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G.L.I.T.S, a Black trans-led advocacy and direct services organization that is dedicated to fighting systemic discrimination against marginalized communities, in New York City and beyond
Columbia County Sanctuary Movement ensures our community has their basic survival needs met, and we fight together for longer-term change! CCSM is the only immigrant-led base building and multilingual organization in multiple counties throughout our region.
Gaza Freedom Flotilla sailing for a just future for Palestine.
For the Many, building a grassroots movement of everyday people to transform New York so it works for all of us.
Hana van der Kolk
is a queer dancer, artist, and embodied learning, ritual, and celebration facilitator living on unceded Nipmuc, Pocumtuc, and Nonotuk lands, colonially known as Western Massachusetts. Hana spends time co-creating bridges through pedagogy, performance, language, healing, celebration, transformation, and dismantling empire inside and out. She creates performances, organizes parades and parties, designs and leads workshops, offers one-on-one counseling & sex and gender expansion work, writes, and makes objects, environments, and videos. Hana sees their work—which is always collaborative—as a conduit for knowing/unknowing what is here and now, for remembering and practicing intimacy at many proximities and in many ways. They are dedicated to continuously learning and practicing an intersectional and politicized approach to art-making and somatic and healing work.
Hana has worked internationally as a teacher and facilitator, performer, and artist since 2001. They completed an MFA in Dance from UCLA in 2008 and a practice-based PhD in Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2022 where their dissertation focused on queer friendship, telepathy, and somatic technologies for re-enchantment and recovery from the delusion of separateness. Dancing/studying dance and performance since they were 3 years old, some of her core influences in this journey have been Contact Improvisation, Authentic Movement, Body Weather Laboratory, queer and Black social dance, teachers Jennifer Monson, Keith Hennessy, Sherwood Chen, KJ Holmes, Simone Forti, Susan Foster, debra bluth, d. Sabela grimes and many others, and learning, adapting, and performing dances by Deborah Hay from 2000-2007. In addition, Hana has been meditating and studying Buddhist philosophy since 1998, most extensively in Thai Forest and Burmese lineages, trained in and work creatively with the Internal Family Systems method, maintain a robust one-on-one counseling practice, are trained in and practice Barbara Carrellas’ Urban Tantra work, studied DREAMWORK with Mala Kline, and consider themselves a practitioner of animism.
Hana is part of the FlagsSs Day Collective in Troy, NY, Mahican and Mohawk lands, (where they were based for almost a decade) with Angela Beallor and Elizabeth Press. The project works in traditions of entwining celebration and challenge, protest with party, and dissent with a dedication to joy, and organizes parades, rituals, and community flag-making workshops. In Troy, Hana also volunteered for five years at Troy Bike Rescue and was involved in youth advocacy in the broader community and threw the underground dance party and grass roots fundraising event, Polly, with a team of artists and organizers. They are part of the dance band The Ponies with Mara Poliak, Hilary Kennedy, and Eddy Levin, have been working with Lea Kieffer on the immersive workshop experience Strange Nature at The Field Center since 2022, have been collaborating with Erica Dawn Lyle on The Stamina of Utopia, a sound, dance, writing, and telepathic practice since 2021, and is part of Witness, a dance-based anti-incarceration project directed by Sondra Loring of Moving Potential. Hana has worked closely with Tomislav Feller, Sondra Loring, margit galanter, Dori Midnight, Eli Nixon, Julia Handschuh, Lailye Weidman, Erin Sickler, Jason Martin, Sean Desiree, Asher Woodworth, Ethan Kiermaier, Ellen Foster, taisha paggett, Jesse Marshall, Nikola Knežević and others and has taught/guest taught in a wide variety of contexts including School for New Dance Development (Amsterdam), The Field Center, The Flaherty Film Festival, Williams College, Marlboro College, Skidmore College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Sadhana Yoga, GOODWITCH Studio, UCLA, Refuge, Oakwood Community Center, The Sanctuary for Independent Media, Blackwood Gallery (Toronto), University of Tallinn (Estonia), and countless private homes, squatted/borrowed spaces, and public parks.