Northglenn Arts
PRESENTS
MAKIN’ CAKE with Dasha Kelly Hamilton
February 24 at 7:30pm
For most of human history, baking required patience, resources … and luck. Ingredients were scarce and expensive; chemistry was fickle; and the chain of procedures required days. When our nation began experiencing abundance for the first time, most Americans couldn’t afford basic cake ingredients.
Makin’ Cake is written and performed by Dasha Kelly Hamilton, author, poet laureate, and creative change agent. Kelly Hamilton cuts into a cake, revealing what its history and ingredients can teach us about race, class and equity in America.
Written & Performed by – Dasha Kelly Hamilton
On-Stage Bakers – Kima Hamilton Cleo Parker Robinson
Cleo Parker Robinson is founder, artistic director and choreographer of the 50-year-old Denver-based Cleo Parker Robinson Dance. She leads a professional dance Ensemble, Youth and Junior Youth Ensembles, a Dance Academy, an International Summer Dance Institute, a 240-seat theatre that bears her name, and a myriad of community outreach programs. She continues to be the recipient of honors and awards from civic, community, and artistic organizations around the world, and is called on by a myriad of organizations and performance venues, including the Parsons Theatre, to bring her Ensemble for performances. Her philosophy of “One Spirit, Many Voices” is reflected in all she does, and is the vision she brings to everyone she meets, everywhere she goes.
Dasha Kelly Hamilton is a writer, performance artist, curator, and facilitator. Ultimately, she’s a creative change agent, leveraging the creative process toward human and social wellness.
Her nonprofit, Still Waters Collective, initiated literary arts programming for 20 years, creating platforms for thousands of voices to be honored and heard. The organization continues to partner on impact projects, including a creative leadership fellowship. Dasha has written for national, regional and local magazines; produced three collections of poetry; recorded four spoken word CDs; published two novels and one collection of personal vignettes; has work included in several anthologies; and performed in the last season of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. Her stage production, Makin’ Cake, is touring nationally.
Dasha served as an Arts Envoy for the U.S. Embassy to teach, perform and facilitate community building initiatives in Botswana and the island of Mauritius. She was also an artist in residence in Beirut and Toronto. Dasha has been an adjunct professor at Mount Mary University, Alverno College, Bryant & Stratton, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a recruiter and mentor with University of Wisconsin’s First Wave Scholars Program. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, an MA in Marketing Communications from Roosevelt University and a BS in Public Relations from Illinois State University.
Dasha is former Artist of the Year for the City of Milwaukee and the city’s 11th Poet Laureate. She has been named a 2020 national Rubinger Fellow and 2021-22 Poet Laureate for the State of Wisconsin. In 2021 she earned a National Laureate Fellowship award with the Academy of American Poets. This year she will serve as the endowed Social Justice Chair for Milwaukee Area Technical College.
Kima Hamilton is a Georgia boi from Philly, with an Alaskan spirit and a Milwaukee IP address. His diverse range of lived experiences informs his art and social engagement. Kima has worked with NGOs, schools and the US State Department to advocate and activate urgent dialogues around social justice, equity and dignity. His creative offerings, in spoken word performer and sound design, refresh contemporary conversations about families, culture and social evolution. Kima and his wife, Dasha Kelly Hamilton, deliver an implicit bias training called “X/M: An Explicit Conversation about Implicit Bias.”
Programs like these are made possible through the Northglenn Arts & Humanities Foundation and their generous donors. Visit NorthglennARTS.org to learn more about NAHF and how you can support the arts!
TICKET UPGRADE SPECIAL OFFER
Visit the box office and apply the price of tonight’s ticket to our Season FLEX package and enjoy more of our 4 upcoming season productions for the absolute lowest prices!