Some personal news from Eva!

Eva Yaa Asantewaa (Photo: D. Feller)

 

Some personal news...and I’ll try to keep it nice and simple!

In early July, I marked three years of employment with the Gibney organization. Many of you know that, on August 26, I reached my 69th birthday and, from out of the blue, suffered my first panic attack, a severe, terrifying one. On August 31, I resigned my position on Gibney's staff as Senior Director of Curation, effective December 17.  

The reasons behind this professional shift are complex, but it fits my new aim, as I age, to finally pull back and reclaim rest, time and focus for myself and a world of interests beyond the dance field I have served with fierce love for more than 45 years.

Even so--for now, at least--I will continue on as a consultant for Gibney, retaining my role as Founding Director of the Black Diaspora program and Editorial Director of Imagining: A Gibney Journal. Both are relatively young projects, launched during and largely because of this pandemic, and I’m eager to see them develop and flourish.

As for my current curatorial projects–some of which I inherited, some which I created for Gibney--I will support them on staff through December 17. I have been assured that artists and projects I planned for Gibney all the way through July 2023 will be honored and supported by the organization.

So, there you have it!

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Please also read: My Body Wants Something Different for Me Now (June 21, 2021)

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve, at Gibney, as Senior Director of 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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My Curatorial Highlights of 2020

 

 CURATORIAL HIGHLIGHTS 2020

I call on all Black creatives to preserve and tell our own stories.

We must center, treasure and tell our own stories, or others will tell them their own way for their own uses--or refuse to tell them at all.

The comprehensive story of Calendar Year 2020 is a difficult one, and there are different ways I could tell it. This day, though, I wish to acknowledge and celebrate things achieved before and, then, in spite of the pandemic. Things accomplished before and, then, in response to the rise of this year’s anti-racism uprising. Things created in joy and, then, in sorrow, in an effort to keep at least some movement happening at a time of stasis and loss and to build circles of mutual support.


GIBNEY CURATION

Below is just a sample of notable events I curated for the Gibney organization during 2020:

Black Dance Artists on Masculinity, panel moderated by J. Bouey and featuring Du’Bois A’Keen, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Orlando Hunter, Jr. and Ricarrdo Valentine

Soundz at the Back of My Head, premiered by Thomas F. DeFrantz/Slippage, Bessie Award nominee (Quran Karriem) for Outstanding Sound Design/Musical Composition

Afro/Solo/Man, premiered by Brother(hood) Dance! (Orlando Hunter, Jr. and Ricarrdo Valentine), Bessie Award nominee for Outstanding Production and for Outstanding Visual Design (video)

Digital: Unidentified Fly Object (U.F.O) by Tendayi Kuumba with Greg Purnell

Long Tables: Latina/x in Dance and Performance (Alicia Diaz, Mariana Valencia, Yanira Castro, Larissa Velez-Jackson, Beatrice Capote) and Does Dance Matter to America?
(Danni Gee, Brinda Guha, Joya Powell, Ayodele Casel, Maura Nguyen Donohue, Aynsley Vandenbroucke)

Art + Action Artist Talks: Solo for Solo Artists, moderated by myself and featuring Marion Spencer, Darrin Wright, Zui Gomez, Wendell Gray III and Paul Hamilton. Spirituality of the Body, moderated by Charmaine Warren and featuring Laurel Atwell, Shamar Wayne Watt, Ogemdi Ude, and iele paloumpis

Sorry I Missed Your Show: presentations by Tess Dworman, 2020 Bessie Award nominee for Breakout Choreographer; LaJuné MacMillian; Michelle Boulé; Jennifer Nugent; Stefanie Batten Bland

Living Gallery: word-based performances by Linda La Beija; Nia Witherspoon; Melanie Greene; Kayhan Irani; Oceana James

Some of the many artists I met with during this year for consultations or discussions about developing work have included Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Leyya Tawil, zavé martohardjono, Kayla Farrish, Dohee Lee, mayfield brooks, Audre Wirtanen, Colleen Thomas, Olaiya Olayemi, Ahn Vo, Kazu Kumagai and Lisa LaTouche.


CURATING DANCING QUEERLY FESTIVAL

I was delighted to be recommended to the producers of Boston’s annual Dancing Queerly Festival to guest curate a digital evening of video works from New York-based LGBTQ artists. I selected J. Bouey, Ni’Ja Whitson, Maria Bauman-Morales, zavé martohardjono and Brother(hood) Dance! for this well-received program.

In years past, I have also enjoyed curating events for Danspace Project, La MaMa and 92Y Harkness. I'm still eager for independent curatorial or dramaturgical projects--specifically Black- or BIPOC-centered ones. Reach out!

CREATING BLACK DIASPORA

This summer, I started organizing Black Diaspora, my pilot program designed for rising Black artists from a variety of cultural backgrounds and dance/performance techniques and traditions. I invited artists to apply following recommendations from more experienced Black artists in New York's community, and a cohort of eighteen was formed. Since September, sponsored by Gibney, they have met by Zoom to hold conversations on topics of their own choosing. Some of these informal community conversations have been joined by invited artists such as Ayodele Casel, J. Bouey, Jerron Herman, Kayla Hamilton, Ni'Ja Whitson, Raja Feather Kelly and Rokafella and Kwikstep and more are coming in 2021. Participation is free. Recently, I was offered additional funding to curate a series of workshops for the Black Diaspora cohort. These will run from February through June of 2021, facilitated by Cynthia Oliver, Gilbert T. Small II, Paloma McGregor, Nicole Stanton and Bebe Miller. I have invited this first cohort to return for a second fiscal year (September 2021 through June 2022). It is my intention to develop Black Diaspora into a full-featured residency program over the next few years.


LAUNCHING IMAGINING: A GIBNEY JOURNAL

Along with its newly-redesigned website, Gibney now has a bi-monthly online journal--Imagining: A Gibney Journal--which I have edited along with outgoing Curatorial and Editorial Coordinator Dani Cole. (Monica Nyenkan has now joined Gibney in the CEC role and has begun assisting me with Imagining.) Some of the writers engaged in our September and November 2020 issues were Ogemdi Ude, George Emilio Sanchez, Maura Nguyen Donohue, Conrhonda E. Baker and Aynsley Vandenbroucke. We are situated at the intersection of the arts and social justice and seek to make space for underrepresented voices.

CREATING/CURATING THE EVA YAA ASANTEWAA BLACK ARTS LEADERSHIP AWARD (EYABALA)

I have awarded the EYABALA space grant at Gibney--funded through a generous contribution from board member Andrew A. Davis--to nia love, Jerron Herman, David Thomson, and Jordan Demetrius Lloyd. These artists will receive 50 hours of free rehearsal space when studios in both of Gibney’s centers can safely reopen. (UPDATE: Due to an unforeseen scheduling conflict, Jerron Herman had to withdraw from this program. André Zachery has been given this award in his place. And, last but not least, the hours have been increased for all awardees from 50 to a whopping 100!)


ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES

In November, I convened a new independent group Black Curators in Dance and Performance, two-dozen strong, with a focus on mutual support, creative collaboration and advocacy. We have set January 22 for our third meeting.

The independent Artists and Advocates of Color Collective (AACCollective), which I proposed as a haven and support for BIPOC artists affiliated in any way with Gibney, finally began to take off this year, growing in membership and activity.

I have also had the honor of serving on the 2020 Bessie Awards Steering Committee for a short spell this year and joined some amazing community leaders on the advisory Dance/NYC Symposium Committee in preparation for the upcoming symposium (March 17-19, 2021).


Most of our journeys have been disrupted this year, and I have had to put aside or alter many things planned for this year and the next. But I’m happy to say 2020 still offered good opportunities to stay in motion and strive to make a difference.

Wishing you and yours all the best in 2021!

Eva

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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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Wilson's Fist & Heel troupe concludes Platform 2018

Choreographer Reggie Wilson
of Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group
(photo: Antoine Tempé)

My old friend Reggie Wilson put a "post-African/Neo-Hoodoo"* curse on me last night at Danspace Project.

Let me explain.

I'd been taking notes during his opening, hour-or-so Powerpoint talk--the initially-rambling preamble to his troupe's performance of …they stood shaking while others began to shout. Friday's talk, amusingly illustrated and delivered, touched on Wilson's perennial sore point--what he perceives as the chasm between the World of the Written Word and the Land of the Body Moving in Space and Time; the way colonized thinking devalues the power of bodies to communicate knowledge to other bodies. Only a man as accomplished and lovable as Wilson could get away with lecturing his audience on how to look at and analyze his (or anybody's) dances right before rolling out his newest one.

There was--for practical reasons as well, I think, symbolic ones--a break between talk and dance. During that brief turnover, I quickly and roughly jammed my notebook and a fairly new ballpoint pen into my crowded shoulderbag and turned to chat with friends and colleagues. When the houselights lowered for the dance, I reached to retrieve notebook and pen only to find the pen entirely dismantling in my hand, one small piece of plastic flying off onto the darkened floor.

I thought of many things at once:

God, I hope nobody's seeing this and laughing at me.

Oh, boy! Reggie and Tere O'Connor (who once admonished critics to stop writing notes and just look) would get a kick out of this!

I can only ever make out 5% of what I wrote in the dark anyway. So, fuck it.

Then, and only then, was I able to let go.

Reggie's curse.

His rich and complex platform--Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches and Downtown Dance--concludes, this weekend, with the beautiful Fist & Heel Performance Group ranging all over St. Mark's space including, quite vividly, the balcony to which enslaved African people were once relegated. His talk inspired a laser focus on that claiming of space and the variety of ways Wilson takes the measure of it, populates it, creates drama with it, brings warmth to it and affects those of us who watch.

If you get a chance to see …they stood shaking while others began to shout--inspired by rhythmic Black Shaker, Yoruba, Black Baptist and Spiritual Baptist worship traditions and a luscious collage of Black music--I think you will appreciate how all of this craft creates a sturdy container for deep, enormous feeling. (That feeling is the neo-hoodoo secret sauce, quietly simmering away underneath it all, unmistakably permitted and, to me, unmistakably Black.) I think you will find space for emerging feelings of your own, and I would imagine--I would hope--that you would not necessarily need to be Black to find and feel them. Certainly, Wilson's multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-generational dancers and vocalists--Hadar Ahuvia, Rhetta Aleong, Yeman Brown, Paul Hamilton, Lawrence Harding, Raja Feather Kelly, Clement Mensah, Gabriella Silva, Annie Wang and Michelle Yard--suggest this. Each performer brings palpable individuality--a generously-welcomed selfness--to Wilson's movements, arrangements and scenarios.

This seems a most significant retention from all of Wilson's many years traveling the African diaspora to witness how Black people evoke and fill ourselves with Spirit: the idea that one might come to that work through the door of one's own struggle and dignity and pleasure, in a way that has one's own signature, and that there is room for you just as you are. The strong traditions--of song, of movement--hold space for us to do what we need to do as we find family.

[*Wilson has long referred to his choreographic aesthetic as "post-African/ Neo-Hood Modern Dance."]

Tonight's 8pm show--already sold out--ends the Wilson platform. A wait list will be taken at the door beginning at 7:15pm. No late seating. For information, click here.

For full information on Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches and Downtown Dance, click here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (off Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Dada Masilo's swans of a feather flock to the Joyce

Songezo Mcilizeli as Prince Siegfried
with Dada Masilo as Odette
(photo: John Hogg)

some Masilo swans swanning about
(photo: John Hogg)

That blaring Tchaikovsky processional set the tone right away. Those barefoot dancers, flouncy and twitching in their gender-nonspecific tutus on The Joyce Theater stage, simulated the flight of a flock of swans while encoding every point along the movement spectrum from ballet to African. But not seamlessly, never the sort of contemporary ballet where every last element is blended out, airbrushed and...Kumbaya! We've got exotic perfection for ya!  Instead, you can see the separate techniques of dancing smacking up against each other, visibly diced, sliced and spliced by the exacting mind and sharp hand of Dada Masilo. Without question, this extraordinary work is Dada Masilo's Swan Lake.

I only became aware of Masilo when she choreographed and performed in William Kentridge's Refuse the Hour at last fall's BAM Next Wave. But, for several years, this talented Black South African woman has been turning heads all over Europe, making works called I Just Want To Be a Princess for One Day and The World My Butt and Other Big Round Things, and training her wry eye on classical icons like Romeo and Juliet and Swan Lake.

Well, why not use the classical ballets she dearly loves to tell contemporary stories of top importance to her?

Her take on Swan Lake puts me in mind of Camille A. Brown. Fans of that American dance artist will find Masilo's narrative work and her own piquant, bravura performance style similar in nature and appeal. In addition, both artists draw from aspects of Black culture and artistry, have well-honed, character-driven comedic skills and an interest in showing the full range of human experience and feeling. They both step up to address challenging issues, mixing entertaining performance with social relevance. For Masilo, the story of Swan Lake sets the stage for a look at the consequences of homophobia and the devastation of losing generations of South Africans to AIDS.

This turbo-charged, enormously charming Swan Lake pairs, against his will, a closeted Prince Siegfried (Songezo Mcilizeli) with Masilo's eager bride-to-be Odette. Siegfried's parents--especially Mom--freak out when they learn that their son is in love with a man named Odile--yes, I know, usually, the sinister doppelganger of the dancer playing Odette--here danced by tall, graceful Thamsanqa Tshabalala, the only cast member rocking pointe shoes, and beautifully, thank you.

The piece--lit with true magic by Suzette le Sueur--flies by in just an hour. In that hour, nearly everything moves at a speedy, insistent pace. Group scenes are tightly-organized delirium, usually some hooplah over the expected nuptials. Which brings me back to the loud, nearly martial selections from Tchaikovsky. With this music, Masilo seems to underscore how the private life, and will, of the individual can get pounded down by the heedless force of society. This comes in sharp contrast to the tranquility of Siegfried's time alone with Odile. Without the crowd mashing him, Siegfried can get to know himself and his desires.

Because humor has such prominence in the dance, its conclusion can seem either jarring or poignant. Masilo lost her aunt to AIDS, and this work was made in memory of her. Performers in long, black skirts dance against a dark, starry backdrop. Some slump to the floor. Eventually, just two remain, each delicately rubbing fingers together as if sprinkling a handful of dirt on the coffins of loved ones until there's no one left to perform this final rite.

Swan Lake continues tonight through Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 2pm. For information and tickets, click here.

The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue (at 19th Street), Manhattan
(directions)

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Dancers are the music: Urban Bush Women at BAM

Members of Urban Bush Women
perform Walking with 'Trane.
(photos: Julieta Cervantes)

In Walking with 'Trane--performed this week at BAM Next Wave by Urban Bush Women and inspired by the genius and spiritual force of John Coltrane--dancers are not simply people dancing to music. Dancers are music, in turbulence and in silence.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Coltrane's masterpiece, A Love Supreme, and the 30th anniversary season of Urban Bush Women, founded by award-winning dancemaker, educator and activist Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. When developing Walking with 'Trane, Zollar and collaborator Samantha Speis conceived the piece as an album of two "sides" divided by an intermission.

Side A--"JUST A CLOSER WALK WITH 'TRANE," with Philip White's electronic score--opens with one supple, wriggling figure suspended in a faint wash of light against darkened space and thrumming sound. Little by little, dancers assemble on the stage, integrated and attuned to one another but each pulsing her or his own instrumental, multidimensional voice. These musical lines are never straight. Flat is not flat; flow, never one way. Destinations only open up more directions of travel.

Looming, dynamic video projections play across a translucent scrim, evoking the smokiness of a music club. Or the keys of a piano. Or a sheet of lines awaiting notes the dancers will live. Or, thrillingly, the sensation of railway tracks receding from a speeding train/'trane transporting everyone--dances and watchers--into new times and places. Speis takes a masterful solo, and Du'Bois A'Keen introduces a flavor of hip hop to his crisp, clear moves, forging an up-to-the-minute connection to Coltrane.

With the side winding down, we hear recorded voices reflecting on Coltrane's music. The final speaker's words set the stage for Side B, "FREED(OM)," a title inspired by the searching, all-embracing nature of Coltrane's spirituality.

He was free. His music was free. 

He was expressing freedom.

Composer-pianist George O. Caldwell's live music for this new section is infused with themes from A Love Supreme and carries the dancers into a space of expansion and transcendence. There's a panoramic photo of the inside of a jam-packed music hall projected against the back of the stage, giving the illusion of the performers dancing their music for this crowd. Indeed, the UBW dancers savor freedom of movement in the open space of the stage, the dancing here feels expansive and celebratory. The quirks and questions of the earlier movement in SIDE A have dispersed which, I must admit, made me value them so much more and miss them.

The dancers of Urban Bush Women are Du'Bois A'Keen, Amanda Castro, Courtney J. Cook, Chanon Judson, Tendayi Kuumba, Stephanie Mas, Love Muwwakkil (understudy) and Samantha Speis.

With dramaturgy by Talvin Wilks, lighting design by Russell Sandifer, costume design by Helen L. Simmons-Collen and video design by Wendall Harrington

Walking with 'Trane continues through Saturday with performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

How will dancers embody the Afrofuture?

CALL FOR CONFERENCE PROPOSALS: 

DANCING THE AFRICAN DIASPORA: EMBODYING THE AFROFUTURE

Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD) Conference
Duke University, February 19-21, 2016

How might we imagine the impact and import of Black dance within the context of afro-futurism?

What sorts of movement practices reflect an embodied Black feminist/womanist perspective?

What does Black Dance contribute within the context of ongoing brutality and practices of resistance?

CADD's second conference, Dancing the African Diaspora: Embodying the Afrofuture, aims to re-ignite the discourse on defining Black Dance on a global scale by bringing together scholars, practitioners, educators, and other stakeholders for three days of intellectual and artistic inspiration.  Anchored by critical dialogue and provocative research presentations, the conference will also feature breakout sessions, movement workshops, film screenings, and a performance by Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion culminating their Duke residency.

This three-day conference seeks to center African diaspora dance as a resource and method of aesthetic identity. The Collegium for African Diaspora Dance aims to facilitate an interdisciplinary discussion that captures the variety of topics, approaches, and methods that might constitute Black Dance Studies.

"Dancing the African Diaspora" suggests multiple exigencies and interests. We are interested in papers/presentations that consider dance practices throughout the African diaspora, and the specific contexts that engender them. We are also interested in dance as an approach to the understanding/engaging the African diaspora itself. This convening situates black dance as constituted by theories of black performance. We invite you to explore black movement as a technology of African diasporic identity-making. Presentations are invited along any theoretical line of inquiry concerned with African diaspora dance. We welcome papers that engage any site or topic related to black movement and those that represent a rigorous engagement with a number of disciplinary and methodological perspectives.

Possible topics include:

Black dance, virtuality, and technologies of mediationPedagogical politicsIdentity and community makingCorporeality, gender and sexuality in the African diaspora danceColonialism, neoliberalism, commodification

Deadline for Proposals:  October 1, 2015

Confirmations sent:  October 15, 2015

Click here to submit your proposal. 

For questions, click here.

 
Conference Committee|Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD)Founding Members

Takiyah Amin, Thomas F. DeFrantz,  Shireen Dickson, Jasmine Johnson, Raquel Monroe, C. Kemel Nance, Carl Paris, John Perpener, Will Rawls, Makeda Thomas, Andrea E. Woods Valdés, Ava LaVonne Vinesett

Sponsors for this event include: SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology in residence at Duke; Humanities Writ Large @ Duke; the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance; the Corporeality Working Group @ Duke; the Duke Dance Program; African and African American Studies at Duke.

#SayHerName and the value of art over politics

Poet Aja Monet Confronts Police Brutality Against Black Women With #SayHerName
by Maddie Crum and Irina Dvalidze, The Huffington Post, May 21, 2015

A database for Black/Diasporic dance communities

Here's an important announcement and request from our colleague, A Nia Austin-Edwards:

There is an emerging outcry for more intensive connection, communication, and sharing of resources/networking amongst and within the Black and/or Diasporic dancing communities. The Coalition of Diasporan Scholars Moving (CDSM) has been in conversation concerning the development of a database that connects diasporan scholars moving and a dialogue also surfaced during the Dancing the African Diaspora Conference led by the Collegium of African Diaspora Dance.

As if that wasn't enough, Camille A. Brown took on an exciting endeavor at APAP 2014 to organize a conversation among Black female choreographers and those who support their work - The Gathering. Through conversation facilitated by Baraka Sele, the database concept emerged as a place where Black dance artists and their supporters can connect, share resources, and build their network. Camille, Indira Goodwine (Company Manager), and myself took on this task and began to gather information to lay a foundation for this database.

Recently at a CDSM steering committee meeting me, Lela Aisha Jones, Saroya Corbett and Norma Porter Anthony committed to moving the database concept forward.  From this point forward they are working to combine efforts as many entities seem interested in the database coming to fruition.  This is where you come in.  We need some feedback regarding the creation of a database as we want to be sure to fulfill a need that the community is invested in.  
Please complete and SHARE this survey:

http://bit.ly/BlackDanceDatabase

The more responses we get, the more responsive this database can be (couldn't resist a little tech humor! lol). If you are not on the CDSM listserv please contact cdsm@iabdassociation.org so they can make sure your receive information regarding the database.  Following the survey we'll be reaching out to a number of partner organizations to help build this database in the way that best serves us all. If you are interested in more detailed information or have additional suggestions about the database, LET ME KNOW.

Slowly but surely, we're moving this idea along. As with all things, we can't do it alone. We look forward to your responses!

Peace & Love, 

A. Nia Austin-Edwards (ANAE) | anae@PURPOSEProductions.org

PURPOSEProductions.org | @KwanzaaKid

Sorry I Will Miss Your Show

Eva Yaa Asantewaa
(photo by D. Feller)

Gibney Dance Center has a running program they call Sorry I Missed Your Show. So I'm riffing off that title here because I want you to know that I'm aware how exceedingly tough it is to get press coverage (and decent press coverage) for dance shows in New York.

Throughout the year, I get numerous requests--not only press releases but also personal emails and Facebook messages--and try to juggle those requests along with my own interests and personal needs. No secret: I love dance a lot--as well as other arts and other activities; I am generally a quiet yet wildly multifaceted person--but have not managed to acquire bilocation or multi-location as my superpower!

Of course, ask, but there will be times when, for any number of reasons, I cannot get to your show (or even your rehearsal or informal showing). And it's better for all of us that I recognize those times and honor them. That way, I'm going to be more nourished, rested, resourceful, at ease and effective at what I do when I do get there.

Here's what led me to write this post:

How to Not Die: Some Survival Tips for Black Women Who Are Asked to Do Too Much

It's a terrific post, written in June 2013 by educator Robin M. Boylorn for the Crunk Feminist Collective blog. While it's directed to Black women, it contains wisdom that anyone should consider, and perhaps someday you too will take some of these ideas and recommendations to heart.

In the meantime, please remember that I'm grateful for what the arts, particularly dance, have meant to me throughout my entire life. I might not get to every show, but I stand with you in support and celebration.

Love,
Eva

What that darkness may contain: Photographing Black skin

A True Picture of Black Skin
by Teju Cole, The New York Times Magazine, February 18, 2015

Carolina Chocolate Drops' Rhiannon Giddens prepares solo tour

A Solo Spotlight for a Powerful Voice
by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, January 23, 2015

In the works: Brer Rabbit for a new Brooklyn

Original artwork by LaRonda Davis
for Brer Rabbit The Opera
(image courtesy the artist)

Some rabbit ears, eh?

Brer Rabbit The Opera: A Funky Meditation On Gentrification [Work-in-Progress] won't get reviewed here now since it's incomplete, but I can tell you that the sold-out showing I attended last night at BRIC House gives me hope for good things to come.

This collaborative effort, developed during a BRIC Fireworks residency--with Aisha Cousins and Greg Tate with his Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber leading a totally amazing team--strikes the right balance between fun and serious dissection of an issue of the moment. And it strikes it consistently and without pretension.

That's why I'm hoping Cousins and Tate will do two things: 1) trim the two hours down a bit; 2) work on making the dialogue and lyrics (especially in the opening scene) more clearly audible.

Read more about Brer Rabbit The Opera here:

Brooklyn’s Own Briar Patch: A Funk Opera Takes On Gentrification by Alexis Clements, Hyperallergic, January 22, 2015

Attend BRIC's Town Hall meeting, Brooklyn For Sale: The Price of Gentrification, A Community Town Hall, January 28, 7-9pm (free). For information, click here.

For general information on BRIC's Spring 2015 season, click here.

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.

Why I live for the dance

Sun Moon Child

A video altar piece, a celebration and tribute to Black dance, 

created in 2007 by pierre bennu

music by Imani Uzuri

La Danse Noire Magazine debuts with tribute to Dunham

The life, work and legacy of the great Katherine Dunham is celebrated in the premier issue of Atlanta-based La Danse Noire Magazine, an online quarterly dedicated to "the history of Black dance, its pioneers and the ongoing continuum in the field."

Publisher Carol Lloyd invites you to access this issue for free on ISSUU here.

Exploring the African diaspora of Argentina

Argentina Rediscovers Its African Roots
by Michael T. Luongo, The New York Times, September 12, 2014

for Jaamil/Jeremiah....

Reflecting on

Perspectives on Black Male Revisited:

Black Masculinity, Illegibility, Materiality, Constructs, Creative Space

& Imaginative Experience

curated by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko

last evening at 

Gibney Dance Center's

Sorry I Missed Your Show

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko
producer, curator, poet and performance artist
(bottom photo courtesy of Kelly Strayhorn Theater)

Brother of Names and Spirits, I am
not sorry.
I did not miss your show.
I saw your show.
And I see your show.

And I see their show.
Black flesh pressed against concrete.
Holes, from arm to eye, inked black
on this white chart, entry points and exits.

They see animals, their dumb property, commodities.
Let us merge with earth, strong and vulnerable, and
with animals, raising sacred animal powers in images
of magickal readjustment.

And, yes: your Geranium Essential.
What place does healing oil have
in a National Conversation On Race?
It has the place of pleasure.

Pleasure exists in truth, banner flowing
over neighborhoods and continents.
Hold it not tightly.

Please
let it take breeze, currents, sun.
It is pleasure, after all. Or...what is it?
It is Trickster, indefinable
Trickster
of Names Shapes Faces
with amplitude, yes, even enough
for "wading, wading."

You ask us to prophesy
"an infinite space
of limitless creativity,
empowerment,
safety,
and
evolution."

This needs safe space for a sister's tears
--and yours. Let our bodies cry.

Let this conversation open when
and where we enter:

Where do we find pleasure? And where,
a shout for joy?

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

*****

Here, for your consideration, are three questions offered by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko during last evening's Sorry I Missed Your Show:

How do we redirect/reimagine sources of trauma as sources of pleasure, healing, freedom and modes of creative thought and/or experience?

What is your relationship to Blackness in terms of identity, representation, and gender politics, and in what ways are you considering this position into the future?

How do we institute new pathways of thinking where illegible and/or complex queer and black bodies do not become continual platforms of colonized rage.

Are the Gods Afraid of Black Sexuality?

Are The Gods Afraid of Black Sexuality?

Religion and the Burdens of Black Sexual Politics

A Conference

co-sponsored by

Barnard Center for Research on Women

and 

Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University

Thursday-Friday, October 23-24

We are living through a moment of tremendous change at the intersection of race, religion, and sexuality.This conference will bring together scholars, activists, and religious leaders to unearth and engage with the often-unstated claims about the African Diaspora in relation to gender and sexuality, exploring a range of historical and contemporary phenomena in both scholarship and lived experience.

Speakers include Anthea Butler, Kenyon Farrow, Darnell Moore, Alondra Nelson, Emilie Townes and more.

For complete information and registration, click here.

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.

In her own voice: Black women's spoken words

Poet Patricia Smith

What a treasure trove!

Learn about and listen to the spoken word poetry of:

Patricia Smith

Sonya Renee Taylor

Mahogany L. Browne

Falu

Jaha Zainabu

Dominique Christina

Aja Monet

Angel Nafis

Safia Elhillo

Alysia Harris

Tonya Ingram

Aziza Barnes

12 Black Woman Spoken Word Poets Everyone Should Know

by Michelle Denise Jackson, For Harriet, July 2, 2014