The CUNY Dance Initiative (CDI), an expansive program providing New York City choreographers and dance companies with creative residencies on CUNY college campuses, announces the world premiere of These are the bodies that have not borne., a site-specific performance by MBDance at the upcoming Snug Harbor Dance Festival. Performances are Saturday, August 23 and Sunday, August 24 at 6pm at Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, 1000 Richmond Terrace, Staten Island. Admission is pay-what-you-wish, with a suggested donation between $10-30. Get tickets at https://snugharbor.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket/.

These are the bodies that have not borne. combines land art, choreography, original music, soil ecologies, and ritual. It is a reckoning and a healing offering that is a collective and individual somatic processing of unrequited desires and inherent worth in our bodies and livelihoods. Performers will submerge themselves in portals dug into the ground, literally dancing out of the Earth, provoking images and questions of burial, re-birth and of Earth as first parent. These are the bodies that have not borne. is choreographed and directed by Maria Bauman, assisted by Audrey Hailes. Mankwe Ndosi contributes original music, and it will be performed by a cast of seven: Graciella Ye’Tsunami, Rochelle Jamila, AJ Wilmore, Angel Edwards, Myssi Robinson, Audrey Hailes and Maria Bauman.