SERIOUS MOONLIGHT podcast: Cassie Mey

Cassie Mey

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Serious Moonlight, Episode 2: Cassie Mey

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Cassie Mey is the Oral History Coordinator and Audio Archivist for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Formerly, Cassie was NYPL's project Cataloger for the Merce Cunningham Audio Collection and she was the Oral History Archive Assistant from 2009-2015. Additionally, she conducted a focus group on “Documenting the Creative Process” in 2013 for the Dance Heritage Coalition’s Artist-Driven Archives project. Alongside her work in archives, Cassie is a lifelong dancer, having most recently performed in Dean Moss’s multimedia work and 4 year project, johnbrown. Over the past 15 years, she also danced with Molissa Fenley , Jillian Peña , and other choreographers, as well as presented her own dance works and collaborations in NYC. Cassie holds an MSILS degree from Pratt Institute and a BA in Dance from Mills College.

Serious Moonlight--hosted by Eva Yaa Asantewaa and produced with Tei Blow--is a production of Gibney Dance Center's Digital Technology Initiative.

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Writing of Afghan women to be presented at Queens library

The Friends of Richmond Hill Library

and The Afghan Women’s Writing Project

present

Readings from the Afghan Women’s Writing Project
featuring novelist and founder Masha Hamilton

at Richmond Hill Library, Queens

Monday, January 13, 6:30pm

Admission: Free

A selection of poems, essays, and stories by participants of the Afghan Women’s Writing Project will be read by audience members, AWWP staff and volunteers, and special guests. AWWP believes that to tell one’s story is a human right, and this work testifies to the bravery of Afghan women and to the power of their words. Author and AWWP founder Masha Hamilton will also read from her latest novel What Changes Everything.  Admission is free.

Masha Hamilton is the author of five acclaimed novels, most recently What Changes Everything, which the Washington Post praised for its “elegantly wrought prose (which) conveys terror as well as tenderness” and 31 Hours, which the Washington Post called one of the best novels of 2009. In October 2013, she finished sixteen months working in Afghanistan as Director of Communications and Public Diplomacy at the US Embassy. She is currently working as Communications Director for Concern Worldwide. She also founded two world literacy projects, the Camel Book Drive and the Afghan Women’s Writing Project.

Masha is the winner of the 2010 Women’s National Book Association award, presented “to a living American woman who derives part or all of her income from books and allied arts, and who has done meritorious work in the world of books beyond the duties or responsibilities of her profession or occupation.” She began her career as a full-time journalist, working in Maine, Indiana, and New York City before being sent by the Associated Press to the Middle East, where she was news editor for five years, including the period of the first intifada, and then moving to Moscow, where she worked for five years during the collapse of communism, reporting for the Los Angeles Times and NBC-Mutual Radio and writing a monthly column, Postcards from Moscow. She also reported from Kenya in 2006, and from Afghanistan in 2004 and 2008. 

Richmond Hill Library
118-14 Hillside Avenue, Queens
Train: J or Z to 121 Street
Bus: Q10, Q55, Q56

New York's love affair with flamenco

The New York Public Library 
for the Performing Arts

presents

Flamenco:

100 Years of Flamenco in New York 

March 13 through August 3

The multi-media exhibition is an integral part of collaboration between The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana. Photographs, costumes and performance regalia, film, oral histories, and the sound of castanets and taconeo will entertain and educate the visitor. Performances, film screenings, panels, and educational programs will continue through the spring and summer in the Library’s Bruno Walter Auditorium.

Free admission

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, Manhattan

(map/directions)

Celeste Bartos, 99

Celeste Bartos, New York Philanthropist, Dies at 99
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, January 10, 2013

Library of Congress archives interviews with music's greats

The Musicians' Words: Interviews With Stars Donated to Library of Congress
by Patricia Cohen, The New York Times, June 18, 2012

Interviewing Marya Warshaw for the NYPL [UPDATE]

Eva with Marya Warshaw of BAX
at New York Public Libary for the Performing Arts
(photo: Susan L. Kraft)

It was a tremendous honor to conduct an oral history interview with Marya Warshaw, Executive Director/Artistic Director of BAX (Brooklyn Arts Exchange) and Bessie Award-winner, over the past two weeks.

Warshaw and I were invited by Susan L. Kraft, Oral History Project Coordinator at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. All of that's a mouthful, I know, but what you really need to know about Kraft is that she's one of the most organized, considerate and gracious people around. So it was a joy to work with her and with assistant archivist Cassie Mey (better known as one of New York's fantastic dancers) in planning and achieving this important project. Kraft and Mey took excellent care of us, and we were given everything we needed to be comfortable and make a recording with fine sound quality.

Warshaw, herself, made it all very easy. I was amazed by her complete presence and openness as, for close to four hours over two recording sessions, she traced milestones of her personal and professional journey in the context of significant changes in our society, city neighborhoods and arts communities. I got a very clear sense of the life influences, values and strengths that make her an essential leader in Brooklyn and for our entire city.

It's critically important that the contributions of our artists and arts leaders be remembered and be accessible to future artists, scholars and the public. Now you will be able to listen to Marya Warshaw as I did and, I hope, be similarly inspired.

For more information about using the archives of the NYPL's Jerome Robbins Dance Division, click here.

UPDATE: To read Susan L. Kraft's NYPL blog post about this project, click here.

NYPL Dance seeks Assistant Curator

Click for complete information:

Assistant Curator, Dance Division - New York Public Library

Keep the memory of our artists alive

Black sisters: Are you tired of hearing young people say "I never heard of her" when you mention of one our great women artists? I am.

Commit to educating our youth about our heritage. Each one teach one.

Here's a striking photo of legendary singer/actress and fervently outspoken civil rights activist Eartha Kitt (1927-2008) by photographer Kenn Duncan (1928-1986).

















Find more images in the NYPL Digital Library.

NYPL announces short-term research fellowships

Short-Term Research Fellowships at The New York Public Library

The New York Public Library is delighted to announce the availability of short-term fellowships to support visiting scholars conducting research in the Library’s unique research and special collections.  Fellowships stipends up to $4,000 are available to scholars from outside the New York metropolitan area engaged in graduate-level, post-doctoral, or independent research.  Scholars researching in the humanities including but not limited to art history, cultural studies, history, literature, performing arts and photography are welcome to apply.  Applicants must be United States citizens or permanent residents with the legal right to work in the U.S.

Click here for additional details and to download an application (deadline: March 18, 2012).

OWS: Long live The People's Library!

The People's Library of Occupy Wall Street Lives On
by William Scott, The Nation, November 22, 2011

What you don't see

Presented by The Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library, Dana Salisbury and the No-See-Ums perform BARK, an “Unseen Dance” for blindfolded audiences. Dancers reveal themselves and the space through sound, scent, touch, temperature and air currents. The audience is placed within the action and periodically moved, causing shifts in their relationship to the environment, the performers, and one another. Based on non-visual perception, this is the first dance form fully accessible to the visually impaired.

For sighted and visually impaired audiences. This program is not suitable for children.

All New York Public Library programs are free of charge. Register by phone or in person.

March 5 at 2pm
The Richmondtown Library
200 Clarke Avenue (at Amber Street), Staten Island, NY

718-668-0413

March 12 at 2pm
Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library
40 West 20th Street, Manhattan New York, NY
212-206-5400

March 19 at 2pm
Webster Library
1465 York Avenue (near East 78th Street), Manhattan
212-288-5049

March 26 at 2pm
115th St Library
203 West 115th Street, Manhattan
212-666-9393

Dana Salisbury is an independent artist/choreographer who creates events and performances for blindfolded audiences highlighting non-visual perception. Her work has two related branches—the dance company, Dana Salisbury and the No-See-Ums, which creates "Unseen Dances" and Dark Dining Projects which offers sensory feasts for blindfolded audiences. Her work has been performed in a wide variety of settings- theaters, cultural venues, restaurants, festivals, and conferences examining the intersection of arts and science. Learn more here. 

For additional information, email Dana Salisbury,  or call 917-686-7474.

ARAS and the enduring image

Across Cultures, Image Is Everything

by Andy Battaglia, The Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2010

The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism Turns the Human Subconscious Into a Picture Book

Signify, Sanctify, Believe: The Library of Sacred Technologies

Every now and then, an announcement comes along that is way too good to not share. Here's the latest!

A Call for Contributions
Signify, Sanctify, Believe: The Library of Sacred Technologies

archivists: Tanya Rubbak and Adam Overton
at The Church of Public Fiction in Highland Park (Los Angeles)
in April 2011

dear friends,

do you ever feel like you see things that are invisible to others? 

do you ever intuit the presence of other possible realities?

do you ever sense a thickness of energies swirling within the materials around you?

do you ever look at plants and animals and think, “I know what you’re thinking.”

perhaps you’re interested in age-old traditions, but tired of age-old religions?

perhaps you hanker for sacred acts that history has forgotten,

or better yet, perhaps you’ve discovered NEW ways to gently channel the magic in your life?

sceptic or saint, believer or apostate, we’d like to talk to YOU …

about being a part of something very, very SPECIAL ...

The Library of Sacred Technologies

we would like to invite you to participate in our library/reading room in April as part of a residency at the Church of Public Fiction in Highland Park. the space will feature several artists and groups from February through April 2011 as it transforms itself into a church and spiritual center.

our library aims to intercept and illuminate a relationship between contemporary religious and artistic pursuit. we are interested in overlapping the sisterly processes of signification and sanctification, which we view as being innately creative and living in spirit.

with a mixture of found and invented ephemera in the form of pamphlets, newsletters, and articles of faith, the library will capture a communal voice as we celebrate a tradition of religious experimentation in the city of Los Angeles.

Do you hear the call? Will you heed it?

we invite you to temporarily become a best-selling self-published self-helper, a charismatic guru or spiritual leader, a religious anthropologist, or any other type of sincerely mystical dabbler from the past, present or future. we primarily desire text(s) and images to include in printed ephemera, but will consider video and sound documents as well. to whet your appetite, we’ve posted below a list of possible technologies we might be looking to collect. you’re welcome to contribute as much or as little as you’d like, and it can be as [in]comprehensive and [in]comprehensible as you please.

we plan to compile, design, and display these materials for visitors of our Library of Sacred Technologies opening in April 2011. meanwhile, artist-led sermons, services, and workshops based around the temporary observance of [semi-]fictional religious practices will be taking place throughout the month that, with your permission, may or may not incorporate some of these documents. (if you’re interested in leading one of these, please let us know and we’ll contact you as soon as we finish developing a separate call for that portion of the residency.)

here are some starting points for religious invention that we pray you’ll contemplate and contribute:

a religion of the hour

a religion of the day

a religion of the month

a religion of the year

alternative horoscope systems and charts

dance instructions that direct the kundalini or the schizophrenic flow

shaman seances to commune with animal spirit helpers

guided meditations for sudden reality shifts

cures for tardiness

recipes for honesty

maps, formulae and visualizations for time travel

guides to local vortex and portal areas

exorcisms of deep heteronormative conditioning

automatic writing to channel the language of light-beings

alternate creation myths

incantations for accessing the transverbal space of the semiotic chora

harmonic science scores of the ancients that modifies DNA

visualizations for clearing debt

scriptures on radical responsibility

ceremonies that deal with water, driving or synaesthesia

rituals for loss, or lost rituals

prayers and hymns for making new friends

resurrections, fortune-telling, channeling, oracles, predictions and sooth-sayings on the matter of anything you please

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera ...

please send your submissions to: sacredtechnologies@plus1plus1plus.org

deadline for text and image submissions is January 15, 2011

deadline for audio and video submissions is February 1, 2011

also: stay tuned, as we hope to convene a couple sacred technology group writing sessions in late December and early January

Vonnegut library opens in hometown

Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library Opens in Indianapolis

by Emma Graves Fitzsimmons, The New York Times, November 19, 2010

Schomburg Center names new director

New Director for Schomburg Center Named

by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, November 17, 2010

Schomburg Center acquires Maya Angelou papers

Maya Angelou Archive Goes to Schomburg Center in Harlem

by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, October 26, 2010

Howard Dodson reassures Harlem

Howard Dodson Says Schomburg Center’s Home Is Harlem

by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, July 30, 2010

Poetry in the house

A Year in Poetry at Poets House in Lower Manhattan

by Amanda Petrusich, The New York Times, July 7, 2010