Recognizing Women Project, 20 Years and going!

The Recognizing Women Project (RWP) is inspired by the women in my family, and was conceived in 2001 at the Judson Church (DADD) Dance Of African Descent Downtown series, created and curated by Aziza.

In 2002 artistic director/choreographer Nathan Trice presented the first season of the Recognizing Women Project (RWP), an annual thematic community discussion series about the experiences and stories of women across generations, cultures and geographies, that culminate in visceral dance theater performances. From Fall thru Winter the (RWP) discussion series gathers a multi-generational, multi-cultural group of adolescent, young adult and adult women dancers, fathers of daughters and local community to commune as a research analysis team. Their aim is to understand the complexity of the themes that live within the stories & experiences they have lived, while inspiring visceral thought-provoking dance theater performances that illustrate their findings.

The Recognizing Women Project has an ongoing incubation creative residency with the Billie Holiday Theaters’ ChoreoQuest program since 2005.

Since its inception, the (RWP) has explored themes that include: Self-Identifying within patriarchal culture, Rites of passage among mothers & daughters, Female objectification / self-objectification, Myth and Grief. 

RWP 2024 – 2025 activities:

• Establish multi-year multi-institutional RWP partnerships in New York City & Detroit, MI.
• Launch the (RWP) 2024/25 Fundraiser Campaign.
• Conduct fall/winter 2024 monthly rehearsals & discussions series.
• Continue development of new (RWP) work “Alchemist In The Garden”, inspired by discussions with fathers on raising their daughters, and “A sound”, inspired by movement choral meditations.
  
• Confirm RWP 2024 – 25 – 26 activities.

“In retrospect, the (RWP) has become a path to healing a kind of inner culture within myself. An inner  cultural healing that relates to the idea of restoring the feminine/masculine split within. Embodying this idea seems to germinate some sense of spiritual recovery from that split “. Nathan Trice

Highlights:

Testimonies:

Process:

Since 2001 the Recognizing Women Project (RWP) has worked collaboratively with dancers and students enrolled Women’s and Gender Studies, Africana Female Studies, History, Sociology and Psychology departments at Fordham University, Brooklyn College, Hollins University, Adelphi University, Barnard, Columbia University, Brooklyn Arts High School, Fort Hamilton High School, Talent Unlimited High School, Taft High School, Lincoln Park Performing Arts, CAPA and Slippery Rock University dance. Our inter-disciplinary collaborative processes have become an integral tool to producing informative thought-provoking work, that innovaatively bridge art and academia. Work developed through the (RWP) has been presented at numerous dance festivals and the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis and the Association of Psychoanalysis Culture and Society.

As we prepare for the Recognizing Women Project 2024/25 activities, we ask for your help to ensure that we successfully engage our efforts by making a tax-deductible donation to: nathantrice/rituals dance theater music. Donations made to nathantrice / RITUALS dance theater music will support our goal to continually present educational residencies and artistic performances that inspire dialogue and activism around women’s concerns across cultures, generations and geographies. Please make a donation today.

Press

“Nathan Trice’s Recognizing Women Project is the result of years of work and a life-time of learning about women”
– Quinn Batson, Off, Off, Off Dance

“Trice’s Recognizing Women Project delivers the poetry of a mothers struggle to love her child, yet let them go”
– Nana Euka, New York Metro

“Orondava’s beautifully conceived and executed costumes evince the culture background of each woman in “MOTHERS”
– Carl Paris, Attitude Magazine

I, the object in my eye (work-in-progress) 2018

Choreography: Nathan Trice in collaboration with the dancers, Music: Ryuchi Sakamoto, Text: Dancers, Costumes: Nathan Trice.

I, the object in my eye explores what might be the contributions to adolescent, young adult and adult  female self-objectification.

https://youtu.be/mWQe85eXNNM

“3” a new production (2017)

Choreography by Nathan Trice. Music: Arvo Part, costumes: Nathan Trice

“3” is a new production and is inspired by sacred middle eastern verses: The universe is feminine. A gift of light and dark, time and timing, creation and destruction. “3” was originally commissioned by Dance New Amsterdams’ In The Company of Men series in 2006.

MOTHERS (2002)

Choreographed by Nathan Trice, Music: Hanz Zimmer & James Horner, Costumes: Olu-Orondava Mumford, Props: Marisa Lowenstien.

MOTHERS is conceived and conceptualized by Nathan Trice with Olu-Orondava Mumford & Marisa Lowenstien and is a procession of solo’s that interpret and explore the processes and aspects of grief for the mothers of prominent figures: Mahatma Gandhi, Ernesto “CHE” Guevara, Adolf Hitler, Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King Jr., and Tupac Shakur.

banDrui (2004)

Choreographed by Nathan Trice, Music: Various, Costumes: Nathan Trice & Elana Commendador

banDrui conceived and conceptualized by Nathan Trice, is inspired by indigenous myths and legends on rites of passage between mother and daughter.  The work is a progression of exchangeable symbiotic roles that illuminate the rituals between mother & daughter that act as the essential germ to identity and linage.

One’s Trilogy (work-in-progress) 2011

Choreographed by Nathan Trice, Text by Nathan Trice and the dancers, Music: Thomas Newman, Costume: Nathan Trice.

One’s Trilogy (work-in-progress), conceived and conceptualized by Nathan Trice, is inspired by me learning how to be with my mother whom at a period of her life suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and 8 years of homelessness. It is a cryptic search we both navigated to understanding who we were, are and could be as mother and son.

Their Speech Is Silver, Their Silence Is Gold (1997)

Choreographed by Nathan Trice, Music: Peter Gabriel & Nathan Trice, Text: Nathan Trice, Costumes: Olu-Orondava Mumford.

Their Speech Is Silver, Their Silence Is Gold  is an evocative visceral work in responds to the experiences, exchanges and transformations that occur within and between mothers and daughters who aim to self-identify within patriarchal culture/society.