The CUNY Dance Initiative (CDI) an expansive program providing New York City choreographers and dance companies with creative residencies on CUNY college campuses announces the world premiere of These are the bodies that have not borne. a site-specific performance by MBDance at the upcoming Snug Harbor Dance Festival. Performances are Saturday August 23 and Sunday August 24 at 6pm at Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden 1000 Richmond Terrace Staten Island. Admission is pay-what-you-wish with a suggested donation between $10-30. Get tickets at https://snugharbor.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket/.
These are the bodies that have not borne. combines land art choreography original music soil ecologies and ritual. It is a reckoning and a healing offering that is a collective and individual somatic processing of unrequited desires and inherent worth in our bodies and livelihoods. Performers will submerge themselves in portals dug into the ground literally dancing out of the Earth provoking images and questions of burial re-birth and of Earth as first parent. These are the bodies that have not borne. is choreographed and directed by Maria Bauman assisted by Audrey Hailes. Mankwe Ndosi contributes original music and it will be performed by a cast of seven: Graciella Ye’Tsunami Rochelle Jamila AJ Wilmore Angel Edwards Myssi Robinson Audrey Hailes and Maria Bauman.
As a companion MBDance also offers a self-published ‘zine’ These are the bodies that have not borne. a whisper. a seed. an archive. – centering Black queer and trans experiences surrounding reproductive health and family building. Pre-orders are available at https://mbdance.net/zine-pre-order-form-these-are-the-bodies-that-have-not-borne-a-whisper-a-seed-an-archive/.
These are the bodies that have not borne. has been developed with the support of a PASS and Dance Festival residency at Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden/Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art in partnership with the CUNY Dance Initiative.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Maria Bauman founded MBDance in 2009. MBDance creates honest and bold art from a sense of physical and emotional power centering the non-linear and linear stories and bodies of queer people of color using dance as the wheel whose spokes are other genres including visual art text and song.
After dancing with Urban Bush Women as well as serving as Director of Education Community Engagement and Associate Artistic Director Bauman began creating dance works as a freelance choreographer. She formed her company to further amplify her unique creative point of view and to support dancers in honing the particular blend of physical risk and athleticism Capoeira-esque floorwork and spatiality emphasis on race and equity and willingness to investigate intimacy that Bauman’s work excels within.
MBDance recently premiered (re)Source for four sold-out nights via co-commission between The Chocolate Factory and BAAD!. Among other honors MBDance is a current BRIClab and Redtail Arts awarded resident company and Bauman is one of only a handful of choreographers across the nation who are honored as Urban Bush Women National Choreographic Center Fellows. MBDance has also earned 2017-19 Brooklyn Arts Exchange Artist in Residence CUNY Dance Initiative Residencies in both 2014 and 2015 Harlem Stage Funds for New Work via The Jerome Foundation in both 2013-14 and 2009-10 a 2010-11 Dance Theater Workshop (now NYLA) Studio Series and Art Mill creative residencies in 2012 and in 2010.
MBDance has performed across the world from NYC SummerStage to Singapore to the My Body My Space Festival in Mpumalanga South Africa.
ABOUT THE SNUG HARBOR DANCE FESTIVAL
The Snug Harbor Dance Festival is a two-day event celebrating contemporary dance across the organization’s historical 83-acre campus. This dynamic site-specific festival features performances by local and regional choreographers including MBDance Moriah Evans Amelia Heintzelman and Maker Park Radio. The Snug Harbor Dance Festival is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with support from the Governor and New York State Legislature the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council the Howard Gilman Foundation and through generous support by John Robinson.
ABOUT THE CUNY DANCE INITIATIVE
The CUNY Dance Initiative (CDI) marked a decade of supporting the NYC dance field in 2024. The program was developed in response to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s 2010 report “We Make Do” which cited how destabilizing the shortage of affordable rehearsal space in New York City is to the dance sector. A successful pilot supporting residencies on four CUNY campuses in 2013 led to CDI’s formal launch in 2014. Since then CDI has become a key player in New York City’s performing arts ecosystem leading a consortium of 14 CUNY colleges and four arts organizations to host 20+ residencies for NYC choreographers and dance companies each year. In the past 11 years CDI has granted 275 residencies to emerging and established choreographers providing invaluable resources to artists while enhancing CUNY students’ education and cultural experiences.
The CUNY Dance Initiative receives major support from The Mertz Gilmore Foundation and Howard Gilman Foundation. Additional support is provided by the SHS Foundation Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s Charles E. Culpeper Arts & Culture program and the Harkness Foundation for Dance. CDI is spearheaded by The Kupferberg Center for the Arts at Queens College. www.cuny.edu/danceinitiative
FUNDING CREDITS
These are the bodies that have not borne. is supported by multiple sources and partners
including Dance/NYC’s Dance Advancement Fund made possible by the Howard Gilman
Foundation and the Ford Foundation. This work was made possible by the Jacki Apple Fund
administered by Franklin Furnace in memory of Jacki Apple's contributions to the New York
community since the early 1980s through her writing teaching radio shows and artistic
practice. Several residencies and centers allowed for the development of These are the bodies
that have not borne. including PASS and Dance Festival residency at Snug Harbor Cultural
Center and Botanical Garden/Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art in partnership with the
CUNY Dance Initiative The Field Center in Vermont Bearnstow in Maine and Feathertail Farm
in Hudson NY.
MBDance has received additional support and partnership for These are the bodies that have
not borne. from the RESIST Foundation CUNY Dance Initiative A Blade of Grass Field Funds
Brooklyn Arts Council the BAAD! Queer Art Exchange the Kresge Foundation the NYFA Mertz Gilmore Foundation Dancer Award and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Artist-in-Residence program and individual donors Chikako Yamauchi and Jawole Willa Jo
Zollar.
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