How to be a BAAD! badass

Above: poet Pamela Sneed
(photo courtesy of the author)
Below: dance artist Jasmine Hearn
(photo: Scott Shaw)

Comedy, dance, poetry, good company and more: BAAD! has it all in the month of March celebrating Women's History Month in full Bronx style.

Comedienne Robbyne Kaamil
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Check out BAAD!ASS Women Festival 2017, running March 9 through April 8 and featuring the creative work and activism of "fierce women and transwomen artists."

For schedule and ticketing details, click here.

BAAD!

The Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance

2474 Westchester Avenue (Westchester Square), Bronx

(map/directions)

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Celebrating the work of gay Black writers

"in the life" 

a reading of works by gay Black men from the 1980s and '90s

at the Whitney Museum of American Art

Sunday, April 14, 2pm

(doors opening 1:30pm)

For “in the life,” artist and writer Gregg Bordowitz will host readings from the literary work of gay, male, African American poets and writers, who chronicled sexuality, illness, and death during the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and ’90s. Many of the writers are now dead, and their works have been collected in anthologies, such as "in the life", edited by Joseph Beam. Bordowitz will be joined by a diverse group of readers including former Q/A/M mentor Pamela Sneed, to pay tribute to artists such as Donald Woods, Essex Hemphill, Marlon Riggs and many more.

Free with museum admission

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave (at 75th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Queer/Art/Mentorship in New York City

Filmmaker Ira Sachs announces Queer/Art/Mentorship (QAM), a program dedicated to pairing and supporting mentorship between queer working artists in New York City. Sarah Schulman, Pamela Sneed, John Kelly, Barbara Hammer, Justin Vivian Bond, Hilton Als, Jennie Livingston and Jonathan David Katz are among the many distinguished mentors participating in this unique program.

For information, visit the QAM site here, and also see this Scavenger article.

Pamela Sneed at Dixon Place's HOT! Festival

Black lesbian poet Pamela Sneed begins her monologue, America Ain't Ready, beneath the projection of a famous photo portrait of Black lesbian poet Audre Lorde. You know the one: Lorde slightly lowering the professorial, thin-rimmed glasses from her eyes, her Black Mona Lisa smile pleasant enough until you realize that she's likely about to say something America Ain't Ready for.

Pamela Sneed in "America Ain't Ready" (photo by Lisa Guido)

Lorde's revered presence hovers over Sneed throughout this marathon performance, inspiring, instigating, protecting. And Sneed needs that strength right now because, as we learn, she's performing through a world of pain. Not emotional pain--which also could be the case, of course--but physical pain from complex, enormously costly dental problems. She is an artist without health insurance in an America that ain't ready for universal single payer health care any more than it's ready to compensate artists for the intense, dedicated and crucial work that they do.

Sneed begins by reminding us that Lorde insisted that "poetry is not a luxury." It's a necessity. She invites us to imagine a world without all of the arts and artists. Her itemization of our potential losses is staggering. Here, at Dixon Place, through strain and rage, she preaches to the choir, and you want to send her to Capitol Hill to put the fear of God in those supposedly God-fearing Republicans (and some Democrats, too). She's the woman for the job. And, while we're talking job--damn it--if you ever ask Sneed, or any artist, to do a job, be sure to pay her for it. 

America Ain't Ready, adapted from a book-length epic poem, diagnoses perhaps a few too many things that ail this society. However, Sneed's performance, as real as it can get, sears its way into your consciousness. Her aim: To wake up as many people as possible before it is too late to achieve the America in which she still believes. We all have work to do.

Hot! Festival 2011--Dixon Place's 20th Annual NYC Celebration of Queer Culture--continues through August 6 with a mix of "theater, dance, music, burlesques, performance art and homoeroticism for the whole family." Find out more and make ticket reservations here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(map and directions)

Short Documentary: Art from Adversity on Vimeo

Short Documentary: Art from Adversity on Vimeo
by Robert Penn

One of the many New York City community organizations that formed in response to the AIDS epidemic is a writers group for Black Gay Men. In honor of James Baldwin's signature work, Another Country, the group selected the name Other Countries. It held its first writers workshop on June 14, 1986. Over the next year, it developed a three pronged program of peer critique, performance and publishing. In its 25 years, Other Countries has published three volumes of work by Black gay men and women. The most recent VOICES RISING came out in January 2007. The workshop continues each 2nd and 4th Saturday at NYC's LGBT Community Center from 6pm to 9pm. Many past and current members have gone on to publish work that "went through" the workshop. Several have developed their craft and have worked in publishing, arts management and television. Though many of its founding members died twenty years ago, their spirit of affinity continues to nurture and foster creativity and appreciation of the life we have, here and now.

Watch this documentary here.

What are you reading this summer?

Poet Pamela Sneed, posting on Facebook, recently recommended Canadian novelist Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes. I did a little searching for it and discovered that, in the US, Australia and New Zealand, it was published as Someone Knows My Name (W.W. Norton & Company, 2007)--an interesting title change.

A first-person narrative of the life of a African Muslim girl captured and sold into slavery in South Carolina, it is exquisite and moving, with writing of original style and beauty, from its first, stunning paragraph. At 486 pages, it should keep me good company for a fair chunk of this summer!

I've just finished Frank Rich's poignant childhood memoir, Ghost Light (Random House, 2001) which--among other fascinating things--details the enormous love and drive, as well as the influence of family and friends, that went into his growing up to be a prominent theater critic (New York Times). Now, I'd like to find out just how this theater critic transformed himself into such a kickass political columnist! Recommended. 


Okay, so that's me. What are you reading this summer? Comment here and on Facebook!