Creative Residency: Leslie Parker
Choreographer Leslie Parker continues a multiyear project with a creative residency. Parker’s time at Danspace Project includes an exploration of the organization – both the archives and its physical location over the decades since the 1970s to current years – with an emphasis on visionary artist Laurie Carlos. Parker will consider and contemplate multiple perspectives on improvisation through a Black femme lens.
This residency is, in part, research for the world premiere of Divination Tools: imagine home at Walker Art Center May 11-13, 2023 and its New York City premiere at Danspace Project in Fall 2023. Reflecting on divinity and lineage, Divination Tools: imagine home is the latest iteration of Parker’s epic work Call to Remember. The work draws from Blackness in music, dance, and storytelling in real-time.
Divination Tools: imagine home is co-commissioned by Walker Art Center (MN), Pillsbury House Theatre (MN), Pangea World Theater (MN), Danspace Project (NYC), and Counterpulse (SF).
A St. Paul, MN Rondo, native, Leslie Parker is a dance artist with home art bases in Brooklyn, NY and the Twin Cities, MN. As a dance artist/maker, improviser, performer, director, collaborator, and educator, she is a 2022 McKnight Fellow and her work is awarded by National Dance Project (2021), National Performance Network Creation Fund (2020), National Performance Network Development fund (2021), National Performance Network community engagement fund (2021), and National Performance Network Storytelling & Documentation fund (2021). She is an Outstanding Performance Bessie Award recipient and an inaugural Jerome Hill Foundation Artist Fellow. Growing up in the Rondo community rooted her in socially engaged art and led her to hold a BFA in Choreography and Modern dance technique from Esther Boyer College of Music & Dance (Temple University) and an MFA in dance from Hollins University in partnership with the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, The Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts and The Dresden Frankfurt Company in Frankfurt, Germany. Parker’s original works have been presented by New York Live Arts, HarlemStages EMoves13, Thelma Hill Performing Arts Center, Tribeca Performing Art Center, University of Minnesota Dance, Southern Theater, Pillsbury House Theatre, Pangea World Theater, Walker Art Center, and Painted Bride Arts Center.