Our Daily Bread Project at CounterPULSE

About the Project: Our Daily Bread is an innovative project that combines dance performances with activism and education about sustainable food-growing and eating practices. It promotes healthy eating habits and engages audience members and other participants in conversations about how to maintain our food
traditions, promote sustainable eating practices and become more informed about our food sources.

The Performances: The performance piece called Our Daily Bread uses dance, text, and video to celebrate what we eat and illuminate the culture that underlies our eating practices. Created by Amara Tabor-Smith’s Deep Waters Dance Theater, director Ellen Sebastian Chang and visual artist Lauren Elder at CounterPULSE, Our Daily Bread delves into the folklore and stories surrounding our food traditions to examine how these traditions are impacted by industrialized agriculture, fast food culture and our global food crisis.

“I am passionate about gaining deeper understanding
about why we eat what we eat and the ways that history,
culture and identity are expressed in our cooking. I have
also come to recognize the depth of how economic
realities are expressed so dramatically through
food…[This project] has inspired within me personally, a
life dedicated to food activism…It has sparked many
conversations and personal actions among those involved
in this process around food, art, family and community.”

–Lead Artist, Amara Tabor-Smith

The performance piece was the culmination of a year of community-building around food issues that included eat-ins, cooking workshops, sharing of personal food stories, and a parade down Market Street.  When the audience members came to see the Our Daily Bread performances, their hands were washed by the performers as they entered the theatre, and then during the show, they were fed and instructed to feed their neighbors too. The performances inspired audience members to examine the physical and environmental effects of their eating habits by tapping into their deep and joyful connections to food. The performance piece played to sold-out houses and standing ovations every night during its run in April 2011. Funds are currently being raised to stage the performance piece again in fall 2012.

The Community Education Project: The Our Daily Bread Community Education Project is a collaboration between Amara Tabor-Smith, Deep Waters Dance Theater, local arts organization CounterPULSE,
community-services organization Catholic Charities CYO, and the residents of two low-income
family and housing facilities which are within one block of CounterPULSE – 10th & Mission Family Housing and the Edith Witt Senior
Community.

The Community Activities: Local residents of the housing projects engage in a year-long period of learning, story gathering, artistic creation
and community building to promote healthy eating habits using traditional foods, including:

• Ten monthly potlucks where residents share meals, stories, and folklore from our diverse histories
  from our diverse histories and engage in conversations about how to maintain our food traditions,
  promote sustainable eating practices and become more informed about our food sources.

• Workshops exploring how to eat locally and seasonally, and provide resources for urban
  gardening, as well as how to substitute unhealthy traditional food ingredients with healthier ones.

• Thirty weeks of after-school classes where youth create modern-day harvest dances, weaving
  together rhythms created by kitchen items, stories generated by creative writing exercises, and
  family recipes.

• A documentary film comprised of residents’ stories about their food heritage and the transformation of their current eating practices
• These elements will culminate in a final community celebration at CounterPULSE. Youth will
  perform the food-oriented dances and spoken-word pieces developed in their after-school classes,
  sharing the stage with food-oriented performances by professional dancers. Families will bring
  dishes that represent healthy versions of family classics, and the final documentary will be screened.

"It was life changing. This should go around the world with
schools and everyone they can reach and reconnect humans,
change minds, souls, and health. Flawless. I’m coming again."

–Audience Member

“I was completely blown away by the production. Rarely do I feel this way after seeing any type of performance and I still find
myself meditating on the images, words, movement, flavors, and power behind the work. I can’t thank you enough for investing
moved by the work, I am honestly a little speechless. All I can say is thank you.”

–Audience Member

To see Amara Tabor Smith’s blog posts and more pictures and videos from the Our Daily Bread performance piece, please click here>>

Special Thanks: The Our Daily Bread Project has been made possible by a generous grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission.