Medgar Evers College Offers New Multimedia Dance Residency for Local Artists
The CUNY Dance Initiative provides funding, rehearsal, and performance space for artists in New York to develop relationships between working artists and CUNY campuses. Although this program has been in existence since 2014, this is the first year Medgar Evers College will be a part of the initiative as a hosting college. As a college with social justice in its DNA, our school’s participation will help the central Brooklyn artists and the emerging artists around NYC find affordable rehearsal and performance space while enhancing our college campus and building new audiences. This fall, our college will welcome Brooklyn- based artist Stephen Shynes. Stephen Shynes will be working on a new dance show premiering in December 2023 in our multimedia dance studio and offering our college two public workshops or Artist Talks. All expenses will be covered through the initiative.
Medgar Evers College and the Department of Mass Communications, Creative and Performing Arts & Speech are excited to welcome Stephen Shynes.
Learn More About Stephen Shynes and The CUNY Dance Initiative Below:
Stephen Shynes
Artist Statement
My movement rises from emotional responses to personal life events. The motion development is produced through character studies and is driven by the internal struggles of one or more main characters. Exploring this choreographic structure creates freedom within the movement, allowing the artists to be as human as possible while playing outside the lines. My creative process mirrors my human mentation, in which I would like to consider an impression. Parallel to my perception of reality, my movement is arduous, loud in expression, but occasionally soft and personal. I revel in stillness as much as breath, gestures, and body language to outstretch the connection between the performer and the viewers, assembling my thoughts into an expression for the approachable mind and the naked eye. Movement is constant, demonstrating my current sentiment, spiritual consciousness, and physical wellness. Connecting with one’s higher frequency when communicating through dance is one of the most fulfilling challenges as a creator. My goal is to engage as many people in the space by creating experiences anyone could relate to. During developmental processes, there are organizational steps that I pursue before entering a studio. This includes journaling, idea screening, and incorporating feedback from my supporters. I enjoy diving into different styles of music. RnB, Hip Hop, Jazz, voice over narration, and instrumental sounds to create phrases. This allows me to structure momentum while conceiving the movement of the dancers’ bodies. Ideally, my collaborators are as fluent on the vision as I am. I then like to contemplate the impact it generates for viewers who are not dancers and how my work can be articulated in many ways. My previous works have encircled mental health, politics, the laws of attraction, race, generational curses, and escapism. I assess sounds, locations, theatrical property, costume, and design to create a kaleidoscopic state of mind, giving the audience the illusion that we are in a dreamlike disposition. The scenic, light-hearted space removes you from your comfort zone while establishing a safe space to encourage verbal and non-verbal communication about the subject matter. I aim for my movement to be timeless, eternal, perpetual, unfading, and abiding. A feeling or a memory that endures through happiness, distress, contempt, desire, adoration, and confusion. The mind facilitates the phenomena of sensation of emotions. When in the process of creating this experience for the viewer, it is an invitation to explore not only my perspective but to traverse one’s own thoughts, leaving with introspection and room to reflect on an open-ended synopsis.
