Second Saturday - Music, Poetry & Dance Performances inspired by exhibition “Changing Lanes: Mobility in Connecticut"

The Amistad Center for Art & Culture has partnered with Sageseeker Productions to bring you a showcase of music, poetry, and dance that is inspired by our current exhibition, “Changing Lanes: Mobility in Connecticut.” 

Collaborative performances feature:

Music by KeyOfDee with dance by Mellissa Craig (20 min)

Poetry by Sadejah Blake with dance by Chantal Edwards (10 min)

Music by Chad Browne-Springer with dance by Ginette Christie (20 min)

KEYOFDEE (she/her) IG: @key0fdeemusic

KeyofDee is a multi-instrumentalist, educator and producer from the Hartford area. Influenced by the great Nina Simone, she brings her own sultry twist of neo soul and jazz. KeyofDee has performed for Make Music Hartford, Juneteenth celebration, La Sala Femme, and sang with Grammy award winning artists such as Charmagne Tripp. Her future goals are to open her own school of music, spreading her lifelong knowledge and skills to other passionate youth.

CHAD BROWNE-SPRINGER (they/them) IG: @legendarysuperc

Chad Browne-Springer is an artist’s artist. A maestro of many disciplines, their work as a musician, singer, songwriter, producer, and designer creates more than a performance, but a full sensory experience. Incorporating ethereal, futuristic, and psychedelic elements into fundamentally grounded artforms like hip hop, metal, and soul, creates a sound that is innovative, intoxicating and refreshing.

SADEJAH BLAKE (she/her) IG: @saenergy

Sadejah Blake is a poet and spoken-word artist, born and raised in Hartford’s North-End. She began to write as a child when she’d get frustrated, her love for poetry began as a comfort and then a sense of reassurance for her spirit. Sadejah was the Hartford Iron Poet Champion of 2019. She was awarded the UConn Feminist Art Award that same year when she graduated with her B.A. in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She's traveled to Houston and Chicago, competing against and coaching other poets. She continues to write with the belief that poetry and performance can be nourishing to those who choose to listen and receive.

MELLISSA CRAIG (she/her) IG: @noluthando3000

Mellissa Craig is an artist, educator, and activist. A native of Hartford, CT, Craig is an accomplished dancer in modern, African, and Caribbean folk forms, as well as a trained stilt walker. She is an artist instructor at CREC’s Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts high school, teaching dance, theater and stilt walking and coordinating performances and art-filled experiences for the entire school community. For the past 11 years, Craig has been an ensemble member with the Judy Dworin Performance Project (JDPP), performing in several major productions that call for social change and give voice, visibility and justice to the stories of the unheard. In addition to her role as a dancer and choreographer with the JDPP ensemble, Craig has been a teaching artist for the Moving Matters! and Bridging Boundaries residency programs. She is currently co-curating and performing in the virtual series, A Response and A Call, where she, alongside other JDPP artists of color and guest artists, create and perform work that speak directly to issues of race and identity in America to create a dialogue and cultivate hope around solutions.  Additionally, Craig is a dancer and choreographer for FriendZWorldMusic, a band of artists who perform a blend of traditional music and movement from the African Diaspora, and is also a founding member of Island Reflections Dance Theatre Company, specializing in instruction and performance of Caribbean folk, African and modern dance forms. Craig has had the pleasure of performing in Hartford’s Night Fall as a dancer, stilt walker, puppeteer, and choreographer for the last 10 years, and now sits on its Board of Directors as the President. Craig is furthering her education and studying for a certificate/degree in Arts Leadership and Cultural Management. She lives everyday with this personal philosophy: “I am dedicated to using the arts to leave the world a brighter and more enlightened place to live than I found it.”

GINETTE CHRISTIE (she/her) IG: @ginnygingin22

Ginette Christie is a teaching artist from Bloomfield, Connecticut. She has been a working artist for more than 12 years, teaching hip hop dance and urban style movement for almost a decade mainly within the New England area.

CHANTAL EDWARDS (she/her)  IG: @cde7

Chantal Edwards-Matthews is a Jamaican born, New Jersey raised movement artist. She started her dance career at the age of seven and traveled all over the US with her dance company Freehold Academy of Performing Arts from Freehold, NJ. For eleven years she won platinum and gold medals alongside her dance company in styles such as contemporary, ballet, modern, Jazz, hip hop and tap. In 2016, Chantal started dancing with Stephan Hankey’s company in Connecticut. Finding Island Reflections Dance Theater Company expanded Chantal’s dance vocabulary by adding styles such as African, folk and Caribbean to her repertoire. In 2018, Chantal auditioned for Night Fall in Hartford, fell in love with Anne Cubberly’s large puppet creations, and during her first year of Night Fall learned a new skill as a puppeteer. Through the years, Chantal has grown with Night Fall, gaining many experiences in theater and the art of storytelling. After 2018, her dance career continued to grow as a solo artist taking on commercial projects such as Hartford’s Anti Litter Campaign (2019). Chantal has also choreographed hip hop music videos and currently dances with a house music singer by the name of Khadijah Lisa. Chantal is currently working on her first dance project called Centerfold.

JASMIN AGOSTO (she/they) | SAGESEEKER PRODUCTIONS IG: @sageseeker0

Jasmin Agosto is the founder of Sageseeker Productions, an event/experience curation company based in Hartford, CT that centers Black womxn, womxn of color, non-binary folks, and the queer POC community, as shown with her performance installation series, La Sala Femme. By day, she is the Education and Community Outreach Manager at the Hartford History Center at Hartford Public Library. She has been working with artists, activists, students, and elders to organize cultural arts and history/herstory focused festivals, events, exhibitions, and programs for more than 15 years.