Midday Movement

Rough Drafts

Informal Showing
detritus dance: Malefica

Monday, February 26, 2024
Doors: 6:45pm Showing: 7:10 pm

Arrow Street Arts Studio
2 Arrow Street, Cambridge

ABOUT
DETRITUS DANCE'S INFORMAL SHOWING

detritus dance, MIDDAY's February Rough Drafts artists, will present an excerpt of their contemporary dance piece, Malefica, with a cast of two dancers.

Through a focus on the cultural tropes of witches, Malefica explores the vilification of women and gender nonconforming people and the oppression of their bodies in contemporary culture. We source movement inspiration from our ancestral ties to the Salem witch trials, Afro Caribbean-diasporic Spiritualist practices, and Eastern European and Slavic folktales to reckon with how grotesque imagery of witches immortalized in popular media across time and place can be reclaimed by the women and people who bare the brunt of these negative stereotypes.

About detritus dance

detritus dance, founded in 2021 by co-Artistic Visionaries Caroline Bradbury and Claire Lane, is a multimedia performance collective that amplifies intersectional feminist and queer story-telling through contemporary dance, collage, and text. detritus dance draws their movement research from a vast body of feminist scholars and artists whom they join in working towards dismantling patriarchal systems through subversive gender performance. detritus dance has performed at notable venues including the Center for the Arts at the Somerville Armory, The Dance Complex, the Cambridge Foundry, and Boston WiP at Tufts University. They received the Somerville Arts Council ArtAssembled AIR fellowship, a Somerville Local Cultural Council Grant and the New England Foundation for the Arts’ New England Dance Fund for the development and production of their inaugural work “in the Ether.” They have taught community workshops and professional-level classes with Urbanity Dance Company, Midday Movement Series, and José Mateo Ballet Theater. Claire and Caroline integrate a breadth of international perspectives including Gaga technique, Flying Low, and Physical Theater in their approach to dance-making.

A Note from the Choreographers,
Claire and Caroline:

We began developing "Malefica" in March of 2023 with two additional dancers, Gabriela M. Amy-Moreno and Marcel J. Santiago Marcelino. These dancers, while not featured in this particular iteration of the Informal Showing, will be re-joining the cast for continued creative process. We are so grateful for their contributions thus far and we'd like to acknowledge how deeply they've shaped this work.

ABOUT MIDDAY + ROUGH DRAFTS

Midday Movement Series ("MIDDAY") is a BIPOC-led grassroots initiative cultivating a new, diverse generation of dance leaders through professional development, mentorship, and advocacy.

MIDDAY's newest program, Rough Drafts, is a process-focused program supporting early (1-4 yr) and mid-career (4-10 yr) contemporary dance-makers to deepen their understanding of their own choreography and how to communicate to collaborators and audiences. From January-June, MIDDAY will host one monthly informal showing with our Rough Drafts artists. Our program will culminate with black box work-in-progress showcases on Saturday, July 13, at 2:00 PM and 8:00 PM.

Ticket Information

All seats General Admission; seating opens at 6:45 pm

This is a free showing, although audience members are encouraged to donate to help Midday Movement cover performance and administrative costs. We appreciate your support so we can continue to produce impactful dance programming and events; however, no one will be turned away for lack of funds!