MDD's Virtual and Hybrid Salon Performance Series for Social Change 2023

Mark DeGarmo Dance announces its 13th Annual Curated Transcultural Transdisciplinary Salon Performance Series for Social Change 2023, featuring International, U.S., New York City Emerging and Established, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, People with Disabilities, and Senior Performing Artists' works-in-progress in person and on Zoom during MDD’s 35th Anniversary

New York, NY, November 2022 - Mark DeGarmo Dance will present its 13th annual curated transcultural transdisciplinary Salon Performance Series for Social Change 2023 on 6 Thursdays at 7pm ET: three salons virtually on January 5, February 2, March 2 via Zoom; and 3 salons on April 6, May 4, and June 1 in person at MDD Studio Theater 310 at The Clemente Center in NYC’s Lower East Side. These salons are the first in person MDD performances in its Studio Theater 310 since the city’s 2020 lockdown. MDD will present the works-in-progress of 4 performing artists at each salon. VSPS is a curated transcultural transdisciplinary sharing of original works-in-progress with audience response encouraged and facilitated by dancer, choreographer, writer, researcher, and Founder, Executive & Artistic Director of MDD, Dr. Mark DeGarmo.

This year during MDD’s 36th Anniversary, MDD will produce 24 presenting artists and groups. 17 of the 24 artists and groups are New York City-based, illuminating MDD’s role in helping New York City rebound after the significant flight and permanent loss of artists, arts organizations, and dwellers from the city over the current 2 years and 8 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The artists MDD selected beyond New York City show the nonprofit organization’s commitment to support and connect to a wider public under-resourced, under-represented, noncommercial global and national dance artists. SPS 2023 artists additionally hail from Democratic Republic of Congo, California, Kentucky, and New Jersey. MDD SPS 2023 artists and their works represent a wide range of creative artistry and cultural backgrounds, including communities such as, Asian American and Pacific Islander; Black, Indigenous, and Latinx People of Color; LGBTQIA+; People with Disabilities;and seniors.

2023 SPS line-up includes:

January 5 – Lucia Gagliardone, Misaki Hayama, Rush Johnson, Mboko Lopiki

February 2 – Ari LaMora, Claudia Lavista, Mayu Nakaya, & Anisha Ramakrishna Yarlapati

March 2 – Teresa Fellion, Sloka Iyengar, Anabella Lenzu, & Kiran Rajagopalan

April 6 – Nicole Bradbury, Nathan Forster, Grant Jacoby, & Liam McLaughlin

May 4 – David Appel, Kathy Luo, Charly Santagado, Miranda Stück

June 1 – Melanie Holm, Marianna Koytsan, Bianca Moise, & SarAika Movement Collective

Tickets by Donation:

Give and give as generously as you can. There is a suggested $25 donation per salon and a $125 donation for 5 salons. If $1U.S. is impossible for your economic situation, contact us at least 24 hours in advance: [email protected] with the reason for your request so you can join us. https://markdegarmodance.org

Online: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mdds-virtual-salon-performance-series-for-social-change-feb-2nd-2023-tickets-477629551847?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=escb

Paypal: paypal.me/markdegarmodance

Venmo: Mark-DeGarmo-2

About MDD’s Salon Performance Series for Social Change

Founded in 2010, MDD's Salon Performance Series for Social Change aims to support the professional learning and development of curated dance, movement, and other performing artists in New York & State, U.S., and globally. SPS provides a curated opportunity for the general public to view, engage with, and demystify the creation of original dance and movement works-in-progress of selected emerging and established artists. The program began in 2010 when choreographer and director Mark DeGarmo sought innovative ways to create via ongoing public sharings his work-in-development, the 60-minute Las Fridas: A Movement Installation and Offering, invited to the Mexico City International Contemporary Dance Festival in August 2023. His own successes using a facilitated audience response process led him to share his process with others.

Unlike parallel opportunities, DeGarmo wanted to produce under-resourced and under-represented people with ambitions to enter & sustain themselves in the “dance worlds” across the Earth. His extensive international work provided him unique perspectives on the common struggle for non-commercial and nonprofit movement and dance practitioners to sustain themselves & their creative work, as he has for over 50 years.

As a recognized innovator in various fields, Dr. DeGarmo challenges curated participants to market and sell their works-in-progress and this event to their own audiences, with only the request that the publics they bring to the virtual, in-person, and hybrid in-person and virtual performances of works-in-progress self-select their ticket payment by donation with the understanding that there is no “free money” for The Arts in New York City & State, the U.S., and globally. Our collective audiences and the rigorous participation of the participants will sustain this project beyond this current season.

From October 2020 to June 2022 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when “New York state shed 1 million jobs” meaning “10 percent of the state workforce vanished” (NY Post, Carl Campanile, 1/22/21 3:54pm) MDD produced and presented 18 salons, including 2 Virtual International Arts Festivals featuring 329 Artists from 18 states: California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky. Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin & 29 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, England, France, Germany, Haiti, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Scotland, Spain, Trinidad, Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, & USA.

NYC lost two-thirds of its employment in the arts, entertainment, and recreation sectors between December 2019 and December 2020 according to a report by the New York State Controller’s Office. There was also a notable exodus of the population from the early global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. The effects of the pandemic continue to be felt across the City with lowered quality of life indicators, such as, increased concerns about safety, subways, street crime, homelessness, and rodent infestations among others.

MDD’s immediate pivot to live virtual programming since March 2020 led the fields of dance, performing arts, education, and nonprofit organizations from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. MDD’s webinar on navigating live remote teaching with New York City public elementary schools and students for the National Dance Education Organization for 150 U.S. dance educators in June 2020 exemplifies its commitment to dance in all of its forms for all audiences locally, nationally, and internationally. In 2023, MDD continues to lead its fields and domains of endeavor by returning to live in-person performing arts-based performances, productions, and presentations in and from New York City in order to help the City recover and to rebuild from the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

MDD will broadcast its January, February, and March Salons live on Zoom with artists and audiences interacting live. MDD will broadcast its April, May, and June Salons from MDD Studio Theater 310 at The Clemente Center in NYC’s Lower East Side with live performers and audiences simultaneously broadcast via Zoom for a global audience.

Dancer/performer, choreographer, writer, and researcher Mark DeGarmo founded and curates MDD’s innovative series. He supports and facilitates audience response as part of each salon. DeGarmo guides positive discourse among the artists and audience members and encourages the public to actively participate in the development of original works-in-progress and understanding of dance as an accessible transcultural transdisciplinary art form and an essential part of humankind’s global cultural heritage.

https://markdegarmodance.org

About Mark DeGarmo Dance

Mark DeGarmo Dance, founded in 1987 and celebrating its 35th Anniversary in 2022-23, is a leading New York City nonprofit dance organization located in Manhattan’s Lower East Side at NYC-owned The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center (The Clemente). MDD’s 13 programs support its tri-part mission integrating education, performance, and intercultural community-building. MDD educates under-resourced and marginalized New York City Asian American and Pacific Islander, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, Latinx, and Other communities and children; creates, performs and disseminates original artistic and scholarly work; and builds intercultural community through dance arts.

In 2022, MDD collaboratively taught over 1,000 NYC under-resourced and disenfranchised elementary public school students with over 100 school teachers and administrators across Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens in its evidence-based Partnerships in Literacy through Dance & Creativity© program with the support of federal pandemic relief funds. The program was deemed “a national model” by the National Endowment for the Arts. President Barack Obama commended DeGarmo and MDD for “your service to your community and the nation.”

About SPS Curator & Facilitator Mark DeGarmo

Founder, Executive & Artistic Director Mark DeGarmo, Ph.D., B.F.A. is an award-winning, internationally recognized choreographer and performer, researcher and educator with a passion for transcultural and international community-building. He hails from the agricultural Hudson Valley region of New York State. New York press and audiences have heralded his performances as “mesmerizing” and “fearless”; and DeGarmo as “a gladiator in various arenas.” Dance Teacher Magazine made him its cover feature (June 2017). Martha Hill Dance Fund awarded him its Mid-Career Award (2015). Dr. DeGarmo’s transcultural work spans 14 countries. He is an American Cultural Specialist (Ecuador), Creative Agent (Australia), Crossing Bridges Dance Director (Mexico), Fulbright Senior Scholar (Peru), and served as U.S. Representative and Lecturer for the Volgograd International Dance Festival. He was twice a featured subject at international photo and costume exhibitions at Moscow’s A. A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum (Russia).

DeGarmo’s 60-minute Las Fridas: A Movement Installation and Offering is invited to the Mexico City International Contemporary Dance Festival in August 2023. DeGarmo’s latest research publication, Roadkill, American Style: A Performative Reflexive Autoethnography Through Embodied Imagination, Photography, and Poetry During COVID-19, March 17–June 30, 2020 was published November 2022 with original color photographs and poetry in hardcover and online in Massive/Micro Autoethnography: Creative Learning in COVID Times, Editors Daniel X. Harris, Mary Elizabeth Luka, and Annette N. Markham, Volume 4 in the Studies in Arts-Based Educational Research series by Springer, Singapore.

https://markdegarmodance.org

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Ticketing by donation:

Contact [email protected] if $1US minimum is not possible for you to donate.

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Press inquiries:

Maddie Moayedi

[email protected]

Tel: 347-393-4257

107 Suffolk Street, MDD Studio Theater 310

New York, NY 10002

This program is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Host or Publisher Mark DeGarmo Dance