On October 3rd, at 6pm, the Weaving Dreams Exhibition Opening features a live excerpt performance of PURPLE by Sydnie L. Mosley Dances, celebrating Mosley’s longtime collaboration with textile artist and scholar Dr. Kim F Hall, part of the PURPLE “universe.” Along with a vibrant collective of dancers, director and choreographer Sydnie L. Mosley BC’ 07, and associate director Amy Shoshana Blumberg BC ‘09 lead an interactive experience that showcases oral storytelling, embodiment and audience participation. Seeded and nurtured by her time studying with both Professor Hall and legendary poet/choreographer Notzake Shange ‘70, Mosley’s work cultivates joy in community spaces, upholds traditions of sisterhood maintained by Black and Brown women over generations, and centers “elders as royalty.”
The performance will be followed by a Q&A with artist Kim F. Hall, performer Dyane Harvey, and associate director Amy Shoshana Blumberg.
More info about Weaving Dreams: https://library.barnard.edu/weaving-dreams-exhibition
Open to non CUID holders - RSVP required by Monday, September 29
Featured Artists
Kim F. Hall is the Lucyle Hook Professor of English and Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College. She is a pioneering figure in the study of race in English Renaissance Literature and teaches courses in Shakespeare Studies, Black Feminist Studies, Food Studies and Slavery Studies. Diverse Issues in Higher Education has named her one of “25 Women Making a Difference in Higher Education and Beyond” (2016). Her most recent book, The Sweet Taste of Empire: Sugar, Mastery and Pleasure in the Anglo-Caribbean will appear with University of Pennsylvania Press in summer, 2025. Her quilts have been displayed in Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina and New York. She is a member of the Quilters of Color Network of New York and the African American Quilters of Baltimore.
Dyane Harvey is a performing artist, dance educator, choreographer, assistant to the director of Forces of Nature Dance Theatre, and Pilates instructor. Her performing arts career spans over 50 years having worked with Ntozake Shange, and some of the most influential choreographers of her time, Eleo Pomare, George Faison, Joan Miller, Dianne McIntyre, Margie Beals, Ze’Eva Cohen, Fred Benjamin and Abdel R. Salaam. Courses taught at both Princeton and Hofstra Universities have been met with high student acclaim. A published author, she contributed a chapter, “The Goodness of Sweet Honey In the Rock” to Melony McGant’s book “Goodness Is Powerful Beyond Measure.” In honor of her collaborations with Ntozake Shange, she wrote “Making Movement As An Act of Listening, Riding With The Muse,” for the College Language Arts Journal.
Amy Shoshana Blumberg is a theater director, writer, and dramaturg based in Brooklyn, NY. She is also an anti-Zionist Jew and a former professional dancer. She co-founded and co-leads movement-theater company the after-image and regularly collaborates with other radical women, femme, and non-binary theater and dance-makers. With the after-image, she is currently a 2025 SU-CASA Artist through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Her past collaborations include: co-creator of SEDER with Eliana Fabiyi (in development, Subcircle Residency July 2025), associate director for What Does PURPLE Sound Like (Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State University, February 2025) and PURPLE: A Ritual in Nine Spells by Sydnie L. Mosley Dances (June 2023, Lincoln Center premiere), dramaturg for SAXYN Dance Works’ Seolh (November 2024), dramaturg for When the Sky Separated from the Earth by Ani Javian and Benjamin Roach, and co-director for Chaos Theory and Chaos Theory: Digital Edition by Jessica Ellen Creane, among others. She holds an MFA in Theater Directing from Temple University and a BA in Africana Studies and Dance from Barnard College.
Sydnie L. Mosley is a choreographer and writer renowned for socially aware creative work with her collective SLMDances. Her repertoire including critically-acclaimed evening length dances PURPLE: A Ritual In Nine Spells (world premiere Lincoln Center 2023), The Window Sex Project, and BodyBusiness—as well as their creative processes—are a model for dance-activism. She was one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” in 2024 and recognized by former NYC Mayor de Blasio in 2017 for using dance to fuel social change. Sydnie was part of the Bessie Award-winning skeleton architecture, the future of our worlds, curated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa. In addition to her own work—which she has performed from Lincoln Center to the legendary Apollo Theater—she performed with Christal Brown's INSPIRIT (2010-2013) and Brooklyn Ballet (2009-2019). At Barnard, she has taught in the departments of Africana Studies and Dance, and designed the Pre College Program’s Dance in the City program. She has also been a visiting lecturer at Harvard University. Her writing has appeared in ESSENCE, Dance Magazine, and The Washington Post. She is currently serving as Assistant Choreographer for the first-ever full staging of Zora Neale Hurston's Spunk presented by Yale Repertory Theatre, a play that was lost to time until the Library of Congress uncovered the drama in 1997.