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

Lily Kind brings to her presentation, new work with an emphasis on rhythm, visual and historical rhymes, cartoon-ish camaraderie with fellow performers and sly critiques of contemporary dance. There will be pop music and there will also be “footnotes”. Kind’s collaborators include Chelsea Murphy, Chloe Marie, and Dylan Smythe, with whom she recently co-presented dance works that she re-set on Egyptian dancers at Cairo’s Breaking Walls Festival, 2024. 

Lily Kind is a critically acclaimed choreographer, dancer, producer, and writer based in Philly & London. Lily’s movement languages include contemporary dance, clown, waacking, locking, and vernacular jazz. Lily’s work has been presented by Princeton University, Ursinus College, Philadelphia Dance Projects, Table Gallery (Chicago), Miami Light Project, Sarasota Contemporary Dance Company, Le Mondo (Baltimore), Creative Alliance (Baltimore), and The Baltimore Museum of Art. Lily self-produced her own work as the founder of Effervescent Collective in Baltimore, Maryland – gaining recognition as Best Choreographer, (Baltimore Magazine, 2014) Best Dance Company (Baltimore City Paper, 2010, 2012, Baltimore Magazine, 2012) and winning a Baker Artist Award ‘B’ Grant, 2011. She has also produced multiple iterations of her critically acclaimed show Wolfthicket, 2016 to present. In 2017, Lily helped Vince Johnson launch Urban Movement Arts (UMA) in downtown Philly, where she also trained with The Hood Lockers and Ron Wood. As a vernacular jazz dancer, Lily co-directed Ragtag Empire, a lindy hop school in Philly from 2017-2022 and has trained with Guardian Baltimore and The Jazz Maniacs (Brussels). Lily is one of few US American ambassadors of Flying Low & Passing Through, the methods of David Zambrano, in which she has trained intensively with both Zambrano & Milan Herich in Thailand, Costa Rica, Mexico, and as a participant in The 60 Days Project in Brussels, Belgium. She holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Goucher College, an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts with a concentration in Afro-Diasporic Studies from Goddard College, and a certificate from Headlong Dance Theater. Her dance writing can be found at Culturebot, thinkingDance, Phindie, and ArtBlog. Lily has taught workshops at Tulane University, Muhlenberg College, California Institute of the Arts, Bryn Mawr College, Temple University, and Haverford College. She has served as an adjunct professor at Ursinus College and Marymount Manhattan College. In 2023 she joined the faculty of De Montfort University of Leicester, outside London, England.

June 26 & 27 https://buytickets.at/philadelphiadanceprojects/1195536