Events by this organizer
Artists Seeking Transcendence
director@artistsseekingtranscendence.com
Events by this organizer
april
10apr10:00 am8:15 pmArtists Seeking Transcendence - Wisdom Workshop

Event Details
What does it mean to be wise? How does our personal wisdom impact our art? This virtual workshop for dancers, choreographers, musicians, painters, filmmakers, crafters,
Event Details
What does it mean to be wise? How does our personal wisdom impact our art? This virtual workshop for dancers, choreographers, musicians, painters, filmmakers, crafters, writers, actors—artists of any type—guides participants through deep discussions, investigates views by prominent Eastern and Western philosophers, and provides individual artistic mentorship.
Speakers
Victor Fung, author/music educator
Loren Davidson, choreographer/dancer
Daniel Smith, composer/pianist
Bios
Victor Fung is Professor of Music Education and Director of Center for Music Education Research at the University of South Florida. He has studied extensively in parts of Asia and was a Fulbright researcher in Japan (2018). He has given over a hundred presentations at professional conferences and offered open lectures and seminars at over thirty institutions across five continents. His books A Way of Music Education: Classic Chinese Wisdoms (2018) and Music for Life: Music Participation and Quality of Life of Senior Citizens (co-authored with Lisa Lehmberg, 2016) are published by Oxford University Press. His recent projects include Asian philosophies as applied to music education and contributions of senior citizens’ music participation to their quality of life. He is particularly interested in the wisdoms found in the Book of Changes (Yijing or I Ching), dated back to about 2900 BCE, and the philosophical schools of Confucianism and Daoism, established and solidified in the mid-3rd to mid-6th century BCE.
Loren Davidson is currently performing with Adele Myers and Dancers and Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre, both based in Miami, FL. She is also a Pilates instructor and mentor at Polestar Pilates (Miami, FL) where she continues to develop creative healing rituals and movement curricula within a variety of modalities using the wisdom of each individual body and the stories it carries to create an invigorating movement experience. She has most recently taught Contemporary Dance and Cross-Training for Dancers at Florida State University and NOVA Southeastern University. She has taught for summer programs at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp, and The American Dance Festival. While in NYC, Loren performed with Ellis Wood Dance from 2003–2009. Loren received her MFA from Florida State University and her BFA from New World School of the Arts.
Daniel Smith, the Director of AST, is an acclaimed pianist and composer best known for his work with leading dance institutions, including Martha Graham Dance Company and Suzanne Farrell Ballet. He is a faculty member at Florida State University where he teaches cross-disciplinary courses that merge philosophy, science, and the arts.
Schedule
10:00–11:15 Eastern Philosophies of Wisdom, ft. Victor Fung
1:00–2:15 Western Philosophies of Wisdom
4:00–5:15 Artistic Sharing
7:00–8:15 Developing Our Wisdom, ft. Loren Davidson
(All times are Eastern Time Zone.)
AST provides online workshops and master classes for artists that integrate philosophy, science, and aesthetics. Each of our events explores one of six core character attributes: happiness, wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, and temperance. We investigate leading philosophical and scientific understandings of these virtues and mentor artists as they wrestle with rich, enduring questions in the pursuits of bettering themselves and expanding their capacity to make impactful art. Our workshops and master classes are held online via group video chats (NOT webinars), allowing you to see and talk with us, our guests, and other participants from anywhere in the world. If you’re involved in an arts-related field and want to engage with passionate, insightful speakers and guest artists, you’ve come to the right place!
For additional information, visit ArtistsSeekingTranscendence.com and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Time
(Saturday) 10:00 am - 8:15 pm
Location
On-Line
Organizer
Artists Seeking Transcendencedirector@artistsseekingtranscendence.com
may
15may10:00 am8:15 pmArtists Seeking Transcendence - Humanity Workshop

Event Details
Who do we care about? How does our sphere of concern impact our art? Can we love those with whom we disagree? Should we? This four-part online workshop invites attendees
Event Details
Who do we care about? How does our sphere of concern impact our art? Can we love those with whom we disagree? Should we? This four-part online workshop invites attendees to join in a discussion about care, kindness, and community in relation to artists, their art-making processes, and their training.
Speakers
Josh Prince Choreographer/Broadway
Alex Ketley Choreographer/Stanford University
Sidra Bell Choreographer/University of the Arts
Daniel Smith Composer/Florida State University
Bios
Josh Prince has appeared on Broadway in Little Me and Saturday Night Fever, made his Broadway choreographic debut with Shrek, The Musical (Outer Critics Circle Nomination) in 2006, and is the proud choreographer of the award-winning hit Broadway show, Beautiful – The Carole King Musical (Olivier, Helpmann, and Astaire Award nominations), which ran for six years at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre and toured the US, UK, Japan, and Australia. He has choreographed shows at prestigious venues across the US and UK, including New York City Center, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, BAM, and The Royal Albert Hall. Additionally, Josh is the founding Artistic Director of Dance Lab New York, an organization dedicated to promoting and providing resources to a diverse range of dance makers.
Alex Ketley is a choreographer, filmmaker, educator, and the director of The Foundry. In his 20 years making work, he has developed pieces from many different creative entry points. Examples of these are: Syntax, an hour-long duet that used the mechanics of language as an organizing mechanism; Lost Line researched how the application of environment affects the generation of movement; Please Love Me jettisoned performing in a theater and researched how people connect and experience artwork; and the No Hero Trilogy was a multi-year project that explored what dance and performance means to people living throughout rural America. He has been commissioned extensively throughout the United States and has received acknowledgement from the Hubbard Street National Choreographic Competition, the Choo-San Goh Award, the Princess Grace Award for Choreography, four MANCC Residencies, the Eben Demarest Award, the National Choreographic Initiative Residency, a Kenneth Rainin Foundation New and Experimental Works Grant, a Phyllis C Wattis Foundation Grant, the Artistry Award from the Superfest International Disability Film Festival, and his work was featured on the show So You Think You Can Dance. His pieces and collaborations have also been awarded Isadora Duncan Awards for outstanding achievement in the categories of Choreography, Company, & Ensemble. He is a Lecturer at Stanford University’s Theater and Performance Studies Department, and in 2020 he became a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, one of the most prestigious honors in the United States recognizing individuals ”who have demonstrated exceptional creative ability in the arts.”
Sidra Bell is currently a Master Lecturer at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, was artist in residence at Harvard University, and was an Adjunct Professor at Barnard College in New York City. She has a BA in History from Yale University and an MFA in Choreography from Purchase College Conservatory of Dance. Her body of work was featured in the Harvard University Theater, Dance & Media course Contemporary Repertory: Dance Authorship in the 21st Century. She has received many commissions from institutions and companies internationally and created over 100 new works notably for BODYTRAFFIC, Ailey II, The Juilliard School, Harvard University, Boston Conservatory, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Sacramento Ballet, Ballet Austin, Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet School. Bell was a cultural ambassador in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2014 and 2015 (made possible by Movement Research, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and Derida Dance Center). In 2015 she collaborated with the internationally acclaimed women’s chorus Karmina Slovenica in Slovenia. She is the first Black woman ever to create a new work for New York City Ballet.
Daniel Smith, the Director of AST, is an acclaimed pianist and composer best known for his work with leading dance institutions, including Martha Graham Dance Company and Suzanne Farrell Ballet. He is a faculty member at Florida State University where he teaches cross-disciplinary courses that merge philosophy, science, and the arts.
Schedule
10:00–11:15 Care, Kindness, and Community
1:00–2:15 Josh Prince’s Thoughts on Humanity
4:00–5:15 Alex Ketley’s Thoughts on Humanity
7:00–8:15 Sidra Bell’s Thoughts on Humanity
(All times are Eastern Time Zone.)
AST provides online workshops and master classes for artists that integrate philosophy, science, and aesthetics. Each of our events explores one of six core character attributes: happiness, wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, and temperance. We investigate leading philosophical and scientific understandings of these virtues and mentor artists as they wrestle with rich, enduring questions in the pursuits of bettering themselves and expanding their capacity to make impactful art. Our workshops and master classes are held online via group video chats (NOT webinars), allowing you to see and talk with us, our guests, and other participants from anywhere in the world. If you’re involved in an arts-related field and want to engage with passionate, insightful speakers and guest artists, you’ve come to the right place!
For additional information, visit ArtistsSeekingTranscendence.com and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Time
(Saturday) 10:00 am - 8:15 pm
Location
On-Line
Organizer
Artists Seeking Transcendencedirector@artistsseekingtranscendence.com