Pauline Oliveros, 84

Pauline Oliveros, musical performer and experimentalist, dies
by Joshua Kosman, SFGate, November 25, 2016

Pauline Oliveros, Composer Who Championed ‘Deep Listening,’ Dies at 84
by Steve Smith, The New York Times, November 27, 2016

Ecosexuals Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens marry that mountain

Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens
remake environmental activism for a sexy new era.

Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle stand before all the world--tall in their funky platform boots--as proud, passionate ecosexuals. And they recruit. With those two, you're well aware, surely, of the sexual part. But what's with that eco prefix?

The couple answered that question--and more--last night at the New York City premiere screening of Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story, their 2014 documentary film about mountain-top removal mining in the Appalachians where Stephens was born and raised and has family. That's the eco part. We'll get to sex in a minute.

Hosted by Abrons Arts Center, the event helped launch the 2015 Queer New York International Arts Festival in partnership with MixNYC, the queer experimental film festival. The cheerful pair greeted the audience after having led an EcoSex walking tour of Central Park earlier in the day. They shared a list of "25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth."

"Talk dirty to her plants" and "Love her unconditionally even when she's angry and cruel" were two standout suggestions. So, if you have not pieced it together already, ecosexuality--a state of mind, identity and practice open to anyone regardless of gender or orientation--derives from the notion that Earth is not Earth, Our Mother but Earth, Our Lover.

"Mommy's not going to take care of us," Stephens warns. "Mommy's tired." We have much work to do.

Through giddy imagination and wit, Sprinkle and Stephens shift the balance of power to inspire us to take a more direct role in the well-being of our planet. As they see it, the key to this new form of activism is bonding with nature through enlivened senses and pleasure--the sensation of slippery mud and gnarly tree bark and chlorophyll on one's skin. The pair have traveled around, staging weddings in which they get married to mountains and snow and the moon and what have you. And, you know what? I have no idea what "cloud sex" is, but I'm all for it.

In Spain, they married coal. In Stephens's West Virginia, they married a mountain and helped local activists draw awareness to the coal mining technique that imperils natural beauty, biodiversity, health, community and heritage. Goodbye Gauley Mountain shows what they're up against--a powerful industry holding the whip hand of steady employment over many workers who envision no other way to feed their families. But Stephens interviews others who know all too well what's going on, and their intellectual resistance--and deep love of the land--is most clear and ultimately moving.

To learn how you can see Goodbye Gauley Mountain, contact Stephens and Sprinkle here.

Closed.

Queer New York International Arts Festival continues events at Abrons through September 26. For information and tickets for other QNYIAF events, click here.

Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

"We have life because water is bent."

As a writer, I’m interested in the intersection between poetry and storytelling. How and when does an act of human speech become like a poem? How do poetry and storytelling come together and diverge?

--Devi Lockwood, One Bike, One Year

Read more at:

Release (and Dreams of a Performance)
by Devi Lockwood, One Bike, One Year, January 16, 2015

Sam Andrew, 73

Sam Andrew, Guitarist for Big Brother and the Holding Company, Dies at 73
by Peter Keepnews, The New York Times, February 16, 2015

Legos @Large: works by Ai Weiwei at Alcatraz

Art Man of Alcatraz
Ai Weiwei Takes His Work to a Prison
by Jori Finkel, The New York Times, September 18, 2014

Frank M. Robinson, 87

Frank M. Robinson, Dies at 87; Author and Adviser to Harvey Milk
by Paul Vitello, The New York Times, July 4, 2014

Fun thought: Dukakis as Maupin's Anna Madrigal again

Olympia Dukakis hints at screen return for Armistead Maupin's Anna Madrigal
Forthcoming novel from San Francisco author, centered on iconic Tales of the City character, could be made into a film

by Joanna Walters, The Guardian, December 7, 2013

Lofti Mansouri, 84

Lotfi Mansouri, S.F. Opera director 13 years, dies
by Joshua Kosman, SFGate, August 30, 2013

A look at how dance troupes use Twitter

How Twitter transformed dance
by Judith Mackrell, guardian.co.uk, July 31, 2012

Alonzo King LINES Ballet at The Joyce Theater

Click here to read my Dance Magazine review of Alonzo King LINES Ballet at The Joyce Theater.

Jewelle Gomez set to bring new play to NYC

Jewelle Gomez (Photo by Diane Saben)

The Robert Chesley/Jane Chambers Playwrights Project of TOSOS

will present

A staged reading of Waiting for Giovanni

Written by Jewelle Gomez 

(writer, activist, and author of the double LAMBDA Award-winning novel, The Gilda Stories)

Directed by Mark Finley

Saturday, January 28, 7pm

Waiting for Giovanni is Jewelle Gomez's imaginative, funny, and moving dream play about author James Baldwin, as he grapples with emotional and professional obstacles to completing his landmark 1956 novel, Giovanni's Room. The cast includes K. Todd Freeman (Song of Jacob Zulu, The Brother/Sister Plays) as James Baldwin, and Desiree Burch (52 Man Pickup, Tarbaby) as Lorraine Hansberry. The play was originally staged at San Francisco's New Conservatory Theater Center (Ed Decker, Artistic Director).

Ripley-Grier Studios

Studio 16T

520 Eighth Avenue, (between 36th and 37th Streets)

(directions)

Free and open to the public. No reservations required.

Information

Liberate your soul

Krissy Keefer of Dance Brigade
(photo by Anastacia Powers Cuellar)

San Francisco's feminist troupe

Dance Brigade

presents

THE GREAT LIBERATION UPON HEARING

 

at Dance Theater Workshop 

Thursday-Friday, July 7-8 (7:30pm)

Saturday, July 9 (2pm and 7:30pm)

Writer/director/choreographer Krissy Keefer, called a "rabble-rouser" by the San Francisco Weekly, has turned to the Tibetan Book of the Dead for her unique new work, performed by a group of 12 including a taiko drummer. The Tibetan Book of the Dead, whose actual title is "The Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Intermediate State" or "Bardo Thodol," acts as a guide for the dead during the state that intervenes death and the next rebirth. It is read aloud to the dead while they are in the state between death and reincarnation in order for them to attain liberation.

Founded in 1984, the feminist group Dance Brigade engages diverse communities and artists in their multicultural, multi-media dance/theater works. At home, in San Francisco, they operate the Dance Mission Theater, support the dance company, produce a series of annual events showcasing both emerging and established Bay Area choreographers, and conduct dance programs for adults and youth. For more information, click here.

For reservations, call 212-924-0077 or click here.

Dance Theater Workshop

219 West 19th Street (between 7th & 8th Avenues), Manhattan

(map and directions)

Cotter: Stein is a Stein is a Stein

Modern Is Modern Is: Gertrude Stein in Two San Francisco Exhibitions
by Holland Cotter, The New York Times, June 2, 2011

Critic Ann Murphy reflects on

by reflecting on

by Ann Murphy, writingdance, February 20, 2009

Don't mess with ballet dancers!

San Francisco Ballet Dancer Beats Down Mugger in BART Brawl
by Lauren Smiley, SF Weekly, August 5, 2010

Attack of the hula dancers!

Hula Dancers Ambush SF Apple Store [Video]
on Mashable, August 17, 2009

Okay, I'm heading out to Apple at 9th & 14th to see what might break out there! I think, for here, some radical queer performance art might be more appropriate!

Alonzo King's LINES Ballet

Alonzo King's LINES Ballet, on tour from San Francisco, concludes its Joyce Theater run tomorrow, Sunday evening, with an 8pm show. King's company not only proudly reflects the diversity of today's America, it glories in the beauty of the individual dancer--especially the male of the species--rewarding dancers by doing everything possible to make them look very, very good and spotlighting pliancy and virtuosity. King seems to be more about challenging these marvelously capable performers than truly challenging his audiences. When it comes to us, I think he just wants to love us up. He just straps us in and gives us the ride of a lifetime.

I preferred King's Dust and Light, a suite to music of Corelli and Poulenc, over the program's second piece, Rasa, a suite to Zakir Hussain's tabla music. The latter work has none of the gnarly, fast-twitch complexity found in Dust and Light. It looks like it was made by a very different man, one much less fussy or in more of a rush to finish a big, important piece. And, unlike its predecessor, it feels repetitious and every bit as long as it is, and then some. At best, it makes you want to turn your thinker off and just enjoy the hummingbird bodies of the dancers.

Dust and Light's title, music, milieu and shifting relationships possibly suggest something about being a spiritual being having a physical experience--or something like that, maybe. In this piece, King's inventiveness keeps the viewer on mental alert and highly entertained, and dancers like David Harvey, Ricardo Zayas and Corey Scott-Gilbert dazzle, standing out in a mighty impressive crowd.

The economy...sigh! If today's audience was any indication, you should be able to secure tickets for LINES at the Joyce.

Here's a wonderful video excerpt of a pre-concert talk by Alonzo King at the 2008 Stern Grove Festival.