The Parkinson's Performance Project cultivates a multigenerational creative community with and around people living with Parkinson's disease (PD) through exploration of music and dance and multidisciplinary performance-making in collaboration with professional artists. It fosters embodied practices and dialogues with occupational therapists and neuroscientists to advocate for a creative and holistic approach to PD that centers individuals living with PD as self-agent experts. The 2023-24 project will offer workshops and two open studio showings, all of which works towards the creation of a future original performance.
Film: Iximche Media
Barn Church
A creative placemaking initiative facilitated by Culture Mill and Kindred Seedlings Farm
Barn Church, a creative placemaking initiative facilitated by Culture Mill and Kindred Seedlings Farm, is a liberatory and anti-racist project which combines original performance, the sharing of food, and work on the land as a social practice of community care that centers BIPOC voices and embodied imagination. Barn Church, taking place at one of few Black-owned farms in rural Alamance County, addresses racism of the individual and communal bodies, explores intentional relationship with the land, reclaims church, and activates socially-engaged art as a vehicle for human connection. Performances will feature Crystal Cavalier-Keck and Jason Crazy Bear Keck, Jeghetto, Murielle Elizéon and Shana Tucker, the Barn Church Chaplain CJ Suitt, and more. A winter workshop series with Jasmine Powell and workdays at the farm sustain embodied communal practice. Barn Church is catered by baker and chef Malik Walker.
Barn Church is a Culture Mill and Kindred Seedlings Farm collaboration. This project was supported by the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. The arts are back in North Carolina. The Spark the Arts grant promotes audience inclusion and reengagement in the arts. Additional support is provided by the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation.
Photo by IxImche Media
When We were Queens…
A NC State LIVE-commissioned work, co-produced by Wilson Center at Cape Fear Community College and the Weatherspoon Art Museum, UNC Greensboro, by Murielle Elizéon in collaboration with Shana Tucker
When We were Queens… is a collaboration between dancer/choreographer Murielle Elizéon and composer/musician Shana Tucker exploring a shared ancestry of diaspora and violence. Presented as a diptych, two solos in conversation, the work illuminates both singularity of experience and resonance embedded in the bodies of women of color from different African diasporic communities. When We were Queens… considers the body as a repository of history and the complexities of ancestral heritage and seeks to identify the themes and threads that tell a story beyond words.
In 2023-24, When We were Queens… will be in-residence with NC State LIVE (Raleigh), Wilson Center (Wilmington), La Pratique, Artistic Factory Studio (Vatan, France), Compagnie Marie Lenfant (Le Mans, France), and the Culture Mill Lab (Saxapahaw). It will make its world premiere at the NC Museum of Art (Raleigh) followed by a presentation at Cameron Art Museum (Wilmington) in February 2024. In April 2024, it will be presented as part of Barn Church at Kindred Seedlings Farm (Graham).
WWwQ at CAM Program
Artists, Collaborators, and Contributors
When We were Queens… is a Culture Mill production, commissioned by NC State LIVE and co-produced by the Wilson Center at Cape Fear Community College and Weatherspoon Art Museum, UNC Greensboro. Culture Mill is a 2023 NDP Finalist Grant Award recipient. Support is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project with funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation in support of When We were Queens.. and to address continued sustainability needs. American Sign Language at When We were Queens… Performances are funded in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council.
photo: Sarah Marguier
Southern Futures at Carolina Performing Arts
A multi-year collaboration with Carolina Performing Arts
Southern Futures at Carolina Performing Arts produces new works, collaborations, and research on social justice, racial equity, and the American South. In its third year of the partnership, Culture Mill will support an interdisciplinary cohort of six locally-based artists in their collaborative artistic direction of The Commons Festival and Residency, culminating with place-based performances of Black identity May 3 and 4, 2024 at The CURRENT ArtSpace + Studio. The cohort includes Sylvester Allen Jr., Johnny Lee Chapman III, Cortland Gilliam, Anthony “Otto” Nelson Jr., Jasmine Powell, and CJ Suitt.
After collaboratively producing a listening practice at UNC’s Old Well uplifting the legacy of Black masons in Chapel Hill and their relationship to the university built by enslaved labor, Culture Mill will also continue its work with the UNC Geography Department and the Marian Cheek Jackson Center in a second year of practices bridging UNC students and the historic Northside community of Chapel Hill.
Lastly, Culture Mill with Carolina Performing Arts presented the reading of NOTHING ABIDES, an evening of poems in dialogue by Southern Futures writers-in-residence Cortland Gilliam and Brian Howe. The pair has debuted their collaborative writing in relationship to Eclipse, which is not about the dance piece but around and within it. A first reading took place at Attic 506 on August 27. Additional NOTHING ABIDES performances will be shared as part of the Octopod Reading Series in Durham, among others.
Culture Mill’s collaboration is presented as part of Southern Futures at Carolina Performing Arts. American Sign Language at The Commons Festival is funded in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council.
Film: Iximche media
Assembly
A new performance-practice on Place, Body and Capital by Tommy Noonan
Assembly, a new work by Tommy Noonan, adapts to each place and each piece of land beneath that place. Its themes vary according to the given historical, economic, and political conditions connected to the land where Assembly is performed, but it always names the complex relationship between land, economy, and body in the place called Here, asking audiences to inhabit that place through their own bodies. Assembly carries with it the seed of Culture Mill’s 2022 work Eclipse and remains in communication with five other solos from five artists around the world.
Commissioned by Mia Habib Productions and following a spring 2022 premiere in Norway, Assembly will make its US premiere at Greensboro Project Space as part of the North Carolina Dance Festival’s season in October 2022. Following, the work will return to Oslo, Norway for additional presentations and touring.
Assembly is a Culture Mill production with support from Mia Habib Productions and Dance Project. It is a response to the score: Inopiné II - How To, created by Mia Habib and Janne-Camilla Lyster and produced by Mia Habib Productions, Norway, with guidance from Chrysa Parkinson. Five other connected solo projects are made by: Filiz Sizanli (Turkey), Julie Nioche (France), Thami Hector Manekehla (South Africa), Thais de Marco (Brasil) and Mia Habib (Norway). Additional co-producers include: Dansens Hus (no), Black Box (no), RAS (no), Tou scene (no), DansiT (no) Rosendal teater (no), BIT Teatergarasjen (no) and Supported by The Norwegian Arts Council and Nordic Culture Fund – Globus Opstart.
Moving Through
A trans-disciplinary project linking contemporary dance with new approaches to Parkinson’s Disease
Culture Mill continues its third year of Moving Through, the transdisciplinary project linking Contemporary Dance with new approaches to Parkinson’s Disease. The collaboration, led by Murielle Elizéon and Tommy Noonan, develops as an ongoing partnership with the American Dance Festival, which is supported by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council as well as RTI International.
Noonan, Elizeon, choreographer Leah Wilks and dance education specialist Annie Dwyer will teach a series of 6 virtual workshops, open to any and all dancers of all abilities living both with and without Parkinson’s Disease. The team will also convene a small working group of specialists in Parkinson’s Disease and Occupational Therapy, to research how their method of creative movement exploration might effectively be applied to a home-environment.
Additionally, Culture Mill collaborators will continue to plan for an upcoming pilot study at Duke University Movement Disorders Clinic. As matters of equity and access are important to this work, Culture Mill is also committed to developing new partnerships in Alamance County to provide access to their classes for aging populations and underserved communities.
More on this specific program can be found at www.movingthrough.live
BodyStorm
A new commission by Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company
Culture Mill is commissioned by Salt Lake City-based Ririe-Woodbury Dance company to create a new work titled BodyStorm. The work will focus on physical rendering of autobiographical material, and will be informed by interactions between dancers in the company and local people living with Parkinson’s Disease. BodyStorm will be created in collaboration with Paris-based choreographer Clint Lutes, and will premiere in Salt Lake City on April 28th, 2022 before going on tour.
Eclipse & Southern Futures
Eclipse: A new relational performance by Tommy Noonan & Murielle Elizéon / Culture Mill
April 9th and 10th, 2022 at 7:30pm
The Current Artspace & Studio, Chapel Hill, nC
FREE
In Eclipse, Culture Mill brings together audiences and professional artists to build an imaginary monument for a (im)possible “we.” Just before sundown, you are invited to join a choreographic practice outside CURRENT ArtSpace + Studio, which uses restorative justice practices and embodiment tools to investigate how our assembled bodies and stories might form the architecture for a togetherness we don’t yet know.
“Knowledge is only a rumor until it lives in the bones.” So goes a proverb of the Asaro Tribe of Papau New Guinea. In our current global moment, democracy, too, feels increasingly such a rumor whose complexities are not fully practiced and lived together in assembled bodies and their accompanying memories and histories.
Located on the green outside CURRENT ArtSpace + Studio. Mask-wearing required. Runtime is approximately 90 minutes.
photo by Roderico Y. Díaz
Watercolor by Ravel Hughes
Southern Futures: A multi-year collaboration with Carolina Performing Arts
The process for creating Eclipse will serve as a framework for Culture Mill’s design of other artist residencies as a part of “Southern Futures” initiative at Carolina Performing Arts: notably Marcella Murray, David Neumann and Tei Blow in 2021, later expanding over three years to include multiple collaborators from around the United States.
Culture Mill will work to design and link each artist residency together in connection with Southern Futures' mission to examine the past of the UNC campus and greater community, and imagine the future, focusing on humble listening and community engagement, and bringing storytelling and art to the foreground.
Presented as part of the Southern Futures initiative at CPA, Eclipse is a performance of this embodied social practice at the core of democracy.
How To & Aroz
Two new works in development
The development of more intimate individual performances remain core to Culture Mill’s work. Murielle Elizéon continues her collaboration with Shana Tucker in developing a new duet called Aroz, which began in a residency with NC State Live.
Tommy Noonan will show an in-progress performance of How To, in Saxapahaw, date TBD in winter 2022; How To is a performative attempt at being Human, made in collaboration with Mia Habib Productions and 5 other artists from 5 continents. How To will tour to Norway in May of 2022.
Sylvester Allen
2021/22 Artist-in-Residence
Culture Mill’s artist in residence for the 2021/22 season will be Burlington, NC-based theater director, performer and musician Sylvester Allen. Allen has produced Culture Mill’s only in-person hosted event in 2021 with The Spirit of Wyatt Outlaw: Final Peace -- an original play written and directed by Allen, which tells the story of Outlaw -- the first appointed African-American town commissioner and constable of Graham, North Carolina, who was lynched by the Ku Klux Klan in 1870.
In Allen’s residency with Culture Mill this season, he will focus on the composition of original Jazz pieces that weave together music, movement and text.
Moving Through - Year 2
A Transdisciplinary program linking Contemporary Dance with new approaches to Parkinson’s Disease.
Join us live on May 27th at 7pm!
Moving Through 2021:
Past, Present and Future
An online experiential presentation of Culture Mill's innovative program linking Dance with approaches to Parkinson's Disease.
Thursday, May 27th at 7pm: Free
Join Culture Mill co-directors Murielle Elizeon and Tommy Noonan, along with Dr. Jeffrey M. Hoder of Duke University, for a dynamic presentation of the history and the unfolding future of the Moving Through project. From the creation of a performance on the main stage of the American Dance Festival, through ongoing classes supported by South Arts and ADF, towards an upcoming pilot research study in collaboration with the Duke Movement Disorders Clinic, Moving Through is a multifaceted project that is seeding new approaches to both healthcare and art-making through interweaving researchers and dancers living with and without Parksinon's Disease. The experiential embodied program on May 27th will include footage from the project as well as live presentations from Elizeon, Noonan and Dr. Hoder.
Moving Through is funded in part by ADF with a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. This project is made possible in part with a grant from the Kenan Charitable Trust. Additional support is provided by RTI International and The Duke Movement Disorders Clinic.
Moving Through enters its third year, drawing together partnerships with the American Dance Festival, Duke University, RTI International, South Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and local partners in an ongoing effort to seed new perspectives in approaches to Parkinson’s Disease. The project began with Culture Mill’s 2019 commission by the American Dance Festival: They Are All. Along the way, continuing and expanding classes in Durham and Alamance counties have brought partnerships with researchers at Duke and Wake Forest, and a multidisciplinary working group has sought to better understand and document our unique approach to Parkinson's Disease through movement in an artistic context. This program is funded in part by a grant from the William R. Kenan Charitable Trust. More information in this specific program can be found at www.movingthrough.livE
Explore our different projects in this program below
Dancing With
A series of in-person and remote classes for aging populations and people living with Parkinson’s Disease. (September, 2020 - June, 2021)
Culture Mill continues classes for people living with Parkinson’s Disease in Durham, through a partnership with the American Dance Festival, supported by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. Additional support is provided by RTI International. This support makes possible an expansion of our unique approach for residents of Alamance County in the spring of 2021. A mix of classes will be offered outdoors and via Zoom. For more information on our Durham classes, register HERE. Please stay tuned for our Alamance Classes.
Culture Mill on Tour
Murielle Elizeon’s autobiographic solo, Brown, in Strasbourg, France (28 & 29, January, 2021)
Though touring in the current season has mostly been suspended due to COVID-19, Murielle Elizéon’s celebrated 2017 solo: Brown, celebrated at the American Dance Festival in 2018, is scheduled to appear at Centre de Développement Chorégraphique National Pôle-Sud in Strasbourg, France as a part of the L’Année Commence Avec Elles Festival. This solo explores Elizéon’s personal relationship to race, identity, domestic violence and resilience. It sparked an innovative collaboration in artistic and restorative justice practices between Elizéon and Hanson, director of Restorative Practices at the Dispute Settlement Center. Our current season continues many outcomes of this long-term, emergent collaboration by exploring the multiple ways in which artistic tools provide an important opportunity for community members to navigate complexity across lines of difference.
Movement & Community Practice
A series of creative projects exploring embodied practices for strengthening social tissue and supporting resilience
Hear and Now
A conversation about race (Ongoing)
A Hear and Now conversation gathers local community members into a physically distant outdoor space, allowing us to tell our stories about an experience of race and racism and how it has impacted our lives. We enter first with an awareness of our bodies before speaking what we feel and think, what we see and hear: this is not head work but heart work. The project is a collaboration between Culture Mill’s Murielle Elizeon, therapist, civil rights activist and facilitator Lutricia Callair and Val Hanson, Director of Restorative Justice at the Dispute Settlement Center.
Generative Movement for Womxn of Color and Other Self-Care Classes
Virtual and in-person classes from dance, somatics and movement professionals, focusing on embodied self-care. (Ongoing)
Culture Mill will collaborate with Davida Reid and others to offer a series of virtual and in-person classes, some for Womxn of Color and some open to all. These various classes will focus on using somatic, movement and embodied wellness tools such as Gyrokinesis, Yoga, Qi-Gong and more to find center and resilience in chaotic and troubling times. All classes are donation based, and 100% of profits will go towards Alamance-based charities that support underserved populations. In this way, participants’ own self-care is of direct benefit to those who lack access to self-care.
Shared Experiences
Following two years of collaboration with the Saxapahaw Social Justice Exchange, the most recent of which was supported by a Community Progress grant from the Z Smith Reynolds Foundation, we continue our commitment to this rich community collaboration while expanding our own programming to include new community partners.
Saxapahaw Indigenous Peoples’ Day
& Black History Month Celebrations
Virtual gatherings celebrating the history and culture of local Black, Indigenous and Peoples of Color. (October 12th, 2020 & February 2021)
Following 2019’s inaugural Indigenous People’s Day (the first ever such celebration held in Alamance County), we will collaborate once again with local indigenous artists and activists as well as with the Saxapahaw Social Justice Exchange (SSJE) to hold a virtual celebration. We will also collaborate with the SSJE and local businesses to offer programming for Saxapahaw’s annual Black History Month celebration in February, 2021.
Collaboration with Carolina Performing Arts
Collaboration with NC State Live
Workshops, showings and discussions exploring embodied social practices with NC State’s broader community of students, faculty and local partners (September, 2020 - April, 2021)
Culture Mill Codirectors Murielle Elizeon and Tommy Noonan are in residence with NC State Live for the 20/21 season. Their residency will include collaborations with cellist Shana Tucker, Restorative Justice specialist Val Hanson and Chapel Hill Poet Laureate CJ Suitt. Noonan, Elizeon, Hanson and Suitt will conduct two workshops merging somatic work with Restorative Justice techniques, and Elizeon and Tucker will lead three workshops and a public showing based on rending participants’ body stories into sound and movement material.
Collaboration with Carolina Performing Arts
Feedback: The Institute for Performance / Okwui Okpokwasili
Moderated Discussions with Culture Mill and UNC Faculty on “Liveness” and “Arts Economies” & collaboration with Okwui Okpokwasili (September, 2020 - June, 2021).
Culture Mill will collaborate with Carolina Performing Arts on Feedback, a virtual fall program exploring the arts open by application to Triangle-area adults. CM will join UNC professors to co-host moderated discussions. The first module in October will focus on “Liveness”: how conditions of time and space shape our understanding of liveness, how performance conjures the past through presence, and how we can be "live" in this challenging time. The second module, scheduled for November, will focus on “Arts Economies”, in which we consider the interdependencies of artistic practice and arts infrastructures, now and from a historical perspective. Additionally, we will collaborate with NYC-based Bessie and McArthur Award-winning artist Okwui Okpokwasili to facilitate the creation of a communal song with local artists as a part of Okpokwasili’s Mellon Foundation-funded Creative Futures residency with Carolina Performing Arts.
CHRISTIAN UBL RESIDENCY
May - June, 2020
In the spring of 2020, Culture Mill will host Paris-based artist Christian Ubl for three weeks in Saxapahaw. Ubl is Artistic Director of Compagnie CuBE, which has toured extensively throughout France and Europe, creating work for companies and venues such as Festival d’Avignon, CCN Ballet de Lorraine, Thétre Hexagone Scènce Nationale Arts Sciences, Pol Sud, CCN Crétuil, Ballet Preljocaj, Ballet Nationale de Marseille, CND Lyon, La Briqueterie and others. As a part of his residency, Ubl will create three participatory “Summer Ball” dance events, wherein Ubl along with France and NC-based dancers will invite audiences to participate in a lightly choreographed social event designed to playfully introduce audiences to contemporary dance. Three Summer Ball events will take place as a part of the residency: one in downtown Graham, a second in coordination with Alamance public schools, and a third at The Current ArtSpace + Studio, Chapel Hill, NC in coordination with Carolina Performing Arts. Ubl’s residency is supported in part by a grant from the French American Cultural Exchange (F.A.C.E Foundation) and the North Carolina Arts Council.
photo: Fabienne Gras
CULTURE MILL AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, RENO
March - April, 2020
As part of our Dancing with Parkinson’s project, Culture Mill co-directors will travel to the University of Nevada at Reno to set an original performance on students as well as perform themselves at the University. The work will further the artistic research initiated during the creation of the ADF 2019 commissioned piece They are All. It explores not only how tools and techniques proper to contemporary dance are beneficial to people with Parkinson’s Disease, but how working with people with Parkinson’s can influence choreographic processes. Together with the students, Murielle and Tommy will initiate an outreach program with the local Parkinson's support groups.
Photo: Sarah Marguier
CJ Suitt Residency
December, 2019
In December, Culture Mill will host performance poet CJ Suitt in a residency at the Culture Mill Lab. Aside from being a performance poet, CJ Suitt is an arts educator and community organizer based between Chapel Hill, NC and Oakland, CA whose work is rooted in storytelling and social justice. He is committed to speaking truth to power and aims to be a bridge for communities who can't always see themselves in each other. CJ is making a long-awaited move into full-time artistry to be a bridge for people engaging in relationships across differences and to facilitate dialogue in spaces that are often dominated by fear-driven stereotypes. He is the co-creator of the podcast, Sitting in the Intersection, which explores the radical nature of relationships across differences. CJ’s residency will include other performances and educational outreach activities in Alamance County. As the first W.A.G.E certified organization in the southeast, all Culture Mill artist residencies include living-wage fees according to the W.A.G.E fee-scale.
photo: colette heiser
COLLABORATION WITH THE SAXAPAHAW SOCIAL JUSTICE EXCHANGE
July, 2019 - June, 2020
After nearly two years of informal collaboration with the Saxapahaw Social Justice Exchange, Culture Mill will spend the year fully engaged with the Exchange as a part of a project funded by the Z Smith Reynolds Foundation. Culture Mill will continue to house Social Justice Exchange programs at the Culture Mill Lab in Saxapahaw, such as bi-monthly table talks exploring the dynamics of systemic racism, bi-monthly film screenings, quarterly Brunch and Breathe events for local Black and Brown people, and yearly celebrations such as Indigenous People’s Day, Black History Month and Juneteenth. Furthermore, the project will include new residencies and performances from artists of color as well as movement classes connected to the Exchange.
The American Dance Festival, Culture Mill, and Ici & Now present:
A 20-minute Live-Streaming Documentary
by Elisabeth Barbier
Saturday, June 27th
7PM EDT
at
Followed immediately by the launch of:
www.movingthrough.live
A website with detailed information and resources on Culture Mill’s project linking Contemporary Dance and perspectives on Parkinson’s Disease
___
Here and Dancing explores how people with Parkinson's Disease and other neurological conditions rediscover movement through creating Contemporary Dance by following a local group alongside professional dancers Murielle Elizeon and Tommy Noonan as they ultimately create and perform They Are All in ADF’s 2019 Season. The creative work, framed as a conversation between neuroscience and dance, is directed by choreographers Murielle Elizéon and Tommy Noonan / Culture Mill.
Here and Dancing is produced by Ici&Now and directed by Dr. Elisabeth Barbier, a neuroscientist with a keen interest in contemporary dance.
The screening will be followed by the immediate release of movingthrough.live -- a website which tracks the ongoing development of Culture Mill’s three-year project seeding new artistic and scientific perspectives through the collaboration between Contemporary Dancers and those living with and researching neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s Disease.
The They Are All/Dancing with Parkinson’s Project is funded in part by ADF with a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. This project is made possible in part with a grant from the Kenan Charitable Trust. Additional support is provided by RTI International.
photo: Elizabeth Barbier
They Are All
April - June, 2019 - American Dance Festival Commission
They Are All is an original commission from the American Dance Festival, in which choreographers Murielle Elizéon and Tommy Noonan interweave the combined expertise of professional dancers, neuroscientists, people with Parkinson’s disease and data informaticists. The multi-generational work explores the relationship between cognitive engagement, interpersonal relationship and movement. At once an artistic and a research project, They Are All probes the ways in which artistic technologies and perspectives can be useful to medical research, as well as the ways in which medical, technological and experiential expertise in movement disorders can generate new artistic perspectives in dance. They Are All intertwines an artistic creation with innovative research workshops, culminating in both a new dance work at ADF’s summer festival, as well a scholarly report; it is a project by Culture Mill in Saxapahaw, NC, and is supported in part by RTI international and The William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust.
SUSTAINABLY ENGAGED
with Creative Capital
A day-long Creative Capital workshop exploring tools, strategies and links between funding your work, and inclusive and equitable social engagement
On Saturday March 9, Culture Mill will host a Creative Capital workshop in partnership with NYC-based theater artist Aaron Landsman and creative studio Peoplmovr. This day-long experience promises to be a robust immersion into innovative approaches and techniques for fundraising and project development, while also diving deep into social engagement strategies in inclusive, equitable ways.
The application for this workshop is closed.
This workshop is supported by the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, as part of its commitment to artists’ professional development. It has partnered with Creative Capital for the past 15 years to bring high-quality training opportunities to North Carolina artists in all disciplines. www.NCArts.org
Black History Month
February, 2019
Culture Mill’s ongoing relationship with the Saxapahaw Social Justice Exchange and Saxapahaw businesses will be evident in another month of original programming celebrating Black History as well as current Black leaders, artists, activists and innovators. Activities will take place all over Saxapahaw as well as in the Culture Mill Lab.
David Norsworthy Residency
January - February, 2019
Toronto-based Canadian choreographer David Norsworthy will spend 1 month in Saxapahaw in a multi-faceted residency which explores Artistic Motivation and Responsibility of the artist to their community. Norsworthy will engage in extensive conversations, masterclasses and showings, as well as collaborative work with local artists: Ginger Wagg, Murielle Elizéon, CJ Suitt, Tommy Noonan and Monet Marshall around the theme. The myriad activities will find public expression through a performance in collaboration with Durham Independent Dance Artists (DIDA) on February 8th and 9th, 2019. Norsworthy is a graduate of The Juilliard School, and performs professionally in Canada, the USA, Sweden and Australia (www.davidnorsworthy.com). His residency is supported by the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. www.NCArts.org
Research and Development Residency in Le Mans, France
December, 2018
Culture Mill continues its multi-year exchange between Saxapahaw and Studio Marie Lenfant in Le Mans, France. In the course of this residency, Tommy Noonan and Murielle Elizéon will prepare material for upcoming projects, and will continue to teach dance and performance workshops for members of the greater Le Mans community. A focus of this residency will also be the development of more extensive exchange opportunities between Culture Mill and various institutions and populations in France.
American Heroes LLC (The Workshop)
October, 2018
American Heroes, LLC (The Workshop) is an artistic project exploring myths, stereotypes and images of heroism in American Culture. The project uses this framework to construct new notions of heroism that fit a more diverse, nuanced and inclusive vision for contemporary American communities. The 1st phase of this project takes place in Saxapahaw on October 28th, 2018, and coincides with a partnership with Down Home NC, in which Culture Mill’s 44-seat school bus is used to encourage civic engagement in Alamance County by providing transportation to early voting. American Heroes LLC (The Workshop) is funded through the Innovation Fund, a joint initiative of Alamance Foundation and Impact Alamance and through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Make / Believe
May, 2018
Make / Believe takes audiences on a short walking journey though downtown Graham before arriving at a secret location in which performers create an immersive theatrical event, probing the value of artistic experiences within a society driven by commercial market forces. Drawing loosely on historical NC commerce traditions such as Tobacco Auctions, Make / Believe playfully imagines the value of a song, a dance, a poem or a story as a commodity to be bid upon, bought, sold and traded. In a series of communal and individual vignettes, Make / Believe ultimately asks audiences to consider the value of artistic experiences in their daily lives, communities and larger society.
Make / Believe is a production of Culture Mill, the award-winning Performing Arts Laboratory based in Saxapahaw North Carolina. The performance is part 1 of a 2-part series on value, art and community taking place in downtown Graham. It continues Culture Mill’s tradition of creating artistic experiences in secret, site-specific locations in order to instil an intriguing sense of adventure in audiences. Make / Believe is Culture Mill’s first production to be held in Graham, and realized with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as a grant from the Alamance Innovation Fund in cooperation with The COOP.
BROWN
December, 2017 & July, 2018
Photo: Tim Walter
"...daringly authentic and honest...sublime..." - Indyweek
July 8 & 9, 2018 - American Dance Festival, Durham, NC, USA
March, 2018 - Soirées à Suivre, Compagnie Marie Lenfant, Le Mans, France.
December 3-5, 2017 - Durham Independent Dance Artists (DIDA), Season 4 at Monkey Bottom Collaborative: Durham, NC
A PROJECT BY MURIELLE ELIZEON
"Brown" is a collision with the lingering allure of gender and racial stereotypes, Brown uses personal history to explore heritage, violence against women, loss, vulnerability, and resilience. Brown premieres during the U.N.’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence. Parallel to the creation of her solo, Elizéon will partner with professionals in restorative Justice to create community engagement events and movement workshops around the thematics of the piece.
Brown is a production of Culture Mill.
Je Suis Belle
November, 2017
The North Carolina Museum of Art
Experience Auguste Rodin’s ability to render the texture and the tension of the human body through the lens of movement and sound. Murielle Elizéon draws on various Rodin sculptures, as well as the relationship between Rodin and his model, collaborator and lover: Camille Claudel to create a textured duet together with Tommy Noonan.
The work is also in collaboration with NC-based sound-artist Ben Trueblood, who creates a real-time sculptural rendering of time, bodies and sound. The 20-minute performance highlights the kinetic power of Rodin's sculptures, imagining them as fluid living works which provide insight into the dynamic human relationship in which many of them were formed.
Sketches for Auguste
February, 2017
AN INITIATIVE OF JENNIFER CURTIS IN COLLABORATION WITH MURIELLE ELIZÉON, PAUCHI SASAKI, TOMMY NOONAN AND DOHEE LEE
Sketches for Auguste is a formal showing of a new work-in-progress by a group of world-class performing artists. The work grew from a original idea by acclaimed violinist Jennifer Curtis and realized through a collaboration with musician Pauchi Sasaki, choreographer/performers Murielle Elizéon and Tommy Noonan, and performer Dohee Lee to create a multi-disciplinary chamber opera of sound and movement based on Henry Miller’s “The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder.”
This novella--which Miller believed to be his “most singular story”--depicts a clown’s near religious devotion to an audience through a trance-induced artistic offering that features an angel. Miller considered the process by which he paired a clown with an angel even more “surrealistic” than the final document itself. The notion of this work as autobiographical is as potent for Miller as it is to the performing artists, who will recreate the feverish state by melding music, movement, design, and text on the stage.
Articulating Value in the Arts
August, 2016 - September, 2017
Articulating Value in the Arts is a project which hopes to seed new opportunities for a diverse arts community, through a sustained consideration of the relationship between art and value. We started in 2016 with small conversations among a core group of four facilitators. We then held a large gathering of around 30 people at the Carrack Modern Art in January, 2017 in Durham, NC and later facilitated four gatherings across central North Carolina. There was one in Durham at The Shed, one at Anchorlight in Raleigh, one at the Nightlight in Chapel Hill, and a fourth at The Culture Mill Lab in Saxapahaw.
We’ve done things this way in order to gradually grow this project out of the kinds of casual, personal conversations after concerts, gallery openings, performances or during rehearsal breaks, and that usually end with “we should do X or we should start Y” and then get back into production mode.
Those initial small conversations among our core four folks produced a set of 10 big questions about value and the arts. Those 10 questions produced discussion in our first large gathering that headed into two broad categories:
- The needs, aspirations, and purposes of artists;
- Both the existing and the missing organizational resources for artists in our communities and cities.
That discussion has prompted a variety of activity in the areas of arts advocacy and resource sharing and development. People are making new relationships with local governments and businesses to create opportunities for artistic projects or new access to spaces. People are launching advocacy initiatives in the context of probable massive changes to traditional arts funding structures. People are sketching out new, more agile arts organizations that could better address needs that aren’t being addressed, or are under-addressed.
Articulating Value in the Arts has been an evolving platform, driven by artists, which culminates with a public Symposium in September of 2017. This project is neither comprehensive, nor authoritative. They are meant to represent a crystalization of insights, initiatives and possibilities articulated in the first place by artists, towards future actions and initiatives. It is also meant as a spark, hopefully setting alight a greater engagement and interest on the part of artists, towards a clearer, more inclusive and empowered articulation for the Arts in central North Carolina.
- Murielle Elizéon, Chris Vitiello, Ginger Wagg & Tommy Noonan: September, 2017
ARTICULATING VALUE IN THE ARTS: THE BOOK
This PDF version of the Articulating Value in the Arts book contains an overview of the project, as well as reflective texts, essays and related observations and statistics. Click below to download.
Trust the Bus
Ongoing
Trust the Bus has quickly become one of Culture Mill's signature programs. In two seasons we have produced 8 collaborative projects for a total of 19 performances, involving nearly 50 local, national and international dancers, musicians, actors, DJs and visual artists, and have served over 600 audience members. All in rural Alamance County, North Carolina. Audiences board Culture Mill's 44-seat Bluebird Biodiesel school bus without any idea where they are going or what they will experience. They are then taken on a journey to a location in rural North Carolina, where an original collaborative performance takes place. Trust the bus is a format intended to support cutting-edge performances while disarming and engaging all types of audience members outside of traditional art spaces.
