Feedback
The Institute for Performance
Radically Democratizing Access to Arts Learning
Feedback: The Institute for Performance is a collection of virtual arts courses created by and for the Triangle community.
“…to generate a kind of radical intimacy…an empathy, an empathetic stream, an empathic feedback loop.”
Okwui Okpokwasili
Carolina Performing Arts artist-in-residence
About Audience Advocates
Audience Advocates is an online conversation forum for Triangle residents interested in contributing to the development of works by CPA artists in upcoming performance seasons. This small, virtual class will meet twice weekly via Zoom to interact with and discuss various parts of artists’ works in progress, provide valuable feedback, and get a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes work of performing artists.
Learn more about fall 2022 forum.
About Feedback
Inspired by CPA/Mellon Foundation Creative Futures artist Okwui Okpokwasili, who has said that her work aims “to generate a kind of radical intimacy…an empathy, an empathetic stream, an empathic feedback loop,” Feedback: The Institute for Performance underscores the necessity of feedback. Led by renowned CPA artist collaborators and guests, participants in Feedback courses will explore concepts related to feedback and its importance to performance, no matter the form.
Past Courses
Audience Advocates with Advanced Beginner Group: Marcella Murray, David Neumann and Tei Blow
Spring 2022
In this iteration of Audience Advocates, Triangle locals met over Zoom with Southern Futures Artists-in-Residence Marcella Murray, David Neumann and Tei Blow. Participants got a first-hand look into the creative process of Advanced Beginner Group as they viewed previous works, spoke with dramaturg Melanie George, and contributed their ideas to the group’s digital mood board for their in-progress commissioned piece for a future CPA season.
read more about advanced beginner group
This trio uses digital imagery, dance and theater to explore issues such as race and vulnerability. In addition to their fall 2022 presentation of Distances Smaller Than This Are Not Confirmed, their Southern Futures residency will allow them to create a new work that will make its world premiere at CPA in an upcoming season.
Learn more about Advanced Beginner Group: David Neumann, Marcella Murrray, Tei Blow.
Audience Advocates with Faye Driscoll and Culture Mill
Spring 2021
Audience Advocates is a new online conversation forum for Triangle residents interested in contributing to the development of works by CPA artists, scheduled for upcoming CPA seasons. This spring, Audience Advocates participants will focus on pieces in progress by CPA collaborators Culture Mill and choreographer Faye Driscoll.
read more about audience advocates
This small, virtual class met weekly via zoom to interact with and discuss various parts of these artists’ works-in-progress, provide valuable feedback, and get a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes work of performing artists.
About Faye Driscoll
Faye Driscoll is a Bessie Award-winning performance maker who has been hailed as a “startlingly original talent” (New York Times) and “a postmillenium postmodern wild woman” (The Village Voice). She previously co-hosted Feedback’s Liveness and Arts Economies courses at Carolina Performing Arts.
Learn more About Faye
Faye’s work has been presented nationally at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Walker Art Center, The Institute for Contemporary Art/Boston, MCA/Chicago and BAM/Brooklyn Academy of Music, to name a few.
For her newest work, Faye is building practices around the politics of touch. Who or what do we allow to touch us now? Lovers, parents, friends, grocery store clerks, data miners, surveillance systems, facial recognition software? How are we altered? Where is our body, and how far does it extend? In an exploration that conjures the adage that “you cannot touch without being touched,” she examines two prolific human choreographies: the act of battle and the act of sex. Touch—our need for it, and our fear of it—come into conflict, as new modes of engagement complicate our concepts of consent.
About Culture Mill
Culture Mill is a Performing Arts Laboratory based in Saxapahaw, North Carolina, and co-directed by Tommy Noonan and Murielle Elizéon. Culture Mill fosters a creative ecosystem through the cross-pollination of artist residencies, educational outreach and groundbreaking immersive artworks from local, national and international artists.
Learn more About culture mill
This workshop series lays the groundwork for Culture Mill’s new project: Eclipse. Eclipse is an embodied practice of assembly, which draws upon Movement, Performance and Restorative Justice practices to negotiate distributive power amongst a diverse community of individuals. This series will first ask participants to practice elements of the work through their bodies as a framework for later dramaturgical and conceptual discussions around Eclipse and its social and artistic implications. The series will be co-facilitated by dancers and performers Murielle Elizéon and Tommy Noonan along with performance poet and facilitator CJ Suitt and Restorative Justice specialist Val Hanson.
Liveness
Fall 2020
What is “liveness”?
When we go to the theater, we generally expect the performance to be “live”— either played out in real time or offering a shared experience in a physical space. But what does it mean to be “live” in our current moment, when most theaters are closed?
Read more about Liveness
Especially now, as theaters go dark and our streets light up with protest, it is essential for us —artists, arts goers, performing arts institutions, and our communities — to gather and discuss the role of performance in society and how it can move us in new directions.
Throughout this short course, we explored how time and space shapes our understanding of live theater and art performances, how performance evokes the past through presence, and how being live together is an act of resilience in these challenging times. Sessions were led by UNC-CH faculty in collaboration with CPA artists and staff. Our readings included texts by performance scholars, cultural thinkers, and recent magazine and newspaper articles.
Arts Economies
Fall 2020
Artists are not okay right now. Due to the pandemic and economic recession, many artists are unemployed or underemployed. Meanwhile, institutions that support artistic practice are trying to find new ways to exhibit, commission, and present. However, creative problem solving at the institutional level is not solvent without cultural policy to back it up.
Read more about arts economies
This short course investigated the interdependencies of artistic practice and arts infrastructures now, and from a historical perspective. Sessions were led by UNC-CH faculty arts experts in collaboration with CPA artists and staff. Our readings included texts by performance scholars, cultural thinkers, and recent magazine and newspaper articles.
past feedback Instructors
UNC-Chapel Hilll faculty instructors include:
Andrea Bohlman (Music)
Mark Katz (Music)
Cary Levine (Art & Art History)
Deepanjan Mukhopadhyay (Art & Art History)
Tony Perucci (Communications)
Michelle Robinson (American Studies)
Tanya Shields (Women’s and Gender Studies, Carolina Seminars)
Sarah Wilbur (Dance Studies, guest from Duke)
The courses are co-taught by the following internationally renowned artists:
Advanced Beginner Group
Faye Driscoll
Brendan Fernandes
Sunder Ganglani
Culture Mill
Shara Nova
Okwui Okpokwasili
Annie-B Parson
600 HIGHWAYMEN
Feedback is the result of a collaboration across Carolina Performing Arts’ departments, led by creator and curator Amanda Graham.
