SixTwelve is honored to welcome Marie Casimir for a three class workshop series, “Reclaiming The Lakou: A Movement & Writing Workshop.” Together participants will use elements of improvised movement, voice and storytelling to create something new. Using the model of the Haitian Lakou-system, the rural communal courtyard of collective work, extended kinship, spirituality and culture, we will collapse time and space, using our own innate movements to instigate moments.

In this workshop we will learn how to channel fluid movement and breath, making our own choices from one moment to the next. We will learn how to work in group (our own Lakou) to create collective sound and movement influence by Afro-Diaspora aesthetics. You will write to explore personal / communal story and transfer that into movement. You will breathe.

During each of the three workshops, Marie will focus on the following:

February 24th: Breath, movement, learning to support and be supported by the group

March 24th: Layering sound, rhythm & voice with improvised movement

April 28th: Excavating our words to tell our own stories, personal and communal.

These workshops are open to all! You do not need to be a professional dancer or writer to participate. Cost: $10 – $20 suggested donation per class. You do not have to preregister to take these workshops.

About Marie:

Marie Casimir is a Haitian-American performer/ arts producer and educator interested in the straddling of multiple cultures, languages, and memories that exist within the body. Her practice s rooted in improvised performance using “Theatrical Jazz” as a tool to meld contemporary movement and text through an afro-caribbean and afro aesthetics lens. She claims writer, director Sharon Bridgforth as mentor for her pathe to Theatrical Jazz. Marie is the Co-Founder of The Instigation Festival, a week of improvised music and dance in Chicago and New Orleans. She has performed at Art Hall and The Root (OKC), Links Hall, Chicago Home Theater Festival, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, Rockefeller Memorial Chapel and more.

Marie teaches African Dance at the University of Oklahoma. She is the founder of Djapora Productions, connecting and supporting artists of color nationally and internationally as a means to create art that will impact change, encouraging global citizenship in our own communities and abroad.She is a 2018 Ragdale in Schools Fellow and a OneLoveNola Artist in Residence.