Free outdoor dance performance — registration required

In the wake of continued loss artists Emily Bate and Shayla-Vie Jenkins each present new meditations in the Christ Church Burial Ground. Each work, sited in one of the oldest resting places in Philadelphia, considers grief and communal gatherings of public healing. Bate and Jenkins each acknowledge the burial ground as a tender and troubled place that holds layers of the city’s history — casting it as a space that is ultimately as much about futures created together as it is the past.

This program is curated and organized by Katy Dammers and produced by Christ Church Neighborhood House.

Shayla-Vie Jenkins is a performer, teacher, and maker whose current research and practice explores blackness, presence, and liberation. Shayla-Vie performed with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company from 2005–2016. During her tenure, the company received two ensemble New York Dance and Performance Awards for Chapel Chapter (2007) at Harlem Stage and for the “Outstanding Revival” of D-Man In The Waters (2013) at The Joyce Theater. She has restaged notable BTJAZ works at universities nationwide and continues to teach for the company at the American Dance Festival. Shayla-Vie has most recently performed in projects with Yara Travieso, Ni’Ja Whitson, Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born (Sitting on a Man’s Head), Yvonne Rainer (Part of Some Sextets), David Gordon (The Philadelphia Matter 1972/2020), and James Allister Sprang. She is an Assistant Professor in the School of Dance at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.