2010 is a milestone year for Pat Graney Company’s Keeping the Faith: The Prison Project. Its upcoming arts residency on the “inside” marks the 15th anniversary of the program’s inception. Since 1995, Keeping the Faith: The Prison Project has cultivated expression through art for offenders in the Washington State women’s prison system, including WCCW, the state’s largest facility for women. This year, the company will be in residence for the sixth time at Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women, located just south of Bremerton. The three month residency starts February 5 and will culminate in two performances for fellow inmates and the public on May 7 and 8, 2010 at 7pm.
2010 also marks the second consecutive year that ex-offenders will be allowed back into the prison as Keeping the Faith program interns. This is a particularly exciting development in the program’s history. “For the incarcerated women, whose offenses vary from assault and burglary to drug possession or dealing to first degree murder, the involvement of ex-offenders in the residency is truly amazing,” Graney said. “The women respond so strongly to the presence and accomplishment of their peers.”
This year, inspired by the success of a similar effort in a Philippines prison, program coordinator and ex-offender Shan Peña will teach the women the choreography from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. The women will learn the steps over the course of the three month residency, as one component of the twice-a-week sessions comprised of writing, dance, and visual art.
All members of the Keeping the Faith group will learn the dance, create the visual arts, and share their writing. Of the 50 women who signed up for the program, ranging in age from 21-45, “there are no ‘observers,’ just participants,” Peña explained. Peña will be joined in the residency by Pat Graney, Artistic Director of the program, as well as writer & founder of Pongo Teen Publishing, Richard Gold, guest visual artists, a dance intern, writing intern, and visual arts intern.
The final performances: May 7 & May 8, 7pm. The public performance begins at 7pm at Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women, with the audience checking in through security no later than 6:00 pm. For more information or to register for the performance, email shan@patgraney.org by April 13th. All audiences must be cleared prior to attending.
Keeping The Faith: The Prison Project is generously supported by Raynier Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, National Performance Network Mentorship & Leadership Awards, 4Culture, Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, Judith Beck & Tom Alberg, & many individual donors.
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Also from Pat Graney Company in 2010
In addition to their residency at Mission Creek Corrections Center For Women that runs February – May 2010, Pat Graney Company will be touring the acclaimed House of Mind to Miami as part of Art Basel Miami, and presenting the triptych of Faith, Sleep, & Tattoo at On the Boards in October.
About Keeping The Faith - The Prison Project
Keeping the Faith - The Prison Project is an arts residency program designed to enable incarcerated women and girls to discover a sense of identity within themselves and to develop that identity within the context of community - through the vehicles of performance, video documentation and a published anthology of their writings. Each year, the program culminates in performance where the participating women perform their own movement and writing, and display their own visual art for 200 members of the general public, 200 of their incarcerated peers, and the prison administration. This year's program runs February 5 - May 12.
About KTF Transitions
After extensive work with women on the ‘inside,’ Company Director Pat Graney envisioned a program that would guide women transitioning out of prison to fully realize and utilize those skills. Pat Graney Company launched "Transitions" in 2008 to empower women to successfully transition from prison to community. This program is governed by ex-offenders, and is in residence at Seattle University and Helen B Ratcliffe women’s work release.
About the Triptych of Faith, Sleep, & Tattoo
The full evening works of Faith, Sleep, & Tattoo will be presented as an evening-length work at On the Boards October 21-23, 2010. Faith, hailed as ‘a work on which reputations for genius are built,’ by The Seattle Times and ‘Powerful Ritual Theater’ by the New York Times, will open the evening, with Sleep next, and Tattoo closing the evening. This project was awarded an American Dance Masterpieces Grant by the National Endowment for the Arts to assist in reconstructing the work.
About House of Mind
House of Mind, an installation performance work that premiered to Seattle audiences in December of last year, will go to Art Basel Miami this year and the Kohler Art Center in 2011, before returning to Seattle Audiences in 2012.
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