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“Roots” - connecting to earth through Indian classical and Folk dance with Kinnari Vora at El Paseo Community Garden curated by Marcela Torres

  • El Paseo Community Garden 944 West 21st Street Chicago, IL 60608 United States (map)

“Roots” - connecting to earth through

Indian classical and Folk dance

with Kinnari Vora at El Paseo Community Garden

In this open level workshop, participants will journey through guided movements for grounding and connecting to the earth through Indian Classical and folk dance, rituals and yoga. We start with an introduction to Bharatanatyam dance honoring the earth, water, fire, and air, the sun, moon, and planet, living beings, the body, mind and the heart. May that peace be everywhere and in everyone.The group will then be led in a folk dance form “garba”, a communal circle dance honoring mother earth, the divine feminine and cyclical nature of being.

Curated by Marcela Torres

part of Links Hall’s Co-MISSION Curators-In-Residence program

Ofrendas en Sinestesia; experiments in shared dance rituals, considers how communities in Pilsen and Little Village practice spirituality as ancestral technology and create contemporary storytelling through transcendent dance ceremonies. The artists will blend together different cultures and their forms of ancestral connection.

In Pilsen, they will curate an outdoor ceremony, inviting artists–including Izayo Mazehualli and Kinniari Vora–to present traditional dances and assist in fire services and sacred objects. Indoor performances at Links Hall include dance and storytelling rooted in ceremonial research and practice. Members of the public are invited to join the artists, exploring how diasporas living in the U.S. create new viewpoints and new genres of performance.

Marcela Torres

is an artist, organizer, and educator that uses strength-building exercises and community rituals, to propose forms of reparations. Using self-care methodologies to share reparative tools with others and to exorcise the intergenerational trauma of colonization. Their physical research builds on Mesoamerican Indigenous rituals, racial struggles within the United States, and contemporary Mexican American diaspora. Torres received a BA in Sculpture Intermedia and a BFA in Art History from the University of Utah, continuing their studies in MFA in Performance form School of the Art Institute Chicago. Torres has performed at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, NE), The Momentary (Bentonville, AK), Fringe Festival (Detroit, MI), Experimental Actions (Houston, TX) and Time Based Arts (Portland, Oregon). Torres has exhibited work at Recess (Brooklyn, NY), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL) UW-Parkside University (Kenosha, WI) , Tropical Contemporary (Eugene, OR), Petzel Gallery (NYC, NY) In 2022 Torres was a Chicago Dance Maker Forum Lab Artist, a Art/Industry resident at John Michael Kohler Arts Center and a Fellow at Franconia Sculpture Park. In April 2023, they will be performing at Performance Space New York.

Featured Artist

Kinniari Vora

Kinniari Vora shares stories of universal human conditions and emotions through movement, meditation, and theatrical practices. Her movements are rooted in Bharatanatyam (disciple of Sarmishtha  Sarkar, India), various Indian folk dances and kalaripayattu martial arts. Her work is guided by ancestral energy, wisdom of nature, and collaborative communion. Kinnari is Co-founder and Artistic Co-chair of Ishti Collective and a dancer collaborator with Surabhi Ensemble.

Partner Organization: El Paseo Community Garden

El Paseo Community Garden’s mission is to strengthen environmental stewardship and civic engagement while protecting equitable green space on behalf of the community. Their governance and leadership structure allows for anyone with a desire to make an impact to do so, growing not only healthy food, but community leaders as well. The outdoor space has become a community center and partner for anyone willing to share accessible community resources. Their goal is to Empower through Nature. Since 2009, El Paseo Community Garden (founded as Growing Station) has been fostering community and wellness for Pilsen residents through stewardship, conservation, placemaking, partnerships, programming, and community gardening. The garden is one of many NeighborSpace protected and community managed spaces in Chicago, with over an acre of equitable greenspace maintained by volunteers and donations. The garden is a converted brownfield site and sits along a path with a native prairie and permaculture food forest on one side and raised beds and an apiary on the other.

Links Hall’s Co-MISSION Curators-In-Residence program supports independent, Chicago dance curators, producers, and social practice artists in presenting new and existing performance by their communities, for their communities. In collaboration with Links Hall and a local organization in their own Chicago neighborhoods, the 2022-2023 resident curators will invite artists from their communities to present new or existing performance work at both Links Hall and a neighborhood location. Projects include engaging community events outside of the formal theater environment. Residency awards include artist fees for curators and participating artists; direct funding for neighborhood-based partner organizations; and administrative support, rehearsal space, marketing, and technical production services.

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June 3

Ofrendas en Sinestesia; experiments in shared dance rituals curated by Marcela Torres
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June 9

Ollin Yollistli: Embrace the Sacred Movement with Izayotilmahtzin Mazehualli at El Paseo Community Garden