2020 COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT RESIDENCY
HMD’s Bridge Project is pleased to announce the 2020-21 Community Engagement Residency lead artists/projects: Living Folklore led by Jarrel Phillips, and The Performance Primers, led by Hannah Ayasse, Chibueze Crouch, Zoe Donnellycolt.

Performance Primers Events | Living Folklore Events | Artist Bios

Join us for our latest Performance Primer show, co-produced with Crowded Fire Theater on their Twitch channel this Tuesday, March 30th at 8 pm PDT. Curated by Hannah Meleokaiao Ayasse, Chibueze Crouch and Zoe Donnellycolt of the Primers team, we are proud to feature an amazing lineup of indigenous artists from across the Bay Area, working in dance, video, visual art, and more.

Come see the work of Kanyon Sayers-Roods, Aambr Newsome, Amanda & Amelia Vigil, and Faun Harjo in a virtual showcase, beginning with a conversation about land acknowledgements, led by Kanyon Sayers-Roods, and ending with a post-show Q&A with the artists.

Don't wait - save the date and spread the word! This event is free to the public, with sliding scale donations accepted for the artists and the Primers here. This show is also supported by HMD’s Community Engagement Residency, a program of The Bridge Project.

We all touched this in a way.
A Primer Publication

What would have been the Spring 2020 Performance Primer transformed into the Winter 2020 Primer Zine. It was born from a desire to practice collaboration and now is available as a collection of collages, drawings, writings, photographs, a playlist, and space for you to participate. Featuring work by Annalise Constantz, Justin Ebrahemi, Emily Haydock, Soule, Agnes Palotas, Juliet Paramor, Ainsley Tharp, and the Primers Team (Hannah Ayasse, Chibueze Crouch, and Zoe Donnellycolt).

Order your zine here.

Support this project and future projects of the Performance Primers by making a tax-deductible donation here.

Email performanceprimers@gmail.com with any questions or just to say hi!

LIVING FOLKLORE EVENTS

coming soon

Performance Primers
Hannah Ayasse, Chibueze Crouch, Zoe Donnellycolt

The Primers is an Oakland-based, grassroots collective serving early-career creatives. Grounded in DIY sensibility, Primers ask: what do local artists need? The Primers grow in direct response to continued evidence that our East Bay community needs accessible performance space, a caring community, and production support to thrive. In our constantly evolving context, we provide fluid structural support to artists of all kinds. The Primers team listens to artists’ needs because we are the artists we serve. We are intentionally based and remain in Oakland, Ohlone territory: a Black city with a legacy of radical mutual aid, deconstructing oppressive systems, and fostering artistic abundance; principals that we align within our work. 

During our Community Engagement Residency, The Primers team will produce three Performance Primer events featuring local artists with facilitated post-show discussions. We will engage in a critical examination of our curatorial praxis and build a stronger dialogic practice with our audience. We will hone our mission statement and create an equity statement for our work. We will build a website to house a digital multimedia archive/databank of resources for East Bay-based artists that includes video, audio-recordings, and a zine.

Jarrel Phillips
Living Folklore

Living Folklore is a project-based performance company. Living Folklore tells stories through a myriad of movement styles including dance, Capoeira, theatre, acrobatics. The company will explore topics and themes including fables and lore, and develop a live performance and video amidst their collective research of the subject. Living Folklore is also a youth internship program for adolescent and teenage performing artists. Participating teenagers will receive stipends and attend classes and workshops to support their continued growth and development as artists.

“The purpose of coming together is to learn stories of the past in order to bridge and create stories for the future. In doing so we aim to continue the oral and folkloric tradition of storytelling through movement in order to preserve and continue to pass down and explore what we value most.” -- Jarrel Phillips

Phllips' Living Folklore initiative will also feature a digital yearbook and trimester based newsletter featuring community members.

Jarrel Phillips is a performance artist utilizing mixed media to tell, preserve, and connect our stories across the globe. Drawing heavily on experience as a Fillmore native and student of Capoeira, much of his work explores the beauty and resilience of the African diaspora and its global presence and influence. Phillips’ work emphasizes “living folklore”, the unfolding and continued cultivation of our lived experience, from the past to the present, through our community history. www.jarrelphillips.com

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