In-Studio Performance

Imani Lee Williams has created a one-woman show which utilizes mediums that require plumbing, a few outlets, and the space to move. Ideas of Grandeur is about taking in and making out that which, in permanence, disgusts us. Experience freedom in the world premiere of Ideas of Grandeur.

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Recently honored with a Master’s in Fine Arts from FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training, Imani Williams carries her birthright to perform. She has spent 17 years as a performing artist of different capacities. From the start, Imani's involvement in musical theater and sketch comedy began from the new works of Youth Ensemble of Atlanta. Since moving to Florida, interest in excavating her true artistic voice grew. Building trust in creation through improvisational comedy met with the intent to communicate spiritually through West African dance has found its place within Imani's long held love for Afrofuturism. This is Imani's first solo show. She aims to further develop what it means to tell her story." 

Natalie will be presenting the Mad Scene excerpt from her full movement theater play which she wrote, choreographed, workshopped and produced a showing of early this year.

[In this one, nobody is dying] has been a collision between explorations of Natalie’s work over the past 4 years, and the discovery of poems by award winning poet Philip Schaefer. His publication of Bad Summon (https://uofupress.lib.utah.edu/bad-summon/) came into her life through a mutual friend and fellow artist. When she read Philip’s work, she immediately felt she wanted them to play a part in her creative world, or perhaps she wanted to find a way into theirs. Instantly, their exquisite beauty, melodrama, and humor brought her inspiration and kinship. She was bold enough to ask if he might grant her permission to use his poems for a night of plays she was producing. Soon after, knowing she was not yet done exploring them, she approached him about using his poems as text for a brand new play; He said yes.

At its heart, this project is a tumbleweed that has been rolling for quite some time. The experience of grief had been a driving theme for her in art making, and her own personal investigations inspire play in the grey area where tragedy, love, and humor intertwine.

Saturday night will feature a purely movement based excerpt featuring solo violinist Nora Willams, and later Natalie will present samples of poetry from the full play, and feature a new work in progress excerpt from her current project WendyPan! 

It is extremely meaningful to be able to present work with SCD. I truly began finding my own voice as an artist working with Leymis, my fellow dancers, and the plethora of choreographers that inspired every show. Sharing the work that I have continued after leaving the company feels organic, necessary, refreshing, and nurturing, and I cannot wait to be back in the Sarasota community!!

The Invitation Situation

Alpert award winning choreographer Jeanine Durning comes together with a group of stellar woman dance artists and thinkers for the making of The Invitation Situation, a choreo-performance experiment based on Durning’s signature movement practice, nonstopping. Following a basic desire to “practice together,” Jeanine was invited by Andee Scott, Mary Williford-Shade, Heidi Brewer, and Clare Croft in the midst of 2021 pandemic lock downs to share her practice over Zoom which then soon developed into the desire to create a performance together. Building on the initial invitation, as well as the situation of being in 3 different states and 2 countries, The Invitation Situation highlights the labor and intelligence of the dancer’s enduring desire to move and build something together. Teetering at the edge of what could be in an ever-shifting environment, this choreography exposes both the precision and precarity of the dancer’s decision-making from moment to moment, somewhere between personal agency and collective will – grappling with time, place, and makeshift meanings.