Virtual Event:
DELving into Dance History
Hula

Virtual DELving into Dance History
Indigenous Dance of the Americas: Hula

Sunday, November 7 & Sunday, November 14, 2021 | 2-5pm Eastern
Facilitated by Ann Biddle and Felice Santorelli, with guest artist John-Mario Sevilla

Join Ann Biddle (Director of DEL at Jacob’s Pillow), Felice Santorelli (DEL Facilitator) in this online workshop series highlighting the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive site. Re-envision dance history as embodied inquiry using the extensive video and multimedia resources of the Jacob’s Pillow Archives. DELving into Dance History is an ongoing series and is designed for K-12 dance educators and college dance history enthusiasts to enhance remote and in-person teaching.

In this immersive and embodied dance history workshop, participants will DELve into the Pillow interactive site’s Indigenous Dance of the Americas playlist curated by Norton Owen, Director of Preservation, in order to celebrate indigenous peoples and their dance forms from the past to the present. Guest Artist John-Mario Sevilla, 2021-22 Visiting Scholar at the Asia | Pacific | American Institute at NYU, will share his knowledge and expertise of the art of hula with participants through embodied practice, historical research, community-based dance making, and culturally responsive curricular applications.

Participants will receive classroom resources and discover how to bring hula dance and culture into the classroom in an engaging, culturally responsive, and accessible way. Participants will also explore the extensive video resources of the Pillow interactive site. 

In this interactive, movement-based workshop, DELving course participants will

• Experience aspects of the DELving into Dance History model with a focus on applied LMA, embodied dance history research, culturally responsive pedagogy with a focus on learning and teaching hula, and collaborative dance making.
• Receive classroom resources and discover how to bring hula dance and culture into the classroom in an engaging, culturally responsive, and accessible way.  Participants will also explore the extensive video resources of the Pillow interactive site.
• Deepen their understanding of the history, meaning, and significance of hula as an art form through movement exploration which will include learning specific terminology and steps from the hula lexicon.
• Learn how and what content to present when introducing hula in a culturally responsive manner to their students.

Indigenous Dance of the Americas

A full week of activities at Jacob’s Pillow in 2019 was designated as The Land On Which We Dance, in honor of the Indigenous peoples of the Mohican, Nipmuc, Pocumtuc, and Agawam tribes who originally inhabited this area. As part of the contemporary celebration, we looked back upon decades of Indigenous presentations on all three Pillow stages, with representations here of both the 2019 gathering and some of what came before, also explored in a related podcast.

John-Mario Sevilla

John-Mario Sevilla hails from Kaʻehu, Paukūkalo, Maui, and is a student of the hula with Kumu Hula Hōkūlani Holt (Pāʻū O Hiʻiaka) and Kumu Hula June Ka‘ililani Tanoue (Hālau I Ka Pono). He is the 2021-22 Visiting Scholar at the Asia | Pacific | American Institute at NYU. The former director of 92Y Harkness Dance Center, Dance Education Laboratory and New York City Ballet Education, his work has appeared in New York City at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, LaMaMa, NYU Steinhardt, Movement Research at Judson Church, 92Y Harkness Dance Center, Dance Theatre Workshop, Columbia University, ABC No Rio, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, The Asia Society and Bronx Academy of Art and Dance. He is a former collaborator and dance captain for Pilobolus and has danced in the companies of Alison Chase, Murray Louis and Alwin Nikolais, Anna Sokolow, Rebecca Stenn, Lisa Giobbi, Janis Brenner, Erin Dudley, Bill Cratty, among others, as well with juggler Michael Moschen, drag artist Sherry Vine, poet John Unterecker and Navajo sand painter/healer Walking Thunder.