2023 CIRCA Summer Fellowship winners

Shaness D. Kemp (Assistant Professor, Dance) will use the CIRCA Summer Fellowship funds to complete Spirit of Our Bones, an evening length performance inspired by the Black Lives Matter Movement and the stories of a marginalized people, and the protests that ensued from the murder of George Floyd, highlighting the pain and journey of black mothers who have lost their children to senseless and racially driven violence. The work will be interdisciplinary and will present a call to action for all people to hold space for one another with love and equality. The funds will also support the professional recording of the performance for dissemination through film festivals. Professor Kemp is a native of Nassau, Bahamas and holds both a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and a Master of Fine Arts from Temple University. Most recently, Kemp was invited to be a guest performing artist with the Tabanka African & Caribbean Peoples Dance Ensemble which is Northern Europe’s largest all black professional dance company. As Master Teacher of the Umfundalai technique, she has taught at various institutions, festivals and intensives, both nationally and internationally. Kemp has trained and performed with several notable artists and professional dance companies, including Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, Kariamu & Company: Traditions, Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers, Eleone Dance Theatre, Philadanco! The Philadelphia Dance Company, Urban Bush Women, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Rennie Harris Puremovement, The Katherine Dunham Seminar and The American Dance Festival to name a few. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally at organizations such as the International Association of Blacks in Dance Conference and the 37th Annual Choreographers Showcase where she received the Audience Choice Award for her choreography. She was also the 2015-2016 recipient of the Ellen Forman Memorial Award.

Dr. Linda Dusman (Professor, Department of Music) will use the CIRCA Summer Fellowship funds to support the recording of a commercially released CD of her recent compositions reflecting on various aspects of our environmental fragility. The mastered recording needed for CD release will be done “in house” with renowned audio engineer Alan Wonneberger completing the recording, editing, and mastering of each work. UMBC’s RUCKUS ensemble will constitute the core musicians, including Dr. Lisa Cella (flute), Dr. Airi Yoshioka (violin), Dr. Daniel Pesca (piano), and Professors emeriti Tom Goldstein (percussion) and E. Michael Richards (clarinet) alongside long-term affiliate artists cellist Gita Ladd and trombonist Patrick Crossland. Linda Dusman’s compositions and sonic art explore the richness of contemporary life, from the personal to the political. Her work has been awarded by the International Alliance for Women in Music, Meet the Composer, the Swiss Women’s Music Forum, the American Composers Forum, the International Electroacoustic Music Festival of Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Ucross Foundation, and the State of Maryland in 2004, 2006, and 2011 (in both the Music: Composition and the Visual Arts: Media categories). In 2009 she was honored as a Mid- Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellow for a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She was invited to serve as composer in residence at the New England Conservatory’s Summer Institute for Contemporary Piano in 2003. In the fall of 2006 Dr. Dusman was a Visiting Professor at the Conservatorio di musica “G. Nicolini” in Piacenza, Italy, and while there also lectured at the Conservatorio di musica “G. Verdi” in Milano. She recently received a Maryland Innovation Initiative grant for her development of Octava, a real-time program note system (octavaonline.com).