PREVIOUS EVENTS
Julian Saporiti and Erin Aoyama performing No-No Boy at the University of Michigan. Photo by Molly Paberzs.
2024
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THE SOUNDS WE KEEP / THE STEPS WE TAKE
DECEMBER 4-7, 2024 | Ann Arbor & Dearborn, MI
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Daring Dances proudly joined forces with Arab.AMP and the Arab American National Museum (AANM) to bring you: THE SOUNDS WE KEEP / THE STEPS WE TAKE, A full week of programming in Ann Arbor and Dearborn featuring Bay Area based Palestinian dabke troupe Al Juthoor of the Arab Diaspora, led by Director Wael Buhaissy.
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WORKSHOP: Palestinian Dabke Workshop with Al Juthoor of the Arab Diaspora
DECEMBER 7, 2024, 1 - 3 pm @ AANM, Dearborn
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Al-Juthoor (“Roots” in Arabic) of the Arab Diaspora is a Dabke troupe that raises awareness about Arab and Palestinian struggle, culture, and art. Directed by Wael Buhaissy, Al-Juthoor empowers our community and youth to take pride in our heritage, our past, and our future by honoring our history and celebrating our resistance. Across the borders of our diaspora, we assert our community’s connection to our deep roots in the land and the people throughout the Arab world, from Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Palestine.
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Director Wael Buhaissy of bay-area based Al Juthoor of the Arab Diaspora will lead this Palestinian Dabke workshop. Open to all levels, you’ll be in a welcoming environment to learn basic dabke steps and phrases, with more advanced variations introduced as well.
This event is part of The Sounds We Keep, curated by Leyya Mona Tawil.
The Sounds We Keep is a performance series by AANM guest curator Leyya Mona Tawil, Director of Arab.AMP. Experimenting with themes inherent to our diaspora, the artists in this series use sound, voice, composition and movement in an attempt to create a record of our journey and invoke our future. Each program brings together Arab American artists from separate regions of the U.S. This tuning of diasporic forms through music and performance reveals the complexity of our cultural references through the instruments, the approaches and conversations that ensue.​
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PERFORMANCE: Listening for Land Al Juthor of the Arab Diaspora / Huda Asfour & Farah Baraqawi
DECEMBER 7, 2024, 8 pm @ AANM, Dearborn
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​Al-Juthoor (“Roots”) of the Arab Diaspora from the Bay Area, is a celebrated Dabke troupe that raises awareness about Arab and Palestinian struggle, culture, and art. Their powerful dances are fueled with pride as they cue our collective resistance. Al Juthoor Choreographer Wael Buhaissy will work with local dancers from Thowra Dabke for a group performance and the evening will be layered with performances by Huda Asfour (oud) and Farah Barqawi (poetry), sharing excerpts from Journey from Gaza to Brooklyn.
University of Michigan students have the opportunity to attend the performance through the Art Outta Town Program, a subsidized program that provides travel and tickets to art events off-campus. $20 tickets for the Art Outta Town’s trip to AANM for the Dabke performance, which includes dinner, bus travel, & museum tour.
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ROUNDTABLE: Artistry & Resistance: Experiments in Palestinian American Artmaking
DECEMBER 4, 2024, 4-5:30 pm @ Haven Hall 3512, Ann Arbor
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Artmaking is always an experiment– a testing of possibilities meant to create new meanings or forms and/or to teach audiences new ways of looking. Artistic experiments also often re-imagine pre-existing forms and histories and bring these into new spaces or moments in time. This roundtable brings together artists working in film, dance, and sound whose experimentations focus on bringing attention to important themes of Palestinian life, joy, and resistance.​​​​​
Participating artists include Wael Buhaissy, Umayyah Cable, Leila Mire, and Leyya Mona Tawil. Moderated by Clare Croft, Daring Dances curator and Associate Professor of American Culture
Co-sponsored by the Arab American and Muslim American Studies program, Arab.AMP ARAB.Amp, the Arab American National Museum, Daring Dances, and the Global Islamic Studies Center.
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Daring Curation
SEPTEMBER 28, 2024, 12-1 pm @ Koessler Room, The League​
How do arts curators not just critique society, but help support and build just worlds? This public conversation brings together performing arts curators to discuss how they imagine, support, and build communities and worlds through public arts programming, with a particular focus on how curators take risks. Curators hail from a range of institutions including San Francisco/Detroit's Arab.AMP, Akron's National Choreography Center, Oberlin's Oberlin College/Mga Tsismosa, Detroit's Temate Institute for Black Dance and Culture and Detroit's Sidewalk Festival.
This event is part of the Arts & Resistance Theme Semester and received funding support from the Arts Initiative.​
2023
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Dancing Lab: Mga Tsismosa
Experiments in Coalition
JUNE 2023
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The national Center for Chreography - Akron (NCCAkron) and Daring Dances join forces for Dancing Lab: Mga tsismosa with artists Al Evangelista, Jay Caron, Anito Gavino, and Marie Lloyd Paspe.
Learn more about this Experiment in Coalition here.
2022
T. Ayo Alston in Residence at UM
Daring Dances 2020-2022 artist-in-residence
MARCH 7-13, 2022
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T. Ayo Alston came to Ann Arbor for a week of guest teaching, panel conversations and performance. Alston joined guest speakers from the Detroit West African community, Ajara Alghali and Crettia Hunter, and University of Pennsylvania dance scholar Dr. Jasmine Johnson for a conversation about what it means to make dance from a West African perspective while also centering the voices and experiences of women. This panel conversation, West African Dance and Drum: Community, Identity, Storytelling, took place March 10, 2022 at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA). Alston concluded the residency with a culminating performance of Guinea Sweet Suite featuring Ayodele Drum & Dance at the Keene Theater. Performance footage from the live-stream of the show can be viewed here.
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To learn more about Ayo's residency, go here.
To learn more about the Artist-in-Residence program, go here.​​​
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T. Ayo Alston Teaching in Detroit
MARCH 5-6, 2022 @ Andy Arts 3000 Fenkell Ave, Detroit MI
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Daring Dances 2020/22 artist-in-residence, T. Ayo Alston taught West African dance in Rule of III: Chicago in Detroit hosted by TéMaTé Institute for Black Dance and Culture. The workshop features three instructors and three dance styles over two days. All levels welcome (no dance experience necessary) and masks were required. More information here.
2021
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Virtual Midwest RAD Fest 2021: West African Dance Workshop with Daring Dances 2020/22 Artist-in-Residence T. Ayo Alston
MARCH 6, 2021
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In a collaboration between Daring Dances and RAD Fest, T. Ayo Alston will be teaching a West African Dance Workshop in the Festival's Virtual 2021 Movement-Based Master Class series! Alston's class will explore traditional movements of West African dance and music. Students will move through basic technique fundamentals, building sequence while sweating hard and having fun. This class is invigorating and stimulating to the body, mind and soul. Movement classes are open to students 15 years of age and up.
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Watch Party & Discussion: Gabrielle McLeod, Detroit's 'Queen of Jit' in conversation with Clare Croft and J'Sun Howard
(on Zoom & live-streamed to the Daring Dances Facebook Page)
Thursday, February 25, 2021
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Daring Dances and the Center for World Performance Studies team up to premiere two short videos featuring Gabrielle McLeod, Detroit's 'Queen of Jit'. An acclaimed dancer and choreographer from Detroit, Queen Gabby is an ambassador and tradition-bearer for her hometown dance style. She teaches, performs and competes internationally, and is known throughout the Midwest for her amazing footwork.
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The watch party will start with a dance tutorial commissioned by Daring Dances as part of the Daring Dances for Surviving and Thriving series. After participants have had the change to work up a sweat, and work out some footwork, we'll follow with a short video of curator Clare Croft interviewing Queen Gbby, created as part of the CWPS "Performing the Moment, Performing the Movement" series, and have an opportunity for Q&A with Clare Croft and Gabby McLeod, moderated by CWPS Graduate Fellow J'Sun Howard.
2020
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Dancing Justice II: 2019-2020 Daring Dances Student Fellowship Performance
Sunday, September 27, 2020, 7 pm @ UMMA
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Performances featuring new work by the 2019-2020 Daring Dances Student Fellows: Ambiance Dance, Arabesque Dance Troupe, Iraqi Student Association, and the Queer Arts Collective.​​
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Dancing Identities / Defining Place: An evening of dance with Audrey Johnson & Leila Awadallah
NOVEMBER 23, 2019
Dance artists Audrey Johnson (Detroit/Oakland) and Leila Awadallah (Minneapolis) shared an evening of work focused on identity, place and imagination at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.​
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Leila Awadallah in Residence at UM
Daring Dances 2019-2020 artist-in-residence
AUGUST 23-29, 2019 & NOVEMBER 18-23, 2020
During Part 1 of her residency, Leila Awadallah began to codify a specific letter-to-movement relationship for her developing dance language rooted in the study of embodied Arabic calligraphy. Joined by her collaborator, Palestinian-American visual artist Lamia Abukhadra, they activated embodied Arabic calligraphy to investigate how it speaks to conversations surrounding diaspora Palestinian-American identity.
During Part 2 of her residency, Leila shared RAS ABU'AMMAR IS HERE within the Daring Dances Dancing Identities / Defining Place performance at the Arab National Museum in Dearborn.
To learn more about Leila's residency, go here.
To learn more about the Artist-in-Residence program, go here.
2019
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EXPLODE! queer dance: Midwest
Experiments in coalition
AUGUST 8-11, 2019​
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In Chicago, EXPLODE! focused on queer dance of the Midwest across four sites: Three on Northwestern University's campus and one at Chicago dance center Links Hall. This festival was sponsored by and ran co-currently with the Annual Conference of the Dance Studies Association.
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EXPLODE! queer dance (California)
Experiments in coalition
MAY 30 - JUNE 1, 2019
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EXPLODE! queer dance takes to the road, presented by the University of California-Riverside and UCR Arts, in a collaboration with the 2019 Indigenous Choreographers at Riverside Gathering, with overlapping planning. Performances took place at Barbara and Art Culver Center of the Arts
3824 Main Street, Riverside, CA.
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Noemí Segarra Residency
in collaboration with Northwestern University's Puerto Rican Arts Initiative
APRIL 22-24, 2019
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Dancing Justice: Inaugural Daring Dances Student Fellows Showcase
APRIL 14, 2019
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Notes on Territory Premieres
MARCH 11-17, 2019​
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Daring Dances inaugural artist-in-residence Anna Martine Whitehead premieres her work Notes on Territory, a collaboration with Damon Locks and Giau Truong at Detroit's Jam Handy, as well as mentors with Daring Dances Student Fellows.
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Choreographing Black Space with Skeleton Architecture & The Gathering
Experiments in coalition
FEBRUARY 27-MARCH 4, 2019​
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Bessie Award-winning Skeleton Architecture returns to Michigan for a residency with The Gathering, a group of ten Detroit-based Black dance artists and improvisers for a five-day residency and culminating performance.
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Application Deadline for Student Fellowship Program
Daring Dance's inaugural group of student fellows have been selected. Check back in future years for more application cycles.
2018
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Skeleton Architecture Fall Residency
Experiments in coalition
NOVEMBER 7-12, 2018​
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Skeleton Architecture, a Bessie Award winning collective of Black womyn and gender nonconforming artists rooted in the rigor and power of the collective in practice and improvisation will collaborate with Detroit-based Harge Dance Stories for a week-long residency that includes teaching and working with student activists at University of Michigan and working with Black improvisers in Detroit.
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Anna Martine Whitehead in Residence at UM
Daring Dance’s inaugural artist-in-residence
JUNE 18-29, 2018
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While in residence at the University of Michigan, Anna Martine Whitehead will be engaged in movement and sound research for her project Notes on Territory, a performance lecture on the history of containment architecture and freedom practices. Territory is a journey from gothic cathedrals to slave dungeons to modern prisons to public housing -- in no particular order -- and uses technologies such as the cross, the dome, the siteplan, and the chalk outline as temporal guideposts. For the first week of Daring Dances’ Artist-in-Residency program, Whitehead will be joined by sound and visual artist Damon Locks in the studio.
To learn more about the Artist-in-Residence program, go here.
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No-No Boy: Julian Saporiti with Erin Aoyama
Performance and artist residency
FEBRUARY 19-21, 2018​
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Singer/songwriter Julian Saporiti will be at the University of Michigan to present No-No Boy, a multimedia concert inspired by Saporiti’s doctoral research at Brown University, as well as his experiences growing up as a Vietnamese-American in Tennessee. This performance shines a light on diverse but interconnected Asian-American experiences: the many lives of WWII Japanese Incarceration camp survivors, refugees from southeast Asia, waves of immigrants, and kids in middle America making sense of a hyphenated identity. Saporiti will be joined by singer and fellow Brown Ph.D. student Erin Aoyama, in performance and throughout their residency in classes at U-M.
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To learn more about the No-No Boy project, go here.
To read the Michigan Daily article, No-No Boy: The Intersections of Asian American, go here.
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2017
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EXPLODE! queer dance (New York)
Experiments in coalition
JUNE 22-24, 2017
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EXPLODE! queer dance is a four-day festival of performances and conversations curated by dance scholar Clare Croft, that re-imagines the potential of queer dance today. Featuring a range of forms - including South Asian dance, improvisation, Irish step dancing, and drag - the festival showcases artists from across the U.S. and around the world, including Jennifer Monson, DD Dorvillier, Thomas DeFrantz, Jennifer Harge, Nic Gareiss & Cleek Schrey and Post Natyam Ensemble. The shows will be hosted by the fierce and beautiful Boston-based design drag queen LaWhore Vagistan.
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Performances took place at JACK in Brooklyn, NY. Conversations took place at Oxford University Press and Tisch School of the Arts. To learn more about the programming, go here.