BODY AND SOUL: Italy Bianca: Pleasure Within

Italy Bianca (photo: Ashanti Hinton)

A brown-skinned woman with locs wearing a black,orange, and green halter top on the left side of the frame. Behind, a white background.

Photo: Aesam Sharafaldin

A brown-skinned woman with locs down to her waist and wearing a silver long necklace with two silver bracelets. Eyes closed and right arm on top of the left. Behind, a black background.

 

"My life is a dance," says dancer-healer-teacher Italy Bianca, "How am I going to stage it, each and every day?" Body and soul are connected, she knows from personal experience of trauma, healing, and creativity. In this talk to inspire other artists, teachers, caregivers, and anyone, Italy invokes what she has learned through modalities such as massage, acupuncture, herbalism, spiritual practice, and the use of sensory deprivation tanks.

Listen to her episode of Body and Soul podcast here!

Photo: Ernesto Mancebo

A brown-skinned woman with locs in a black dress leaning against a black cloth. The body is leaning towards the right with legs in a squat-like position. Arms are reaching out to the left side.

Italy Bianca is a sacred multimedia artist and herbalist who seeks to serve and enlighten the collective. From South Carolina and based in Brooklyn, NY, Italy believes that dancing leads to the transformation and healing of our personal and collective traumas; and aspires to offer the gift of transformational healing through community art. Her work focuses on creating work that portrays the rawest layers of human experience in collaboration with other local dancers and musicians. She has collaborated with various NYC dancers and companies such as Aeternus Dance Company, Asha Dance Company, Fiyah Dancehall Theatre, Sydnie L. Mosley Dances, and Marguerite Hemmings. In 2017, Italy was nominated for a Bessie Award in the Outstanding Performer c, and Chategory and appeared in Crystal Water's I am House video in 2018. Italy received a B.A. in Dance Education, Performance and choreography from Coker University and trained at the Joffrey Ballet School in their Jazz and Contemporary Dance program. https://www.italybianca.com/

BODY AND SOUL: devynn emory: dancing in the liminal

devynn emory on set for Grandmother Cindy, 2022 (photo: Reilly Horan)

emory with bronzed skin, dark black faded hair stands in their grandmother's warm fuzzy coat covered in polar bears looking directly at the camera while clasping their hands in anticipation of the performance beginning soon. behind them is a silver sterile table with bowls of medicine placed in preparation, their performer/collaborator Joseph M. Pierce (Cherokee Nation) and their cinematographer Jorge Cousineau. two figures draped in yellow fabric hold the space, representing devynn's ancestors.

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There's no reason to build a wall of labels around devynn emory and their work in this world and between worlds. They care for body, spirit, and community in a multitude of ways--from nursing to choreography, from mediumship to bodywork, from writing to work with death and grieving. This rich interweaving of skills and services sounds strange only in a society that deliberately separates body and soul and fails to respect the multiplicity of ways of knowing and healing. devynn, however, stays attuned to ancient ways and what the land teaches.

Listen to their segment on Body and Soul podcast here.

Subscribe to Body and Soul for more.

Read below to learn more about devynn.

Eva Yaa Asantewaa

 

devynn emory filming Cindy Sessions: LAND on the lands of the Serrano peoples

 

BIO: devynn emory is a choreographer/dance artist, dual-licensed bodyworker, ritual guide, medium and registered nurse- practicing in the fields of acute/critical care, hospice, COVID and integrative health. emory's performance company devynnemory/beastproductions finds the intersection of these fields, walking the edges of thresholds–drawing from their multiple in-between states of being, holding space for liminal bodies bridging multiple planes of transition, finding reciprocity practice as a constant decolonial practice. they are currently working on a trilogy centering medical mannequins holding the wisdom of end-of-life experiences. (deadbird + can anybody help me hold this body, 2021, Cindy Sessions: Grandmother Cindy + Cindy Sessions LOVE, LOSS, LAND 2022, boiling-rain tbd). emory is a research group fellow at danspace 2020-2023, a recipient of the Onassis Eureka award, an FCA emergency grant recipient, and an Art Matters Artist2Artist fellow. born on Lenape Land, emory is a reconnecting descendant of mixed Lenape/Blackfoot/settler ancestry. www.devynnemory.com

Join me for "Centering Our Power" workshop for BIPOC

 

 

CENTERING OUR POWER

a drop-in workshop for BIPOC

 

via freeskewl 

 

Saturday, February 20, 2021

12pm EST (9am PST)

 

Join our BIPOC Zoom "circle" for an active meditation practice to center and ground you (and all of us) in expansive power. Come as you are and leave with the awareness of all that you are. We will work with practices that sense and move personal and transpersonal energies.

 

Bring whatever you love to have near you to support this self-care--a journal, divination cards, crystals, shells, stones, sacred images, essential oils, stuffed toys, family/ancestor photos, what have you.

 

This is a seated visualization but, if you like, feel free to move with it. You may turn your camera on or off as you prefer at any time.

 

Please respect this circle as BIPOC space.

Accessibility: Closed captioning will be available through Rev Live Captioning

 

No payment required!
Donations welcome: Venmo: @Eva-YaaAsantewaa 

Zoom link: zoom.us/j/3093774924

Zoom password: 640262

 

Eva Yaa Asantewaa (she), native New Yorker of Barbadian-immigrant heritage, works as Senior Director of Artist Development and Curation as well as Editorial Director at Gibney. A veteran arts writer (since 1976), educator and curator, Ms. Yaa Asantewaa won the 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance. She blogs on InfiniteBody and edits Imagining: A Gibney Journal. In 2016, for Danspace Project’s Lost and Found platform, Eva created the skeleton architecture, or the future of our worlds, an evening of group improvisation featuring 21 Black women and gender-nonconforming performers. Her cast received a 2017 Bessie for Outstanding Performer. Eva is founder of Black Curators in Dance and Performance. She is also a Tarot counselor with forty-plus years of experience.

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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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Artists Reach Out: Grace Osborne

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Grace Osborne

Grace Osborne
(selfie courtesy of the artist)

Grace Osborne is a healing arts practitioner from Pasadena, California currently based in New York City. Her practice includes sound baths, soundwalks, and body work informed by Usui Reiki and the practice Romiromi as taught by the teachings of Hohepa Delamere.

www.verdantvibration.com
Instagram: @verdantvibration

Grace Osborne in performance
(photo: Malcolm-x Betts)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

This is truly a season of stop, cancel, and reflect, because a lot of my projects have been postponed. In February, I was going to do a workshop at Movement Research, and then 48 hours before the event, my grandfather passed away, and I just wasn’t able to do it. In March, I had plans to collaborate with the company Archestratus to facilitate a monthly Sound Bath healing salon with in-house brewed chai. In April, I was going to lead a workshop on DIY audio recording. For the month of May, I had plans to be in a writing residency at NYU’s satellite campus in Prague. Everything this season has been cancelled! I’m hoping that I can resume activities in the fall.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

I come from a family of musicians and artists, so I grew up listening to the Jazz my great uncles would compose, listening to my cousins sing, admiring the clothes my aunt made, watching my grandmother paint, and reading the poems my mother wrote. Making art and being creative in my family is just who we are. I never saw it as something for an audience—just for ourselves and each other.

I started to seriously study Flute when I was 9 and went on to major in Music Theory and History at Mills College. From that experience, I started to take classes and make music with people like Pauline Oliveros, Fred Frith, and Roscoe Mitchell. I really pushed myself to participate in as much improvised and experimental music as I could.

I also worked as a stage hand. So, for years, I got to hear so many different types of music. It really blew my mind. When I graduated, I started to begin my own practice of improvisation. When I moved to New York to start my graduate studies, I took a break from my practice, but 2016 I started using sound bowls. I met [dancer, producer and curator] Marýa Wethers and everything changed. I felt inspired around her, and she saw something in me. She started to recommend me to other movement-based artists and, since then, I’ve become a part of this amazing community of dancers and movement artists.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

Especially now more than usual, I am practicing becoming a better listener. My practice is about listening and healing through vibration. Even though this is a creative arts practice, it’s not about creating a work. This practice is about creating environments and experiences that guide others to pause and look inward, rest, and heal. I’m working towards and envisioning doing more collaborative work especially with recorded sound. I’m also excited to start curating more Sound Walks!

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

I’m really excited right now, because I feel like most of us in quarantine are already participating in the activities that I consider to be a part of my practice! So many people are taking the time to intentionally rest, listen, walk and connect with others. After all this is over, I look forward to hearing about how people engaged these practices and what it meant for them during this time.

Briefly share one self-care tip that has special meaning to you now.

Just stop and listen. Tune into the experience life is offering you at any present moment.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

******

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Chicago's Deeply Rooted brings "INDUMBA" to BAM Fisher

Dominique Atwood and Joshua L. Ishmon
of Chicago's Deeply Rooted Dance Theater in INDUMBA,
a work by South African choreographer Fana Tshabalala
(photo: Ken Carl)

How fortunate to be introduced to South African dancemaker Fana Tshabalala through his mighty ensemble piece, INDUMBA ("healing hut"), a 2017 work performed for the first time in New York by Kevin Iega Jeff's Deeply Rooted Dance Theater. The Chicago-based troupe completes its too-short run of this stunning piece this afternoon at BAM Fisher.

The hut in question here--evoking sites of African traditional cleansing and healing--takes shape through a semicircle of stools for dancers on the perimeter of a misty space illuminated by hazy shafts of light. Constructed of beautiful, golden wood, the stools are spare and look less than sturdy. Inside that simple boundary, dancers rise to propel themselves through angular, anguished gyrations and convulsions. These obsessive movements suggest horrors born of social conflict. At the same time, they suggest a ritual of pressure to rid body, mind and soul of these lingering toxicities.

Nicholas Aphane's driving music reaches inside any helpless viewer, evoking the violent, relentless churning of massive machinery. We first hear a vague, intermittent hum like a muted signal or something powering up. We don't anticipate its coming textures and caustic power. External, inhumane forces that have become internalized must, like demons, be exorcised. The "hut" itself--heartless but purposeful--nearly pulverizes damaged beings to render them safer for themselves and for their community.

Some of the drama involves two men--are they antagonists? brothers? actually one person wracked by warring forces within himself?--who clutch, grapple, twist and coil around each other as if they were made of the same skin. One shoves away and isolates himself only to later find himself in the other's grip once again. Likewise, a suffering woman turns from her brutal attacker only to find her "savior" treating her with equal brutality.

Tshabalala's research into the experiences of war-scarred Mozambique, as well as his observations of how apartheid's legacy impacts today's South Africa, informed the creation of Indumba. The work resonates for us, as well, in an America newly haunted by its nightmarish past and roiled by present-day hatreds and violence. If Inbumba is a dance, as described in DRDT's program, offering hope of "resilience and reconciliation," there's clearly nothing easy along that path. And its final image suggests not so much the soothing of terrible pain as its honest, open-throated expression.

Performed by Dominique Atwood, Pierre Clark, Shanna Cruzat, Joshua L. Ishmon, Rebekah Kuczma, Marlayna Locklear, William Robertson and Anthony Williams

Costumes: Alex Gordon
Lighting design: Sarah Lackner

INDUMBA concludes with a 3pm performance today with a post-show discussion moderated by Baraka Sele. For information and tickets, click here.

BAM Fisher
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Gibney's DoublePlus: Wesley Chavis and Cori Olinghouse

Wesley Chavis in his solo, Ku In Tuo Muah,
a DoublePlus presentation of Gibney Dance,
curated by Dean Moss
(photos: Scott Shaw)

In Ku In Tuo Muah, soloist Wesley Chavis's "physicalizing [of] his worship"--to use Gibney DoublePlus curator Dean Moss's words--adopts a widespread human practice with ancient origins, still active, for example, in the Black churches of Chavis's own Southern upbringing. Worship of higher, disembodied powers is often a practice of the body, and extreme, transcendent states of mind have always been powerfully accessed through the body, say in ritual dancing or ingestion of sacred hallucinogens. 

Ku In Tuo Muah, like most dance works I get to see, might have many behind-the-scenes influencers and supporters. But the few program credits--for "concept, audio/visual design and, of course, performance--go to Chavis solely, no stated collaborators. For the audience, this solo offers a privileged, if complicated, view of a path engaged upon decidedly alone. It's an internal, private, abstract exploration with challenges only one man can know.

Even the sounds that arise from this exploration are sounds of the breathing and gasping (and maybe unseen crying) of a human body. The emphasis on peeling off and shedding articles of clothing suggests continuous self-transformation and digging down to the person beneath persona beyond the grip and labeling of an outside world.

Stopping to remove his shoes and shirt is the first thing Chavis does as he walks through the door into the theater called Studio H at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center. It's like watching a weary man come home.

At first, he does not enter the portion of the space directly in front of the audience seats and will not for a long time. Instead, he occupies that stage-left area near the mirrors. So we must look over, slightly sideways, to watch him. It's a brilliant distancing device. You see me, but you have to work a little for it. I'm still over here in my somewhat private space, and I'm going to make you feel like the voyeurs you are.

So we watch as he proceeds to disturb and distort the functional harmony of his body, and we watch the wrenching and shedding and listen to the ragged gasps. His entrance to the main section of the space, which is covered in shiny, black plastic introduces more sound--the noise of him scrunching that floor covering as he continues to contort and scrunch up his body.

At the end, Chavis simply gathers up his clothing and exits the theater, remaining someone seen with the physical eyes but not really known--an impressive, even beautiful, but remote performer. His dance, his ritual, remained--for me, at least--a journey monitored but not truly shared, and I note that with acceptance and respect.

Cori Olinghouse (above and below)
in GRANDMA
(photos: Scott Shaw)

What Cori Olinghouse calls Clown Therapy draws from The Fool's power to look at things sideways upside down and dismantle the everyday mundane and how we habitually see it. Her GRANDMA--an interdisciplinary piece for herself, Martita Abril and Kate Watson Wallace--is wacky without (for the most part) being funny. It really isn't clowning in the conventional manner. Its pace is most often glacial with stiff, stooped, dazed dancers shambling about a space littered with cheap snack food. Their overpowering, face-obscuring wigs and lipstick pink costumes, the recognizable snack food product placement, though--that's where the funny would normally be situated. The clown proffering little plastic-wrapped cupcakes could not be more pathetic as she apparently cannot bring herself to approach more than two people in the audience, her feet repeatedly colliding with the plastic cups that earlier exploded onto the floor right in front of us.

My sympathetic attention cleaves to one performer momentarily and sadly stuck facing a corner, as if in shame, confusion or both. The old-fashioned tv screen at the center of it all gives back nothing but static. Attempts to mop up the mess--or stuff slices of Wonderbread under one's wig--are futile, half-hearted and soon abandoned. The overall ineptitude and visual disarray speak to a growing upheaval at the core of something, and that must be the therapy Olinghouse chooses to agitate.

Olinghouse's inclusion of two pop hits--George Michael's "Father Figure" and Wham!'s "Everything She Wants"--will launch an army of earworms, I can attest. The songs underscore a displeasure with warped values, excess consumption and the detritus it generates.

Wesley Chavis + Cori Olinghouse concludes tonight with a performance at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center
280 Broadway (entrance: 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Sharing, surviving: Black men dance at Danspace Project

Damon Green performs at Danspace Project in
Working on Better Versions of Prayers: Volume 1
by Chicago dancemaker J'Sun Howard
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Ricarrdo Valentine, above,
and below with Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr.
of Brother(hood) Dance!
in how to survive a plague
(photos: Ian Douglas)

Demonstrations, marches, sit-ins/die-ins/love-ins, rallies, prayer: are there alternatives to these forms of protest that we can employ to generate positive change? 

For his presentation at Danspace Project, Chicago's J'Sun Howard asks this question and offers a possible answer in a trio for Black queer men entitled Working On Better Versions of Prayers: Version 1. Is Howard's result actually a better version of prayer?  Of protest? That's never clear but, choreographically, this dance is easy on the eyes.

Dancers D. Banks, Damon Green and Will Harris mark off an uncluttered space in which, from the start, we can focus on the lyrical fluidity of their movement--a flowing reach and unfurling, a cursive squiggling and twirling and twining that, while accelerating or embracing flourishes of basketball or hip hop or voguing or West African movement, never loses control or its through line. Howard writes with an aesthetically conservative hand. He is a lover of beauty and of the beauty in these dancers, presenting them subtly, sympathetically and with utopian vision--the world he wants to see.

One moment alone appears disruptive--a dancer's brief, frustrated interaction with part of the decor and his partner's intervention. This second dancer's role presents interesting questions: Is he helping his mate? Or is he restraining him? And then, near Howard's conclusion, comes the mystery figure (Green) emerging with face obscured, head enveloped in a leafy bush strung with Christmas lights--a remarkable, if cryptic, image.

In a “reverential gesture to lost ancestral artistic dreams,” Hunter and Valentine seek to venerate the Black African bodies that were exiled from the urgency of care and shunned by their communities and government [during the HIV/AIDS pandemic].

Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr and Ricarrdo Valentine--the Black gay couple who are Brother(hood) Dance!--now have built how to survive a plague, a popular feature of Danspace’s Platform 2016: Lost & Found, into a work of enhanced, operatic proportions. Their aesthetics call for so much sensory engagement--and, yes, overload--you might expect the generous sights and sounds to be joined by offerings of food and libations. No such luck. But we did get to sample the aromatherapeutic artistry by Nicole Wilkins. I thought I caught a waft of something minty at one point, and then something else, pleasant enough but unidentifiable.

Ultimately, the sexy and ecstatic ritual of how to survive a plague is, I think, an invitation to take what we need by way of self-care. In that context, what works for one, in one moment, might not work for another, and many things will compete for your attention. You will find exuberant dance (with superb technique, always) overlapped with poetry and humor and glorious singing and visuals and kooky-fun costuming and booming voiceovers and, for a precious few, a chance to get up and shake your body. Trickster Eshu and Mother Kali share and dance this Carnaval, neither exactly shy and retiring types. I thank these deities--and more--for the audacity of Hunter and Valentine and look forward to whatever they bring us next.

Vocals: Starr Busby
Costume design: Shane Ballard
Lighting Design: Carol Mullins

Shared Evening: Brother(hood) Dance! & J'Sun Howard continues tonight and tomorrow at Danspace Project with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

SPECIAL NOTE:

Nicole Wilkins recommends arriving hydrated for the best possible experience [of the aromoatherapy]; water will also be available during the show. If you have any questions or concerns please call the Danspace Project office at (212) 674.8112.

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

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Antonio Ramos: For love of the body

L-r: Antonio Ramos, Darrin Wright and Alvaro Gonzalez
in Almodóvar Dystopia, premiering next month at Dixon Place
Below: l-r, Wright, Gonzalez, Luke Miller and Ramos
(photos: Peter Yesley)

When I read about Antonio Ramos and The Gangbangers planning a world-premiere Dixon Place commission described as "part Latinx-flavored 'asstravaganza,' part humorous celebration of queer culture, and part an outrageous political statement against the body-negative and repressed nature of the world we live in" and, btw, "the work is performed in the nude," I must admit I thought: 'Great. Queer. Check. POC. Check. Nude and body positive. Check and check. Dixon Place. But, of course." I envisioned the delightfully Tricksterish Ramos bringing coals to Newcastle or...whatever would be the appropriate metaphor in this case. The famously-inclusive, provocative Dixon Place is not exactly enemy territory for any of the communities or sensibilities Ramos represents.

The work's title, Almodóvar Dystopia, references Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar with whom Ramos feels creative kinship. Award-winning playwright/director/actor David Drake is onboard as dramaturg, and Ramos is joined in performance by Luke Miller, Darrin Wright, Alvaro Gonzalez Dupuy, Angie Pittman, Sarah White-Ayón and Awilda Rodriguez Lora--a diverse cast who "cull exaggerated personae from their personal backgrounds, exploring the challenges, anxieties, and neuroses entailed in the process of dance-making."

I asked Ramos, the self-identified "Queer-Puerto-Rican-Cha-Cha-Heels-Shaman," to share more about the mission and vulnerability behind the new work and how he hopes to relate to his audiences. Here are some excerpts from his remarks.

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I wish an audience that is not used to seeing this kind of work would come to see it. I really want people to understand the importance of body respect and that, in my work, all bodies are beautiful. Right now, in society, there’s this whole thing about how the body should look and how the body should be. That’s affecting us on so many levels, even in the queer community. We call each other names, and I have a problem with that.

I’m actually doing a lot of work on genitals in Almodóvar Dystopia, about how society views genitals as disgusting, taboo, that we constantly have to cover them. It’s an issue I deal with myself: why, if we are made beautiful, we have to cover, and we treat people like they are perverts. To me, that’s the perversity–finding the nude body disgusting and sinful.

It has also been hard for me to find dancers who have that sense of freedom and to deal with photographers who have strict limits on what they can show in their photographs. They don’t have to be rude about it, though. If you’re a photographer, you should find a way to work with the nudity. Their discomfort can be funny, but it’s also offensive to me. Again, it’s the issue of how we deal with genitals in this country. For me, the body is sacred. This is the real thing. We’re real people who sweat. We’re real people who shit and fart.

I am grateful for my dancers' courage, for being vulnerable and naked with me, and for believing in the work.

When you look at Almodóvar’s work, I think he’s always been interested in Hollywood and how to copy Hollywood. I’m not interested in that. I’m more interested in his process and how that process of creating is very similar to mine. It’s almost like the meta of the meta of the meta. Kind of doing a play that is being recorded or making a film of and, at the same time, you see the inside of the film, and you see the actors showing you the process of making the film. I do that a lot--show you how the work is done. I have a collage of images--things happening right now, things happening to me, things happening in the world, in Latin America. I’m excited to work with David Drake as my dramaturg. He has been really great.

I’m using elements I haven’t used before, like green screen and livestream. My video designer Alex Romania has helped me with that. Live music. I wanted to make it like you’re in the studio making a film, making a dance and trying to make sense of this mess we live in.

I feel like I have to get my voice out there, and this is my practice to deal with how we are treating one another.

In terms of shamanism, it is my spiritual practice, and I’m trying to do it within my dance. It is my way of living, my way of breaking through. It’s not a dogma, not a religion, not a rule, but more things that come through nature. I feel related to that. A lot of the source material comes from my journey, connecting with nature. Some of this is connected to my mother’s illness and death.

I’ve always been interested in herbalism. I’m a massage therapist. I like energy work. I’m very involved with all that. This sustains the work and my practice as a shaman, as a healer. And I go in nature, I get undressed, and I do my little video in the sea, in the mountains. And somehow that material gets filtrated into the dance, and the dancers learn from these improvisations. The process keeps changing, but the process also keeps creating and setting things from that process.

I don't want to give too much away about the piece, but I always have food in my pieces, and it's a symbol of unity and family, getting people together--the warmth of the food, the sweetness of it. It's part of my Latin culture.

In Almodóvar Dystopia, it's a gift to the audience. I'm grateful to the audience for taking this journey with me. Regardless if you see me as dirty, nasty, queer, perverse, there's always the sweetness. 

I hope people laugh and have fun!

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Antonio Ramos is a dancer, choreographer, and licenced massage therapist / Feldenkrais practitioner from Puerto Rico whose recent work has been presented at American Realness, The Center for Performance Research, JACK, and Museo del Barrio. He is currently a resident artist at Gibney Dance and Danspace Project. Ramos is the artistic director and choreographer for Antonio Ramos & the Gangbangers. As a performer, Antonio has danced with choreographers Mark Dendy, Neil Greenberg, Jeremy Nelson, Stephen Petronio, Merian Soto, Kevin Wynn, Ori Flomin, Donna Uchizono and Larissa Velez-Jackson/YACKEZ, among others.

 The Gangbangers find inspiration in pop music, queer identities,  shiny objects, all forms of dance, and the fabulous way a wig can enhance how one presents themselves to others.

Catch Almodóvar Dystopia at Dixon Place on Fridays and Saturdays, September 15-30 at 7:30pm. For information and ticketing, click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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ART MATTERS NOW

ART MATTERS NOW

Since word first leaked that Donald J. Trump wants to gut the National Endowments of the Arts and the Humanities, along with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, many commentators have focused on the economic impact of the arts on communities, cities and the nation as a whole. Statistics argue for the arts as a contributor to American prosperity. The arts give far more than what they take in government support. The arts, we repeatedly hear, drive economic development and employment on the local level and represent this nation before the world as one dedicated to innovation and excellence.

As a writer, and one devoted to the arts, I’m grateful for any persuasive advocacy. However, with so much energy invested in painting the arts’ material benefits--linking their worth to monetary usefulness and relative low maintenance--we tend to ignore the full extent of good that the arts provide any society. These benefits happen to be desperately needed right now as we face the ascendancy of Trump and his nationalist, white supremacist regime.

The Arts as Story

The arts seek ways--ever new and as ancient as humanity itself--to articulate and preserve the story of individual lives as well as diverse communities, cultures and nations. They remind us where we’ve come from, who we are, what we most value, what we have built, to what stars we aspire. For each of us and for all of us, they give abundant sustenance for the Hero’s Journey.

The Arts as Guide

The arts inform how we choose to live our lives, how we relate to our inner selves as well as to the world around us, how we engage with hard problems and join our many individual talents to solve them. They show us where we slipped up in the past so that we need not repeat these errors or, if we do, we can recognize them as such and choose differently next time. They stimulate our intuition and creative potential. They give us ideals to reach for, consolation when we fall short and energy to try again and again and again.

The Arts as Healer

The arts have consistently demonstrated outstanding power to heal--in body, mind, heart and soul--those who study and work through them as well as those who witness and receive them. In a nation with historic unhealed trauma, unacknowledged anger and deep, deep layers of denial, the arts offer ways to surface and express pain, to empathize and align others who suffer, to gather what each and all of us will need to cleanse our wounds and grow strong in the broken places.

The Arts as Change

The arts have the ability, if willed and well utilized, to speak truth to power. They are rousing instigators that can help us question and dismantle rather than accept injustice. Through their example, we see our situation more clearly as they capture reality in mirrors that may be playful and surprising, personally life-changing and revolutionary on a grander scale. They serve the creation of the world we desire.

The Arts as Joy

The arts bring joy by radically dispersing the hateful lies and shame thrown upon individuals and whole communities of people. They awaken a healthy sense of roots, of awe, of agency and the capacity for freedom and pleasure. They restore us to our true selves.

Of course, all of these sacred roles speak to the reason the arts have long been undervalued, even held suspect, in a society caught up in mass commercialism, escapism, fear of the Other and conservative fear of creativity itself. A minority of the US electorate has now empowered an insecure, vindictive man threatened and enraged not only by a free, newly revitalized press but by artists who dare criticize his policies and refuse to normalize his election and its aftermath.

There has never been a more crucial time for our people to affirm and activate the arts--and support artists engaged with the ancient and evergreen roles of Storyteller, Guide, Healer and Agent of Change and Joy. There’s more at stake than jobs and the tourist dollar. There’s a nation’s soul to be rescued.

(photo: D. Feller)

Eva Yaa Asantewaa
InfiniteBody

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Re-membering Black lives with Taja Lindley

This Ain’t A Eulogy: A Ritual for Re-Membering (9:58) is a stunning film by Brooklyn-based visual and performance artist Taja Lindley, based on her solo healing performance ritual This Ain't A Eulogy (premiere: La MaMa's SQUIRTS, 2015). Co-directed with and edited by Ellen Maynard, the film was premiered on February 16 at the 5th Annual Black Artstory Month (Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership).

The film draws "parallels between discarded materials and the violent treatment of Black people in the United States," Lindley writes. "People in the African Diaspora have a long history of repurposing, remixing, and transforming oppressive systems into valuable cultural practices." Through the surreal, eye-catching artistry of her film, Lindley invites the viewer to "imagine how we can recycle the energy of protest, rage, and grief into creating a world where, indeed, Black Lives Matter."

Taja Lindley

Taja Lindley is a writer and artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She is the founder and Managing Member of Colored Girls Hustle, and a member of Echoing Ida and Harriet's Apothecary. Lindley considers herself a healer and an activist, creating socially engaged work that reflects and transforms audiences, shifts culture and moves people to action. She uses movement, text, installation, props, ritual, burlesque, and multi-media to create performances that are concerned with freedom, healing and pleasure. She is currently developing a body of work recycling and repurposing discarded materials. Her artwork has been featured at the Movement Research at Judson Church series, Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), the Gallatin Arts Festival at New York University, WOW Café Theater, La Mama Theater, in living rooms, classrooms, conferences and public spaces. In 2014 she was a Create Change Fellow with the Laundromat Project and a participant in EMERGENYC, an artist activist program of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at New York University. In 2015 she was a Fall space grantee at BAX. This summer (May-August 2017) she is an Artist in Residence at Dixon Place. Her writing has appeared in Rewire, EBONY, Feministe, Yes! Magazine and Salon. www.TajaLindley.com

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Dance artist Jessica Chen lights a candle

Jessica Chen
(photo: Vanessa Gonzalez-Bunster)

In 2013, I interviewed dancer-choreographer Jessica Chen (J Chen Project) a little over a year since a near-fatal car accident left her with injuries so severe that she needed surgery and spent two weeks in a medically-induced coma. (Read Unbreakable Spirit: dancer Jessica Chen--here). Towards the end of that Q&A, I asked Chen, "What is the absolutely most important thing that people should know about you?" She told me, "I am a fighter, and I am a rebel." She said the hospital had to strap her down and place an alarm on her bed because she'd once tried to leave. That's the artist you see today in her suite of dances, Never Was Broken: a dance through life and death and life, running now at Ailey Citigroup Theater.

Jessica Chen
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Chen combines this toughness with a sense of spirituality and gratitude infusing every aspect of her program. The evening begins with a "pre-show invocation installation" on a stage strewn with votive candles and lissome, swirly dancers as, over an instrumental track from Sade, vocalist Enrico Rodriguez sings of the desire to "focus my energies to heal my body/fill my mind with beautiful images and sounds." In this song, forgiveness is called "the healer of hearts." Dances that follow bear titles like Let Us Pray, No (evil), Leap of Faith and Amen--this last one set to a reading of The Lord's Prayer. Program notes express Chen's articles of faith on art and life itself. At no point, though, does any of this seem overly pious or overbearing. It's a sharing she handles with grace, and the gutsiness of her choreographic voice helps to balance things out.

Under Alan Edwards's dramatic chiaroscuro lighting, Chen's movement ideas flow and ebb and flow again with the wild force and sinuosity of ocean waves. Dancers, when connecting with others, resemble nerves firing impulses and influence across synapses. These abstract interactions, always searching and inventive, suggest an entire system illustrated across the stage--one brain, one body--healthfully proceeding with its work. In Chen, I recognize a desire for beauty--her version of tikkun olam, to make connections and make sense of the world through movement.

The most eye-opening work on this program, though, travels a dark space. It's Training the Devil, a piece Chen co-choreographed with Chien-Hao Chang. The piece explores the volatile nature of a relationship between lovers apparently equal in strength and bullheadedness. Chen makes a fascinating match with her partner and mirror Sandy Shelton, a whirlwind. Even without knowledge of Chen's backstory, one would be impressed with the confidence and tenacity of this artist in body, mind and spirit.

Performers: Jessica Aronoff, Flannery Houston, Sandy Shelton, Rafael Sanchez, Yasmin Schoenmann and Cole Mills with vocalist Enrico Rodriguez

Guest choreographers: Norbert de la Cruz III, Nicole Smith and Chien-Hao Chang

Never Was Broken concludes this evening with a performance at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Ailey Citigroup Theater
405 West 55th Street (at 9th Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Interview with Korean dancer-shaman Hi-ah Park

At the initiation ceremony, the minyong was placed leading onto the upstage portion of the house as a bridge between the heaven and the earth. To test my psychic ability and to determine if I could identify the deities who had descended on me, my Godmother and her assistant shaman, who serves as a messenger, sat at the end of the minyong, in a sense ending in heaven. A straw mat was placed downstage. Each question asked by the head shaman was repeated by her assistant. Instead of answering the questions directly, I began dancing. Then, kneeling down on the straw mat, I answered the questions orally. The dance seemed to heighten the trance state so that my answer came without thinking as if I know everything already.

The first question was, “If you become a shaman, through which gate will you enter?”

I started singing in an occult nature, previously unknown to me. Again I danced until possessed and knelt down to wait for the next question.

--Hi-ah Park as interviewed by Lauren W. Deutsch

Read more at:

Meeting With Sanshin:
An Interview with Hiah Park, Lover of the Mountain God
by Lauren W. Deutsch, Kyoto Journal, 1993

Dance-activists rise up for justice and healing

I really believe when people change, then the system will change.

--dance artist Lela Aisha Jones

Listen to Community Organizing, Self and Community Care, Activism & the Arts, a podcast from Moving Spirits of Color on BlogTalk Radio.

with guests Lela Aisha Jones and A. Nia Austin-Edwards discussing the significant role of the arts in racial justice activism and healing.

Click here to listen.

Maria Bauman says: Come together to grieve and breathe.

photo by Whitney Browne
graphic design by Ashley Phillips

Dance artist, educator and activist Maria Bauman has created an event to support us in self- and community-care as we struggle in the movement for a just society. Please join us on the afternoon of December 31, 1-4pm, for Grieve & Breathe (followed by Solidarity Write-in) at Downtown Art. This is a free event. 

Bauman writes:

Just as pressuring our systems and institutions is key, our self-care and community-care must be part of this movement for justice and liberation. MBDance is offering an afternoon self- and community-care on December 31: 

1:00-2:00 MBDance starts the afternoon with a community-care circle of venting and discussion. The collective stress of navigating oppression and of holding grief creates high levels of cortisol in our bodies and can have us act out in ways that are unhealthy for ourselves and for our communities. We will take dedicated time to talk through our anger, sadness, action, and inaction around the two non-indictments and their larger context. A social worker who has a race analysis will be present to offer resources to anyone who feels he/she/they needs more than the community circle may be able to offer that day.

2:00-3:00 Then we will relieve tension, safely ease and lengthen our muscles, release stashed energy in the body, and take in the caring energy of the group through Partner Stretch & Tension Release. This is free of charge, all gender-inclusive, gender presentation-inclusive, age-inclusive, and body positive; people of all body types and levels of experience are welcome.

3:00-4:00 Afterward, we focus on community care by writing letters of condolence, support, and solidarity to Eric Garner's family: Mrs. Esaw Garner, five children, and three grandchildren. We have been in touch with Emerald Garner, one of the (adult) children; she has provided a mailing address for this purpose and the family welcomes this communication. Families can bring children to this last hour of the afternoon, as well. Crayons and paper will be provided in case children want to draw pictures to send to the Garner family, and MBDance will also provide letter-writing materials including addressed envelopes and stamps.

For updates and further information on Grieve & Breathe (followed by Solidarity Write-In), visit the event page on Facebook. Click here.

Downtown Art
61 East 4th Street (between 2nd Avenue and Bowery), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Esoterico Collective open house supports social justice

A number of my good friends and Tarot students from the arts community are involved in this effort to support the new anti-racism movement for social justice. Please read the following notice, and give your consideration to joining this timely effort.

Thanks!

Eva

*****

Esoterico Collective Open House

Saturday, December 20, 1-5pm

Esoterico Collective

67 West Street (4th Floor, Suite 402), Brooklyn

(map/directions)

Book your session: 

http://esotericobrooklyn.setmore.com/

The Esoterico Collective stands in solidarity with the families of Eric Garner, Akai Gurley, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Duanna Johnson, Mike Brown, Rekia Boyd, Tamir Rice and too many others whose lives have been cut short and impacted by police brutality. This open house event will take place on the Saturday just before the Winter Solstice, raising much needed monetary support for organizations doing work around issues of anti-Black racism and anti-police repression.

We will be offering our services as healers and intuitive counselors to all who seek it out. We are asking for donations of $25 and up for each 20 minute session. The services we will provide include Tarot, Reiki, Ayurvedic Consultation and I Ching readings (other modalities TBA). 100% of proceeds from those who book in advance (prior to December 18th) will be donated to Healing Justice For Black Lives Matter (https://www.facebook.com/events/728881563862374) and Equality for Flatbush : E4F

Book a session with iele paloumpis, Bobby Abate, Jasmine Spacher, Regina Rocke or Robyn Olds (other member offerings TBA) @http://esotericobrooklyn.setmore.com/ 

You will receive an email with information on how to donate to the causes above.

Generally speaking our open houses are intended to help Esoterico keep its doors open, so we will be accepting separate donations for the space on December 20th as well.

There are many ways to contribute to this movement - healing justice, self and community care are all vital components toward movement building. Our services will be free to organizers who need to take time to self reflect so that their work can sustainably continue, contact esotericobrooklyn@gmail.com. Our intention is to help create more space for healing to happen.

We are sending energy to the protesters out in the streets and activists organizing against state violence, moving us toward racial justice and all forms of social change. We hope that you will add your energy and voices in whatever ways you can. We hope we can support you on your path toward self reflection and healing in this time when community care is so needed.

Chris Berry and Maija Garcia's "Legend of Yauna"

Chris Berry,
writer/composer, The Legend of Yauna
(photo by Jamie Soja)

Maija Garcia, 

director/choreographer, The Legend of Yauna 

(photo courtesy of the artist)

The Legend of Yauna, which ran for two nights this weekend at BAM Fisher, is a sprawling work of storytelling through theater, dance, music and visual art. Its collaborators--Grammy-winning world music artist Chris Berry and director/choreographer Maija Garcia, best known for her work with Bill T. Jones's FELA! on Broadway--aim to teach the kind of curiosity and unstoppable courage people need in order to heal their lives and communities. It's a noble mission that I wish I could fully support. Unfortunately, the work is undermined by uneven casting and overall quality as well as issues of cultural appropriation.

Produced by Berry's Banakuma organization, this work draws from the musician's attraction to an eclectic range of philosophies, symbols and ritual practices, primarily his experience of the ways of the Shona of Zimbabwe. A white American born in California, the musician believes that a vision and subsequent synchronicities led him to discover a profound spiritual connection to the mbira (thumb piano) and drums of southern Africa. Inspired by his exploration, he has devised an intricate metaphysical system related to the four elements of Air, Water, Fire and Earth. (Watch Berry's tutorial on Vimeo. See also World music artist Chris Berry goes digital, Quibian Salazar-Moreno, Boulder Weekly.)

Visualizing Chris Berry's Black Panther Queen (above)
and hero Yauna (below)
(artwork by Leif Wold)

Leif Wold's fantasy-style illustrations of Berry's mythic characters add visual gravitas and charm to Legend's production, but their intricate collaging of symbols from African, Hindu, Northwest indigenous and perhaps other traditions too strongly evokes a New Agey cherry-picking tendency. Everything--from traditional stories to ritual dance styles--gets tossed into Berry and Garcia's post-racial, colorblind blender. The appearance of Zap Mama herself--vocalist Marie Daulne portraying the Black Panther Queen dressed in Catwoman-style getup--is a missed opportunity. Daulne's much-heralded participation is what made me take a chance on Legend, but Daulne appears for one song (with poor sound quality) and a quick dispatch up a flight of stairs past the audience and out of sight.

Legend is a classic Hero's Journey, where the hero's disobedience to his wife ("Don't open the forbidden door!") leads to loss, disorientation, failure, tragedy and...well, you know. At two hours, including an intermission, it could stand judicious trimming, and elements of its staging--especially its frequent use of balcony scenes that are hard to see or properly hear--can be awkward and frustrating. But the live music often has warmth and, among the many cast members, Benjamin Sands (Yauna), Oscar Trujillo (Great White Eagle), Laurie M. Taylor (Sula and Gurthusula) and Naoko Arimura (Sah-i-Sah) bring distinction to their performances.

Trio of poets to present "The Poetry of Survival" at CUNY

On Wednesday, November 20, poets Antoinette Bennett, Vaseah Dupree and Melinda Goodman will present the first in a series of mixed-media theater programs dedicated to survivors of physical, mental and psychic violence and for those who are close to them or care for them. This event is free (with RSVP) and open to the public.

The Poetry of Survival

November 20 (7pm–9pm)

Segal Theatre

The Graduate Center, CUNY

Depression, anger, shame, and hatred are some of the issues that many survivors have to deal with on a daily basis. It takes hard work not to be consumed with fear, flashbacks, and ingrained patterns of self-destruction. Additionally, some of us struggle with HIV, AIDS, addiction, and other physical and mental illnesses while trying to support ourselves and our dependents on very limited economic resources.

Ultimately, it’s not enough to just "survive" our childhoods. In fact, in order to really survive we need to thrive. Thriving means finding the flame inside ourselves and each other that makes us glad to be alive. The combined story of survival that these poets are bringing to the table is an inspiring celebration of life through written and spoken word in a multi-media theater presentation.

Writer Bios

Antoinette Bennett is a writer, artist, cancer survivor and PWA whose work is informed by the depth of her spiritual foundation. As a survivor of incest and the child pornography industry, Antoinette’s long journey has involved many years of crack addiction during which she lived in the tunnels of New York City and gave birth to eleven children. She has been a featured speaker at numerous conferences throughout the country and she is only three credits short of her MFA from The School of Visual Arts.

Vaseah Dupree is a spoken word artist and creative writer who grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn during the height of the drug wars and the AIDS/HIV epidemic. She is a survivor of Urban America, sexual, physical, verbal and domestic abuse. While struggling to cope with the affects of the environment in which she grew up, Vaseah received her Associates Degree from BMCC and she plans on continuing her education.

Melinda Goodman is a poet, writer, and producer who has taught at Hunter College since 1987. She is a recipient of awards and/or fellowships from the Astraea Foundation, Columbia University, and New York Foundation on the Arts.

For your FREE ticket, please RSVP here.

For information, click here

or on The Poetry of Survival's Facebook event page here.

Segal Theatre

The Graduate Center, CUNY

365 Fifth Avenue (between 34th and 35th Streets), Manhattan

(map/directions)