Professional Development for the People!
“Life changing and soul cleansing.”
-2020 Participant
September-November, 2021
Professional Development for the People! (PD for the People!) is an experiential, 8-week online course (with a 1 week break, mid-course) that shares SLMDances’ praxis of self-development, community building, artistic practice steeped in strategic vision, decolonized organization building, and the embodiment of our collective values: HUMANITY, DREAMING, COMMUNITY, TRANSPARENCY, LEARNING, and ACTIVISM.
We will offer to you creative works, stories, and resources that have supported our journey to creating a values-centered, mission-oriented collective in which leadership and labor is shared, and artists feel whole, valued, and cared for. Our practices offer tenacity in artistic, cultural, and movement organizing work.
We are sharing our *magic* with you!
This course is for you if you are an artist, organizer, educator, cultural worker, or other related practitioner who is deepening and re-imagining your leadership practice.
Tuesdays 5:30-8:30pm EST 9/21-11/16 OFF 11/2 Election Day
Every other Thursday 5:30-7:00pm EST (9/23, 10/7, 10/21, 11/11)
This program takes place online in real time, via Zoom. Gibney will provide Live Transcription via Otter Live Notes in English for this program.
THE VIRTUAL COURSE INCLUDES:
- Weekly Live Instruction designed to build community and introduce ideas
- Small Discussion Groups designed to support each other as we apply learned concepts and frameworks
- 1:1 Accountability Partnerships to support your overall experience
- Reflection + Integration prompts and activities are designed for you to integrate your learning after each session
- Resources (reading, listening, watching, worksheets) to support your learning before, during, and after each session.
- Virtual Community Hub to access all resources and socialize with cohort outside of class times.
YOU WILL PRACTICE:
- Movement designed to support an embodied connection to concepts and frameworks
- Self-management
- Community building
- Defining and sustaining liberation
- Defining personal, collective, or organizational values
- Collaboration
- Defining cooperative economics
- Reflection, improvisation, and responsiveness
- Activism that is long term and strategic
By the end of this course, participants will share an idea that they are dreaming of that applies the skills they have learned and plan to continue to work on beyond our time together.
Thank you for choosing to show up for yourself and your communities through this work. We are so excited to be on a journey together with you.
We see you! We support you! We lift you up!
Application Due: Monday, August 9th, 2021 at 11:59pm EDT
Applicants will be notified of acceptance by Friday, August 13th, 2021. We ask that accepted participants confirm their acceptance by Tuesday, August 24th, 2021. Payment plans are available, with final fee payments due by Tuesday, September 14th, 2021.
Course Fees
SLMDances has defined the rates of our sliding scale course fees by the northeastern seasonal farming cycles, understanding ourselves and our work as relational and cyclical. Winter is when the soil is frozen and cannot grow much; Spring is when you can begin to seed/plant but aren’t likely to have much harvest; during Summer, the harvest begins as some plants are still growing; Fall is the most abundant season in the northeast, when many/most plots are cleared to free the soil for the rest of winter and another year of planting.
- $50 Find-A-Sponsor – The participant pays $50 and finds a sponsor(s) who is willing to pay an additional $150.
- $310 – Winter, lowest sliding scale rate
- $380 – Spring, middle sliding scale rate
- $450 – Summer, highest sliding scale rate
- $625 – Fall, true cost rate
Upon acceptance to the course, you will receive instructions on how to submit payment. Participants should choose the level of payment that is mindful of how they may contribute to the collective thriving of the course cohort, and also feels in alignment with their personal thriving. Payment plans are available.
100% of participants said they would recommend PD for the People! to a friend.
ABOUT SLMDANCES
Sydnie L. Mosley Dances (SLMDances) is a New York City-based dance-theater collective that works in communities to organize for gender and racial justice through experiential dance performance. SLMDances’ works engage audiences in the artistic process; our dances provoke a visceral reaction to the physicality on stage and incite conversation toward community action.
The works reflect real life experiences central to our identities, and pulls focus to the stories of women and Black folks. The movement vocabulary fluidly integrates modern dance techniques and movement of the African Diaspora, while dancers frequently use their voice with spoken text and audible breath. Through dimensional compositions, specific, textured movement, humor and character development, choreographed works appeal to a sense of humanity.
The collective situates itself amongst the Harlem arts community by creating and presenting dance uptown; partnering with other Harlem artists and businesses; and focusing community-based initiatives within Harlem. SLMDances travels for projects both domestically and internationally as relevant to the mission and interests of the collective.
NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and First Lady Chirlane McCray recognized Artistic Director Sydnie L. Mosley for using her talents in dance to fuel social change. Other support and recognition includes: Black Art Futures Fund (2021), Harlem Stage Fund for New Work (2020-2021), Manhattan Community Artists in Residence through Lincoln Center Education (2018-2020), LMCC Creative Engagement (2017, 2019, 2020), CUNY Dance Initiative (2016- 2017), Dancing While Black Artist Fellowship (2015-2016), and The Field Leadership Fund (2015-2017), The Performance Project @ University Settlement (2015-2016). Sydnie is a 2013 alumna of the Create Change Fellowship with The Laundromat Project, and the Gibney Dance Institute for Community Action Training. In 2011, she became the inaugural Barnard Center for Research on Women Alumnae Fellow.
SLMDances has shown work at Dixon Place, Gibney Dance, The Chen Dance Center newsteps program, the FIGMENT Festival on Governor’s Island, RoofTopDance, 92Y, as a part of the New York Foundation for the Arts Boot Camp Arts Festival at Surreal Estate and Joyce SoHo, The Actor’s Fund Arts Center, the Harlem Arts Alliance Artz, Rootz & Rhythm Festival, Movement Research at Judson Church, BAX|Brooklyn Arts Exchange, The Riverside Church, The Red Carpet Theater at Taino Towers, Harlem Stage’s The Takeover, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD!), Triskelion Arts, The New School for Hollaback!’s HOLLA:Revolution, Barnard College, Cornell University, The Pennsylvania State University, Amherst College and Duke University, in addition to the NYC anti-street harassment rally, annually, and many outdoor performances including the Suite Summer Festival at Socrates Sculpture Garden in Queens and Multicultural Arts Festival in Harlem.
“The PD is amazing, and it helped me feel liberated and justified in my work and moving forward in it…the facilitators, readings, assignments, and participants provided me with invaluable exchanges, advice, experiences and feedback that will continue to have an impact on my work for years to come.“
-2020 Participant
Top photo by Amir Hamja. Bottom photo by ShocPhoto.