DeAnna Pellecchia specializes in working with inner-city teenagers and underprivileged youth, both ‘arts-identified’ and ‘non-arts identified’. She bridges gaps between diverse disciplines and mediums to expose youth to the unlimited possibilities of movement as art. DeAnna facilitates the generation of original material created directly by the youth themselves, including simple gestures, jumps, leaps, partnered lifts, and spoken text shaped through individual reflection and group discussions. This material is streamlined and linked together to craft a culminating dance adaptable to performance in landscapes varying from brick walls to lush green gardens to theater in the round. She has taught for The Yard on Martha's Vineyard, The Huntington Theater, Vine Street Community Center in Roxbury, "Act 2" in conjunction with Celebrity Series of Boston and "Taking Steps" at Boston Ballet. From 2002-2004 DeAnna co-directed the performing arts component of Medicine Wheel Production's "No Man's Land" Youth Outreach Program, involving art-based work with at-risk teens in South Boston. She resided on dance faculty at The Cambridge School of Weston, a progressive, coeducational, day and boarding school for grades 9 through 12, from 2005-2007. She was an 'artist mentor in residence' at The Cloud Foundation from 2007-2009. She has also taught movement workshops for impoverished children throughout India. DeAnna now holds residency as a staff artist at Urbano Project, working to build confidence, ambition and hope through artistic creation and cross-cultural experience by providing much needed mentorship to young people across the city. DeAnna greatly enjoys teaching inquisitive, courageous teenagers how to express themselves through the medium of dance, and in the process beautify the world with movement.
"I would like to thank DeAnna for teaching me many different kinds of dance, very patiently, in gentle ways. I will remember this class always. I know it is a hard journey to be a dancer but my plan is to work hard, do my best, and always have faith in myself." -Annie Wu, Contemporary Dance & Composition Workshop Student, Cloud Foundation
"The Contemporary Dance & Composition Class is the first dance class I have ever taken. I have learned a lot about dance, most importantly that dance is not only action and movement, but also art." -Yan Lin, Contemporary Dance & Composition Workshop, Cloud Foundation "My goal is to become a professional dancer. I have been dancing since I was four-years-old. I have studied many dance styles at CLOUD including hip-hop, salsa, jazz and Classical Indian. I hope to learn more of each of these disciplines and every type of dancing there is in the world! I would like to thank DeAnna for opening the doors to a new world of dance, confidence, and love." -Amanda Quiles, Contemporary Dance & Composition Workshop, Cloud Foundation
Headline
"Our ideas come from the soul and the heart. Our ideas are inspired by each other, inspired by the society we live in, and by the struggles that we face in every day life. We all get together and brainstorm. Our art is not only words on a piece of paper or memorized lyrics, it's who we are and what we are not only as a "group", but as a team. Urbano is a family to me, and that is something I take to heart." -Jaelyn Montes, Spoken Word Teen Curator, Urbano Project
URBANO Project DeAnna holds residency as a staff artist at URBANO Project where she teaches Dance & Compostion and facilitates the Spoken Word Curatorial Program. URBANO Project seeks to foster a philosophy of artistic expansiveness, supporting works that blur boundaries between art and lived experience. Through artistic collaboration, participating teens are challenged to create works that take place both within institutional spaces and in the community beyond the walls of the studio. Working with professional public artists and community members, teens develop a commitment to continued engagement with the development and evolution of their city.
The instructors who staff URBANO Project's programs are seasoned educators with experience working with teen populations as well as professional artists who pursue a vibrant and innovative personal artistic practice. Workshops provide opportunities for teens to experience a diversity of media in-depth through personal studio exploration and large-scale collaborative projects and are offered free of charge to Boston-area public high school students.
Spoken Word Curatorial Program Staff Artists/Facilitators: Ayano Strickland & DeAnna Pellecchia Teen Spoken Word Curators work with professional performers to explore a range of performance techniques, focusing on creating spoken word poetry and performance art. Teen Curators produce and host a series of public open mic nights at Urbano and perform annually at the Masachusetts' State House in conjunction with "Violence Transformed", an exhibition of visual and performing arts scheduled in concert with Massachusetts' Annual Victim Rights Conference. Teen Curators are recruited and interviewed at the beginning of the school year and receicve a stipend for their participation.
Dance & Composition Workshop Staff Artist/Facilitator: DeAnna Pellecchia This workshop explores dance and movement as a means of self-expression. Classes include lessons in technique from disciplines including ballet, jazz, hip-hop, and modern dance as well as lessons in Bharata Natyam, the oldest of all classical dance forms in India, taught by guest artist Wendy Jehlen, and Salsa Dance taught by guest artist Mila Thigpen. The class also focuses on composition and choreography. Through improvisation, group work, and partner exercises, students learn how to generate their own original movement and make personal choreographic choices. Dance related field trips are also included. Participants are not required to have any previous dance training, just an open-mind and a desire to discover the artist within.
Classes take place at The Urbano Studio located in "The Brewery" building at 29 Germania Street Jamaica Plain. MA 02130
DANCE WORKSHOP FOR CHILDREN - KERALA, INDIA While on tour with ANIKAI Dance in 2011 DeAnna taught a dance workshop for 50 impoverished children ages 10-15 in Thalikulam, a fishing and beach community in the state of Kerala, India.
CELEBRITY SERIES OF BOSTON - ACT 2 Onstage and off, the Celebrity Series Arts, Education and Community Program engages people of all ages and backgrounds with vital, inspiring programs that harness the creative energy of the performing arts to help build better communities and to cultivate the artists and audiences of the future. AileyCamp Boston is a free summer program for middle school students from Boston public schools that uses dance as a vehicle for developing self-esteem, creative expression and imagination. Created in partnership with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the camp curriculum is designed to develop students’ critical thinking skills and foster healthy respect for self and others through a rigorous and diverse program of dance instruction, creative expression and personal development. ACT 2 is an after-school program designed to provide follow-up activities in dance and creative expression for students who have participated in AileyCamp Boston. DeAnna taught jazz technique for the fall 2010 semester of ACT 2.
THE CLOUD FOUNDATION The Cloud Foundation believes in the transformative power of art to enrich the lives of urban youth. Through resident programs at Cloud Place located right in the heart of Boston on Boylston Street, the Cloud Foundation fosters strong mentor relationships between teens and professional artists and promotes artistic mastery in diverse artistic media. Seeking artists with strong teaching skills and a desire to create innovative work in partnership with young people and communities, the Cloud crafts workshops for teens that are interdisciplinary, guiding teen participants to view their relationships and the world around them in new ways. In collaboration with colleague Mary McCarthy, DeAnna has taught "Contemporary Dance and Composition", a workshop focused on exploring dance as a means of self-expression. Participants create movement inspired by specific dance styles and drawn from familiar everyday gestures, to explore the relationship between dance and sound, and to experiment with performance in a variety of public and private venues. Through improvisation, group work, and partner exercises students get comfortable expressing their own ideas through movement, and making choreographic choices of their own to create a culminating performance piece that engages their audience in a variety of ways.
VINE STREET COMMUNITY CENTER During the summer of 2007, DeAnna taught dance and creative movement at the Vine Street Community Center in connection with Bennett Dance Company. The work was funded by a Boston Community Grant from Mayor Menino’s office for BostonROCKS, a program focused on providing teens in-depth exposure to art. BDC members Nicole Dagesse and DeAnna Pellecchia traveled twice a week to Roxbury,MA to work with six teens in this summer-long program. The students created original movement while learning about the choreographic process. They developed two dances which were performed for younger students at the community center. One of the greatest rewards of this experience was watching the teens transform through their performance, putting aside their fear of judgment and completely engaging with the movement and the audience.
MEDICINE WHEEL PRODUCTIONS "NO MAN'S LAND" YOUTH OUTREACH PROGRAM In 1996, with the help of neighbors, friends, and especially youth from the community, South Boston artist Michael Dowling began the process of reclaiming the unsightly, vandal-ridden slope behind South Boston High School with the goal of transforming it into a sacred space that all the diverse people who live there can regard as belonging to them. As part of the process Michael decided to collaborate with at-risk youth from South Boston on this sculptural and landscaping project now known as "No Man's Land". The program provides paid summer employment to ten teenagers each summer. Participants work 25 hours a week for 8 weeks on various individual and group projects that include gardening, landscaping, environmental works on the site, sculpture, drawing, poetry, bookmaking and creating a site-specific performance piece. This performance work is presented at the end of the summer at "No Man's Land"'s annual Community Day which draws the entire South Boston community together. The "No Man’s Land" project is an example of how artists can expand their role in society by involving their communities directly in the creation of public art and thereby improve the quality of life in their neighborhood. More specifically, the goal is to offer a sense of hope and wonderment to kids nearly forgotten. The aim is to nourish these children's souls, and to provide a safe setting for them to admit to having dreams, intuitions and a desire for life.
DeAnna co-directed the performance component for Medicine Wheel Productions' Youth Outreach Program from 2002-2004. Alongside Ingrid Schatz, she taught dance and performance skills to many talented teenagers who worked on No Man's Land each summer.
