Have you heard? Beating of Wings is now OFFICIALLY a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization- which means your donations are fully tax deductible! Upon donating, you will receive a receipt from GiveButter that you can save for your records.

Help us produce our first LIVE project since the pandemic: our immersive feminist dance show, Our Feet Off the Ground, which uses the medium of dance as a vehicle for reckoning with the perils and passions of inhabiting a female body.

What We’re Asking For:

Last year, The Wayward Artist approached Beating of Wings’ Founding Artistic Director Anna Miles and asked her to create a dance show. Right away, Anna and Choreographer Emily-Mae Kamp began developing the site-specific outdoor dance show that would become Our Feet Off The Ground: a dark devised retelling of the stories of Hans Christian Andersen through a contemporary feminist lens. Wayward promised to co-produce this show alongside Beating of Wings, pledging a total contribution of $5,000. However, in January 2024 The Wayward Artist abruptly pulled their support without legitimate cause after Anna, formerly a Wayward Resident Artist, told Wayward she needed to take a step back from her unpaid position running their social media.

By removing the dance show from their 2024 Season, Wayward removed the only explicitly feminist programming offered for the season, eliminated employment opportunities for 11 women and nonbinary artists, and demonstrated an apparent disregard for Beating of Wings' mission to provide support for women and other underrepresented artists in their journeys to create and produce vital, socially conscious work.

This, of course, did not sit well with us here at Beating of Wings.

We believe that this story still deserves to be told. We believe that our innovative approach to this project still deserves a chance to develop. We believe that both the artists already involved with the piece and the artists yet-to-be hired deserve a space in which to exercise their creativity and artistry.

We won’t let The Wayward Artist clip our wings. Beating of Wings has decided to move forward with producing Our Feet Off The Ground in May 2024 without Wayward’s help- but in order to pull that off, we are now asking for your help.

We are looking to raise the $5,000 we lost when Wayward pulled funding from the project. This $5,000 will go directly toward paying the artist stipends for the show, and any additional funds raised will go toward production and location costs. All of our performances of Our Feet Off The Ground will be held at public parks in both Orange County and Los Angeles and will be entirely free to the public. By helping us raise the money upfront, you allow us to keep this event completely free, offering momentous audience member access.

We understand that being a member of a theatrical community can be vulnerable and complicated, so donations can be made anonymously if desired. While you will need to put in your email address, that information only goes to us, and we will NEVER reveal the identity of any donors without their explicit consent.

Any small amount that you're able to give gets us closer to reaching our goal. Help us get Our Feet Off The Ground off the ground!

About the Show:

Our Feet Off the Ground is a brand new immersive feminist dance show drawing from the stories of Hans Christian Andersen, including such familiar classics as The Little Mermaid, The Dryad, and The Red Shoes. The show darkly reimagines these classic tales, intersecting their language and themes with the medium of dance as a vehicle for reckoning with the perils and passions of inhabiting a female body. With choreography and narrative developed through collaborative devising, Our Feet Off the Ground explores the expansiveness of desire and the social punishments incurred when desire is deemed too much. Our Feet Off the Ground will be performed in a site-specific outdoor location, inspired by Andersen’s imagery connecting woods and wilderness to the boundlessness of the human soul.

Our Feet Off The Ground will run for three performances only in May 2024: two shows at Hillcrest Park in Fullerton on Friday May 24th and Sunday May 26th at 6 pm, and one show at La Tierra de la Culebra park in Highland Park on Saturday May 25th at 1 pm. In keeping with Beating of Wings' tradition, admission to all shows will be completely free.

While Beating of Wings has incorporated movement and dance into previous productions, this will be our first project entirely dedicated to telling a story through dance. We're excited to more deeply explore this visceral modality and welcome artists of a new medium into our community.

"...the Dryad disappeared, lifted to the cheerful freshness above. She saw a glittering portal open, that led to a little garden, where all was brightness and dance music. Beautiful weeping willows, real products of spring, hung their fresh branches over these lakes like a fresh, green, transparent, and yet screening veil. In the bushes burnt an open fire, throwing a red twilight over the quiet huts of branches, into which the sounds of music penetrated—an ear tickling, intoxicating music, that sent the blood coursing through the veins.

Beautiful girls in festive attire, with pleasant smiles on their lips, and the light spirit of youth in their hearts flitted to and fro in the wild dance. Where were the heads, where the feet? As if stung by tarantulas, they sprang, laughed, rejoiced, as if in their ecstacies they were going to embrace all the world.

The Dryad felt herself torn with them into the whirl of the dance. Round her delicate foot clung the silken boot, chestnut brown in color, like the ribbon that floated from her hair down upon her bare shoulders. The green silk dress waved in large folds, but did not entirely hide the pretty foot and ankle.

A wild joviality seemed to rush through the Dryad. Her partner stretched out his arms to draw her to him, but he embraced only the empty air.

The Dryad had been carried away, like a rose-leaf on the wind. Before her she saw a flame in the air. The beacon light shone from the goal of her longing. Thither she was carried by the wind, like butterfly that had come too early, and that now sank down dying." -from The Dryad, or The Wood Nymph, by Hans Christian Andersen

Where Your Money Goes:

Your donation goes directly toward funding artist stipends for Our Feet Off the Ground. We have decided to give every artist involved the same amount, and publicize those amounts, in a radical display of our commitment to equity and transparency. Every team member and cast member involved with the show will receive stipend amounts of $500, excepting director Anna Miles who has chosen to donate her stipend amount back towards the production.

We have chosen to turn to crowdfunding for this project because we believe it is the best way to engage our community and maintain maximum transparency about where our donations are coming from. Crowdfunding bypasses the traditional model of a few wealthy donors giving larger amounts to non-profits, often with strings attached, and allows individual artists with less money to give support one another in their creative endeavors.

About Beating of Wings:

Beating of Wings is a 501(c)(3) organization with a mission to build a community which supports women and other underrepresented artists in their journeys to create, develop, and produce vital, socially conscious work.

Beating of Wings celebrates art that brings forth those voices that have been forgotten, forbidden, and suppressed, and which presents unique interpretations of the world that are fresh, new, and necessary. Beating of Wings prizes innovative storytelling and approaches its work with a true collaborative spirit. While our mission and much of our language emphasizes women as our primary focus, our collective is for every person, female-identifying or otherwise, who has ever felt silenced, in the arts or in life.

Beating of Wings is dedicated to experimentation and innovation and to exploring not only the production of traditional performance, but also the intersections between different art forms. The collective strives to maintain a diverse roster of ensemble members and programming options, both in terms of artistic fields and the expansive representation of different life experiences.

Since its inception, the collective has upheld its commitment to community-centered creative events by hosting several music and storytelling gathering events such as Phoenix Songs and Divine: Songs for a New Moon, and partnering with other local theater companies such as Noise Now at A Noise Within Theater to workshop A Sad Tale's Best for Winter in Fall 2019, The Wit Theater to create the photo project "Scavenged Stories," and now Debatable Productions. The collective participated in "12,000 Voices," a nation-wide voting initiative, and during the pandemic Beating of Wings further expanded its accessibility efforts by branching out into film and digital theater, producing the acclaimed short film "Zenith" and its predecessor, the Instagram experience #NeverAlone.

Our Feet Off The Ground is one more baby step forward as we continue building a supportive and equitable creative environment through Beating of Wings. It has always been our goal and to contribute to the revolution of our industry and to combat the exploitation, abuse, and discrimination which so often pervades our experiences. We do not pretend to be offering artists nearly enough money for this or any other projects. We do not pretend to be perfect. But we will always offer what little we have to give, and will always strive to maintain a space built on fully informed consent, artistic empowerment, transparent communication, and accountability both personal and organizational.

Learn more on our website and socials:

https://www.beatingofwingscollective.com/

https://www.instagram.com/beatingofwingsco

https://www.facebook.com/beatingofwingscollective\

About the Team:

We are excited to share that our team includes many of the creative powerhouses behind last year's award-winning production of Grace McLean’s In the Green, including Director Anna Miles, Choreographer Emily-Mae Kamp, AD/AC/Hair&Makeup Designer Lizzie Gimple, and A2/Sound Engineer Mykaela Sterris. Rounding out our team is Chassey Simmons, a creative force local to Orange County who will be joining the production as our Stage Manager. We can’t wait to invite performers both familiar and unfamiliar to participate in this production alongside the production team- we will be holding auditions on Sunday, April 7th in Fullerton. To learn more and/or to sign up for auditions, visit auditions | Beating Of Wings (beatingofwingscollective.com).

Perks:

To help sweeten the deal even more, we're tossing in some fun perks based on amounts donated! If you donate $50 more, make sure to tell us whether or not you'd like to collect your perks, and give us your mailing address so we can send them your way.

$10: a shoutout on our social media, website, and show programs

$25: the $10 rewards PLUS a free downloadable Beating of Wings coloring book

$50: the previous two rewards PLUS a commemorative thank you enamel pin

$100: the previous three rewards PLUS a commemorative rose quartz heart crystal token

$500: the previous four rewards PLUS VIP show seating

$1000+: all previous rewards PLUS a customized copy of Hans Christian Andersen's Fairytale's signed by the cast and crew

All rewards will be mailed out in May.

Auction:

Like the idea of supporting our show while also treating yourself to a little handmade treasure at the same time? Visit our auction by clicking the auction tab to purchase beautiful trinkets, including Anna's famous crystal Troll Dolls, with all proceeds going directly towards producing this show!

All items will be mailed out in May.

A Note About Fees:

As with all fundraising platforms, GiveButter asks for some credit card processing fees. You will be given the option to cover these fees as part of your donation- while we understand you may not be able to add that extra amount, we greatly appreciate if you are!

Thank you for your contribution to this project, and for your support in building a more equitable creative landscape!

Help Get Our Newest Project Off the Ground!

Help us produce our first LIVE project since the pandemic: our immersive feminist dance show, Our Feet Off the Ground, which uses the medium of dance as a vehicle for reckoning with the perils and passions of inhabiting a female body.