About

Where Heaven’s Dew Divides. From left to right: Adrienne Abdus-Salaam, Ellen Gerdes, Sheila Zagar, Kristen Shahverdian, Leah Stein and JungWoong Kim. (Photo credit: Nathea Lee)

We know that the work itself will provide answers, more questions, of course, but also infinite ways of seeing, rethinking and imagining what we wouldn’t have arrived at otherwise….it is the process itself that answers questions.
— Wura-Natasha Ogunji (March 2013)

This website is dedicated to recalling and archiving a remarkable year of exploration, discovery, and creating by 12 Philadelphia-based dancer/choreographers.  We are diverse in background, nationality, age, and dance form.  We all use improvisation in our practice, and we have a shared interest in history, collective memory, and social justice as themes and inspiration for our work.

We spent a year, from June 2012 to July 2013, as a community of learners–learning from master artists and teachers and from each other in order to deepen our individual artistic practices and to experience the power and wisdom of the group.  We never had intentions of remaining together as an ensemble or learning community, although our network of trust, feeling, and respect continues.  As the documents in this archive attest, we take away profound lessons, galvanizing questions, and enduring connections.

This memoir speaks principally to those of us who shared in this fertile year.  It was created so that we can return to it and rekindle warm remembrances and resonant questions–so that we can touch again on moments of inquiry and discovery that continue to reverberate in our work.  We hope that others will find significance and inspiration in the short, but wondrous journey of our learning community.

We are grateful to the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage for providing primary support for this project–one whose foremost concern was creating a space and process for artists to question and discover without the limiting demands of staging finished work.  We also thank the Wyncote Foundation for making it possible for additional artists to participate.

We thank Toni Shapiro-Phim for recording images and taking insightful interviews that capture and recount our work together.  And our special thanks go to Thomas Owens (“TC”) whose keen eye, attentive listening, and storytelling gifts make this website a richly-layered testament and memoir.

— Germaine Ingram, August 2013

The Professional Learning Community has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.