2012 Festival Archive page

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

** BUY PAPERLESS TICKETS FOR THE FRIDAY 4/27 and SATURDAY 4/28 PERFORMANCES! Last year’s performance sold out, so reserve your spot and support the Disability Pride Art and Culture Festival!**

Click button below for Festival Performance:
FRIDAY 4/27, 7-9PM, Zoomtopia, 810 SE Belmont.
Please include your name and email address in the box “Add special instructions.” You will need to give your name and email at the door. You may also pay at the door. Thanks!

Click button below for Festival Performance Admission:
SATURDAY 4/28, 7-9PM, Zoomtopia, 810 SE Belmont.
Please include your name and email address in the box “Add special instructions.” You will need to give your name and email at the door. You may also pay at the door.

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Disability Pride Art and Culture Festival 5 is coming soon April 20-28! A project of Disability Art and Culture Project, this year’s festival will be taking place at Project Grow and Zoomtopia. Don’t miss two nights of Performances and a Dance Intensive with guest artist Antoine D. Hunter, a panel discussion on The Power of Art to Cultivate Social Change, and a Theatre of the Oppressed workshop on the Intersection of Race and Disability. Registration for the Dance Intensive is still open, and we are also looking for volunteers to join the Festival Team in exchange for admission to events including the intensive. See more about the festival below. Whether you’re a performer, an artist, an activist, or someone who can’t wait to be in the audience, we hope to meet you there!


EVENT DETAILS:

Panel Discussion: The Power of Art to Cultivate Social Change
Panelists: Andres Guerrero of Project Grow, Nim Xuto of Colored Pencils, Mizu Desierto of Water in the Desert/The Headwaters Theater, Curtis Walker of Impetus Arts, and Rupert Kinard.
Moderator: Kathy Coleman of Disability Art and Culture Project
Friday, April 20, 7-9pm
Location: Project Grow, 2156 N Williams
Cost: $5-$10 Sliding scale

In these difficult economic times, art is devalued, underfunded and not deemed as important. Yet, as artists we influence individuals in ways that educate and create long and lasting change in our communities. We bring people together to experience and challenge the condition of our world. The panel will feature artists and arts organizations that have a social justice emphasis embedded in their creative work. We understand that individual healing is critical and the arts as therapy are important; however, this is not the focus of this panel. Our focus is on using the arts in social movements to create opportunities for dialogue, performance and activism.

Theatre of the Oppressed Workshop: The Intersection of Race and Disability
Facilitator: Sandra Hernandez PhD, THE-TREE Institute
Sunday, April 22, 6:30-9:30pm
Location: Project Grow, 2156 N Williams
Cost: $5-$10 Sliding scale

At this workshop facilitated by Sandra Hernandez of THE-TREE Institute, we will explore the intersections of race and disability utilizing Theatre of the Oppressed. Join us to learn about how our multiple identities inform the ways that we move through the world, and the ways that we work for a just and interdependent society. We will examine white supremacy in disability communities, and discuss the ways that Disabled people are, and are not, included in social justice movements and dialogue around culture—and we’ll talk about the ways that we can use the arts to tell our stories, engage people on our terms, honor each other’s differences and bring people together in community and solidarity.

Creating Dance Stories: Dance Intensive with Antoine D. Hunter
Registration deadline April 18!
Intensive:April 22, 12pm to 5 pm; April 23, 12pm to 2:30pm; April 24, 6pm to 10 pm
Tech Rehearsal: April 25, 6pm to 10pm
Dress Rehearsal: April 26, 6pm to 10pm
Performances: April 27 and 28, 7pm to 9pm
Zoomtopia, 810 SE Belmont.
Cost: $40 or work trade distributing 25 festival posters.
Contact Kathy at [email protected] or 503-238-0723 to set up the details.

Let’s celebrate dance! What does your body want to communicate? How do you dance “I am smart and strong”? How do you dance to show that you’re sad? Let your body dance its story. What movement says you feel alive, what movement tells us you’re gonna cry? Explore new things and old, open up to the spirit and soul of dance.

This intensive is for all. If you are shy or a professional, this intensive is for you.
If you think you can’t dance or if you love dancing, this intensive is for you. Come explore and learn and move and let the movement move you – there will be you in every dance, and in dance there will be everything. A dance will be created from the intensive to perform at the festival.

Festival Performance (same show both nights)
Friday, April 27 and Saturday, 28, 7-9pm
Location: Zoomtopia, 810 SE Belmont St., Portland, OR
Cost: $10

Antoine D. Hunter is the 2012 guest artist for the fifth Disability Pride Art and Culture Festival. He is an African American Deaf and Hard of Hearing Choreographer, dancer, actor and poet. Hunter is the founder and director of Urban Jazz Dance Company (http://urbanjazzdance.com) in Oakland, California. Hunter states, “We call it Urban Jazz because we believe our soul is jazz and our language is urban. In poetic terms, Urban is RAW -gritty-edgy-tough-uncut-torn unevenly, fresh with unexpected movement, visible impactable sound from the dancers body. We dance in any way we can express ourselves: ballet, jazz, African, hip-hop, Praise, Sign Language, modern and so much more.” For Hunter, art is an essential element of self-discovery. “Dancing is a way to express oneself, a way to communicate,” he said. “As a person, who is Deaf, I have found dance is a way to communicate with both the hearing and the Deaf world.”

Kathy Coleman, the festival’s Artistic Director, helped to create the Disability Art and Culture Project in 2005 to give individuals with disabilities a high-quality, semiprofessional venue in which to explore “the uniqueness of different minds and bodies.” This year’s festival brings together performers from across the Portland-metro area. William L. Alton uses poetry and stories to reduce the stigma of mental illness and disability. Nathan H.G., a ballet and Butoh dancer, will perform “Stanley,” a channeling of his late brother who had cerebral palsy. Alexis Jewel and Max McDonnell will bring a video highlighting “the many ways our hearts keep us alive.” Jewel and Tiffani King offer a dance piece about “how we are different but also strong disabled women.” Also appearing is Inclusive Arts Vibe, Coleman’s dance company for teens and young adults with disabilities.

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VOLUNTEERING:

Would you like to be a part of the Disability Pride Art and Culture Festival 5 by volunteering on the Festival Team? There are lots of ways you can get involved before, during, and after the festival! Volunteer roles and details are at “Be a Disability Pride Art and Culture Festival Team Volunteer!”.

You can also download a pdf of the Festival Poster here to share with friends.

Contact Aireen, the festival volunteer coordinator, at or call 503-853-0001 to get involved. Festival Team Volunteers receive free admission to the event you volunteer for and many many thanks for supporting Portland’s Disability Pride Art and Culture Festival!!

ACCESSIBILITY:

All events will be wheelchair accessible with accessible restrooms, and will be ASL interpreted. There are both gendered and gender-neutral restrooms at Zoomtopia. There will be large print and electronic versions of printed handouts. Performances will be audio-described. At the workshop and panel discussion we will designate areas for participants to take a quiet moment for themselves. There are low-flicker fluorescent lights at all venues. All events are accessible by public transit. We will have some sturdy armless folding chairs at each event. The temperature at Zoomtopia will be warmer than standard room temperature, so dress accordingly; we will also have a limited number of fans available for people with heat sensitivity.

We request that everyone refrain from using scented products before these events so that they are accessible to people with chemical and fragrance sensitivities; we cannot guarantee a 100% scent free environment, as the restrooms have scented soaps and will have been cleaned with scented products.

We ask that people raise their hands instead of clapping at the end of performances.

Accessibility, as an integral part of the work of social justice, is a process that requires communication and work. We hope you’ll help us build accessible, inclusive community at the Disability Pride Arts and Culture Festival.

Contact Sarah, the festival accessibility coordinator, at [email protected] or 609-775-8001 to let us know how we can make these events accessible for you.

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MANY THANKS to all of DACP’s funders, donors, supporters, volunteers, and community!!

ABOUT DISABILITY ART AND CULTURE PROJECT
The mission of the Disability Art and Culture Project (DACP) is to further the artistic expression of people with both hidden and visible disabilities. We view disability as a natural and valuable variation of the human form. We believe affirmative disability identity is intertwined with racial, gender, social, and economic justice. DACP accomplishes this mission by supporting the creative expression of people with disabilities. DACP utilizes the performing arts as a method of examining disability in relation to society. DACP also supports established and emerging artists, as well as the community at large, in developing knowledge and expression of disability culture and pride.

All contributions to DACP are tax deductible under the nonprofit organization, Oregon Cultural Access.

In solidarity,
DACP Organizing Committee
Kathy, Jane, Ann, Cheryl, Sarah, and Aireen

DACP on Facebook
https://dacphome.org/

“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

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2010 Festival

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.

Art and Anisa

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 .

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