Oct 16, 2019
On this episode your co-host Azaria interview Dr. Lela Aisha Jones. Lela Aisha Jones is a movement performance artist and an interdisciplinary collaborator. Her work intimately intertwines personal and collective lived experiences of diasporic blackness as archived in and excavated from the body through dance. She is a proud native of Tallahassee, FL and feels quite fortunate to live and create in Philadelphia, PA. Lela is a 2015 Leeway Foundation Transformation Awardee, a 2016 Pew Fellow in the Arts, and a 2017 New York Dance and Performance Award | Bessie Nominee. As an organizer, Lela is invested in cultivating a society with more nurtured, insightful, and harmonized human beings and she continues to bring people together in support of eachothers’ development through initiatives such as Dancing for Justice Philadelphia and The Requisite Movers Philadelphia. Furthermore, Lela is currently a Project Co-Director for Modupúe | Ibaye: The Philadelphia Yoruba Performance Project and is the Associate Artistic Director for Brownbody led by Artistic Director Deneane Richburg. On this episode, we talk about Jones’ creative process and her work that lead to a Bessie nomination, Black and African diasporic performance, how to locate your activist self, identity and spiritual wholeness, creating a system of online connections, and useful tips on how to balance the challenges of being a freelance artist.
Show kNOwtes: https://www.knowboxdance.com/post/17-lelaaishajones-flyground