Dexter's L.A.B‪.‬ The Boston Foundation x Dunamis

Emily Beattie is a Somerville based artist working in multiple disciplines: movement, text, space, film, and interactive media to create performance in many formats.

Rosa Weinberg is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based artist and licensed architect. Her projects are grounded in research and interviews and seek to use surprise and delight to challenge assumptions and social constructs. Her work asks people to take a pause from reality. Through her installations, wearables, and her students’ work, she has explored how design can be used to express complex ideas that are experienced by the viewer rather than passively absorbed.
She is currently collaborating with Heidi Latsky Dance, creating sculptural wearables for ON DISPLAY, “a deconstructed art exhibit/fashion show and commentary on the body as spectacle and society’s obsession with body image.” While at Pioneer Works, she will be designing kinetic wearables using digital and hand fabrication techniques for Heidi Latsky Dance and two of her performers.

This episode of Dexter’s LAB features Katrina and Jonah Goldsaito: a pair of uniquely talented multihyphenates and the creators of one of our most futuristic LAB projects.
What began as a performance in Kazakhstan has transformed into Reach You: an augmented reality transmission from the future built for the tenderness of the present. Reach You comes from a future when Earth is no longer habitable. Each transmission delivers an important message, asking users to contribute their own stories and share their griefs and gratitudes, integrating you into a larger, ever evolving Human Record.
Over the course of our conversation, we discuss the impacts of small griefs and gratitudes, what its like to collaborate artistically with your life partner, and wonder out loud about the human condition. Small things. This is Katrina and Jonah’s LAB.

REYNALIZ HERRERA is a professional musician, percussionist, composer and educator based in Boston but originally from Mexico where she studied and began pursuing music at the Escuela Superior de Musica y Danza, with maestro Noel Savon.Reynaliz has performed in different countries like Mexico, US, Canada, Cuba, Spain, Germany and Italy, and has performed and collaborated with many renowned ensembles.Currently, Reynaliz is the director, composer and performer of her theatrical percussion company “Ideas, Not Theories” where she combines music for unconventional instruments like bicycles, and physical theater, and which she has recently presented in the U.S, Canada and Mexico in various venues and festivals.During our conversation we discuss Reynaliz’ artistic family legacy, her love of finding the music in the everyday objects all around us, and the full body workout playing the bicycle as an instrument can be. This, is Reynaliz’ LAB.

Boston-based artist Omar Najmi splits his time between composition and performance, maintaining a busy schedule as an operatic tenor. As a performer, Najmi has recently made his international debut creating the title role in Joseph Summer’s operatic adaptation of Hamlet with Bulgaria’s State Opera Rousse. Other recent and upcoming engagements include Rodolfo in La Boheme with Opera Steamboat, Shakur in Thumbprint with Portland Opera and Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet with Boston Lyric Opera to name a few.  Najmi enjoys a long standing relationship with Boston Lyric Opera where he began his    professional career as an Emerging Artist (2013-2015).Najmi began his composition career with the production of his first opera, En la ardiente oscuridad, in 2019. After a run of sold-out performances, he was invited to serve as the first ever Emerging Composer in residence with Boston Lyric Opera, where he worked with Boston Youth Poet Laureate Alondra Bobadilla. He is currently working on Jo dooba so paar - a short opera exploring the intersection of queer and Muslim identity - which will be premiered as part of White Snake Projects’ Let’s Celebrate initiative.In 2022, Najmi and his husband Brendon Shapiro co-founded Catalyst New Music - an organization dedicated to fostering, developing, and producing new works. Catalyst’s first project was a concert performance of Najmi’s new opera This Is Not That Dawn, a drama set during and after the Partition of India. In this episode, we discuss exploring hidden talents, dismantling ancient art forms and the complexity of nature vs. nurture. Welcome to Omar’s LAB!

U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo is a Zimbabwean American poet, author, speaker, singer, and educator who has performed internationally in Africa and Europe. She is fiercely passionate about using her voice for women's empowerment, wellness, diversity & inclusion and the exploration of translation or "hyphenated identities" through her work. 
Umeleni is a member of New England Poetry Club, The International Women’s Writing Guild and an advisory board member for Write On The Dot , a community reading initiative in Dorchester. She holds a graduate degree in Education from Lesley University in Multicultural Education and Theatre and a Bachelors Degree in Social Psychology from UMASS Boston.
As an educator, Umeleni has taught over 2,500 students through workshops in the Boston Public Schools and Communities on topics such as, holistic health and wellness education while incorporating the arts, violence prevention and   social-emotional well-being to name a few. She has also done international work in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Nigeria and is multi-lingual speaking Shona, French and English. 
She is currently working on a multi-modal poetic one woman experience “Roots & Revelations” about identity and belonging stemming from family roots in Leominster and Zimbabwe/South Africa. When not performing her work or collaborating with other artists, she is often running marathons, biking with her spouse and son for charity or social justice, competing in World Indoor Rowing Championships, or thrifting and traveling around the world. 
In our conversation, we discuss the journey to becoming a poet, exploring family dynamics and defying societal norms and narratives.
This is Umelenis LAB.