The ArtWorks Cincinnati and Pones Summer Youth Apprentice Program is a paid, eight-week opportunity for teens and young adults to collaborate with professional teaching artists in visual art and dance. Through projects ranging from large-scale public murals to site-specific performances, apprentices develop creative, technical, and professional skills while engaging directly with the community. By blending hands-on artmaking with teamwork, leadership, and career training, the program empowers young people to express their voices, gain workforce experience, and contribute to the cultural vitality of Cincinnati.
2024 Dancers
Fiona Bradley 
August Brown 
Riley Coleman 
Mari Diggs 
Dinithi Fernando 
Wilbur Freid 
Malia Howard 
Gus Wissemeier
Weekly updates every Friday at 3:00 PM EST
Week of 8/19/2024
“The Courage to Give” Dance Film
Week of 7/22/2024
Performance at “The Lotus Mandala” Mural Dedication
Our work and choreographic process up to this point has been full of creativity, education, curiosity, storytelling, new dance techniques, and positive collaboration.
The 2024 Summer Youth Apprentice Artist Statement
Week of 7/15/2024
As the first performance of the summer is right around the corner, the apprentices have working diligently to perfect the final bits of their piece. They have also been joined by three Pones artists, Darnell Pierre Benjamin, Jensen O’Dell, and Sarah Spurling, who will be performing alongside the apprentices.
Not much new news this week, but YOU’RE INVITED! Come celebrate “The Lotus Mandala” mural with @artworkscincy, Esoteric Brewing Company, Model Group, and Pones at the Esoteric tap room next Friday, July 26th from 3-5pm. Enjoy an afternoon of admiring the mural, meeting the community, and a performance by the apprentices! Trust us – you WON’T want to miss it.
Designed by local artist Radha Lakshmi (@radartist), the mural incorporates themes of beauty, resilience, and unity. The mural was started by an ArtWorks Apprentice team in fall 2023, and was completed by artists Ryan Little and Derek Toebbe in spring 2024.
This event is completely free and open to the public, so be sure to spread the word. We can’t wait to celebrate with you!
Week of 7/8/2024
Progressing into July, the apprentices are deep in the choreographing process for their mandala piece, while starting to brainstorm for their LifeCenter piece.
Monday was a very exciting day as the apprentices were joined by Anupa Mirle, Founder and Executive Director of NrityArpana School of Performing Arts (NSPA), as well as four of her students, Riya, Disha, Vanessa, and Sivanya. Ranging from 9 to 11 years of practice, and ages of 15 to 17, the girls led the apprentices in a Bharatanatyam masterclass.
Bharatanatyam is a dance originating in the ancient temples of Tamil Nadu with over 2,000 years of history. Bharatanatyam includes four major styles including: Pandanallur, Vazhuvoor, Melathoor, Kalakshetra. Different styles entail different points of emphasis. For example, the Pandanallur form emphasizes mathematical importance and linear geometry, focusing on corresponding angles of the body and limbs. In our session, Anupa and her students focused more on the Vazhuvoor style, focusing on rare, unexpected movements, deep sitting positions, and an assortment of positions on the floor.
Despite the new style being overwhelming at first, with the help of Anupa and her students, the apprentices were able to not only learn the choreography, but simultaneously learned more about Southern Indian culture. While the steps may never be perfected, the whole SYDAP collective thanks Anupa, Riya, Disha, Vanessa, and Sivanya for their time, patience, wisdom, and kindness.
Wednesday was yet another busy, but very exciting day for the apprentices. The apprentices were first visited by Jeni Jenkins, the designer of the LifeCenter mural. Jeni is a “visual activist and social practice artist invested in enabling positive social impact by extending her practice outside the studio and into the social context.” She is also the Founder of Renegade Babe Studio™, emphasizing radical art for radical change. The apprentices were able to discuss with Jeni about nuances in the mural, the underlying meaning, and the sorts of things they want the audience to take-away from both pieces.
The apprentices were then visited by Josh McGrew, Creative Project Manager at ArtWorks Cincinnati, to design lotus-themed fans for the mandala performance. The hope is to use the fans as a way to not only incorporate India’s national flower, but to capture the concentric, even distribution of energy within the mandala.
After wrapping up the day at WordPlay Cincy, the teaching artists and apprentices headed downtown to meet up with professional photographer Casey Miller to take some headshots. Casey is the Owner of CMiller Photography, founded 2009, and works with a plethora of clients. Casey was recently named CityBeat’s 2024 Best Local Photographer, and was named the winner the previous year. Fun Fact: Casey is also a Pones artist! With the comforting guidance of Casey, the apprentices were able to get beautiful headshots that showcased their unique personalities.
The entire SYDAP collective would like to thank all of the guests that joined in this past week sharing their expertise, time, and space.
Week of 6/24/2024
It was an exciting week for the apprentices as they advanced onto the choreographing stage of the mandala mural.
On Monday, the apprentices went back to fine-tune their impact statement, which consists of a mission, vision, and artist statement, from the very first week with the help of Teaching Artist Amy Tuttle. For the mission statement, the group focused on the active, present moment. They thought about who they are as a collective, and what sort of influence they wanted to have on others. The vision statement focuses on the collective’s big picture goals and aspirations. What is the scope and scale of our work? Where will we have a profound impact? What is our Why? Finally, the artist statement houses the collective’s belief in the importance of dance and its value.
“Pones Project Impact Statement 2024
WE ARE Pones creators; dancers who bring art to life. WE ARE legends leaving a legacy. WE ARE artistic and movement educators.
Our goal is to help people understand the beauty of dance, bring awareness and inspire conversation, and bring a sense of community. We aim to reflect and inform, learn and create, allowing people to connect across cultures. We form creative vessels within our heads and our hearts, as we hold space for shifting perspectives.
Our art matters and is important because our community is growing more diverse in perspective. Dance allows for alternative forms of education, it allows for a visceral and exploratory way to interpret, feel, and understand art. Dance brings connection and many can resonate with it. Dance is another way to express and elevate each mural’s story. Through this project, we pick up pieces of our environment for everyone to see. We light up like a flare and allow others to shine with us. We create a cooperation that goes so easy, we listen and learn to build respectfully with one another, actively.”
For the last half of the day, Teaching Artist Alexandra Leurck led the group for a site-specific Northside experience. Walking through the streets of the historical and beautiful neighborhood, from a lamp post, to the local playground, the group was encouraged to see and experiment with creative movement inspired by still objects.
Wednesday was a very busy and exciting day for the apprentices as many guests joined them throughout the day. As the collective will be creating a piece in response to the brand-new LifeCenter mural, the group was first joined by two representatives from LifeCenter, Kennedy and Julie, to talk about some of the work that they do revolving around organ donation.
According to LifeCenter, “17 people die each day while waiting for an organ transplant, and every 10 minutes another person is added to the national waiting list.” Many factors go into matching donors and recipients for transplant, from blood type and the size of needed organ(s), to the relative distance between a donor and a recipient. Historically, Black and Latine individuals are genetically at a higher risk of Diabetes and hypertension (high blood pressure). These individuals usually have a longer wait time as there are less donors that are able to match their needs. There are also a number of barriers in trust within these communities when it comes to organ donation, including economic, language, and social barriers. There is also a bigger, more general mistrust within the medical system. Some of LifeCenter’s missions are to destigmatize organ donation, make donations more accessible, and encourage Ohioans to become registered donors. For more information, visit the LifeCenter website.
After a beautiful and insightful conversation with LifeCenter, the apprentices were visited by Brandon Isaac. Brandon is a local artist, writer, musician, and podcast host of “The Village” podcast with WordPlay Cincy. Brandon is also a huge advocate for youth arts, and hosted a podcast episode with last year’s SYDAP group. Pones was very excited to bring Brandon back to host another podcast with this year’s apprentices. Some of the questions included:
- Why dance or why are you an artist?
- What about this project are you excited for?
- What would the world look like if there was no dance?
- What are some ideas of accessibility/accessibility in the world of dance?
- What are some things that you have learned/done so far?
Moving from the brainstorming phase of the project, the apprentices are now in the choreographing stage for the mandala mural. The apprentices are super excited and already cannot wait to share this project with the public.
Week of 6/17/2024
Despite it only being a one-day week for the Pones apprentice team, the group still had an amazing day. The first half of the day was spent with Radha Lakshmi, the designer of the mandala mural in which the apprentices will be creating a piece in response to. Before creating a mandala of their own, Radha shared important historical, cultural, and spiritual aspects of the mandala.
Originating from ancient Buddhism, the mandala is seen not only as an ancient art form, but a symbol of meditation, prayer, and holy blessing. In traditional Indian culture, women serve as the caretakers of their homes. As women sought a way to keep their homes sacred, waking up at dawn, they strewed rice flour in intricate patterns on the threshold of their homes to worship nature and its abundance. As Radha put it, the mandalas were “painted prayers.” The rice flour would also help feed the animals, further adding to the veneration of nature. Traditional spices, like turmeric and saffron, are commonly added to the flour to dye it as the auspicious colors of red and yellow.
The core element of the mandala is its symmetry. In the ancient Sanskrit language, the word mandala means “circle.” According to Radha, “it’s all about finding peace in the symmetry of the design and of the universe.” All of the energy within the mandala is located at the center of the design; as long as it is cut through the middle, each piece will have the same amount of energy. In a traditional mandala, there are four main gates, representing the four cardinal directions. The mandala is then further expanded in size by the usage of rings and walls, representing different concepts of its parent religion.
To Radha, her mandala artwork helped her through many adversities throughout her life. These adverse events had caused her to lose sight of her passion for art. Returning to India, Radha took part in an art residential experience where she was able to reconnect with her artwork. She shared a vivid memory of her laying on her grandmother’s lap, and all the close women in her life were talking about their designs and meals. She then explained how many mandalas designs are passed down through generations of mothers, making them a very meaningful part of a relationship between a mother and her daughter.
Radha concludes by sharing the importance of impermanence. Despite taking hours of physical labor to create their mandalas, the women sweep away their designs at the end of each day as there is a new one to be created the next morning. To Radha, the labor of creating a mandala is a labor of love. The act of letting go of cherished things is a very key practice of Buddhism. In India, as women hold onto so many responsibilities, they need something to discard or release. Radha explains that there is a human tendency to create sentiment in the things we deem important. While reminiscing can bring joy, it can also bring angst and pain. In Buddhism, letting go of the sentimental things is a very powerful tool when it comes to healing.
Radha was originally invited by ArtWorks to create a piece for childhood cancer. The purple design was declined at first, but was then approved after she had explained that it represented healing, and was dedicated to a child that was battling cancer.
Inspired by Radha and her art, the apprentices were to make their very own mandala. The apprentices first experimented with different handmade stencils, made from tin, stainless steel, and plastic, that had been in Radha’s family for over one hundred years. Using colored sand and stencils, the apprentices collaborated and worked together to create their design. The whole SYDAP collective was incredibly touched by Radha’s generosity, kindness, and guidance, and are extremely thankful for this opportunity.
The second half of the day was a deep dive into the B.E.S.T. model (Body, Energy, Space, Time). The group spent time going over each letter of the acronym, and conversed about what sort of movement each entailed. Lead Teaching Artist Kim Popa then shared the idea of coming up with multiple dance sentences to create a paragraph that would serve as a section of choreography. The team decided to use a skincare routine as inspiration for the topic of their paragraph. Thinking about the different moving qualities of cleanser, toner, oil, and moisturizer, the group worked together to create their paragraph. The group also experimented with adjusting the movement quality of the overall paragraph by using different styles of music, varying in pace and genre.
Week of 6/10/2024
This was the first official week of the 2024 Summer Youth Dance Apprenticeship Program (SYDAP). The SYDAP is a dance-based ArtWorks Cincinnati and Pones Apprenticeship project that brings in a group of young artists interested in using creative movement as a medium to create pieces in response to two murals. The apprentices work alongside four Teaching Artists (Kim Popa, Amy Tuttle, Hattie Clark, and Alexandra Leurck) as well as many other guest artists throughout the summer to create the pieces. In 2023, the SYDAP welcomed its inaugural group.
This summer, the apprentices will be creating pieces aligning with a mandala-inspired mural designed by Radha Lakshmi, located on the Esoteric Brewery Co building, as well as the brand-new LifeCenter mural designed by Jeni Jenkins.
After starting the day off with some icebreakers and getting to know one another, the group moved into forming their individual artist and impact statements. Using guiding phrases such as “I am an artist because…” or “My spirit moves through my Art as if I were a…”, the individual artist statements would help them gain a sense of who they are as artists and what they hope to embody in their work. Apprentice August Brown wrote, “My spirit moves through my body like a phantom and lights up like a flare.” The apprentices also wrote about what kind of impact they wanted their creative movement to have on others. Apprentice Dinithi Fernando hopes to “educate the public on these subjects through a creative vessel and to not only think, but feel.”
The next step for the group was to move from the individualistic mindset to a collective one in order to begin the production of their group artist and impact statements. Below is a rough draft of what the group came up with.
“We are dancers that bring art to life, we are Pones creators. We are artistic educators. We are legends leaving a legacy. We are movement educators.
Our goal is to help people understand the beauty of dance, bring awareness and inspire conversation, bring a sense of community through differences, reflect and inform, teach and learn, allow people to connect to cultures, for creative vessels within our heads, and our hearts, and hold space for shifting perspectives.
This matters and it is important because Cincinnati is more diverse in perspective, dance allows for alternative forms of education, it allows for a visceral and exploratory way to interpret and feel and understand art, dance is another way to express elevate the mural’s story, and we pick up pieces of our environment for everyone to see, we light up like a flare and allow others to light up like a flare, we create a cooperation that goes so easy, we hold space to actively listen to learn and build respectfully with one another. Dance brings connection and many can resonate with it.”
For the rest of the week, the Teaching Artists introduced the B.E.S.T. model (Body, Energy, Space, Time) for choreography, thus beginning the creative movement aspect of the project. On Monday, the group broke off into pairs and used B.E.S.T. to create 32-counts of choreography that embodied what they want their audiences to feel from their performance. Everyone came up with high energy, upbeat, and unique choreography that was thoroughly enjoyed by the entire group. Check out the video by clicking here.
On Wednesday, the group worked together to come up with a gesture for each of the values in their group artist and impact statement, combining them together to create a dance that brought the group mission statement to life. The group also took some time to watch the Casa Colina and “Love Wins” pieces from last summer. Apprentices Riley Coleman and Fiona Bradley, as well as Teaching Artist Alexandra Leurck, were celebrated for their contributions to the inaugural group as they shared some of their stories from the process last year to the group.
This program is supported by ArtsWork Cincinnati.
Pones Inc. 