A week of activities has been organized leading up to the launch of Feed the Artist, the Battlefords first arts and culture magazine made by a group of young volunteers in the community.
The magazine is being released Saturday, June 16 from 7 to 10 p.m. at the Chapel Gallery. Zen Shin, hip hop from Saskatoon will be the feature musicians, as well as local funk band, The Cunning Men. The show will also be the opening reception for Karlie King's Descarte inspired deskart.
Zines will be available for purchase at The Battleford Boutique, Freedom, Crandleberry's, Classic Trading and the Allen Sapp Gallery.
Ashley Johnson is one of the volunteers behind the project.
"Dance is created in all forms, walking down the street, in conversation with others, in our classrooms and at our jobs. Movement is a universal language that expresses the human condition," says Johnson, dancer and dance educator.
"Extraction of form is never limited to those with technical training. Often when in the right environment, beautiful and provocative movement can come from a body with no formal training.
"I became interested in working with non-dancers after I started my training as a Mitzvah teacher and slowly became more and more fascinated with the language of simple gesture. Working with two bodies that are relatively un-patterned through technical training is a blessing because it allows the choreographer to see easily into the emotion behind simple pedestrian movements."
Johnson believes everyone can dance and has been challenging the students in the classrooms of Connaught and McKitrick community schools to be inspired by movement.
Random Acts of Dancing (RAD) is a year-long project based in places unfamiliar to dance performance and education. The project will finish with a week of events promoting street art leading up to FTA's magazine launch. Students from Sakewew and NBCHS as well as many talented community members will be performing in three events that bring performance art to the street, into the banks and up a tree.
This week of street art aims to come to you instead of you going to it. The intention is to reach a larger audience and expand our conceptions of what art is. "Art belongs everywhere, not just in the theater, the gallery and on TV," Johnson explains, "RAD aims to wake people up to the beauty of their day-to-day lives through dance and performance in unusual places."
Johnson will be surprising the public with a solo dance performance in the Credit Union at 4 p.m. Wednesday as well as a flashmob somewhere downtown at noon Thursday. Both will include live music performed by many talented Battleford area artists.
