TEDxSalem

Ideas worth spreading

Entertainment

Beyond Limits Aerial Dance to thrill audience at TEDxSalem

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Grav­i­ty adds a sense of won­der and thrill to watch­ing dancers who leave the safe­ty of the ground to twirl from rings and oth­er geo­met­ric shapes over­head.

That’s the expe­ri­ence that Beyond Lim­its Aer­i­al Dance will bring to TEDxSalem Jan. 4. It’s rem­i­nis­cent of the soar­ing wild gamut of emo­tions you feel on a roller coast­er with­out the dis­joint­ed move­ments of a rick­ety track.

Jes­si Fouts and EJ Reinagel are the artis­tic direc­tors behind the Salem dance com­pa­ny Beyond Lim­its. They hail from mul­ti­ple locales from around the coun­try includ­ing New York, Cal­i­for­nia and Mis­souri.

To cre­ate the com­pa­ny, the cou­ple take pro­fes­sion­al dancers, often hand­picked, and put them in the air. Jes­si dances in some of the pieces, too.

They chore­o­graph pieces that help dancers move through prob­lems and issues they are fac­ing per­son­al­ly. Their work incor­po­rates all of that into the dance so not only is the audi­ence get­ting some­thing beau­ti­ful to watch, but the actors are releas­ing their scope of emo­tions as well in each aer­i­al twirl, swoop and dive.

Sec­ond, they write all the pieces with a spe­cif­ic theme or an event they would like to explore fur­ther. Their dances are expres­sions of time­less emo­tions sig­nif­i­cant to all peo­ple; love, joy, pain, loss.

“Every­one has expe­ri­enced feel­ings like loss on some lev­el,” says EJ, who is an artis­tic direc­tor of Beyond Lim­its.

While they both chore­o­graph the dancers’ move­ments, EJ is in charge of the appa­ra­tus­es that will help cre­ate the emo­tion­al peaks and val­leys the audi­ence sees. Jes­si brings a back­ground in dance with a Bach­e­lor of Fine Arts in dance per­for­mance.

She’s the one who stum­bled on to this art when she was fin­ish­ing school. Some­one need­ed aer­i­al dancers, she said, and she thought she would give it a try.

When they don’t have their heads in the clouds, Jes­si is an occu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py assis­tant and EJ teach­es at Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty. They dream of offer­ing class­es and pro­vid­ing a space to explore envi­ron­men­tal and social issues through mul­ti­me­dia plat­forms.

Even though this isn’t their bread and but­ter just yet, they hope it will be one day. EJ believes it is impor­tant for them to have a place to cre­ate a com­mu­ni­ty that can give back, a place where they can empow­er peo­ple to be their best selves.

You can see their lat­est work Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 4 at TEDx Salem. Don’t miss this ride.

For more infor­ma­tion about Beyond Lim­its go to https://www.beyondlimitsaerialdance.com/

TEDxSalem VII

TEDxSalem VII is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and swag. It takes place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 4, 2020, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Click here for tick­ets. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com

Jewelia Owens brings electric-guitar-infused folk to TEDxSalem

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If you’ve been out in the music scene, chances are you have heard Jew­elia Owens and her elec­tric gui­tar mes­mer­iz­ing the crowd.

If you grew up in Salem in the ‘90s you might have crossed paths with her too. With her mag­net­ic gui­tar and cap­ti­vat­ing voice, she isn’t one to eas­i­ly for­get, which is why you won’t want to miss her at TEDxSalem Jan. 4

Jew­elia Owens to play folk with elec­tric gui­tar for TEDxSalem VII.

She comes from cre­ative par­ents. Her dad was a play­wright and her mom act­ed in his plays. Grow­ing up, there were always fam­i­ly friends play­ing music around her. As a girl, Jew­elia played vio­lin and sang in the choir, but then as a high school fresh­man she met peo­ple who had gui­tars. One day some­one left a 12 string at her house, and she held on to it for a while and learned all the strings and chords

She has trav­eled a bit, seen Europe, and tried to move to New York once, but says she real­ly is a home­body. She has a large, close-knit fam­i­ly in Salem includ­ing aunts, uncles, cousins, grand­par­ent and par­ents. In fact, she lives with her broth­er and his girl­friend, who is also her best friend. Fam­i­ly is impor­tant to her. It was her uncle who first taught her gui­tar.

She loves that they get to pick and choose who hosts for the hol­i­days. But even though she loves Ore­gon, she wouldn’t mind see­ing “some­thing seri­ous­ly trop­i­cal, with clear waters and sun umbrel­las.”

By day you can find her teach­ing music at Riv­er City Rock Star Acad­e­my, and this fall she took a sec­ond job at Sil­ver­leaf School.

“It’s ful­fill­ing and chal­leng­ing to teach a class of chil­dren,” she said of her new gig at Sil­ver­leaf. “They have so much ener­gy!”

She also said that Sil­ver­leaf is fun because she teach­es kids whose par­ents just want them to have the expe­ri­ence of try­ing new things. And the kids don’t care what they play or if they sound good, they just bang drums and play the piano.

“My most fun kids are the ones with no direc­tion, I guess!” she laughed.

Over the years she has changed the direc­tion of her music, mov­ing from an acoustic gui­tar and easy-going folk songs to a dark­er folk on an elec­tric gui­tar.

As she pre­pares her setlist for TEDxSalem, she is think­ing about the theme – VISION and imag­in­ing what songs she can share that include this idea of vision; think­ing about where she is going and where she is com­ing from. It inspires her to think about life and what it means.

“I believe we are here for each oth­er. We real­ly are. Peo­ple are here for peo­ple,” she said.

“It is why we are all alive. All I want in the world is to spread love and kind­ness.”

You can find Jew­elia Owens on Face­book, Insta­gram, Band­camp, and of course, at TEDxSalem on Jan­u­ary 4.

TEDxSalem VII

TEDxSalem VII is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and swag. It takes place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 4, 2020, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Click here for tick­ets. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com

Musician J.J. Gregg to play sitar at TEDxSalem Jan. 4th

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Play­ing the sitar is not some­thing you real­ly pick up on a whim. At least, that’s the expe­ri­ence of J.J. Gregg, who will be per­form­ing at TEDxSalem on Jan­u­ary 4th.

“The sitar is a dif­fi­cult instru­ment to learn, but it’s very reward­ing over the long haul,” said Gregg. “Progress can be quite slow. It’s like walk­ing from Salem to Seat­tle. Well, maybe Salem to San Diego. It’s absolute­ly pos­si­ble, but it’s a long-term com­mit­ment rather than a week­end moun­tain climb.”

Gregg’s ultra-marathon jour­ney to mas­ter­ing the sitar began with a love of music with intri­cate or com­plex beats. He often lis­tened to favorite albums repeat­ed­ly from every angle on dif­fer­ent speak­ers and dif­fer­ent times of day.

“I’ve prob­a­bly lis­tened to ‘Sgt. Pepper’s [Lone­ly Hearts Club Band]’ at least 200 times, and more recent­ly the album ‘Amer­i­can Don’ by Don Caballero,” he said.

This pas­sion led him to the real­iza­tion that he want­ed to be a good musi­cian but couldn’t quite fig­ure out how to get there on his own. A cou­ple weeks after this epiphany, he arrived in India on a study abroad pro­gram and short­ly there­after met his now guru, Ustad Usman Khan. He start­ed tak­ing sitar lessons with him twice a week for five months.

“Over many return trips to study sitar in India,” he said, “I slow­ly devel­oped a love and devo­tion toward the sitar – it’s now the only instru­ment I real­ly play.”

What is your favorite part about per­form­ing?

One of my favorite things about per­form­ing is impro­vis­ing, and the chance to sur­prise myself musi­cal­ly. Every audi­ence and per­for­mance is dif­fer­ent, depend­ing on size, time of day, venue and the ener­gy of the audi­ence. I love the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take my audi­ence on a jour­ney. Often the sounds I use calm people’s ten­sions and allow them to explore thoughts, ideas and pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ences while lis­ten­ing to the music.

Do you play oth­er instru­ments?

I took piano lessons for nine years and played the french horn for sev­en years, and start­ed an exper­i­men­tal rock band with my best friend after Kurt Cobain’s death. In that group, I sang and at dif­fer­ent times played bass, drums, gui­tar and oth­er dif­fer­ent things that made inter­est­ing nois­es. I also spent a lot of time record­ing our music and releas­ing things most­ly on cas­settes and then lat­er CD-Rs, so you could say that I have always been pas­sion­ate about per­form­ing and pro­duc­ing music.

How does the sitar dif­fer from a per­former’s and a lis­ten­er’s stand­point?

The sitar is dif­fer­ent from a gui­tar in that it’s pri­ma­ry pur­pose is to play melodies. It also pro­vides sup­port­ing rhythm for those melodies. A gui­tar, while it often plays melodies too, is a whole world of har­mon­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties in chords. The sitar is real­ly in just one key.

The sitar as an instru­ment evolved along with South Asian clas­si­cal music. That broad tra­di­tion empha­sizes melody and rhythm, with har­mo­ny cre­at­ed from note to note as part of the melody rather than through the chord changes found in much of West­ern music. So, from my performer’s per­spec­tive, play­ing South Asian clas­si­cal music on sitar feels like a per­fect match. With­in this tra­di­tion, there’s great scope for impro­vi­sa­tion.

What can you tell TEDxSalem atten­dees about your upcom­ing per­for­mance? 

I hope atten­dees can enjoy my per­for­mance as a time to relax, process oth­er ideas from the con­fer­ence, or be trans­port­ed into a dif­fer­ent frame of mind.

How long have you been in Salem, and what do you like about liv­ing and work­ing here?

I live in Salem and have for about five years. There are lots of great things about Salem: We have awe­some trees on our streets and in our parks. You can gar­den through the win­ter, and I like my neigh­bors!

If peo­ple are inspired to learn them­selves, how can they find more infor­ma­tion about the sitar?

I teach sitar lessons here in Salem, so that’s a great place to start. I think every­one has the capac­i­ty to learn to sing or play the sitar or any oth­er instru­ment. First, you need a strong desire to learn your cho­sen instru­ment. Then it’s real­ly a mat­ter of reg­u­lar, delib­er­ate prac­tice; fam­i­ly sup­port to make your prac­tice pos­si­ble; and an expe­ri­enced teacher to guide you.

If you’re inter­est­ed in tak­ing sitar lessons, Gregg can be reached at charukeshi.roopak@gmail.com. To hear his music, go to jjgregg.bandcamp.com or lis­ten to his guru Ustad Usman Khan’s album “Yaman/Charukeshi” who recent­ly re-released on New Earth Records as “Pure Yoga” on iTunes and Spo­ti­fy.

TEDxSalem VII

TEDxSalem VII is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and swag. It takes place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 4, 2020, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Click here for tick­ets.  Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com

Michelle LaFontaine brings Bollywood dance to TEDxSalem VII

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When Michelle LaFontaine and her troupe Sun­dari Bol­ly­wood take to the TEDxSalem stage in Jan­u­ary, expect an inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence.

“Plan to move to the music,” said LaFontaine of the East Indi­an-inspired dance per­for­mance. “The music is so upbeat and fun, one can’t help them­selves!”

LaFontaine made the move from bel­ly-danc­ing to Bol­ly­wood dance after hear­ing about an open audi­tion when she lived in Seat­tle in 2011. She had a sched­ul­ing con­flict, but the direc­tor invit­ed her to try out a class the next week.

“I showed up, jumped in head first as I tend to do,” LaFontaine said. “She was impressed with my abil­i­ty to pick up chore­og­ra­phy quick­ly and asked that I be a part of her team. So I start­ed learn­ing.”

Learn­ing soon turned to per­form­ing, which in 2014 turned to teach­ing.

“Dance is an incred­i­ble way to express one­self through move­ment and gain both body aware­ness and con­fi­dence,” she said. “It’s also an incred­i­ble form of exer­cise and helps main­tain youth in the body and brain.”

She now teach­es week­ly class­es in Salem and hosts month­ly shows for those who decide they’d like to per­form.

“I want to encour­age every­one to explore some form of dance, in par­tic­u­lar, women,” she said. “I believe the boost­ing of our­selves is of utmost impor­tance!”

LaFontaine is excit­ed to bring the joy and expres­sion of Bol­ly­wood to even more of Salem through TEDx. The city has been home “for about 12 years, minus the four years I was in Seat­tle.”

“I enjoy the com­mu­ni­ty, espe­cial­ly the diver­si­ty of our com­mu­ni­ty,” she said. “I love work­ing in Salem as a small busi­ness own­er and strive to sup­port my local busi­ness­es.”

She’s also involved in the Indi­an com­mu­ni­ty via the board for INDUS, a non­prof­it whose vision is “to pro­mote and strength­en friend­ship and under­stand­ing of cul­tures between the peo­ples of Indi­an Sub-con­ti­nent and Unit­ed States.”

“I get the plea­sure of help­ing pre­pare the events we hold and per­form for the com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple I tru­ly adore,” she said.

So when you see Sun­dari, be ready to move.

“My favorite part about per­form­ing is see­ing the smiles on my audience’s faces and con­nect­ing with them,” LaFontaine said. “They often can’t help but tap their foot to the music and clap their hands, and their involve­ment makes per­form­ing even more fun for me and my group!”

TEDxSalem VII

TEDxSalem VII is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and swag. It takes place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 4, 2020, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Click here for tick­ets.  Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com

TEDxSalem poet explores identity, female empowerment through words

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Poet. Col­lege stu­dent. Black woman. Hait­ian immi­grant. Adoptee.

These are just a few of Jolie Brownell’s many iden­ti­ties.

When the 20-year-old takes the stage at TEDxSalem, the audi­ence will hear her grap­ple with these iden­ti­ties through her poet­ry.

“I want to express through poet­ry my walks of life, the inter­sec­tions of my dif­fer­ent iden­ti­ties, and what that means to me and to soci­ety,” Brownell says.

Brownell, who grad­u­at­ed from Sun­set High School in Beaver­ton, is a sopho­more at Loy­ola Mary­mount Uni­ver­si­ty in Los Ange­les. She’s major­ing in women and gen­der stud­ies.

Her choice of major wouldn’t sur­prise any­one who knew her in high school.

By age 19, Brownell had already won awards for her blog, “Me Too Girl,” and she had self-pub­lished a book with the same title. The book is a col­lec­tion of mes­sages and poems on girl empow­er­ment.

She has giv­en speech­es on this top­ic to hun­dreds of women and girls in the Port­land area, and led work­shops in part­ner­ship with Girls Inc., I Am That Girl, Pro­duced By Her, and Chick­Tech.

Brownell is orig­i­nal­ly from Haiti, but a Port­land fam­i­ly adopt­ed her when she was 3.

She first became ded­i­cat­ed to female empow­er­ment issues when she was just 13.

“Like many young girls around that age, I was con­sumed with self-hatred, self-doubt, lack of con­fi­dence,” she says. “Dur­ing the sum­mer between mid­dle school and high school, I decid­ed to shift gears because I real­ized that I’m going to have this body, I’m going to be this per­son for the rest of my life. Do I want to spend the rest of my life hat­ing this per­son, or do I want to spend it try­ing to teach myself how to love myself?”

Her essays and jour­nal entries about self-dis­cov­ery even­tu­al­ly led to her blog and her book.

“I’ve always loved the pow­er behind words, and I want­ed to use my words to uplift and inspire oth­ers,” Brownell says.

Brownell hopes that TEDxSalem audi­ence mem­bers will expe­ri­ence that inspi­ra­tion dur­ing her per­for­mance. But, ulti­mate­ly, the work to improve self-con­fi­dence is an indi­vid­ual pur­suit, she says.

“I’m try­ing to encour­age and uplift women. But I can only do so much and then you must car­ry it; you must do the work, the final step of lov­ing your­self,” she says. “I encour­age the audi­ence to find the deep­er mean­ings in my work and what that means for them.”

For more infor­ma­tion about Jolie Brownell, check out her web­site at www.joliebrownell.com

TEDxSalem VII

TEDxSalem VII is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and swag. It takes place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 4, 2020, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Click here for tick­ets.  Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com

Friends explore music and spoken word on stage at TEDxSalem Saturday

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Chris Ross and Nathan Olsen, two accom­plished and unique souls, will share their long-stand­ing friend­ship on stage for the first time in the form of a musi­cal con­ver­sa­tion at TEDxSalem Sat­ur­day.

One will play the key­board. The oth­er will speak.

The dis­cus­sion will tack­le themes such as how to make things bet­ter, the pas­sage of time, com­ing and going, trust­ing our­selves, and how to be thought­ful­ly inten­tion­al. The idea of play and being play­ful will thread through­out the con­ver­sa­tion; Chris with words, Nathan with music. The audi­ence will expe­ri­ence all the feels on the jour­ney with them through their vision of RE.

Chris has been in Salem about 15 years after liv­ing in Upstate New York, Ari­zona and Cal­i­for­nia. We can thank his wife who prompt­ed the move to Ore­gon after tak­ing a job teach­ing law at Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty.

By day Chris teach­es preschool here in Salem. He also works with the Her­itage School, a small K – 8 pri­vate school, also in Salem. He has been work­ing with chil­dren for 40 years. He says he is very play­ful, and the chil­dren keep him young.

When he isn’t work­ing with kids or spend­ing time out­doors with his fam­i­ly, he oper­ates his very small “Uber ser­vice” (his words) which trans­ports his daugh­ters to and from their many activ­i­ties.

“I like things that go in a lot of direc­tions at the same time,” Chris said. He likes to see lay­ers of things and inter­pre­ta­tions from dif­fer­ing views. It makes sense then, that he is a world trav­el­er, hav­ing seen every con­ti­nent but Antarc­ti­ca. Don’t wor­ry, it is on his list.

It was dif­fi­cult for him to give me favorites. “I like to like things,” he said. So, in keep­ing with his love of trav­el, he loves all types of music and food.

As for his stage part­ner Nathan Olsen, they have been friends a long time and have often talked about how to do a per­for­mance like this. The oppor­tu­ni­ty has final­ly pre­sent­ed itself.

Nathan is a Salem-based, self-taught musi­cian who works as a con­sul­tant, teacher, com­pos­er, and per­former. He majored in com­mu­ni­ca­tions in col­lege and worked in pub­lic rela­tions for a while before final­ly decid­ing to fol­low his pas­sion. Accord­ing to his web­page biog­ra­phy, he has an exten­sive resume and plays in a vari­ety of music gen­res. He will say, though, that his favorite music includes Funk and Jazz Fusion.

And he is proud that, “After many years work­ing as a side­man, this year I’m final­ly fronting my own instru­men­tal Jazz/Funk trio.”

Rather than words, he uses music to express his thoughts and feel­ings. He “lets his fin­gers do the talk­ing.”

Hear this unique con­ver­sa­tion of words, music and friend­ship with Chris and Nathan at TEDxSalem Sat­ur­day.

Chris Ross

Home­town: Pitts­burgh, New York

Edu­ca­tion: BA in Busi­ness and Psy­chol­o­gy from State col­leges in New York; MA in Edu­ca­tion, North­ern Ari­zona Uni­ver­si­ty

Fam­i­ly: Wife, War­ren, and two daugh­ters still in school

Hob­bies: ski­ing, hik­ing, moun­tain climb­ing, camp­ing

Favorite recent movie: The Post, Black Pan­ther

Favorite music: Music of all kinds. Grew up on jazz, blue­grass, music fes­ti­vals and hun­dreds of Grate­ful Dead shows

 

Nathan Olsen

Home­town: Salem, OR (moved here in 3rd grade)

Edu­ca­tion: Radio Broad­cast­ing at Mt Hood Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Maryl­hurst Uni­ver­si­ty

Fam­i­ly: One broth­er, His par­ents are founders of and teach­ers at Her­itage School

Hob­bies: hik­ing – he feels “con­tin­u­al­ly for­tu­nate to live in the Pacif­ic North­west

Favorite recent movie: The orig­i­nal Star Wars tril­o­gy

Favorite music: Funk and Jazz Fusion

 

TEDxSalem VI

TEDxSalem VI is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. It runs 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 5 at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Tick­ets are on sale now for $55, $45 for stu­dents. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.