Current Projects

The Love Letters project will be anchored by 651 ARTS, Miami-Dade Community College, Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts and Howard University, working in active partnership with selected Historically Black Colleges and Universities and local African American communities, beginning (Fall) 2001 - December 2003.

Specifically, the project will be led by Souloworks/Andrea E. Woods & Dancers and will consist of four 1-week workshop residencies around the country, culminating with the tour of a 50-minute group dance titled Love Letters. The final work will draw on these workshops, which will involve African American community members in a multi-generational exchange, including interviews, letter reading, storytelling and movement/gesture experiences. Love Letters will be performed by Souloworks (six dancers and four musicians) and will incorporate in a music/vocal score recording of original letters read and stories told by workshop participants. In addition photographs or letters belonging to the participants will be videotaped as part of a collage of images to accompany the dancers. Choreographer Andrea E. Woods has worked on numerous community-based activities of this nature and brings extensive touring years as dancer/rehearsal director for Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company (1989 -1995).

Discovering a letter written by a suitor to her Great Aunt Margaret in 1941. In the letter a young man declared to my Aunt, "Dear Peg, . . I don't want to set the world on fire I just want to start a flame in your heart." Woods was inspired to extend her personal family history into a community expression of a universal idea by creatively presenting loving relationships in the African American community. Love Letters will recount how generations of African Americans and their ancestors have expressed affection, tenderness, romance and love.

Collaborating with Woods are composer/percussionist David Pleasant who is a 1997 recipient of a New York Performance Bessie award and former composer/musician for Urban Bush Women and Forces of Nature, as well as photographer/video artist George R. Larkins, whose photo illustrations have appeared in several prominent African American publications most recently accompanying Walter Mosely's new serialized novel "The Tempest Tales" (Savoy Magazine, Jan. - Dec., 2001). Both Pleasant and Larkins have collaborated with Woods on several previous projects.

Following the premiere of the first 20 minute excerpt of Love Letters at the BAM Harvey Theater (651 ARTS) in Brooklyn in February 2001, Souloworks will continue conducting Love Letters workshops and teaching residencies at selected host sites as well as touring the completed work throughout 2002 - 2003.

For more information, performance and/or residency fees and booking please email us at andreaewoods@aol.com.

Love Letters workshop: informing the choreographic process with movement, memory, myth and the heart

The love letters workshop is an exploration of movement/voice inspired by and reflective of spoken word and the natural rhythms and intonations inherent in the voice. Written or spoken stories and photographs have an inherent sense of history, time and place and motion. As a choreographer/dancer my passion and instinct are exploring stories through movement. I will be asking workshop participants to share their personal accounts of love from their own love letters, notes or spoken word. The atmosphere of the workshops will be that of a gathering to share and acknowledge memories and issues that exemplify love in our lives. The workshops will include women and men and explore a range of perspectives and experiences. "Love Letters" will present loving relationships in the African American community as a continuum of our ancestral legacy and our present day efforts to create personal, intimate harmony and peace in our families and society at large.

While exploring as a group and as individuals we will use stories and relationships from our nuclear and extended families, partners, friends and loved ones living and ancestral as the resources for dance movements and gestures.

Activities Include:
a group warm up, letter reading, story telling, interviews, creating dance gestures and movements, creating a group song. Selected workshop interviews will be audio or video taped. The and included in the Love Letters musical composition or to inspire song lyrics.

The workshop will include a group warm up. Participants should wear lose comfortable clothing or sweats. Bring:
• notebook/journal, pencil/pen
• photographs, letters or notes from or to loved ones (wives, husbands, boy/girl friends, partners, family members etc.)
• memories and stories about courting, dating, falling and being in love

Optimum number of participants 10.- 20
Age range 18 and older
Length of workshop - 1 1/2 - 2 hours

For more information, performance and/or residency fees and booking please email us at andreaewoods@aol.com.