Photo by Renata Irving
Nneka Kelly explains the name, StoryGround… a dance collective:
“Everything we need comes from the earth we stand on, the ground we walk, run, dance and sleep on. My belief is that we are molded from earth and when we transition we go back. The earth/ground is our foundation. As we walk through this realm of earthly life, we take steps on the earth and each step leads us closer to our destiny and closer to the earth that we come from. Along our path, each step we take, we create stories with thought, with experimentation, with lessons for others to build on and continue.”
“Everything we need comes from the earth we stand on, the ground we walk, run, dance and sleep on. My belief is that we are molded from earth and when we transition we go back. The earth/ground is our foundation. As we walk through this realm of earthly life, we take steps on the earth and each step leads us closer to our destiny and closer to the earth that we come from. Along our path, each step we take, we create stories with thought, with experimentation, with lessons for others to build on and continue.”
Photo by Renata Irving
Photos by Renata Irving
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Photo by Renata Irving
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Our stories - written, spoken aloud, and embodied - are exchanged on the dance floor (manifested wherever we gather - in dance studios, parking lots, grassy fields, or building lobbies). StoryGround is a space of resistance and survival. Too often the economic realities of artistic life overwhelm our ability to actually immerse ourselves in creative process. Too often our racialized and gendered bodies, movements, and creative practices are marginalized, devalued, or erased in other spaces and contexts. By banding together and dedicating our time and energy to each other, and by sharing resources (studio space, music, snacks, grant funding, classes, lesson plans, professional opportunities, welcoming children in the space to alleviate the stress of finding childcare) we acknowledge that our dancing labor is valuable and vital, and do our best to make our creative processes accessible. It is a space to see each other and be seen; to listen, speak, and be heard; to be free to move in the ways that we need in any given moment. It is a space to celebrate and affirm our differences, our histories and traditions, our re/imaging of ourselves, our creations and visions for the future.
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Photos by Renata Irving