Participation Type
Performance
Session Title
"Where I'm from the Mountains are Red, White, and Yellow," a Performance Ethnography
Session Abstract or Summary
Appalachian and Affrilachian Performing artists collaborate in a Performance Ethnography that is Part poem and part dance. This interdisciplinary work explores Appalachian and Affilachian identity by questioning how our perceptions of color influence our ideas about race, class, and place.
Presentation #1 Title
Where I'm from the Mountains are Red, White, and Yellow
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
What do redneck, white trash, and yellow roach mean? Where did these words come from? Should we use them? Where I’m from the Mountains are Red, White, and Yellow is an interdisciplinary work that explores Appalachian and Affrilachian identity through movement, language, photos, and film. Performing artists Kelley Ann Walsh (Lexington, VA) and Yunina Barbour-Payne (Louisville, KY) challenge stereotypes about Appalachia and its people by questioning how our perceptions about color influence our understanding of race, class, and place. Part poem and part dance, this work investigates the visual, symbolic, and linguistic significance of color to our sense of identity. Join us for a series of semi-autobiographical vignettes that explore what it means to be to Appalachian.
Total Run time is 1 hour and 30 minutes. Show Run Time is 45 minutes with 15 minutes for Talk Back immediately following the show and 15 minutes for a Pre-show activity.
Technical Requirements for this show include Projector, A/V and Sound. Microphones are preferred but not required.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Yunina Barbour-Payne is an Instructor of Theater at Yes Prep Public Schools, North Forest Campus in Houston, Texas. Her scholarship and teaching are interdisciplinary and involve Performance Studies, Africana Studies, Appalachian Studies and Folklore in and outside of the classroom. As an educator and scholar Barbour-Payne was recently selected as a 2018 National Endowment for Humanities Summer Scholar of Shakespeare and Performance. She received a BA in Integrated Studies with Concentrations in Dance, Theater and Black Studies from Northern Kentucky University, and a MA in Performance Studies from Texas A& M University. Her research involves looking at stories of survival among Black Women in Appalachia, within community, family and creative iterations. As an Affrilachian scholar-artist, Yunina is the founder of The Affrilachian Memory Plays,(www.affrilachianmemoryplays.com) a performative inquiry for understanding experiences of people of color in the Appalachian region. Barbour-Payne performs professionally as an actress in Houston, Tx. As a scholar/artist she has performed regionally in Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado and Texas. Barbour-Payne’s works have been presented at the Museum of Blacksburg Odd Fellows Hall, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio and the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Kelley Ann is an interdisciplinary performing artist and arts educator whose research explores Appalachian identity. She danced with Columbus Moving Company and John Gamble Dance Theater, and has performed in works by Larry Keigwin, Bill Evans, Lux Boreal, and Taproot Dance Ensemble. Kelley Ann’s choreography has been performed in the Boulder International Fringe Festival and the Greensboro Fringe Festival. In 2018, Kelley Ann received the Boulder International Fringe Festival’s ‘Hibner Brown Award: Most Important Historical Message’ for Where I’m from the Mountains are Red, White, and Yellow, which she created in collaboration with Yunina Barbour Payne. She also received a 2018 summer fellowship to conduct research in the Post-Holocaust Jewish Archives.
Kelley Ann is a Second-Year Dance MFA Candidate and Graduate Part-Time Instructor at the University of Colorado. She received a BA in Government from the College of William and Mary and a BFA in Dance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Kelley Ann is a Certified Movement Analyst who trained at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, and an Alexander Technique teacher who trained at Chesapeake Bay Alexander Studies.
Where I'm from the Mountains are Red, White, and Yellow
What do redneck, white trash, and yellow roach mean? Where did these words come from? Should we use them? Where I’m from the Mountains are Red, White, and Yellow is an interdisciplinary work that explores Appalachian and Affrilachian identity through movement, language, photos, and film. Performing artists Kelley Ann Walsh (Lexington, VA) and Yunina Barbour-Payne (Louisville, KY) challenge stereotypes about Appalachia and its people by questioning how our perceptions about color influence our understanding of race, class, and place. Part poem and part dance, this work investigates the visual, symbolic, and linguistic significance of color to our sense of identity. Join us for a series of semi-autobiographical vignettes that explore what it means to be to Appalachian.
Total Run time is 1 hour and 30 minutes. Show Run Time is 45 minutes with 15 minutes for Talk Back immediately following the show and 15 minutes for a Pre-show activity.
Technical Requirements for this show include Projector, A/V and Sound. Microphones are preferred but not required.
