Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic

Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic is a week of embodying dances that were written inside the California Rehabilitation Center (CRC) prison during Spring 2020. Interpreting choreographer/dancers of the written dances are Suchi Branfman, Bernard Brown, Jay Carlon, Ernst Fenelon Jr., Irvin Gonzalez, Kenji Igus, Brianna Mims, and Tom Tsai.

In 2016, a dance program in the CRC prison gym of a medium security state prison in Norco, CA was created by choreographer/dancer/educator Suchi Branfman. Weekly gatherings to dance and create with the incarcerated men where abruptly halted in March 2020. The California state prison system shut down all programming and visitation due to COVID-19. The program was rapidly revised and the dancers began sending out imagined written choreographies from their prison bunks to the world to imagine Undanced Dances through Prison Walls During a Pandemic.

The Field Workshop has offered space to explore the embodiment of powerfully written choreographic work. Branfman has invited other choreographers who have been part of the CRC dance program as well as formerly incarcerated colleagues of the authors, to spend a week to read, internalize, and collaborate to bring the written dances to life.

September 1-4: WATCH THROUGH THE ICA LA WINDOWS (In-person event)

You are invited to watch the process of choreography and dance through ICA LA's windows along 7th St between the hours of 12:00-5:00 pm.

*Limited in-person, socially distanced masked attendance, watching through the ICALA windows. Reservations required.*

September 5: ONLINE CONVERSATION (separate RSVP required)

You are invited to join the dancers of Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic for an online conversation about the process of writing, interpretation, choreography, and dance for this uniquely collaborative project with the incarcerated community. Pre-registation for the Zoom is required.

Artist Bios:

SUCHI BRANFMAN, choreographer, curator, performer, educator and activist, has worked from the war zones of Managua to Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre and from Kampala’s Luzira Prison to NYC’s Joyce Theatre, as soloist and with Wallflower Order, Crowsfeet Dance Collective, Harry Streep’s Third Dance Theatre, Liz Lerman, Gus Solomons Jr., Dan Wagoner and Augusto Boal. Branfman is currently in the middle of a five-year choreographic residency at the California Rehabilitation Center, a medium security state men’s prison in Norco, serves on faculty at Scripps College and Cal Poly Pomona, and is a prison abolition activist with Critical Resistance.

BERNARD BROWN is a performing artist, choreographer, educator, scholar and arts activist who situates his work at the intersection of blackness, gender, and sexuality. A Lester Horton Award and Westfield Emerging Artist Award recipient, Bernard has performed with distinguished artists and companies including Lula Washington Dance Theatre, David Rousseve/REALITY, TU Dance, Shapiro & Smith Dance, Doug Elkins Dance Company, Donald McKayle, Rennie Harris, Kamasi Washington, Vincent Patterson, Rudy Perez, Nike, and was invited to perform with Mikhail Baryshnikov in Robert Wilson’s “Letter to a Man” with choreography by Lucinda Childs. Brown earned his MFA from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance and BFA from SUNY Purchase. As artistic director of Bernard Brown/bbmoves, a social justice dance theater company, Brown’s choreography has been presented with acclaim in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis, Phoenix and New York City. The work is often described as thoughtful, captivating, and powerfully exquisite. He is published in the peer-reviewed dance journal, Dancer-Citizen, with a recent publication in The Activist History Review in 2020. He has presented his scholarship on blackness, queerness and post-modern dance at conferences across the US. Bernard has been featured in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times for his activism. He is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Sacramento State University and a Certified Dunham Technique Instructor candidate. The Los Angeles Times has called him "...the incomparable Bernard Brown..."

Named Dance Magazine’s Top 25 to watch in 2020, JAY CARLON is a contemporary choreographer based in Los Angeles whose highly physical work is focused in experimental, site-sensitive dance theatre. Born and raised on California’s Central Coast, Carlon’s work is inspired by his background as a competitive wrestler while growing up the youngest of 12 in a Filipino, Catholic, and agricultural migrant-working family. In 2016, he started a multidisciplinary dance group called CARLON. He is committed to connecting his art practice to sustainability and his personal and collective journey of decolonization. Jay’s work has been presented in Los Angeles at REDCAT, The Broad Museum, Los Angeles Dance Project, Annenberg Community Beach House, LA Dance Festival, Electric Lodge, Los Angeles Performance Practice, homeLA, and Beach Dances; in New York at 92ndY and The CURRENT SESSIONS; in Phoenix at Breaking Ground Festival; in Monterrey, Mexico at Espacio Expectante; and in Bangkok, Thailand at Creative Migration. Jay is a performer and directing associate with aerial spectacle theatre company Australia’s Sway Pole, where he has performed at the 2014 Olympics, the 2016 World EXPO, and the 2018 Super Bowl. Carlon has also performed with the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center, Palissimo, Oguri, No)one. Art House, and danced for Rodrigo y Gabriela on Jimmy Kimmel Live (choreographed by Annie-B Parson), in Solange Knowles’ art film Metronia (2018) choreographed by Gerard & Kelly, and was appointed Choreographic Associate for Kanye West's opera, Mary (2019).

ERNST FENELON JR. is an author, international speaker and life coach with numerous multi-media appearances (podcasts, radio.) His focus on enhanced prison education, social reintegration and individual rehabilitation for the current and formerly incarcerated, stems from his 29 years of experience with the California/global prison system, including fourteen and a half years of incarceration. Fenlon works with multiple organizations and is Senior Program Coordinator/Instructor for The Prison Education Project (PEP) programs in California, Uganda and London. www.ernstfenelonjr.com

IRVIN MANUEL GONZALEZ is a Queer, Mexican American mestizx dance artist loosely grounded somewhere between LA, the Inland Empire, and Mexico. He finds pleasure in working through the powerful potential embedded in community, creating through collaborative imagination. As such, Gonzalez makes one-fourth of the collective that is Primera Generación Dance (PGDC). The group focuses on the investigation of ‘mexicanidades’ as a communal formation and as an ever-evolving sensibility. They fuse their various trainings and dance knowledges (cumbia, quebradita, salsa, modern, jazz, and contact improvisation) to develop ways of moving that speak to the mestizo/a/x experience. Gonzalez is a recipient of the Eugene Cota Robles Fellowship, four Gluck Fellowship Awards, and a Humanities Students Research Grant funded by the Center for Ideas and Society at UC Riverside. He was also awarded with Dance Magazine's Award for "Outstanding Student Choreography" (2016) for his collaborative role in "fourtold." Gonzalez presently serves as a board member for Show Box L.A., a non-profit organization in Los Angeles, and as graduate representative for the Dance Studies Association.

KENJI IGUS has been tap dancing since the age of six and has been teaching since the age of fifteen. He has shared the stage with such tap notables as Gregory Hines, Steve Zee, and Jimmy Slyde, and can be seen in a variety of media and film work. Currently, Kenji can be found performing every week at the social club, Rose.Rabbit.Lie located at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.

BRIANNA MIMS is a movement artist, facilitator, and abolitionist. Mims works as advocacy support staff for Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB). She is a recent graduate from the University of Southern California where she studied Dance and NGO’s and Social Change. She uses art, research, and facilitation as a catalyst for self-exploration, civic engagement, healing, and dialogue, in collaboration with artists of various mediums. She is currently developing and presenting #jailbeddrop. The #jailbeddrop experience consists of a performance and interactive installation rooted in challenging our inherent notion between "crime" and punishment. The work contextualizes and facilitates a space to explore interpersonal accountability and reflect those values back on our “criminal justice system". This project is an extension of Justice LA's #jailbedrop art series started by Patrisse Cullors and Cecilia Sweet-Coll.

TOM TSAI is a dancer/choreographer based out of Los Angeles. He is a descendent of survivors and victims of Taiwan’s martial law era, and a perpetual student of B-boy/B-girl culture and history. Tom is deeply inspired by the voices and experiences of the underrepresented, who cope with and resist against injustice and erasure. He has been privileged to perform his solo works in iconic international venues including Judson Church in New York, Sadler’s Wells in London, Theater Rotterdam Schouwburg in Rotterdam, and Esplanade Theatres in Singapore. He has danced with LA-based choreographers Suchi Branfman, Laurie Cameron, Victoria Marks, and John Pennington.

Contact information: dancingthroughprisonwalls@gmail.com