ReVIVAL: A Site-Specific, Multimedia Dance Theater Production

Course Description

ReVIVAL: November 14-16, 2019 at Roble Studio Theater. Stanford Artist in Residence Amara Tabor-Smith leads the creation of a site-specific, multimedia, dance theater work titled, ReVIVAL. ReVIVAL is a survival research performance work that is launched from the history of the student activism that took place on the Stanford Campus in the late 1960s, and has a particular focus on the student actions that led to the founding of the Committee on Black Performing Arts (CBPA). During the three week intensive, students will engage in a researched creative process which includes daily movement classes rooted in Afro-contemporary dance and improvisation techniques, theater training practices, and mining the Stanford archives: this will be the foundation for the creation of text and choreography. The question that each student will begin the process with is What parts of history do you/we choose to recall, remember, recreate and re-invent in order to carry us forward repaired, restored and revived? Students enrolled in this Arts Intensive course are expected to continue into the fall quarter culminating in the premiere of ReVIVAL the weekend of November 14-16.

Meet the Instructor(s)

Amara Tabor-Smith

Amara Tabor-Smith describes her experimental dance theater work as Afro Futurist Conjure Art. Her dance making practice, utilizes Yoruba spiritual ritual to address issues of social and environmental justice, community, identity and belonging. A San Francisco native and Oakland resident, she is the artistic director of Deep Waters Dance Theater (DWDT) and was the co-artistic director of Headmistress, an ongoing performing collaboration with movement artist Sherwood Chen.

Her work has been performed in Brazil, The Republic of the Congo, Judson Church/Movement Research, NYC and many venues throughout the San Francisco/Bay Area and United States.

Amara has performed in the works of dance and theater artists such as Ed Mock, Joanna Haigood, Pearl Ubungen, Julie Tolentino, Ronald K. Brown, Faustin Linyekula, Ana Deveare Smith, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and she is the former associate artistic director and dancer with Urban Bush Women. Residencies and awards include The Headlands Center for the Arts artist in residence, CHIME Mentorship Exchange grant, CounterPULSE artist in residence,Sacatar Residency Fellowship in Itaparica, Bahia, Brazil; Green Choreographers exchange at Dance Exchange in Maryland, and she was an artist in residency at ODC Theater from 2013-2015.

She is a 2018 USA Artist Fellow, is a 2017 recipient of the Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center fellowship, and is a 2016 recipient of the Creative Capital Grant with Ellen Sebastian Chang. Amara received her MFA in dance through Hollins University and The Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts in Germany, is a continuing appointed lecturer of dance in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley and is an artist in residence at Stanford University.