Portals: pandemic dances
Portals: pandemic dances
Seattle International Dance Festival 2021
Featuring works by Nia-Amina Minor + Moonyeka + Lavinia Vago + Drama Tops + Dani Tirrell
Thursday June 17th | 7:30 PM PDT
Broadway Performance Hall | 1625 Broadway, Seattle, WA
Curated by Fox Whitney | Velocity Dance Center
Portals: pandemic dances is an opportunity to re-enter the live theater space and re-orient to the emotional and physical experience of sharing space with others after such a long period of pandemic restrictions and reconciling with altered ways of creating, rehearsing, and moving in space with others. Broadway Performance hall becomes a symbol for the transition from inside to outside, alone and together, past and present and our new normal.
ABOUT SIDF 2021 – Special Edition
This year, the Seattle International Dance Festival emerges from a year of virtual festivals, to bring audiences a special edition, hybrid-version of its yearly contemporary dance festival. SIDF 2021 will feature live stage performances for a reduced-capacity in-person audience, as well as a live-streamed virtual option for audiences to choose their comfort level of seeing live dance.
With travel restrictions still in place and strict Covid-19 guidelines to adhere to, what better programming than to spotlight Seattle artists and invite performers from different Seattle dance venues to unite the Seattle dance community? Join us, as we safely lift the restraints from the past year and open our doors to a small in-person and a large virtual audience!
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Nia-Amina Minor
Nia-Amina Minor (she/they) is a movement artist + educator from South Central Los Angeles. Her creative work focuses on the body and what it carries. Through performance and teaching, Nia-Amina converses with black realities and investigates the intersections of movement, memory, and rhythm. She holds an MFA from UC Irvine and a BA from Stanford University. From 2014-2017, Nia-Amina was a co-founder and curator for No)one Art House. Upon moving to Seattle, she worked as a Company Artist and Community Engagement Artist Liaison with Spectrum Dance Theater. Nia-Amina is currently based in Seattle, WA.
Instagram: @niaaminam
Facebook: Nia-Amina Minor
Moonyeka
MOONYEKA (my name/goddexx/they/them/she/her) is a non-binary mixed Filipinx movement-based storyteller who is on a journey to integrate their erotic knowledge from various lived experiences, and with the guidance of Aswang*, to offer sensually sacred, erotic, and body experiential spaces, especially for the communities that have raised them. *Aswang is an umbrella term for various shape-shifting, mythological, animist, folkloric, “evil” spirits and creatures in Filipino folklore.
You can support them find out more about group offerings such as Aswang Movement Incantations, SLITHER: a sensual movement practice, and other class offerings at
Patreon: patreon.com/moonyeka
Instagram: @m00nyeka
Lavinia Vago
Lavinia Vago (she/her) is an Italian dance artist, performer, educator, maker, collaborator, and director based in Seattle and working between NYC, LA, Montreal, Vienna and Berlin. Lavinia experiments and creates dance works as a solo artist. Her work researches and attacks themes of disobedience, kinesthetic empathy, queerness, and transcendence through exhaustion, duration, endurance, and rigor. She uses intuitive improvisational choreographies and scores to explore altered cerebral and emotional headspaces within experimental soundscapes.
Website: laviniavago.com
Facebook: Lavinia Vago
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Drama Tops
Drama Tops was born with the artistic partnership of Elby Brosch (he/him) and Shane Donohue (he/him). They began making work together three years ago with the creation of a solo on two bodies. The dynamic between their trans body and cis body has created beautiful moments of frustration, competition, tenderness, and comedy. Jordan Macintosh-Hougham, a non-binary dancer, has recently joined Drama Tops rounding out expression, perspective, and dynamism. Drama Tops blends the worlds of nightlife and concert modern dance.
Instagram: @drama_tops_official
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Dani Tirrell
dani tirrell, Seattle’s Mayor Arts Award recipient 2019, is a Black, Trans Spectrum, Queer choreographer, dancer, and movement guide. dani has guided people in Detroit and Seattle as well as sharing movement practices in other cities in the United States. Currently dani is the curator for Central District Forum for Arts and Ideas. Dani is the host and co-creator of several online talk programs Sunday Dinner, The Living Room, and Intimate Conversations.
dani is the founder and current artistic director of The Congregation a movement/art group. dani taught at Northwest Tap Connection, Velocity Dance Center, University of Washington Seattle and Bothell campuses. dani has created work for Dance This (Northwest Tap Connection), Strictly Seattle (advance/professional track), Seattle Repertory Theater, Nina Simone Four Women (Directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton). dani is an Arts Matter Fellow, Artists Trust Fellow, and 4Culture Arc Fellow. dani is the Artist in Residence at Velocity Dance Center (2020/2021) and one of 6 Artists in Residence at On the Boards (Seattle, WA)
dani’s production of Black Bois (On the Boards and Seattle Theater Group) was a locally critically acclaimed work that produced sold-out shows in Seattle and is in development for a documentary film. In 2019 dani was the recipient of an Artist Trust Fellowship Award and a Dance Crush Award for Black Bois (performance). dani also received a 2018 Arts Matter Fellowship grant. dani’s new work 46, is a photo exhibit styled, staged, and photographed by dani. This work can be found online under dani’s Instagram profile.
Instagram: @danitirrell
Website: danitirrell.com
Facebook: Dani Tirrell and the Congregation
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