REVIVAL/50: Terre Parker

REVIVAL/50 is a year-long digital performance series celebrating Augusta Savage Gallery's 50th Anniversary

 

YouTube premiere Friday, October 2, 2020 4:00 p.m. ET
Online Friday, October 2 through Thursday, October 8, 2020

 

Dance artist Terre Parker’s site-specific performance entitled For Her celebrates the body’s kinship with the living land. The dance artist and educator seeks to expand assumptions about what dance is, who can dance, and where dance happens. Created in collaboration with Barbara Cortez-Greig, Liz O’Brien, and Elizabeth Pangburn, Terre Parker dedicates this performance of For Her in the following way: “This dance is for her. We unmake ourselves and remember ourselves in her image. In her three faces we see ourselves.”

For Her is a part of the Creative Women Leading Climate Action series presented by the UMass Arts Extension Service, Augusta Savage Gallery, Women of Color Leadership Network, and College of Humanities and Fine Arts Advising and Career Center with support from Women for UMass Amherst, UMass Sustainability Innovation and Engagement Fund, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Arts Extension Service’s Arts Entrepreneurship Initiative.

Bio
Terre Parker is a dance artist and educator whose work expands assumptions about what dance is, who can dance, and where dance happens. She is founding director of the intergenerational, place-based dance ensemble Mae/Movement Arts Ensemble; recent work includes The Honey Land and Stone Songs. As a principal member of Anna Halprin’s Dance Company, Terre performed the seminal Parades and Changes and originated roles in Awaken, based on the sculpture of Auguste Rodin. Terre’s choreographic and video work has been presented by Videoholica Varna (Bulgaria), Université du Québec à Montréal, One People Voice Company (Java/Bali), Art in Nature Festival (CA), Sense of Place Dance Festival (WY), and Brooklyn Academy of Arts and Dance, among others.

Terre’s artistic practice encompasses environmental and stage performance, video, visual scores, installation, participatory ritual, and teaching in a wide range of settings from museums to community centers to universities. As a teaching artist for Enchanted Circle Theater, Terre co-directed the Youth Truth performance advocacy ensemble. Her current research, Evolving Identities, emerges from the experience of motherhood to explore the interaction of literal and figurative social identities during life transitions through movement and writing. A member of the International Interdisciplinary Artist Consortium and Studio Firenze (Northampton), she teaches dance workshops and develops arts integrated curriculum. As Program Coordinator for the UMass Arts Extension Service she teaches Arts Programming and facilitates connections between the arts communities on and off campus. She holds a certification in Halprin’s somatic approach, BA from Mount Holyoke College, and MFA Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College.

To view For Her, visit Terre Parker's Vimeo.