NEWS & EVENTS
Events
Celebrating Arts & Health
Exploring the impact of music, movement, and poetry on our health and well-being with Ashley Cornelius, Suzanne Costello and Fred Johnson
All come, free to all
Free parking available
Refreshments provided
Fred Johnson, an acclaimed jazz vocalist, sacred chanter, storyteller, author and arts educator, has opened for both Aretha Franklin and Dr. Deepak Chopra demonstrating his remarkable versatility as an artist and healer. He is recognized globally for his work in the health and wellness community and his extensive work in international Interfaith peace and reconciliation.
Ashley Cornelius, the first Black Pikes Peak Region Poet Laureate, is a nationally recognized and multi-award-winning spoken-word poet, facilitator, cultural worker and keynote speaker. She believes that mental health is paramount, and poetry and performance are a way to support mindfulness and coping skills.
Suzanne Costello has toured internationally as a dance/theater director, choreographer, and performer. Working at the forefront of the Arts & Health field, she has offered her Caring for the Caregiver program for caregivers across all spectrums of the caregiving field for over thirty years.
More About the Artists:
Fred Johnson
Fred Johnson is an artist and educator dedicated to the journey of creating space that serves to manifest the restoration of our highest energy of humanity. The fact that he has opened for both Aretha Franklin and Dr. Deepak Chopra points to his versatility as an artist and healer. An acclaimed jazz vocalist, sacred chanter, storyteller, author and arts educator, Fred is a graduate of the National Academy of the Performing Arts as well as the Master Performers School of the National Mime Theater. He has opened for or recorded and toured worldwide with jazz and R& B legends Ramsey Lewis, Chick Corea, Sonny Rollins, Christian McBride, Richard Elliot, George Benson, Boney James, Joe Zawinul, Ottmar Liebert, David Sanborn, B. B. King, Patti LaBelle, Herbie Mann, Dizzy Gillespie, Nat Adderley and Miles Davis.
He is recognized globally for his work in the health and wellness community and his extensive work in international Interfaith peace and reconciliation. He served as Deputy Executive Director of Intersections International, a Multi-faith, multi-cultural initiative of The Collegiate Church of New York for nine years and led their international outreach, utilizing the arts, meditation and dialogue that specifically addressed challenges in communities around the issues of bias, exclusion and cultural conflict. Since the mid 1980’s Fred has worked in communities throughout the United States, empowering children and adults in creative ways, to celebrate the richness of who they are, to dream big, lift their voices and come together to work towards making the experience of living in Tampa Bay culturally rich, inclusive and inspiring.
Fred presents lectures and seminars re-accentuating the importance of creative expression and the sharing of story as catalysts for personal and communal empowerment, health and healing and giving voice to the voiceless. He is a leading voice in the national conversation regarding Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access and has chaired committees for The International Transformational Leadership Council, the Straz Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa, Florida and The Stella Adler Center for the Arts in both New York and Los Angeles.
Mentored by spiritual masters of the African oral and percussion legacy, Fred has been hailed as one of the true guardians of an oral tradition transplanted and nurtured to create a fusion of cultural heritage that is uniquely American and inherently African. His global presentations of "Jazz, it's Roots and Branches" have served to inform and inspire audiences around the world to recognize and celebrate a creative global tapestry set by the first woven thread sown from the artistic richness of Africa. Fred currently serves as Artist in Residence, Community Engagement/Diversity and Equity Specialist and coordinates the Arts and Health initiative at The David A. Straz, Jr. Center for the Performing Arts. He also serves as Artist in Residence for The National Academy of Science in Washington D.C.
Ashley Cornelius
Ashley Cornelius is the first Black Pikes Peak Region Poet Laureate. She is a nationally recognized and multi-award-winning spoken-word poet, facilitator, cultural worker and keynote speaker. Ashley published her debut poetry collection "Translations of the Soul" this year. Ashley Cornelius is a Licensed Professional Counselor and uses poetry as her modality for healing. Ashley has 7 years experience working in hospitals and healthcare as a therapist in adolescent inpatient psych and managing a hospital-wide staff resilience program. Notably, Ashley has opened up for former U.S. Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo and performed for the Grandmother of Juneteenth, Opal Lee. She is a two-time Tedx speaker. Ashley's work has been featured at the Gallery of Contemporary Art and the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum. Ashley is the Co-Director of Poetry719, a Black-led poetry group lifting the voices of marginalized communities and BIPOC folks through art. Ashley is committed to using poetry as a platform to speak up and out for marginalized groups and be a voice for those who have been historically silenced.
Suzanne Costello
Suzanne Costello began her career in New York and has toured throughout the U.S. and abroad as a dance/theater director, choreographer, performer and teacher for four decades. She has been at the forefront of the Arts & Health field since introducing the Caring for the Caregiver program in 1991. Since then, she has presented this program for 100’s of caregivers across all spectrums of the caregiving field.
Her other Arts & Health initiatives have engaged the “often unseen populations in our world” through workshops as well as performance work. These include persons impacted by cancer, active military & veterans, persons experiencing memory loss, caregivers and incarcerated populations.
Costello has been invited to present at conferences and universities globally and has been honored with multiple awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board, Ohio Arts Council, Salt Lake City Arts Council and others.
In Fall, 2023 she was a Guest Artist at Colorado College teaching a new course, Moving Together / The Power of Art, Health & Wellbeing. She will return to C.C. in Fall 2024 and 2025 to teach this course again. She also was commissioned to create a new work, Chapters to Come, for the Colorado Springs-based Ormao Dance Company. For this she brought together company performers with elders from the community in an intergenerational look at life chapters. The new work will be premiered in April 19-21, 2024 at Armstrong Hall, Colorado College.
She is based in Minneapolis, MN.
Featured Courses
BLOCK 4: DA200/TH200/PA250/FG206: The Nakedness of Being
The Department of Theatre & Dance at Colorado College is pleased to host Eiko Otake as the 2022-23 Pamela Battey Mitchell Visiting Artist-in-Residence in Contemporary Dance. Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement–based, interdisciplinary artist. With her partner Koma, Eiko became a key figure in contemporary dance in the United States, receiving numerous awards, including the Doris Duke Artist Award and the prestigious Macarthur Fellowship. Throughout her career, Eiko has explored historical, political, and ecological catastrophes in sites such as Fukushima, Wall Street, and the Western United States. She teaches at Wesleyan University, NYU, UCLA. In Block 4, she will return to CC to teach her popular course, Naked & Delicious. While at CC, Eiko will also conduct a creative residency co-sponsored by Theatre & Dance and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, which will host I invited myself, vol. 2, a solo exhibition of multi-media works running from February 3 until July 31. During the exhibition, Eiko will travel to Colorado Springs in February, April, and July to host a philosophical and critical conversation with artists, scholars, and curators. In addition to these conversations, Eiko will stage performance interventions, including site-specific dances, film screenings, and community-based workshops. This winter, she will be on campus to perform at the opening of I invited myself, vol. 2 alongside critical conversations and talks on February 9-10 that will highlight, among others, NYU Performance Studies Professor Andre Lepecki.
Block 7: TH200/AS210 Rogue Objects: Creative Research and Art-Astrophysics Practice
Eligible for the Creative Process credit, pending final approval
Rogue Objects is a combined studio/seminar class taught by multimedia artist Janani Balasubramanian. Students spend approximately half their time exploring ethical and cultural implications of emerging brown dwarf astrophysics with insights from feminist science studies, trans studies, critical theory, anti-colonial histories of science, and art history. The rest of the course is focused on creative experiments for the operatic film Rogue Objects, described below. No prerequisites are required other than expansive and rigorous curiosity; the course is ideal for students with interests across math, physics, astronomy, music, STS, computer science, feminist and critical race studies, history, film, performing arts, and visual arts.
Made in collaboration with the brown dwarf astrophysics group at the American Museum of Natural History, Rogue Objects is an operatic film for planetaria that explores the emerging science of brown dwarfs: a newer class of in-between celestial bodies, neither planets nor stars. Brown dwarfs are primarily bright in the infrared -- a segment of the electromagnetic spectrum just outside the wavelengths of human sight -- and to observe them we, humanity, had to make the creative leap that darkness was worth looking at. Through animation, renderings from the new JWST and Gaia space telescopes, and an operatic score built from sonified light curves of nearby brown dwarfs, Rogue Objects invites audiences into the wonderful life of these objects that abound and sing in the dark.
Student and Faculty Features
Abi Walls '21 Play To Be Produced by Riot Act in September
Abi Walls won first place in Riot Act's New Play Festival Competition. Her play, an evolution of her thesis project, titled in-memory, is being produced by Riot Act in Jackson, WY, this September. Congrats to Abi on this great accomplishment!
Read more info here: https://riotactinc.org/new-play-festival/
Short Film About Dallo Fall
Dallo Fall is our Senegalese dance instructor and a DanSix choreographer. Her wisdom goes far beyond how to move your body, as she teaches us to drum and to sing and most importantly, how to survive.
A special thanks to John-Henry Williams '19, a film and media major, for making the film.
Lapse, a short film by Patrizia Herminjard
Artist-in-Residence Patrizia Herminjard recently shot a new short film, Lapse.
Over time, even the most tender moments come to pass, questioning if they ever happened in the first place.
2023-2024 New Courses
Suzanne Costello taught a new course called "Moving Together: The Power of Art, Health, and Wellbeing." This class took place in block 3 in Cornerstone Arts Center. Additionally, Lauren Spencer will teach "Disrupting Shakespeare" in block 7 this upcoming spring.