amara tabor-smith

Photo by Robbie Sweeny

Grant Recipient

Photo by Robbie Sweeny

Location

Oakland, CA

Digital Presence

Artist Website

Project Title

(may there be) Good Atmosphere Between Us: The Parables of NOW

Fiscal Year Awarded

2027

Grant or Program

National Dance Project Production Grant

Grant Amount

$45,000

(may there be) Good Atmosphere Between Us: The Parables of Now is an interdisciplinary ritual performance project that responds to the current global climate crisis through dance, storytelling, and Yorubá/Lukumí divination practices. Grounded in community narratives intermingled with African and Indigenous mythologies and spiritual texts, this multi year project is performed as a series of “parables” inspired in part by the writings of Octavia Butler and is guided by the core question, “How do we activate our collective wisdom to survive, adapt, and heal from environmental catastrophe, political chaos and climate disaster in the Anthropocene?”

Caretakers of Land/Land Acknowledgement: Oakland sits on the territory of Huichin, the unceded land of the Chochenyo Muwekma Ohlone people.

Estimated Artist Fee: $35,880

Four people dressed in black stand on a stage.

Photo by Robbie Sweeny

Four performers dressed in black sit on a stage. Behind them is a projection of an elderly person.

Photo by Robbie Sweeny

Four performers dressed in black move about a stage. One of them seems to scream passionately.

Photo by Robbie Sweeny

Four people are outside by a waterfront, three of them sit and one of them stands.

Photo by Robbie Sweeny

Interested in presenting this work?

Institute for Diversity in the Arts | A-lan Holt
Director
Institute for Diversity in the Arts
aholt@stanford.edu
ida.stanford.edu

The following organizations have partnered with this project:

Stanford Institute for Diversity in the Arts and Stanford Theater for Performance Studies Department (Stanford, CA)
Eastside Arts Alliance (Oakland, CA)
Brava Women in the Arts (San Francisco, CA)
Sibyls Shrine in collaboration with PearlArts (Pittsburgh, PA)
Junebug Productions (New Orleans, LA)