Collaborative Storytelling Workshop: Weaving Together Voices of Loss and Hope

Abstract:

For centuries, opera has integrated ballet into its aesthetic and narrative storytelling. Movement choruses are described mimicking nature, depicting battles, and marking celebration. Across generations and cultures, interconnections of dance and literature are profound. This workshop examines the making of Baby Book, a creative research project centering poetry, music, choreography, and film. Baby Book uses a blend of neoclassicism and modernism with ballets’ distinct intersection of form and fluidity to embody expressions of maternal representation. The songs and cinematography follow a mother’s experiences of miscarriage, pregnancy, postpartum depression, and new parenthood. The choreography and editing use gesture, leitmotif, and abstraction to support the narrative arc and emotions. Untold stories of family building gathered from community events are incorporated into the film. Drawing from this four-year long interdisciplinary arts collaboration, this workshop offers insights for framing and facilitating socially engaged art projects. This session uses content and models from Baby Book to explore communicating across temporal, geographic, and disciplinary divides. Focusing on storytelling through non-linear collaborative process, participants will work in small groups to co-create instant dances. Provided with specific roles and prompts, they will devise choreographic sequences to be shared. Attendees will view and respond to excerpts from Baby Book, film by Machmer Media with Chloe Yelena Miller (poet), Lauren Spavelko (composer), Nicole Asel (mezzo-soprano), and Tim Burns (pianist). Preceding Q&A, presenter will discuss the inclusion of undergraduate students in examining deeply personal narratives and the resultant trust and vulnerability which contribute to a culture of care in ballet pedagogy.

 

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Presented by Madeline Jazz Harvey, Associate Professor; Colorado State University

 

Biography:

Madeline Jazz Harvey is a dance educator, choreographer, and performer specializing in classical and contemporary ballet. She began her performance career at age fourteen as an apprentice with Charlotte Ballet, under the direction of Patricia McBride and Jean Pierre Bonnefoux. In 2010, Madeline joined Hernan Justo’s Carolina Ballet Theatre where she served as a principal dancer, resident choreographer, and outreach coordinator. Madeline performed with Judy Bejarano’s IMPACT Dance Company from 2018-2025.

Madeline, Associate Professor of Dance and recipient of the 2025 CLA Excellence in Undergraduate Mentorship Award at Colorado State University, has been teaching and choreographing since 2006. Her choreographic résumé includes over 55 original works, and she has been entrusted with coaching and restaging works by Bryan Arias, Salvatore Aiello, and Dwight Rhoden. Madeline holds an MFA in Choreography from Jacksonville University and a BA in Dance from the University of North Carolina, where she received the 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award. She is the founder and director of CSU’s summer Dance Lab.

Madeline values collaboration and has co-created works with composers, psychologists, visual artists, and community members. Her research explores dance and parenting. She is co-founder of the Arts and Parenting Collective and Principal Investigator for Movement Through Parenthood, a research study examining the impact of dance on emotional availability and wellbeing during pregnancy and within caregiver-child interactions. She is honored to be a 2025 recipient of the Colorado State University Ann Gill Faculty Development Award. She is grateful for the support of her partner and their two children.