Culture Mill
Presents
its 2025/26 Season
Culture Mill, the Saxapahaw-based Performing Arts Laboratory, reorients its usual programming towards community practice.
In response to political climate and accompanying uncertainty, as well as climate crisis that has impacted the organization’s home in Saxapahaw, through a range of body-centered social practices, Culture Mill will share body-centered, creative practices to nurture spaces of connection and care. The purpose of this practice-forward season is to practice across communities how we come together, negotiate difference, and build resilience so that when the next crisis comes, we are ready to respond—together.
In addition to practice-based offerings, Culture Mill will also restage two recent performances, develop a new performance with people living with Parkinson’s disease, and welcome artists-in-residence whose work strengthens the region’s cultural fabric.
PERFORMANCES
Take a minute to write an introduction that is short, sweet, and to the point. If you sell something, use this space to describe it in detail and tell us why we should make a purchase. Tap into your creativity. You’ve got this.
by dancer/choreographer Murielle Elizéon with cellist/composer Shana Tucker will be restaged and presented November 14 at the Black Mountain College Museum in Asheville, NC
When We were Queens… is a multidisciplinary performance in two parts—two solos in dialogue. The piece explores how the bodies of women of color from the African diaspora carry personal and collective histories. Together, Elizéon and Tucker reclaim a shared lineage of violence, power, and resilience, creating an immersive performance and relational practice between performers and audiences.
Take a minute to write an introduction that is short, sweet, and to the point. If you sell something, use this space to describe it in detail and tell us why we should make a purchase. Tap into your creativity. You’ve got this.
by Culture Mill co-directors Elizéon and Tommy Noonan will be restaged and presented by the work’s commissioner Carolina Performing Arts. Performances of Eclipse at the CURRENT ArtSpace in Chapel Hill in March and April will be shared as part of Culture Mill’s Southern Futures Assembly, a celebration of works, practices, and collaborations during their five-year residency with the Southern Futures at CPA initiative. In addition to performances of Eclipse, Culture Mill will curate programming including Well (2023), created in collaboration with a UNC Social Geography course, a lecture presenting Bricks as Memory, a forthcoming chapter in [book title] published by Vanderbilt University Press, and restorative circle practices. Key collaborators include poet CJ Suitt, dancers Otto Nelson and Jasmine Powell, poet Dr. Cortland Gilliam, and professor Dr. Betsy Olson.
IN-DEVELOPMENT
Take a minute to write an introduction that is short, sweet, and to the point. If you sell something, use this space to describe it in detail and tell us why we should make a purchase. Tap into your creativity. You’ve got this.
As part of Culture Mill’s ongoing Parkinson’s Performance Project, Elizéon with dancers/choreographers Annie Dwyer and Clint Lutes will create the forthcoming performance Anatomy of Care. Anatomy of Care is a multigenerational, cross-sector dance project exploring the poetics of embodied care. Developed with people living with Parkinson’s disease, professional dancers, and researchers, the work honors the ever-changing body through imagination and creativity.
Commissioned by the American Dance Festival (Durham) and created in partnership with Dance for PD (Brooklyn) and DaPoPa (Paris), Anatomy of Care will grow through labs, residencies, and rehearsals that center the voices and experiences of people living with PD. At its core, Anatomy of Care reclaims performance as a vital practice for individuals living with PD: to see and be seen, to touch and be touched, to move and be moved.
COMMUNITY
PRACTICES
Practice Forward: Resilient . Creative . Communities is a new workshop series curated and framed by Culture Mill. Claiming that a community of practice cultivates a community of care, each session offers embodied and creative practices to strengthen resilience and deepen connections, collectively building community resilience and capacity to help us face uncertainty. From processing the aftermath of storm Chantal, to exploring solidarity economies, to Songs of Resistance with Kamara Thomas and Kym Register on election day, to multigenerational improvisational movement, to men’s breathwork, this series insists that creativity and embodiment are key to building resilient communities
A community of practice cultivates a community of care.
ARTIST IN
RESIDENCE
Culture Mill will continue to uphold the artistic fabric of our region through supporting artists near and far.
CJ Suitt
will be in-residence creating a new autobiographical evening-length performance titled 3731.
Take a minute to write an introduction that is short, sweet, and to the point. If you sell something, use this space to describe it in detail and tell us why we should make a purchase. Tap into your creativity. You’ve got this.
Lutes (Paris, France)
will be in-residence in November as part of the Parkinson’s Performance Project, offering a series of trainings and engaging in the creation of Anatomy of Care.
Take a minute to write an introduction that is short, sweet, and to the point. If you sell something, use this space to describe it in detail and tell us why we should make a purchase. Tap into your creativity. You’ve got this.
Culture Mill’s 2025-26 Season and operations are generously supported by numerous individuals and the following institutions:
Culture Mill’s 2025-2026 operations are supported by the Mellon Foundation.
When We were Queens… is a Culture Mill Production presented by the Black Mountain College Museum. The work was commissioned by NC State LIVE and co-produced by Wilson Center (CFCC) and Weatherspoon Art Museum (UNCG).
Eclipse is a Culture Mill production. This work is commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Southern Futures Assembly is presented as part of Southern Futures as Carolina Performing Arts.
Anatomy of Care is a Culture Mill production commissioned by the American Dance Festival. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, and Duke Health.
Practice Forward: Resilient . Creative . Communities is presented in partnership with the Haw River Ballroom.
Small blurb on deepening and iterative practices and community commitment.
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