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Sit in on an intimate conversation between Ebony Noelle Golden, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and Sydnie L. Mosley about four works of Womanist literature that have influenced PURPLE: A Ritual In Nine Spells.

Ebony Noelle Golden is a theatrical ceremonialist, culture strategist, entrepreneur, and public scholar. In 2009, Ebony founded Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, a culture consultancy that devises systems, strategies, and social justice solutions nationally. In 2020, she founded Jupiter Performance Studio, a space to study and practice Black diasporic performance traditions. Winner of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Transformational Practice Award, Golden works to incite and ignite the creative capacity of everyday folks in service of liberation and collective wellbeing. Her practice is rooted in community-design, ritual performance, and leadership development through a womanist and Black feminist praxis. Invoking messy, magical, and medicinal processes, Ebony and her collaborators, work to conjure a better world. www.bettysdaughterarts.com IG: @ebonynoellegolden

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is cherished by a wide range of communities as an oracle and a vessel of love. Drawing on over 25 years of experience as a writer and facilitator, her inclusive practice finds us and brings us into the ceremonies we have always needed. Her books include: Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (AK Press 2020), Dub: Finding Ceremony (Duke Press, 2020), M Archive: After the End of the World (Duke Press 2018), Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity (Duke Press, 2016) and Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (PM Press, 2016). In 2020-2021 Alexis was awarded a National Humanities Center Fellowship to work on her forthcoming biography The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde Alexis recently won the 2023 Windham-Campbell Prize in Poetry. Alexis and her partner Sangodare have received many honors,including an Advocate 40 under 40 feature for their decade of work to create an intergenerational living library of Black LGBTQ brilliance called Mobile Homecoming. Alexis lives in Durham, North Carolina where she nurtures and is nurtured by a visionary creative community while scheming towards her dream of being your favorite cousin.

Sydnie L. Mosley​ is an artist-activist and educator who produces experiential dance works with her New York City-based dance-theater collective Sydnie L. Mosley Dances (SLMDances). She won The Bessie for Outstanding Performer as a part of the ensemble of the skeleton architecture, the future of our worlds, and received a special citation from Mayor Bill de Blasio for using her talents in dance to fuel social change. As an educator, she designed and teaches Barnard College's Dance in the City Pre-College Program. She sits on the Advisory Committee to Dance/NYC. Her writing has appeared in Essence, The Brooklyn Rail, and Dance Magazine.

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Hosting, editing, and production by Kirya Traber
Executive Production by SLMDances

Assistant Production by Ziiomi Law

Production support by Max Van & Lance John

Music produced and composed by Line Neesgaurd, Spring Gang, Ebonie Smith and Counterfeit Madison

Special thanks to Emma Alabaster

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We continue the journey and hear about the place where PURPLE: A Ritual In Nine Spells was developed: the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, which is also the neighborhood formerly known as San Juan Hill, and the community engagement process with the Lincoln Square Neighborhood center.

• More information on SLMD’s Community Engagement for PURPLE
• SLMD’s Community Engagement Curriculum
• Listen to the full EP: What Does PURPLE Sound Like
• Lincoln Center’s Legacies of San Juan Hill website

This episode features interviews with: Artistic Director Sydnie L. Mosley; SLMDances Creative Partners Brittany Grier and Candance Sumpter; and Community partners Jacqueline Wright and Marie Stephen. Additionally featuring excerpts from interview footage recorded in 1985 by New York City’s municipal broadcast television station, WNYC-TV, for Neighborhood Voices, a limited series on changing city neighborhoods, archived by the NYC Department of Records & Information Services.

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Follow Kirya Traber on social media

Twitter: twitter.com/Kiryatraber

IG instagram.com/kiryat

Website: kiryatraber.com

Follow SLMDances on social media

Twitter: twitter.com/slmdances

Instagram: nstagram.com/slmdances

Facebook: facebook.com/sydnielmosleydances

Website: slmdances.com