UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Michele Dunleavy, professor of dance and 2024-25 Penn State Laureate, will serve as the School of Theatre’s inaugural artist-in-residence, offering a series of collaborative dance workshops and public performances April 14 through May 3 at the Penn State Downtown Theatre Center, located at 146 S. Allen St. in State College.
Dunleavy, who teaches in the College of Arts and Architecture’s School of Theatre, is collaborating with community members and representatives of the Science-Art Initiatives at the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences for the residency, titled “The Beads Project.”
During the workshops, open to ages 18 and up, participants will interact with multiple suspended bead sculptures created by Talley Fisher, a senior research artist at the Huck. The workshops will take place at 5:30 p.m. April 14, 16, 21 and 23, and at 2 p.m. April 19 and 26.
When Fisher, who specializes in creating large-scale, suspended artworks, suggested sculptures using beads, Dunleavy said she was attracted to their “tactile sensibility.”
“Inclusion and access were two of my priorities for the collaboration,” said Dunleavy, whose tenure as Penn State Laureate has focused on further bridging the gap between the arts and community engagement. “I love that there’s a lot of ways to interact with [the beads], and a lot of ways to receive what they have to offer.”
Dunleavy said she is calling the workshops “Physical Rhymes”
“To me, “physical rhymes’ are those moments of synchronicity that happen unexpectedly inside of an improvisational experience. … We will work with a variety of prompts and different methodologies to create a space where those ‘physical rhymes’ might occur,” Dunleavy explained. “I want people to feel empowered, physically stimulated, and in community with other people.”
The workshops will be followed by three public performances at 7:30 p.m. on April 30, May 2 and May 3. The performances will feature Dunleavy and community members who are dancers, storytellers and poets, including Ann Van Curen, Carolyne Meehan, Rychele Stipcak and Cynthia Mazzant.
“The performances will address how we experience the passage of time in our individual lives and as a collective,” Dunleavy said. “We’re using those stories and conversations to generate a movement vocabulary.”
All workshops and performances are free, although registration is required for the workshops at arts.psu.edu/beads. The performances will have American Sign Language interpreters and audio description.