Denton TX – In celebration of Mexican culture on the weekend of Cinco de Mayo, Muchacha Fanzine and The Wounded Healer’s Collective, proudly presents Denton’s first Latina artist showcase “Brown Queen: Our Voz Our Arte” on Cinco de Mayo located in downtown Denton. This cultural celebration is intended to honor, celebrate, and support the cultural contributions and talents of rising local Latina artists. We hope this event can serve to bring attention to Latin@/Hispanic culture and women of color contributions within the artistic community of Denton and the larger DFW metroplex.
Brown Queen: Our Voz Our Arte is brought to you by one of the organizers of the Denton Annual Femme fest, Muchacha Fanzine, a local Latina feminist zine and The Wounded Healer’s Collective, an initiative comprised primarily of local women of color artists, graduate students, and staff from Texas Woman’s University who promote art as a tool for community building and development. This event will include spoken word poetry, comedy, dance, diverse musical performances, food, as well as a visual art auction open to the public. This event will also premiere Muchacha Fanzine’s newest issue “Brown Queen” which includes diverse submissions of poetry, short stories, and visual art by Latina artists around the world.
We invite local businesses, organizations, media sources and YOU to consider being involved in the conservation and creation of culture through the arts by donating to our KICKSTARTER EVENT PAGE. All donations will be used towards event costs. All proceeds of this event will also be donated to the participating local Latina artists as a statement of appreciation, support, and solidarity in the continued nurturance and development of Latina’s in the arts.
What is the Jungian Shadow, anyway, and why is it relevant? Here is a short new video of Shadow Tender’s artistic director, Natasha Kolosowsky, explaining & contextualizing these things + some art and dancing.
In brief, it’s a performance and workshop series that asks how humans create and interact with the monstrous within ourselves and in others, and seeks to provide the tools and inspiration to meet our shadows with compassion rather than fear, shame, or rejection. We’re examining these ideas through the lens of fantasy, theater, wearable sculpture, and movement, with inspiration ranging from neuroscience to alchemical philosophy. We’ve been invited to perform and teach at the World Stage Design festival this July in Taiwan, Taipei - one of the largest international performance design festivals in the world! But we’ll need your help to get there! We’re only about 26% of the way to our funding goal, and we only have a few days left of our crowdfunding campaign!
SHADOW TENDER IS ON THE POSTER for SCENOFEST - the performance program of the entire World Stage Design festival! The poster is up in Taiwan right now. Wha…?!! That’s Aurelia Cohen and Maria in the bottom image. What an honor….now we have to go!
Speaking of which, we are just past 25% of our total goal for funding with LESS THAN a week to go in our campaign. If we are able to get to get to at least 45% of the full sum, that may be enough to get us to the festival.
We have been blown away by the generosity of our communities thus far — thank you SO MUCH for supporting us and believing in Shadow Tender. I cannot begin to express how much it means to be able to share these ideas with you and to hear affirmation that yes, this work is necessary, timely, and welcome in the world.
Can we do it? Can we actually make it to Taiwan?! As we near the final, deciding week of our Indiegogo campaign, we are working extra hard to reach out far and wide to encourage people to donate and make Shadow Tender a reality. Our whole team is giving it absolutely everything we can, but we still have a ways to go.
Will you help us spread the word in the coming week? Its as simple as sending a short note or sharing the campaign linkwith somebody you think may resonate with our work – every little bit counts.
….After all, we are already on the poster : )
Thank you for being part of this adventure with us!
“The Jungian Shadow lays curled up in the darkness of the fictional mind-body split, in the chasm that we tell ourselves separates our “civilized,” “rational” selves from the “primitive,” “uncultured” aspects of our being. Within this darkness dwells the “other”: the deep trauma, shame, and pain of the colonized and the colonizer; the oppressed and the oppressor. The body knows these secrets – blood and sinew cannot be fooled, cannot be made to ignore these aspects of the self.“ -Natasha Kolosowsky
Here is a small snippet of a Shadow Tender rehearsal from our first week of workshops at the Headwaters Theatre in Portland, OR. Part of exploring our Shadow selves is honoring the parts of ourselves that are not always…”approved of” by society. This is SO up my alley when it comes to beastly, feral movements–I’m so grateful to have an outlet for the type of movement that feels like it’s running just under my skin, more often than not…
To take a page from The Princess Bride; It’s got masks, and ballet, and monsters; butoh, and biofeedback technology, and prosthetics; martial arts, modern dance, and circus arts; Jungian psychology, alchemical philosophy, and neuroscience; fearsome things and tender things.
I can’t imagine a project I would be more excited to work on right now. This is one of the largest projects I’ve ever tackled, and what I truly want my art to achieve: using the transformative magic of costumes and movement to help people understand more about themselves and even find the tools to interact more healthily with each other.
I’m working with some of the most talented artists and performers I know, but even as excited and determined as we are, we’re not going to be able to do this alone. Please take a moment to watch our video and check out our campaign. If you can contribute we’d be forever grateful, but you can help us succeed just by spreading the word. Do you know anyone who likes any of the things in that first sentence? Share this with them!
Wow! So it’s been a year since I developed my last poster which had 20,000+ shares! Clearly this is a sign that I’m not alone in thinking street harassment is a disgusting, pervasive problem which has wider implications about how women are valued, viewed and treated in society. And more importantly many, many people actually do *give a shit* about putting an end to it.
Apologies for taking so long to fill you in on the anti-catcalling campaign! At the end of last year, I did a street performance in San Francisco entitled “I Am Not A Cat” where I interviewed people on the street about some of the horrendous examples of harassment they’d experienced and asked them, if they could respond one-way, what they would say. Some responded with a simple “fuck you” and others with more specific reprimands. These responses were stitched together to form a voicemail message, tied to a number printed on anti-catcalling cards that could be given to aggressive cat-callers. When the street harasser dialed the number they’d hear (instead of the object of their harassment) dozens of people telling them EXACTLY what they think of street harassment! Now that the performance is finished, I’m continuing to explore new avenues for sending the message that street harassment is not okay and spreading awareness about verbal and sexual assault.
Niv Acosta, I Shot Denzel, Ongoing project since 2010
“how do i navigate being transgender in dance? identifying as black in dance? identifying as queer in dance? and not always be defiant or “challenging”? i am interested in creating space and visibility for myself and others who identify similarly. the topics that remain challenged in i shot denzel are normativity, complacency, and impossibility,“ nivacosta
The inside of the Opera House–at least, the backstage inside–put Agnes strongly in mind of the clock her brother had taken apart to find the tick. It was hardly a building. It was more like a machine. Sets and curtains and ropes hung in the darkness like dreadful things in a forgotten cellar. The stage was only a small part of the place, a little rectangle of light in a huge, complicated darkness full of significant machinery…
