Dancing Queerly

Q***r Beach Ball offering number 2!

Come join Holly & Michael for an intro level American Foxtrot lesson with a gender–expansive approach, followed by an open social dance to practice what you’ve learned!

Image Description:

Holly and Michael pose facing the camera in matching black-and-white ballroom dance clothes.

Raised in rural Vermont, Holly Stone creates dance and theater in Greater Boston. Currently teaching at Tufts and Boston Universities, their recent gender-expansive partnering collaboration–INSIDER BALLROOM–with Michael Winward has been presented at the Providence Fringe Festival and the Dance Complex. Recent theater credits include CHICAGO for Ashland High School, KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN for A Common Thread Theater, and ONCE UPON A MATTRESS with Greater Boston Stage Company. They have a B.S. in Bioengineering from Syracuse University and an MFA in Dance from Florida State University. As a performer, Holly has recently danced for Kathy Hassinger, Jo-Me Dance Theater, Lowell House Opera, and many others from their time in the American Ballroom Dance Industry.   

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Annual 24 hour
Vigil for Day Without Art/World AIDS Day

What: Days Without Art Healing Walk: Greater Bostonians of all backgrounds will join artists, dancers, musicians, friends, and collaborators in a procession from City Hall to the Boston Center for the Arts’ Cyclorama. There they’ll formally open SPOKE’s 30th Annual World AIDS Day art installation and vigil, marking the effects of multiple pandemics on our lives and our communities. City Hall will be lit red in honor of those lost to HIV/AIDS from dusk Nov. 30 until dawn Dec. 1. Participants will walk from City Hall, holding small bowls fashioned from newspaper obituaries and a 150 foot stream of red satin, evoking the AIDS Red Ribbon and the beauty of the thread of human connection.

Where: Start at Boston City Hall, 1 City Hall Square; end at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Cyclorama, 539 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02116

When: Gather in front of Boston City Hall Wednesday November 30th at10:45 pm.

Why: On Thursday December 1 SPOKE presents Days Without Art, its 31st annual World AIDS Day installation and vigil at the Cyclorama. This year's program is entitled Out of the Ashes, We Remember Their Names, a multimedia series of cultural actions that illustrate the healing power of human contact.

Days Without Art originated in 1992 as the "Medicine Wheel" installation in response to the ravages of the AIDS epidemic and the lack of official response. Each year since SPOKE has mounted a 24-hour vigil and art installation on World AIDS Day where people from all backgrounds come to remember, reflect, and grieve as a community while visual and performing artists present prayers, poetry and spoken word, dance, music, and ritual. This year’s Days Without Art installation will comprise more than 500 portraits of people we have lost to pandemics which will be installed at the Cyclorama alongside 25 sections of the historic AIDS/ Names Memorial Quilt, the only Boston venue for this unique work.