Brown is Bawdy: A Bollywood Burlesque Workshop

Artist Facilitator: Masti Khor

Did you know burlesque was used to mock the rich? That South Asia has a history and a contemporary culture that includes sexy dances? That people continue to use burlesque as a means of empowerment? In this workshop, we’ll learn about some of the radical histories of burlesque, focusing on burlesque performers of colour in North America and in South Asia. Learn  a few sashays, shimmies and bump’n'grinds! We will also belearning how to make pasties (aka nipple tassles) and will learn how to develop a character.  Please wear or bring something that makes you feel sexy, whether that is stockings, a tie, silk gloves or jeans. Let’s feel great in our fabulous bodies!

*Please note that there will be no stripping in this workshop. Sexy movement,whatever that means to you,is encouraged but you are welcome to participate as suits you.

*People of all genders and abilities are welcome

About Masti Khor: masti khor has been delighting audiences with anti-racist feminist sexy stripteases for a couple of years. she is a big-haired queer crip brown cis femme sequin-loving crafty neon-pink-lipstick-wearing introvert, who loves expressing various exaggerated femininities on stage and in real life. for her, burlesque is an anti-oppressive tool that uses humour to educate.

Bookbinding: Holding Our Stories Together

Artist facilitators: Eshan Rafi and Nadijah Robinson

In this workshop we will learn how to make our own books to honour and hold our stories.  Join us and walk away with a finished book that can hold your drawings, photographs, musings, cravings, ravings,   rants, recipes, to do lists, poems, collages and everything in between.

About Eshan Rafi: Eshan Rafi is a queer Pakistani artist, teacher and community arts educator. He has a deep love for film-based photography and also works in performance and video. Eshan resides in Toronto, grew up in Lahore/Toronto, and is currently on a journey of healing and loving. He is the recipient of the Mark S. Bonham Scholarship for Queer Studies in Film & Video (2011) and the Vital Person Award (2009). This year, he has been selected to participate in the Triangle Arts Association Workshop in Brooklyn, NY and theYoung Artists’ Program at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Eshan is doing his teacher training at a social justice focused alternative middle school in Toronto. He is very proud of his wig collection and loves teen movies from the eighties. You can reach him at eshan.rafi@gmail.com.

About Nadijah Robinson: Nadijah Robinson is an artist based in Toronto, currently working in the media of Collage, Textile and Printmaking, Sound, and Installation. She received her BFA from the University of Ottawa. Her fabric-based work mixes the conventions of painting, street art and textile art in order to raise themes of memory, identity, and storytelling. This work aims to reflect and archive the stories of communities in which she is strongly rooted, and which are not often represented in conventional art spaces. Drawing directly from experience with screen-printing, modern-batik making, sewing, figurative painting, and filmmaking, her work speaks to diverse artistic traditions. Robinson’s draws from her interest in popular histories, oral histories, sci-fi and subcultures to colour her subject matter. Recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition of her new series BLACK INFINITY at Accents on Eglinton (2012). She also screened her first-prize-winning video ‘QWOC: Queer Women of Colour Oral History Project’ at the Jacqueline Fry Contest at Gallery 115 (2009); as well as a showcase of her fabric-based works at Canteen Gallery in Ottawa (2010). Her community work and artwork often go hand in hand, in providing graphic design services, art direction, mentorship and workshops.

Everyone is a Storyteller

Artist Facilitator: Jamilah Malika

This workshop begins with a conversation around what makes a great story and storyteller followed by written exercises/schematics intended to uncover layers of identity, community and narrative and thereby explore participants’ individual ‘untold’ stories in order to value their perception of the world, their voice, as unique and important.

About Jamilah Malika: Jamilah Malika works words with love; a writer at heart, she’s one third of abstract random, electro dub hop toronto-based band bringing back feminist political cool. Alumni of d’bi youngs anitafrika dub theatre residency and grad of the banff centre’s spoken word residency, Jamilah is performance poetry youth workshop facilitator who is liable to open the session with stretching as she’s a yoga teacher and proud to support Brown Girls Yoga and related initiatives that require yoga interrupts social hierarchies as opposed to support them.