Opening Trauma into Transformation: The Politics and Poetics of Embodied Knowledge in Physical Difference and Disability
This panel explores loss, sexuality, movement, and trauma through the lens of performance art, dance, disability, poetry, and sex work. As intertwined artists, the bright light we stand in is that of transformation through embodied inquiry. Elements of the panel invite audience participation/sensory immersion.
Amber DiPietra:
“The Disabled Sex(ological Body) Worker: a Poetics of invisible, Intimate Performance”
Amber Dipietra, as a body and personality, has moved on an arc from socially-isolated child with a disability, to poet, to disability advocate, to escort, to intimacy coach. She recently moved from San Francisco to St. Petersburg, FL where she has started a a local chapter of the Sex Workers Outreach Project, swoptampabay,org.. Find her at adipietra.blogspot.com and
Violet Juno:
"Portals to Transformation: Body, Art, Architecture and Sound"
Violet Juno is a transdisciplinary performance artist who has performed and exhibited at 70 venues in 36 cities since 1990. She combines text, sound, visual tableaus, kinetic sculpture, movement and a unique form of three-dimensional mapping to create multisensory experiences for her audience. Her work addresses issues involving disability/embodiment, trauma/transformation, and the poetic tension between language and languagelessness. More info at www.violet.juno.com
Margit Galanter:
"Vivid Spaces: Movement as a Re-source"
Margit Galanter is a movement educator, arts investigator, and dance poet living in Oakland, CA. Her fascination with the potency of movement -- the multiplicity of tones, its cultural efficacy, the composing -- has drawn her to embodied inquiry for decades. She has presented, performed, and taught her work throughout the US, and has a thriving practice in the Bay Area called Physical Intelligence Life Arts, where she finds the greatest understanding through the mysteries that emerge from the speculative nature of conversation, creative collaboration, and shared practice. PI Practice: www.
Denise Leto:
“Postcard Divinations, Embodied Loss, and the Poetics of Origin: A Grief Geography”
Denise Leto is a poet, editor, and explorer of multigenre and collaborative forms of media and performance. She wrote the libretto for the performance piece, Your Body is Not a Shark, which examined the poetics of embodied difference and disability through music, text, and dance. Recently, she was awarded a Fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference in Sicily and was the recipient of the Orlando Poetry Prize. onecontinuousword@
