Anonymous intimacy showcased different Bay Area artists as they embody their immediate expressions through shadow and color while being encased in an opaque paper covered display case. By passers views it from the other side of the display case, reaching and making indirect contacts with the artists as they try to embrace the artist’s intentions. This piece felt so anonymous yet powerful as they connect different people to the artist and knotting all the heart strings together.

Directed and Choreographed by: Angela Newsham Performance by: Angela Newsham, Titania Kumeh, and Jose Cital Videography by: Tim L Schafer Music by: Viktoria Leilani This work sample was shot specifically for video so that the viewer can see the details in each dancer's movement. This performance "Eyes Yield: The Importance of Healing a Rape Culture in Community" is part of a three hour workshop called "Healing for Change" which engages participants in the importance of collective healing through movement. "Eyes Yield: The Importance of Healing a Rape Culture in Community", features three performers dancing in trust and resilience, bringing awareness and balance to a person/community using Body-Mind Centering techniques. This choreography is developed using Body-Mind Centering developmental movement process, "Yield, Push, Reach, (Grasp) Pull" and explores what happens when a person is witnessed, when we, the community, can lean on one another and how this helps to redefine, restore or rebalance our movement process. In our "Healing for Change" workshop all performers worked with groups to explore the developmental movement patterns with our participants before our performance. Provided this opportunity, our audience may understand our message on a somatic level and participate in collective healing. We received outstanding feedback from participants and from our collaborators, San Francisco Women Against Rape and OSHA, two organizations in the Bay Area that support survivors that participated in the development and review of this project. The next step in reaching a larger audience will be to tour colleges with this workshop and expand the cast.

Titine Vos (Angela Newsham) and Laura Oriol Performance Art Residency in Paris https://anglaura.tumblr.com/ La Defense August 2014 Performance length: 2.5hrs One month of street performance/explorations, video art and installations inspired and supported by gentleness, radical acceptance and ritualizing creativity into our daily lives. To work with gentleness is to work with respect and listening. It is the idea that we do not need to push ourselves beyond our boundaries or look outside ourselves to find strength. Our bodies themselves hold space for creativity. With gentleness we challenge this societal expectation and ground ourselves in self care, honor our physical limitations and tap into the space inwardly connecting. Radical acceptance is the refusal of perfection. We believe that anything can be the support for our creative expression. We want to expose our vulnerability and be supported by the acceptance of our struggles, our sense of inadequacy and our fears. In this way, we enter a state of non-striving and allow ourselves to be. We work with our personal yet deeply universal challenges, hardships, we will use our fears, our shame and sense of ‘not belonging’ to create explorations and performances. By ritualizing creativity into our daily lives, we reintegrate art into the center of our lives and experience creative expression as inseparable to our daily living. The simple intention of being mindful in each moment of the day brings a similar quality of attention we offer in performance to our cooking, cleaning, and waking. Through the incorporation of movement, breathing, singing and chanting so that each moment is a platform for creativity, we connect to our ancestors and question societal conditionings.

Performance response to patriarchal male dominance. Butoh artist Angela Newsham wears hand-sewn documents that attest to misogyny with written accounts of the personal impact of these discourses on her familial lineage. She moves with statements by Toni Morrison to draw a connection between racism and sexism. She demonstrates the importance of leaning into our personal pain to create space for others and take responsibility for the political power we hold. While audience members read aloud the documents from her costume, she focuses on her internal cellular archive and wisdom. Community engagement was a large part of the creation for this piece. Inspired by her teacher Vangeline’s article, Misogyny in the Dance World: https://www.vangeline.com/news/2017/11/27/misogyny-in-the-dance-world-are-we-listening-by-vangeline I performed many renditions of this piece. Each one invited room for collaboration with new artists and musical improvisation. The voice of Toni Morrison emerged when the question, How do we take responsibility for the harm we perpetuate in our society, even when we are suffering from oppression? This performance grew from being a response to acts of misogyny in the dance world to how we care for our own pain and remain open to seeing they way we are complacent when others are being harmed. I acknowledge the ways I has been harmed by sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, and ablism, and hold white and cis privilege. It is my intention to draw a connection to how we can take responsibility to heal our personal lineages of pain that we carry and hold space for collective healing. I engaged my collaborators and audience members in this inquiry. Each performance was danced using the same costume with new articles sewn into it. Audience participation was invited to read aloud articles and musicians were invited to improvise during the performance creating a cacophony of new possibilities. Sound Composition by Angela Newsham featuring words of Toni Morrison, Michelle Obama, voices of Angela’s Vocal Ensemble students, and Trumpet by Ariya Amin. Performance duration: 15min October 17, 2019

Film by Angela Newsham and Laura Oriol Chief Cameraman and Editor: Julie Rodrigue Still Photographer: Jérôme Gaussein Paris Art Residency 2014 One month of street performance/explorations, video art and installations inspired and supported by gentleness, radical acceptance and ritualizing creativity into our daily lives. To work with gentleness is to work with respect and listening. It is the idea that we do not need to push ourselves beyond our boundaries or look outside ourselves to find strength. Our bodies themselves hold space for creativity. With gentleness we challenge this societal expectation and ground ourselves in self care, honor our physical limitations and tap into the space inwardly connecting. Radical acceptance is the refusal of perfection. We believe that anything can be the support for our creative expression. We want to expose our vulnerability and be supported by the acceptance of our struggles, our sense of inadequacy and our fears. In this way, we enter a state of non-striving and allow ourselves to be. We work with our personal yet deeply universal challenges, hardships, we will use our fears, our shame and sense of ‘not belonging’ to create explorations and performances. By ritualizing creativity into our daily lives, we reintegrate art into the center of our lives and experience creative expression as inseparable to our daily living. The simple intention of being mindful in each moment of the day brings a similar quality of attention we offer in performance to our cooking, cleaning, and waking. Through the incorporation of movement, breathing, singing and chanting so that each moment is a platform for creativity, we connect to our ancestors and question societal conditionings.

CCSF Virtually Feminist Collective Sharing 2020 Choreography and Soundtrack by Angela Newsham Videography by Caryn Liau

Video from recent performance at Art Saves Lives Gallery in the Castro!!! Performance response to "Misogyny in the Dance world: Are we Listening" article by Vangeline France my respected mentor. Thank you!

In memory of the painter Sharon Pearson, I explore the boundaries of time. This line resembles the ocean and how one may find balance in the the face of challenges.