Meg Foley

portunity to connect and share with other q***r and trans parents and to explore collectively and how we shape our families and some of what parenting q***rly means to you, particularly in regards to gender and s*x in family-building. Participants will be able to learn somatic and improvisational practices in order to newly consider and process parenting experiences. These conversations and energy exchange are at the core of the creative formation of the overall Blood Baby performance project. When: happening semi-regularly 2021-2024, with exact schedule determined by the facilitators and participants.

-The first q***r gestational parents group is happening Fall 2021

-The first q***r parents group will also be virtual and will begin early 2022, exact date TBD. Where: Philadelphia, Denver, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Los Angeles, and online - follow @_bloodbaby for updates. Who: The facilitation team for the first convenings group is:

• Pati Garcia is a q***r latinx certified Sexological Bodyworker and Certified Professional Midwife. Pati has been involved in revolutionary somatic approaches to feminist body autonomy cultivation from a latinx gender non conforming perspective since 2004.
• Paloma N Irizarry is a Boricua birthworker, performer, creator, and facilitator who feels at home in the unknown and collective problem solving based in Philadelphia.
• Darcelle Lewis is a q***r and non-binary feminist and mental health activist from Trinidad & Tobago.
• Michèle Steinwald is a Canadian, feminist, DIY, artist-centered, pseudo-forensic, embodied, community-driven, cultural organizer working in the US. The Q***r Parent Convenings are conceptualized by Meg Foley, a q***r dance artist, educator, and parent who creates performances and somatic-based events, and are managed by Philadelphia-based parent, educator, and artist Linnea deRoche. Philadelphia-based for over 15 years, Meg co-runs The Whole Shebang, a studio and experimentation space for artists and facilitators. Meg is the project leader for Blood Baby.

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For the past 20 years I have made performance projects with radical self-determination as subject, crafting body-based explorations of identity, belonging, and time from a q***r perspective. In a loving tumble with formalism in dance and what constitutes performance and influenced by my identity as a q***r mom in a trans family, I work on a continuum of research that centers the 24hr body and asks how identity is occupied: an all-the-time, ever-shifting self, a sacred site, a portal, a prism. I danced wherever I was everyday at 3:15pm for four years, including during childbirth. In collaboration with thought and movement partners, I developed action is primary, an improvisational performance practice that trains a hyper-articulate interiority in direct dialogue with shape/form/feeling/being as choreography that has become the core materiality of my practice. This daily dance and action is primary research culminated in Action is Primary (2016), a visual and performance exhibition of shared practice and improvisational research undertaken by Kristel Baldoz, Marysia Stokłosa, Annie Wilson, and myself and curated by Perel. In 2019 I began using fabric, foam, and carpet to extend embodied space through interactive objects and installations, affording somatic life to objects and “feeling back” on and through my body, which has developed into and informed my current project, Blood Baby. Blood Baby explores my experience of q***r motherhood and the intersecting experiences of q***r parenting, pregnancy, gender, s*xuality, and fellowship. And also, rocks. Lots of rocks, and body heat, and spirituality, and thinking about how we build - or gestate - ourselves on the daily. :)

A rigorous body-based researcher, my choreographic practice is rooted in sensorial investigation, questions of how interiority meets shape and architecture, and organizing how this accumulates and evolves over time to change energetic space and how we perceive the environment. I build intricate scores of often competing tasks, navigated by the performer’s own interior rhythms. To generate movement and scores: I track choreographies and rhythms already present in the world as frames to enter; I work from imagery or the tactile experience of other materials, seeking familiars in objects assumed without presence; I usher associative, sensorial threads, considering movement as poetic reframing. My dances have been presented by TanzFabrik Potsdam, Art Stations Foundation at Malta Festival, Prague Quadrennial, SummerWorks Festival (Toronto), LA Performance Practice, DraftWork at Danspace Project, CATCH! at Invisible Dog Art Center, Philadelphia Contemporary, and Philadelphia Fringe Festival (curated). A 2012 Pew Fellow in the Arts, my visual art work has been shown at Moore College of Art and Design, Pilot+Projects, and Vox Populi. Grants include: Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Independence Fdtn, Dancemakers Centre for Creation, and a Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant. I have taught across the US and abroad, most recently in the graduate UCLA World Arts & Cultures/Dance dept. I also co-direct The Whole Shebang with my partner Carmichael Jones, a space that provides a South Philly home for the practices of working artists and teachers. It is intended as a space for experimentation, energy collision, and supported trying-out-of-things. You can find out more about Shebang at thewholeshebangphilly.com.