Grisha Coleman

Grisha is an Assistant Professor of Movement, Computation and Digital Media at the School of Arts, Media and Engineering and the School of Dance at Arizona State University [http://ame.asu.edu]. A dancer, composer, and choreographer in performance and experiential media systems, she is the recipient of a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts in Media grant for the development of her current project, echo::system, recently presented at ISEA 2013, ArtxScience in Los Angeles and the New Media Art Triennial at the National Art Museum in Beijing, China. An invited research fellow/artist in residence at Carnegie Mellon University’s STUDIO for Creative Inquiry [2008], she was commissioned by the Robotics Institute at CMU to create a public, site-specific robot in Pittsburgh’s downtown. Reach! Robot, a public sound sculpture, a kinetic installation and a domain for public interaction and participation inspired by the conduction techniques of Butch Morris. A graduate of the College of Letters at Wesleyan University, with an MFA in Composition and Integrated Media from California Institute of the Arts, she danced as a member of the acclaimed dance company Urban Bush Women [1990-1994], and subsequently founded the music performance group HOTMOUTH, which toured extensively nationally and internationally, and was nominated for a 1998 NYC Drama Desk Award for “Most Unique Theatrical Experience.” She is a member of the Board of Directors for Society of Dance History Scholars.

Sunday June 21 4-7pm & Sunday June 28 4-7pm
Pelham Bay Park

Mar Sea Sol will take place on two Sundays, June 21 and June 28, starting at 4pm and ending at 7pm in Pelham Bay Park. We will meet at the Salsa Sunday dance event on Orchard Beach, then stride along the famous beach, circumnavigate Hunter Island and engage in place-centering exercises at points along the way. We will hold mid and post activity discussions about the place immediately before us, discuss overlapping thoughts regarding personal, political and social representations of this location, and consider correlations to other seaside spots, particularly in the Caribbean. We will ruminate on perceptions of home and holiday; familiar and strange; city and country; belonging and nonconformity. An area of interest is in investigating the colonial history of the Bronx and that of various Caribbean Islands. What impacts of our colonial past are still in motion? Are these histories physically evident in our natural and cultural landscapes? Large bodies of water have surfaces impenetrable to our eyes; the sea can seem unknowable and intractable. Is this what keeps drawing us to it? How does this impact our time at the seaside and our sense of the history of these sites?

Activities will include somatic exercises – simple and accessible for all people – which will ground participants in body and in place. We will tune ourselves to the unique location and engage in sense mapping: colors (bathing suits, beach toys, birds); sounds (radios, cooking, playing); smells (suntan lotion, salty water, cooking); and skin sensations (temperature, heat, cool, wind, damp, dry). We will draw en plein air, observing human and non-human life, and the interchange between the two. Part of the walk will center on the beach, another on the nature trails. There will be a choice of activities, yet we will encourage all participants to salsa at our meeting spot – the Salsa Sundays dance floor at Orchard Beach.

Participants can take public transportation to Pelham Bay Park by taking the 6 train to the Pelham Bay Park station and walking to Bruckner Blvd and Wilkinson Ave. Take Bx12 Bus to Orchard Beach. Meet the group at Salsa Sundays at Orchard Beach at 4pm. We will have a bring-your-own picnic at the Orchard Beach picnic tables. We will supply simple basics: chips, fruit, cookies, water. Participants can either bring a protein or buy something at concession stands.