Brooklyn Arts Exchange Announces (RE)SOURCE An Investigation-in-Process

BAX Artist in Residence Maria Bauman is a dance artist who mines her identities as an artist, a community organizer, and as a Black, queer, not-quite-southern-belle-now-living-in-New-York to create bold and honest dances. In April, she is sharing her newest work-in-progress at Brooklyn Arts Exchange. (re)Source, investigation-in-progress, is shaping up to be an improvisatory piece wherein Bauman dances, sings, and speaks through the assets in her family (both the white and the Blackfolks), what it takes to make it in Trump's U.S., and what her research into maroonage and her own ancestors have to do with all of that. For it, she has made a large set (a 3-D family tree) and she is working with the amazing SoundChemist/VoudouElectro Composer Val Jeanty on sound collaboration. They are contending with "if/then" improvisatory themes of navigating and being resourceful immediately.

In addition to solo choreographed and improvised dancing, the work includes live soundscape composition and performance as well as a visual art landscape Bauman dances with, in, through, and in spite of. Of the work she says, "My experience is that we're all navigating; I certainly am. Whether I am bringing my Blackness across the terrain of conversations on shared and not-shared experiences in our dance field with white colleagues, whether I am using my grandmother's prayers and my father's wit as a map to direct my course through Trump's vision of the U.S., or whether I am sailing over depression and stagnancy with care, I am navigating. And I know I am not the only one moving carefully and without ease over sometimes unexpected terrain."

Since late 2015, Bauman has embarked on a series of outdoor improvisations on non-traditional, inclined, and bumpy surfaces in multiple settings. She is learning how her physicality is both limited and expanded by the terrain. Her exploration of inclined surfaces and uneven terrain as surfaces for dancing-outdoors and inside on structures and obstacles-is inspiration for the landscape she is creating for (re)Source. That landscape includes a 3-D web/family tree made of paper, yarn, and other fiber materials that she dances through. At the early stages of creation, she worked with visual artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti as an advisor on it.

Bauman has brought on the amazing SoundChemist/VoudouElectro Composer Val Jeanty as live sound collaborator. They are contending with "if/then" improvisatory themes of navigating and being resourceful, immediately. The two co-create seamlessly in the moment, based on shared goals. Jeanty and Bauman have an intangible connection which allows them to both plan and work together more traditionally as well as to trigger artistic responses in one another on-the-spot.

Questions central to Bauman's artistic practice for (re)Source are:" What instruments and maps do I, and we, have to guide our journeys-recipes, ancestral memories, daily routines, etc? What specific, unique physical capacities can I utilize to navigate uneven terrain? What are the costs and/or the gifts, especially to people of color and queer folks, of constantly navigating-physically and emotionally?"
For more information, visit events.bax.org/resource About the Artist

Maria Bauman is a dance artist and community organizer from Jacksonville, FL. Her choreography for her company MBDance (www.mbdance.net) is based on her sense of physical and emotional power, desire for equity, and fascination with intimacy. Bauman brings the same tenets to organizing to undo racism in the arts and beyond with ACRE (Artists Co-creating Real Equity), the grassroots organizing body she co-founded with Sarita Covington and Nathan Trice. In particular, Bauman's dance work centers the non-linear and linear stories and bodies of queer people of color onstage. She draws on her long study of capoeira, improvisation, dancing in living rooms and nightclubs, as well as concert dance classes to embody interconnectedness, joy, and tenacity. Currently, she is Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange and just finished her tenure as 2017 Community Action in Residence at Gibney Dance Center. Bauman is creating a new improvisatory work on lineage and navigation called (re)Source.

In New York, Bauman's work has been showcased at BRICstudios, Harlem Stage, 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, Dixon Place, the Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts, SummerStage NYC, BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, St. Mark's Danspace Project, WOW Café Theater, Summerstage NYC, and more. Bauman and MBDance have also shared dance across the U.S. and in Singapore.

Previously, she was Associate Artistic Director of Urban Bush Women and danced with that company for many years. Bauman has also danced with Paloma McGregor, Nia Love, Kathy Westwater, Mendi + Keith Obadike, and jill sigman/thinkdance, and apprenticed with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. She earned her BFA in Dance and English from the Florida State University in 2002, and later earned an MFA in Dance from Temple University.

ABOUT BAX
Founded in 1991, BAX | Brooklyn Arts Exchange, is a community based performing arts center dedicated to developing artists of all ages, from children to professionals. The organization offers community access to arts and culture, supporting the creation of new work by emerging artists, engaging diverse audiences and providing arts education to youth and families. BAX has intentionally constructed an environment where children study and professional artists create under the same roof. Students are mentored by professional directors and choreographers. The organization's distinct focus on developmental process makes it a nurturing incubator for experimental dance and theater artists and is an important advocate for under-represented voices in the New York City performing arts community.

BAX Artist In Residence program began in 1993, with two artists - Reggie Wilson and George Emilio Sanchez - both lived near BAX's first location in the Gowanus and rehearsed there extensively. Their regular presence at BAX led to conversations about their needs as artists, and how BAX could more fully meet those needs. Within a year through their input, BAX identified a need for space, a desire for opportunities to investigate specific aesthetic and cultural concerns, and an interest in curating work by other artists to build community and extend their own artistic practice. With these two artists, we established what would become BAX's Artist In Residence program (BAX AIR). BAX enjoys long lasting and sustained relationships with many former resident artists who continue to develop ideas and programs that become part of the organization.

BAX | Brooklyn Arts Exchange, an organization with a core commitment to social justice, welcomes students, families, faculty and artists. In keeping with BAX's mission to encourage artistic risk-taking and stimulate dialogue among diverse constituencies we intentionally and purposefully support the voices of under-represented individuals and groups of all origins, ages, abilities, races, sexual orientations, genders, and varied immigration status. All our constituents join an organization whose staff and Board are actively engaged in challenging the manifestations of whiteness, able-bodiedness and privilege as part of our ongoing anti-racist efforts and our other anti-oppression, pro-inclusion work.
BAX has a proud history and commitment to developing cohorts that are reflective of our mission and core commitments. In our curation and residencies, we take into account our field's history of racism and discrimination, and take active steps to undo the effects of that history. We believe that this commitment enriches the AIR experience for all members and audiences.

For more information about BAX and its programs please call 718-832-0018, email press@bax.org or visit us on the web at www.bax.org.

Friday-Saturday, April 27-28, 2018 @ 8pm General Seating, Sliding Scale: $20 / $15 / $10 Purchase Tickets: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/989771 Event Website: events.bax.org/resource

BAX | Brooklyn Arts Exchange receives generous funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, Council Member Brad Lander, Jody and John Arnhold, Bank United, Bay and Paul Foundations, Copper Beech Foundation, Corcoran Cares, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Robert & Mercedes Eichholz Foundation, Eileen Fisher Inc., Fund for the City of New York, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, Houlihan Lokey Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the Jerome Robbins Foundation, the Scott Klein Team at Douglas Elliman Real Estate, M&T Charitable Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, Park Slope Civic Council, the Pritchard Family Foundation, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Scherman Foundation, Sterling National Bank, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the Beth M. Uffner Arts Fund (New York Community Trust).

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