Everything After

Overview

An improvised performance delving into the aesthetics of healing from trauma. Six dancers and a musician follow movement and music scores abstracted from PTSD therapies to uplift the labor of survivors. Rather than staging moments of violence, revenge, or catharsis the performers take the subtlety of healing as a new territory to explore as they wind their way through a projected installation of domestic scenes.

We are not defined by the moments of violence we experience. It’s Everything After that makes us who we are.

ELLA-GABRIEL MASON

Ella-Gabriel Mason wants to understand who we are, how we got here, and how we’re all thinking and feeling about that. An artmaker, educator and bodyworker, they combine rigorous academic research with live experience, words with dance, brain with body, living in the tension between ways of knowing and methods of being. Over the past decade Mason has created 7 evening-length performance works and a number of installations, video pieces, and short movement works. They have been granted residencies at Future Tenant Gallery (PGH) and Pearlarts Studios (PGH), and their works have been presented at the New Hazlett Theater (PGH), Kelly-Strayhorn Theater (PGH), vox populi (PHL), wild project (NYC), WOW Café Theater (NYC), and BAAD! (NYC). In addition to their work as a creator and performer, Mason is a licensed massage therapist specializing in trauma-sensitive bodywork. They bring their deep background in embodied practices to their work (both paid and volunteer) in a variety of community organizing roles. Mason is currently a dance MFA candidate at Temple University and aspiring to bake the perfect babka.

Credits

Director: Ella-Gabriel Mason

Dancers: Lia Haynes, Mandy Hackman, Ella-Gabriel Mason, Tessa Rhodes, Tiana Sanders, Madeline Shuron

Music and Videography: Miles Wilder

Photography: Benko

Video editing and installation: Ella-Gabriel Mason

This project was funded by a Vice Provost for the Arts Student Grant from Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA.