Harmony Club to host ‘Social Dance’ Friday night

Published 7:39 am Thursday, February 1, 2024

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The Harmony Club will host the “Social Dance,”  a set of four films, on Friday at 6 p.m.

The collaborative network Hyphae is presenting the event, which will be a screening of four videos and films by James Gregory Atkinson, Lasse Lau & Flo Maak, Valentin Noujaïm and Anna Zett. Littleton Odom and Phillip Zach are the two organizers for the event.  

Odom, who lived in Selma for a few years, said he is looking forward to the event in Selma, where his mother was born and raised.

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“We’re very excited about having an event where my mother is from,” Odom said. “I lived in Selma in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I moved back to Germany two years later. Coming over from Germany and bringing European artists to Selma, it feels exciting.”

Zach, a Germany native, said he is equally excited about having the “Social Dance” in a historic town like Selma. 

The combination of films and one video showcased in the showing are “6 Friedberg-Chicago,” “Hang on, Hang Tight,” “Pacific Club,” “Es gibt keine Angst (Afraid Doesn’t Exist)” and “1980, Fulda, Germany” will be the films showcased. 

All of the works presented in “The Social Dance” focus on topics of communal expression, safety and self empowerment, lost and disappearing histories and the navigational “dance” required of communities in the midst of shifting societal structures from gentrification, governmental volatility or social bias and the importance of designated spaces for the well-being of those communities. 

The Hyphae [pr. Hi-Fi] is a collaborative network founded by Alabama curator Littleton Odom and German artist Phillip Zach, linking Alabama and Germany to form an artistic sky-bridge. Their goal is to foster a dynamic exchange between artists from both regions, and investigate pre-existing artistic and cultural connections. 

Hyphae took its name from the mycorrhizal network of fungi. Hyphae is a nomadic, symbiotic program aimed at activating pre-existing contexts in both regions via artistic intervention.

The Harmony Club was built in 1908 as a Jewish social club. It was closed for decades and previously owned by the late David Hurlburt for 16 years.