Arts in Nature Festival - DNDA Showcase

DNDA’s Arts in Nature Showcase on August 28th will evoke the feeling and flair of our annual Arts In Nature Festival, offering an eclectic experience of art and performance in a local park. Come explore our performance stage, mixed media art installations, family-friendly interactive activities, and hiking trails through the great outdoors! The entire event is open to the public as a completely free summer event. 

STAGE

Holy Pistola is a well-rehearsed 9 piece band that seamlessly blends elements of Soul, Funk & Hip Hop. Our musical direction reflects a wide array of inspirations across those same genres.

Inspired by everything from 70’s Soul & Funk pioneers like Roy Ayers, Mother Father Sister Brother, Sly & The Family Stone to golden era hip hop artist such as The Fugees, Nas, Rakim, The Roots to more contemporary artist like Robert Glasper Experiment, Kendrick Lamar & Little Dragon.

 New Music Coming 2021
Momma Nikki
Artist/Musician/Poet
www.MommaNikki.com
HeyMommaNikki@gmail.com
Venmo: @HeyMommaNikki
CashApp: $HeyMommaNikki

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The Djeliyah Band is the newest West African Music & Dance Band that’s located in Seattle, Washington. A harmonic fusion between the traditional Djeli music and the modern Guinea music within West Africa, which provides a highlife sound for your dancing pleasure!

Orchestrated by: multi-talented Djeli, Aboubacar “Boka” Kouyaté of Kankan, Guinea, West Africa. Djelis have always been next to the king and honored within the West African region as the Traditional Griot.

The band began February 2015 in Seattle, Washington. Hitting the ground with an exciting bouquet of songs, music and dance that includes an interactive component for everyone’s enjoyment.

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Locally grown cellist Gretchen Yanover began playing cello in Seattle Public Schools. She earned a BA in Music Performance and a Teaching Certificate from UW. Gretchen won a position in NW Sinfonietta Orchestra on the same day she taught her first string orchestra classes. Embracing an interwoven path of teaching and performing, Ms Yanover guided students in music for 17 years, while continuing to grow her solo music career. Gretchen moved her focus from teaching to solo performing in 2016, and continues to compose with her electric cello and looping pedal. She has four solo albums to date.

Gretchen loves exploring places on foot, cooking vegan dishes, reading for fun, and having dance parties at home with her daughter.

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Noelle Price, international contemporary creator, from Detroit, MI, moved to Seattle WA in 2015 after receiving her Bachelor of Arts in Dance from Western Michigan University. She wrote and performed her one woman play Death and Other Rude Things in 2016, performed live with Gretchen Yanover at TEDx Seattle 2019 as well as received Seattle Dances - Dance Crush Award for her commitment to advocacy through dance in that same year. Price presented at the DEAW conference in 2020, the Vashon Center for the Arts Shaping Movement - Body Image Conferences and is the co-chair of the Black Alumni Advisory Council (BAAC) for her alma mater WMU.  In addition to being on faculty at Cornish College of the Arts, Noelle Price is the Executive  Director of PRICEarts and founding member of PRICEarts Never Ending Work dance project.  

She believes in the whole person, she believes in the pause and the ability to rebuild after a pause. She strives to share her experience as a full framed creator in every moment and movement.

Jennifer Moore (The Well Of Sound/DJ Freequeensee) is a multi-disciplinary artist born and raised in the Northwest. 

I sense no difference between art and existence. In this way I am an artist, as I believe we all are. I create as a practice of freedom. I translate life into sound, image and movement, to affect and accept its direction, path, and quality. In pursuit of inner vision and my own feeling tone of love, I work daily to allow creation and possibility to flow through me. I find sway and fluidity in the interplay between medium, with a focus in music composition and production, sonic meditation, poetry and dance. I practice liberation through process, and believe sharing to be an integral part of growth and healing. Love as modality is necessary. Love is all there is, so long as we have the courage to give and receive. 

A three-time grand slam poetry champion, Troy is the recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and the Jack Straw Cultural Center, and has earned grant awards from Artist Trust and the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. His work has appeared in Hobart Journal, the Margins, [PANK], Poetry Northwest, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.

Singer-songwriter Cody Choi began performing under the name SuperCoze as a solo act in 2017. Creating multi-genre music from improvised material recorded on their phone, their music focuses on mental health advocacy and self-care. The band is a sweet three-piece ensemble with drummer Je’Warren and bassist Eli.

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Allison Masangkay (DJ Phenohype) is a sick and disabled queer Filipinx femme artist, student, and social justice advocate. Her work is influenced by and dedicated to her childhood in northern New Jersey, survival in Sequim, Washington, ancestral memory, and diaspora feels. Her sets include a range of genres, especially Jersey club, soul, hip hop, and house. 

LASH is 20, ready and thriving.

Born and raised in Seattle, this Washington native has advocated for black, queer youth since young. 

She’s finished a year as a college first-gen and is focusing on determining her career path. Her passion and interest for social justice and art has led her to collaborate on many local and global causes, where LASH uses personal adversity and spirituality to create multimedia art that brings her to center and that resonates in the hearts of others.

FIELD

The Washington Capoeira Center - Capoeira Angola Panteras has roots from the first capoeira school and masters in Washington from the 1980s. 

The WCC is a South Asian Muslim and Black-led capoeira school from the Southend off Rainier and Forest St. 

Mestre Syed and Professor Omari’s life missions are to maintain and pass on to future generations the traditions taught to them by Grand Master Nô of Bahia, Brasil. WCC offers classes in North and South Seattle and Downtown Tacoma.

IVÁN-DANIEL ESPINOSA is a Latino interdisciplinary artist and choreographer of Live performance based in Seattle.  His recent multimedia dance installations exploring mycelium fungi networks, bio-sonification, and forest lichen are at the forefront of INTERSPECIES PERFORMANCE.  Iván-Daniel has presented his ecology-themed artwork nationwide at venues such as the world-renowned La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York City, Houston Fringe Festival, Austin Fringe Festival, the Seattle International Butoh Festival, Seattle ARTS IN NATURE Festival and at numerous academic forums including the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center's BUTOH NEXT symposium, Performática International Forum of Contemporary Dance and Movement Arts at the Universidad de las Américas in Mexico, York (Toronto) University’s Imagining Differently: Research-Creation Practices in Urgent Times conference, and the 2021 International Federation for Theatre Research conference hosted by the National University of Ireland Galway.

 

Iván-Daniel's choreographic approaches to performance are highly influenced by his intensive studies of Japanese Butoh dance.  He has trained with veteran Butoh artists Hiroko & Koichi Tamano, Natsu Nakajima, Keiji "Semimaru" Morita and Dai Matsuoka of the world-renowned Butoh dance troupe SANKAI JUKU, Diego Piñón and Seattle Butoh pioneer Joan Laage.  Iván-Daniel frequently collaborates with avant-garde musicians and electroacoustic sound artists, as well as with mycologists and sculptors of various mediums, to create his multi-layered, sensorially immersive environments.  Iván-Daniel holds a Master of Arts degree in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (NYU).  

Washington born and raised interdisciplinary artist; Kimisha Turner enjoys working in varying mediums & processes to execute her conceptual vision. She creates murals, art camps/workshops, sculptures, and performance art, connecting with her community while reflecting the times. Typically, there is a familiar thread of layers and beauty combined with challenging subject matter in her work, with the hope that it is provocative yet easily digested by a varied audience. Bright colors and semi-precious materials are often used to grab attention and draw in the viewer.
Growing up as a Black woman in the Pacific Northwest, losing both parents by her early 30’s and being a mother to beautiful boy on the spectrum, her layered life experience heavily influences her artistic curiosity. Her work aims to help generate new perspectives and encourage empathy, pushing to have the viewer walk in another’s shoes while exploring ways that allow one to relate to another. She earned her B.F.A. from Cornish College of the Arts with an emphasis in Photography and Printmaking and has since focused on innovative ways of creating and interpreting the human journey. The Seattle Art Museum, Pratt Fine Arts and Seattle Theater Group are a few of the organizations to collaborate with Kimisha. While she isn’t making work, she is raising her amazing flipbook making son, Malcolm.
Yvad Campbell is a Jamaican fine artist changing the face of portraiture with his sensitive, vibrant, and political portrayals of Black folks, ranging from people he meets on the street, to fellow contemporary artists, to even former President Obama.
 
Campbell made a name for himself with his naturalistic and vibrant portraits of young Black men , often with flowery backgrounds. With Black masculinity often framed as synonymous with fear and violence, his portraits challenge viewers' preconceptions and bring young men and people of color into the galleries and museums where they're so woefully underrepresented.