Angela’s Pulse creates and produces collaborative performance work dedicated to building community and illuminating bold, new stories. Angela's Pulse provides a home for interdisciplinary collaborations that thrives on both politics and play, and is committed to developing timely performance works that provoke, inform and inspire. Co-founded in 2008 by Paloma and Patricia McGregor, Angela’s Pulse was named for their mother Angela, an artist, teacher and activist who continues to inspire their work.
Angela’s Pulse is a Black-led, artist-led organization. Their leadership in the field includes their core community-building initiatives Dancing While Black, Building a Better Fishtrap and the newly formed North Star Arts Incubator, a cohort of nine artist-activists who are visioning moving the field beyond “diversity, equity and inclusion” and toward liberation.
Learn more about Angela's Pulse on the Movement Lab's Artists in Residence page.
3 Year Residency Plan:
During their 3-year-residency, Angela’s Pulse will expand their creative and organizing capacity by exploring Movement Lab's unique technological resources - including film, VR and Motion Capture. This opportunity comes as AP enters into a collaborative call-and-response with organizers on McGregor's home island, St. Croix, as it struggles to stave off disaster capitalism after the 2017 hurricane season. The work at the Movement Lab will be grounded in the pillars of AP's practice: The Understanding & Undoing Racism principles of New Orleans based The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond; Urban Bush Women’s Entering, Building and Exiting Community framework; and Angela’s Pulse’s Shared Practice and Fishtrap Method models.
- Year 1 - Entering
- Listening tour to get to know community, students, space
- Exploring technology in the Movement Lab - particularly in relationship to Building a Better Fishtrap
- Facilitating Story Circles, Shared Practice, Fishtrap Method workshops
- Co-Hosting PISAB Undoing Racism training
- Developing core Angela’s Pulse Programs: Dancing While Black and North Star Arts Incubator
- Surfacing Process & Learning through Culminating Sharing
- Surfacing Goals for Year 2, and Establishing Next Steps
- Year 2 - Building
- Developing interdisciplinary/interdepartmental partnerships, and establishing core collaborators
- Deepening and integrating technology in the Movement Lab into Angela's Pulse creative and organizing processes
- Developing and deepening relationships through Story Circles, Shared Practice, Fishtrap Method workshops
- Deepening anti-racist organizing/principles in practice
- Developing core Angela’s Pulse Programs: Building a Better Fishtrap, Dancing While Black and North Star Arts Incubator
- Surfacing Process & Learning through Culminating Sharing
- Surfacing Goals for Year 3, and Establishing Next Steps
- Year 3 - Integrating (Exiting)
- Deepen interdisciplinary/interdepartmental partnerships with core collaborators
- Continue deepening and integrating technology in the Movement Lab into Angela's Pulse creative and organizing processes
- Develop creative work and relationships through Story Circles, Shared Practice, Fishtrap Method
- Deepening anti-racist organizing/principles in practice
- Developing core Angela’s Pulse Programs: Building a Better Fishtrap, Dancing While Black and North Star Arts Incubator
- Surfacing Process & Learning through Culminating Sharing
- Establishing Next Steps
News Article Cover Image: Ebony Noelle Golden and Sydnie L. Mosley (Barnard Alumnus, '15-'16 DWB Fellow) share a moment of pure joy surrounded by a circle of Dancing While Black community members at Dancing While Black: This Body Knows Freedom - Story Circles on Organizing toward Vision in an Age of Resistance at NYU's Hemispheric Institute in November 2017. Photo by Whitney Browne.