Experiencing Interruptions?

blue, green

This screen dance was researched in sites in Asheville, NC in 2019 and in Marquette, MI in 2020. The original score was created by Kimathi Moore was funded by a University of North Carolina Asheville Teaching Council Award in 2019 for musical collaboration during a production for dance minor students, which drew upon similar thematic materials. In 2020, Celia Weiss Bambara furthered the research process by improvising and engaging in somatic studies in sites in the small peninsula in Michigan where she lived between the ages of 2 and 12 roughly. From the ages of 9-11, approximately, my mother would pack me off to Jew camp in Wisconsin for almost a month. There I lived on a kibbutz for children in army tents. While it was a wonderful experience on many many levels it was also challenging on other levels. Mainly, I was not as sophisticated as the big city Jewish girls. I found refuge though, in the small garden patch, singing everyday, New Hebrew learning, and the lake and in the outdoor temple services. We would sit outside in the woods and listen to lectures on god and nature, ethics, and community. The 11-year-old girl, that is still a part of me, with the long braids and uneven laugh, loved the lectures on Kabbalah and nature and the singing. This dance film working connects me to that partially blind 11 year old and my adult understanding and somatic studies of women’s connections to nature as a place of power, Jewish female identity, African dance practices, Diasporic links and refuge.

  • Celia Weiss Bambara
    Director
    Je Te Souhaites Du Bien et Apres
  • Loren Earl
    Producer
  • Kimathi Moore
    Producer
  • Celia Weiss Bambara
    Key Cast
    "As Self"
    CCBdance Project
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short, Other
  • Genres:
    Dance, Experimenatl, Short, Jewish, Somatics
  • Runtime:
    7 minutes 20 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 5, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    800 USD
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Celia Weiss Bambara

Dr. Celia Weiss Bambara is a dance artist and scholar as well as a dual citizen of the US and Burkina Faso. She is the artistic director of the CCBdance Project, which was co-founded with Burkina Faso born dance and theater artist, Christian Bambara in 2006. Her choreography, improvisation and/or site- dancework has been shown in the United States, and internationally in the Caribbean, West Africa, and in Europe. This work has been shown at venues including: Dancespace (NYC), Movement Research (NYC), Zacho Studios (SF), Links Hall (CHI), Drucker Center (CHI), Institut Francais in Abidjan, Goethe Institut in Abidjan, Alliance Francaise (CHI), Jane Addams Hull House (CHI), African American Museum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Occidental College, University of Southern California, National Theater in Abidjan (CNAC), INSAAC (National Arts Conservatory in Abidjan), Cannes at the MJC Picaud, Laboragras in Berlin, National Television in Haiti, Trinidad at Alice Yard, in Jamaica at the Caribbean Studies Association, Donko Seko in Mali and at the Belk Theater at UNC Asheville. She is currently working on multi-media works in dance-film, site-dance and photography. Her work has been awarded grants or residencies by the Puffin Foundation, Maryland Arts Council, The Djerassi Foundation, Ragdale Foundation, Ecole Des Sables (Senegal), Donko Seko (Mali), Tanzart (Germany), UCIRA (University of California Institute For Research in the Arts) among others. Her movement research combines the base of Haitian dance with other African forms, modern/contemporary dance, yoga and Klein Mahler technique and Body Mind Centering. Dr. Bambara’s work addresses the intersections of practice as research in contemporary and African diasporic dance. She has published a chapter on contemporary dance making in the works of women choreographers’ who have mentored her or with whom she has collaborated in Port-au-Prince in Susanna Sloat’s 2010 volume on Caribbean Dancemaking. The Journal of Haitian Studies has also published two articles on Haitian dance and articulations of diaspora. The Chicago Artist Resource and Chicago’s Social Justice Journal Area Magazine, have published works that addresses her artistic work through dialogue about improvisational practices, movement research, and social justice. Her current book project addresses over lapping Jewish and African diasporas through questions of improvisation and processes as practices of interculturalism. This practice as research project situates African Contemporary Dance as a geo-political set of practices: research questions and answers that she has negotiated as a dance artist through creating work and dancing with artists in the Caribbean, US and West Africa. Dr, Bambara teaches choreography and improvisation courses, dance studies, dance administration, contemporary technique, yoga, and somatics. She occasionally will teach Haitian traditional dance classes.

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Director Statement

In 2006, I formed the CCBdance Project with my partner Burkina Faso born dance and theater artist Christian Bambara. I have directed or co-directed the company for 14 years and our work has been shown in France, Germany, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Mali, Haiti, Trinidad, Jamaica, and nationally in the US. The company works with the thematic materials of travel, race, peace, translation, violence, and interculturalism in new works made for the stage, improvisations, site-specific installations, and dance films. As a practice-based teaching artist, my work in studio courses, dance studies, and choreography classes can also be hybrid when necessary to best suit university needs and curricular interests. My teaching work consistently addresses cultural context and social justice issues as they intersect with professional practices in dance, dance making, improvisation and dance studies.
On technical and choreographic levels my work engages the “base” of Haitian and African dance in combination with the somatic practices of Klein/Mahler technique, Body Mind Centering, and yoga as well as modern/contemporary dance to create researched movements. The movement technique that I practice is experimental as is my choreographic process in that they both grow as I locate researched movements and methods for producing dance. With a focus on finding the body’s full movement in space and time, this technique asks students to relocate balance and to play with a range of full spinal and hip articulations. Students will learn their edges, contours and play with rhythm. Improvisational research is worked into the practice and in course work. A layered mode of movement research is employed in my choreography and is integral to my choreographic practice in a contemporary, hybrid form. I am currently certified at the 200-hour level in yoga and have been studying Body Mind Centering, Gaga and Klein Mahler techniques.
Improvisation is central to my practice and process as a choreographer. I will often begin a new project, project section or new phrase material by deciding to follow an intention such as a memory or a set of words, experiences or drawings that I have recorded in a notebook. I let the improvisations develop and accumulate. Often as I am researching new movement through memory, for example, I note newness when my body is articulating through a new, difficult, physical space or set of movements. Through improvisation, I feel out what new phrase material, structures or textures might be employed in a work and selectively employ found materials. Improvisation is a process that I follow--an internal, energetic and spiritual space or way of being to make dance. Improvisation is worked into all of my classes whether in composition, movement research or technique. It is central to how I am currently locating dance-making, teaching, identity, and movement research.