Embraced Body Announces How We Move Program

Embraced Body, the Disability Justice and inclusive arts organization founded by artist and Disability Justice consultant India Harville in 2016, has announce the application period for its new How We Move program. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, How We Move is a dance intensive created for and by multiply marginalized Disabled artists from across the U.S.; the program centers agency, multiplicity, interdependence, and creative power. Applications for the 2025 pilot program are open October 1-31, 2024.

"Disabled dance challenges conventional understandings of movement and form and forges its own narrative, placing disability as a rich and layered aesthetic unto itself. Disabled dance builds its community of practice around the truths inherent in intersectional bodies and identities," shared India Harville, Embraced Body Founder & Executive Director. "Building space for this rich collaboration is not simply about addressing one form of access or another, but creating multi-faceted programs where flexible, adaptable creation and partnership can take place - and where spaces are created specifically by and for multiply marginalized artists. This is what we are creating with How We Move."

The How We Move Program centers Disabled, multiply marginalized (BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, women) dancers. The inaugural program will welcome six artists and will include two virtual weekend gatherings, followed by a 10-day in-person intensive in New York City (June 2025), and culminating in a final virtual weekend. This hybrid gathering format intends to provide multiple access points to Disabled dance artists wishing to build and expand cross-disability community.

The in-person intensive will include somatic/movement/dance workshops; each participant will have an opportunity to lead a workshop and will receive support to ensure their workshop is accessible for all attendees. The intensive will also include space to build power together towards a transformation of the colonial, eugenicist, and ableist lineages still present in the dance field. This intensive will provide a rigorous access framework, allowing cross-disability artists from across the country the opportunity to come together, create, learn from one another, and cultivate opportunities.

How We Move collaborators include India Harville, Kayla Hamilton, JJ Omelagah, and Movement Research. Bios below.

Program and application details are available at https://www.embracedbody.com/projects/how-we-move. Applications are open October 1-31, 2024. All accepted How We Move participants will receive a $2,000 stipend and the program will cover access, travel, housing, and food costs for the June in-person intensive. Funding is also available for Personal Care Attendants.

ABOUT EMBRACED BODY

Centered in the belief that our bodies should feel radically welcomed in all spaces, Embraced Body advances Disability Justice through inclusive performing arts, accessibility consulting, and anti-ableist education for all. Our work is for and by people like us: Black Disabled people, queer and genderqueer Disabled folks, Disabled survivors, folks who don't neatly fit into one identity category or one canonized way of making dance-those who need to re-make the world in their image in order to find a place where they can be in their entirety. Embraced Body is driven by a profound commitment to fostering accessibility and inclusivity for multiply marginalized Disabled individuals. By highlighting the interconnectedness of ableism with other forms of oppression and addressing these systemic inequalities head-on, we endeavor to dismantle oppressive structures and create a more equitable society for all.

INDIA HARVILLE

As a Disability Justice activist, performance artist, public speaker, and somatics practitioner, India Harville has made it her mission over the past 20 years to open people's minds to the wonder of their own bodies as a vehicle for growth and transformation, both personal and collective.

India has danced with Sins Invalid, Dance Exchange, California State East Bay, The Queer Arts Festival, the Black Spirit Dance Collective, Mouthwater Festival, and Movement Liberation. She's a two-time recipient of the Access Movement Play Residency funded by Mellon and is currently working on a one-woman show, Liminal. She's certified as a dance instructor in: NIA, Zumba, Dancing Freedom, and DanceAbility, where she is both a Master Teacher and Master Trainer.

In 2016, she founded what is now known as Embraced Body, a Disability Justice and inclusive arts organization that began by providing accessible movement classes to Disabled communities. Since then, they've made disability-affirming dance funded by major philanthropic organizations, while also consulting on accessibility and Disability Justice.

The intersection of India's own identities as an African American, queer, Disabled/chronically ill, femme, cis woman informs all her work. No matter what she is doing, she sets forth the example that however our bodies show up in the world, they are perfect, worthy of existence, and capable of magic.

KAYLA HAMILTON

Kayla Hamilton is a Texas-born, Bronx-based dancer, performance maker, educator, consultant, and artistic director of Circle O-a cultural organization uplifting Black Disabled and other multiply marginalized creatives.

She has developed & designed access-centered programming for the Mellon Foundation, Movement Research, DanceNYC, and UCLA, and is a co-director of Angela's Pulse/Dancing While Black.

Kayla is a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, Pina Bausch Foundation Fellow, United States Artist Disability Futures Fellow, NEFA National Dance Project Production Grant recipient, and Bronx Cultural Visions Fund recipient. Her work has been presented at the Whitney Museum, Gibney, Performance Space NY, New York Live Arts and Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. Kayla was also part of the Bessie award winning ensemble Skeleton Architecture.

As an educator, Kayla co-developed 'Crip Movement Lab' with fellow Disabled artist Elisabeth Motley-a pedagogical framework centering cross-disability movement practices. She also worked as a K-12 public school special education teacher in NYC for 12 years.

JJ OMELAGAH

JJ Omelagah (they/them) is the Program Director, Access Doula, and Healing Artist for Embraced Body and the founder of Sounds of Kayode.

With two decades of experience in human services and healthcare, JJ brings a unique perspective on care. They provide crucial access support and education while contributing to the organization's overall operations.

As a transgender sound artist, JJ's mission is to create vibrant frequencies resonating with collective care, healing, and transformation. Each note contributes to the co-creation of a sonic environment where energies converge, intertwine, and uplift. They've performed at events such as SF Pride and the National Queer Arts Festival.

JJ is also a trained Circle Sing Facilitator, Reiki practitioner, Ifa priest in training, and a committed advocate for Disability Justice and LGBTQIA+ rights. They hold expertise in mutual aid, nonprofits, conflict resolution, and volunteer management. JJ studied at Howard University and City College of San Francisco.

MOVEMENT RESEARCH

Movement Research is one of the world's leading laboratories for the investigation of dance and movement-based forms. Valuing the individual artist, their creative process and their vital role within society, Movement Research is dedicated to the creation and implementation of free and low-cost programs that nurture and instigate discourse and experimentation. Movement Research strives to reflect the cultural, political and economic diversity of its moving community, including artists and audiences alike.

Movement Research, based in New York City, is an international center for dance education and performance. Movement Research accomplishes its mission through eleven interrelated, core programs that engage participants in over 16,000 interactions annually. Since 1978, MR has been committed to providing space for adventurous dance in New York, to exploring the evolving language of dance and performance, and to reflecting the cultural, political, and economic diversity of our community. The movement ideas and thoughts that are explored through Movement Research's programs are deeply rooted in the work of influential artists from the Judson Dance Theater of the 1960s (from which Release Techniques and Contact Improvisation emerged), ideas drawn from performance art forms that exploded in the 1980s, and investigations that have emerged over the past three decades, including the current integration of social justice and activist practices with movement-based practices.

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