Lela Aisha Jones

Window on the Work: October 22, 2012, Troy Dance Studio

The dancers will be featuring some excerpted work from the STREET GRACE SERIES. This Flyground Series is a contemporary collection of movement performance works that cleverly blur textual and bodily memories as they are uncovered in the histories of African/Afro/Black diasporic shared experiences in the US.  Currently the Series includes Native Portals of Lynching and Love, which is an abstract cultural narrative that transforms our relationship with the noose as an active agent in lynching through jolts of comedy and intensity.  It puts the image of the noose front and center for everyone to work through in their bodies and systems.  It starts internal and external conversations based on what has been missing or excluded as a part of our historical education in theUS-namely visibility, accountability, and healing.

Biography

*Lela Aisha Jones* is a native of Tallahassee, Florida and is at home when creating.  While in movement she found her entry point as an artist, she cannot be defined by one discipline or practice; her experiences have lead to a more nomadic existence. She is the founder of FlyGround-her creative home, co-founder of The Requisite Movers, and development coordinator as well as member of Mascher Space Co-op. Lela walks with her transitioned as well as living family; she is humbled and so thankful for all those who have nurtured her, especially her grandfather, mom, dad, and sister.

*FlyGround* experiences are in a genre of their own but never too far from home. Since 2009, it is a movement performance company that artistically archives and rethinks the intersecting lineages of the African/Afro/Black diaspora and US black lived experiences through abstract, physical and cultural narrative.  The work is a spiritual sanctuary that asks hard questions in safe spaces and honors the body and embodied experience as real landscapes that know life.  We walk coherently through cultures and traditions meeting where we can and realizing where we are varied.  We are grounded in native US vibes.  We are home grown traces of many.  We are consciously here.