Dear Friends, Fans and Supporters,
I write with great excitement, energized hope, and deep gratitude. This has been an amazing year for me and Artichoke Dance Company and it would not have been possible without the support of our donors.
Artichoke Dance at the Earth and Ocean Festival - photo by Bob Kroll
We made our west coast premiere in Los Angeles with Visioning Bodies, commissioned by the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Arts, in the Future Currents: LA River festival created with center staff and local artists. We returned to the west coast as the featured performers at the Earth and Ocean Festival in Cannon Beach, OR. I created the Dance and Sustainability Project with Rider University, setting Overflow on students and working with faculty, staff and students to create sets and costumes from upcycled plastics.
Artichoke Dance at the Cooper Hewitt Museum
Our performances were featured at the Cooper Hewitt Museum’s Design Triennial, Car Free Earth Day, and Summer Streets in New York City. We produced the Gowanus Visions Festival of Art and Action and Summer Solstice Celebration in our home borough of Brooklyn, providing interactive and engaging cultural experiences for thousands. I had the pleasure of creating a work for students at Rutgers University, began a photo project tracing the life of plastics from cradle to grave with collaborator Robin Michaels, and joined the Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice, deepening my political work in my neighborhood.
We garnered significant press this year, including articles in the LA Times, Broadway World, Bklyner, Bedford + Bowery, The Medium, Cannon Beach Gazette, Seaside Signal and Coast Weekend, and a short documentary feature from Versa Planet.
Photo of Visioning Bodies in the Los Angeles Times
“While the world is drowning in plastic, Neuman’s troupe is dancing in it as a way to get people to really see the garbage they generate and discard and understand the damage it causes to the environment.” Versa Media
All the performances in plastic bag costumes and petition gathering paid off with the passing of the Carryout Bag Waste Reduction Act, making New York the second state in the nation to ban plastic bags. New York also passed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition the state to renewable energy. And there’s more plastic legislation in the pipeline.
Art and activism do create change.
Lynn with Mark, a trashion workshop participant
One of my favorite things is leading workshops in dance and trashion, fashion made from trash. Here space and time is created where anyone is welcome to learn and explore. It’s fun, engaging and educational. This year we held 11 free community workshops, involving over 100 people in deep and meaningful ways.
This year we also saw our largest beach clean-up, with 65 volunteers collecting 222 pounds of trash, most of it plastic.
Artichoke Dance has an exciting year ahead that kicks off with performances at the Urban Garden Room in Times Square and performances at the Ailey Center in Manhattan. We’ll celebrate Earth Day at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, FL. In development is an Environmental Justice Performance Tour, the first of its kind.
We continue to innovate and accelerate and need your support. Please consider including Artichoke Dance Company in your year-end contributions. You enable us to continue our ground-breaking work.
As many of you know, this summer I turned a milestone of 50 years. There is energy that comes with five decades of progress and a vision of so much more to accomplish in the future.
Thank you for your support,
Lynn Neuman, Director
