We are proud to announce... Tevyn East as Earthdance Artist in Residence from February 14-21, 2010.

After graduating from Hollins University with a degree in dance, Tevyn filled 7 years with community building creative processes- learning, healing, striving, stretching, and cultivating her voice as an artist, a teacher and a performer. Through five years with the Zen Monkey Project in Charlottesville, VA, Tevyn performed in six evening length works of original dance theater. This includes her directorial debut in '05 of The Palimpsest , with a musical score by Mike Vargas, in which the audience migrated through a world of movement, story, and image in and among sculpted installation pieces. With an ambitious bunch of seasoned performers, Tevyn helped produce the WunderKammer , -a community arts carnival, unruly circus, that put Charlottesville on the map. The circus experiment continued with Shentai , where Tevyn expanded her carnie skills and helped build a world of roving sideshows and interactive installations. Tevyn has also traveled to improvise and participate in experimental performance processes. She briefly lived in rural northern California, collaboratively created original works of dance theater in an old one-room school house with the Glass Bead Players, presented work at the Seattle Fringe Festival '03, performed in Karl Frost's “Ocean Studies” in Seattle, WA in ‘04; attended Nancy Stark Smith's January Intensive '01 and '05 and acted as co-facilitator of the New Year's Jam at Earthdance in Dec. ‘06. Tevyn served as faculty member at the Zen Monkey Project Summer Intensives '04, '05 and ‘06, taught classes regularly from '01 to '07, helped facilitate workshops, managed ZMP's studio space for two years, organized ongoing events and served on the executive council of the McGuffey Arts Center '07 to '08. It is no wonder that the 7 year itch sent Tevyn into a new life experiment- to live simply in intentional community in Washington DC and learn about service, justice, peace and the integrity of creation. Tevyn seeks to integrate her artistic gifts with the journey work of faithful action, responding to the needs of the world and the signs of the times.

Artist Statement

Tevyn's newest project comes out of an effort to integrate her artistic training and creative gifts with her faith calling and hunger for justice. Though a preachers kid, steeped in the social gospel and liberation theology, Tevyn spent most of her adult years pursuing a life in the arts. Through years of dancing, training, teaching, choreographing, facilitating workshops and producing shows Tevyn struggled with a growing critic of the church and mainstream Christian dogma. Though still drawn to social justice actions and prone to theological reflection, Tevyn found more and more compelling examples of radical faithfulness and transforming love. Eager to learn more about justice, service and community, Tevyn entered the Discipleship Year program through Church of the Savior and started working with the Maryknoll Office For Global Concerns. Both of these organizations are concerned with addressing the root causes of injustice, accompanying the vulnerable and marginalized, and speaking truth to power in the heart of the United States capitol. Tevyn has been an active member of the Faith, Economy, Ecology working group, an advocacy group challenging the growth-led economic model that is mandating ecological policy that violates Earth's limits. This learning environment allowed Tevyn's interests (Sabbath Economics, Ecological Justice, Corporate Accountability) to take hold and create the fertile ground through which this project was born. The intentional melding of Faith, Art and Justice makes the Affording Hope Project an exciting new territory for Tevyn to apply her artistic voice.

 

Check back this winter for a list of classes offered by Tevyn in February!