2009 Kenan Writers' Encounters: The Word is Women to feature Angela Davis and Liz Lerman
**PLEASE NOTE THAT THE ANGELA DAVIS LECTURE IS SOLD OUT**
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Bert Woodard, Next Level Communications
336-978-0021, bert@nextlevelcom.net
For Kenan Institute for the Arts (www.kenanarts.org)
WINSTON-SALEM - Two nationally-recognized women's rights leaders - Angela Davis and Liz Lerman - will give free lectures at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in late March and early April as part of the 2009 Kenan Writers' Encounters. This year's theme is "The Word is Women."
Angela Davis, a radical social justice advocate, political and feminist scholar and educator, will present a lecture, "Art, Resistance and Transformation," on Thursday, March 26, 7:30 P.M. at UNCSA's Thrust Theatre/Performance Place. Admission is free, but tickets are required (336-721-1945 ticket box office). Seating is limited. A reception and book signing will follow in the Performance Place Lobby.
Liz Lerman, a dancer, choreographer, author and educator who has gained an international reputation for artistic daring and social activism, will conduct a workshop titled "Storytelling Workshop: Text and Movement" on Wednesday, April 1, from 6:00-8:30 P.M., at UNCSA's Catawba Theatre/Performance Place. Admission is free, but tickets are required (336-721-1945 ticket box office). Participation is limited.
Lerman will also present a lecture, "Redefining the Radical," Thursday, April 2, from 7:30-10:00 P.M., at UNCSA's Main Theatre, ACE Complex, Film Village, (including a post-lecture reception in BB&T Lobby in the ACE Complex). Admission is free, but tickets are required (336-721-1945 ticket box office).
A project of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts, The Kenan Writers' Encounters is a series of public lectures and receptions, master classes, workshops, and multimedia presentations devoted to the exploration of creativity across the arts. Inspired by the perspectives of renowned and rising authors and artists whose visions bridge the world of letters and other arts, The Kenan Writers' Encounters invites local and state communities, UNCSA conservatory artists-in-training, faculty and interested members of the public to share an extraordinary conversation with the participating writers.
Through her activism and her scholarship over the last decades, Angela Davis has been deeply involved in our nation's quest for social justice. Her work as an educator - both at the university level and in the larger public sphere - has always emphasized the importance of building communities of struggle for economic, racial, and gender equality. Professor Davis' teaching career has taken her to San Francisco State University, Mills College, and the University of California at Berkeley. She has also taught at UCLA, Vassar, the Claremont Colleges, and Stanford University. She has spent the last 15 years at the University of California at Santa Cruz where she is Professor of History of Consciousness, an interdisciplinary PhD program, and Professor of Feminist Studies.
Angela Davis is the author of eight books and has lectured throughout the United States as well as in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America. In recent years a persistent theme of her work has been the range of social problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of those communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination. She draws upon her own experiences in the early seventies as a person who spent 18 months in jail and on trial, after being placed on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted List." Davis has also conducted extensive research on numerous issues related to race, gender and imprisonment. Her most recent books are Abolition Democracy and Are Prisons Obsolete? She is now completing a book on Prisons and American History.
Liz Lerman founded Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in 1976, and has cultivated the company's unique multi-generational ensemble into a leading force in contemporary dance. Lerman has been the recipient of numerous honors: the American Choreographer Award, the American Jewish Congress "Golda" Award, and Washingtonian Magazine's 1988 Washingtonian of the Year. In 2002, her work was recognized with a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship. Through participation in Synagogue 2000, Synagogue 3000 and grants from the Righteous Persons Foundation and Covenant Foundation, Lerman has won wide recognition for her work as a teacher, choreographer and collaborator in Jewish institutions. She received the National Foundation for Jewish Culture Award, the Sally J. Priesand Visiting Professorship at Hebrew Union College, and was named as outstanding Jewish woman to watch in Forward 50.
In her quest to stretch the expressive capacity of dance/theater, Liz Lerman has developed a variety of techniques for combining movement with the spoken word.
"Angela Davis and Liz Lerman are two driving forces for social justice and equity that have approached the inequities and unfolding shifts of American society along paths that have been marked by different terrain and different gear," said Ellen Rosenberg, Ph. D., the Project Director for The Kenan Writers' Encounters. "Both of their paths have led to confrontation with a mountain of racial marginalization and violence, gender bigotry, ageism, the disempowerment of the different. Their words, literal and figurative, have helped to transform us over the past half century, and in very real ways have helped us to manifest this time of transition in our country. As people of vision, as women wrestling with the real world, as author and artist, they have each attained the sort of mastery to which many of us aspire. They have set our agenda for vouchsafing the future of human rights by inviting us all into the conversation. The Kenan Writers' Encounters carries that conversation forward this year to our community."
"In our fifth and final season of The Kenan Writers' Encounters, we are pleased to be bringing two of the leading women in the arts to the University of North Carolina School of the Arts campus," said Kenan Institute Executive Director Margaret Mertz. "We expect that the creative and innovative capacities of our community will be stimulated by their presence and the lectures and workshops will further sustain the creative development of this community."
For more information about The Kenan Writers' Encounters, call 336-722-0030 or visit www.kenanarts.org. For tickets, contact the Stevens Center Box Office at 336-721-1945.
The Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts incubates projects that sustain artists at every point in their creative development through strategic partnerships that capitalize on visionary thinking in the arts.
The 2009 Kenan Writers' Encounters schedule of public events follows:
(There is no charge for these events, but tickets are required and seating is limited. For tickets, contact the Stevens Center Box Office at 336-721-1945)
The Kenan Writers' Encounters: The Word is Women presents Angela Davis, "Art, Resistance and Transformation," public lecture, reception and book signing
Date: Thursday, March 26, 2009
Time: 7:30 P.M.
Location: Thrust Theatre, Performance Place, UNCSA Campus
Free and open to the public. Tickets required (336-721-1945). Seating is limited.
Kenan Writers' Encounters: The Word is Women presents Liz Lerman, "Storytelling Workshop: Text and Movement"
Date: Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Time: 6:00-8:30 P.M.
Location: Catawba Theatre, Performance Place, UNCSA campus
Free and open to the public. Tickets required (336-721-1945). Limited to 50 participants
Light refreshments
The Kenan Writers' Encounters: The Word is Women presents Liz Lerman, "Redefining the Radical," public lecture, reception and book signing
Date: Thursday, April 2, 2009
Time: 7:30-10:00 P.M.
Location: Main Theatre, ACE Complex, Film Village, UNCSA campus, reception in BB&T Lobby in the ACE Complex
Free and open to the public. Tickets required (336-721-1945).
###