Our mission is to provide artists a personalized creative residency, affording space, time, and resources to create, process, rest, and play! (co)LAB residency is a creative sanctuary for artists to recenter and retune their whole-being to the heartbeat of the Rocky Mountains, and let their artistic seeds sprout and blossom.
Meet the Artists
Choreographer | Filmmaker | Dancer | Teacher | Embodied Facilitator
Ashley Menestrina is a freelance artist performing her own work around the world. Her self-choreographed solo, "Always a Creature" has been performed at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, the CURRENT SESSIONS’, Peridance’s Salvatore Capezio Theater, Center for Performance Research, and the 14th Street Y. Her second solo work, "The Human Condition: Absent Presence" premiered at The Martha Graham Theater in April 2018 and has since toured in New York City, Los Angeles, Turkey, Mexico City, Portugal, Oklahoma City (received ‘Best Creation’ Prize at Solocoreografico Festival), and Israel, taking home 3rd place at the International Choreography Competition in Jerusalem as part of Jerusalem International Dance Week. Her newest work, "Combative Echoes” was originally shown in Thessaloniki, Greece for Die Wolke Art Group’s Unit Motives: GRM festival in 2019, and has since been extended to premier in Germany at the 24th International Solo-Dance-Thetare Festival Stuttgart in 2020. This solo was also selected to be performed at BAM Fisher as part of the NimbusPRESENTS: OFFLINE+ series. However, due to COVID-19, these performances were unfortunately cancelled. One festival that resulted in a live performance for “Combative Echoes” was the 39th Edition of Battery Dance Festival held right here in NYC. Ashley is looking forward to the creation process of a new solo work titled, “The Woman in the Wire Suit” as well as furthering her teaching practice. Teaching credits include: The Martha Graham School, Pizarts Global Dance Hub, Fusion Dance Project, and Manhattanville College. Commissioned choreography includes Manhattanville College, KODA Lab, Velocity’s Bridge Project 2022, as well as various studios across the nation.
Ashley
Menestrina
Ashley’s Residency 2022
Ashley was personally invited to teach and create a dance film at Embodied Arts (co)LAB’s 2022 Reset Retreat. During her residency, she taught her very own, The Connective Tissue Series, a movement-based improvisational practice that mindfully links the relationship of our own physical tissue to the more metaphorical connections that allow us to be seen and heard in everyday life. Her embodied facilitation explores “how realms of interconnectedness can be seen as our physical road map, our mental cognitive awareness, our internal sensorial mechanisms, and our external sociable informants”. -Menestrina
During her residency, Ashley Created the dance film, “A Glacier”, an extension of the themes explored during The Connective Tissue Series workshops. Integrating themes of winter and her poetry, Menestrina invited collaborative solo and group discoveries with the dancers as they embodied themes of time, weight, standing, falling, and shifting with elements of nature in the forest where (co)LAB resides.
Connect with Ashley to say “Hi”, and stay updated on her current performances and class offerings
Audrey Freeman
Visual Artist & B-Girl
To me, art and dance is a therapeutic process that allows me to express myself creatively. I enjoy sharing and capturing stories through my art and constantly challenging myself to step out of my comfort zone. Through my visual art, I use primarily watercolors to depict colors, emotions and moments to share a narrative.
Born and raised in Colorado, I started drawing from a young age and developed a passion for art throughout school. I pursued drawing and painting throughout my childhood and young adolescence. I then attended college at CU Boulder in 2014-2018 for a degree in Environmental Design/architecture, and from there pursued architecture as a career and worked in firms for 2 years. This was the truth I had subscribed to, that I would not make it as an artist and so I continued down the path of architecture.
While in school, my mom was battling severe mental illness. In April 2019, she committed suicide. At the time, she was resuscitated and rushed into an ICU unit. There was a chance at first that she would live, eventually though, it was determined that there was too much damage to my mom's brain, she had been deprived of oxygen for too long and was declared brain dead. Since experiencing this deeply life-changing loss followed shortly by the pandemic, I have spent the last few years pursuing my dream of being an artist. I am in the process of building my art business and I truly appreciate your support.
Some items that I have been selling include greeting cards, pet portraits, custom commissions, prints, stickers and original artwork. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me with any questions regarding my artwork and I hope you know how much your support is appreciated. I donate 5% of my profits to NAMI, National Alliance on Mental Illness, which is a grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness. This is in honor of my beloved Mom, Amy. Thank you so much for taking the time to support my art. Please reach out to me if you have any questions about my artwork and subscribe to my newsletter below :)
Connect With Audrey for Commissions, Performances, & More! :
Instagrams: @audreygfree @bgirlaudio
Website: https://linktr.ee/audreygfree
Audrey’s Residency 2022
Audrey was personally invited to a residency at the (co)LAB to paint a mural on the studio wall. We commissioned her to integrate the values of Embodied Arts (co)LAB in her creation, highlighting the divine feminine while honoring the divine masculine in the SPIRIT of all creation.
Through deep tentacular roots and waves of our collective tears, this painting represents the healing whispers out from the conch-shell, mountains, and pine trees, if we are willing to put the ears of our feet to the gracious love of Mother Earth and open our h(ear)ts to the call of Great Spirit. The depth of Great Mystery is portrayed in the powerful whale fluke and AS ONDAS (waves/frequencies) of phenomenal ocean. Transmuted pain soars as birds, cascading from sacred feathers of hair. The brainless starfish, the main element of Kristen’s MFA research, informs (co)LAB, exemplifying total embodied intelligence. It’s bloodless life filled with seawater is a clue into our inextricable interconnection with water as life and memory, Earth, and one another’s tears of joy/pain. Audrey painted the seastars drifting into becoming snowflakes and stars, the connection of the great beyond.
Further honoring our planet, Audrey painted purely with @bioshieldpaint clay paint made solely of water and earth. Color in “Lychee” over “Slate” walls.
In addition to the mural, Audrey was commissioned to paint our company logo in her personal watercolor style.
Thank you Audrey, we couldn’t imagine anyone else creating these works of heArt for us!
Connect With Akasi
Website: https://linktr.ee/luvpeacensoulmovement
Instagram: @luvpeacensoul_movement
Modern Medicine Woman | Creative Healing Artist
My name is Akasi Mortiga Awogny Francis-Mora, and I am the Founder & Creative Director of LuVpEaCeNsOuL MoVeMeNt. I am a healthcare practitioner, creative healing artist, educator, poet, social justice activist, world traveler and enthusiastic student of life and all its complexities. I have learned to love my passions and live my purpose as a light leader in this life, and it’s time to share my story. Growing up as a young Black woman, and first generation Filipina and West African American has been quite the adventure. In my younger years, there wasn’t always an understanding of the various outlets and opportunities for wellness that reside within me, around my communities, or that exist within the many ancestral roots, roads traveled, and authentic stories intertwined within my journey. Through many years of self-exploration, navigating creative expression, facing challenges, taking risks, experiencing losses, defeats, learning modalities of holistic healing, unlearning cycles of oppression, decolonizing spaces by being, speaking, choosing to rest to ensure rejuvenation, and revolutionizing my resistance to systemic trauma , deciding to Love all of me - I found my voice, proudly started to self-identify, gained the confidence to live my truth, and continue to write and co-create my story of power as I dare to dream and shine as a warrior of light walking her path.
LuVpEaCeNsOuL MoVeMeNt is my legacy, and is a wellness initiative that provides accessibility to curated movement and mindfulness development workshops focused on centering self, purpose, and passion for communities of color, and all those who know they are here to change the world, that want to liberate their lives and manifest mind, body, and soul connection. Through exploration of unique somatic flows and grooves, sustainable methods of empowerment are offered as we utilize these tools to co-create thriving environments for growth, cultural exchange, and communities of holistic healing. We are all worthy of wellbeing, let us create our own versions of wellness- together, as we move, groove, with attitudes of harmonious joy and love.
Let’s do it through the Artforms of Hip Hop, Dances of The African Diaspora, Grounded Grooves, free-flowing Freestyles. Let’s do it through poetry, lyrics, Mantras, affirmations, meditation. Let’s do it through yoga flows, poses, postures, breathwork
- creating stillness, silence, internal shifts, sound, rhythms, intuitive embodiments, collective consciousness and connectedness, liberated living, purposeful thriving and so much more. Are You ready? Let’s Go, Let’s Flow!