本网站使用cookies. 在我们的 隐私政策.
布米·帕特尔12岁
2008年,当Bhumi Patel(她/他们)成为Agnes Scott学院的一名学生时, she remembers it feeling like a place where she and many of her peers at the time could really be themselves. She remembers the feeling of empowerment and support she felt walking with her Scottie siblings each year in Atlanta’s Pride Parade and how proud she was that her college had a Women’s 研究 Department (now Women’s, 性别及性研究).
“我作为酷儿的身份在我做的每件事中都根深蒂固, 进入一所历史悠久的女子学院是一种变革,帕特尔说. “There was a gentleness there that allowed me to unpack and explore all of my identities, 它让我能够用自己独特的声音去做任何我想做的事情. 没有适应现状的压力.”
帕特尔需要一个安全和支持的环境才能茁壮成长. 创意写作和舞蹈双学位, 她每学期都在学院的舞蹈剧院演出, 是砂浆董事会的成员吗, 杵板和极光文学杂志, volunteered with the Writer’s Festival every spring and interned with the Atlanta Review. The concept of safe and inclusive spaces and the encouragement to engage with the economic and social challenges of her times had such a profound impact on Patel that now, 从艾格尼丝·斯科特毕业近10年后, 她的作品几乎完全围绕着这些主题.
She combines skills gleaned from both of her academic majors daily as a freelance dance writer and performer, 作为她的舞蹈工作室pateldanceworks的艺术总监. 以M开头.A. 在佛罗里达州立大学获得美国舞蹈研究硕士学位.F.A. 米尔斯学院舞蹈专业毕业, Patel is also an Associate Professor of 跳舞 at West Valley College in California, 她现在住在哪里. From striving to create an accessible learning environment for all of her students to choreographing and performing works that “center marginalized voices at the intersection of embodied research and activism,帕特尔称她的工作为激进主义.
“It sometimes feels like I’m making art to respond to the injustices I’m witnessing or the social change that I want or the future that I think we can co-create – dancing is my medium to discuss that,帕特尔说.
“There’s this perception about what activism is or isn’t that I think is so unnecessary; Activism is any way in which we push against the status quo or ask the difficult questions.”
帕特尔在高中跳过舞, 包括参加一个比赛舞蹈队, but Agnes Scott was where her desire to also pursue a career in academia was ignited from taking a Labanotation class, a symbol-based dance that is essentially a system for recording human movement. 舞蹈教授Bridget Roosa, Labanotation at Agnes Scott is one of the most popular dance classes among dance students.
“The rigor of the dance process and all the classes I took at Agnes Scott prepared me for having a career in the arts,帕特尔说. “They challenged me to not be afraid to ask for a better world, to ask the difficult questions. 我想我成为了艾格尼丝·斯科特的积极分子.”
艾格尼丝·斯科特的舞蹈班每班有5-21名学生, while there are between 10 and 20 declared dance majors in the 跳舞 Program at any one time. The college’s Studio 跳舞 Theater consists of 25 members and puts on two major dance productions per year. Roosa, who has taught dance at Agnes Scott for the last 20 years and was recently the college’s 2020 Vulcan Teaching Excellence Award recipient, 形容她的学生很好奇, 总是渴望更多,愿意尝试新事物. She intentionally teaches students how to use movement as a form of expression to engage the social challenges of their times. 最近, 2020年10月, the Studio 跳舞 Theater produced a Facebook Watch Party performance entitled “for the people” in response to the current environment where racism, 政治动荡, 一场全球性的流行病站在了最前沿. 表演者带着“对人性、团结和积极变化的希望”跳舞.”
帕特尔将舞蹈描述为她现在用来追求解放的东西, with a goal of “supporting marginalized and oppressed voices through performance and movement education.”“运动可以治愈, and a form of processing and digesting the world around us; plus, 当我移动的时候我感觉很好——移动让我回到我的身体,帕特尔说. “我们通过身体了解世界, 但是作为成年人, we lose the bridge between our thinking brains and our bodies; my work seeks to rebuild this bridge.”
Her studio pateldanceworks is a project-based dance company with members who rotate on and off projects based on availability. 帕特尔写道, 为, 为工作室指导和表演舞蹈作品, including such social justice and equity-centered works as “divisions the empire has sown” and “all the things we’ll never be.“过去三年, 帕特尔策划了“fem(me)”,这是一种女性认同的表现, 安全屋艺术的激进酷儿. 自2017年成立以来, pateldanceworks has presented works at over 15 destinations including LEVYsalon, 旧金山国际艺术节, Studio 200和RAWdance的概念系列, ,是, 据帕特尔说, 她最引以为傲的成就.
除此之外, Patel stays active in the San Francisco Bay area as a member of Dancing Around Race - a 跳舞 研究 Association community engagement residency that has done such things as examining issues surrounding equity in dance and discussing how systemic racism shows up in higher education – and Cat Call Choir, which is a group of female-identified artists who create live performances about gender-based violence using satirical song, 舞蹈和物理戏剧. 她的舞蹈作品曾在《推荐十大正规网赌平台》上发表, 现代舞者的生活, 联系季刊和In跳舞.
2020年秋天, Patel returned (via Zoom) to Agnes Scott as a visiting lecturer to teach embodied improvisation to Professor Roosa’s intermediate/advanced Modern 跳舞 class. Patel describes this sensation-based work as having been very important for students to “re-engage with their three- dimensional bodies” during the virtual learning settings that have come to be required as a result of the pandemic. Her goal was to get students to look away from their screens by inviting them to close their eyes and follow her prompts to imagine creating movement in their bodies.
即使她的学生最终没有一个以舞蹈为职业, Patel expressed her satisfaction with having at least challenged them to be creative thinkers. “这个世界需要创造性思维, 它在每个领域都是非常必要的, 重要的是,学生们感到有能力参与到他们的工作中来. We live in a world that moves quickly and tells us that we have to also move quickly. But my advice would be to take the time to give yourself the spaciousness to think deeply and really follow what you love, 想要并真正在乎.”