A festival is a celebration; it is an opportunity to express the glad tiding that I still live and can still do whatever it is that I do.”
- dancer, Art Honeyman 1940-2008
Fifth Disability Pride Art and Culture Festival coming Spring 2012.
Check back for details!
The fourth Disability Pride Art and Culture festival, featuring disability activist Eli Clare, writing workshops and performances by dancers from across the metro area, will be held April 22-24 at the new Zoomtopia performance space in Southeast Portland.
“Bone Translations,” sponsored by the Regional Art and Culture Council and the Oregon Arts Commission, will explore “our core stories, what lies in our bones – our histories, our identities and, when we share these stories, how are they experienced,” said Kathy Coleman, the festival’s artistic director.
Clare, author of “The Marrow’s Telling,” a collection of poetry and prose, brings a poet’s passion for language and an activist’s passion for social justice to his work. In “Exile and Pride,” a collection of essays on disability, queerness and liberation, Clare ridicules society’s fascination with the “supercrip,” such as a blind man who hikes the Appalachian Trail from end to end.
Coleman was among three artists who created the Disability Art and Culture Project in 2005 when they couldn’t find enough places to perform. Physical access was one barrier. Another was the idea that people with disabilities could be artists outside of therapy or social programs – getting together in a setting “truly about art and cultivating artists,” she said.
In addition to dancers from across the metro area, performers also include a group of teens and young adults with disabilities. Participants in the writing workshops will be able to perform their work.
Clare, who lives in Vermont, will help people write their own stories at workshops on April 22 and April 23 at Zoomtopia, 810 S.E. Belmont St. Clare also will give a lecture on April 22 at a location to be determined. The Bone Translation performance will be 7 to 9 p.m. April 24 at Zoomtopia.
The Disability Art and Culture Project’s mission is to further the artistic expression of people with hidden and visible disabilities.
For more information, contact Coleman at 503-238-0723 or .
