A NOTE FROM MARLA, IJ’S ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
My daughter asked me the other day if some friends of ours were family or friends — she couldn’t remember if we were related, only that we loved each other. It filled me with wonder to imagine that her experience of connection is so boundaryless — a free-flowing exchange of love not yet hemmed in by the lines that get drawn around us.
This feels like a moment when all of us are stepping outside of the lines again — joining and rejoining groups; gathering in person; choosing which connections to keep. That act of stepping out can feel fraught, and I keep having to remind myself that we’re all taking those baby steps, that if I look out of the periphery I’ll see someone else stepping out too.
from left to right: Interminable, Solomon Temple, Mel Hsu, and Denice Frohman.
This season at IJ we celebrate stories of connection — of finding a place in a world of difference, of ties both inherited and chosen. From sharing food and art with the Table Sessions curators Solomon Temple, Mel Hsu and Ximena Violante, to hearing Denice Frohman’s poetic tapestry of stories woven from interviews with queer Latinx elders, to celebrating 20 connective years of Intercutural Journeys — we welcome you to join the IJ circle all year long.
Whatever new steps you’re taking right now, you’re in good company. And the circle of connection can be fathomless and wide, extending through generations and beyond boundaries — if you open your imagination to it.
Come imagine with IJ this season.
- Marla Burkholder
