Work-in-progress by Nia Love presented by Ailey/Fordham students

Students from Ailey's New Directions Choreography Lab
rehearsing a work-in-progress by Nia Love
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Congratulations--and a big thanks--to choreographer Nia Love (Love/Forté: A Collective) and her wonderful dancers from the New Directions Choreography Lab of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Last Friday, the lab presented a showing of Love's work-in-progress at the Ailey Studios to a large circle of invited guests including Sylvia Waters (Ailey II Artistic Director Emerita), Melanie Person (Director, Ailey/Fordham BFA Program), renowned dance artists Christine Dakin, Gus Solomons Jr. and Marlies Yearby, and several members of Love's family.

After Love and I participated in Paloma McGregor's Dancing While Black program last month, I was most honored when she invited me to collaborate on this new work by contributing text--now called make a dance--that I had read at McGregor's event. In my words, Love heard echoes of her central theme of re-connection to the earth and to cultural memory and community through the earth, inspired by her visits to Tanzania and research into agricultural practices.

Top and bottom: Ailey/Fordham BFA students at Wednesday's rehearsal
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

New Directions Choreography Lab was initiated by Robert Battle, who succeeded Judith Jamison as Ailey's artistic director in 2011, as a way for the institution to offer independent choreographers access to the space, time and dancers they need to experiment and to develop solid work. "Things take time," Battle said, "And we should honor process.”

Besides working out the best way to integrate my text into the project, Love's process involved the careful preparation of a floor grid with large patches filled with potting soil. 

Design by Nia Love
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Love and Dancers prepare before Friday's showing
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

The dancers would have to be willing to dance--and I mean dance fast and hard--on this soil and get messy. Ultimately, these students proved to be up to the task. And on Friday, during the actual showing, it was a thrill for me to see the soil get scattered outside its taped lines in the sunlit studio.

This was, of course, only the first leg of the journey--which will involve more travel and research overseas and to the American south--and I'm wishing Love the very best as she continues to develop this powerful and moving piece.

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Daniel Alexander Jones strives, through his performance art, bring elements of theater into the concert realm and to build bridges between his audience members.

by Patrick Verel, Inside Fordham, April 2013

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by Patrick Healy, The New York Times, October 4, 2011

Symposium on diasporic literatures in the US

Turning Tides
A Symposium on Diasporic Literatures

Saturday, November 6 (1-6pm)
McNally Auditorium, Fordham University, Lincoln Center
140 West 62nd Street, Law School Entrance
(between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues)
directions

Free and open to the public

Poets & Writers is pleased to co-sponsor Turning Tides: A Symposium on Diasporic Literatures at Fordham University.

This creative and scholarly symposium will highlight three different legacies of diaspora in the United States: Haiti, The Philippines and Puerto Rico. Each panel will feature a short scholarly talk and a reading by two writers, followed by a moderated conversation. What do Filipino American writers take for granted, in terms of artistic freedom? In what political and aesthetic ways are Puerto Rican writers employing creative disobedience? Until January 2010, descendants of the Haitian diaspora could call Haiti their home; now, that geography has been rent. What kind of scattering will result? And, how will it be told by writers?

The principle aim of Turning Tides is to involve prominent artists and scholars in an exchange of ideas for the purpose of proactively responding to the growing phenomena of American diaspora as it is in the making and to ground and contextualize this conversation within a critical understanding of a larger global history. 

For detailed program and speakers information, click here.