The Global Arts + Humanities builds intellectual community and capacity for cross-disciplinary collaborations that integrate arts and humanities methods and practices. Our annual spring showcase celebrates the insights that emerge from these collaborations. This year’s showcase spotlights two signature programs: the Society of Fellows and K-12 Interdisciplinary Teaching Institute, which both support the synthesis and translation of knowledge across disciplines through critical inquiry and community engagement.
Welcome Address
The 2024 Society of Fellows Showcase began with opening remarks from Vice Provost for the Arts Lisa Florman.
"Society of Fellows: Care + Context"
Global Arts + Humanities Director Wendy S. Hesford delivered remarks about one of GAH's signature programs, the Society of Fellows. This program facilitates the multi-disciplinary exchange of ideas and methods on a shared theme. Fellowships provide fellows time and support to focus on their scholarly and artistic work and to engage with internationally-recognized scholars and artists. The 2024-25 theme, Care | Culture | Justice, foregrounded care as a socio-cultural practice that alerts us to the ethical obligations that arise from claims of harm and everyday requirements for nutrition, shelter, bodily integrity, education, health and well-being.
Threads of Care
The Global Arts + Humanities commissioned Threads of Care under the direction of Associate Professor of Dance Nyama McCarthy-Brown, who is also a GAH faculty hire. The performances and art installation intersect with the 2024-25 Society of Fellows’ theme of Care | Culture | Justice and reflect some of the thematic threads across the SOF fellows’ projects.
"Four Corners"
The presentation of Four Corners is an outcome of a GAH Field School. In the fall of 2024, Ronald K. Brown and his partner, Arcell Cabaug, came to Columbus to set one of Brown’s historical works on Ohio State dance students and members of Thiossane West African Dance Institute. Students and Thiossane dancers worked through a field school collaborative project to bring this piece to life and performed it in November at the Lincoln Theater. Brown’s Four Corners was originally commissioned for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 2014. Dancers depict spiritual seekers amid four angels standing on the corners of the earth, holding the four winds.
Choreographer: Ronald K. Brown • Rehearsal director: Nyama McCarthy-Brown • Dancers: Ceila Benvenutti, Liv Bryant, Zoey Canty, Shaela Davis, AÏda de Souza-Nianduillet, Lale Madenoğlu, Quianna Simpson, Latifat Sulaimon, Eryn Toppin, Afaliah Tribune • Music: Da Na Ma • Photography: Robb McCormick
"Haydi Kizlar"
Haydi Kızlar (Let’s go, girls) is based on the choreographer and dancer Lale Madenoğlu’s childhood experience saying these words while dancing the Zeybek, a traditional Turkish folk dance. These words are a call to action, urging the dancers to begin or intensify their movements, encouraging enthusiasm and energy. This is not a Zeybek performance; rather, it draws on various elements from the choreographer’s Turkish roots through a personal lens.
Choreographer and Performer: Lale Madenoğlu • Music: “Harmandalı” (Traditional Turkish Folk Music, Anonymous, Aegean Region) “İzmir’in Kızları” (Sezen Aksu) • Photography: Robb McCormick
"Gathering Ground"
Gathering Ground is a choreographic work that brings together dance elders from the Columbus community and Ohio State dance majors, creating an intergenerational exchange of movement, history and artistry. This project was born from the choreographer’s desire to honor their dance teachers and mentors by bringing them back to the stage to showcase the power of legacy. The piece embodies culture, care and justice in every aspect.
Choreographer: Afaliah Tribune • Dancers: Celia Benvenutti, Yolanda Connor, Shaela Davis, AÏda de Souza-Nianduillet, Yvonne Mumin, Najiyyah Muqtasid, Debra Tribune, Aziza West • Musicians: Duane Tribune, Jonathan "JSwiffa" Tribune • Vocalists: Monica Guidry, Afaliah Tribune • Music: Excerpt from “Grandma’s Hands” (Bill Withers), Excerpt from “Bridge Over Troubled Water (Roberta Flack) • Photography: Robb McCormick
"Threads of Connection"
During this structured improvisational score, willing audience members are asked to stand to symbolize their connections to words being shared in the space. A visualization of layered, complicated and sometimes messy connections will likely emerge.
Choreographer and Performer: Nyama McCarthy-Brown • Choreographer and Performer: Elizabeth Sugawara • Photography: Robb McCormick
"Unfolding Care"
“Unfolding Care” is an interactive, collaborative interplay of yarn and notes of care. As you move through the space, there is the possibility to tactilely unfold, reshape and create words of care made with multitudes of relationships. When stepping into this ever-changing web installation, you immediately become a co-creator of the creative ecosystem: What shapes experience of care?
Installation Artist: Elizabeth Sugawara • Photography: Robb McCormick
"The Courage to Teach"
Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Director of GAH's signature K-12 Interdisciplinary Teaching Institute, delivered remarks about the program.
