Wildin’ In: Philly

ACCESS

Painted Bride Art Center is a wheelchair accessible space. There will be the possibility of workshop non-participants of the workshop passing through the space at specific times, but I will make sure that everyone has a heads up about it in advance.

COVID-19 PROTOCOLS

Please arrive to Wildin’ In with a face mask for personal and collective protections against the spread of COVID-19. I will also be prepared with extra masks for anyone who neglects to bring their own. When you register, you will be asked about your comfort in relationship to being in space with other people as concerns protections against COVID, and I will use responses to inform a broader masking policy. But, please plan to arrive with a face mask. ALSO, please plan to take a PCR test within 96 hours of your first workshop. Here are some local Philly resources for no-cost PCR testing.

As a group, we will briefly check-in at the start of each session about how we want to be protected and plan to protect one another. I will provide multi-colored stickers for each participant that symbolize our comfort in relationship to indoor proximity to others.

REGISTER BELOW!!

FEES

You are welcome to purchase Wildin’ In admission at full price, or at a sliding range of prices based on percentage of full price. You can also purchase on a no-interest payment plan. If you would like to participate and cannot afford any of the sliding rate options, please email me at makini@thefabulistsagenda.com and we will figure it out. As you make a decision about how much you would like to contribute, I invite you to consider your own personal financial situation — your income, any financial wealth you have access to, your financial responsibilities to care for others, any short- or long-term savings goals you may have — alongside what your desire to contribute to this workshop series and my ability to offer it. From there, you can make your own decision about how much seems right for you to contribute, and I will be grateful for your contribution. For me, I have already decided that offering this series is crucial for me right now, and that I will fund it entirely, if necessary. I think that queer and trans centered Black & indigenous spaces that center this kind of rigorous exploration are nutritious and rare. I think that I have something to offer the conversation – among so many other folx – and am excited to make this contribution. If you are interested in seeing my projected budget for this series (considering both the Philly and Durham editions), you can check it out here.

Price List (with full price amounts boldened)

• Wildin’ In: Philly complete series — $280 / $224 / $168 / $112 / $56
• The Switching complete week — $150 / $120 / $90 / $60 / $30
• Sweat to the Beat of Slow Motion complete week — $150 / $120 / $90 / $60 / $30
• The Switching and Sweat to the Beat of Slow Motion first-day only — $60 / $48 / $36 / $24 / $12
• The Switching first-day only — $35 / $28 / $21 / $14 / $7
• Sweat to the Beat of Slow Motion first-day only — $35 / $28 / $21 / $14 / $7
• Queer Slow Jam admission — Stay Tuned!!!

ARE THESE WORKSHOPS FOR ME?

These workshops are for you if:

• you are a Black and/or indigenous folk who is excited to be in a space that lifts up queer and trans folx. you do not have to consider yourself queer or trans, but if you do not lift up the queer and trans folx you have in your life already, this space is likely not for you
  • i am also of the mind that language is an approximation, and all such terms are in a state of becoming… if you are curious about whether the above applies to you, we can have a conversation about it
• you have a movement/dance practice and are excited to engage in the subject matter with rigor and courage
• you are interested in researching your own erotic and wild energies in community with others — individually and collectively — while honoring personal / communal boundaries
• (for Sweat to the Beat of Slow Motion) you are over 18 years old

I have taught both workshops before to folx of various physical and neurological abilities, and to folx of various ages.

IS THIS A SEX PARTY?

Good question.

In short, no. This workshop series will be a laboratory to explore wild and erotic energies in community. While some sex parties may invite similar exploration, this will not be a sex party. However, participants will be encouraged to bring their full erotic selves to our exploration, with respect for the boundaries of others. As we outline our individual and collective boundaries and excitements together, our workshop environment may become a place where interested and consenting participants allow themselves to engage in some gradation of sexual activity within the workshop place (i.e. kissing, shifting/removing articles of clothing, erotic touching, erotic gazing, sexual language, etc.). This will be up to the consenting participants in relation to what our collective boundaries can contain. We will create the space together so that it can hold all of us. Please note that oral, vaginal, and anal sex will not be welcome in the workshop space.

WHAT SHOULD I EXPECT TO DO THERE?

You should attend workshops ready and excited to participate in rigorous physical, emotional, imagistic and psychological explorations around workshop themes (descriptions below). For The Switching, each participant will primarily be on their own solo journey, though benefitting from the other solo journeys happening around them. Sweat to the Beat of Slow Motion will invite you to touch and embrace other workshop participants; however, you will be able to set and regularly renegotiate the terms by which you engage with others.

DO I HAVE TO ATTEND BOTH WORKSHOPS?
AND/OR
WHAT IF I HAVE CONFLICTS?

Full participation in both workshops in the series is strongly encouraged, but you are also able to register for just one or the other. When you fill out the registration form, you will be asked about conflicts. Please note that participation in the first day of either workshop is allowed without registering for the remaining days. However, priority will be given to registrants who are available to attend the entire workshop series, so if you plan to do partial registration, REGISTER SOON before slots fill up. Unfortunately, single day attendance outside of the first workshop day will not be possible.

WOULD BE GREAT, BUT WHAT ABOUT MY KIDS?

The Switching workshop will be able to accommodate younger participants (under 18) in the space. There will also be an option on the registration page for you to say whether you would like to be a part of a collective childcare resourcing group.

WOULD BE GREAT, BUT WHAT ABOUT MY JOB?

If you would like to attend, and cannot make this work with your employment schedule without organizing some flexibility around attendance hours, let’s talk about it.

WOULD BE GREAT, BUT I DON’T LIVE IN DURHAM

Time for a visit! 🙂

I will be organizing some information for folx interested in coming in from out-of-town, including a resourcing group for folx who would like to organize housing together (folx in Philly who have places to stay for free or for some cost, folx from out of town who are looking for places, etc). Also, I am starting this Airbnb list for some ideas of housing that could also be shared.

ANY OTHER QUESTIONS?

Holla. makini@thefabulistsagenda.com

REGISTER BELOW!!

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS:

The Switching

I like to imagine that this practice in performance improvisation, The Switching, is a strategy in immediate evolution, rapid-fire shifting, sublime learning of and in the moment. I began this practice while curiously obsessing over the question: “Can I change myself?”

Our practice will deal with strategic essentialism, wrapping our fists around what we understand the immediate essence of a moment, or a self, to be. We will frequently submit to the immediate re-design of ourselves into other creatures, or other ways of being our innate creature selves. We will fine-tune our abilities to immediately identify inescapable restrictions and limitations as they arise. It’s a round about journey, and ideally will come full circle.

Now, in this moment, it’s circle/curve drawn by the tips of my body, and
my tips are everywhere, and my desire moves in orbits, in cycles, and my vision is a limb of my body.
And now, in this moment, my vision is a limb of my body, and I am made up of everything
that I can sense but cannot see, and I am made up of the same
material all throughout my body, and my voice is flat.
And now, in this moment, my voice is flat, and my rhythm is insistently
syncopated, and i move because my visceral organs erupt to propel me into motion,
and
then they recompose themselves from the debris, and I am responsible for all of the sound I can
hear, and I am feeling overwhelmed at all of my responsibility, and my
erotic desire is piercing through my pores.

For me, there is something deeply spiritual about this practice, something confusing, something humbling/humiliating about it. And it asks me to put to work my superpower of transformation in service of ecstasy, rather than in service of code-switching to contain myself unobtrusively in one environment or the next.

“It kinda asks the “safe space” academic overuse and misuse to reexamine itself cause not only am I accountable for what I’m choosing to put into the room, but I’m acknowledging that there are things about my makeup/training/culture/privilege/unconscious/blind spots that can also cause a shift in the room or the community or the world for better or for worse or who knows really what the effect will be. Something about this philosophy is great to me because it doesn’t make me feel like I have to fret. It doesn’t make me feel totally paralyzed to choose or move. It does make me hyper-diligent about the messiness of it all, the plurality of it all.“
—Christina Gesualdi

Sweat to the Beat of Slow Motion

We are going to welcome the slow jam onto the dance floor, and meet it with a close embrace – maybe just of our individual selves, or of a consensual partner… or maybe more than one. Let’s get close; feel our wise hips swing into dimly lit spaces, hear inhales and exhales from a mouth hovering near our ear, pumping oxygen for a heart rate that’s pulsing a bit faster than usual… Let’s see what we can get up to way down below 95 bpm. Let’s be people dancing up on other people, when we want to and when we are wanted. Let’s ask for and give our permission for the proximity that we are desiring. Let’s be queer and normal and strange and open and close… very close… Sweating to the beat of slow motion. This is a collective exercise in exploring slow, and experimenting with how to construct a mutually attentive unit with someone else – leading, following, and getting tangled in a consensual gray area. Within this, we will explore movement related to the hip swing of the J-Sette march, the entangled embrace of forms like Cuban Son and Angolan Kizomba, and the importance of deeply communicative pelvic movement in African-descended dance forms. We will disrupt gendered notions about who follows and who leads, slowly discovering the ways we would like to embrace and be embraced on the dance floor.