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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New York Live Arts presents Buffard's "Baron Samedi"

David Thomson leads the international cast of
Alain Buffard's "choreographed opera," Baron Samedi,
at New York Live Arts, now through Saturday evening
(photo by Ian Douglas)

Danse: a French-American Festival of Performance & Ideas will run through May 18 at fourteen New York City venues (see information here) to examine "the ways in which dance engages with and informs our understanding of the world." The festival got off to a provocative start last night at New York Live Arts with Baron Samedi (2012), the final work of the late multi-genre artist Alain Buffard.

This "choreographed opera" is not easy to embrace. It took me a while before I found my way into it, and its continues to unfold today in my mind--which argues for the gravity and value of Buffard's offering.

Drawing from Haitian voodoo symbolism--in which the corpse-like Baron Samedi rules both healing and death--and the music of Kurt Weill, this work emerges from a very dark morass. At it opens, we are given only a woman's strong, melancholy singing voice and the soft, vulnerable patches of light on her face, something for us to hold onto. An hour later, everything brought to light slowly seeps back into darkness.

When we are first granted full sight of the stage, we see motley figures moving over and away from a clean white platform. Designed by Nadia Lauro, this platform resembles a large, undulating sheet of blank paper. It nearly engulfs the performance space, and it complicates it, creating discrete areas for encounters and interactions or for individual behavior separate from the whole. There's a slippery slide effect, too, that plays a part in the physical theater of the piece.

You will notice that the typical racial balance of "downtown dance" has been upended; most of the performers are Black, born either in African nations or in the US. They include Nadia Beugré (Ivory Coast/France), Dorotheé Munyaneza (Rwanda/France), Hiengiwe Lushaba (South Africa) and venerable New York dance artists Will Rawls and David Thomson. Three others--dancer Olivier Normand and the two musicians, double bass player Sarah Murcia and guitarist Sébastien Martel--are, like Buffard, white and French. This shift in balance, and the pulse and propulsion of the dancers' movement across the sloping white surface, works brilliantly with the platform's undulation, keeping everyone, including observers, in a continuous, unsettling state of flux. Although the villain of the piece--the amoral, lascivious and hideously vain Baron, played by Thomson--is Black, he serves as a lens on the nasty workings of European colonialism. Buffard underscores his preoccupation with this theme by having performers sing Weill's "Pirate Jenny" and "Ballad of the Soldier's Wife."

Baron Samedi, himself, is on hand to stir movement and provoke uncertainty (of one's identity, one's station in life, one's autonomy, one's physical and psychological safety). Thomson, sounding like a bit like the great Geoffrey Holder, reaches his high point in dancing when the Baron is at his lowest. Confronted by his victims, he is revealed to be nothing more than a hollow man, a skeleton tottering on the verge of collapse, a sack of graveyard dust.

Baron Samedi runs through Saturday with performances at 7:30pm. You're also invited to come early this evening at 6:30pm for a conversation on Baron Samedi--Symbolism and Practice in Haitian Voodoo moderated by Whitney V. Hunter, PhD Candidate and Director of Whitney Hunter [MEDIUM]. For complete information and tickets, click here.

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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)

Harlem Stage's "Makandal" opera will tour Haiti and South Africa

Harlem Stage Prepares to Export Its Own Opera
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, July 28, 2013

Jean-Léon Destiné exhibition and life celebration planned for Harlem

Jean-Léon Destiné (1918-2013)

Life Celebration--Saturday, June 15

1pm Mass at St. Charles Borromeo Church, 211 West 141st Street, Manhattan (212-281-2100)

4pm Exhibition at The Schomburg Center, 515 Malcolm X Boulevard, Manattan

(NW 135th Street and Lenox Avenue)

6pm Performance at The Schomburg Center's Langston Hughes Auditorium

****

The New York Times obituary from January 30, 2013:

Jean-Léon Destiné, Dancer, Dies at 94

by Margalit Fox

Jean-Léon Destiné, 94

Jean-Léon Destiné, Dancer, Dies at 94
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, January 30, 2013

Haitian dance is La Difference

Haitian Rhythms You Can Hear From the Street
by Sarah Stodola, The New York Times, December 13, 2012

Recovery in Haiti

A Year Later, Haiti Struggles Back

by Deborah Sontag, The New York Times, January 3, 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.

Afro-Haitian dance at BAAD!

BAAD! presents Jessica St. Vil's Ka Nu Dance Theatre and the Mikerline Dance Troupe for an evening of Haitian heritage, history and culture.

Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD!)
841 Barreto Street, 2nd Floor, Bronx

718-842-5223

Friday, October 15, 8pm

For more information, ticketing and directions to BAAD!, click here.

Saving the art of Haiti

Cultural Rescue
Public and private U.S. sources unite to help Haiti's art community recover from the earthquake
by Stevenson Swanson, ARTnews, September 2010

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts: with love for Haiti

An announcement from writer Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts 

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

Some of you know that I'd planned to go to Haiti in January 2010 to begin research for my next book. Slow-to-arrive funds delayed the trip, then the earthquake happened.

In the immediate aftermath, horrified at the disaster, the idea of writing a book seemed besides the point, to put it mildly. The old question put forth by Hölderlin summarized the feeling: "And what are poets for in a desolate time?"

Here is one attempt at an answer. Along with a small army of folks in two cities, I'm coordinating fundraisers to benefit two grassroots organizations that have been doing important work in Haiti since long before the earthquake and with whom I'd hoped to work during my research. SOIL Haiti focuses on ecological sanitation, working alongside communities to create composting toilets that remove dangerous pathogens from the water supply and provide

nutrient rich compost to farmers. Since the earthquake, SOIL Haiti has been working in Port-au-Prince along with OXFAM and the Haitian government to implement environmentally sound sanitation strategies urgently needed to serve the 1 million+ people living in tent cities since the disaster.

Seeds for Haiti works in concert with Mouvman Peyizan Papay (Peasant Movement of Papay), to support farmers in Haiti's Central Plateau in achieving social justice and asserting food sovereignty. With the reverse migration from the city back to the countryside since the earthquake, their work is even more urgent. Recently farmers of MPP made headlines when they promised to burn any seeds donated by Monsanto, a gift-horse of seeds that will not

reproduce and are laced with pesticides, thus subjecting farmers already facing a state of emergency to the vicious cycle of industrial agriculture.

This July in New Orleans (where I'm living at the moment instead of traveling in Haiti) and in Harlem, we'll raise voices, funds and spirits with a marathon bilingual reading of "Cahier d'un retour au pays natal" ("Notebook of a Return to My Native Land") the epic work by Martinican poet and statesman Aimé Césaire. Césaire was one who had an answer for Hölderlin. Some of you were there in 2008 for the inaugural public reading of this poem, co-produced with Brent Edwards, as an anti-colonial Bastille Day celebration to honor the recent passing of Césaire. If you were there, you remember the magic raised

up by 11 men and women reading in French and English, a literary

reading-as-ritual that we did not dream of or even know was possible.

If you live in New Orleans (or have people in New Orleans) the date to save is Saturday, July 10. We'll gather at GRIS GRIS LAB, a wonderful art/healing/ community center.

If you live in New York City (or have people in NYC), the date to save is Thursday, July 15. The fantastic Harlem Afrobeat bar THE SHRINE has agreed to open their wonderful space to us for a second round.

Many people have already joined in to make these benefit readings a reality. I hope you'll come gather round the fire of Césaire's poetry in the name of rebuilding Haiti.

Please spread the word. Full details to come. Stay tuned for updates on Facebook at:

TheFreedwomensBureau

with lots of good wishes,

Sharifa

Unite for Haiti!

KONBIT POU AYITI
Harlem Stage Unites for Haiti

Sat, Jul 17, 4-9pm (free)

Bruce Paltrow Field at P.S. 161
134th Street at Amsterdam Avenue, Manhattan
(adjacent to the Harlem Stage Gatehouse)

a free outdoor community event with performances, family activities and tabling by organizations supporting Haiti relief

4pm: Gates open, family activities, arts & crafts, DJ set

5pm: Concert begins

Emeline Michel: "Queen of Haitian Music" 

(c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Performers include Tabou Combo, Mika Benjamin, Eddy Francois, Ase Dance Collective, Emeline Michel with special guest Daniel Bernard Roumain, and Los Terrys. 

There will be a special tribute to Benji Jolicoeur, one of Haiti's premier dancers, who passed away in the earthquake. 

Please bring pictures and materials to build a Tower of Power for Haiti.

Please bring blankets. Chairs are not allowed on the grass.

For more information on the performers, program and park rules, click here, or visit Harlem Stage on Facebook or call 212-281-9240, ext. 19/20.

Emeline Michel: "The guest is king!"

Lincoln Center's Target Free Thursdays at the Rubenstein Atrium hosted an extraordinary performance by Emeline Michel and guest artists last evening. This gorgeous performer has been called "the Joni Mitchell of Haiti," but the singer she most reminds me of is Benin's and Brooklyn's great Angélique Kidjo. That should give you a sense of Michel's incandescent warmth, energy, generosity and motivational power--as well as her world-hugging sound. Besides Kidjo, I'm reminded of a couple of other artists I've loved--Rubén Blades and Angela Bofill.

At a time of great sorrow and challenge for the people of her remarkable home island, Michel asserts a desire to show us a Haiti beyond the pain, "to share the art," as she says, "to bring community together." Well, last night she drew so much of the New York metro area branch of the Haitian community--as well as lots of non-Haitian admirers--that the Atrium's security had to deny admission to anyone who made the mistake of arriving less than about 45 minutes early for an 8:30 show. A lot of unhappy people--some of whom had expected friends to save seats--were left out on the sidewalk.

For Michel, as is the Haitian way, "the guest is king." She takes quite seriously--and lightheartedly--her mission to entertain. Those of us lucky enough to get in had a sensational time from start to finish, a lesson in how Haitians "embrace the tragedy, embrace when times are good," according to Michel. If a voice can teach, by example, how to be resilient, how to rise and transform, it is this one--a free, exalted voice like a sleek seabird catching a thermal, gliding with her wonderful band providing lilting, percolating matrix. Her special guests--Haitian-born jazz saxophonist Buyu Ambroise and jazz vocalist Pauline Jean, a native New Yorker of Haitian descent--contributed to the program's soulful depth and passion.

If you missed this show, don't worry: Summer offers another chance to catch up with Michel. Bill Bragin--Lincoln Center's imaginative Director of Public Programming, invites you to Ansanm (In Love We Stand), featuring Michel, Beethova Obas, BélO, Zili Misik and Peniel Guerrier in collaboration with the Mikerline Dance Company on July 29, 7:30pm, at Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Damrosch Park Bandshell. Click here, and check back in June for more details.

Conserving quake-damaged art

Conservators Aid Art Rescue Effort in Haiti

by Kate Taylor, The New York Times, May 10, 2010

Superb event for Haiti, May 26

Another Chance to Dance

GIMP Benefit for Handicap International’s Prosthetics and Orthotics Workshop in Haiti

GIMP: gimp (gimp)
1. a ribbonlike, braided fabric
2. FIGHTING SPIRIT; VIGOR
3. a lame person
4. slang; a halting, lame walk
5. to turn, vacillate, tremble ecstatically

Wednesday, May 26 (7pm performance; 8pm reception)

at JCC in Manhattan
344 Amsterdam Avenue (at 76th Street)

General Seating: $100
Reserved Seating: $250
Gold Seating: $500
Platinum Seating: $1000

Minimum $100 per person is
required for admission to the event.
($25 per ticket is not tax-deductible)

Please RSVP to attend the event via the following web site address:
http://www.thegimpproject.com/gimp/another_chance_to_dance.html

Inspired by Fabienne Jean, ballerina, Haitian National Theatre

Read her story in the February 22, 2010, New York Times article, Countless Lost Limbs Alter Life in Haiti's Ruins.

All of the proceeds will benefit Handicap International Prostheses Workshop in Haiti.

Thank you for your support of Another Chance To Dance. The JCC in Manhattan is a wheelchair accessible venue. If you need further accommodation or want more information, please contact us at: GIMPDancesForHaiti@gmail.com

Emeline Michel in free performance at Rubenstein Atrium

Emeline Michel

With special guests Buyu Ambroise and Pauline Jean

Lincoln Center's David Rubenstein Atrium

Thursday, May 20, 8:30 P.M.

Emeline Michel is the reigning queen of Haitian song, beloved for combining traditional rhythms with social, political, and inspirational content. A captivating performer, she is a member of a new generation of Haitian musicians who emphasize complex themes, conscious lyrics, and a broad palette of musical styles, including the native Haitian compas, twoubadou and rara along with jazz, rock, bossa nova and samba. The New York Times called her a “dancing ambassador with a voice serene and warm like a breeze.” 

Joining Michel are jazz vocalist Pauline Jean and saxophonist Buyu Ambroise, both known for their sophisticated compositions blending traditional Haitian roots with contemporary sounds. 

Target® Free Thursday performances start at 8:30 p.m. FREE admission; no tickets required. Seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

For more information, click here.

Triple Goddess at WOW

If you can still get a ticket, check out the three solo-woman shows continuing their joint premiere run at the WOW Café Theater tonight and tomorrow at 8pm. MilDred (formerly, Dred), the Haitian-American performance artist who forged a credible reputation on dicking around with gender expression, elevates her talents to new levels of sophistication and meaning in Haitian GOD/DESSES. Drawing from traditional Afro-Atlantic religion and culture, she takes the physical and sartorial form of each of three spirits sacred to practitioners of voudon--Danbala, Baron Samedi and Erzulie--who, themselves, contain duality, triplicity and all kinds of powerful multitudes within. Full moon on her back, she does not lack--to slightly paraphrase one of the lines from her dynamic monologue--for she has found survival in moon-like fluidity and self-transformation.

MilDred's skills offer a potent lesson in how to put on a performance. There's no filler. No word or motion is wasted. All are employed with the exacting precision she also uses to apply the makeup of gender transformation. But those changes mainly come from deep within where a world of possibilities exist--all of them MilDred, as she tells us. Genders and personalities flush to her skin, clear to everyone's view: There stands before you, unmistakably, this one or that one. And then, whoever has arrived recedes to be replaced by someone equally vivid. Her command of voice and body, of cosmetics and costume (most designed by her colleague, dancer sokhna heathyre mabin) is confident and assertive. If you don't get to see Haitian GOD/DESSES, be sure to see MilDred somewhere doing whatever. Visit her site.

Not only did mabin design most of MilDred's costuming for Haitian GOD/DESSES, she also created her own costumes and sculpted props for snapshots from the underground forrest. (No telling why "forrest" has two r's, but it appears to be deliberate, not a typo.) Would that mabin could also sculpt her piece, itself, with as fine an eye. Unlike MilDred and the third performer, Tantra-zawadi, she works without words and relies on the surreal, ritual-like visual elements of her piece to give it variety and a sense of shifting place. Not only is snapshots quite long, it feels even longer--much longer still, on a program that started more than 20 minutes late and had two "brief intermissions" that ended up sprawling.

snapshots only seems to be approaching an end when it starts up again on one or another visual or musical tangent. Watching mabin picturesquely stretch, writhe, crawl and drift through much of this dance, especially when sleep-inducing yoga music is playing, draws attention to the work's limitations and missed opportunities. mabin moves prettily but is, perhaps, too invested in that sensual loveliness to explore what else her body might be able to express. Choreography is more than prodigious output; it's about making choices with impact.

Tantra-zawadi knows from impact. Soldier Blues--a "poetic movement" concerned with the wellbeing of our military forces and their families--makes her wicked-sharp, blues-based spoken word performance the solid core of a contained multimedia team presentation. She's sensational, rousing and right as rain. And, as with MilDred, you should see her perform whenever you get the chance. Learn more about Tantra-zawadi online.

WOW Café Theater
59-61 East 4th Street, 4th Floor
between Bowery and Second Avenue, Manhattan
Reservations: 646-342-5660

Celebrate Haiti. Stand with Haiti.

A Celebration of Haitian Culture: Benefit for Earthquake Relief 

Sunday, March 14, 6:30PM

Please join the Poetry Project, Danspace Project, Ontological-Hysteric Theater and St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery for a celebration of Haitian culture. All proceeds from the evening will be donated to Partners in Health: Stand With Haiti.

Tickets are now available, and will be available at the door.

Sliding scale admission: $20-$75 General Audience

Reserved Seating: $75-100

Readings by Amiri and Amina Baraka and Denizé Lauture!

Performance by master Haitian drummer Bonga!

Performance by John Zorn!

More performers to be announced soon!

Location: 

St. Mark’s Church, Sanctuary

131 East 10th Street (2nd Avenue)

Manhattan

Information

Towards a new song

Haitian Singer and His Guitar Fight Urge to Weep

by Simon Romero, The New York Times, March 4, 2010