Wine, dancing, diaspora
We chat with the folx behind the "Black Families of Greenfield" exhibit at the Lava Center, explore the bridge of tap dance with members of "They Dance for Rain" as they participate in the Nairobi Dance Life Festival, and drink with Amy McMahon of Mesa Verde in Greenfield while discovering her collaborations with Haitian refugees.
The Fabulous 413 · Monte Belmonte & Kaliis Smith
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Show Notes
We're exploring touchstones today.
We find it in a new exhibit that seeks to highlight folx often overlooked. The Lava Center in Greenfield hosts a number of projects, as we hear from co-coordinator Jan Maher, from plays to visual art to film festivals and more. Now open and on display at the LAVA Center is "Black Families of Greenfield: A Brief Historical Snapshot" which seeks to highlight the legacies of folx in that town who have been often overlooked. The collection was researched by Carol Aleman, president of the Greenfield Historical Society, who offers some insights to the process of putting it together.
We find these touchstones in the ways that we move. Berkshire based dance company, They Dance For Rain, has found these connections in tap. Over the years they've gone to Kenya to teach and share the medium, but this is the first year they've been invited as guests of the Nairobi Dance Life Festival, and Stefanie Weber and Josephine “JoJo” McDonald join us live from Nairobi to speak on their myriad experiences there.
And we discover these connections closer than we knew. For our Wine Thunderdome we head to Mesa Verde in Greenfield to have proprietor Amy McMahon. But her incredible palate and two bottle challenge to us are only half as interesting as her recent efforts to collaborate with the nearly 150 Haitian refugees currently living just off the Greenfield rotary, so we talk about the connections and compassion of food and resilience.