DePaul University's Theatre School Presents:

Sharon Bridgforth's Theatrical Jazz Institute:

sista docta

Inspired by traditional Jazz methods of training, this Institute is designed for artists interested in learning about the Theatrical Jazz Aesthetic by being in the room with practitioners. Sharon

Bridgforth, the 2010 – 2011 Visiting Multicultural Faculty member at DePaul University’s Theatre School, will facilitate the Institute.

Nationally based master Theatrical Jazz Aesthetic practitioners will visit the Institute, offering public talks, workshops and informal presentations of their work.

Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, 1/23/11

PERFORMANCE (30 minutes)

sista docta

In 1993, Omi Osun Joni L. Jones began performing sista docta as a way of interrogating racism and sexism in U.S. academic institutions.  Using personal narratives, statistics, movement and improvisation, Jones explores the many ways that institutions seek to silence our spirits.  The work uses elements of theatrical jazz that acknowledges the deep learning possible through embodiment and non-linear structures.

30 minute talk back

Workshop 2 hours

Fusion of Forms. Using the principles of Theatrical Jazz participants will create 3 or more artistic artifacts and explore ways of combining them into a single performance.  Through writing, movement, and collaborative exercises participants will have an opportunity to examine new performance strategies.

BIO Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, Ph.D is an artist/scholar whose most recent exploration in the theatrical jazz aesthetic include the role of GreGre Gurl in Sharon Bridgforth’s, blood pudding in the 2010 New York SummerStage Festival.  Omi is Director of  The John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies and is Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the founder of the Austin Project—a collaboration of women of color artists, scholars, and activists who use art for re-imagining society, and is lead editor of Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic, that documents this work (UT Press 2010). Omi is completing work on a forthcoming ethnography on jazz aesthetics and Yoruba cosmology in theatre titled, Jazz, Ase, and The Power of the Present Moment.

Workshop participants should come dressed to move and bring writing materials.

Contact Erica Mott at education@linkshall.org for additional information