Temple University Awards Lela Aisha Jones a Reflection:Response Choreographic Commission

May 2, 2017

The Temple University Department of Dance, Institute of Dance Scholarship, is delighted to announce the sixth Reflection:Response Choreographic Commission has been awarded to Lela Aisha Jones/FlyGround.

Building on her current series of episodic works, Plight Release & the Diasporic Body, Jones will create Ancestral and Everyday Saturday, new works that traverse, through the body and movement, what the black/African Diaspora offers as an archive of and guide towards individual and collective transformation. Jones is asking, “what if keepers of cultures in societies also let traditional practices breathe and become tapestries grounded in histories and discoveries that collide, merge, diverge, and converge?”

The Reflection/Response Choreographic Commission includes a cash award of $5,000 and access to rehearsal space at Temple University throughout summer 2017. Past commission recipients include Laura Peterson, Charles O. Anderson, Tatyana Tennenbaum, Jennifer Weber, and Kathy Westwater.

Ancestral is an interlude and cast-specific movement experience that purposefully brings performers and audiences together around their practices of honoring ancestors to create pathways for understanding and connection along with problems and challenges in U.S. society.

Everyday Saturday works to capture and imagine the gestural, common, and less visible locations of black/African diasporic movement. It is inspired by the Saturday morning clean up ritual that took place weekly in the Southern U.S., North Florida city of Tallahassee, in the Jones home. Cleaning up was/is a time to get down to LPs, cassette tapes, CDs, and eventually streaming. Singing and dancing while cleaning goes way back and makes work feel like family. Students of the Temple University Department of Dance will join Jones and her company in Everyday Saturday.

In addition to the premiere of Ancestral and Everyday Saturday, Jones will perform her critically acclaimed trio, Jesus & Egun (2016).

Performances will take place in Temple University’s Conwell Dance Theater on Friday and Saturday, September 22 and 23 at 7:30 PM. Additional public programming includes a Round Table Discussion on Saturday, Sept 23 from 4-6PM, and a public workshop on Sunday, Sept 24 from  2-5PM.