UPCOMING! Read More

UPCOMING!

Read More

“Make. Believe.”
CONTACT INFO Telephone  718 228 8497 Email  mgmtarts@gmail.com Dancer/Choreographer/Artistic Director, MAKEDA THOMAS creates new dance works through collaboration with artists around the world. Makeda Thomas is from Trinidad & Tobago and has presented work at HARLEM Stage/Aaron Davis Hall, Dance Theater Workshop, and Symphony Space in New York City, Brooklyn Academy of Music, BRIC Arts|Media|Brooklyn, the Chicago Women’s Performance Arts Festival, Maputo’s Teatro Africa, Port of Spain’s Caribbean Contemporary Arts, Queen’s Hall, Zimbabwe’s 7 Arts Centre, Seattle’s Broadway Performance Hall, Southern Theater in Minneapolis, Teatro de la Ciudad in Mexico, and as a Cultural Envoy for the U.S. Department of State. Her choreography has been commissioned by the Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas, 651 ARTS Black Dance: Tradition & Transformation and received awards from Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the United States Embassy, Puffin Foundation, NYS Council on the Arts, Bossak-Heilbron Charitable Foundation, Arts International, Yellowfox, and the National AIDS Council of Moçambique. In 2004, during its 25th Anniversary season, she was named Resident Choreographer of Companhia Nacional De Canto e Dança. Graça Machel (Former First Lady of South Africa and Moçambique) served as the Honorary Patron of her internationally acclaimed work, A Sense of Place (2005), on which she presented at the 1st Biennale Performing Africa/Visualizing Africa! In 2007, Thomas was a featured choreographer in This Woman’s Work: Choreographic Development Project Representing Women of Color - joining Camille A. Brown, Bridget Moore, Shani Collins, Princess Mhoon Cooper, Francine Ott, & Ursula Payne. In 2008,as Artistic Advisor, Thomas remounted “FIN” by contemporary African dance choreographer Augusto Cuvilas. The work went on to performances at The Baltoppen in Copenhagen, Teatro Africa and Centre Culturel Franco Mozambicain in Maputo, and Zimbabwe’s Tetrad Reps Theatre. Makeda Thomas has collaborated on films with Finnish cinematographer, Panu Kari, Trinidadian multi-media artist, Elspeth Duncan and German photographer, Stefan Falke. Her film work has been shown at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, T&T Moves Film Festival, MadLab’s First International Film Festival, the 41st Congress on Research in Dance “Dance Studies & Global Feminisms”, and BRIC as part of Choreographic Sketches II. Thomas has been a Visiting Artist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (where her work FreshWater was embedded into “Black Matters: Introduction to Black Studies”), Yale University, University of Minnesota (as a Cowles Visiting Guest Artist and part of Continuously Rich: Black Women in Cultural Production), Long Island University, Hofstra University, Hollins University, Florida Memorial University, University of the West Indies, and University of Hawaii. Thomas has conducted independent projects and research in South Africa, Argentina, The Netherlands and taught at American Dance Festival, The Dalton School, Arts in Education Institute of Western NY, and NYC Dept. of Education. In 2010, she developed The Dance & Performance Institute - an international community of dance and performance artists, a forum for exchange, and a series of programs on contemporary dance and performance. As a dancer, Makeda Thomas performed internationally in the companies of Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE, URBAN BUSH WOMEN, and Rennie Harris/ Puremovement in Facing Mekka, said by the Los Angeles Times to be “arguably the greatest tribute to black womanhood since Alvin Ailey’s “Cry.” Thomas has also performed as a guest artist with Shani Collins/ETERNAL WORKS, Robin Becker Dance, Lula Washington Dance Theater, and Stephen Koplowitz. She began her study in Brooklyn, New York with Michael Goring and Eleo Pomare, continuing on scholarship at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, The Paul Taylor School and Hofstra University where she earned a B.A. in Dance and English. She also holds an MFA in Dance from Hollins University. Thomas continues to create and perform internationally, while living in New York City & Port of Spain.
Sighting Freedom NEW WORK!  Site-Specific Project  Choreography & Artistic Direction  Makeda Thomas Saturday, 18 August at 8pm Sunday, 19 August at 8pm The powerful history of the Underground Railroad is woven through this new site specific work.   This work is part of the “Inhabiting Memories: Dance at the Ruins” program, made possible with funding from the New York State Council on the Arts, Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation and New York State Dance Force.  It draws upon the extensive collections and intellectual resources of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, The Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society, and the Center for African American Studies at the Frank E. Merriweather Library.  Sighting Freedom For some time now, I’ve been interested in networks; organic, loose networks like the Underground Railroad - how and why they work; the role of the individual in the health of the network; and the power of silence and secrecy… Buffalo is positioned where Lake Erie flows into the Niagara River.  Across the swift Niagara and one is in Canada. The western terminus of the Erie Canal was a premier Great Lakes port for the United States.   With this immediacy to Canada and a growing economy, Buffalo was once a haven for free and fugitive African Americans, particularly after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Today, the outflow from Lake Erie provides hydroelectric power to Canada and Buffalo continues to have a significant African-American population. I have a title, “Sighting Freedom”, which plays with the fact that it’s a site-specific work but more so is about being a sort of embodied excavation of specific histories of the site - black histories. It’s furthermore about this idea that a certain physical, geographic space or place grants freedom; or that freedom can even be sited on or through the body. What is freedom then? How do we live it today? The site is the excavated stone foundation of multiple manufacturing company, the “ruins”.  All that was built on top this structure - all that was manufactured - is gone and only this foundation remains.  For me, this evokes a powerful metaphor. In this spirit, and along with the dancers, I’m excavating movement from an older work for the language of the piece. The performance and renewed energy of the work become the architecture of the space and rebuilds its history.  What’s rebuilt/revitalized echoes the complexities of our layered histories -  like the centuries upon centuries of waters that accumulate from almost a quarter of the continent that continues to flow through the Niagara’s channels.  Movement in silence is punctuated by sound from the choir of the former Michigan Street Baptist Church- living, singing archives of the Underground Railroad. The church was an important meeting place for the abolitionist movement. Together, we’ll curate a score that honors those who found freedom at night and by water. I imagine it was quiet, more solemn - especially considering the sacrifices many made to get free.  The actual ruins has the smell of an open nerve - exposed, sensitive, and [with a history that can be] extremely painful.  In fact, the nervous system is an appropriate analogy when thinking of the Underground Railroad insomuch as it is a network (of people) that sends signals to the body (conductors, trains, and cargo) to coordinate its actions (route to freedom).  Even the look of the ruins, with its narrow interconnected pathways are like tracts, and the old stones pile like the cross-section of a nerve. Why have these ruins remained?  To remind us of what? cross section of a nerve - found on Wikipedia It’s important to connect history with our lives today.  What’s difficult is that in a city with such history, a 2008 United Nations report, “State of the World Cities”, cited Buffalo as having one of the worst rates of economic inequality in the world and that it was racially based.  Perhaps this is the open nerve, reminding us of the continued struggle for equality and how it keeps us all from being free.  Ultimately, “Sighting Freedom” is about the possibilities of what can now happen in this revitalized space.  And it asks questions many asked themselves as they got free:  What now? What goes from here? images from:  http://www.contemporan.com/company/erie-canal-harbor/
Dance & Performance Institute →
LOS COLORES  (2009) Choreography by Makeda Thomas With Text from “The Danger of A Single Story” by Chimamanda AdichieLighting by Burke J. WilmoreLos Colores, inspired in part by “La Historia de los Colores: A Bilingual Folktale From the Jungle of Chiapas”, was created for the 25th Anniversary Celebrations of the Hofstra University Department of Drama & Dance.
5th Anniversary International Tour

5th Anniversary International Tour

FRESHWATER Choreography & Performance Makeda ThomasLighting Design & Technical Direction James ClotfelterSound Design  Keshav SinghCostume Design  Robert Young/THE CLOTHVocals by Attillah Springer of text from “The Whirlwind” by Delano Abdul Malik de Coteau30 minutesU.S. Premiere - 15 May 2009    Broadway Performance Hall - Seattle, WAWorld Premiere - October 2006    CCA7, Port of Spain, Trinidad‘FreshWater’ was made possible, in part, with a commission from Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas and the Distinguished Patronage of the United States Embassy in Trinidad & Tobago. The international tour of ‘FreshWater’ was made possible with funding from USArtists International, a program of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Trust for Mutual Understanding. ‘Fresh Water’ embedded into Black Matters: Introduction to Black Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  See MIT OpenCourseWare COSTA DEL ALMA (2008) a FILM collaboration Makeda Thomas with Panu Kari Featuring “Om Mani Padme Hung” by Yungchen Lhamo7 minutes’Costa Del Alma’ published at SmallAxe, a platform for criticism primarily concerned with thinking in and through the regional/diasporic Caribbean. 12/08 RAMGOOLIE TRACE (2007) A FILM collaboration with Elspeth DuncanFeaturing “Jah No Dead” by Burning Spear Folk song performed by Christiana George
“one of the most beautiful dances to grace a Seattle stage in some time”
FIN by Augusto Cuvilas →
“Dance is also an area in which women are the acknowledged pioneers and progenitors of the contemporary form. “New dance” geniuses Twyla Tharp and Martha Graham paved the way for acclaimed contemporary choreographers Merce Cunningham, Siobhan Davies, Shobana Jeyasingh, Amanda Miller and Makeda Thomas.”
“the rare successful blending of humanistic feeling and meaning with sophisticated visual style……the sure touch of a poet.”
Makeda Thomas photographed by Stefan Falke MOVING STILL (2004) Choreography Makeda ThomasCostume Design Makeda Thomas 12 minutesMOVING STILL (2007) a collaboration with Stefan FalkeFeaturing “Oya-O” by Raw Artistic Soul featuring WunmiWhen Stefan Falke and I collaborated on this project in July 2007, we drew on the spirit and history of Coney Island. The hundreds of photographs we took there became a photo dance collaboration - which captured Coney Island iconography and restored both of our connections to the place. Only a few photographs were actually printed, featuring three historic rides: The Break Dance, AstroTower, and The Cyclone. As a dance work, ‘Moving Still’ lives in this spirit.
A SENSE OF PLACE (2005) Choreography and Video Makeda Thomas Music Ron Wood/Zen One Costumes Makeda Thomas & Ada Jiron Lighting Design Makeda ThomasProject Coordinator Chimene Costa Rehearsal Assistants Maria Jose Goncalves & Noe Manjate 15/30 minutes - English & PortugueseWorld Premiere - 1 December 2005  Teatro Africa - Maputo, MozambiqueA Sense of Place is an interdisciplinary dance work anchored by a series of conversations with 40 women living with HIV/AIDS in Mozambique. Dance, video and sound meet in a multimedia performance landscape based on the conversations.A Sense of Place was commissioned in 2005 by Companhia Nacional De Canto e Danca and in 2007 by 651 ARTS Black Dance: Tradition & Transformation, in cooperation with the United States Embassy in Maputo, Office of Public Affairs, KUYAKANA, and The Foundation for Community Development, with additional support from the Bossak-Heilbron Charitable Foundation and The Puffin Foundation. Graca Machel (Former First Lady of Mozambique and South Africa) is the Honorary Patron. A VASATI WA LOMO (2005) FILM- A project of A Sense of PlaceFilmed and Directed by Makeda ThomasFeaturing “A Vasati Wa Lomo” by Mingas8 minutes
→