What if Our Blooming is a Threat?
May 28th, 2024 | 10 - 4pm EST
with Wolf Willow faculty Vanessa Reid, Laura Blakeman and guest artist, Dainty Smith
A spring beckoning. An underworld journey. In an era of tumult, heartbreak and possibility, how might we attune to this season of rupture and rapture to break through hard ground?
Join us in the Imaginarium as we delve into the art and story-form of Burlesque as a radical complexity proposition. Where in the musculature of despair and hope, and a world in flux, might we dare something like self-romance? Why remember how important joy and pleasure are when there is so much about which to be rightfully outraged and skeptical?
“Our refusal to turn away from the ugliness of the world and our ability to still see something beautiful in it may be what makes us dangerous,” says our guest artist Dainty Smith. “To go further into the unknown and to still have the capacity to dance, and dream. To go deeper and deeper into romancing this world and all that’s in it.”
At Wolf Willow, we believe imagination to be a core complexity capability. We also believe that anomalies, the less known, the unusual and what is shimmering at the edges hold potent ingredients for the complex work of these times. How might we see and sense new patterns from the edges? From the future? How might the soft, the sensuous, stillness and the slow offer us an entry port into exploring the complex systems in which you are working.
If you are finding yourself overwhelmed in your work or deeply alarmed by the world, you are probably right on track. These are apocalyptic times. The tides are shifting. There are great uncertainties and possibilities. As systems leaders, many of our ways of working or being or thinking may not (yet) be attuned to what these times are asking of us. So we’re inviting you into an apocalyptic practice (ἀποκάλυψις) - which at its root means to reveal, to take the cover off.
Photo (left): Dainty Smith | Credit: Amanda Ciccoritti
Read Dainty’s letter to you: “What if blooming were a threat?”.
Join us in The Imaginarium.
Part art studio, part petri dish; this is a practice space for building our complexity muscles. Bring your burning questions about the systems work in which you find yourself. Bring questions to which you do not have answers. Bring your exhaustion and overwhelm, or a bit of that audacity of a vision you dare not bring to your Board, your collaborators, or investors. We will marinate them in an Imaginarium process.
Our aim here is to bring what is known and unknown into a new inquiry. And if complexity thinking and leadership is anything, it is to be in the questions and inquiry with curiosity, rigor and a good dose of synchronicity. Here in the Imaginarium we combine creative practice and creative constraints (pressure makes diamonds!). We open different vantage points and lean into what we call “embodied imaginings” to access different kinds of intelligences. We combine provocations and perspectives, art practice and contemplation, synchronicity and sense-making. The intention is to access new neural and imaginal pathways and to impact our inner and outer work in meaningful ways.
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Wolf Willow Faculty Vanessa Reid and Laura Blakeman and special guest artist Dainty Smith will be hosting you.
Dainty Smith’s artistry is the somatic language of the body, the art and story-form of burlesque, and the radically generous epistemologies of love, femme culture and Black Lives. Dainty will offer us ways of understanding complexity through improv, performance, movement, and the intersections of visible and invisible systems.
Dainty believes that through the art of storytelling and a willingness to be exposed that genuine human connections can be made. Her performances often tell deeply vulnerable stories regarding race, religion, sexuality and challenging social boundaries.
Dainty studied performing arts at George Brown College and is a powerful self taught storyteller, performer, and orator. She performed in the acclaimed independent theatre group Les Blues. She was a co-producer in the independent performance art collective Colour Me Dragg and the founder of Les Femme Fatales: Women of Colour burlesque troupe, the first burlesque troupe for women of colour in Canada.
http://www.daintysmith.com
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Tuesday May 28th, 2024
Opening: 10am - 12 pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT)
Break/ Reflective Practice: 12 pm - 2 pm
Exploration: 2-4 pm (EDT)
The session will take place on Zoom. We will send you the link a week before the Imaginarium opens.
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Bring a sketchbook, your favourite pens. A cup of something warm to drink. Your burning questions. And something soft. Something with feathers, a textured scarf or length of fabric. Whatever you consider to be soft.
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This course is offered on a sliding scale.
90$ CAD
120$ CAD
140$ CAD