Insights: Joe Davis

Insights is an interview show featuring members of the ARC community. This week (4.23.2020) our guest is Joe Davis, an ARC member, poet, and teaching artist.

Joe is a nationally-touring artist, educator, and speaker based in Minneapolis, MN. His work employs poetry, music, theater, and dance to shape culture. He is the Founder and Director of multimedia production company, The New Renaissance, the frontman of emerging soul funk band, The Poetic Diaspora, and qualified administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory. He has keynoted, facilitated conversation, and served as teaching artist at dozens of high schools and universities, most recently as the Artist-in-Residence at Luther Seminary and the recipient of a Masters in Theology of the Arts.

Insights: KJ Dahlaw

Insights is an interview show featuring members of the ARC community. This week (4.16.2020) our guest is KJ Dahlaw, an ARC member and a queer dance artist.

They make work under the name of Unruly Body Tanztheater. KJ is also a working parent and dance teacher in the East SF Bay. Speaking about their work, KJ says the following:

As a dance artist, I am interested in the Body: my own body, the ‘other’ body, the corporeal body, the bioregional body, the transgressive body, the queer body. The body pulses with the stories of our ancestors, the imprinting of culture, and the instincts of our creaturely ways. I approach movement as a presence practice with the body, oriented towards ease, athleticism, and pleasure. I believe in sweating stories into pools of questions on the floor of wonder and playing with possibility.

Invitation to Contribute: Chronicles of Change and Hope

In this season where isolation is a daily challenge, we invite you to share stories, songs, prayers, poems, images, or insights that capture a moment of connection. What have you seen, felt, or thought that gave you a sense of greater life? What small acts of resistance or transformation have you experienced that you want to offer to others? We know that we are in a challenging moment. We also know that this community is powerful and visionary; we want to provide a way for your power and vision to be shared. 

We would love to have you contribute in any medium (links for audio and video please) that allows you to communicate what you need to say in this time. Starting on April 6th, we will begin to share pieces with the ARC community via our blog, letting people know about your work via our email list, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our hope is that by amplifying your voice we can contribute to the reminder that something more is possible. Contributions and questions can be sent to Chronicles@ArtsReligionCulture.org.

Insights: James Howard Hill Jr.

Insights is an interview show featuring members of the ARC community. This week (4.9.2020) our guest is James Howard Hill Jr. He is an academic, artist, and the recipient of the 2020 Rubem Alves Award for Theopoetics.

As an interdisciplinary scholar, Hill's scholarship in religious studies also engages explorations of performance, disability, gender, and sexuality. His current research relates to Michael Jackson, exploring the ways his music and life left a wake of controversy and exuberance. Hill thinks profoundly about bodies and embodiment, often reflecting on his own childhood as well as what it means to be a Black father in the United States.

His work increasingly explores how his passion for justice can meet scholarship and his creative hope for what might come next. As an emerging artist, Hill has turned to experiments of photography and mixed-media. He wants to build and work collaboratively, feeling as if many are “are tired of pretending that the old wineskins of higher academe aren't bursting in protest for something new.” He is searching for a way forward that rejects the silos that hold apart art from the academy, that divides scholars from their bodies, and that keeps each of us from one another.