Abstract
As a choreographer, performance-maker, community activist, and college professor, I’ve worked with a group of elders in an ongoing program called Dancing Your Stories. In 2022, partnering with a local dance company and leaders in Colorado Spring’s Hillside neighborhood, historically black and neglected by the city’s institutions yet rich in human resources, we created a dance and storytelling laboratory. Rather than delivering already formulated dance performances or classes, we collaborated with the neighborhood elders and leaders to construct socially impactful artistic programming. The Hillside elder dancers perform and collaborate with professional guest artists, college students, and community organizations. They attend public events together and share information about arts and cultural activities, voting rights, best practices in healthcare, etc. They interface with grass-roots community groups, they share rides and generally care for one another when needed. Dancing Your Stories has become a creative hub – a second life – for the elders to develop an expanding constellation of relations through creative inquiry and public performances. My practice-based research is focused on the social benefits of creative engagement and draws upon the interdisciplinary field of creative studies. This participatory workshop will demonstrate how I collaborated with artists, elders and community leaders to both create community and foster communities that create. Workshop participants will be guided through a series of exploratory activities – drawing on gestural vocabularies, movement improvisation, conversation, active listening, and storytelling as the materials for engagement – to make visible the rich reservoir of creativity in elder populations.
Presenters
Shawn WomackProfessor and Department Chair, Theatre and Dance Department, Colorado College, Colorado, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
Social and Cultural Perspectives on Aging
KEYWORDS
Creativity, Community Activism, Collaboration, Performance
