Standing Together - Seeing and Being Seen
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Standing Together - Seeing and Being Seen *
A project about individuals investigating standing together and relating through language, movement and life stories. is a personal work, and evolving collaboration engaging race, ancestry and somatics. Currently, Wendy, Samuel and Damaris are working on a Trio peace that will be presented in late September.
the collaboration. portland, 2025.
Developed through seven years of collaboration, Standing Together brings together Jorge Samuel, a Black Brazilian dance specialist, Damaris Webb, a descendant of the American slave trade and Scandinavian immigrants, and Wendy Hambidge, who traces her lineage to early colonial plantation owners.
Through a deeply improvisational and somatic creative process, rooted in the principles of Body-Mind Centering®, the artists explore and unpack their racial and ancestral identities in real time — allowing each performance to emerge as a unique encounter. The work blurs the boundaries between dance, theater, and oral history, creating space for difficult conversations, empathy, and collective healing.
Standing Together was presented at Dekum Street Theater in Portland, Oregon, on September 26–28, 2025, with support from the Ronni S. Lacroute Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation, the Regional Arts & Culture Council, and in-kind contributions from Chelsea Petrakis, LeAnne Smith, and Suniti Dernovsek.
Photo credit: Chelsea Petrakis
Presented by: Performance Works NW & Dekum Street Theater
The Investigation started in a group format in 2018
Wendy Hambidge through the Brazilian Colleges - University of São Paulo and State University of Paraná, developed with a group of students the basis of what would become the fundamental procedures of investigating Race, Nationality and Ancestry through the lenses of Dance (in it's different forms and formats) and the Somatic Approach Body-Mind Centering