{"id":496,"date":"2023-06-07T20:14:07","date_gmt":"2023-06-07T20:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/?p=496"},"modified":"2023-06-07T20:14:09","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T20:14:09","slug":"arts-initiative-award-for-festival-dancing-in-the-streets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/2023\/06\/07\/arts-initiative-award-for-festival-dancing-in-the-streets\/","title":{"rendered":"Arts Initiative Award for festival, Dancing in the Streets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Emma Davis, theatre and dance lecturer, and Jason Kosnoski, associate professor of political science, recently received a $25,000 <\/strong>U-M <\/strong>Arts Initiative<\/a> award to engage with Flint-native musical artist Tunde Olaniran for the creation of a public performance festival in Flint this Summer.  The collaborators will work to bring together a variety of performance artists from both the local and national level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theme of the grant was \u201cArts & Resistance,\u201d and the project will pursue that theme by exploring how creativity and artmaking emerge from social and political unrest and help to resist oppression. The project asks the main question, \u201cHow can movement function as a political activity that can create new kinds of community, identity, and ways of looking at the world?\u201d They will create a performance experience that will bring together students, faculty, artists, and Flint community to connect in new ways through movement, dance, music, and art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
The Dancing in the Street project will involve lots of movement and exploration of physical space for the students and community both.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Davis and Kosnoski will be integrating the performance and project with their First Year Experience class, Dancing in the Streets<\/em>, a History of Collective Joy, <\/em>which is centered around the Barbara Ehrenreich book of the same name. The class is a part of the Mellon-funded Borders & Crossings<\/a> FYE classes that aim to help incoming UM-Flint students think about the ways they relate to their own identities, each other, the campus community, and outward in concentric circles to macro-issues like deindustrialization and globalization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theme of the grant was \u201cArts & Resistance,\u201d and the project will pursue that theme by exploring how creativity and artmaking emerge from social and political unrest and help to resist oppression. The project asks the main question, \u201cHow can movement function as a political activity that can create new kinds of community, identity, and ways of looking at the world?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project is a continuation of previous but separate work by Davis and Kosnoski. They connected through mutual interest around the ways activists often create spaces in their efforts to change things. Davis did much of her Master\u2019s thesis, the Riverbank Park Dance Project<\/a>, on the 1970s Lawrence Halprin-designed park. Kosnoski\u2019s recent book, The Political Theory of Salvage<\/a> (SUNY 2022), centers on these topics as well and looks at the ways that resistance groups use found materials to create public space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Approximately
Students study and occupy space in the Fountain Block as a part of Davis’ Riverbank Park Dance Project.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Davis has a long history of dance and movement in public spaces. She has developed and led several community dance projects with university students, adults with disabilities, senior citizens, public high school students, and incarcerated youth. She has also worked as a background dancer for Flint artist and project collaborator Olaniran for the past several years on a national and international scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTunde has a lot to offer outside of being a Flint artist,\u201d says Davis, \u201cthey have a lot of connections and experience, worldwide. I really trust their insight and curation to bring a really great opportunity and experience for the people of Flint.\u201d Olaniran is also an alumnus of UM-Flint and graduated with a Master\u2019s in Public Health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project aims to lead the students and community to cross the border of themselves and others as they collaboratively explore spaces through dance and collectivity to construct the final festival performance. \u201cI think Tunde,\u201d says Davis, \u201cis an excellent example of Borders & Crossings, that they are able to cross borders between Flint and other cities, and within the city of Flint as well. They\u2019re just fluid in that sense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe (Dancing in the Streets) book is based on the concept of collective joy, and I think that is<\/em> the resistance. It\u2019s interesting to think about joy being resistance, but in a world where polarization is happening; coming together is resisting.\u201d<\/p>Emma Davis<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Helping to address UM-Flint\u2019s passion to integrate research with learning and community engagement, the project \u201cwill also encourage them to cross the many social and political borders that exist between the campus and community in Flint.\u201d Kosnoski\u2019s political science background will bring a depth to the many ways that students and, indeed we all, can navigate and influence global social and political issues. \u201cWe hope to motivate people to become more civically engaged by emphasizing how even the smallest actions can have political import.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emma Davis, theatre and dance lecturer, and Jason Kosnoski, associate professor of political science, recently received a $25,000 U-M Arts Initiative award to engage with Flint-native musical artist Tunde Olaniran for the creation of a public performance festival in Flint this Summer.  The collaborators will work to bring together a variety of performance artists from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":539,"featured_media":504,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[36,78,11,84,86,85,12,15,172,18,19,17,22,28,173,30,174,50],"class_list":["post-496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-um-flint-research","tag-applied-learning","tag-borders-crossings","tag-community-engagement","tag-community-engaged","tag-community-engaged-learning","tag-community-engaged-research","tag-featured","tag-higher-education","tag-mellon-foundation","tag-office-of-research","tag-office-of-research-and-economic-development","tag-ored","tag-research","tag-um-flint","tag-umai","tag-undergraduate-students","tag-university-of-michigan-arts-initiative","tag-university-of-michigan-flint"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/539"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":543,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions\/543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}