We’re excited to introduce a new dance and poetry project, “Flourish! Uptown Plant Dances and Poetry.” The Flourish team is thrilled to have been selected as a grantee of the UMEZ Mertz Gilmore Seed Fund for Dance (woohoo!). Team members are planning to develop a series of dances celebrating the healing, beautiful, nutritious, medicinal wild plants of our uptown neighborhood – dandelions, jewelweed, fonio, mulberry… and more. The dance performance will take place at J. Hood Wright Park in Washington Heights, around the spring equinox, during Earth Month and Poetry Month! Our dance celebration will be led by dancers and choreographers who have devised movement to original music and poems in Spanish and English (guitar, percussion, and more!), celebrating the plants. Events and offerings include an art zine, a poetry zine, a cyanotype (plant art) workshop and a special plant walk through the park.
This project is funded, in part, through a Seed Fund for Dance grant from the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation, thanks to the support of the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.