Presented by Indy Movement Arts
The Neon Black Festival is the first Black dance festival in Indianapolis. This one-of-a-kind event is hosted by Indianapolis Movement Arts Collective and made great by 10 local performing companies led by artists of color. Summer is ours as we come to you live from The Madam Walker Legacy Center. Neon Black will be joyful, powerful, excellent.
*Neon Black logo artwork designed by @onyxchimera
Purchase Festival Tickets
Saturday, June 8th | 7pm
Madam Walker Legacy Center
Divergence Performing Arts
Seda Negra/Black Silk Dance Company
Relevations Dance Company
Kenyettá Dance Company
Epiphany Dance Collective
Sunday, June 9th | 2pm
Madam Walker Legacy Center
iibada Dance Company
InDanza Dance Company
Create Freedom Arts Projects
Allure Dance
Austin "Sirlimitless" Day
Kenyettá Dance Company
Epiphany Dance Collective
Meet the 2024 Neon Black Featured Artists!
Why Sponsor Neon Black?
For Individual Donors: If you love the performing arts and you care about equity, this is the event to support. Indy Movement Arts has been visionary in its support of mid-tier dance makers and artists. Whether it’s our Process/Progress digital residency, or our presentation of artists like Mexico City-based Andrea Garay for workshops and performance; Indy Movement Arts provides the critical intermediate link between emerging artists and big names. We’ve seen the energy events like Butter can create around visual artist of color. With your support, Neon Black can energize the Black dance community.
For Business/Corporate Donors: The Neon Black dance festival will be attended by hundreds of people and people of color that are invested in their community. Indy Movement Arts has put years of work into cultivating a curious audience. These two forces combined ensure your visuals will be seen by a highly specific, highly engaged audience. And there’s nothing like being there in person. There are two vendor tables available in the Madam Walker coffee pot lounge ($100) and one vendor table available in the lobby ($150). These table prices are so low because we recognize the work that goes into presenting your product to a live audience. And this audience will be live!
To learn more about sponsorship opportunities for the 2024 Neon Black Festival or to inquire about a vendor table, please contact Lauren Curry at admin@indymovementarts.org. The sponsorship levels for Neon Black and the corresponding benefits for each sponsorship level are listed below.
Neon Black Title Sponsor
The Indianapolis Foundation, a CICF affiliate
Neon Black Headliner Sponsors
Ice Miller LLP and Sarah Harrell, IP Attorney at Barnes & Thornburg
Neon Black Act 1 Sponsors
Scott Semester, The Meyer Family, &
The Indy Arts Council and the City of Indianapolis
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Many thanks to our "Rosie Perez" Sponsors:
Dorothy Hathaway
Dr. Takuya Sato & Ingrid Sato
Myra Selby & Bruce Curry
Jenny Thomas
Lani Weissbach
Many thanks to our "Gregory Hines" Sponsors:
Bethany Bak, Sarah Harrell, Ashley Halberstadt, Ellen Pactor, Rebecca Pappas, Idrienne Steiman, Hadar Tann, Nikki Wenck, & Donald Wells
Also, with support from:
Kelly Barger, Ashley Benninghoff, Eve Earley, Sarah Ferguson, Lauren Gendron, Amanda Green, Mariel Greenlee, Emily Julian, Eric Sheets, Laura Schroeder, Lisa Warner, & Tashia Washington
If you would like to make a donation to the Neon Black Festival today, please click on the donate button. To make a donation by cash or check, please contact Lauren Curry at admin@indymovementarts.org. Thank you!
Are YOU ready to "Play with it"?
But we wouldn’t be Indy Movement Arts if we didn’t include a way for YOU to get in the mix. International dance-maker, Michelle Gibson will be teaching her The New Orleans Original Buckshop accompanied by a live brass band!! Everyone is welcome to attend this all-levels workshop (did I mention the workshop is accompanied by a live brass band?). Drawing on her upbringing in New Orleans, Gibson “…engages participants in the culture and Diasporic traditions of Black New Orleans as pertains to the rooted history of the city, through dance, language, art and music…Using her Second Line Aesthetic in dance workshops…she acquaints participants with Second Line as a rooted spiritual impulse for movement.”
“‘Play with it’ means play with your own inner rhythm,” Ms. Gibson explained in an interview with the New York Time in July of 2022. “That’s your real you. Everybody second line different, honey, because everybody got their own different testimonies.”
Michelle Gibson
Neon Black 2024 Artist in Residence
Michelle N. Gibson is a Mother, Choreographer, Cultural Ambassador, Curator, Professor, Performing Artist, and Spiritualist. She received her BFA in Dance from Tulane University and her MFA from Hollins University in collaboration with the American Dance Festival at Duke University. Currently, Gibson is as a Professor of Practice in Dance at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and recently completed her 14th year on faculty with the American Dance Festival’s Pre-Professional Intensive at Duke University.
Michelle N. Gibson is a consummate storyteller, employing body and mind to build a bridge between the culture and academia, but most importantly, humanity. On stage and in the classroom, Gibson intricately intertwines Black African American dance traditions, choreography, and associated scholarship linking the vibrant heritage of New Orleans through the Caribbean to the vast expanses of Africa, evoking the social, political, economic, and spiritual understandings central to building bonds within and across cultures. This journey, steeped in both tradition and innovation, encapsulates Gibson’s unwavering commitment to heal the world through the culture.
“My practice is more motivated by spiritual unification, harmony, rolling on the same rhythms together and moving forward. That’s what the world needs. I want to heal the world. Just let me strut.”
The New Orleans Original Buckshop
Joy
Rhythm
Resistance
Rooted in New Orleans' unique spiritual and cultural traditions, The New Orleans Original BuckShop workshop provides not just a window, but a doorway into practices that have sustained communities through joy, rhythm, and resilience.
An exploration of the unifying power of the Black Church and Black syncretic practices, the workshop aims to share the essence of Black New Orleans culture in a format that benefits every participant. These spiritual and communal elements have historically knitted together a potentially fragmented Black community, nourishing a collective identity and fostering resilience through shared rituals and beliefs.
Through her Second Line Aesthetic, Michelle N. Gibson's workshop focuses on improvised movement, interpretation, defined footwork, full body articulation, authentic self, and the embrace of communal ritual. With hips leading the torso and feet, legs bent at the knees, and steps that strut, Gibson invites participants to share lived experiences, embodied spiritual unification, harmony, rolling on the same rhythms together, and moving forward as a way to heal the world.
