Poetry Electric: Remembering Our Breath: A Night of Poetry, Movement, and Music – Feb 10
Remembering our Breath: A night of poetry, music, and movement
With Lacresha Berry, Jaimé Yawa Dzandu, and Shyvonne
ABOUT
The Poetry Electric fuses music, movement, sound, and dance with the spoken word and presents artists working in a wide range of styles including beatboxing, jazz and hip-hop theatre. This series has presented over 200 emerging poets from diverse cultural backgrounds.
CREDITS
Performing excerpts of my new one woman show, “soft.belly.” Lacresha Berry, better known as Berry, is a singer/songwriter, actress, poet, educator, and writer from Queens by way of Lexington, Kentucky. She received her BA in Theatre from the University of Kentucky. She honed her playwriting skills there and went on to produce three one woman shows since 2002. Her last one woman show, “Browngirl. Bluegrass.” documented her life as a brown girl coming of age in the bluegrass state of Kentucky. She’s performed all over the country with the show as well as singing and hosting all over NYC. Her latest one woman show, TUBMAN, a reimagining of Harriet Tubman’s life as a young girl in Harlem, debuted to packed audiences in her hometown of Lexington, Ky, and NYC, with additional performances in San Diego, Rikers Island, New Bedford Massachusetts, Sacramento and Tubman’s birthplace in Cambridge, MD. When she’s not performing, she’s teaching spoken word to middle and high school students in the Bronx, conducting educational workshops, and writing curriculum. She is currently writing her debut YA novel, “Seeing Janelle.”
Singer / Songwriter
Musical Director / Host
Teaching Artist / Writer
Poet / Fashionista
Jaimé Yawa Dzandu is a choreographer, movement artist, community organizer, and facilitator with roots from Hampton, Virginia and Wusuta – Anyigbe, Ghana. She creates movement art-based experiences that seek to bring forth stories, social connection, restoration, and celebration. Currently she is the Senior Program Manager of Wellness and Culture at Lower Eastside Girls Club, where she organizes and facilitates year-round youth and adult programming in wellness and performing arts. She is also the Artistic Coordinator and facilitator for Urban Bush Women’s BOLD network (Builders, Organizers, and Leaders through Dance). For a decade as a facilitator and community organizer, Jaimé has been working with individuals and organizations during challenging moments of change; burnout, navigating leadership transitions, and realigning practice with values. As a choreographer she creates work rooted in an African Diasporic experimental practice. Her work reflects the sacred in performance and focuses on exploring the complexities of Black girlhood/womanhood, lineage, and our relationship to nature. Her choreographic works includes ourwombtruth in collaboration with Brittany Williams (Open Season; National Black Theater, Bushwick Starr, Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans), mud diggn’: (Brooklyn Arts Exchange) mud diggn’: homework in progress (Movement Research) mud diggn’: she has always been here, sea (Corridor Gallery), mud diggn’’: working with the blues (BAAD!), bridge blood breath bone (92nd Street Y and Gibney Dance), and An Ode To Our Breath (Raising Voices Festival). You can find her collaborating with artists who explore performance at the center and edges of dance, theater, ritual, and community engagement. She is a proud recipient of Angela’s Pulse Dancing While Black Fellowship. She earned a B.F.A in Dance & Choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University and resides on the unceded Indigenous land of the Lenape peoples. Her work in the community is a prayer to turn towards our bodies and the land with more curiosity, care, and reverence.
NYC singer/songwriter Shyvonne embodies living art and takes you on a polychromatic journey like flipping through the pages of a storybook. Her music is an emotional rollercoaster of dance and tears, pulling from her dance, electrosoul, and hip hop influences to become a musical bouquet to establish a sound all her own, emotional house music.
Her do-it-yourself approach (as of press time, she has no management) inevitably has landed her backup slots for the likes of Estelle, Theophilus London, and Nina Sky as well as opening up for Dwele at Spellman’s Homecoming concert, all before locking in her own string of dates that placed the singer in over 75 + headlining spots spanning from New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Indonesia, London, Thailand, and Trinidad & Tobago. Shyvonne has also opened up for International Dancehall legends, Mr. Vegas, Beenie Man, Machel Montano, and Sister Nancy. In 2015, Shyvonne performed at one of NYC’s most popular festival’s AFROPUNK and was also featured in a style profile on Beyonce.com showcasing Beyonce’s clothing line. She has premiered new music on popular sites such as: Saint Heron, HypeTrak, NoisePorn, Pigeons and Planes, and UK’s FACT Magazine.
Her debut EP, entitled Back to the Beach, was released in July 2017, followed by her megamix Mind Games in 2018, and her self shot, directed, and edited visual album, “WAVES”, was premiered on Essence Magazine in September 2020, carries you rhythmically through the monumental tides of quarantine and an intimate perspective on how Covid and the Black Lives Matter movement transformed NYC.
Her most recent projects Sunset Therapy (2021), and In My Element (2023) are focused on nature as Shyvonne continues to lean towards the sun and shine her light in a complicated world. The reminder of growth and change with songs like “Be Like Water” and “Trust in the Wind” to remind us to surrender to the flow.
