Toronto

Call for participants
School for the Movement of the Technicolor People project

This is an invitation to participate in a paid creative project, running February-November 2019, as part of the School for the Movement of the Technicolor People (SMTP), an interdisciplinary exhibition, which will run from September-November at Gallery TPW. The SMTP exhibition will turn the gallery into an environment reminiscent of a dance school with a series of guiding photographs and an experimental, free-to-the-public curriculum of movement-based classes, workshops, and events facilitated by a selected core group of Toronto participants across the show’s eight-week run.

This call is to form that Toronto-based collective who, under the direction of Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary dance artist taisha paggett and dramaturgical support from Toronto-based dance artist/scholar Seika Boye, will move through three stages (described below) to develop and then activate the exhibition’s experimental curriculum, which seeks to address a guiding conceptual question: “What is a Black. Dance. Curriculum. Today?” (Here “Black dance” is a play on words meant not just to point to the canon of African diasporic dance but to the perpetually unstable condition and resiliency of Black life in the United States and Canada.)

Who should apply: Movement-inclined artists and dancers of color interested in engaging somatic and contemplative practices; radical pedagogy; queer, feminist and Black studies; (Black) geography and land politics; and performance and visual art studies are encouraged to apply. Participants must also have access to a reliable computer and be comfortable with online communication (including video.) Teaching and performance experience is a plus
but not required.

Fee: Participants will be paid development, rehearsal and performance rates in accordance with CADA recommended fee structures.

Read below for further details on the process and expectations of the collective. Send any questions to SMTPToronto@gallerytpw.ca. There will also be a public information session on Thurs Nov 8 from 7-9PM with the lead artists at Gallery TPW: 170 St. Helens Ave. Toronto.

To apply: Please send a bio, CV and a brief statement describing your creative practice/research and interest in the project by Nov 1 to the email above.

Tentative project timeline and expectations*

Stage one: Building our praxis (Feb-June)
In this first stage, the collective in Toronto will engage an “inner curriculum” of reading and listening materials, movement practice scores and experiments offered by paggett and Boye. Utilizing the term ‘solitary togetherness’ as an organizing and conceptual anchor, collective members will work mostly independently with the exception of online communication and a monthly gathering for in-person studio exchange (with LA and Houston members participating via Skype.) The goal of this stage is to get acquainted with one another, build embodied understanding of the project’s primary concepts, and collectively develop a new platform of experiential ideas, questions, language and materials to be employed in stage two. Towards the end, we will also build a portfolio of photographs with project collaborator Ashley Hunt which will be included in the fall installation.

Stage two: Evolving our praxis into an experimental curriculum (August)
The second stage will have collective members engage directly with one another in generative in-person studio practice, and a rehearsal intensive (approximately 5-10 days towards the end of August) with paggett, Boye, and members from the States. The goal here is to move together and collectively build and refine the infrastructure for the experimental curriculum of classes, workshops, and events to be offered to the public for the fall exhibition. We will also develop a score to be performed for the exhibition’s opening and concluding event, and grow familiar with the gallery by working in the space as the installation is being built.

Stage three: Activating the School for the Movement of the Technicolor People (Sept-Nov)
In this final stage, we will activate and facilitate the School for the Movement of the Technicolor People, the eight-week exhibition and experimental curriculum developed across stage one and two. Seen now as an “outer curriculum” and free-to-the-public dance school, each collective member will take turns leading the experiential workshop(s) they devised and participating in other events of the school. The collective will also offer a performance for the opening and engage in concluding events as a way to establish a container. To further frame the gallery as the collective’s home environment, it will also be offered up to members across the eight weeks as a rehearsal space and/or resource for their own creative research (based on availability.)

*Details of timeline subject to evolve based on the group’s availability and general project development.