Olivia Moon Photography / @halfasianlens
Olivia Moon Photography / @halfasianlens
Olivia Moon Photography / @halfasianlens
Olivia Moon Photography / @halfasianlens
Olivia Moon Photography / @halfasianlens
What is NOURISH?
NOURISH is my multiyear dance project of community movement sessions and solo performances. NOURISH is an embodied experience of recognizing and choosing what you need, in the moment. A choreographed, participant-determined dance, it can take place any time, anywhere, for any body. Each iteration of NOURISH is designed to accommodate specific settings, people, and parameters.
NOURISH offers movement, talking, drawing, and writing to build stronger connections within our selves and with our communities. Participants are guided to create their own gentle movements to help bring centering, grounding and clarity for themselves. We focus on feeling whole through our breath and use of attention, and by resourcing powerful memories. No dance experience is necessary, NOURISH is welcome space for people of different abilities and ages. NOURISH’s practice of moving to feel better - wherever we are - is its own form of social change.
NOURISH sessions were held over three years at Lexington Community Farm. In 2021, Nourish with Black mothers who live in Cambridge, MA, took place over Zoom with support from Cambridge Center for Families. Jessica also taught NOURISH with intergenerational families of all ages in Lexington’s Five Fields neighborhood, with Cambridge Public Library patrons, and with professional dancers and dance students at The Dance Complex as part of their Reflection, Healing, and Movement program.
Film Preview!
Conceived and Directed by Jessica Roseman
Filmed and edited by Olivia Moon Photography/halfasianlens.
Premiered at Monkeyhouse’s Malden Dance Mile on May 14, 2022.
A meditative overview of NOURISH’s mission, it samples footage from over a year’s worth of dance practices, rehearsals, and performance.
Jess & Olivia will continue with this film work, to produce a longer feature film.
Funding for this film was provided in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies;
Combined Jewish Philanthropies Arts & Culture Community Impact Grant Fund,
Cambridge Arts’ 2022 Art for Social Justice Grant, through the Cambridge Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and
New England Foundation for the Arts’ Public Art for Spatial Justice grant, with funding from the Barr Foundation.
Artist Talk
Learn more through this Artist Talk between myself and Karen Krolak about NOURISH, presented by Monkeyhouse. This lively video discussion premiered in December, 2021, filmed by Olivia Moon Photography/halfasianlens.
How did NOURISH come to be?
I asked about these positive recollections below to help carry us through the uncertain times of the pandemic. In the act of remembering, we recapture those sensations in our nerve cells, and reinforce the positive neurological pathways to change our present experience. This is neuroplasticity, a practice used in trauma work to rewire the brain away from trauma and towards healthy engagement. While we couldn’t share in live dance together, we could still heal on the cellular level, and enact those histories and safe spaces within our selves. Helping people to embody positivity is my continued vision for coping with the effects of this universal trauma.
Since the COVID-19 shutdown, I’ve been awarded placement in the New England Foundation for the Arts’ Regional Dance and Development Initiative (RDDI) cohort; a Cambridge Arts for Justice grant; grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council; and a commission for Monkeyhouse’s Against the Odds to support Nourish and keep imagining new ideas for the future. I am humbled by the support I’m receiving from friends and colleagues who are fighting with me to stay creatively afloat. I’m exploring innovative ways to connect and put together the shards of what we are missing - politically, emotionally, physically. I’m focusing on social and racial justice through dance for every body. Dance has the power to heal. Black Lives Matter.
NOURISH is supported in part by a commission from Monkeyhouse. It was made possible with funding from the New England Foundation for the Arts' Public Art for Spatial Justice program, with generous support from the Barr Foundation; the Cambridge Arts’ 2021 Art for Racial Justice Grant, through the Cambridge Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council; by the Cambridge Community Foundation’s Cultural Capital Fund; the Sister Outsider Relief Grant from the Free Black Women’s Library; by grants from the Lexington Cultural Council and Arlington Cultural Council, local agencies which are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council; and with donations from Zuri.
Questions for healing.
Some of the questions I’ve been asking myself and reflecting on with others since 2019. Meditate on these questions with me.