A.P.E.'s programming 33 HAWLEY STREET continues its core mission to support contemporary artists working in all disciplines, by preserving and supporting the spaces in which they create, perform and exhibit their work.
By initiating the development of a community ARTS TRUST, A.P.E. seeks to ensure creative spaces in the heart of community, with 33 Hawley Street as a first significant project. Further, A.P.E is partnering with The School for Contemporary Dance and Thought (SCDT) and Historic Northampton to bring vibrant programming to 33 Hawley Street.
Using the Land Trust model, the ARTS TRUST preserves what is essential for a thriving community and serves as a template for others wanting to sustain creative vitality through the arts.
Located in southern Vermont, the Field Center is an educational center for arts practices that serves as a resource for working artists at all stages of their career to focus on their work, develop their teaching and performance practices and build stronger collaborative relationships with one another. Through working together we help to create and curate structures, solutions and events that inspire equitable, environmentally and socially sustainable practices, interrogate systems, drive creativity and encourage courageous exploration. Programming at the Field Center is divided between weekend-long events and residencies to seasonal modules in which small groups work together for 'semester' long blocks of time- led by 2-3 teachers from a variety of disciplines. During the summer months, the space hosts a variety of workshops, festivals and cultural events.
We work towards cultivating the arts ecology in the United States while bridging gaps between differing ages, human identities, and borders between people and practices in both the local, national and international communities. We work to create a place that appreciates difference and is rigorous, improvisational, intuitive, healthy and original.
We work towards cultivating the arts ecology in the United States while bridging gaps between differing ages, human identities, and borders between people and practices in both the local, national and international communities. We work to create a place that appreciates difference and is rigorous, improvisational, intuitive, healthy and original.
First GenerationAre you the first in your family to: Grow up in this country? Graduate high school? Go to college?
Speak English? Be an activist? Be openly LGBTQ+? Be incarcerated? Be drug free?
Break a silence? Be a feminist? Be an artist? Are you First Generation?
First Generation brings together young adults ages 15-22 who self-identify as "first generation,” for artistic training, leadership development, and inter-generational mentoring. Forming an artistic ensemble, members create original multi-lingual physical theater performances based on their life experiences, conversations and discoveries with a focus on social justice.
First Generation members may be the first in their family to grow up in the United States, the first to speak English, to graduate high school, go to college, to be openly LGBT+, be an activist, a feminist, or many other firsts. Participants include youth recently arrived in this country and youth who are court-involved. First Generation youth train with professional artists and are mentored by college students, graduate students and community elders. We support each other, build on our strengths, cultivate ambition, and become leaders who build enduring, intercultural networks.
In First Generation, we talk about the complexity of embracing individuality while honoring one’s family and community cultures. The Ensemble creates powerful, high-quality performances that engage the public in dialog about social, cultural, and generational issues. Our performances also invite audiences to celebrate our humanity and our connection through the arts.
Family and Community Celebrations
Several times a year First Gen hosts Family and Community Celebrations. They are wonderful Saturday afternoons of live music, dance, spoken word, poetry, theater and food. Family and Community Celebrations include performances by First Generation and Ubuntu Arts Community youth and family members, professional artists, and community members.
Adventures
First Gen members attend theater and dance performances, cultural events and festivals in the Pioneer Valley, Vermont, Boston, New Haven and New York. We also climb mountains, pick apples, and participate in leadership trainings!
Speak English? Be an activist? Be openly LGBTQ+? Be incarcerated? Be drug free?
Break a silence? Be a feminist? Be an artist? Are you First Generation?
First Generation brings together young adults ages 15-22 who self-identify as "first generation,” for artistic training, leadership development, and inter-generational mentoring. Forming an artistic ensemble, members create original multi-lingual physical theater performances based on their life experiences, conversations and discoveries with a focus on social justice.
First Generation members may be the first in their family to grow up in the United States, the first to speak English, to graduate high school, go to college, to be openly LGBT+, be an activist, a feminist, or many other firsts. Participants include youth recently arrived in this country and youth who are court-involved. First Generation youth train with professional artists and are mentored by college students, graduate students and community elders. We support each other, build on our strengths, cultivate ambition, and become leaders who build enduring, intercultural networks.
In First Generation, we talk about the complexity of embracing individuality while honoring one’s family and community cultures. The Ensemble creates powerful, high-quality performances that engage the public in dialog about social, cultural, and generational issues. Our performances also invite audiences to celebrate our humanity and our connection through the arts.
Family and Community Celebrations
Several times a year First Gen hosts Family and Community Celebrations. They are wonderful Saturday afternoons of live music, dance, spoken word, poetry, theater and food. Family and Community Celebrations include performances by First Generation and Ubuntu Arts Community youth and family members, professional artists, and community members.
Adventures
First Gen members attend theater and dance performances, cultural events and festivals in the Pioneer Valley, Vermont, Boston, New Haven and New York. We also climb mountains, pick apples, and participate in leadership trainings!
The ponderosa e.V. is a non-profit organization consisting of 18 people. Our main purpose is to create an International meeting space in the countryside outside of Berlin. We come from wide ranging backgrounds, but share a common experience of embracing the arts, living on a broken down farm and encouraging an event that inspires people’s creative sources and gives them a place to enact their own desires and visions. We depend on the form of improvisation to help create our structures and our solutions. We are a team of organizers, teachers, builders, performers, artists, cultural managers, producers and hosts. Our goal is to bring as much uniqueness, clear thought and spontaneous action to our yearly festival while remaining intact as a self-sufficient group and as a building community.
Directed by Kathleen Hermesdorf with Albert Mathias in San Francisco, ALTERNATIVA is an apparatus for deeply integrated dance and music via creation, improvisation, performance, education and curation. Hermesdorf and Mathias create and instigate performance work based in visceral, dynamic and experimental investigations into ineffable aspects of the human condition. They also share a focus on interdisciplinary collaboration and roots in improvisation. The organization supports the project-to-project creative work and acts as an umbrella for Alternative Conservatory, facilitated by Hermesdorf and AM Audio/Media, established by Mathias. With support in San Francisco by ODC Theater in numerous residencies, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, CASH/Theatre Bay Area, CHIME/MJDC and the San Francisco Arts Commission, ALTERNATIVA has presented 8 home seasons since 1998, and toured nationally and internationally in affiliation with Movement Research/New York, Velocity Dance Center/Seattle, Bates Dance Festival/Maine, Ponderosa/Stolzenhagen, Germany, and Delfos & EPDM/Mazatlán, Mexico, among many others. ALTERNATIVA was in residence at KUNST-STOFF arts from 2010-13, and is a founding member of [ABC] Arts Building Consortium with THEOFFCENTER, dedicated to shared resources, intentional curation and creative connectivity.
New Movement Collaborative (NMC) is dedicated to the research, development and performance of post-modern and contemporary dance in the city of Boston through the creation of programming that is focused on critical response, peer-review, works in progress, mentoring programs and master classes in which risk-taking and rigor are paramount.
The mission of the Northampton Community Arts Trust is to protect and ensure the long-term vitality of Northampton through the acquisition and preservation of space for creative work — affordable and accessible — in the heart of the community.
Earthdance is an artist-run workshop, residency, and retreat center located in the Berkshire hills of Western Massachusetts. We provide a dynamic mix of dance, somatic, and interdisciplinary arts training, with a focus on sustainable living, social justice, and community. Earthdance has been spearheading innovative arts programming, and maintaining a beautiful facility for rental groups in the Pioneer Valley for nearly three decades. Our diverse, year-round programs include: dance workshops; yoga retreats; interdisciplinary, ecological and somatic art festivals & residencies; Contact Improvisation jams; a year-round Artist Residency Program; and local programs focusing on Sustainability and Social Justice. Our facilities include two large and sunny studios with maple floors, meeting space, meditation and massage rooms, 100 acres of woods, streams and trails.
Movement Research is one of the world's leading laboratories for the investigation of dance and movement-based forms. Valuing the individual artist, their creative process and their vital role within society, Movement Research is dedicated to the creation and implementation of free and low-cost programs that nurture and instigate discourse and experimentation. Movement Research strives to reflect the cultural, political and economic diversity of its moving community, including artists and audiences alike.
Vermont Performance Lab (VPL) is a new type of performance incubator located in rural southeastern Vermont. VPL was created in 2006 with a mission to support the development of new performance works and to connect creation and presentation of contemporary performance with residents of the communities we serve.
VPL’s innovative Lab Program provides a new resource in the performing arts field for regional and national artists to focus on the creative process in relation to community; opportunities for collaborative research with scholars, students, local experts and community members; access to state-of-the-art dance and recording studios, community spaces and non-traditional performance sites; and support and facilities for choreographer-composer collaboration.
VPL’s innovative Lab Program provides a new resource in the performing arts field for regional and national artists to focus on the creative process in relation to community; opportunities for collaborative research with scholars, students, local experts and community members; access to state-of-the-art dance and recording studios, community spaces and non-traditional performance sites; and support and facilities for choreographer-composer collaboration.
James Morrow creates powerful yet accessible mediums to communicate to multiple generations, multiple ethnicities, and to illuminate alternatives for an urban audience disenfranchised by the commodification of mainstream media and entertainment. He provides students with a supportive and challenging environment that is responsive to multiple learning styles, emphasizes learning through the arts, and integrates critical thinking throughout the curriculum. For more information, please contact lowthree@gmail.com
The Northampton Center for the Arts is a private, non-profit organization, established in 1984 as the result of a public/private partnership between the City of Northampton and the developers of the former D.A. Sullivan School complex in downtown Northampton. For almost 30 years, the Center’s ballroom and galleries served as affordable, accessible venues for performances, exhibitions, arts-education programming and community gatherings. The Center has been a unique and valuable resource, encouraging participation in a variety of expressive forms and producing quality events that bring people together in celebration of creativity.
SHOW Circus Studio is a circus training facility in Easthampton, MA that opened in 2009. The space is available for classes, workshops and professional training in the circus arts. As a recreational circus school, we teach adult and youth classes in aerial arts (trapeze, fabric & lyra), juggling, hand balancing, tumbling, mini trampoline, tight wire, rolla bolla, rolling globe, partner acrobatics and clowning.
Wire Monkey Dance creates highly physical dance installations utilizing steel scaffolding and other industrial materials. Their gravity defying, multimedia dance events feature bold, animalistic choreography, live music and video projections, and address timeless human themes. Under the artistic direction of Saliq Francis Savage and Jennifer Polins, Wire Monkey Dance has a six-year roster of performances, including site-specific installations on the UMASS/Amherst campus, in gallery spaces, proscenium theaters, international festivals and even in a sugar cane factory in Taiwan.
