Happy Winter Solstice, everyone!

Here comes the sun, and I say 

It's all right...

Abundant blessings to you and yours in
this season of returning light.

Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Winter Solstice: Have a joyous season of light!

Here comes the sun, and I say 

It's all right...

Abundant blessings to you and yours in
this season of returning light.

Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Anabella Lenzu premieres "Sangre & Arena"

In Sangre & Arena (Blood & Sand), Argentine-born choreographer Anabella Lenzu proudly works from an aesthetic associated more with the "classical" modern dance of Humphrey, Limón and Graham than with the intents and strategies of New York's contemporary dance makers. And Lenzu's 40-minute trio, given its world premiere last evening at Duo Multicultural Arts Center, looks backward even farther than those pioneering antecedents. Inspired by Roman Mithraic myth and ritual, the work evokes ancient, cathartic rites employing masks of fearsome animal gods; arresting movement gestures; heightened sounds of swirling wind, hypnotic chimes and terrifying gongs; nature-emulating cycles of repetition; and a profusion of blood--or what frightened initiates might easily take for real blood--used to effect lasting transformation.

Fellow dancers Lauren Ohmer and Julia Lindpaintner join Lenzu--disclaimer: she is currently one of my writing students at New York Live Arts--on Duo's little stage in the intimate theater. Ohmer and Lindpaintner's bodies get wildly smeared with paint as their behavior becomes more abandoned. Lighting (by Stephen Petrilli) and the dancers' thrashing in vivid tempera create three-dimensional art come to life. Lindpaintner's robust sturdiness is impressive, but Ohmer's precise, electric shapes make her the most watchable of the three.

Anabella Lenzu/DanceDrama continues at Duo tonight at 8pm and with a 2pm matinee tomorrow. For information and tickets, click here.

Duo Multicultural Arts Center
62 East 4th Street (between Bowery and Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Happy Winter Solstice!

Here comes the sun, and I say 

It's all right...

Happy Summer Solstice! Happy LGBTQ Pride Week!

(c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Margot Adler on the contemporary Pagan movement

The Moonfire series of public presentations will host a workshop facilitated by National Public Radio journalist Margot Adler:

The Pagan Movement: What's New, What's Different, What's Changed

Saturday, May 22 (5pm-7pm)

In the last 15 years, the Pagan Movement (Wicca, Goddess Spirituality, Druids, Norse Religionists, Reconstructionist Pagans, and more) has grown, so that now scholars are saying that there are at least a million contemporary Pagans worldwide, and perhaps three-quarters of that number are in the U.S.

In the last few years, Wiccans have fought and won a number of civil rights. There are now peer-reviewed academic Pagan journals, more than 100 Pagan Pride Festivals, and a strong Pagan and Wiccan presence at the Parliament of the World's Religions. What does this foretell?  What is the promise and what are the pitfalls of modern Paganism becoming a World Religion?


Margot Adler is a writer, pagan priestess and broadcast journalist.  She is the author of Drawing Down The Moon, the classic study of Paganism, Goddess Spirituality and Wicca. A lecturer and ritual leader, she has been a correspondent with National Public Radio for more than 30 years. Before NPR, she reported, produced and hosted live radio on Pacifica's WBAI-FM and was the creator of Hour of the Wolf and two other free-form radio shows there.  She was also the hostess for eight years of Justice Talking, a show about the Constitution and how it affects our daily lives, that aired on a hundred radio stations until the summer of 2008.

Admission: $6

All are welcome!

Location:
LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street (near 7th Avenue), Manhattan

For further information, click here to email Moonfire's founder, Amethyst.