The Davalois Fearon Dance Community Engagement Lecture Demonstrations are designed for audiences/participants consisting of schools, assemblies, after-school programs, hospitals, and inexperienced movers. The focus of these workshops is on the importance of cultural dance techniques, finding individual expression through movement, working mind and body simultaneously, and having FUN while moving. Participants will learn about Fearon’s style of developing movement and repertoire through “social issue” inspiration, improvisation, bony landmarks, stretches, Dancehall, West African, and “Rapid Fire”. These Lecture Demonstrations run for 60-90 minutes.
Option I: DFD offers educational performances that raise awareness of a variety of social issues and feature an excerpt from the DFD repertory. Each performance is followed by a discussion that focuses on social issues highlighted by the excerpt and solution-oriented practices to combat the disparity the excerpt seeks to address. The educational performance closes with an added layer of awareness and engagement by inviting participants to learn dance movements associated with solution-oriented practices to provide an embodied experience as a means to increase the impact of the message behind the work.
Option II: Dance workshops grounded in the DFD mission of pushing artistic and social boundaries. Participants are guided through an improvisation-based warmup before crafting a dance phrase that is informed by the embodiment of DFD artistic and social practices introduced in the warmup.