A’we deh ya is a community-specific performance project that connects the people, histories, and visions in St. Croix, a current US colony, Richmond, and the Bronx. Our work explores Black liberation technologies and the impacts of industry in each geography, activating a vital call-and-response between colony and mainland, body and place, art and activism.
Using our adaptive engagement and touring praxis – the Fishtrap Method – we are weaving together collaborators both within and across geographies by telling stories, sharing expertise, and creating performance. The performances will evolve in relationship to each community, through a co-designed research and engagement model with longtime local partners. Local culture bearers and performers in each tour community participate in the research process, public programming, and within the performance itself.
A’we is the latest iteration of a decade of research and development for the project Building a Better Fishtrap. The work is rooted in the vanishing fishing tradition of choreographer Paloma McGregor’s father and three animating questions: What do we take with us? Leave behind? Reclaim? Past performances include an installation along the Bronx River with audiences in canoes piloted by local conservation organizations and a ritual walk from McGregor’s ancestral land in St. Croix to Gallows Bay where her father built fish traps.
We look forward to continuing to develop this project with other communities interested in using choreographic practices to cultivate community-centered visioning, organizing and action.
Land acknowledgement: Munsee Lenape (current), Taino/Carib/Arawak (ancestral home), Powatan (project support). Also acknowledging cultural/economic/spiritual contributions of African descendant peoples in these geographies, which undergirds my practice & sense of possibilities.
Estimated artist fee:
- $45-50,000 + travel and housing / weeklong in person engagement and performance residency (full creative team, including fees paid to local artists/culture bearers)
- $15-20,000 + travel and housing / weeklong in person engagement residency (5-person team, including fees paid to local artists/culture bearers)
- $15,000 / virtual engagement series (full creative team, includes fees paid to local artists/culture bearers) – This option builds on our Study Group model, a scaffolded strategy for cultivating connections across geographies between or before in-person engagements.
In addition to the fees articulated above, Angela’s Pulse is dedicated to connecting with values-aligned communities; we work collaboratively with potential partner organizations of all sizes to strategize how to resource and share this work.
