Contact / Location

Harambee

Starts: 9:30 am

On Hiatus until September - Interpretive & Folkloric Dance Fusion (bilingual class)

Starts: 6:45 pm

Description: Marta will start class back up in September. In July and August, She is on sabbatical where she will focus on devotional dances, dance therapy, community building and strengthening arts and community organizations/spaces.

Recognized for her sincere dedication to learning and teaching, Marta offers weekly classes, workshops and private sessions in the D.C. area.

Marta approaches teaching from a holistic perspective, emphasizing technique, stylization, and musical interpretation while helping students understand how each movement initiates, feels and flows through their individual bodies. With a clear historical and cultural foundation, she invites more advanced students to fuse their own creativity, where appropriate, allowing for the exploration of each one's unique voice.

Through her own independent studies and her certified doula/labor assistant work (ALACE & The Farm Midwives), Marta brings knowledge of women's health into her teaching; currently working to finish a curriculum that incorporates childbirth education and dance for mothers-to-be. Lastly, Marta is committed to using dance and other forms of creative movement in her work with under-resourced communities (in the U.S. and Latin America) to support engagement, healing, leadership, community building and skills development among women, teens and girls. To this end, she actively volunteered for over 3 years at the Sitar Center for the Arts as well as BloomBars and has completed several community based initiatives including a month-long dance project in Lima, Peru. She continues to provide special workshops and classes throughout the U.S., Latin America and the Caribbean.

Marta has been a faculty member at award-winning institutions including Joy of Motion Dance Center (JOM), Dance Institute of Washington (DIW), Sahara Dance (founding instructor), and the MamaSita Cultural Center (home of the Belly Dancers of Color Association). She currently conducts classes at BloomBars, Danza Jonda (Marta's private dance studio), D.C. Public Schools, and community centers throughout the city.

marta@martadances.com

"Marta's classes are wonderful and a unique combination of elements. Her precision, empowering teaching style, integration of history and social movements into the dance class, and her emphasis on the basics as the core language from which personal interpretation follows, allows beginners and advanced dancers to enjoy the same class. Thank you for uniting the people and keeping our roots alive and in their power." -S.L.

http://www.martadances.com

The Garden Open Mic feat. Camisha Jones (hosted by Gowri K.)

Starts: 8:30 pm

Description: Join us for DC's only weekly variety open mic (poetry, music, comedy, storytelling, etc-ing) where the show is appropriate for all ages (please and thank you to performers).

Sign-up list opens at 8:30 pm
Show starts at 9:00 pm
$7 donation

Featuring: CAMISHA JONES
Anne LaMott once said, “You don’t want to wake up at 80 wishing you would have written more.” After leaving a full-time job in 2010 at her alma mater, the University of Richmond, Camisha Jones has committed herself to writing her way out of having regrets at 80. She became active in the spoken word community in Richmond, Virginia, gaining a spot on the 2013 Slam Richmond team and a cast member of The Lyric Ave Show. She has been invited to perform at statewide events like Virginia Festival of the Book and the James River Writers conference. Her writing is often shaped by the 16 years she spent leading community-building and diversity programs at non-profits and institutions of higher education. She is published in Urban Views Weekly newspaper and Let’s Get Real: What People of Color Can’t Say and Whites Won’t Ask about Racism by Lee Mun Wah. Camisha is currently Managing Director of Split This Rock, a DC non-profit which calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national network of socially engaged poets.
http://www.facebook.com/poetcamishajones

Hosted by: GOWRI K.
Gowri K. is a Sri Lankan Tamil American poet and lawyer. Her advocacy has addressed animal welfare, the environment, and the rights of prisoners and the criminally accused. She has co-authored two peer-reviewed scientific journal articles and her poetry has been published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Bourgeon, and Lantern Review. Gowri was a member of the 2010 DC Southern Fried Slam team and has performed at Lincoln Center Out of Doors, the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. She hosts open mics at Busboys and Poets and BloomBars, where she serves as poetry coordinator, and is the senior poetry editor at Jaggery: A DesiLit Arts and Literature Journal. Gowri tweets on-the-spot haiku @gowricurry.