SLIPPAGE Contributes to Race and Climate Change Festival
Thomas Defrantz, representing SLIPPAGE, participated as a contributing artist for the Spectrum Dance Theater’s Race and Climate Change Festival. He describes the festival:
The Race and Climate Change Festival explores how BIPOC lives are impacted by choices that others make. What if we imagine an alternative future where BIPOC lives from healthy living cycles with the planet, the environment, and insect, plant and animal life? I was happy to explore these concepts with a widely dispersed group of artists.
The Race & Climate Change Festival presents a series of virtual dance, video, audio, and visual experiences in which guests explore a future world order that has emerged after a major global climate disaster. It is also a place where current concern around the long-term impact of climate change is confronted through panel discussions and imaginative engagements with the BIPOC communities and youth of Seattle.
Upcoming events in the festival include:
Afro-Futurism, Black Women, and Climate Change
Mode of Presentation: Online
Premiere Date: June 10, 2021
A humanities program accompanies Spectrum’s dance presentations about the impacts of Climate Change. Curated by Beverly Aarons and Vivian Phillips, the program features readings from four local women writers on Afro-Futurism, and a moderated discussion between Dr. Na’Taki Osborne Jelks and Jourdan Keith on Black Women Leaders in the Climate Change Movement.
Youth Engaging with Climate Justice
Mode of Presentation: Online
Premiere Date: June 12, 2021
This virtual presentation centers around the group of youth that inspired Donald Byrd to explore the current and future impacts of the relationship between Race and Climate Change. Over the past calendar year, this group has cultivated a youth-centered space to learn, discuss, and organize around the intersectionality of Race, Climate Justice, and Art Practice. This presentation is a creative distillation and contemplation of that work.
The Race & Climate Festival TalkBack
Mode of Presentation: Online
Premiere Date: June 30, 2021
On the final day of the Festival, all Pass-holders are invited to a behind-the-scenes look into the making of The Race & Climate Change Festival with Donald Byrd and the creative and production teams.
Click here for tickets and more information
Spectrum Dance Theater (SDT) was founded in 1982 to bring dance of the highest merit to a diverse audience composed of people from different social, cultural, ethnic and economic backgrounds. Our principal objective is to make the art form of dance accessible through contemporary dance performances and high-quality training in a variety of dance styles.
Under Donald Byrd’s visionary artistic leadership since 2002, the organization has embarked on an exhilarating transformation that has attracted world-class dancers, produced some of the most ambitious works in contemporary dance, and generated local and national praise.