🌿 "Rest, The Grass is Always Free" by Denver Gonzales and Amy Morrow
📅 Dates: May 3 & 4, 2025
🕖 Time: 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
📍 Location: Brent Grulke Plaza,
9307 Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail,
Austin, TX 78701
✨ "For 555 days I social danced every single day, even multiple times a day while I was grounded by my laughter somatic practice dancing with rice bags. In the presence of grief, I will share my practice of impossible optimism to reclaim the joy and compassion that makes me human. All we have is each other."
— Amy Diane Morrow
📖 Note from the Performer:
I write from the Smoky Mountains, reflecting on the months since laughter somatics on a dance stage overlooking the edge of mountains in a tiny village on a tiny Greek island in the Ionian Sea, and I recall the memories of laughter washing over me with each Mediterranean wave.
In contrast, just a few days ago, my friend was arrested for resting in Austin. Did you know it is illegal to sit or rest in public spaces? The hour he was arrested—my co-producer of REST Fest—I was swimming with manatees thousands of miles away, trying to pay his bail. The manatees have evolutionarily never known a single predator. When they dream, they dance underwater, twirling with one half of their brain dreaming while the other half lets them breathe.
What would it be like for my friend to have never known a predator? To have a manatee come snuggle up next to him and dance dream together? To never have been beaten up, time and time again, by police for no reason other than the color of his skin and for resting as I did, soaking up the sun in Austin? Now I'm with mountain bears, whose only predator is humans.
I remember rehearsing for this performance piece in Butler Park. We were abruptly told by staff from the Long Center across the park that we were not allowed to dance because a wedding was happening and way across the lawn, in a public space, our presence was not welcomed because we were in view. When I asked where I could dance, they said “I guess over there, way over there, in the grass. The grass is always free.”
Fast forward to now. I flew from the crystal rainbow springs with the peaceful manatees to the Smoky Mountains, a range older than the Himalayans themselves—a sacred space where I can finally breathe and reconstruct what a life-sustaining practice is for me today.
🌅 May 3 & 4, I will perform "Rest, The Grass is Always Free," It is my sunset ritual, a practice that in these challenging times, brings me life. I will turn, like the dreaming manatees, on the wooden dock where I met my friend over 4 years ago during the 2021 ice apocalypse. We will have plenty of benches and resting areas for you where the grass is always free.
🌱 I invite you. I invite you to show up, because showing up is the show, and we belong here, together. You can draw, write, dance, cloud gaze, have a stimulating conversation, snack (I'll bring refreshments) or please, rest—do what makes you feel fully alive in this moment, because that is what we need today: people who are fully alive.
Our rest is resistance—and I believe, revolutionary.
👤 About Amy Morrow:
Amy Morrow is a master teacher, choreographer, and festival producer known for her relentless pursuit of the radical roots of social dance. She sees social dance as a community-centered microcosm of humanity. In May 2024, Amy launched an innovative initiative with Osei Bonsu, training visually impaired students to DJ Brazilian Zouk socials at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. As the Executive Director of Fisterra, Amy manages five social dance cultural heritage projects, including The Theorists, Draw Together, Urban Echo, XYZ Atlas, and REST Fest, having produced over 100 movement workshops worldwide.
Morrow’s journey is gently guided by the ever-evolving conversational invitation to ease into the dance, exploring partner dance as the anthropological art of hugging. Her introduction to social dance began with Lindy Hop on her grandparents' farm, dancing Blues in living rooms amidst a warzone, spinning to Salsa at a Garba house party in Jackson, swaying to Bachata on a rooftop in Ahmedabad, and discovering Kizomba with We Can Dance Blind in Dallas. Since April 2023, she has fully immersed herself in Brazilian Zouk and Lambada, dancing with eyes closed and arms wide open, every day, in every city she visits. Her deep exploration of the living history of these dances has earned her an invitation to present at the Psychology and the Other Conference at Boston College in September 2025. Wherever she goes, Amy finds a sense of belonging through movement, always seeking the magic in the mundane and inviting others to join her on this transformative journey.
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