INTANGIBLE ROOTS EVENTS
Aimed at continuing creative and critical dialogue, as well as building community, INTANGIBLE ROOTS offers a variety of events. Continue to check back often and follow to learn more about our offerings.
UPCOMING EVENTS
PAST EVENTS
FEBRUARY PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CLASSES
In February 2024, INTANGIBLE ROOTS Pedagogical School offered online professional development classes. To view the syllabus for the course click here.
INTANGIBLE ROOTS 2023 Summer intensive
INTANGIBLE ROOTS 2023 Summer intensive FACULTY
FEBRUARY 2023 LECTURE SERIES Black 2 my Roots: Black Heritage Celebration
During February, 2023 INTANGIBLE ROOTS’ Professor Durden will be lecturing once again via ZOOM!
Course Overview:
This course taught you how to view and analyze dance on film. More importantly it surveyed and traced the systems and traditions of embodied practices produced and circulated in Afro-diasporic communities in the United States of America. This survey featured how Belonging through cultural aesthetics impacts expression and personal identity. Participants learned how African aesthetics maintain distinctive markers yet retain a common core set of cultural priorities that seem to transverse communities regionally, nationally, trans-nationally , and generationally.
This Four Part Course was be an exploration of the cultural modalities of Africanist aesthetics in American culture. Completion of all four courses could be used toward INTANGIBLE ROOTS Professional Development Certificate or INTANGIBLE ROOTS Pedagogical Certification
Participants could purchase each lecture individually or as a bundle.
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WEEK 1 – How to Analyze Dance on Film
02.05.2023
10:00am-11:30am PST
Go from a passive watcher to an active watcher. A film is something we can read just as carefully and consciously as a book or poem.
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WEEK 2 – Belonging and Identity
02.12.2023
10:00am-11:30am PST
Belonging means more than having access. Belonging entails being respected at a basic level that includes the right to both co-create and make demands on society.
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WEEK 3 – Rhythm and Representation
02.19.2023
10:00am – 11:30am PST
Rhythm is essential to life, we have to allow our own embodied experience to guide and enrich our perceptions about the dance we are studying.
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WEEK 4 – Aesthetic of the Kool
02.26.2023
10:00am-11:30am PST
Coolness was central to the culture of many ancient African civilizations. John Janzen believes that coolness was expressed in oral culture, character building, artwork, linguistics, dance initiation rituals, warrior cults, mating rituals, and the concept of health.
FILM FESTIVAL 2023 Black 2 my Roots: Black Heritage Celebration
During February, 2023 INTANGIBLE ROOTS granted access to 7 films throughout the month to celebrate the history and heritage of dance and music culture in America. This year films were accessible for the entire month of February!
The curated list of films along with their descriptions are below. A donation amount of $19.99 was suggested.
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Breakin’ and Enterin'
In 1983 director Topper Carrew produced a documentary about the Radio Club called "Breakin' 'n' Enterin'". A documentary about the LA hip hop/electro scene in the early 80s.
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Minnie The Moocher
Minnie The Moocher, and many, many more (1981) is a TV documentary hosted by Cab Calloway that's comprised of newsreel, movie and soundies clips.
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Founding Fathers
Founding Fathers tells the story of the unsung creators of HipHop in thorough, compelling detail. The documentary film challenges the popular narrative that the art and culture originated in the South Bronx with pioneers like Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash.
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Fresh Dressed
Fresh Dressed chronicles the history of Hip-Hop Urban fashion and its rise from southern cotton plantations to the gangs of 1970s in the South Bronx, to corporate America, and everywhere in-between
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The Hippest Trip in America
The Hippest Trip in America tells the full story of this pop culture phenomenon that appealed not only to blacks, but to a wide crossover audience as well.
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Sara Bartman the Venus Hotten Tot Story
Sara Bartman the Wenus Hotten Tot Story THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SARA BAARTMAN is the fascinating story of this Khoi Khoi woman who was taken from South Africa, and then exhibited as a freak across Britain. Please note this film shows sensitive content.
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United Skates
United Skates spotlights a community fighting in a racially charged environment to save the underground African-American subculture of roller skating, which has been overlooked by the mainstream for generations
FILM FESTIVAL 2022
During February, 2022 INTANGIBLE ROOTS played 6 films throughout the month to celebrate the history and heritage of dance and music culture in America. The curated list of films along with their descriptions are below.
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2/7 No Maps on My Taps.
This nostalgic documentary investigates the history of tap dancing, particularly focusing on the 1930s, when performers became famous for accompanying live jazz music. Viewing the art form from a cultural perspective, the film, which makes extensive use of movie clips and vintage photographs, explores tap dancing in the context of the American -- and most significantly African American -- heritage. Among the revered dancers featured are Bunny Briggs, Chuck Green and Howard "Sandman" Sims.
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2/11 Bleaching Black Culture.
Bleaching Black Culture examines the continuum of America's black cultural appropriation and effects on the African American community. ... Currently, the Rhythm and Blues billboard chart, a genre developed for the African American voice, is dominated with the likes of Robin Thicke, Justin Bieber, and Adele.
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2/15 Plenty of good woman dancers.
"Plenty of Good Women Dancers: African American Women Hoofers from Philadelphia" is one in a series of traveling folklife photo exhibitions organized by the Philadelphia Folklore Project, an independent agency that works to preserve and support the folk arts of Philadelphia.
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2/19 Wattstax.
Wattstax was a benefit concert organized by Stax Records to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the 1965 riots in the African-American community of Watts, Los Angeles. The concert took place at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on August 20, 1972. The concert's performers included all of Stax's prominent artists at the time. The genres of the songs performed included soul, gospel, R&B, blues, funk, and jazz.
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2/23 That Rhythm, Those Blues.
That Rhythm, Those Blues is a short documentary covering the R&B (rhythm and blues) field from the 194-s to the early 1950s. R&B emerged from African-American communities around the United States and paved the way to rock and roll. Ruth Brown and Charles Brown are among the R&B pioneers who share their memories.
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2/26 Stormy Weather .
Stormy Weather is a 1943 American musical film produced and released by 20th Century Fox. The film is one of two Hollywood musicals with an African American cast released in 1943, the other being MGM's Cabin in the Sky. The film is considered a primary showcase of some of the leading African American performers of the day, during an era when African American actors and singers rarely appeared in lead roles in mainstream Hollywood productions.