The Frost Art Museum is hosting Tertulia Nights, a monthly event held every second Thursday of the month.
Tertulia Nights brings people together to share ideas, inspire creativity, and support local artists, scholars, and community leaders. Join us for a fun evening of engaging discussions and exciting activities!
This edition of Tertulia Nights presents Pioneer Winter Collective and a new iteration of their performance, Birds of Paradise. A provocative and immersive performance, Birds of Paradise confronts our notions of dance by exploring movement with people of varied physical ability, body type, gender identity, race, ethnicity, and experiences. In this series, Pioneer Winter Collective explores rebirth in the ideas threaded through its choreography and in its stagecraft. Each iteration embeds new ideas, collaborators, design elements, and performance configurations into an existing choreographic vocabulary and artistic team.
Learn more about Pioneer Winter and the Pioneer Winter Collective here.
This event is free and open to the public, thanks to our partners at the Art Bridges Foundation. Bites and refreshments provided by Half Moon Empanadas.
Meet the Performers
Clarence Brooks (he/they) performs with Pioneer Winter Collective, Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble, The Dance Exchange, and David Parker and The Bang Group. They can be seen in the video documentary The World of Alwin Nikolais, their essay Dancing with the Issues was published in One Teacher in 10, and the Library of Congress recorded their performance of Talley Beatty's Mourner's Bench. The recipient of several fellowships and awards, Clarence holds an MFA, four somatic certifications, and sits on the boards of danceTactics, Natural Movers Foundation, Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble, Miami Dance Futures, Florida Dance Education Organization, and Humphrey Foundation for Dance.
Junior Domingos (he/him) is a Brazilian artist, choreographer, and dancer who began his studies with circus technique. He is trained in a variety of physical movements including Pilates, Yoga, Ballet, Modern Dance, Jazz, Contemporary, Ballroom and Capoeira. Junior has danced for Cia, Claudia de Souza and Grupo Raça while traveling throughout Brazil. While he lived in São Paulo, he participated in the choreography of Béjart Ballet Lausanne's Boléro. He also worked with Ismael Ivo in Vienna, Austria for the show No Sacre at ImpulsTanz and São Paulo. He currently resides here in Florida where he continues his dance studies.
Jessica Gilmore (she/her) was born and raised in Miami and received her BFA from University of South Florida. Jessica has worked with Donald Byrd at Spectrum Dance Theater in Seattle, San Diego Dance Theater under the direction of Jean Isaacs, and has performed works by Jean Isaacs, Stephen Koplowitz and Khamla Somphahn. While with SDDT, she performed in Trolley Dances, WOW Festival, San Diego Fringe Festival, and Live Arts Festival. Jessica is also a competitive pole dancer and teacher. She is excited to be back in Miami and working with PWC.
Hector Machado (they/she) a multidisciplinary artist who's need to educate and inspire through entertainment became paramount after their attempted suicide led to them becoming a double amputee in 2015. With that constant visual reminder and motto that as long as we still have air in our lungs and passion in our hearts anything is possible. With that same passion along with hard work, determination, and drive there is nothing limiting any of us from leaving an imprint in the world of the arts. They have been dancing and working with PWC since 2018.
Arsimmer McCoy (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist who merges language, archive, performance, and audio/visual sculpture, into a conduit for advocacy. McCoy uses these “devices” in her writings, archive installs, and educational practices as a teaching artist. Her influences come from her upbringing in historic Richmond Heights; an all Black neighborhood, built in 52’, for black WWII vets. It is there, Arsimmer says, where she was privileged to observe her community, built on history, family, and spirituality; constantly thriving, fighting, celebrating, and fellowshipping, together. Arsimmer activates The voices of her family and community by crafting from her self-developed creed, Everywhere I am, you are. McCoy believes there is power in remembering, and those memories can change the way a community sees themselves, accepts and absorbs their past, and molds their future. Arsimmer is Pioneer Winter Collective’s inaugural Poet-in-Residence.
Pioneer Winter (he/they) is a Miami-based choreographer and artistic director of Pioneer Winter Collective, an intergenerational and physically integrated dance-theater company, rooted in social practice and community, queer excellence, and beauty beyond the mainstream. Recognized in Dance Magazine's 25 to Watch in 2019, Pioneer Winter's work democratizes performance in public spaces, museums and galleries, stage, and film. Pioneer has been commissioned by Miami Theater Center, Karen Peterson and Dancers, Tigertail Productions, Jacksonville Dance Theatre, FundArte, and the Adrienne Arsht Center, where Pioneer was the first Artist-in-Resident in a decade. Pioneer has been a guest artist at universities, including Miami Dade College, Nova Southeastern University, Broward College, Florida State College, and teaches full time at Florida International University. An extension of his creative practice, Pioneer has curated and directed ScreenDance Miami Festival since 2017, presented by Miami Light Project; Pioneer’s own films screen internationally at festivals like Cucalorus Film Festival, LA Dance Film Festival, Chicago Feminist Film Festival, Miami Film Festival, Toronto Queer Film Festival, ADF's Movies by Movers, Leeds International Film Festival, San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, and Berlin Independent Film Festival, among others.
Most recently, their renowned duet Gimp Gait created in collaboration with Marjorie Layne Burnett is featured in the 2022 book Screendance from Film to Festival: Celebration and Curatorial Practice by Cara Hagan. Continuing to learn and grow, Pioneer was honored to be part of Maven Leadership Collective’s 5th Anniversary cohort, Maven’s signature professional development program; he is also in the Creative Administration Research program through the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron.