Before we begin tonight's program...

Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group
in Wilson's ...they stood shaking while others began to shout
Danspace Project in St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Before we begin tonight’s program...

by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Hello. My name is Eva Yaa Asantewaa (she/her/hers), and I am a non-disabled, medium-dark-skinned Black cis queer woman writer and editor and curator and counselor and mentor and atheist spiritualist mage of African-Caribbean immigrant heritage and of a certain age. I am certain that age, at this time of reckoning, is nearly 68--now just over fifteen days away. I have almost no hair, having clipped it off, nearly to the scalp, several times during this barber-less pandemic shelter-in-place, and I’m wearing a light layer of drugstore lotion and matte black eyeliner and mascara and a little bit of eyebrow pencil in a dark, greyish brown. I miss wearing dangly earrings and glossy red-brown lipstick; neither pair well with surgical masks. I am coming to you, remotely, from the light clutter of my snug and cave-like home office and also wearing an olive-green t-shirt with an image of Snoopy from Peanuts on it. The shirt is really old, a hand-me-down—maybe I should say “hand-me-over”—from my wife who had cut off the sleeves and neckband and overlapped and sewn the shoulders to make the armholes more fitted and the shirt a bit smaller across the chest, and her stitches are tiny and even. Hello. My name. Snoopy is seated in front of a bulky old computer monitor and surrounded by bits of text from the early days of the Internet (like "alt.schulz" and "FTP sites"), and the two of us--Snoopy and I--are greeting you from unceded and, in fact, stolen Lenni Lenape land just a stone’s throw away from St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery which, like a lot of things on stolen indigenous land, was built and maintained by the labor of African ancestors and where, during services held by the biblical god’s own goodly Christians, these ancestors were relegated to the balcony. I’ve sat up there. In the balcony. No, not back in the day. Though, maybe yes, if you believe in reincarnation. Which I actually think I don’t. But, no. More recently. I’ve watched Ni’Ja Whitson and their dancers from up there, through the posts of the balcony’s railing, as they performed Oba Qween Baba King Baba below for a preview audience of LGBTQIA+ folx like me. I looked down, watching a universe erupt across the warmth of a broad wooden floor. I’ve sat below and looked up, past the railing to watch Reggie Wilson’s troupe dance a passage of ...they stood shaking while others began to shout near stained-glass windows. Woman of African-Caribbean immigrant heritage. Hello. St. Mark’s Church. Among other things. Is a danspace. A constellation of spaces for the arts flickers around here in lower Mannahatta island, with star-spaces in any direction you look--walkable, if you are walking, flyable if you are a crow or a jay, though pigeons and mourning doves seem to rule the territory now. I miss the crows. I miss the jeering jays. I no longer see them or hear their corvid harshness near the trees of St. Mark’s. I am certain of my age and that, someday, I will miss the pigeons and the mourning doves, too. I am certain. This local, time-limited self I have been given pleases me. Like Audre Lorde, I treasure each identity even as I know I am a vast, capacious, timeless spiritual being having a human experience. The specificity of that human experience is the craft. That specificity is the key for the lock. The unique key for any lock, so many locks. What then, hello, if we all think of our bodies as conjurations of the Mighty Dead? So different, then...Hello. My name is...from that idea of reincarnation. Hello...I am...here, in this time, a unique key, turning in so many locks in this time of locks. Before we begin tonight’s program, I want to give an acknowledgement, acknowledging the jays I used to hear and their parental vigilance, and the red-tailed hawks who now hunt Tompkins Square Park and their august strength. I want to acknowledge the grief we humans cause and the grief we carry. I want to acknowledge that pain lives quietly, or not so quietly, inside nearly everything we make and do and, for some of us, it is the lightning bolt and jolt and juice carrying us through to the end of days. I want to acknowledge that breath is work. Hard and worthy work. At this time of reckoning.

(c)2020, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

******

DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve, at Gibney, as Senior Director of Artist Development and Curation and Editorial Director. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Gibney presents Shamar Wayne Watt and Yinka Esi Graves

Shamar Wayne Watt (photo: Natalie Romero Marx)
Below: Yinka Esi Graves (photo: Camilla Greenwall)

DoublePlus presents three weeks of shared evenings for which established artist-curators each choose a pair of emerging artists and mentor them through the creative, production and audience development processes.

--Gibney Dance 

I am very excited about Yinka Esi Graves, a mature, serious thinker and flamenco artist. Shamar Watt is a strong physical performer with a nascent choreographic practice. These artists are both asking questions about the value of human life through different performance forms. What I care about most is how their aesthetics come through. 
Carrying the history and burden of blackness are relevant topics of discussion. But how do time, space and energy capture these issues? With little to no evolution in contemporary politics and economies of race, the body must become a weaponized agent of aesthetics for the artist. Graves’ and Watt’s performative explorations manifest the body as a site for these urgent concerns.

--Nora Chipaumire 

Nora Chipaumire--otherwise known as one of the most exhilarating dance performers of our times--writes that she prefers to avoid calling herself a curator. So let's call her, instead, a practiced eye that allows us all to see further and wider. Fulfilling her role as "eye" and one of the mentors for the DoublePlus fall series at Gibney Dance, she has now introduced us to two exciting emerging artists--Yinka Esi Graves and Shamar Wayne Watt. I attended Watt and Graves's final show in the theater at Gibney's Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center.

When the audience first entered, Watt's Gully spring: Di exhortation was already in motion. His gnarly shadow played across a canvas curtain enclosing him like a shower stall. His mother, Valerie Davis, sat nearby, waiting to sing, play her mini-tambourine and read pointed Scripture passages at certain times during the dance.

Jamaica-born Watt draws his aesthetic for Gully spring from a prophetic spirituality that is, indeed, exhortative, magnetic, formidable. He is both high priest of a religion of his own creation--insurgency, liberation--and its exemplary warrior. For most of the lengthy, engrossing performance, the muscular, dreadlocked dancer anchors himself at the center of a broad, low platform, under the periodic drip of a gallon jug of water, and slowly rotates on his axis, gathering tension and power. He speaks, imparting searing visions to us, his captive congregation. When he stamps, it shakes the ground beneath our chairs, and when he tells us to do something--yes, you just looking on as if this is mere spectacle--he means it.

I have watched dance artists address the frightening toxicity of our times with rituals of healing. I have never watched--and felt--anything that could match this hypnotic intensity.

Watt's sermon? Every valley--or gully, if you will--shall be exalted. It is written. It is coming. We make it happen.

An intermission gave Gibney's theater crew time to reset things for Yinka Esi Graves, but maybe also offered time for us to turn to one another, talk a bit, let some of that tension out.

Graves's Twitter bio reads:

In short: born in london, grew up in nicaragua, guadeloupe, london, part educated in french, studied art history, wanted to make films, now flamenco dancer...

Her dancing has been featured in M. Angel Rosales's film, Gurumbé: Canciones de tu Memoria Negra (2016), a documentary tracing the influence of Africans on Spain and flamenco. She is the first Black flamenco artist I have seen and one of the most exciting flamenco dancers in my experience. I am grateful to Chipaumire for opening my eyes to this artist, and I hope she will return to New York so that we can see more.

Her solea--The fine line por Solea--follows a wistful, delicately sensuous prelude by Guillermo Guilén (guitar) and Ismael Fernandez (vocals). Here the dancer's authority and intensity--which, as I see it, connects her to Watt--lies in the depth and exactitude of shape in her movements, right down to the specificity of each finger. She has her own chosen, deployed power. She sweeps us up in the follow-through of impulse through inclination and gesture. And there's nothing wasted. Nothing just for filler or flash. Such intelligence, such beauty I can only call regal and bow before.

This program has concluded. For information and tickets to the DoublePlus series, click here (Week Two) and here (Week Three).

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center
280 Broadway (entrance: 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Dance Caribbean COLLECTIVE moves to value and protect culture

Left to right: Sita Frederic, Michael Manswell, Candace Thompson,
Jessica Phoenix and Valierie McLeod-Katz
(photo: Adanna Jones)

As you can imagine, there are so many exciting and important events in New York, and beyond, that I cannot get to, and--as a woman of Caribbean heritage--I'm grateful to Candace Thompson for putting me in touch with Adanna Kai Jones, today's guest contributor, who offers following report on Dance Caribbean COLLECTIVE's May 4th gathering at Brooklyn College.

Dance Caribbean COLLECTIVE 

Takes a Stance Against Cultural Appropriation

by guest contributor Adanna Kai Jones


On Thursday, May 4, a relatively quiet evening, some fyah-starters gathered in the Woody Tanger Auditorium of the Brooklyn College Library to hold the first ever Dance Caribbean COLLECTIVE (DCC) town hall meeting on cultural appropriation. Walking into the auditorium, people quickly noticed “graffiti” on the walls, to use the lingo of DCC’s town hall moderator Sita Frederick. Large sheets of white paper, taped to the walls, bore questions that all participants were invited to contemplate and to respond to in writing:

1. Do you think about the creators of your favourite Caribbean music? What ways have you tried to support them (financially and otherwise)?

2. Who do you think should be able to teach Caribbean dance styles? What should the requirements be?

3. What does mastery look like? What qualities or skills make one a Master teacher?

4. Do you enjoy seeing Caribbean dance/music on the mainstream?  Why? Why not?

5. What do you think is the responsibility of mainstream artists when using our culture?

Given this already-rich food for thought, participants were next offered a taste of Caribbean creativity--a mini-class on Jamaican dancehall taught by the dynamic duo of Kendell “History” Hinds and Korie Genius (a.k.a. Genius), two members of the Black Gold Dance Crew. We learned old school dancehall dances such as the Willie Bounce, the Wacky Dip, the Gas and the Mad Run. After we practiced these steps for a bit, the teachers changed to a follow-along method, the way dances were taught and learned in the dancehalls of Jamaica. Similar to a call-and-response format, first History and Genius would execute a four-count movement, then we would be expected to repeat their steps. Although these steps were tricky, we caught the flows, styles and energies of our instructors. In effect, “responding” to their “call” got easier and easier as the class continued.

Kendell "History" Hinds and Korie Genius (a.k.a Genius)
teaching the Willie Bounce
(photo: Adanna Jones)

Following the class, five people took to the stage and the main discussion began. The panel featured dance masters Michael Manswell (Creative Director of the Something Positive dance troupe) and Valerie McLeod-Katz (Artistic Director and Coordinator of the Visual and Performing Arts Programs at Medgar Evers College Preparatory School) plus the up-and-coming game-changers Candace Thompson (Artistic Director of ContempoCaribe and Founding Executive Director of DCC) and Jessica Phoenix (founder of FIYAH Dancehall Theater). And, as aforementioned, Sita Frederick (Director of Community Engagement Programs for Lincoln Center Education) moderated the panel discussion.

Frederick started things off by posing a question to everyone in the room: “What does cultural appropriation look like?” After calling attention to Drake’s obsession with Jamaican dancehall and to Beyoncé’s invocation of Oshun, she then shifted the conversation to a discussion of how we should take on such forms of appropriations, which have become rather commonplace in today’s society.

Over the next hour, panelists discussed their training, mentors and inspirations, calling the legacies of Eugene Joseph, Pearl Primus and Katherine Dunham into the space. These are the great shoulders upon which today’s Caribbean dance makers stand.

Talking about how and why each panelist began teaching and promoting Caribbean dance and culture, everyone recalled recognizing the need–really, a demand--for their teaching as well as the need to build community. They have all created a space where cultural history is kept alive, valued and passed on for many generations that will follow.

Thereafter, Frederick opened the floor for questions and open discussion. The first audience member to speak called attention to the nuances of the term “natural,” specifically citing the exploitation of Caribbean cultural labor by people who claim a “natural” affinity for all things Caribbean. (Her line of questioning further brought to mind Rachel Dolezal’s infamous appropriation of Black identity.) In response, panelists and members of the audience prescribed the following remedies:

1. As a Caribbean community, we need to put money and value back into our own arts, culture and heritage.

2. We must institutionalize our cultural practices so that the state has no choice but to support us, especially through large grants.

3. We must make sure that our team is filled with people knowledgeable about all aspects of society--especially experts in law and policy, accounting and finance, marketing and social media, in addition to cultural masters, writers and creators.

4. We must be honest, be of integrity and hold everyone, especially ourselves, accountable.

As the first DCC town hall meeting ended, it was very clear that everyone still had much more to say. Most of the audience members and panelists lingered, getting into deeper discussions of many of the points raised.

In general, we need this type of gathering in New York City, period. In today’s fast-paced world of Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat, there is too much at stake for us to not take more control over how Caribbean dance cultural practices are transmitted and used.

As a Trinidad-born, US-raised, winer woman, I look forward to the next town hall meeting where we can clarify our agenda, further our vision and expand our audience. In conclusion, with DCC taking the lead in creating space for Caribbean dancemakers to take a stance against cultural (mis-)appropriation, I expect that the Caribbean dance community will continue to work together and forge a path for profound social change, not only throughout New York but also throughout the world.

Adanna Kai Jones
(photo courtesy of Adanna Kai Jones)

Adanna Kai Jones received her Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies at the University of California, Riverside, and her BFA in Dance from Mason Gross School of the Arts—Rutgers University. She has performed in professional dance companies based in NYC, including the Julia Ritter Performance Group and Souloworks with Andrea E. Woods. And in general, her research remains focused on Caribbean dance and identity politics within the Diaspora, paying particular focus to the rolling hip dance known as winin’. With regards to her own creative pursuits, she has choreographed dance-theater pieces that were not only based on her research, but were also used as tools for generating more research questions. In July 2015, she choreographed Wine & Tales in Port of Spain, Trinidad, which was presented by New Waves! 2015 and the Dancing While Black Performance Lab. And in May 2016, she performed Rum & Coke in New York City at Field Studies 2016. Both performances were rooted in her ethnographic fieldwork on the wine and Caribbean Carnivals within the US. As a visiting lecturer at Stanford University in the Department of Theater and Performance Studies, she taught a survey class on folkloric and popular Afro-Caribbean dances, as well as a composition dance class that used Caribbean aesthetics along side that of US contemporary dance practices. Currently, she is an adjunct at both Marymount Manhattan College and Temple University, teaching two lecture courses on dance and culture.


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Cuba Gooding Sr., 72

Cuba Gooding Sr., Soul Singer, Dies at 72
by The Associated Press, The New York Times, April 21, 2017

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Derek Walcott, 87

Derek Walcott, Poet and Nobel Laureate of the Caribbean, Dies at 87
by William Grimes, The New York Times, March 17, 2017

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E. R. Braithwaite,104

E. R. Braithwaite, Author of ‘To Sir, With Love,’ Dies at 104

by Sewell Chan, The New York Times, December 13, 2016

Afro-Caribbean legacy: Visit "La Sirene" this weekend

The Afro-Cuban Lukumi Arts--founded in 2008 as "an open and growing collective of artists, orisha/palo priests and practitioners, singers, dancers, percussionists, MCs and producers"--presents La Sirene: Rutas de Azucar at Brooklyn's JACK performance space now through tomorrow evening. Dedicated to the Black mermaid water deity who protected Haitian sugarcane workers on their way to Cuba, the 90-minute program is an immersive experience created by a thriving network of multi-talented, accomplished artists dedicated to the continuing relevance of Afro-Atlantic history and spiritual culture especially in our time of renewed resistance to oppression.

For four days, singer/performer Jadele McPherson in collaboration with Director Charlotte Brathwaite, offers a cosmic sonic journey through black liberation figures, conjurers and spiritual leaders from Haiti and Cuba, surrounded by fellow performers Val Jeanty, Maxine Montilus, Yomaira Gonzalez, Caridad Paisan Garbey, Bembesito Akpon, Hansel Vaillant and Daniel Gil. La Sirene: Rutas de Azucar (“The Siren: Routes of Sugar”) probes Cuban revolutionary José Antonio Aponte's libro de pinturas, a book of paintings, of black heroes that served as a catalyst for an attempted rebellion against colonists, leading to the first conspiracy and abolition charge in Spanish-speaking Latin America. Through sound and movement, McPherson maps the connections between West Indian and Haitian migrations to Cuba to harvest sugarcane and repositions the Cuban ingenio (sugar mill) as a birthplace of freedom that extends beyond borders and waters.

Each performance is followed by a special event. Tonight's--on the eve of Santa Barbara/Shango's day--the cast will offer "Afro-Cuban Rumba for the Vispera de Santa Barbara-Chango." Sunday evening will conclude with "Healing Quisqueya and Beyond," a reference to the Taino name for the island including the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. This panel features Dr. Nathalie Guillaume, Goussy Célestin, Jose Perez and Osvaldo Lora.

Dr. Nathalie Guillaume is an alumnus of the University of Miami where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry and Foreign Languages. She holds a Master of Science in Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine from the Atlantic Institute of Oriental Medicine, and a Clinical Doctorate in Pain Management & Oncology from Bastyr University. She specializes in lifestyle medicine with an emphasis on nutrition, meditation & Qi Gong, and is dedicated to promoting the benefits of holistic health to the community. She is currently adjunct faculty for the Graduate School of Oriental Medicine at the New York College of Health Professions and practices in New York City where she is the CEO and Medical Director of Healing Happy Hour.

Goussy Célestin currently performs throughout the NYC-Tri state area as a musician and dancer. She is an alum of ASE Dance Theater Collective, a neo-folklore ensemble dedicated to the traditional/contemporary arts of the African Diaspora filtered through Haitian music and dance. She is also a member of ¡Retumba!, an all-female multi-ethnic music-dance ensemble dedicated to the traditions of the Caribbean and Latin-America, in addition to serving as lead vocalist for Charanga Soleil. Ms. Célestin's wide range of interests and versatility, has led her to study classical piano, Jazz and Latin music. While in Cuba, she had the honor of performing with members of the Buena Vista Social Club, as well as performing/mentoring with members of Grupo AfroCuba de Matanzas, Yoruba Andabo and Clave Y Guaguanco. She has performed at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, Del Terzo Studio at Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, SOB's, the Knitting Factory, NJPAC, Tilles Center, Newark Symphony Space, Joe's Pub, as well as various jazz clubs in NYC.

Osvaldo "Bembesito" Lora. Bembesito is one of the most renowned and versatile "akpons" in the U.S. and maybe even internationally speaking. With over 10 years of experience performing religious ceremonies and as an olo Obatala he brings a level of professionalism that is hard to find in most ceremonies. Bembesito's crew does it all, from cajon to guiro to Aña and even the music of the 21 divisions from the Dominican Republic also called los palos. Over all the experience you will receive at a ceremony where Bembesito performs will be clean, authentic, professional and like no other...

Jose Perez is a writer and editor, an investigative reporter, a West Indian Nationalist, and a public school history teacher at North Miami Middle School where over 80% of his students are Haitian.  He infuses social justice into  his underground curriculum, which has led to him to become a leader in professional development trainings to teachers in the Miami-Dade County Public School System, the 4th largest in the United States. Pérez also was a  Research Assistant for Cuban filmmaker Gloria Rolando during the production of her moving documentary about Haitians in Cuba, Reembarque.  Collaborating with AfroCubaWeb.com and Dr. Andrea Queely of Florida International University, he brought Ms. Rolando to North Miami Middle for her only Florida screening of Reembarque.  Pérez has been recognized by the Haitian American Cultural Society as well as the Mayor and Board of County Commissioners of Miami-Dade County for journalistic coverage of Haitian heritage. Perez's interest in the bridges between Ayiti & Kiba is as deep as the joy found in a plate of homemade legume.

La Sirene: Rutas de Azucar continues tonight and tomorrow with performances at 8pm. Seating is limited. For more information and tickets, click here.

JACK
505 1/2 Waverly Avenue (between Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue), Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Austin Clarke, 81

Austin Clarke, Canadian Author Who Explored Black Experience, Dies at 81
The Associated Press, The New York Times, June 27, 2016

A season of celebration for dance artist Davalois Fearon

Davalois Fearon, left, with Gino Grenek and Nicholas Sciscione,
members of the Stephen Petronio Dance Company
(photo: Sarah Silver)

The 30th anniversary of the Stephen Petronio Dance Company happens to coincide with another notable anniversary for this renowned and stylish troupe. Dancer and Education Coordinator Davalois Fearon is marking ten years working with Petronio. She's excited to be part of the launch of the company's five-year Bloodlines project which will pair classics of postmodern dance with Petronio's repertory. This season, the troupe will present Merce Cunningham's RainForest (1968) alongside the world premiere of Petronio’s Locomotor/Non Locomotor at The Joyce Theater (April 7-12).

A native of Jamaica, Fearon was raised in the South Bronx from the age of four with her siblings. She remembers her immediate surroundings as "not the safest neighborhood."

"But my parents did a good job of sheltering us," she says. "I had no idea that I was in Crack Central. We would go to school and then come straight back. When I was at home, it was like going back to Jamaica. I had a very Jamaican upbringing."

She's been dancing, she says, "since I was out of the womb" and would force her older sister--"quiet and more like a bookworm but always supporting me"--to put on shows for the family gatherings.

"Jamaicans love to dance, and it would be rooted in reggae with a gymnastic influence. As I got older, I got exposed to pop, hip hop and salsa. I would always be performing for anyone who would look!"

In eighth grade, she took part in an eight-week Alvin Ailey outreach program where she had her first exposure to ballet, studying with Ron Alexander. Her parents, like many Caribbean immigrants, foresaw a secure career path--perhaps medicine or law--and did not support the idea that their daughter might choose dance instead.

"In their minds, they had the big American dream, and they wanted that for us."

Money was tight, too.

"I auditioned in socks, because I didn't have ballet shoes and didn't know where to get them," she recalls, marveling that she made it into the school anyway. In fact, Fearon had to sit out her first class at Ailey, lacking the proper attire for class--a school requirement. "My first pair of ballet shoes, tights and leotard were from the lost-and-found." But dance was, for her, "like a calling, something I had to do."

Today, in her role as a dance teacher, she looks for similar desire and focus in her young students.

"You have to want it so bad that you're looking for every little detail that the teacher is giving you. I have this one student, about five years old. In her first class, she didn't know anything--didn't know a plié, didn't know first position. Now she knows the whole class by heart--there, right in the front, in first position, ready to go before anyone else. 'I know what's coming!' It's beautiful, really beautiful."

With role models like Ailey, Denise Jefferson and Judith Jamison--"the pride they brought to the work"--Fearon made steady and accelerated progress up the levels of Ailey training.

"They saw something in me that I didn't know that I had, and that helped build my confidence."

She won a scholarship to Purchase College Conservatory of Dance, where she earned her BFA in 2005. In a way, even her parents' resistance helped strengthen her resolve even as she was forced to take numerous jobs to support her pursuit.

"Junior year, I thought about auditioning. I had to show my parents that I can do this. You don't have to worry about me."

She auditioned for Petronio and spent her senior year as an apprentice to the troupe.

Today, her parents could not be more proud, her mother remembering being able to buy Fearon at least one crucial item--a pair of pointe shoes.

Davalois Fearon
in Petronio's Beauty and the Brut
(photo: Sarah Silver)

So, what's most interesting, challenging and eye-opening about dancing for a maverick like Stephen Petronio?

"Stephen is an incredible mover," she says. "He started late as a dancer, and that speaks to me. I started with reggae and hip hop and salsa and then started training.

"We were in rehearsal, and Stephen was working with Joshua Tuason on a solo, and he did a syncopated move that reminded me of something African that I knew from my Ailey training. And here is Stephen, you know, tall, white, bald man doing that and doing figure eights a lot like salsa dancing. The freedom and choices that he comes up with I love because I have that wide background, too. I can do that, too. I can move into a moonwalk one minute and a so de chat the next. His range of movement is all over the place--a lot of fun!"

But, at first, the work was just different enough from what she'd seen of conventional ballet and modern dance training to be a challenge. Remembering, her initial efforts to enter Petronio's philosophy and approach to movement, Fearon took a proposal to him. She wanted to write a syllabus as a guide for other company members and future recruits.

"I would see new dancers come into the company and go through the same struggles. 'You know what? I don't get it.' It was a need I saw not only for our dancers but for our outside teaching work, decoding what he would do in a way that, say, a first-year Juilliard student could understand."

Interviewing students gave her insight into what they needed from the company, and she was able to convince Petronio to create an education department.

Besides performing and teaching, Fearon has been developing her own voice as a choreographer. One upcoming project--Consider Water, her first full-length piece--was inspired by a talk with a UN ambassador working on issues of water-related disasters and scarcity of safe drinking water in many regions of the world. He happened to read about Fearon in a New York Times article and reached out to her. She told him of water shortages in Jamaica and how her family paid to get water shipped to her grandmother's house. The ambassador simply challenged her, "Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"I was thinking, Wow, I don't have much money. I can't save the world. But I have dance."

Excerpts from Consider Water,

a work in progress choreographed by Davalois Fearon

with music by Mike McGinnis

Fearon began work on Consider Water as a way to raise awareness of water-related concerns. The project has taken off, connecting her to supporters and collaborators such as the Bronx Council on the Arts (BCA) and the Bronx River Alliance, a respected local environmental organization. Through the BCA, which awarded her a 2014 BRIO fellowship, she will present excerpts of Consider Water at the Andrew Freedman Home, an arts-related community center, on May 1, and at the Bronx River Alliance Fish Festival on June 6. She plans to preview the finished piece in September at BAAD! (Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance).

To learn more about Fearon and her Consider Water project, visit her Web site here. See the Stephen Petronio Dance Company at The Joyce Theater, April 7–12. For complete schedule and ticketing information, click here.

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Davalois Fearon is a dancer, teacher, and choreographer born in Jamaica and raised in The Bronx, New York. In 2005, Fearon received a BFA from the Purchase College Conservatory of Dance program and has since performed and taught around the world with Stephen Petronio Company, staged its repertory, assisted as rehearsal director, and is currently its Education Coordinator. As a choreographer, she is a recipient of the 2014 Bronx Council on the Arts BRIO fellowship and a member of The Joyce Theater’s Prestigious Young Leaders Circle Artists’ Committee. Her choreography has been presented throughout New York City, including at Bronx Academy of Art and Dance, Bronx Art Space, Roulette, The Vasquez, the Inception to Exhibition Dance Festival, The Warwick Summer Arts Festival, as well as at the Light Box, Portland OR and Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Fearon has created work in collaboration with internationally renowned poet Patricia Smith, multi-reedist Mike McGinnis, and fashion photographer Nigel HoSang. In addition, she has performed with Daniel Ezralow, Forces of Nature, Ballet Noir, Darrell Robinson, and Ballet International Africans. She is proud to be celebrating her tenth year with the company.

Fire & Ink IV conference requests your witness

Fire & Ink IV: Witness (October 8-11, 2015) will address the urgent question of what it means to bear witness as LGBTQ and SGL writers of African descent and heritage in the 21st century.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS (deadline for abstracts: February 15)

If you're interested in being part of the conversation at Fire & Ink IV: Witness, submit an abstract not exceeding 1,000 words by Sunday, February 15 to let us know what you're thinking and ensure priority consideration.

For complete information, click here to download the Call for Proposals.

ABOUT FIRE & INK

Fire & Ink, Incorporated is devoted to increasing the understanding, visibility and awareness of works of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and same gender loving writers of African descent and heritage. As part of our mission, Fire & Ink sponsors a writers' conference and we invite proposals for workshops and panel discussions from our communities' writers, teachers, thinkers and critics.

The Gathering 2015 meets at Gibney 280

The Gathering, as described by founder Camille A. Brown, is "an open forum for intergenerational black female artists to support one another and to advocate for greater cultural equity and acknowledgement in the contemporary dance world."

Following Winter 2014's successful launch, Brown brought The Gathering back last night in a new format guided by Onye Ozuzu (chair, Dance Department, Columbia College Chicago) at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway.

Camille A. Brown
(photo: Ra-Re Valverde)

Dancer-journalist A Nia Austin-Edwards
tweets The Gathering.
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Left-to right: Choreographers Cynthia Oliver,
Edisa Weeks and Paloma McGregor
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Guests mingle before the evening's exercises begin.
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Facilitator Onye Ozuzu leads participants in improvisatory exercises,
sparked by our questions and stories, keeping bodies in near continual flow.
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

The Gathering 2015 was more of a creative game than a discussion of issues, more of an intimate dance of immediacy than a verbal forum. Bodies, questions, tears and testimony filled the theater in shifting, fluid configurations with space for the invisible.

"How are you doing the work?" "What are you excited about?" "How do you know when you're working too hard?" "What is your joy right now?" "Do you ever dance because you hurt?" "I deserve the best. I am the best. I have allies." "Asking for help, connecting with other people, helps you to move from the I to the We."

Participants encircle dance artist Nia Love (seated) and Paloma McGregor.
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

Dancemaker Christal Brown (right)
answers a few questions.
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa 

These first steps are power-packed beginnings from which any number of useful new steps may develop for individuals, organizations and potential collaborators within the Black female dance diaspora. Periodic mini-gatherings during the year--to address specific needs, goals and actions--would be a most welcome addition to this inspiring annual event.

Once again, congratulations to Brown, and to all who worked to produce The Gathering 2015.

As Ozuzu would say, "Rest and hold.... Continue."

To connect with The Gathering, please visit this site.

Michel du Cille, 58

Washington Post Photographer, Michel du Cille, Dies in Liberia
by Ashley Southall, The New York Times, December 11, 2014

In this moment with poet Claudia Rankine

A Poetry Personal and Political
Claudia Rankine on ‘Citizen’ and Racial Politics
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, November 28, 2014

This week, Cynthia Oliver goes BOOM!

R-l: Leslie Cuyjet and Cynthia Oliver in Boom!
(photos by Julieta Cervantes)

Acclaimed dancer, choreographer and educator Cynthia Oliver presents the world premiere of Boom!--a duet with Leslie Cuyjet--at New York Live Arts this Thursday evening. Yesterday, she put up with some of my "really provocative questions," as she called them.

EYA: Who are you? What elements make up who you are as a dancemaker?

CO: That's a question I've been asking myself since I was a teenager. For many years, I worked hard to think about it outside of what I do. In some ways, I am what I do in terms of how I move in the world. But first: a person, a woman, a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, an artist. Not that the order of it shows any priority, but it's a humble mix.

EYA: What do you most value? What do you find non-negotiable?

CO: Being honest with myself, my relationships--my family, my friends--and being human and humane. Those guideposts in my work have never, ever led me wrong. They helped me steer the course of each piece clearly.

EYA: What challenges you?

CO: Fear. I feel like I push through fear every day. It's there. I acknowledge it. But I know that I'm not going to accomplish anything by buckling to it. I have to do what it is that's inspiring me anyway, and once I get on the other side of it, it's like a whole other world opens up.

I feel like fear has always been my biggest challenge. I'm not a very outward person, although I love people. I have some wonderful friends and enjoy social situations, but my husband is the real social butterfly. I am not at all. I push through that and see what happens. I feel that I have done okay with that.

EYA: Through what perceptual channels do you best perceive things?

CO: I think of my intuition as my strongest perceptual channel. I've learned how to trust it, listen to it and act on it. Because when I don't, I pay. I remember early on in my tenure [at University of Illinois], I created a piece with a large gospel group with the Black Chorus out there. I had never worked with more than five people in a piece. This was a chorus of forty-five. I was choreographing them and eight dancers.

The piece was called Whisper to Shout, and it addressed this very thing: I had started to realize that if I don't listen to the whisper, the shout was going to be a humdinger. The shout was going to kick my behind. So I had to attune my ear to the whisper and be much more sensitive and much more aware of the whisper. And that's just a matter of trust and not saying, Oh, no, I couldn't possibly be right with that feeling that I should act on. That's my strongest perceptual channel.

EYA: What audience would you most like to reach?

Honestly, I just want humans there. On so many different levels, I feel that the work can speak to a lot of different people. On the obvious level, yes, women audiences, Caribbean audiences, people of color. But at the same time, all of the concerns that I address--those that are both obvious and blatant and those that are layered and more subtle--are universal concerns that we all, as humans, negotiate. I want as many kinds of folks in the room as possible sitting right next to each other.

I think my audience is a reflection of my own life. I have always had a very diverse group of people around me. I grew up in an international community in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. When I moved to the states to be a professional dancer, that is something I continued. When I went to college, I found that the African American community in the states tended to be more segregated than where I came from. Not that there is not segregation there. But it's one of those things where you'd still see a lot of mixing, especially in those heady days of the '70s, when I was in high school. Less so now. It's much more polarized now [due to economic disparity, changes wrought by disasters such as Hurricane Hugo and other factors.] But at that time, it was very different. That's how I got exposed to a certain kind of experimental dance there, that breadth of experience across communities.

EYA: Do you need an outside eye on your work? Or are you able to be objective about what you do?

CO: I do both. I trust my own eye and my own sensibilities about what needs to happen--what kinds of sequence, what kinds of material, what kinds of language. And because I do a lot of research in the work, I trust that. I also strongly believe that none of us can be objective, and it helps to have a trusted eye in the room. The key word there is trusted. I make sure that the person I ask to come and watch, while the work is in that delicate state, is someone who can put aside their own aesthetic, their own agenda, and look at what I'm trying to do and ask me questions that will help me clarify what I'm trying to do, not what they want. I find that that combination--knowing when to bring people in, going back and revising, and then bringing folks in again--that's been really helpful to me.

EYA: What do you consider to be the most important qualities of a serious or professional artist?

CO: Openness. Sensitivity. A willingness to see beyond where you are and what your work is, to see the broader relationship to your field, to the world, to folks around you. Mostly, openness.

EYA: Why is dance your focus?

CO: The full embodiment. I actually didn't start out as a dancer. My sisters danced and, I think since I was the last of six kids, my parents just said, Go on with your sisters!, to get me out of the house.

I was a visual artist. My parents let me try a lot of things. I tried music. I was terrible at music. But painting, drawing, was my arena. I thought I'd make my living as an architect. I took courses in physics and calculus in high school thinking I was going to go in that direction. Dance was really a hobby early on.

And then I had this mentor who fell in love with me and I with her. She was from Kurt Jooss [the German choreographer] and had been in the Caribbean for decades and had a dance school. I would go there and study Afro-Caribbean dance during the week, and she invited me to start taking ballet and improvisation with her. Then she kept putting me onstage, and she encouraged me to move in this direction. And I loved it! I loved the physicality of dance. I'm a swimmer. So, moving on land was really nice too! She would bring dance companies to the island to expose young people to these companies. So, I saw George Faison's Universal Dance Experience; that really blew my mind. I saw a lot of different companies from Europe, South America, the Caribbean.

Recruiters came at the end of high school, and I thought, I really should do this! This feels like something I could really sink my teeth into. A big concern for my dad was, "How're you going to afford to live?" My mom--a brilliant artist and a seamstress--was different. She was like, "Take your wings and fly, girl. Do that art."

See the world premiere of Cynthia Oliver's BOOM! 

at New York Live Arts, Oct 23-25. 

Click here for details and tickets.

Related events:

October 23 at 6:30pm: Come Early Conversation: Sequencing Non-Linear Narratives, choreographer and educator Nia Love discusses the creative practice of Cynthia Oliver

October 24: Stay Late Discussion: Her History - Her Present - Her Future, Cynthia Oliver and Leslie Cuyjet in conversation with Jaamil Olawale Kosoko

Cynthia Oliver’s work is the visceral evidence of an incongruous mixture of aesthetics. Steeped in the everyday sounds of black voices and bodies moving in time and space in the Caribbean of her youth, Ms. Oliver was encouraged to explore ballet, dance dramas and site specific improvisational experiments led by Atti van den Berg - a former Kurt Jooss dance drama company member/performer. All the while she absorbed both the informal and formal of the Afro-Caribbean dance canons in the US Virgin Islands and elsewhere in the region. These vastly differing experiences defined her childhood coming into art. Moving in this way led her to an eclectic career in New York City and abroad in the world of performance art and experimental dancing with folks as diverse as The Caribbean Dance Company, Theatre Dance Inc., the David Gordon/Pick Up Company, Ronald Kevin Brown/EVIDENCE and Bebe Miller. She currently performs in Tere O’Connor’s Sister and BLEED dance works. Oliver has studied and been a part of the black avant garde theatre world, performing in the works of numerous playwrights, most notably, Laurie Carlos’ White Chocolate for my Father, and Vanquished by Voodoo, and Ntozake Shange’s A Photograph Lover’s In Motion, also directed by Ms. Carlos; Greg Tate’s My Darling Gremlin; and choreographing for theatrical productions like The University of Illinois’ theatre company production of George C. Wolff’s Colored Museum directed by Lisa Gaye Dixon. Her choreography for theater has been performed at Minnesota’s Penumbra and Pillsbury House Theaters, New York’s La MaMa Etc., Syncronicity Space and Aaron Davis Hall.

Oliver has been creating dance works since 1991. A mélange of dance, theatre and the spoken word, her pieces reflect her background and interests, incorporating the textures of Caribbean performance with African and American sensibilities. Named “Outstanding Young Choreographer” by reviewer Frank Werner in German Magazine Ballet Tanz early in her career, Oliver has since received numerous grants and awards including most notably, a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award, two Illinois Arts Council Choreography Fellowships, a Creative Capital award, a Rockefeller Multi-Arts Production grant, NEFA Touring support, NPN Creation Funds, a CalArts Alpert Award nomination and a prestigious University Scholar Award from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she is a Professor of dance. In addition to her performance credits, Oliver holds a PhD in performance studies from New York University. She has published widely and is the author of Queen of the Virgins: Pageantry and Black Womanhood in the Caribbean (University Press of Mississippi. 2009).

Milton Cardona, 69

Milton Cardona, Keeper of New York Salsa’s Beat, Dies at 69
by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, September 26, 2014

Marta Moreno Vega and the culture of East Harlem

From Expanded Home, Celebrating the Cultures of the African Diaspora
by Kia Gregory, The New York Times, September 24, 2014

Caribbean Cultural Center to break ground for new home in El Barrio

The Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute invites you to celebrate the groundbreaking for its new home in East Harlem, planned to open in 2016 at 120 East 125th Street, a four-story, landmark Romanesque Revival-style firehouse completed in 1889. CCCADI, founded by Marta Moreno Vega in 1976, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to honoring and documenting the cultures of Africa in the New World and to connecting Diaspora communities to their root cultures.

Special events will be held on Tuesday, September 16:

10am-11:45am (BY INVITATION ONLY)
Groundbreaking Ceremony
                                         
11:46am-2pm (open to the public, free with RSVP*)
Launch and demonstration of new CCCADI mobile app
Live musical presentation

For more information, click here.

Directions to 120 East 125th Street (MAP):

Subways: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 to 125th Street. Walk to Lexington Avenue.
Buses: M15, 101,100 to 125th Street
Metro North to 125th Street

*RSVP to: www.rsvpcccadigroundbreaking.eventbrite.com

For information: Contact event coordinator, Lisa Banks at (516) 353-8048/email at banks244@hotmail.com

Learn more about the CCCADI's cultural, educational and advocacy activities here.

BRIC House welcomes musician Leyla McCalla tomorrow night

The Stoop Series: Leyla McCalla

Tuesday, February 11, 7pm

Stoop at BRIC House

Admission: FREE

Multi-instrumentalist Leyla McCalla (Carolina Chocolate Drops), celebrates her new album release featuring music reflecting her Haitian roots and eclectic life experiences. Dialogue with Régine M. Roumain of Brooklyn’s Haiti Cultural Exchange follows the performance.

Information

BRIC House
647 Fulton Street (Enter on Rockwell Place), Brooklyn
(map/directions)

Artist M. Tony Peralta makes the cultural connection

Heritage in All Its Rich Hues
M. Tony Peralta Explores His Dominican Roots
by Sandra E. Garcia, The New York Times, January 2, 2014

Dance world, Harlem to say goodbye to Marie Brooks, December 28

Marie Brooks Home Going

Abyssinian Baptist Church

132 Odell Clark Place (West 138th Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

(212) 862-7474

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Final Viewing 10am–11am
Service 11am-1pm

Marie Brooks Pan-Caribbean Dance Company
performing a tribute to Katherine Dunham

Praise song and Manna House Award for Marie Brooks (2011)