On June 6, 2021, Baltimore’s Full Circle Dance Company will present The Healing Project: Moving Through Parallel Pandemics, a deeply collaborative new work funded by a Creativity Grant from the Maryland State Arts Council. With Artistic Director Donna L. Jacobs and company member Shaela Davis providing choreographic leadership, this work for film explores the ways we are feeling and healing in the face of multiple challenges, including the pandemic and the crisis of racial inequality and police brutality.
Filmed in Baltimore City at Harriet Tubman Grove and Wyman Park Dell by local filmmaker James A. Burkhalter, The Healing Project features an original score by Baltimore-based recording artist Jasmin “Jazzo” Walters. Tickets to The Healing Project film premiere and live post-performance discussion are free to all. Tickets and performance details are available at EventBrite.
To create The Healing Project, Jacobs and Davis gathered raw material—movement and text— from an extremely diverse group of dance artists whose contributions reflect their individual, family, and community experiences of the extraordinary circumstances of 2020. The choreographers then layered and interwove these disparate stories into a finished work exploring such themes as isolation, injustice, and trauma, as well as the ways people and communities can build strength, heal wounds, and create hope.
The June 6 virtual performance will include the first public screening of The Healing Project followed by a live virtual discussion of the work and of the circumstances from which it emerged. Moderated by well-known artist, actor, and teacher Maria Broom, this open conversation is intended to foster connection, creativity, and a healing exchange of ideas.
Pre-Register for the event HERE
About our moderator, Maria Broom
Although nationally known as an actress for her recurring roles in HBO’s “The Wire” and “The Corner”, Maria is also a storyteller and dancer with more than forty years of performing and teaching in the US and across the globe. She is a Fulbright scholar and former news reporter for the ABC affiliates in Miami and Baltimore. Currently, she is on the theater faculty at the Baltimore School for the Arts. A native of Baltimore, Maria has received many awards and honors including the Eubie Blake Award, the Sarah’s Circle Award, and the 2004 Governor’s Arts Award for Individual Artist. In 2007, she was named Artist of the Year by Young Audiences of Maryland, Inc. In addition to her work as performer and educator, Maria is much requested as a speaker and presenter. With a background in yoga, meditation, Homa therapy and dance therapy, she conducts staff retreats, workshops and weekly classes that help people to release stress and feel at peace. Formerly the diversity coordinator for the Park School in Baltimore, she has been a consultant since 2006 for Maryland Public Television’s Campaign for Love and Forgiveness, sponsored by Fetzer Institute. As a recipient of an Open Society Institute community fellowship grant, Maria established a unique mentoring program in the inner-city schools, and beyond, called the Dance Girls of Baltimore. It is through this vehicle that she passes on the values of self-discipline and thoughtful behavior. In 2007, Maria worked in Poland and Czechoslovakia co-directing the independent film “Soul Immortal”.
* The June 6 virtual performance will be followed by a live virtual discussion of the work and of the circumstances from which it emerged. This open conversation, moderated by well-known actor, dancer, and teacher Maria Broom, is intended to foster connection, creativity, and a healing exchange of ideas.
“This work grew from the reality that the impacts of 2020 were experienced differently both by individuals and by the different communities we belong to. It acknowledges that healing remains incomplete and complicated as we wrestle with grief, stress, and loss. But it also makes room for beauty, joy, and shared hope.”
- Full Circle Artistic Director Donna L. Jacobs
Pre-Register for the June 6th premiere of
The Healing Project HERE
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