The Crossroads Project roots people in their sense of place, where they live geographically as well as in their hearts. Home – emotional or geographic – is a complicated thing that always elicits challenging questions. I feel drawn to the messiness of digging into those questions of what makes a PLACE a home, a FEELING a home, a PERSON a home. Our identification with our homes parallels what we value and believe is right and true. Depending on how you feel about those values, beliefs and norms can bring everything from comfort and peace to isolation and devastation, depending on what you do with those beliefs. Both in the process of making and in the presentation of Crossroads, my aim is inspire genuine empathy where, perhaps, none existed before as we learn to take an honest look at our home, the homes of others and how we endeavor to share our common communities, country and world. 

The Crossroads Project is a method of inquiry that uses meditation, visualization, journaling, stream-of-consciousness writing, reflective listening, movement improvisation, and storytelling to reveal strongly held feelings, beliefs and judgments about our homes and communities. Crossroads uses the arts to encourage honest reflection about how our communities do and do not function and  increase cross-cultural understanding between  communities across America that may hold opposing beliefs. A platform to break through the fear, judgment and stereotypes that keep us from seeing one another as human beings rather than “us” and “them”, Crossroads is divided into two distinct phases, both resulting in a piece of movement and spoken-word based performance that is presented locally in Phase 1 and branches outward in Phase 2, allowing participants to travel outside their home communities to unfamiliar places to build trust, find solidarity and create a more peaceful, empathic and united country.

Phase 1 – Body, House, Neighborhood, Town 

Phase 1 of Crossroads involves 1-3 months of workshops led by a Cora Dance Crossroads Facilitator. Workshops take place in communities often marked by judgment and stereotyping. Rural Appalachia, NYCHA, and immigrant communities have all been sites of past and current Crossroads projects. The experience offers opportunities for participants to feel solidarity in their shared sense of place and strength in their power to reveal sides of their homes that are often overlooked or misrepresented in mainstream arenas. Predominantly centered on teen and young adults, participants move together, write together, share stories and become witnesses for one another, creating trust that allows for courageously honest reflections of their individual homes, neighborhoods and towns. Crossroads uses the five senses to examine physical, emotional and spiritual experiences that attach us to and repel us from our sense of home. Crossroads creates safe space for identifying, sharing, evaluating and defining what participants experience in their communities encouraging them to see themselves as experts. Once participants amass an uncensored collection of personal storytelling and collaborative choreography, portions are assembled into a representative performance under the direction of the Crossroads Facilitator. The event aims to encapsulate the cast’s collective perspective on what needs to be nurtured and what needs to be changed in their town or neighborhood and is presented live to local audiences. Facilitated Q&A sessions follow to engage audiences in further reflection on the work and on the celebrations, concerns and questions it raises about their shared community.  

Phase 2 – State, Country, World

Phase 2 is rooted in shared experiences across cultures. In Phase 2, participants from separate Phase 1 projects - often from extremely different backgrounds, ethnicities and/or geographic areas - travel to one another’s communities to work with participants from other groups. Initially engaging in get-to-know-you activities, movement games, and trust exercises, participants find companionship and trust in one another before sharing the individual works they created in their home. Together, they reflect on what they witness and strive to question, unpack and address judgments and assumptions they may have held for one another before coming together. Groups work collaboratively, under the facilitator’s direction, to merge their individual works into one collaborative presentation that reflects them, their country and their world. The final product is toured to all Phase 1 communities and presented live to local audiences. As a result, participants get to witness, experience and know one another’s communities in direct and intimate ways, replacing previous expectations sometimes laced with  fear or prejudice with lasting positive connections.

2020-2021 Crossroads Project Participants

This year, we've been working with 4 different groups: Shannon Hummel, Junie Marsh, and Katie Dean worked with communities at Trillium Arts in Lewisburg, WV; Appomattox Regional Governor's School in Petersburg/Richmond, VA; and with Cora Dance students and seniors in Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY exploring ideas of "home" and our communities, both online and in person. Their work will culminate in distinct video projects for each community.

Cora Dance Students

Red Hook, Brooklyn

“The dystopian fantasy that is Shannon Hummel’s “Gifts” is even better the second time around…Dean and Kramer never break their absoluteness of task.”

–––––––Carrie Stern, Dance Enthusiast

gifts juxtaposes the limitlessness of our imaginations against the extremes of confinement. Sequestering dancers and audience in an intensely isolated location, gifts paints a harsh world where value is defined by circumstance. This latest evening-length work from the professional company, Shannon Hummel/Cora Dance, premiered in a sold-out 5-night run in January 2019 inhabiting a 20 x 20 storage unit in Red Hook, Brooklyn’s Treasure Island Storage Building, and returned for an additional sold-out 5 night run in November 2019.

gifts is a stark reflection on the self-imposed anxiety we create when we isolate ourselves from people and experiences we do not understand in the name of our safety. In a stark white world (that is also blue), stripped of fear, free from danger, with all needs met, where everything is fine, gifts asks what we need to make us secure when we already have enough. gifts is performed by dancers Katie Dean and Kelsey Kramer with original score by Hans Bilger and costumes by Maria Kofman.

Choreography and direction by Shannon Hummel in collaboration with Katie Dean and Kelsey Kramer
Original score by Hans Bilger
Scenic design and prop construction by Shannon Hummel
Scenic consultation by Scott Pfaffman
Lighting design by Severn Clay-Youman
Costume design and construction by Maria Kofman
Production & Creative Support by Nicole Assanti
gifts premiered January 22-26, 2019 in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

For booking information, contact production at info@coradance.org

Shannon Hummel’s COMMON DANCES premiered in September 2015 featuring 18 short works no longer than 7 minutes, repeatedly performed in over 30 locations throughout Red Hook, Brooklyn for over 100 short performances over a 4-hour period. Featuring a multi-generational cast of 20 performers ages 9-62 with varying degrees of experience, COMMON DANCES is a true community celebration of the power of everyday moments and movements to draw us closer.

Each dance, though small in scale, is the ticket to intimate spaces. Equal parts dance “scavenger hunt” and self-guided walking tour COMMON DANCES is Hummel’s love letter to the neighborhood Red Hook and its people and a friendly reminder to intersect.

Inspired by the ordinary, beautiful moments of loss, love, struggle, surprise, forgiveness and resolution that we all share, COMMON DANCES takes place on living room couches, park benches, at dining room tables, in church pews, bars, restaurant booths, hallways and even inside of cars.

Each short gem is an invitation to get to know all parts of the community on a broad, yet personal scale. From the hallways of public housing to bars, parks, cars and the breathtaking waterfront of Red Hook, COMMON DANCES challenges audiences to explore the entire Red Hook community, through its people and their stories.

Choreography: Shannon Hummel in collaboration with the performers 

Original Performers: Cora Dance Company Members: Kelly Bartnik, Sarah Burke, Katie Dean, Solomon Goodwin, Nadia Tykulsker; Supporting cast: Yancy Greene, Megan Harrold, Angelic Ortiz, Karen Ross, Sharp, Isabel Umali; Guest Performers: Stephanie Batchelder, Cynthia Thompson, Carolyn Hall, and members of the Cora Youth Company: Mykie Laidlow, Dontae McCoy, Phoebe Pfaffman, Claire Sifton, Mateo Vidals. Music credits and a full list and map of all locations and community partners available upon request.

Individual works from COMMON DANCES ranging in cast size from 1-18 people are available for booking. This work is highly flexible in the locations it can take place, is appropriate for all ages, and has often been varied and remounted in communities that include local performers with a broad range of ages and abilities. For booking information, contact info@coradance.org.