Part 3: Sunday, May 12, 6–9PM
At Studio A Dance:
2306 Hyperion Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Oak Room Studio (Back Studio)
Max participants: 30
COVID Safety: Participants will be required to mask while indoors. We take care of each other and know that disability justice is integral to collective liberation.
Cost: This 3-part workshop is offered on a sliding scale, with a suggested donation of $50 per session, $150 for the series. No one will be turned away for lack of funds, please email us at [email protected] if payment is a barrier. If you are able, please consider making an additional donation above the suggested amount, as a practice in class solidarity. 20% of proceeds will be donated to the Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy and E-SIM distribution in Palestine.
About the workshop
What role does grief play in our yearnings for a just and loving world? From the small griefs of the everyday to the large collective griefs of witnessing multiple genocides unfold before our eyes, grief is an inevitable part of the human experience. However the systems of oppression we live under actively displace and deny grief, resulting in individuals being left to navigate grief in isolation and shame. What would it be like to cultivate a culture that honors the wisdom of grief instead of denying its existence and power?
Through multi-modal expressive arts and somatic exercises, this 3 part workshop will explore the ways we can individually and collectively attune to grief, relating to it as a creative portal from which liberation springs.
Part 1 is focused on individual creative practices for processing and transforming grief. Participants will be guided through multi-modal expressive arts practices as a vehicle for understanding, witnessing, and harnessing the power and messages of grief.
Part 2 centers on community-based creative grief practices. Collective liberation requires that we become more adept at practicing community care, understanding that we have what it takes to hold each other. In Part 2, participants will be guided through roles of witnessing and being witnessed in small groups, using multi-modal expressive arts as a framework from which to practice vulnerability, create community, and cultivate hope.
Part 3 is an emergent community offering and showcase, co-created by the collective that has formed through Part 1 & 2. After diving into our individual and collective grief, what wisdom has emerged through the creative portal? Through a process of distillation, we will bring this potent medicine back to the wider community in service of justice and liberation for all.
Who is this workshop for?
We offer this invocation to anyone who knows another world is possible and wants to exercise their agency to build it, here and now. Anyone who has felt grief and wondered if there was another way to hold it or been disappointed by the dominant culture’s aversion to grief. Anyone who is not afraid of the discomfort of birthing new (or returning to old) ways of being that bring us into more caring and loving relationships with one another and the earth.
This is especially for anyone who has felt irrevocably changed over the last few months by witnessing the genocide in Palestine and is yearning for a creative and spiritual community that is actively responding to the call for collective liberation.
About The Facilitator
Melissa Anran Fan is an expressive arts and somatics practitioner, community organizer, writer, and cultural worker living in service of collective liberation. She holds a MA in Expressive Arts Therapy as well as additional training in somatic therapy, ecotherapy, and integrative change work. She facilitates individuals and groups in moving toward visions of justice and liberation for all, using embodied practices to create lasting transformation along the full spectrum of change — from healing interpersonal trauma to grassroots coalition building. She lives in unceded Ohlone land in the East Bay of California and is an unschooling mama to twins. Follow her on Instagram @melissa.anran.fan.