Andréa Labbée

Andréa developed and presented an excerpt of Miss Enfranchised, a new autobiographical solo piece told through words, movement, and song.

Andréa says:

"This was the first time in my adult life creating and re-creating SOBER. Learning to give myself grace for any physical limitations, and to embrace my story with imperfect vulnerability. Quashing the raging perfectionism was hard. The project gave me a frighteningly beautiful opportunity to go deep, real, and make myself a channel of a message, rather than obsessing about being a polished "performer". That was uncomfortable, yet it was the very thing that seemed to resonate most profoundly with witnesses."

Hector Machado

Hector ran a research incubator for their Accessible Majorette Dance project, designed to develop a language and practice for bringing the majorette dance form to individuals with disabilities.

Hector says:

"Creative Connections helped me realize that I really want to make Accessible Majorette Dance into a program that can be used in many different spaces by many different types of people: as art therapy, performance, workshops, or even an exercise program (for the upper body of course). Through this project, I have learned about my work ethic, creativity, teaching style, ability, and worth. I’m grateful that programs like this exist that take a chance on a new idea from a novice."

Clarence Brooks

[project in process]

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Frank Campisano

Frank expanded on the dance classes he taught through his 2022 Creative Connections project, to offer a progressive ballet class in Fort Lauderdale that was open to all, regardless of experience or mobility level.

Frank says:

“In March 2023 I had major knee surgery. I had no idea if I would be able to dance again or to demonstrate exercises and choreography to students. To my surprise, after 4 months of intense physical therapy, I was dancing and teaching again, feeling determined and ready.

“I felt a self-confidence that most certainly crossed over to my students. I advised my students regularly that there were no judgments, that their bodies were beautiful and capable no matter what and that classical ballet is a very difficult art form and to do as much as their bodies were able to do. That no matter the difficulty, they would not be doing anything wrong. That I was there to help them achieve their goals and teach them about technique and to help them improve on their personal abilities. In sharing my knowledge and experience, I was able to reflect on my ballet career.

“The class was successful enough that the owner of the studio where I was teaching asked if I would join their teaching staff. I am now teaching every Monday night!”

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Gabriela Cruz

In November 2023, Gaby hosted an event “Damas and Discussions,” panel discussion with trans femme artists Opal Am Rah, Chloe Martini, Viola Putx, and Regina.

Gaby says:

“I was first inspired to bring this panel to life when I was a part of a live Q&A back in June for pride month. There was so much vibration in the room and it made me really think about how outside of night life, we don't really get to hear the stories of people who fascinate us. That's when I realized that I needed to do my own version.

“I learned so much that night of each of the girls and the challenges they faced to get to where they are now. One of the biggest takeaways was learning how much we had in common in our upbringing. At one point, we had to hide in the shadows because we were afraid to be rejected by our loved ones. Some of us even got disowned by family members. However, sooner or later we all realized that we shined too bright to live in darkness or fear.

“I was so amazed by how eloquently each of the panelists were able to answer each of my questions. I also have to give myself props because it was my first time moderating a panel and I did it so well. I learned that I have a real talent in hosting and producing. I wanna take my talent, expand and start my own podcast. This way I am able to reach more people outside of Miami who struggle in their own identities and need a little encouragement.”

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Aeon De La Cruz

Aeon offered additional cycles of his dance workshop, Query, in May-June and November-December at Miami Theater Center/ Miami Light Project.

Aeon says:

“Where the first iteration felt more like a trial, a chance to discover how to teach the movement ideas I had been researching, this iteration felt like honing my approach to resonate most with those who attended, as well as for my movement practice!

“This time I embraced the unconventional parts of my approach -- I talked while I danced, encouraged participants to speak while moving, asked critical questions, and embraced feeling lost at times. I continued to challenge myself in new ways, such as changing my floorwork model, doing "more across-the-floor" exercises, developing choreographic phrases, and showing my research even if it felt incomplete or hard to understand in some ways.

“One participant who had been dancing for about a year messaged me after attending class to say: "I've literally thought about dancing completely differently since that class, and I feel so much more comfortable with creating, because I look at it as Query now!" Another dancer, attended one of my classes after a hiatus from dance, reported feeling connected to her body, approaching her movement in a more present way, and experimenting with where she is at, instead of making her movement look like a particular style.

“Hearing that the process was able to connect someone else to their own potential, and also to make their process feel less daunting, unlocked something for me: it meant that the tasks I was creating were functional, not just me for the participating dancers.

“This has influenced how I approach the new work I am making. I am less precious about my choreography and more open to what comes out of the moment of being in the same room with collaborators and sharing movement. I continue to make the movement the priority and the focus, and that has been an anchor in my approach.“

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Junior Domingos

In September and October 2023, Junior taught 12 sessions of a Modern Dance + Capoeira class. Offered to students free of charge, this was Junior’s first time teaching since he relocated to Miami from Brazil, and to develop his facility in and pedagogy for dance education, as well as experiment with original choreography combining modern dance, capoeira, and samba.

Junior says:

“Creative Connections gave me the opportunity to reconnect with my roots, and to reconnect with and develop my teaching and choreography practice.

“I chose to use modern dance technique – specifically, the Graham technique, which has a great stretching structure in addition to having an awareness of movement through the hips – that I could connect with capoeira movements. I brought in the history of capoeira, and also included samba. Samba comes a lot from grounding your feet on the floor, taking small steps, feeling and shaking your hips, that I related with the Graham and capoeira moves. These arts have a very strong connection to struggle and resilience. One is the echo of the other.

“For each class, I created a playlist with various styles of music from Brazil: forró, axé, sertanejo, funk, maracatu, electronic, mpb, bossa nova, samba, capoeira chants, and more; these helped build a rich sound environment for the movement work.

“I devised the warmups and choreography intentionally so that they flowed easily into one another, and varied between sections connecting the feet to the floor, moving throughout the space, partnering with other dancers, and that were more and less technical.

“This was not an easy class for students: it required concentration, coordination, strength, balance and flexibility of its participants. And as we progressed, I had to balance serving returning and first-time students. But I was able to connect with and create a safe, healthy, welcoming atmosphere for everyone. I found the participants very open to learning, challenging themselves, motivating themselves and others. It was incredible to see the evolution of the returning students, from learning the choreography to learning to say the names of the capoeira moves in Portuguese.”

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Josue Garcia

Josue wrote a song with guitarist-composer Diego Melgar, and integrated it into a dance film Josue had previously made with PWC, to create an original music video.

Josue says:

“Anytime I’ve made music before, it’s been to appease an audience. This time I wanted to make music for me, and I did. I went back and looked into months of journals and I pieced together my first draft of a very wordy song. I sat in my feelings. I let the lyrics sit in my mind for a few days then I began to process the song and break it down to a more “pop” or “traditional” song format verse, hook, chorus, bridge. I wanted this format but I had never written in this style. I always just wrote more dialogue that was sung in song. I then started to collaborate with Diego Melgar, and I condensed the song some more. I was finally starting to hear a sound that I was happy with. It took a few edits and revisions but we finally made the song!

“I learned that although I work well under pressure, I thrive when I plan. There’s something so fulfilling about creating and revising a project several times before you say it’s complete. This opened my eyes to wanting to improve on this in my rehearsal practices as an artist and in my life overall. I need to take a second to plan and then execute versus execute along the way and fix any problems in a rush. I’ve already started writing more music and cannot wait to collaborate with Diego and other producers and make more music.”

Frank Campisano | Creative Movement

Creative Movement was a series of 13 free classes offered in Spring/Summer of 2022 to dancers of all experience levels. Classes began with warmups intended to free up mobility by isolating various body parts, followed by basic ballet barre work to build strength, improve balance, and increase awareness of core muscle groups. Campisano then guided participants through turns and spotting technique. Then, he taught choreography inspired by phrases from the Collective’s Birds of Paradise and set to popular music. Every class, a new song would be used and new choreographic phrases would be added to build upon what had been taught in previous classes.

Frank says:

“I was excited and nervous at the same time, because I had never taught a formal dance class before. To my delight, it was very natural for me. It gave me great joy to share my experience as a dancer and a performer and now, A TEACHER!

“I urged the students not to be so concerned about choreography, and to just enjoy moving freely through space without any inhibitions or judgment. And if someone messes up, so what? It was OK just to make something that feels good to you or that comes naturally. Classes were scheduled to last 90 minutes, but we were having so much fun that we usually ended up going for longer. It made me very happy to see the attendees’ smiles and how much fun they were having freeing up Mind, Body, and Spirit, and creating a safe place to just be free from the world outside.

“This experience was one of the highlights of my 2022.”

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Aeon De La Cruz | Query

Query was a limited-term open dance workshop offered twice weekly throughout the month of August 2022 at Miami Light Project. Exploring concepts like form, pathways, and interstitial spaces, Query invited participants to generate movement in response to specific prompts; to discuss their discoveries and observations; and to bring in their own movement language to further shape the communal explorations. 

Aeon says:

“My choreographic process tends to be extremely specific and detailed, and yet I didn't want to impose my approach on others. It was important to me that the class would welcome diverse movements and (any/all) bodies, providing dancers with a framework that would guide their own movement vocabulary, and allow them to be self-critical while also sharing the space and their research with the group, in service of offering all of us new modes of exploring movement.

“Leading the class became less daunting the more I focused on the generation and sharing of ideas, especially after seeing how consistently generous everyone's participation was! The sessions were less about my personal needs and more about providing a safe space for others to explore their own research within a set framework, as well as offering honesty and radical softness! I was reminded how important it is to have a shared communal practice, one that both rigorously challenges us and allows enough openness for movement research and improvisation. Everyone had their own unique way of moving, but after we would gather for discussion, those rich and dynamic critical exchanges prompted everyone to generate movement that was deeper and more multifaceted. I can't wait to see how this unfolds and informs my practice even further!”

A short video recap of the program can be viewed here.

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Niurca Márquez | Queer Motherwork: Tending to the Past, Present, and our Futurity

In November 2022, Márquez organized an online live streamed panel to discuss the topic of queer motherwork, alongside long-time collaborator Amber Ortega and fellow artists Letty Bassart and jo reyes-boitel. The panel defined motherwork as “a tending to that is shaped by a different relation to time and space,” and elaborated that queer motherwork is that which “in turn expands this selfless, intimate, caretaking to a space and an actioning that is not limited or conditioned by gender or biological attachment and that seeks to elevate kinship in a way that is responsive to our futurity.” The panel was an opportunity to “speak of the joys, hardships and unseen labor when we engage in the tending to.” What is possible when we finally suspend the narrative of normativity around motherhood? What alternative ways of knowing and being do we allow once we take back the work that we have been doing and claim it with agency and responsibility?

Niurca says:

“For years I’ve struggled with the dichotomy of being nurturing and a caretaker by nature, and not ever having had a biological child of my own. My motherwork has taken on many faces and shapes, and though I’ve never doubted that I am in fact a mother, society continuously has made it a point to tell me otherwise. Whether by warning me that my career choice and being a mother are not compatible or insisting that if I did choose to have a biological child of my own, that would somehow mean the end of my artmaking. I have been surrounded with examples of this, but I have also had the blessing of witnessing the opposite on more than one occasion.

“In the last few years, in part through my work with the Pioneer Winter Collective, I have had an opportunity to break down assumptions and practices in dance about who gets to dance and how. It is an actioning that has always been present in my dance and artmaking, but recently, I have found myself doing this on a wider variety of fronts and platforms.

“In the weeks following our panel, there were two other panels on similar topics. Both events were organized, entirely separately, by artists I know in other US cities. What does this say to me? All three of us were feeling a need to speak about this in community and to community. These conversations are but the first iteration in a long list of necessary motions to dismantle the exclusivity and prison that patriarchal structures call motherhood. Structures which in my opinion can often be an attack on the very nature of motherwork. Structures which have historically left many mothers out of the conversation and continue to do so today.”

A recording of the panel can be viewed here.

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Barbara Meulener

GOZA is a short dance film that explores and celebrates Black, brown, queer, and trans joy as rhythm and rhythm as joy. Made with collaborators Aeon De La Cruz* aka BlindCarbonCopy, Iman Clark, Hector Machado*, Junior Domingos*, and Sheda Vours.

* PWC members

Barbara says:

“GOZA is the biggest risk I’ve taken so far as an artist, and what a blissful risk.

“At first my ideas and aspirations were bigger than I knew how to execute but with time, struggle, and clarity, I realized that I needed to approach the making of this work with tenderness and ease so that this offering is sincere.

“This project has illuminated how my relationship to dance and movement is one so closely tied to community. Working on this film brought to the forefront all the pain and suffering and struggle we live thru, and how the people before us survived horror we can and cannot fathom, and what they stored in their bodies and communities that kept them alive despite death being peace in comparison. This body, so “hardwired for pain and pleasure”, that wakes me up and puts me to sleep, is the fountain.

“Dance is one of the most exalted ways our joy is manifest. It has always nurtured our collective joy and power, where we celebrate in and with our bodies. GOZA was a way for me to figure out the best ways to practice joy.”