Eliza Bent gets personal on race and cultural appropriation

Eliza Bent
(photo: Knud Adams)

It's far worse than you might think.

No, that's not my review of Aloha, Aloha, or When I Was Queen, the new monologue written and performed by Eliza Bent, now at Abrons Arts Center. But that's what I believe Bent wants viewers to grasp.

The piece jumps off from the playwright's memories of a film on the 19th Century queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii's last monarch--a school project Bent cooked up at age 13 with a friend and classmate. The young auteur cast her white affluent self as the indigenous queen and now looks back on it--as we get to do; the film is both cringe-worthy and just ridiculously audacious enough to kind of work, ya know?--with no small amount of shame. I can't gauge how completely woke today's Bent is but, as things unfold, you will definitely see she's got her eyes propped open.

She might have forgiven her teenaged self (and begged our forgiveness) for youthful indiscretion. But she does not stop there.

Surrounded, inexplicably but beautifully, by Elizabeth Chabot's rich, thick textile art and a row of fetching portraits--Bent resembles some combination of high-class talk show host and star monologist. Wearing a buttoned-up little black dress with A-line cut, she talks nonstop with well-practiced intensity that pegs her as facile, artificial, privileged, ready for PBS or an NPR podcast.

Frankly, even when self-revealing, she's off-putting. You take note when she utters something amusing. You note that amusement and yet stand clear of enjoying it. You definitely stand away from Bent, and maybe she means you to do so, because her delivery of text is noticeably, oddly driven, airless, leaving no room for her breathing or your own.

At some point, you get used to that. Which might mean an unseen internal change within her or--and this is really what it felt like--something shifting inside you, like when a climber gets more and more acclimated to lower levels of oxygen.

Maybe, though, Bent's the sort best positioned to lead us where we need to go and show us what we need to see--what she's done and what she's witnessed, particularly in the world of media and the arts. (In addition to her stage work, she served, for several years, as a senior editor at American Theatre magazine.) Deep into the play, she circles back to her own relationships and disconnections--refusing to absolve herself for what remains unresolved, tasking herself and the rest of us with acknowledging the pervasive breadth and durability of privilege and the damage wrought. Not a curious fossil from the ancestral past. Not a specimen of a problem that has not a thing on Earth to do with us now.

Direction: Knud Adams
Textile panel art: Elizabeth Chabot
Sound design/original composition: Jerome Ellis
Lighting: Kate McGee
Make up and styling: Naomi Miyoko Raddatz

Aloha, Aloha, or When I Was Queen continues through April 21. For information and tickets, click here.

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

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American Realness: "We Wait In The Darkness" by Rosy Simas

Rosy Simas in her solo We Wait In The Darkness
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Rosy Simas Danse
We Wait In The Darkness (New York premiere)
co-presented by Abrons Arts Center and Gibney Dance for
American Realness 2018 at Abrons Arts Center

Recent scientific study verifies what many Native people have always known, that traumatic events in our ancestors lives are in our bodies, blood and bones. These events leave molecular scars adhering to our DNA. Our grandmother’s tragic childhood can trigger depression or anxiety in us, but we have the ability to heal these DNA encodings and change that trait for future generations.

--Rosy Simas 

For people of the Black African diaspora, too, these words from Minneapolis-based dance artist Rosy Simas (Seneca, Heron Clan) ring true, and I must begin with gratitude to Simas for work that illustrates the body as truth-teller and healer. We, too, are a people nurtured by connection to ancestors with tragic histories in this hemisphere, and many of us express reverence for ancestral heritage through powerful spiritual and artistic practices that are, in their way, forms of anti-colonial resistance and justice-making.

Simas's 50-minute solo, We Wait In The Darkness--with its soundscape by composer François Richomme--uses visual, textual, kinetic and sonic mediums to affirm and reclaim the strength of ancestry and environment. By employing this sensory overlapping and overload, viewers grasp what it must be like to uncover the memories one's body holds--some sweet, some painful, some subtle or slow to emerge, some earthshaking--and to tap its wisdom.

Over one end of the stage hangs Simas's long, white paper model of a DNA strand. Towards the center back a white, puff-sleeved dress with a long, old-fashioned dirndl skirt dangles. Along stage left, Simas has suspended a series of white paper panels textured like fine quilts. Panels also capture film imagery, often hazy, glimmering and ethereal, that allude to place--and sometimes people--without specific identification for the benefit of those outside Seneca culture. This poetically elusive quality renders the work as ritual rather than documentary, gives it a spaciousness rather than containing it as the story of a particular individual--although we do hear a voiceover of actual letters of Simas's grandmother, as read by her mother, and we also hear words in the Seneca language gruffly whispered as Simas dances. So, precious, protected mystery exists but also a certain porosity and generosity to help all of us begin to understand the possibility and path of healing.

Theater of both the vivid and the indistinct, then. As Simas sits with her naked back to the audience--spine and arms deeply flexing, stretching and reaching, snaking and twisting--I recall my first realization, when I practiced energy healing, that the back shares more information, without a person's conscious intervention and manipulation, than the front of the body. Throughout the dance, even when she finally dons that white dress, Simas shows us a body of focused, determined will, sure of itself, sure of its mission, sure of the ultimate fulfillment of that mission. We come to understand the evocative sound and visual imagery--drawn from earth and waterways of Seneca land--as its sacred source. And we also contemplate what it meant, for indigenous people, to be literally torn from that grounding, nourishing source. Her body speaks as it moves, and it is saying: I will this. I call this back. The spirits of the land respond in Richomme's mesmerizing, commanding weave of sound.

Near the end of the piece, projections of schematic diagrams suggest maps with numbered sections, a landscape reduced to arbitrary parts for some entity's benefit. Again, nothing is identified, verbally or visually, yet the implications are clear. An environment we just experienced so powerfully in sight and sound, now lies butchered. Simas brings out a sheet of white paper marked with this diagram, solemnly ripping each section from its matrix and placing each strip in a carefully-chosen position along the edge of the floor. She also rips away more of these sections before descending into the audience and gifting them to several of us.

I received number 12. Although I have no idea what territory--real or metaphoric--that it might represent, I will preserve and treasure it.

Letter reader: Laura Waterman Wittstock (Simas’s mother)
Letters: Clarinda Waterman (Simas’s grandmother)
Lighting design: Karin Olson and Carolyn Wong
Set and film design: Rosy Simas

Closed. American Realness 2018 concludes this evening. For further information, click here.

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Native feminist troupe Spiderwoman is 40! Party!!!

Spiderwoman Theater's Gloria Miguel (Kuna/Rappahannock)
with daughter Monique Mojica
(photo: Nicky Paraiso)

Spiderwoman's Muriel Miguel (Kuna/Rappahannock) at left
with Oneida-Oswegan songwriter Lacey Hill
who performed at the celebration.
(photo: Star Black)

LU! LU! LU! LU! 

An Evening Celebrating Spiderwoman Theater’s 40 Years

On Tuesday evening, La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre hosted a warm, down-to-earth gathering of family, friends, colleagues and fans of Spiderwoman Theater in tribute to the renowned troupe's 40-year milestone. Founded by three intrepid sisters of Kuna and Rappahannock lineage--Gloria Miguel, Muriel Miguel and the late Lisa Mayo--Spiderwoman is fundamental to the development of New York's avantgarde and feminist theater movements. With forthright, woke politics of resistance and bawdy, boisterous humor, the Spiderwomen have long been revered role models for generations of artists on the downtown scene like Taylor Mac, Peggy Shaw, Lois Weaver, Alessandra Belloni and Carmelita Tropicana who participated in the celebration and benefit.

The fun evening was capped by a dance party presided over by First Nations electronic group A Tribe Called Red.

Musicians Ian Campeau, Tim 2oolman and Bear Witness of
A Tribe Called Red working the after-party
(photo: Star Black)

SiverCloud Singers
(photo: Star Black)

On screen, Spiderwoman's Lisa Mayo (1924-2013)
remembered at La MaMa
(photo: Star Black)

Laura Ortman of the all-Native Coast Orchestra
and Brooklyn's Stars and Fleas
(photo: Star Black)

Above: choreographer Elizabeth Streb
with Carey Lovelace (Loose Change Productions),
co-producer of the Spiderwoman benefit
Below: Zach Morris and Tom Pearson, co-artistic directors of
award-winning Third Rail Projects theater troupe
(photos: Star Black)

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"Native American Realness": Address/redress cultural appropriation

Rosy Simas and Christopher K. Morgan
(photos: Tim Rummelhoff and Brianne Bland)

On Saturday, January 7, American Realness 2017 presented a conversation featuring Native American choreographers Rosy Simas (Seneca) and Christopher K. Morgan (Native Hawaiian) with Sara Nash, Program Director, New England Foundation for the Arts at Brooklyn's ISSUE Project Room.

The afternoon session was organized by American Realness in response to concerns first raised in mid-December by Simas about the APAP-related festival's planned programming of a solo performance by Latifa Laâbissi, a French national of Moroccan lineage. (See Rosy Simas Reads Laâbissi’s "Self Portrait Camouflage", InfiniteBody, December 13, 2016.)  Sima's complaint and subsequent conversations with American Realness founder, curator and producer Thomas Benjamin Snapp Pryor led to an apology statement from Pryor, who had programmed the Laâbissi show in collaboration with MoMA PS1 associate curator--now Executive Artistic Director of Performance Space 122--Jenny Schlenka. Although Pryor quickly withdrew his organization's co-sponsorship of the Laâbissi event, MoMA PS1 kept the show on its APAP schedule. In the meantime, Simas and Laâbissi had an extensive conversation about the issue. 

The Native American Realness forum was convened on Saturday:

"to discuss the state of Native American performance work across the US and the epidemic of institutional negligence, insensitivity and attempted erasure of and towards Native American / Indigenous / First Nations’ values, histories and contributions to contemporary artistic practice. This conversation seeks to investigate how our dominant culture’s historical insensitivity aids in forms of cultural appropriation, Redface, and racism in artistic practice, spectatorship and presenting. Does Redface sell? Is curating Native artists seen as risky, unsellable, or uninteresting, or does this speak to institutional and societal ignorance?"

Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr.--co-founder, with Ricarrdo Valentine, of Brotherhood Dance!--attended this session and contributes a report.

Native American Realness

by guest contributor

Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr.

Native American Realness was nothing short of a resistance that's been happening for over 500 hundred years. Artist Rosy Simas from Minneapolis initially sparked what's part of a larger fire as it relates to indigenous performance, life and well-being. Simas challenged the annual American Realness festival to reexamine why it would present Latifa Laâbissi's Self Portrait Camouflage, a Red Face performance, an appropriation by an artist who may or may not have done the research on indigenous performance.

Laâbissi was not there to defend her work and dialogue with Simas. Should she have been?

The conversation opened with each person stating their names and if they belonged to any indigenous nation--a traditional way of opening the space and filling it with ourselves and our ancestors. The first questions posed for the room were loaded yet poignant: What is "Red Face" and why is it problematic? Why is it programmed? We further questioned: Why does Red Face programming get funded in the United States while Native American artists do not? Boundaries were set so that Indigenous people in the room would speak first.

It should be noted that not every cultural institution would have the integrity to share their failure so publicly and be willing to host the provocateur and many others who stand in solidarity. And they did this only a month after the controversy arose. Response plus action.

Red Face is a racialized representation of Native American people similar to Black Face in America. Red Face is the impersonation of Native American people by white people of European descent, though not exclusively. People of color can also objectify their own cultures as well as others. Educational structures and cultural production sectors use this and other similar mechanisms to control the image of Native Americans. These efforts continue to write Native Americans out of their own stories, never affording space or access to funding for Native Americans to write their truths.

As the conversation progressed, further challenges emerged around intention and the research process. Who is authentic? For bodies of color, entering European performance spaces is a radical act in and of itself.

Participants questioned how context can be provided for the audience. Should it even be provided? When it comes to esthetics, what is disruptive? If the standard is European esthetics, then we must question who is radical. Someone mentioned a recent performance by Will Rawls that was sourced in Balkan dance traditions. What does "radical" mean for different cultures? In the words of Rosy Simas, "If an artist says it's radical, shouldn't we believe them?" Contextualizing performance is left up to the artist who must negotiate how much they want to let the audience in on their intended communication.

As the ninety-minute conversation ended, everyone realized that this was only a beginning to the work of excavating the dissociative culture we live in and its reluctance to process the trauma suffered by indigenous cultures. How do we heal?

Native American Realness was an opportunity for cultural workers and community members to have open dialogue about the misrepresentation and appropriation of Native culture and performance. This conversation was an example of how cultural production platforms and artists can work together to incite change, offering healing resistance with rigorous dialogue and harmonious creative space.

Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr.
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Orlando Zane Hunter Jr. is a choreographer and dancer who researches, illustrates and creates from an African-American male perspective. In his work, he tackles issues resulting from a capitalistic imperialist patriarchal white supremacist system. Hunter grew up dancing hip-hop and graduated with a BFA in Dance from University of Minnesota, where he performed works by Donald Byrd, Bill T. Jones, Carl Flink, Louis Falco, Colleen Thomas, Uri Sands, Stephen Petronio and Nora Chipaumire. His solo Mutiny was selected to represent the University of Minnesota at the 2011 ACDFA gala in Madison, Wisconsin. Orlando studied LGBT activism and history in Amsterdam and Berlin. He has performed with Christal Brown/INspirit Dance Company, Contempo Physical Dance, Forces of Nature, Makeda Thomas, Threads Dance Project, TU Dance and Ananya Dance Theater, an all-women’s company where he was the first male member and toured with them to Trinidad & Tobago and Zimbabwe. Hunter is a co-founder of the collective Brother(hood) Dance!

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Upcoming US premieres for Carlos Saura's "Argentina"

Fans of Spanish director Carlos Saura's series of flamenco-related films should also enjoy Argentina (2015), a soulful love note to the music and dance of that nation. Shot in Buenos Aires, the sensuous documentary bears family resemblance to Saura's Flamenco Flamenco (2010) in its minimalistic yet dramatic setting, chiarascuro lighting and sunset coloration, intriguingly voyeuristic camera work, close-ups of expressive, lived-in faces and diverse array of excellent performers.

The 85-minute film samples everything from indigenous folk music to extraordinary ballads with an existential or political edge. There are songs about friendship and generosity, songs about the pain we humans cause our earth. "The only thing more important than God," one lyric tells us, "is that no one should spit blood so that another can live better."

The dancing follows a similar mixture--regional social dances, carnival dancing, contemporary choreography. It's all Argentina.

I was moved by so much in this film but especially the photo montage honoring the late, great singer Mercedes Sosa--a progressive artist known as "the voice of the voiceless"--who Saura positions as inspiration to a classroom of youngsters charmingly attentive to her "Todo cambia" ("Everything Changes"). Everything, she tells us, will change--except for the love she holds for her land and its people.

Eighty-five minutes can only give us a taste but, in that short time, Saura does his best to help us understand what Sosa loved with all her heart.

See the trailer here, and the US premiere screenings at New York's Lincoln Plaza Cinema (June 17) and LA's Laemmle Royal (July 1), presented by First Run Features.

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Spiderwoman: "Material Witness" to violence against women

Gloria Miguel of Spiderwoman Theater
in Material Witness at La MaMa
(photo: courtesy Spiderwoman Theater)

I leave the door open for the spirits to walk about freely.

I welcome all the guardians to our space.

--Gloria Miguel in Material Witness

I never saw Spiderwoman Theater's original Women in Violence--the first production by this legendary Native American troupe, premiered in New York in 1976. But, last night at La MaMa, I got a good look at its rambunctious offspring, Material Witness, a piece designed to reach out to today's young women. It aims to remind them, and all of us, that physical, sexual and emotional abuse has not been eradicated from Native communities and that silence about it remains a deadly force.

Material Witness is directed by Spiderwoman co-founder Muriel Miguel, co-written by its six-woman cast with Miguel, and co-presented with Aanmitaagzi, an indigenous, interdisciplinary troupe from Nipissing First Nation, Ontario.

The 90-minute work bears all the hallmarks of Spiderwoman--communal, community-minded theater, story-based exposition, rollicking physical humor often reminiscent of vaudeville and slapstick comedy, and strong musical drive. The 1976 tune from AC/DC, "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"--its chorus cheekily woven into a narrative about deeds most dirty--meets up with Lady Gaga's "Til It Happens to You." But, of course. And its new generation--the radiantly charming and kickass Cherish Violet Blood, Penny Couchie (choreographer), Donna Couteau, Ange Loft and Tanis Parenteau--share the stage with veteran Spiderwoman Gloria Miguel who serves as witness to their struggles and stories, setting and holding the space for them, collaborating in their honesty and victories. The music is dance-club loud, Soni Moreno's costume and decor colors and combos are eye-popping, and the performers' energy rocks the house.

Let me issue a standard trigger warning:  Some stories related here can be uncomfortable for anyone, especially survivors of violence, to hear. But I must also leave you with this laughter trigger warning: Spiderwoman's commitment to humor as a disinfectant has not and will never quit.

Material Witness continues through May 29 with performances Thursday to Saturday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2pm. Panel discussions are scheduled following certain performances. For information and tickets, click here.

La MaMa

74A East 4th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenue), Manhattan

(map/directions)

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Gather here: Walking Minetta Creek trail with Emily Johnson

Gathering at the basketball court of Chelsea's PS 11
for the opening passages of
Emily Johnson's SHORE in Lenapehoking (NYC)
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Dance artist Emily Johnson with audience member
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

I view our bodies as EVERYTHING: our bodies are culture, history, present and future, all at once. Out of respect for and trust in our bodies and collective memories, I give equal weight to story and image, to movement and stillness, to what I imagine and to what I do not know.

-- Emily Johnson, Artist Statement

Emily Johnson (Emily Johnson/Catalyst), a Minneapolis-based dance artist born in South Central Alaska of Yup'ik descent, seeks to use her art and knowledge to reawaken people to their environment and to one another, to realize connections that offer meaning and dignity. Her mission springs from her own deep longing for the landscape of her native state and for its indigenous traditions.

She has taken up this healing work in a celebrated trilogy, including The Thank-You Bar, which won a 2012 Bessie, and Niicugni (2013). The trilogy concludes now with SHORE, originally presented in Minneapolis and now manifesting in our city as SHORE in Lenapehoking (NYC), a multifaceted ceremony spanning several days and venues, with multiple artistic and community partners. The project involves volunteer activities in the Rockaways and on Governors Island, storytelling and readings, bike rides and potluck feasts, and a silent procession to dance installation performances at New York Live Arts.*

All parts of SHORE engage with the larger world beyond theater space. According to Johnson, each bears equal importance. Certainly, total immersion in SHORE should offer not only the most complete understanding of the project but likely provide its intended benefits. Regrettably, I could only take part in last evening's event--a dance/vocal prelude and silent walk from the basketball court of Chelsea's PS 11 along a serpentine path, once the large Minetta Creek, to the New York Live Arts's theater for the rest of the performance. I'm glad I did at least this much.

A sliver of moon hung above the city, and a crow winged across 21st Street, quickly disappearing. Audience and performers gathered, greeting friends and colleagues in the sudden dramatic chill of this late April evening. Johnson provided heavy red blankets as wraps for several folks, and the rest of us made do with winter gear we thought we would have stored away by now.

Performers at PS 11 basketball court
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

A cluster of performers began an unhurried dispersal. Meanwhile, beyond the court's gate, other dancers took slow, intermittent strides along the sidewalk. Eventually, members of the inside group picked up their pace, even sprinting around us in a wide orbit. Through their movements, the ground seemed to come a little more alive, indeed provoking curiosity about who and what once coursed through this region.

Above and below: Emily Johnson at PS 11
(photos: Ian Douglas)

Johnson, her face sporting a band of red makeup across her eyes set with thick, jet-black false eyelashes, mounted a wooden stand to relate her dream of an eagle, a hawk and a baby. A dream that, in her impassioned telling, felt numinous and ecstatic and right for this stark weather. She then asked us to make our way to the theater, walking the creek trail together without talking.

We walked, guided by soothing, pulsing sounds from little portable speakers and human voices. We moved forward, united in purpose, as if part of an invisible watercourse, an invisible ceremony feeding through the busy, darkening Chelsea streets. We held no signs, wore no identifiable costumes. We could have been any stream of pedestrians making our way through traffic and street noise. In fact, outsiders unwittingly strode in and out of our procession. I'd like to think the sonic and kinetic energy reached them on a level just beneath everyday consciousness.

At New York Live Arts, SHORE performers
L-r: Krista Langberg, Emily Johnson and Aretha Aoki
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Johnson's stagecraft at New York Live Arts works boldly with the visual and kinetic energy. SHORE straddles a line between stark abstraction and subtle representation. Performers mass in large groups or lines that recall swaying, rustling trees or pound footfalls like earth tremors or recede like a damaged, vanishing habitat. Dancer Aretha Aoki makes no obvious bird-like moves, but the lash of her arms, jutting turns and impetuous attacks on air seem avian to me. Gasps, electronically amplified, connect human breath to the life force within all living beings. Pairs of dancers sometimes move right into each other's space, nose to nose, so close that they might breathe as one. Kettledrums blare out another potent voice of nature.

There is gracefulness and power, a sense of empty distances, quiet and loneliness as well as a certain homeyness and intimacy--the presence of houseplants at the edge of the space, sounds of a televised basketball game, the flicker of false eyelashes in the otherwise stillness of a hunched over body. Late in the performance, you might become aware that the theater's houselights have gotten a little brighter because, really, you're not just watching from over there, are you? You're part of the story and the song, too.

*****

The SHORE Choir: Margot Bassett, Pareena Lim, Jules Skloot, Erika Banks, K.J. Holmes, Emma Brown, Lisa Loew, Tatyana Tenenbaum, Peter Sciscioli, Michael Becker, Carime Santa-Coloma, Jack Gray

The Physical Choir: Marýa Wethers, Ben Weaver, Madeline Sayet, Koliane Rochon, Tara Willis, Erica Ricketts, Pavel Machuca, Mary Kate Sickle, Monica Gonzalez, Steph Lee, Maré Hieronimus, Erica Chen, Brooke Wheeler, Greer Dworman, Tyler Rai, Lariza Reyes, Gavino Limon

Concept, choreography and writing: Emily Johnson
Direction: Ain Gordon
Soundscore: James Everest and Nona Marie Invie with Fletcher Barnhill
Lighting: Heidi Eckwall
Costumes: Angie Vo
Scenic design: Johnson, Gordon, Everest, Ecwall

*****

REMINDER

It's going to be another cold night. If you're planning to see SHORE tonight, wear sufficiently warm clothing for standing around at the school and walking to the theater.

Do not arrive at New York Live Arts. Performances--tonight and tomorrow at 7:30pm--begin in the basketball court of PS 11: The William T. Harris School at 320 West 21st Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues), Manhattan.

GET TICKETS HERE

*Additional SHORE events this Sunday

SHORE: FEAST Group Bike Ride*

Sunday, April 26 at 12:30pm
Red Lantern Bicycles, 345 Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn

Bicycling songwriter, poet, and SHORE cast member Ben Weaver, will lead a group bike ride starting at Red Lantern Bicycles in Brooklyn and ending 6 miles later at the North Brooklyn Boat Club where SHORE: FEAST will take place.

*Riders are responsible for getting themselves home from the feast.

Pre-register (FREE)

SHORE: FEAST (potluck celebration) at North Brooklyn Boat Club

Sunday, April 26, 2pm-6pm
North Brooklyn Boat Club, 49 Ash Street, Brooklyn
Under Pulaski Bridge, on Newtown Creek

Outdoor event: Please dress for the weather.

Pre-register (FREE)

For all information and tickets or RSVPs, click here.

Doris Pilkington Garimara, 76

Doris Pilkington Garimara, Aboriginal Novelist, Dies at 76
by Douglas Martin, The New York Times, April 20, 2014

Guillermo Bert: weaving tradition and technology

What’s a QR Code Doing on That Blanket?
Artist Guillermo Bert is weaving together technology and Native American tradition
by Maggie Ryan Sandford, Smithsonian magazine, July-August 2013

Mandawuy Yunupingu, 56

Mandawuy Yunupingu, Australian Musician and Educator, Dies at 56
The Associated Press, June 4, 2013

Colgate University will return Aboriginal art to Australia

Aboriginal Artworks to Return to Australia
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, May 7, 2013

Thank gods, it's Friday and hula is alive!

92nd Street Y's 

Friday's at Noon program 

presents

HULA IS LIFE

Curated by John-Mario Sevilla and Halawai

Friday, May 3 (12 pm)

Hula honors nature, gods, royalty, significant geographical sites, historical events and meaningful relationships. This program explores the diversity of hula and presents both ancient (kahiko) and contemporary (auana) styles of dance. The groups performing include Pua Ali’i ‘Ilima ‘O Niuoka, Na Lehua Melemele, Halai Hula O Na Mele ‘Aina ‘O Hawaii and The Gracious Ladies. Live music will be performed by Claudia Goddard, Chris Davis, Kristabelle Muson, Jason Poole, Tommy Cheng and Andy Wang. Plus, guest artist Kaina Quenga.

Please note: Tickets are now required for all Fridays at Noon performances. You can pick up a ticket at the box office downstairs. Pay what you can or come for free – but you need a ticket either way.

For tickets and information, click here.

92nd Street Y (Buttenweiser Hall)
1395 Lexington Avenue (between 91-92nd Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

The Black Arm Band: music of Australia's indigenous experience

"dirtsong" from The Black Arm Band on Vimeo.

NYU Skirball Center presents the U.S. premiere of dirtsong--traditional music and new songs from Australia's Black Arm Band.

Friday, February 22, 8pm 

The Black Arm Band brings together many of Australia’s premiere Aboriginal musicians. They hail from across the country and represent diverse musical, linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Performed predominantly in Aboriginal languages, against a backdrop of evocative film imagery, the U.S. premiere of dirtsong comprises a series of musical “conversations” in which the artists reflect on their country. The result is a deeply moving show that conjures not only a sense of geographical place, but encounters, memories, obligations, community and nature. Combining traditional music and newly commissioned songs inspired by the beloved indigenous author Alexis Wright (Carpentaria), dirtsong offers a conceptual and emotional map of Australia's heartland.

For ticket information, click here or call 212-352-3101

NYU Skirball Center
566 LaGuardia Place (at Washington Square South), Manhattan
(map/directions)

OWS: A Native American speaks out

Why I Am Occupying Wall Street
by John Bird, M.Ed. (Blackfeet), Indian Country, October 11, 2011

Hawaii's Living Waters

Montclair State University's dazzling Peak Performances series will present the U.S. mainland premiere of Kūlanihāko‘i: Living Waters, a new hula drama created by the hula masters of Nā Kinimakalehua.

October 20-21, 7:30pm
October 22, 8pm
October 23, 3pm

Situated high in the heavens, beyond the influence of even the gods themselves, is the mystical Kūlanihāko‘i, an elemental lake from which all life flows. Through dance, chant, storytelling and dramatic interpretation, Living Waters draws from an array of enchanting Hawaiian myths tracing back over 2,000 years, highlighting the need for an equilibrium in the connection between mankind and nature.

For further information and ticketing, click here or call 973-655-5112. For directions, parking and weekend shuttle buses from Manhattan, click here.

Navajo: Gender not binary

The Navajo Culture's Four Different Genders
by Whitney Jefferson, Jezebel, June 15, 2011

Two Spirits -- a film by Lydia Nibley
Independent Lens: a film festival in your living room

What if the dance dances us?

Lake Lowell, Idaho (c)2011, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

"...perhaps the most vital task of the sleight-of-hand magician is precisely to startle the senses from their slumber, to shake our eyes and our ears free from the static, habitual ways of seeing and hearing into which these senses have fallen and the deadening influence of abstract and overly-objectified ways of speaking and thinking.

"Yet perhaps such magic is also, now, the province of all the arts..."

--David Abram, Ph.D., Alliance for Wild Ethics

A wonder: Do we find ourselves caught up within and experienced by the dancing that we see?

Does the dance we see also see us?

And, if so, how might that make awareness and transformation available to us?

I welcome you to read an essay by David Abram--"Animism, Perception, and Earthly Craft of the Magician"--and to consider his thoughts as well as my questions and how they might relate to our experience with dance.

Please feel free to post your responses as comments here and/or on this post as it appears on my Facebook wall.

Thank you!

"The kinesthetic energy of dreaming"

Poets of consciousness
by Robert Moss, The Robert Moss Blog, September 8, 2010

Call for submissions: Yellow Medicine Review

Yellow Medicine Review: A journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought, seeks material "The Ancestors We Were Looking for We Have Become: International Queer Indigenous Voices," edited by Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán.

As queer Indigenous writers, and queer artists of color more broadly, we have spent many years looking for our ancestors, looking for those Native and brown people who loved as we did, who moved in the world and created a space for us. Part of our queer genealogy involves not only finding those voices in our lineage, in our Nations, but also recognizing the way we are becoming those we have sought, and the importance of recording our stories for those coming after, and making the journey with, for we are not only descendents but ancestors. 

Kin coming together at the meeting grounds to share sustenance: stories of survival, resistance, and affirmation. May we make good medicine for our peoples and Nations. May our words nurture and move us forward, our visions deeply rooted in the past and the continuance of our presence.

Same-gender-loving, multiple-gender-loving, and transgender Indigenous peoples from around the world are invited to submit their work, words. May they be blessed.

Submission deadline: June 25. For complete information and submission instructions, click here.

The Turning World (11)

Last Native Eyak Speaker Dead at 89
by The Associated Press, January 23, 2008