MeMoSa | float.-ing: Sessions 1 & 2 by Marjani Forté-Saunders
Marjani Forté-Saunders presents: MeMoSa | float.-ing: Sessions 1 & 2
Thursday, October 24th | 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
I'm dreaming on a new project, I'm calling float. This MeMosa sharing is a combination of favorite moments from our work sessions in August (Session 1) and this October in The Movement Lab (Session 2).
float. is essentially a study on the Zen Buddhist concept of Clouds and Water.
To be like Clouds and Water, is to navigate the hurdles of a journey with a malleable and steady advancement.
float. has emerged thus far, as a series of studies engaging my central nervous system as a launch pad for aesthetic research and choreographic development. The driving inquiry of float., is simple. What must a body/mind/energy do, to become… light as a feather, hollow as a bubble, nimble as water, and slippery as oil?
And then there is the matter of the…
meta-consciousness: meta-consciousness: the state of mind in which our senses are expanded and we fully experience things – a state of complete awareness.
I often dream of dancing and in these dreams I go. The pace is simple, exact, and steady. I do not trip or stumble. The actions are purposeful, and I surrender, in delight and trust.
I’m surfacing these elements: minimal drives, delight/joy, and total acceptance, as a platter for my team of creatives, sharing their own dives into a kind of meta-consciousness. A mediation so rich, and steady, that it becomes the universe of this work - a universe for both the viewer and the performer.
Doors open at 5:00 PM and event begins at 5:30 PM
To visit, please RSVP and contact us via email at movement@barnard.edu at least 24 hours before the event. We will coordinate your entry through the main entrance (3009 Broadway). Visitors with Barnard/Columbia IDs can walk in.
Capacity in the lab is capped at 40 audience members. Attendees who have RSVP'd before the event will have priority, and admission will be determined on a first come first serve basis on arrival. If you RSVP before the event but arrive late, we reserve the right to give your spot to someone on the waitlist.
Attendees who have not RSVP'd will be put on a standby waitlist if they arrive in person before the event.
RSVP Form
Marjani Forté-Saunders - Choreographer & Performer
Marjani standing by Unicorn Horn (re-modeled 2022) Photo by Cassia Davis. © J Paul Getty Trust 2022
Marjani Forté-Saunders (she/her) is an award winning choreographer and performance artist, as well as an educator, community organizer, facilitator, and visioning founder of the burgeoning platform Art x Power which is dedicated to building resilient futures for Black Artists, by creating pathways towards long-term, fiscal and creative wellness.
Art x Power, is one branch of the brain trust that is 7NMS (names), the creative pairing of Marjani Forté-Saunders and composer/sound designer, Everett Saunders. In addition to being life- partners, the creative duo have been touring their latest work, Prophet: The Order of the Lyricist, since its premiere in 2022. 7NMS are recipients of New Music USA Award (2021), the MAP Fund (2020) and the National Dance Project Production & Touring award, for this work. In 2023, PROPHET had its Los Angeles premiere, at the REDCAT ROY AND EDNA DISNEY/CALARTS THEATER (REDCAT), and traveled to the Musuem of Contemporary Arts Chicago, May 2024.
Marjani Forté-Saunders (she/her) is a 2023 United States Artists Fellow, and recently celebrated her debut as choreographer for the New York Metropolitan Opera, El Niño. She is an awardee of the prestigious Dance Magazine Harkness Award (2020) and the (2020) Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellowship. She is an inaugural recipient of 3 distinguishing fellowships in dance, including Urban Bush Women’s Choreographic Center Initiative Fellowship (2017), the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2018), and the DanceUSA Artist Fellowship (2019).
Commercially, as a choreographer and movement coach, Saunders has worked with Sundance Award winning director and fellow LMU Alum Kahlil Joseph (PROCESS & Pantene Pro-V Black is Beautiful commercial campaign), Kevin Willmott (The 24th- a feature film), Kevin Everson (Black Bus Stop), and actress Tracee Ellis Ross’ PATTERNS..
Saunders was a touring artist for five years, with the internationally renowned Urban Bush Women Dance Company (UBW) where she also performed works by celebrated artists, Camille A. Brown and was the first and only artist (beyond Blondell Cummings) to perform Cumming’s American Masterpiece Chicken Soup.
Humbly, Saunders embraces the depth of her career and craft as a divine opportunity and command to listen, serve, and transform. She defines her work by its lineage stemming from culturally rich, vibrant, historic, loving, irreverent conjurers. With joy, Saunders’ most creative, commanding and rewarding practice is as a Mother, which operates inextricably alongside her visioning as an artist.
Everett Saunders - Sound Designer
Everett Saunders is a Composer and Sound Designer specializing in collaborative processes, score, and soundscape development for theater and film.
Everett is the composer and thought partner behind the award-winning and internationally touring production, Memoirs of a.. Unicorn. His work can be found as composer/sound designer on Jaamil Kosoko’s Chameleon, mayfield Brooks Whale Fall, and Urban Bush Women’s Hair & Other Stories (2018). His ongoing work in the production Memoirs of a… Unicorn, received a 2018 Bessie Award for Outstanding Production, with international debuts in Brussels, Belgium, and Berlin, Germany.
Saunders was awarded two different New Music USA grants in 2017 to develop a 3-Dimensional Binaural Soundscape and Score for the performance work being Here…/this time, and later featured as 1 of 5 installations exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Art (Brooklyn, NY), funded by the SURDNA Foundation Thriving Cultures Grant as part of the being Here… In Memory 3 month installation.
As a community organizer and teaching artist, Saunders formerly served as an interim Director of Operations and Programs at the Alkebulan Cultural Center, instituting new programs and projects for artists, Youth, and adults- focused on galvanizing and transforming community through the arts.
Anchored in a steady collaboration with partner and choreographer Marjani Forté-Saunders, they have emerged as 7NMS| Everett Saunders & Marjani Forte. The duo’s latest work, Prophet: The Order The Lyricist was awarded a 2020 New Music USA grant for Everett’s lyric and sonic design, and a 2021 National Dance Project Touring & Presentation award. Including an early post-COVID premiere at Abrons Arts Center in 2022, the project has presented at the Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center at Rennslaar University, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, REDCAT Los Angeles, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
Jasmine Hearn - Performer
By Kearra Amaya Gopee
Jasmine Hearn, born and raised on occupied lands now known as Houston, TX, is an interdisciplinary artist, teacher, doula, performer, and organizer. They are a recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2023), Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize in Design with collaborator Athena Kokoronis of Domestic Performance Agency (2023), a Creative Capital Award (2022), and New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards for Outstanding Performer (2021, 2017).
Jasmine has creatively collaborated with artists, Bill T. Jones, Saul Williams, Solange Knowles, Alisha B. Wormsley, Vanessa German, Marjani Forté-Saunders, Lovie Olivia, Tsedaye Makonnen, Ayanah Moor, Sandra Organ Solis, Holly Bass, Li Harris, and companies, Staycee Pearl dance project, Urban Bush Women, David Dorfman Dance, Helen Simoneau Danse, Dance Alloy Theater, and August Wilson Dance Ensemble, which have produced solo and collective dance choreography for performances.
Jasmine gives gratitude to Spirit, their mothers and aunties, and all the mothering Black people who have supported their moving, traveling, remembering body.
Ny Opong - Performer
Ny is a movement artist and performer. They received a BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 2019. Upon graduation they joined the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company where they were a member from 2019-2024. Ny has also worked as a performer with artists along the East and West coasts; Lee Mingwei, Chien-ying Wang, Vinson Fraley, Shamel Pitts, Huiwang Zhang, Marjani Forté-Saunders and Volta Collective.Through years of modern, jazz, west african and ballet dance training partnered with somatic practices, Ny is interested in uncovering the memories that are held in the body, and discovering how those memories both known and unknown influence, affect, and aid in how we shape our lives. Ny constantly plays between the subtleties and extremities in their body. Whether that be in movement, in feelings and emotions or otherwise. As they continue to work with their mind-body connection, Ny is interested in awakening the ancestral histories of movement within them, and is committed to the evolving union between the spiritual and physical realms.
Bennalldra Williams
Bennalldra is an Integrative Movement Coach and birth doula who believes movement is our universal first language and the body is our greatest teacher. This belief has been foundational in the development of both her community and private practice.
She comes to movement coaching with over two decades of concert dance and teaching experience, including her work with Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Alabama ballet, and the New York based Urban Bush Women. She has a BFA in Dance and Exercise Science, a level 2 Gyrotonic certification, she’s a level 3 Franklin Method Educator, and received her Pilates training from the Kane School of Core Integration. She has also completed Functional Anatomy for Movement and Injuries at Mt. Sinai. These learning experiences help cultivate her specialized wellness programs for those with such conditions as osteoporosis, scoliosis, multiple sclerosis, cancer, foot and ankle disfunction, disc fusions, herniations, and ACL and Meniscus rehabilitation just to name a few.
Bennalldra’s love of learning about the body has also fueled her doula practice, which got started after her learning with Mama Glow and Manhattan Birth. Her goal is to help people demystify their bodies in a way that helps them be their most Balanced, Optimized, Vibrant and Expressive selves, which is why she created Bové, a wellness initiative that explores the intersectionality of movement science, education, art and activism. She is also currently the movement coach for Urban Bush Women and other dance companies.