Dnaworks Will Present Events At Texas Christian University To Discuss Equity, Access, And Opportunity Through Performance And Community Dialogue

DNAWORKS presents a series of events on the campus of Texas Christian University (TCU) between October 9 and 23 that highlights the relationship and impact that the arts can play in social justice and equity work. Events of this residency range from a TCU Community Leaders Workshop to a multimedia dance performance, concluding with a Community Town Hall Meeting. The College of Fine Arts' newly formed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Arts Programming Committee provided funding for this residency.

Launching on Tuesday, October 9, with Crowdsourcing Change: TCU Community Leaders Workshop, DNAWORKS seeks students, faculty and staff that identify as leaders at TCU or would like to take a more active leadership role in social justice and equity work on campus. This limited space workshop encourages productive and honest dialogue about key issues of identity, equity, access, representation, and the language that surrounds them.

On Wednesday, October 17 and Thursday, October 18 at 7:30pm in Erma Lowe Hall Studio Theatre, DNAWORKS Co-Director, dancer and TCU Assistant Professor of Dance Adam McKinney performs HaMapah/The Map. Directed by DNAWORKS Co-Director Daniel Banks, HaMapah/The Map is a multimedia, genealogical dance journey that traces the intersectional histories of McKinney's African, Jewish and Native American heritages. The piece, which weaves contemporary dance with archival footage, personal interviews, and American and Yiddish songs, explores connections to identity, culture, heritage, and community. The evening includes a community storycircle, during which audience members are invited to share their family stories and connections to themes of the piece.

"The arts are modes through which we engage communities to bring us closer to each other and to better understand ourselves. The generous funding from TCU's College of Fine Arts' Equity, and Inclusion Arts Programming Committee creates opportunities for the whole campus to participate in this crucial arts-based activism," says Adam McKinney.

To complete the fall residency at TCU, DNAWORKS poses the question, "What is the relationship between the arts and social justice at TCU?" Building Equity and Social Justice through the Arts: A Community Town Hall Meeting will be held in the BLUU Ballroom on Tuesday, October 23 at 6:30pm. All of TCU's community is invited to this dialogue about the role of social justice work on TCU's campus.

All events are free. Application information for the community leaders workshop and RSVP information for the performance and town hall can be found at www.tinyurl.com/dnatix. To learn more about DNAWORKS, visit www.dnaworks.org. You can also follow DNAWORKS on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at @DNAWORKSARTS.

Founded in 2006 by Daniel Banks, Ph.D. and Adam McKinney, M.A., DNAWORKS is an arts and service organization dedicated to furthering artistic expression and dialogue, focusing on issues of identity, culture, class, and heritage. DNAWORKS catalyzes performance and action through the arts in the intersecting communities in which we work and live. For Banks and McKinney, art = ritual = healing = community; they believe that this philosophy and practice lead to a more peaceful world.?

DNAWORKS has toured HaMapah/The Map, a devised multi-media, genealogical dance journey about McKinney's African American, Native American, Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewish heritages nationally and internationally, including Saratoga Springs Arts Festival, Revolutions Theatre Festival/Tricklock Theatre, Albuquerque; Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Boise; Miteu Festival, Spain; Passing the Flame, DAH Teatar's 20th Anniversary, Serbia; and La MaMa's Spoleto Open Festival, Italy. The company also premieres new work, including: the world premiere of Cascarones by Irma Mayorga at Teatro Paraguas, Santa Fe, NM; What We Are Saying, a devised dance-theatre performance with Ethiopian-Israeli Beta Dance Troupe in Haifa; Breaking Our Silence, a devised ensemble piece with LGBTQ poets, with Poetic Theatre, the Wild Project, NYC; At Sunset, a trio for two dancers and a drone, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta; and Hollow Roots by Christina Anderson, currently touring. In May 2019 DNAWORKS will be bringing its latest production, The Real James Bond...Was Dominican to Bishop Arts Theatre Center in Dallas.

DNAWORKS has received funding from the Trust for Mutual Understanding, the Santa Fe Arts Commission, the Tecovas Foundation, US Embassies and Consulates in South Africa, Ghana, Israel, Hungary, Poland, the U.K., and Azerbaijan, and several family foundations. In 2010 DNAWORKS received Black Theatre Network's Presidential Pathfinder Award.

Adam W. McKinney, M.A., is a former member of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Béjart Ballet Lausanne, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, and Milwaukee Ballet Company. He has led dance work with diverse populations across the U.S. and in Canada, England, Ghana, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Palestine, Poland, Serbia, Spain, and South Africa. He served as a U.S. Embassy Culture Connect Envoy to South Africa through the U.S. State Department. Other awards of note include the NYU President's Service Award for dance work with populations who struggle with heroin addiction, grants from the U.S. Embassy in Budapest and The Trust for Mutual Understanding to work with Roma youth in Hungary, a Jerome Foundation grant for Emerging Choreographers and a U.S. Embassy in Accra grant to lead a video oral history project with a Jewish community in?Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana.

Adam was a?School of American Ballet's National Visiting Teaching Fellow, an opportunity to engage in important conversations around diversity and inclusion in classical ballet.?Named one of the most influential African Americans in Milwaukee, WI by St. Vincent DePaul, McKinney is the Co-Director of DNAWORKS (www.dnaworks.org), an arts and service organization committed to healing through the arts and dialogue. He holds a BFA in Dance Performance with high honors from Butler University and an MA in Dance Studies with concentrations in Race and Trauma theories from NYU-Gallatin. Adam served as the inaugural Chair of the Dance Department at the New Mexico School for the Arts, Santa Fe, for six years. He is currently Assistant Professor of Dance in the School for Classical & Contemporary Dance at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, USA.

Daniel Banks, Ph.D., is a theatre director, choreographer, educator, and dialogue facilitator. He has worked in the U.S. and abroad, having directed such productions as the African premiere of August Wilson's Jitney at the National Theatre of Uganda; the Eastern European premiere of Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz at the Belarussian National Drama Theatre; a workshop production of Zakiyyah Alexander's Hip Hop play Blurring Shine at The Market Theatre in South Africa, and Tap Into Peace, a tap and spoken word tribute to love, set to the music of Stevie Wonder, at Playhouse Square in Cleveland. Daniel was Associate Director for the recent adaptation of Toni Morrison's Jazz, at Baltimore Center Stage, directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah. Current projects include: dramaturgical team for Camille A. Brown & Dancers' Black Girl: Linguistic Play and ink (Kennedy Center, December 2017); and director of Hollow Roots by Christina Anderson, which opened the Revolutions International Theatre Festival in Albuquerque, NM, in March 2018.

Daniel has served on the faculties of the Department of Undergraduate Drama, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, the MFA in Contemporary Performance at Naropa University, the M.A. in Applied Theatre, City University of N.Y., and as Chair of Performing Arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. Daniel is the co-director of DNAWORKS, an arts and service organization that uses performance as a catalyst for dialogue and healing, engaging topics of representation, identity and heritage.

Daniel sits on the advisory boards of the Hip Hop Education Center, NYU, and the Catalyst Initiative at the Center for Performance and Civic Practice; and on the editorial boards of Theatre Topics (Johns Hopkins University Press) and NoPassport Press. He is the Associate Director of Theatre Without Borders and is on the National Cabinet of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture. His writing has appeared in Theatre Topics Journal, American Theatre magazine, Classical World, Black Masks, and in numerous anthologies. His work on culturally specific adaptations of classic texts is featured in the Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas. Daniel is editor of the first critical anthology of Hip Hop plays, Say Word! Voices from Hip Hop Theater (University of Michigan Press).

 

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