Dispatches = reports from the interior .... artist sharing with kaijo caggins & Marisa Illingsworth

[Meg Foley]

Dispatches = reports from the interior

An artist sharing with kaijo caggins & Marisa Illingsworth

Saturday Jan 17 at 7pm (runs approximately 60 min)

at The Whole Shebang, 1813 S 11th St, Philadelphia, PA 19148

 

PWYC (suggested donation $10-20), cash or Venmo

80% of proceeds go to Middle East Children's Alliance, an organization working to protect children in Palestine and Syrian refugees.

RSVP greatly appreciated! 

--- let us know you're coming and more info here ---

Masks highly recommended. 

More about the artists and what they're working on:

kaijo caggins (they/he) is a Black trans performance artist, educator and doula. they observe improvisation and defiance through pleasure in their performance practices. kaijo works with the body, sounding and disorientation; with an emphasis on queerness, somatics, and liberation as life force. they facilitate queer Contact Improvisation jams + teach CI based classes. living within Lenapehoking and Nacotchtank, he is currently in community with local CI enthusiasts, multidisciplinary artists, families, and the rivers. kaijo is pursuing their MA in Women’s, Gender + Sexuality Studies at The George Washington University.

what kaijo is working on:

‘disorient rituals for grounding — a practice in process’

this is a trio

a moresome

we are entering the fifth wall

can we orient ourselves differently

close your eyes

lay with me

hands to the sky

mouths open

‘disorient futures’ is a curiosity space working through practices of improvisation and asking questions. falling into the senses. trusting desire. saying no. activating manifestations of what it means to be with our own complexities + in community as worlds around us shift and crumble. ‘disorient futures’ teases methods of contact improvisation and sonic collage.

...

Marisa Illingsworth (she/ they) is a movement and performance artist based in Philadelphia, land of the Lenape people. She is most interested in authentic movement, radical and expansive movement practices, and movement as a means of grounding toward collective liberation/revolution. In her work, she has been exploring themes of grief, rebirth, togetherness and queerness through performance. Marisa performed a solo dance theater show in the 2024 Cannonball festival called authentic grief baby monologue. They earned their BFA from the University of the Arts in 2016, and have worked with many incredible artists in the area since.

What Marisa is working on:
Marisa has been combining writing, movement, and storytelling practices lately, hoping to disarm her preconceived notions of artmaking and performance to unveil deeper, truer, and more playful possibilities. They have been writing about the grief of losing their mom to cancer in 2023, coming out of the closet during the pandemic, and exploring themes of mortality, transformation, playfulness, and rebirth. Her movement practice is based in authentic movement, an insistence on feeling deeply instead of shape making, and allowing oneself to both witness and be witnessed- despite the nearly unbearable vulnerability hangover that inevitably ensues.

--

megfoley.org

she/her

[Meg Foley]

Unfortunately due to illness, tonight's Dispatches showing with kaijo caggins and Marisa Illingsworth is being rescheduled, new date TBA. 

Want a direct email when we find a new date? RSVP here, and let us know you'd like to come. We'll be in touch asap! 

Stay tuned and thanks for supporting local, experimental performance!

--

megfoley.org

she/her

[Meg Foley]

quick or languid: Shapely & Earthbound with Meg Foley

a movement improvisation and shape evolution inquiry workshop

Saturday Feb 7 and Sunday Feb 8 

at The Whole Shebang, 1813 S 11th St, Philadelphia, PA 19148 with a weather-permitting research trip into the Wissahickon on Sunday morning (ride provided)

 

sliding scale: $110-210

more info and register here

masking optional, Covid + Flu testing prior to gathering required (tests can be provided) 

about the workshop:
We humans are made of STUFF, and in this workshop, we will lean into that sensorial, diverse, transient STUFF; it’s visceral and derived from universal materials: land, stars, water, minerals.

You can expect working through movement scores, using rocks and other non-human materials as reference, opportunities to witness and reflect—solo + together—and a Sunday morning trip to the Wissahickon to explore with non-human shape partners.

We will begin by diving into the SHAPES we make when we are dancing—"still", evolving, fractal—as well as the accumulative material of shape generation and disruption. From there, we will build together in playful relational frames to explore how our shapes engage with being witnessed and influenced. We will embrace the idea that performance begins when one engages with both the consequence of and reflection on their action, whether or not they are witnessed. We will consider our shapes in a landscape of physical materials: sound, site, story, and land. We will engage with performance practice with self, performance practice with others, and performance practice with environment. Finally, we will look at the possibilities of noodling or moving in ways that are not performative. We’ll try it on, dance a lot, talk, write, read, throw away, try again, and research together.

This workshop is for intermediate/advanced improvisers, as well as playful movement practitioners who like making it up along the way. It is informed by Meg’s foundational improvisational practice, action is primary, and her current research as a queer parent into human formation: gestation, family and childhood development; identity: gender, sexuality, social role; and geology:forms, deep time, where we come from, and what we’re made of.

Meg Foley(she/he/they) is a transdisciplinary artist, educator, and parent living and loving in Philadelphia on unceded Lenni land, a fecund landscape with a volatile geological history on the edge of the North American continental plate. For 20+ years Meg has made work concerned with illuminating the experiential and transformative potential of our bodily selves as a tangle of corporeal and social realities. Meg uses movement, visual & environmental design, and choreographic thinking to create containers for bodily engagement and reflection on a somatic present, on the power and location of the body itself as participant. Meg’s practice centers movement generation and rigorous physicality, emergent somatic and social choreography, and engages textiles as bodily extensions and partners. Meg’s recent project, Blood Baby (2021-present)—emerging from her experience as a queer gestational parent—explores queer and trans family building and lineage, gender, sexuality, and geology. Since 2016, Meg has facilitated gatherings intended to foster access to and awareness of a somatic presence for all bodies, outside traditional dance presentation frames and employing the languages of movement improvisation, social therapy, and queer club and drag culture. As part of Blood Baby, Meg initiated and co-facilitated Queer Parent Convenings, creative fellowship groups for queer and trans caregivers to explore queer child-rearing through art and somatics, from 2021-2024. She has taught at University of the Arts, UCLA, Seattle Festival of Dance + Improvisation, CU Boulder, and Pearl Arts in partnership with Kelly Strayhorn, among others. Meg is a 2020 NEFA National Dance Project awardee, a 2012 Pew Fellow in the Arts, a former Vox Populi member, and founding member of Mascher Space Cooperative. Meg is also an educator, curator, and unschooling parent. megfoley.org

--

megfoley.org

she/her