Hi <<First Name>>,
Happy new 2023.
This year, I am continuing a dream from childhood.
Imagine 7-year-old me, it's summer and I am in the small village my grandparents lived in. It's still deep communism in Bulgaria. The sun sets at 10 at night. TV is boring as hell, and kids are running unattended on the street. Electricity and water are sometimes on, sometimes unavailable for hours.
My grandparent's house was on the main road to the cemetery. A wide and smooth asphalt that warmed our bare feet and backs late at night.
The long green bench in front served as the nightly gossip gathering place for all our neighbors and their grandkids.
As a kid, I was never good at cleaning, school, doing my choirs, or even being appropriately nice to grown-ups. But I was good at performing and that's what I got most praised for.
On that hot asphalt, in front of our living ancestors, I started organizing kids in acting out the jokes we knew. Later, I organized a production of Cinderella, where I had to play the bad witch because no one else wanted that role. Costumed up in our grandma's nightgowns, I led an enactment of a prize show popular on TV at the time. Our prize - one little watermelon. ( I fear everyone had watermelons at home at the time).
I think I have always sought out that first troupe of artists. Still looking for people with similar values, ideas, and desires to connect to, to perform together, and to be real and unfiltered.
This year I am starting something I've dreamed of for a long time and it is taking all that I have.
The BodyMeld Performance Research Academy is so close to my heart and I hope this is the first of many years that it will happen.
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I am elated and scared.
So hive mind of friends and acquaintances, I do need your help.
First and foremost, definitely apply if this is something you are interested in or share it with people you think would totally benefit and can fit it into their schedules.
Second, I need your advice. I am still looking to bridge the gap in funding. Do you know of private or public funds that would support artist exchange between the US, UK (specifically Northern Ireland) and/or Italy to come for artistic exchange? Please, send your ideas my way.
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Apply here for BodyMeld Performance Research Academy by Jan. 30th, 2023 end of the day.
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International Performance Research Academy in Sofia, Bulgaria with a focus on the use of the body and the voice together in dance, speech, and song. With internationally acclaimed teachers Megan Bridge(USA), Peter Sciscioli (USA), Stephen Batts(UK), Paolo Chingolani (ITA), and me, Zornitsa Stoyanova (Bulgaria/USA).
It's free once accepted and partially funded by the National Fund "Culture" of Bulgaria.
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In May 2023, I will have my very first solo gallery opening in Bulgaria called En Transe: Female Bodies in Digitalscapes. In 2020, a week before the closings fo the world I had one such show at Black C Gallery in Gainesville, Florida, which was incredible. Now more than three years later I will show some of my older videos and photography as well as premiere the short "Andromeda Dreams of Love". This is a video that started part of my performance AndroMeda and now will come out as a separate piece of digital art.
In addition, I will also curate a selection of international art films on the same theme to be exhibited along with my work.
Open call for short art films on the theme of the female body presented in the digital frame will open at the beginning of February. I will write again about that and hopefully some of you might consider applying and some could come to Sofia and see the exhibit.
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