Daphne Harrison Lecture and Performance: Heroes and Villains
Art and the Road to Improved Race Relations in Baltimore
Location
Performing Arts & Humanities Building : Dance Cube, Rm 337
Date & Time
April 7, 2016, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
Description
DAPHNE HARRISON LECTURE AND PERFORMANCE
Heroes and Villains: Art, Imagination and the Road to Improved Race Relations in Baltimore
Breai Mason-Campbell, Baltimore dancer, teacher, and community activist
Bigotry and systemic injustice are characterized by emotional detachment and resistance to accountability. They are positioned at the polar ends of the spectrum we use to explain the disproportionate sufferings of Americans who are black. Thus, we remain confounded by a civic order that is unjust. By considering its power to broaden imaginations, reveal truths, and inspire empathy, this talk and dance performance will explore the ways in which Arts Education is poised to lead the way in repairing relationships and lives in what will be the deciding years of the health of Baltimore. It will also explore the potential of Arts Education to make progress not through legislation but through the power of understanding.
Bio: Breai Mason-Campbell is a Baltimore native, teacher, dancer, and
cultural counselor. A Harvard graduate, Mason-Campbell’s scholarship
explores the role of secular art as a religious and moral touchstone for
African-American people. Mason-Campbell has worked as an educator and
administrator for New Song Community Learning Center in Sandtown since 2002. As
her methodology for social change, she has written and implemented
comprehensive arts-integration curricula. These include The Corner and The
Colony, which uses photo essays to draw correlations between the
European colonization of North America and the occupation of street corners by
drug dealers, and Roots and Remixes, which engages youth in
describing what it means to be African-American to the world through
video. Her work has been supported by grants from Teaching Tolerance and
the Frankie Manning Foundation, which named her a Cultural Ambassador in 2014. A
steward of the black vernacular movement, Mason-Campbell has directed and
performed at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the
Mechanic Theater and the Hippodrome. Her latest work, Dancing White,
asks through lecture and performance whether, because of racial politics, the
color of a body limits the primal, unencumbered freedom of movement.
Sponsored by the Dresher Center for the
Humanities, the Africana Studies Department, and the Dance Department.
