Look for PDP’s Mid-week DANCE UP CLOSE Series:
AMALIA COLÓN-NAVA & CAITLIN GREEN May 8-9,
JOE GONZÁLEZ May 22-23
LILY KIND June 26 -27
TICKETS: https://buytickets.at/philadelphiadanceprojects
All performances at Christ Church Neighborhood House Theater 7PM
20 North American Street, Phila PA
Amalia Colon-Náva is a farmer and multi-disciplinary artist that loves to move. The majority of her formal education is in dance performance, but she has always loved food and playing in the dirt. She believes we must heal our severed connection with the land on both a personal and global level in order to save our planet from the existential threat of climate change. She is noticing cycles of change and moves through life infusing her love for nurturing the earth with her passion for dance, care, play and contradictions/dualities.
We could plant fruit trees/Podríamos plantar arboles frutales is an autobiographical piece about journeying to Mexico – shared through recordings, diary entries, and movement – “a place where my family is from but after years of relocation to the United States feels strange, remote, and to an extent unwelcoming. My paternal grandparents grew up on a rancho called Tetillas, land of the Zacatecos, Guachichiles and Tepecanos, where they were born, raised, and where my father was born. My grandmother grew up planting corn and beans and foraging local foods like nopales, verdolaga and local fruits. My grandfather cared for animals. I attempt to share the experience of struggling to build a connection with this place, imbued with strong Catholic values and
Spanish colonial influence, and understand the lives of past generations.”
May 8-9 https://buytickets.at/philadelphiadanceprojects/1195527
Caitlin Green will screen “FURY”, an excerpt from the in-progress experimental dance film, Eros: As Fragile as it is Free. Inspired by the obscure emotions that can result from the postpartum experience, the film explores how extreme feeling can simultaneously breed a siloed perception of self whilst mirroring that of the collective unconscious. “FURY” is a reckoning with anger, grief, rage, and the isolation that these taboo emotions require.
Caitlin is a freelance dance artist with a background in dance/movement therapy (R-DMT). Their work has been featured in the Philly Fringe Festival (2019), EMERGE Earthdance multidisciplinary artist residency (2019), the Painted Bride Art Center’s Building Bridges artist cohort (2020), and Bodymeld’s GWYN residency (2021). Caitlin is the curator and facilitator of “Our Embodied Impulses” (2021) – a collaborative choreographic project that explored the interconnected nature of individual and collective restoration. She is the curator and facilitator of a workshop series “Dancing to Transgress: Lessons from bell hooks” (2020) which questioned traditional educational settings and engaged teaching artists in discussions to re-imagine what a multicultural and inclusive learning environment can look like. Caitlin is a trauma-informed teaching artist with Dancing Classrooms Philly, The Village of Arts and Humanities, and BuildaBridge.
May 8-9 https://buytickets.at/philadelphiadanceprojects/1195527
Joe González will premiere Unbroken an evening of works performed by Jo-Mé Dance Theatre that showcases an unbroken drive to keep moving, both forward and stronger. This suite of dances explores strategies to overcome grief and social injustice. One movement centers on the heartbreakingly true story of Sean Ellis, a Boston black resident who, wrongfully accused through police corruption, was incarcerated for over 21 years.
Joe González is an Afro-Latino American dancer and choreographer. He is currently a performing artist with Complexions Contemporary Ballet and Jo-Mé Dance Arts Inc. where he is their Resident Choreographer and co-Artistic Director/Founder. González has toured and performed nationally and internationally with Philadanco!, Anna Myer & Dancers, and Prometheus Dance, and has danced for DanceIQUAIL, WaheedWorks, and #DBdanceproject. He has created commissioned works for Bryn Mawr College, Boston Conservatory, Rowan University, Philadelphia Dance Theatre, City Dance and
many works for Jo-Mé Dance Arts. He served for three years as Artistic Director of PhilaDanco’s D/3
company and is currently a dance professor at Temple University and Georgian Court University.
May 22 & 23 https://buytickets.at/philadelphiadanceprojects/1195529
In I’ve got a tape I wanna play, Lily Kind has created a surreal celebration of music and its slippery role in daily life. Together with dancers Chelsea Murphy, Chloe Marie, Elizabeth Weinstein, and Dylan Smythe, Kind performs a climactic concert, bringing together house, waacking, vernacular jazz, and post-modern dance in a series of vignettes devoted to the unexpected bookmarks songs place in the pages of our lives.
Lily Kind is known as “a real find” and for her “idiosyncratic vision that usually flies under the radar” (Broad Street Review). Recently having made London her second home, Kind returns to Philly to continue presenting her improvised, ensemble performance work, such as Wolfthicket (2021) which thinkingDance called “a sheer blast”. Kind, called a ‘kinetic polyglot’ by the Baltimore Sun, is the former associate director for Vince Johnson at Urban Movement Arts, co-founder of Ragtag Empire, and in 2024 joined the House of Suraj, London. She braids together many strands of Black Vernacular movement styles including Lindy Hop and Waacking. Most recently, she co-created Honey or Hunting with Dylan Smythe, a Wolfthicket off-shot adapted to Egyptian dancers for Cairo’s Breaking Walls Festival, 2024.
June 26 & 27 https://buytickets.at/philadelphiadanceprojects/1195536