home to homeland, sanchel brown, artist in residence

Sanchel Brown, UMA Winter Artist in Residence. Photo: Adriana Imhof

Home to Homeland
8 pm | March 2 & 3, 2019
From Baltimore to Senegal, Sanchel Brown’s new evening length dance journey is a reminder that home is always beneath the feet.
 
Ticket link: https://tinyurl.com/UMAsanchel
 
Philadelphia, PA - In Home to Homeland, choreographer Sanchel Brown, dances, sings, raps, and raises an eyebrow as she travels from 1920’s Harlem to contemporary day time television. Brown weaves common yet diverse movement languages of footwork, as she invites us to follower her footprints towards the meaning of Motherland. Home to Homeland includes stops smack dab in the middle of a New Orleans second line as well as the Baltimore of Brown’s childhood.
 
Sanchel has been teaching her B’more Afro House class at Urban Movement Arts since summer of 2018, when she came on as a Guest Teaching Artist. The richness of her varied training and passion continues to unfold as she explores her repertoire more broadly, including her experience as a theater actor and choreographer. Talking about the piece/her process, Brown considers, “While in Senegal, I felt a connection of Dance as healing -- as connected to my childhood in Baltimore -- although there were dark days and minimal resources, everyone danced. While visiting New Orleans, I witnessed the same connection to brown bodies whom seem to have lost so much, yet have so much through their dance.”

Pack light and get ready to travel to many worlds. This experience will remind you that home is always beneath the feet. Home to Homeland is a the cumulative performance of the Spring Artist in Residence cycle. UMA’s Artist in Residence Program supports the creation of new performance work by providing production support to artists working in conjunction with the UMA community.

Artist Bio: Sanchel Brown
Brown is a performer/choreographer/actress originally from Baltimore, MD. She obtained her B.F.A from Virginia Commonwealth University, extensively studying movement of the African Diaspora in Senegal, West Africa under the direction of Germaine Acogny at L’Ecole De Sable. Most recently, she studied commercial Hip Hop Dance under the direction of Rhapsody James in Los Angeles, CA. Her performance highlight include World of Dance Philadelphia 2018 (choreographer/performer), The Kimmel Center's 2018 Jazz residency (choreographer/soloist), Let 'Im Move You: This is a Formation (Performer), Urban Bush Women (Apprentice), and Theatre Horizon's Black Nativity (Barrymore Win!). Her choreography highlights include Theatre Horizon's "The Color Purple" Regional PREMIERE, Yale Dramat's "Dreamgirls", and her self -produced show "Ode to Black Wombman" (National Tour). Sanchel currently teaches her original "Bmore Afro" class fusing Baltimore House and West African Dance Forms every week in NYC (Cumbe Center for Diasporic Dance) and Philadelphia (Urban Movement Arts). Her teaching highlights also include Yale University, Princeton University, Dancing Grounds, Drexel University, and University of The Arts.

March 2 8 pm
March 3 8 pm
$12
Tickets online or at the door: https://tinyurl.com/UMAsanchel 
2100 Chestnut St (2nd Floor), Philadelphia, PA
To request photos, interviews and more information, please contact:
Lily Kind, Artist in Residence Program Director, Urban Movement Arts, urbanmovementarts@gmail.com

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