GABRIELLE CIVIL / WILD BEAUTY
GABRIELLE CIVIL / WILD BEAUTY with RANDY FORD, NEVE MAZIQUE-BIANCO, + FOX WHITNEY
What happens if we take our time?
a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ritual / black movement intensive
JAN 12-18, 2020
Locations + full event schedule TBA
What does it mean to dance (blackness) in blackness? In the heart of winter, how can we bloom, share breath, conjure, heal, and experiment with joy? What happens if we take our time? Wild Beauty opens space for four core black artists–Gabrielle Civil, Randy Ford, Neve Mazique-Bianco, and Fox Whitney–to work/ play together in an MLK ritual/ black movement intensive. In the week leading up to MLK’s birthday, these core artists will take residency at Velocity to move in blackness across/beyond spectrums of gender, sexuality, queerness, ability, and art.
CORE ARTIST BIOS
GABRIELLE CIVIL (she/ her) is a black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer, originally from Detroit MI. She has premiered fifty original performance art works around the world, most recently in Minneapolis at Queertopia (2019) and in Chicago at the Eclipsing Festival at Link’s Hall (2018). An avid participant in dance classes and workshops, she recently studied Yorchha technique with the Ananya Dance Theater, improvisation with mayfield brooks at the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation and has appeared with Gender Tender. She is the author of the performance memoirs Swallow the Fish (2017) and Experiments in Joy (2019) and was lead contributor to Experiments in Joy: a Workbook (2019). Her writing has appeared in Dancing While Black, Small Axe, Art21, Obsidian, Kitchen Table Translation, and New Daughters of Africa. She teaches creative writing and critical studies at the California Institute of the Arts and was named a 2019 Rema Hort Mann LA Emerging Artist. The aim of her work is to open up space.
RANDY FORD (she/ her or they/ them) is a Seattle-born dancer, choreographer, actor, and activist. She grew up learning choreography in her living room from watching music videos as a child. It wasn’t until the age of 17 when performing became a reality. After some time at the University of Washington, she became a member of Seattle’s Au Collective, a collective of artists committed to bringing womxn, queer people, and people of color to the forefront of everything it does. She has been featured in Velocity Dance Center’s Next Fest NW, CD Forum’s Showing Out: Contemporary Black Choreographers (2016, 2018), Bumbershoot Festival, Birthday Girl Series #5, Legendary Children at Seattle Art Museum, and Beacon Hill Block Party, among other community events. Casted as Lady in Jerome A. Parker’s House of Dinah at On the Boards, she’s been recognized on City Arts Magazine’s 2018 Future List and received a SeattleDances 2016 DanceCrush Award. Randy has worked with artists such as Dani Tirrell (Genre Bender, Black Bois), Markeith Wiley (IT’S NOT TOO LATE), Kitten N’ Lou (CAMPTACULAR, Jingle All The Gay), and BenDeLaCreme (Beware the Terror of Gaylord Manor). Identifying as a Black non-binary Transfemme, her work continues the conversation about and centering intersectionality. When not onstage she’s a program leader through ArtsCorps at Dimmit Middle School and Meeker Middle School. She’s a guest teacher at Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a MixxedFit Instructor at the Northwest African American Museum.
NEVE KAMIILAH MAZIQUE-BIANCO (they/ them or she/ shis/ shers), or NEVE, is a Black (specifically Sudanese, even more specifically Nubian) punk disabled queer fairy beast. A certified personal trainer and integrated dance teacher trained by NASM and Axis Dance Company, respectively, Neve cares about the welfare and equitable access to joy, sensuality, community, self-expression, and liberation of all bodies. Neve received multiple film and theatre directing awards in 2017, from East Bay Express in Oakland, the Toronto International Porn Festival, and from the Seattle Gender Justice League. They made their international debut at Berlin’s Hebel Am Ufer. In spring 2018, Neve joined the artistic board of directors of PlayThey Studios, a media and event production cooperative company of queer/trans/Black/disabled and otherwise marginalized artists. Neve is one of the first four recipients of the PNW Afro X Fellowship, a research fellowship for African American artists created in collaboration by The Seattle Public Library and the Central District Forum, as well as the recipient of a 2019 City Artist grant, both of which benefit production of their evening length work Lover of Low Creatures.
FOX WHITNEY (they/ them) is a dancer and interdisciplinary performance maker working at the intersection of dance, film, theater and visual art. Fox’s transgender, black multiracial and queer point of view is at the heart of their performance project, Gender Tender, for which they create experiences that investigate the nature of trans and queer relationships and histories as well as the surreal nature of transformation. Gender Tender engages a team of artists trained in Fox’s unique methods modeled on sports teams, cults, sitcoms and riots. Fox was awarded the 2018 Artist in Residence position at Velocity Dance Center. Their performance work has been presented by Velocity Dance Center, commissioned and produced by On the Board’s NW New Works Festival and Solo Festival; Velocity’s Next Fest NW and Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation; the Seattle International Dance Festival; Yellow Fish Epic Durational Performance Festival and was selected for the inaugural season of Seattle’s Gay City Arts. Their short dance films have screened at CounterPulse in San Francisco, at Seattle’s Twist Film Festival, Translations: Seattle’s Transgender Film Festival and at Next Dance Cinema presented by Velocity and Northwest Film Forum. They have an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and have exhibited their visual art nationally including shows at SAIC, Columbia College, Heaven Gallery, Roxaboxen Gallery (Chicago), at CalTrans Pride and Femina Potens Gallery (San Francisco), and at Gay City Arts and the Shunpike Storefronts Gallery (Seattle). They have performed in work by Morgan Thorson, keyon gaskin, Maureen Whiting Dance Co., Vanessa Dewolf, Aniccha Arts, Malic Amalya and Andrew Schneider.
