ROMA FLOWERS - VISUAL DESIGNER
About Roma
ROMA FLOWERS, member of United Scenic Artists Local 829,
has designed lighting and projection for theatre, opera and dance. Beginning her professional journey at the renowned Dance Theater Workshop in NYC, she has designed at noted performance venues as The Joyce, Danspace at St. Marks Church, P.S.122, LaMama, Symphony Space, City Center and the Brooklyn Academy of Music for such diverse performing artists as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, The Dance Theater of Harlem, Jane Comfort, Creach/Koester Dance, DanceXchange, David Dorfman, Dark Circles Contemporary Dance, Doug Elkins Dance Company, George Clinton, The Joan Miller Dance Players, ODC San Francisco, Otrabanda, Shapiro & Smith, Gus Solomons and Doug Varone and Dancers among others. An appointment at Texas Christian University’s School for Classical & Contemporary Dance where she recently retired as Emerita Professor led to explorations into projection design and screendance creation. Roma is a recipient of the prestigious New York Dance and Performance Award (a.k.a. Bessie) for her lighting designs and the KOI-USA Knight of Illumination Projection Design Award for A Bon Coeur, an evening-length work, created by dance artist, Helanius J. Wilkins. Roma’s screendance collaboration with Helanius J. Wilkins, Dirt (2021), was awarded Best Experimental film in the New York World Film Festival and the Fine Arts Film Festival. Her design work and screendance films have been seen throughout the United States and Canada, Mexico, Brazil, the UK, continental Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia.
Portfolio
Lighting and Projection Design
The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geopolitical Quilt to Re-Body Belonging
The projection design for this collaborative, immersive work is an ongoing and always shifting dance-quilt. Created by Helanius J. Wilkins and performed by two men with different racial and cultural backgrounds, The Conversation Series is a continually evolving performance work, confronting and celebrating heritage, resilience, justice and hope. Activating technologies of the body, tools and toys in a non-colonizing fashion, this work centers belonging as a way to disrupt the erasure of silenced stories and forge paths towards justice/equitable landscapes. The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geopolitical Quilt to Re-Body Belonging is a dynamic intersection of contemporary dance, performance art, technology (video and interactive gaming), music, fashion and design.
ReWritten (excerpts)
Co-created by Tom Truss and Matthew Cumbie, ReWritten reflects on the intimate relationship between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne as a way to explore queerness, history, intimacy, and writing. The relationship between Hawthorne and Melville has been characterized as one of the most mysterious and fruitful friendships in American letters, yet the letters from Hawthorne to Melville are missing. ReWritten springboards from this historic gap and time-hops between then and now as an attempt to expand how we see ourselves in these stories. Through performances and community engagements, ReWritten weaves together dance, music, visual art, projection, and text, and reimagines an intergenerational queer love story that extends the queer archive.
Big Bad Wolf
Big Bad Wolf, choreographed by Joshua L. Peugh, explores fear and the way almost every culture on earth has used fear as a tool to make people behave. Inspired by cautionary tales people worldwide use to frighten naughty children and influenced by vaudeville, the work is grandly theatrical. Coproduced by Korea Nation Contemporary Dance Company, Big Bad Wolf premiered at the Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, South Korea in 2017.
Of This Place (excerpts)
As part of a constellation of celebratory events to inaugurate the opening of the new Gordon Center for the Performing Arts at Colby College, Of This Place is a community-based performance project that asks: what are the stories, past and present, that have helped make this a home for all of us? Linking movement and stories is the thrust behind collaborative dancemaker and educator Matthew Cumbie’s ambitious, multiyear performance project to collect stories of Colby, Waterville, and the people who have shaped these communities, past and present. Together with artistic collaborators, he has woven the stories into a sweeping performance integrating dance, storytelling, projection, original music, and theatrical design elements.
The Factotum (excerpts)
Grammy-nominated baritone Will Liverman, joined by dynamic producer/DJ/multi-instrumentalist DJ King Rico created a new work inspired by Rossini's The Barber of Seville that has grown into a joyful, original piece all its own, commissioned by Lyric Opera of Chicago. Updating the action to a Black barbershop on Chicago's South Side, the duo has created an irresistibly upbeat work that celebrates the strength of community. The Factotum blended diverse musical styles with boundless imagination to create a soul opera, moving from gospel and funk to rap, hip-hop, classic barbershop quartet, and R&B.
A Bon Coeur
With A Bon Coeur, an evening-length, mixed media solo project, noted dance artist and teacher, Helanius J. Wilkins, explores how embodied practice helps interrogate complex issues of race, culture, and inclusivity. Drawn from inspiration through his Creole cultural ties and aspects of growing up in Lafayette, Louisiana, Wilkins’ envisioned the work to be performed by “a black body in a white-box”, with all the metaphoric, cultural, and political implications that that environment suggests. The projection design for A Bon Coeur employed four white walls (including a translucent front wall) and a white floor as irresistible surfaces for vibrant and diverse projections that could truly transform the space from both audience and performance perspectives. The design received the prestigious LDI Knight of Illumination Notch Award in 2019.
Remembered Present
“Remembered Present”, choreographed by Nina Martin, examined spontaneity as artistic practice. The video content reinforced that aspect of the dancers’ personal artistic journey through imagery of anatomical and digital renderings of human forms, movement through mazes, rooms, anonymous buildings and manipulated footage of the dancers themselves. Using three screens, the projected imagery was comprised of three distinct yet thematically similar image scores. Paul Hunt composed the improvised sound score.
Liminal Territories
Choreographed by Nina Martin, "Liminal Territories" was presented at the School for Classical & Contemporary Dance at TCU. Roma Flowers designed the video projections and lighting. “Liminal Territories” captured an exploration of the moving human form in a contained yet organically shifting landscape. The dancers themselves became an integral part of the visual environment.
Quintet Variations with Weather
Choreographed by Jordan Fuchs, "Quintet Variations with Weather" was presented at the School for Classical & Contemporary Dance at TCU in the fall of 2016. Roma Flowers designed the video projections and lighting.
Gloria
Choreographed by Dance Theatre of Harlem’s resident choreographer Robert Garland, "Gloria" (2012), set to Francis Poulenc's 1961 vocal and orchestral work, is an act of faith, of community. Dedicated to Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church, a congregation that just said no to segregation in 1808, "Gloria" conveys joy, sorrow and hope as subtly as Poulenc's composition.
A Gumbo
Choreographed by Helanius J. Wilkins, "A Gumbo" was presented at the School for Classical & Contemporary Dance at TCU. Reflecting on the impact of Hurricane Katrina, the “visual poems” of "A Gumbo" (projected onto an overhead sculptural installation of Mardi Gras parasols) were created to give context to the geography and cultural identity of the work. Presented in an improvisatory framework, the lighting and videos altered for each of several performances.
Center My Heart
Center My Heart, choreographed by Doug Elkins, featured one of my earliest ventures into full stage projection. Paired with gobo patterns on the dancers, it was a simple and effective visual statement.
When Pigments Fly
Choreographed by veteran choreographer and noted dance teacher, Joan Miller, “When Pigments Fly” was presented at the Citigroup theater at the Joan Weill Center for Dance in New York. Conceived as a tribute to Joan’s longtime friend and collaborator, African-American expressionist painter Herbert Gentry, the design concept was to recreate and highlight the motifs and sensibilities of Mr. Gentry’s oeuvre while maintaining strong focus on the dance and the dancers through the application of full stage visuals that included the dancers, the floor and the background.
Screendance
Secondary Surfaces Redux Trailer
Secondary Surfaces Redux is the creative result of a collaboration with SCCD Associate Professor Dr. Nina Martin, who choreographed the work and performed with Sarah Gamblin, Associate Professor of Dance at Texas Women's University. The video was selected for inclusion in the Braga International Video Dance Festival 2018. Two women arduously traverse an expanse of white paper armed only with black charcoal and their bodies. Created by video artist Roma Flowers and choreographer Nina Martin, and informed by far west Texas landscapes, geological time and human kinetic processes, Secondary Surfaces Redux presents meditations on durational concepts of time and the human relationship to labor and survival.
Selected Theatre Gallery
From musicals to comedies to serious drama, this gallery includes a diverse range of theatrical genres and forms.
