Join Lindsay Gary a multidisciplinary artivist, professor-scholar, and social entrepreneur whose mission is to educate, connect, and empower the African Diaspora. Gary will share more about her process, projects and information about her piece Yemaya and the Flood. Presented virtually on CAMH’s YouTube on Thursday, March 18 at 6:30PM. Yemaya and the Flood is a piece on home(s), ancestral memory, and motherhood. Drawing inspiration from the Yoruba orisha Yemaya, it explores water and its many manifestations–libation, pouring, leaking, birth, flooding, and the ocean. This CAMH Connects is an extended Black History Month program.
This program will premiere on CAMH’s YouTube channel and IGTV.
About Lindsay Gary
Lindsay Gary, MPA, MA is the founder and artistic director of Dance Afrikana, LLC, the founder and board president of The Re-Education Project (501c3), in addition to several other socially-based businesses.
She has received numerous awards and recognition for her work including becoming a 2017-2018 Dance Source Houston Artist-in-Residence which culminated in an evening-length production of her original choreography titled Eleggua. Additionally, she graduated from the Artist INC program for artist-entrepreneurs, and developed a partnership with Young Audiences of Houston wherein she brought cultural and historical performances to Houston’s youth. She is also a recipient of three Houston Arts Alliance Grants and was a part of Project Row Houses’s Artist Round 50 (Formed in My Grandmother’s Womb). She is currently working as an artist and historical consultant in collaboration with S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio, Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation, Sankofa Research Institute, Cultural Arts District, and MacArthur Fellow Mel Chin for the Memory Builds the Monument project. Her newest work Ancestral Memory will be premiering at the Community Artists’ Collective in May 2021.
She graduated from the University of Houston (Texas) with a BA in History and minors in Dance and Business Administration, and with an MA in History and MPA in Public Policy from Texas Southern University (Houston). In 2018, she was selected as a Mellon Scholar in African American History and in 2019 obtained her Graduate Certificate in African American Studies. She was awarded the Molefi Kete Asante Founder’s Award in 2020.
About Felicia Woodard
Felicia Woodard is a professional dancer, choreographer, dance educator, and yoga teacher that graduated with a BA in Dance and an MA in Cross Cultural and Global Studies. Woodard has studied modern dance and various dances of the African diaspora focusing on samba styles. Professionally she has danced with Second Generation Dance Company, Urban Souls Dance Company, Kucheza Ngoma Dance Company, and LD Samba Dance Company. In 2012, Woodard Co-Founded Pretty Cultured, a dance collaborative that has evolved to focus on Black women and Black children. She began presenting her own original work with the debut of Love Spell presented in Dance Source Houston’s Barnstorm and Houston Fringe Festival (2015, 2016). She then became an Artist in Residence with Dance Source Houston and presented Tender (2017). That year, Woodard also competed for Rainha do Samba USA (Samba Queen USA) and was a top ten Finalist. Closing out that year, she presented Adura, a performance art collaboration in the Houston Fringe Festival. After the birth of her daughter, Woodard was chosen as one of five artists in Houston for Dance Source Houston and Houston Ballet’s HIVE in 2019. She was also named “Houston Brazilian Carnaval Queen” in February 2019 and choreographed for, as well as danced in the 2019 Next Brazilian Productions Carnaval. Currently Felicia Woodard is a yoga teacher that focuses on restorative movement for rest and nervous system repair, and presents the Movement Passport dance workshop with Pretty Cultured.