2011 Theatrical Jazz Institute

The Theatrical Jazz Institute (TJI) is Curated by Sharon Bridgforth and is Produced by The Theatre School at DePaul University, Links Hall and Sharon Bridgforth.

About The Theatrical Jazz Aesthetic: HERE
Clips from Theatrical Jazz Institute Events HERE

2012 EVENT LISTINGS HERE.

SPRING 2011

The Theatre School at DePaul University Presents
Sharon Bridgforth’s Theatrical Jazz Institute at Links Hall. Chicago, IL..

Nationally based master Theatrical Jazz Aesthetic practitioners will visit the Institute, offering public talks, workshops and informal presentations of their work.

2010 – 2011 GUEST ARTIST INFO:

Helga Davis

Helga Davis turned it OUT! Thank you to all that came and supported!
View video from Helga’s visit HERE.

Helga’s Work @ The Institute

@ Links Hall Sunday 4/17/11
3435 N. Sheffield Avenue, Suite 207 Chicago, IL 60657
PERFORMANCE & Talk Back 2:30PM – 3:30PM
Spontaneous Act of Theater.  Using a device that allows her to sample her voice, and using  the device to create a musical soundscape around a theme that she or an audience member presents: the audience offers text or musical ideas that get incorporated to make new piece & to present her own original songs.

WORKSHOP 4PM – 5:30PM
Helga will offer a body/mind/breath workshop in which participants will use the breath to open the body and the mind to create short pieces which can be performed within just a few minutes of their inception. Helga has led these workshops for the last 3 years at Robert Wilson’s summer theater lab, Watermill, with great success. 

@ DePaul Monday 4/18/11 5PM – 6PM
The Theatre School at DePaul University
Lobby, 2135 N. Kenmore Ave. Chicago, IL. 60614
Rob Dieringer will interview Helga. Helga will present an excerpt of work and a talk back. Free and open. No reservation needed. Refreshments will be served.

BIO For more than five years Helga has been the co-star of The Temptation of St. Anthony, directed by Robert WIlson with libretto and score by Bernice Johnson Reagon of Sweet Honey in the Rock. She recently appeared in VOX the Contemporary American Opera Lab run by the City Opera of New York. In February 2008 Davis conducted a special feature interview with artist Kara Walker for the  WNYC program Morning Edition on the eve of her Whitney Museum retrospective. She wrote and performed a new multi-media piece entitled: Imaginings at the Whitney Museum at the retrospective’s conclusion. In the Spring of 2008 Davis starred in The Blue Planet, a multi-media theater piece written by Peter Greenaway and directed by Saskia Boddeke. 2004 marked Davis’ directorial debut at the University of Texas, Austin, with Sharon Bridgforth’s, love/conjure/blues.

Lenelle Moïse

Lenelle is an exquisite artist! Thank you to all who came/and supported!!
View Lenelle’s talkback facilitated by Ching-In Chen HERE.

Lenelle’s Work at the Institute

@ Links Hall Sunday 4/10/11
3435 N. Sheffield Avenue, Suite 207 Chicago, IL 60657
PERFORMANCE & Talk Back 2PM – 3PM Free.
Be/Holding Home: an evening of poems, performance, essays and music about place, compassion and resilience.

WORKSHOP 3:30PM – 5PM
Radical Voice & Movement. This is an interactive and highly physical performance workshop for actors, musicians, dancers, poets or anyone interested in radical self-expression & improvisational vocal composition.

@ DePaul Wednesday 4/20/11 5PM – 6PM
The Theatre School At DePaul
Lobby, 2135 N. Kenmore Ave. Chicago, IL. 60614
Alexis Jade will interview Lenelle. Lenelle will present an excerpt of work and a talk back. Free and open to the public. No reservation needed. Refreshments will be provide.

BIO Lenelle Moïse is a Haitian-American writer, composer and internationally-touring performance artist. Curve Magazine calls her work “piercing, covering territory both intimate and political…vivid and powerful.” She has performed at the United Nations, the Louisiana Superdome and in dozens of theatres and colleges. Her essays have been published in Utne Reader as well as several anthologies, including Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders of the Spoken Word Revolution. She is the 2010 recipient of the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award in Poetry, the 2010-2012 Poet Laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts and the 2011 Solo/Black/Woman Artist-in-Residence at Northwestern University.

Daniel Alexander Jones

Daniel Alexander Jones was glorious!
Thank you to ALL who helped to make his visit a great success!
View video HERE.

Daniel’s Work While In Chicago

@ DePaul Friday 2/25/11 2PM-3PM
Theatre School Lobby: 2135 N. Kenmore Ave
Columbia College LGBTQI Student Group, Common Ground will be guests of The Theatre School for this event. Common Ground member Brandon Taylor-Slides will interview Daniel. Daniel will present an excerpt of work, and a talk back.
Refreshments will be provided. Free and open to the public. No reservation needed.

@ Links Hall Sunday 2/27/11
3435 N. Sheffield Avenue, Suite 207 Chicago, IL 60657
PERFORMANCE & TALK BACK 2PM – 3PM
Free and open to the public. No reservation needed.
WORKSHOP 3:30PM – 5PM

BIO Daniel Alexander Jones makes live art. His unconventional, interdisciplinary approach has yeilded a dynamic body of work including: Phoenix Fabrik, Blood:Shock:Boogie, Earthbirths & Qualities of Light. Jones maintains long-running collaborations with artists Robbie McCauley, Vinie Burrows, Helga Davis, Sonja Perryman, Sharon Bridgforth, Walter Kitundu, Grisha Coleman and Barbara Duchow. Daniel, composer Bobby Halvorson & director Kym Moore premiere Jomama Jones – Radiate at Soho Rep in 2011. Jones received the Alpert Award Theatre, grants from Creative Capital and the MAP Fund. He is an alumnus of New Dramatists and is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Fordham University in Manhattan. More at danielalexanderjones.com.

Baraka de Soleil

Thank you to everyone that supported the work of
Theatrical Jazz Institute Guest Artist Baraka de Soleil.
Baraka you truly moved us! THANK YOU!
View video Here.

Baraka’s Work While In Chicago

@ Links Hall Sunday 2/13/11
3435 N. Sheffield Avenue, Suite 207 Chicago, IL 60657
Performance & Talk Back 2PM – 3PM
Baraka de Soleil/D UNDERBELLY will present excerpts from, Water Moves the Soul
Featuring: Baraka de Soleil, Ni’Ja Whitson and Nikki Patin
Immersed in an ambient environment of voices, natural and inorganic sounds. An experimental body-based work, Water Moves the Soul, traces the transatlantic slave voyage from Africa to America; unearthing the ancestral, emotional and spiritual memories of a ‘people’ – who endured one of the most horrific experiences in World history; a testimony to survival in the midst of loss and longing.
Free and open to the public. No reservation needed.

Workshop 3:30PM – 5PM
Work will reflect traditions of the African Diaspora, immersed in a post-modern sensibility. Participants will explore conventions of theatre, dance, communal and interdisciplinary performance.

@ DePaul Monday 2/14/11 5PM – 6PM
Theatre School MFA Acting Student Celeste Cooper will interview Baraka, he will present an excerpt of work and engage with the audience in a talk back.
Theatre School Lobby: 2135 N. Kenmore Ave
Refreshments will be provided. Free and open to the public.

BIO Winner of the Katherine Dunham Choreography/AUDELCO for excellence for his work on ‘Sango: Lord of Thunder’ (produced by National Black Theatre in Harlem), Baraka de Soleil’s work reflects traditions of the African Diaspora, immersed in a post-modern sensibility. Baraka Directed and Choreographed Orunmila, The Yoruba Dance Drama written by David D. Wright, produced by and with the creative input & consultation of The National Black Theatre, Founder, the late Dr Barbara Ann Teer. Based in Brooklyn, NY, Baraka has worked with legendary artists such as Cooper-Moore and Marlies Yearby Movin’ Spirits Dance Theatre and is founder of D UNDERBELLY: a network of artists of color invested in interdisciplinary exploration through the excavation of ‘new’ work & communal exchange. Baraka Directed and Choreographed the 2010 New York SummerStage production of blood pudding.

Dr. Omi Osun Joni L. Jones

Thanks to all that supported and worked to make
our FIRST Theatrical Jazz Institute Guest Artist event series a success!
Dr. Jones YOU ROCK!
View video Here.

Omi’s Work While In Chicago

@ Links Hall 2PM 1/23/11
PERFORMANCE 2PM-3PM
sista docta
In 1993, Omi Osun Joni L. Jones began performing sista docta as a way of interrogating racism and sexism in U.S. academic institutions.  Using personal narratives, statistics, movement and improvisation, Jones explores the many ways that institutions seek to silence our spirits.  The work uses elements of theatrical jazz that acknowledges the deep learning possible through embodiment and non-linear structures.

WORKSHOP 3:30PM-5PM
Register HERE.

Fusion of Forms. Using the principles of Theatrical Jazz participants will create 3 or more artistic artifacts and explore ways of combining them into a single performance.  Through writing, movement, and collaborative exercises participants will have an opportunity to examine new performance strategies.

@ DePaul 1/24/11 5PM-6PM
Lecture/Demo: Theatre School MFA Acting Student Sean Parris will interview Dr. Jones. She will then present an excerpt of her work and engage with the audience in a talk back.
Refreshments will be provided.
Theatre School Lobby: 2135 N. Kenmore Ave.

BIO Omi Osun Joni L. Jones (Ph.D., New York University) specializes in performance scholarship that focuses on identity, ethnography, Yoruba-based performance aesthetics, Black Feminisms and Theatre for Social Change. She teaches undergraduate courses in African-American theatre history and the performance of race. At the graduate level she teaches performance ethnography, performing Black Feminisms, Yoruba performance, and performance and activism. Dr. Jones was a Fulbright Fellow in Nigeria (1997-1998) where she taught at Obafemi Awolowo University and contributed Theatre for Social Change workshops to the Forum on Governance and Democracy in Ile-Ife. For more about Omi HERE.

For More Information Contact:
Erica Mott, education AT linkshall dot org
773-281-0824 linkshall.org

Join us at ATHE in Chicago:
The Jazz Aesthetic: The Next Moment for Black Theatre for panel
with Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, Daniel Alexander Jones, E. Patrick Johnson and Sharon Bridgforth:
August 12, 2011 from 5:15pm – 6:45pm. More HERE.

SPRING 2011 INSTITUTE.

Institute Participant Showcase

Four of the thirteen Spring 2011 Theatrical Jazz Institute Participants shared excerpts of works-in-progress generated during the Institute.

This clip includes excerpts from:
Isaac Fosl Van-Wyke “idEnergy crisis”
Constance Michelle Lee “BlackMon”
Marie Casimir “dawn / avanjou”
Ching-In Chen “Kundiman for Kin”

The showcase took place on September 9 – 11, 2011 @ Links Hall in Chicago.

Institute Participants

(L to R kneeling) Shannon Matesky, Kyla Searle, Marie Casimir,  Jonathan Kitt,(L to R standing) Apprentice: Ni’Ja Whitson, Dalila Paola Méndez,  Isaac Fosl-van Wyke, Constance Michelle Lee,  Ching-In Chen,  K. Bradford, Stacey Nwokeyi, Misty De Berry,  Eleanore Catolico (not pictured: Erica Mott). 

Institute Participants will present a works in-progress performance of the pieces they developed during the Institute Sept. 7-9, 2011 @ Links Hall.

To download a PDF of the PSA below CLICK HERE.

*Check out Laurie Carlos speaking on being in the room HERE.