On November 22nd at the LGBT Center from 7-9 PM, 2020-2021 QAM Fellows Eva Reign and Surya Swilley will be joined by their Mentors Tourmaline and Maria Bauman for Deep Ass Talks, an evening of spiritual healing and creative renewal! Eva will read a scene from her in-progress script, a feature length film about a Black trans woman unlearning old ways of survival and finding freedom in meeting people like her. Eva and Tourmaline will then discuss the power of filmmaking as Black trans artists. Surya will dialogue with Maria in an interdisciplinary artist talk, inviting audience members into their personal healing journey and their movement practice revolving around sex, death, and protest. We’re talking about sisterhood, self-love, transformation, and we’re going in deep. Stick around after the program for a post-performance toast and hang out!

EVA REIGN, 2020-2021 QAM FILM FELLOW

Eva Reign is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and actress originally from St. Louis, Missouri. She writes on topics pertaining to trans identity and culture with an emphasis on Black trans women and transfeminine people. Her performance work is a part of the permanent collections of both the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum. Her writing has been featured on platforms such as Teen Vogue and them. She currently works as Digital Media Manager of the Marsha P. Johnson Institute and as a columnist with them. In 2022 she will star in Billy Porter’s directorial debut.

SURYA SWILLEY, 2020-2021 QAM PERFORMANCE FELLOW

A Native of Charlotte, NC Surya Swilley is a Summa Cum Laude graduate from Johnson C. Smith University where they received a BA in Dance and a BA in Communication Arts. Through a multilingual approach to movement, Swilley interrogates choreographic protest (via Susan Foster), sensual aesthetics, and attempts to fuel conversations surrounding liberation and empowerment to her audiences. They have been honored to work and study under impeccable artists such as Candace Jennings, PJ Pennewell, Shani Collins, and LaTanya Johnson. Swilley has performed with Lela Aisha Jones|FlyGround, Martha Connerton/Kinetic Works and Kariamu and Company. Swilley is a Level 1 Embodiology Practitioner, a movement methodology curated by Dr. S. Ama Wray. Swilley holds an MFA from Temple University, and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance at Denison University.

TOURMALINE, MULTI-YEAR QAM FILM MENTOR

Tourmaline is an activist, filmmaker, and writer. Her work highlights the capacity of Black queer and trans people and communities to make and transform worlds. In her films, Tourmaline creates dreamlike portraits of people whose stories tell the history of New York City, including gay and trans liberation activists, drag queens, and queer icons Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera (Happy Birthday Marsha, co-directed with Sasha Wortzel, 2018), Miss Major (The Personal Things, 2016), and Egyptt LaBeija (Atlantic is a Sea of Bones, 2017). Recent screenings of Tourmaline’s work have been presented at venues including BFI Flare, London; Seattle Transgender Film Festival; Portland Art Museum; New Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Brooklyn Museum. You can learn more at her Instagram.

MARIA BAUMAN, MULTI-YEAR QAM PERFORMANCE MENTOR

Maria Bauman is a “Bessie” award winning multi-disciplinary artist and community organizer based in Brooklyn, NY. She is 2020 Columbia College Dance Center Practitioner-in-Residence, 2019 Gibney Dance in Process residency award winner, 2018-20 UBW Choreographic Center Fellow, 2017-19 Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange and was the 2017 Community Action Artist in Residence at Gibney. In 2009 she founded MBDance which recently premiered (re)Source to sold-out audiences, co-commissioned by the Chocolate Factory Theater and BAAD!. She creates bold and intimate artworks for MBDance, via dream-mapping and nuanced, powerful physicality. Centering non-linear stories, bodies and musings of queer people of color, she draws on her studies of English literature, capoeira, improvisation, dancing in nightclubs and concert dance classes to emphasize ancestors, imagination, and Spirit while embodying inter-dependence. Bauman is a Core Trainer with The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, helping arts organizations and university dance programs understand and undo racism. In 2014, she co-founded a grassroots organization, Artists Co-creating Real Equity, which won the 2018 BAX Arts and Artists in Progress Award for working to undo racism in our daily lives. Organizing to undo racism informs her artistic work and the two areas are each ropes in a double-dutch that is her holistic practice.