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

Singing with spirits

On Saturday, February 22, 2020, I was joined by Okwui Okpokwasili and David Thomson in leading an opening ritual for Danspace Project's platform, Utterances from the Chorus, conceived and curated by Okwui and Judy Hussie-Taylor.

As the audience settled into seats in St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery's parish hall, David and Okwui began to hum and vocalize as I read an invitation. It opened with a question derived from Okwui's exploration for the new platform which, regrettably, was interrupted and scrapped as the coronavirus pandemic shut our city down.

Here, I offer a new version of this invitation. As we now struggle with multiple traumas--the pandemic, the economic crisis, the murder of our Black kin--and dedicate our lives to justice, may you find this ritual healing, strengthening and motivating.

I invite you to perform it privately or in groups, as you find it useful.

Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Eva Yaa Asantewaa
(photo: D. Feller)

Okwui asked:

What does it mean to weave a collective song?


And so, let us ask:


What does it mean to weave a spirit song on Lenape land? 

What does it mean to sing with the African souls?


What does it mean to be guided?

What does it mean to be activated?


Today, charge this space with the energy of sound.


Seek and find your name inside your cells,

inside your veins,

inside your bones.


Sit or stand with the energy of your name circling inside you until you hear its song.


Bring that energy out into this space on the flow of breath and flow of melody.


What is your name?

Sing your name.

Sing your true name.


Find a melody that transports your name into this space.


Keep singing your name into the space.

You can get loud with it.

You can get soft.


You may pause if you’d like to rest,

and you may resume at any time.


You may raise your votive candle above your head at any time, and that gesture will mean whatever it wants to mean.


You may extend your votive candle in front of you at any time, and that gesture will mean whatever it wants to mean.


Feel and sing or chant the name of ancestors of your family blood or ancestors of your mind.


Find the melodies that transmit their names into this space--loud or soft.


Keep singing their names into this space.

Keep singing their names into this space.

Keep singing their names into this space.


Return at any time to the song of your own name.


Sing. Sing out.

Sing. Sing it out.

Keep singing.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve, at Gibney, as Senior Director of Artist Development and 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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Forever hunger: Kimberly Bartosik at BAM Fisher

Joanna Kotze in Kimberly Bartosik's I hunger for you
(photo: Jim Coleman)

Lighting designer Roderick Murray's fluorescent tubes hang from the ceiling inside BAM Fisher's Fishman Space, colder and more severe than stalactites. Two dancers--Christian Allen and Lindsey Jones--step into the bare space of Kimberly Bartosik's I hunger for you. You can almost hear raptor wings, so forceful is the way they will lunge and beat and spin against the air. Arms lifting and rotated. Heavy breath audible. Heads and chins tilted upward. Torsos arching as they drop to a knee.

Burr Johnson, Dylan Crossman and Joanna Kotze--raptors, too, or perhaps angels, if angels have feet to strike mountainous earth--come in and churn and lash against the empty space as well. Back and forth, they cross it, overlapping in time and close pathways, until their labors clearly take a toll. Watching them, too, provides an initial sensation of exhilaration followed by exertion. When they stop--just stop and stand and shift inside and gasp--you feel the same internal wooziness, everything inside one's own body saying, "Hold up. Can we just settle back into order?"

I hunger for you plays with the risk of release--the kind of dropping of form and letting go that we experience in extremes of sensual and spiritual ecstasy--without guarantee of connection. Or guarantee that connection achieved will stay or will satisfy. A partner backs off or quietly quits the space entirely. The one remaining might freeze in a pose of hopelessness--arms wrenched forward from a torso bent as if in abject submission.

Much of the inspiration for the piece comes from the choreographer's religious upbringing, and it's interesting that she has cast her own child, Dahlia Bartosik-Murray, as a silent witness to some moments of Kotze's dancing as well as, later, a figure of release, coursing around the space like a wild filly.

Choreography: Kimberly Bartosik in collaboration with the dancers
Music: Sivan Jacobovitz, with arrangement by Kimberly Bartosik
Costume design: Harriet Jung
Sound Engineering: James Bigbee Garver
Dramaturgy: Melanie George

I hunger for you continues a sold-out run through Saturday with performances at 7:30pm. For information, click here.

Also, Friday's audience is welcome to an informal post-show discussion, facilitated by Melanie George with Bartosik and company in BAM Fisher's Lower Lobby.

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

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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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A meditation on Ni'Ja Whitson at La MaMa Moves

Ni'Ja Whitson (above) and Stacey Karen Robinson (below)
perform The Unarrival Experiments #4', described as
"a ritual digging into the 'vaporous body'
via relationships between astronomy, cosmology, time,
Blackness, and premature death." 
(photos: Theo Cote)

Opacity is in the very nature of what award-winning dance artist Ni'Ja Whitson created in The Unarrival Experiments #4, a presentation of La MaMa Moves at The Downstairs.

A ritual to which you have been invited and for which you have not prepared.

A space in which you are kept in the literal (mostly) and metaphoric (almost always) dark and in which you learn, deep into 90-or-so uninterrupted minutes, that it's all about darkness.

A dark in which much happens to which you are not privy, like the engulfing dark of the ocean at night or at its greatest depths. Or the dark of the vastness of space between stars.

With their audience scattered in clusters, Whitson, dressed in white, begins the evening by beating large fronds against one of the theater's risers. The rhythms of these strikes are clear but keep changing so much that you begin to listen for a language-like pattern, a message. Straining for this might be your first mistake. If this effort wears you out a bit, good. Just stop it.

Stacey Karen Robinson is also in the space with her supple, musical voice. She takes Whitson's dense text on a long, long stream of a flight. (Whitson will also perform a few soliloquies.) She molds it like clay. But, like the rhythms Whitson beat out at the start, her words slip right by you as you reach to grasp them.

I tried. In the middle of jotting down a sentence, I'd lose the rest of it. I'd labor over the start, and the remainder would evaporate, and Robinson would be way past floundering me, on to something else and something after that and more after that. And even what I thought I had managed to capture in my darkened-theater scrawl turns out to be no good to me today. A senseless, hopeless tangle. Or gone. Mostly gone.

Not all, though:

It is not every day I die, not every day I find me a new body....

These walking glories, these transmigrators....holding the North in themselves....the only direction was free!

He broke her. He broke her.

It seems like a contest. Who is the more distracting?

Robinson--distracting us from the largely fugitive Whitson in their dim environment or in darkness or scurrying out of audience view, so that when we catch sight of Whitson again, faint white clothing peeking out from a different part of the space, we're momentarily startled? Maybe momentarily reassured?

Or do Whitson's movements, weighty while enigmatic, distract from Robinson's speech?

To which artist do we owe our attention, our witness, our loyalty?

Body? Or Voice?

And what of that moment when a shredding blast--sounding random, meaningless--obscures both artists?

We, audience, may cup the used space--be space-holders in a way--but we appear to matter only in the way cosmic bodies matter to one another. It doesn't feel personal. It feels functional. Even arbitrary.

A strange feeling. One I'm on the fence about. It's a provocative ask of an audience. But I found myself wondering about (and resisting) all the literal and metaphoric darkness. I felt we had been abandoned. Stranded in space.

And something more. At one point, Whitson drew a ball of twine from beneath an audience member's chair. Whitson unraveled it, spider-like, stringing it between the legs of some of our chairs.

I noticed immediately. I was right next to this action and felt the twine as it touched my ankles. I reached down and ran my fingers over it. I noticed where it connected. I wondered what it meant.

When the piece concluded, I happened to remain in my seat for a few moments and watched as two women--hastening to leave, an impulse I must admit I shared but resisted--nearly stumbled because they did not notice (or perhaps remember) the twine at their feet. Oddly, it took a few moments more before a staffer finally warned the audience to be careful of the twine.

Hard to know if this was deliberate--yeah, in a way, I could see that fitting this piece--or an oversight.

What we don't know could fill a multiverse. Whitson's text offered a brief crack of light for me in a few places--the most dramatic being their mention of how infinitesimally huge is the place of black darkness in the cosmos.

How little there is, really, that we can say with certainty we know, define and control.

Sound design and performance: Jeremy Touissant-Baptiste
Lighting design: Tuce Yasak
Lighting and Sound Supervisor: Hao Bai

The Unarrival Experiments #4 concludes tonight with a 7pm performance. For information and tickets, click here.

La MaMa (The Downstairs)
66 East 4th Street (between 2nd Avenue and Bowery), Manhattan

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Oren Barnoy premieres a new dance trio at JACK

Paul Hamilton in a new work by Oren Barnoy
(photo: Scott Shaw)

You'll find the name of the new trio by choreographer Oren Barnoy if you click on this: (symbol). I'm told there is no official pronunciation, but there might be a rhythm. The glyph resembles something from one of those unauthorized offshoots of Reiki, but the dance itself--which left Paul Hamilton, Candace Tabbs and Molly Lieber dripping and glistening in sweat after its 25 minutes--is more-marathon workout than soothing. The aim is spiritual, though, described as Barnoy's "version of a daily prayer through movement" and a "continuous action...unrelenting ritual...towards transcendence."

Performed in the simple, aluminum-foil surround of Brooklyn's JACK, the piece's exertions bear the same twisty, swirly hieroglyphics of the enigmatic title and its look of a complicated infinity. Dancers, dressed in unremarkable black clothing, come and go, thrusting and retracting with low-dipping torsos and reaching, scooping, swinging, windmilling arms. I imagine some viewers might get into this while others eventually begin to tune it out when it does not appear to be turning into anything. For me, visual drama happened whenever two bodies were at play--at prayer?--in proximity to one another, activating shape and energy in the negative space between. I found my attention snapping to these interactions. On the whole, though, the entire ride can be enjoyable.

(symbol)--part of JACK's Images//Landscapes series, curated by Stacy Grossfield--continues tonight and tomorrow, Saturday, with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

JACK
505 1/2 Waverly Avenue (between Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue), Brooklyn (C or G to Clinton-Washington)

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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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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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Enrico D. Wey presents new solo at Danspace Project

Enrico D. Wey performs his new solo,
to warring states, a useless tool,
at Danspace Project.
(photos: Elyssa Goodman)

In his third Danspace commission, Enrico D. Wey presents a deeply personal examination of Asian male identity and embodiment. Wey explores clichés such as the Asian body as a fetishized and invisible minority, asking, “Can I reclaim my own physical body from the gaze of others and from my own embedded prejudice?”

--from promotion for Enrico D. Wey's to warring states, a useless tool

At first sight, the set-up of Enrico D. Wey's solo at Danspace Project--to warring states, a useless tool--first resembles an improvised boxing ring. Audience seating lines all four sides of a large, square space covered in a white, illuminated plastic mat, its parameters neatly defined by festive, tricolored tape. A pink ribbon, anchored in the air by cords extending from the sanctuary's columns, encloses this area like the ropes of a boxing ring.

We enter, claiming chairs or cushions, to find Wey already stationed at the square's center, standing as still as a rubber doll, his long, black hair completely veiling his face, his chest, legs and feet bare. Oksana Meister's costume--largely front and back panels of multicolored fringe--wraps his lower body from waist to knees. Although the set suggests a competitive match of some sort, the costume introduces a different association--cultural ritual. As we will see, both associations are fair entry into the work.

The solo moves through an hour--most of that time, astonishingly glacial in pace. It takes a while at first, and close observation, to even detect change in Wey's body. But, yes, those arms are slowly rising and spreading. That might not register until the positional change becomes obvious. Fifteen minutes, at least, have passed before the arms find an arch like half-unfurled wings. As if to (sort of) highlight the moment, Elliott Jenetopulos's lighting gives the tiniest, fleeting uptick that seems almost like a hastily-corrected mistake.

Wey's arms begin a descent, his head and back dipping forward, folding downward at the same pace. A half-hour has passed, and he is suspended above the floor, nearby shadows tinted strawberry and green. Abruptly bursting into motion, he rapidly pumps, thrashes up and down, over and over, sharply exhaling, panting, snorting, shifting from one to all four directions. About forty-five minutes in, there's humming, sudden panting, something that sounds like yodeling, scatting, muttered gibberish and then ritual chant. Never, though, the revelation of his face. We're not granted that. The lashing motion blurs whatever we might have been able to see. He is there and not there. Or there in some form of absence that removes his actual identity from easy access. Forced or deliberate. Negative or positive. Make of that what you will. Make of him what you will.

In the post-show Q&A with writer Jaime Shearn Coan, the Taiwan-born performer spoke of sourcing material from traditions ranging across several Asian cultures--including, in his furious, ecstatic lashing, an aboriginal tribal dance of Taiwan performed solely by women. He was driven by a need to put himself at the center "and always at the center," embodying what appears to be stuckness but, as he sees it, is truly "activated space."

"I'm going to place that at the center of my work and see what spins out from it," he said. "That gray space in between, I want to be able to sit in that space and take from it."

Multitalented Wey has also worked in puppetry where, he noted "the idea is to make the puppet breathe" thus changing the nature of the puppet's movement and the audience's perception and understanding. The dancer in to warring states inhabits a space between inertness and dynamism, between being acted upon and acting, between being object and subject. He might be oppressively obscured or protectively hidden. He might be invisible or visible and apprehended and known in multiple ways. The states war. He is a vessel, useless or otherwise, in this adroit and fascinating performance.

to warring states, a useless tool continues tonight and tomorrow with performances at 8pm. Seating is limited. For information and tickets, click here.

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

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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

Whitney V. Hunter: Open Practice in Harlem

Whitney V. Hunter at Chasama in Harlem
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Whitney V. Hunter

1st American Shapist House for the Practice of Performance/Ritual

Open Practice

a seven-day public performance/installation 

at chasama

Activate The Materials
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Hunter, activating
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Open Practice
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Persistence Is Resistance
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Open Practice
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Soil platform for Open Practice
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Persisting
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Daily Public Participation 5-9pm

remaining dates: May 8-9

May 9: 
5-6pm -- closing solo performance & reception
7pm -- artist talk with guests, Manbo Dowoti Desir, Samita Sinha and Andre M. Zachery

Admission: free

chasama
1351 Amsterdam Avenue (at 126th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

luciana achugar and the uses of the erotic

A day or two before the opening of luciana achugar's OTRO TEATRO at New York Live Arts, I received an email from the theater's publicist, requesting that critics not divulge sensitive information about the "surprises" in the production. Not only will I abide by that request, I'm not going to tell you much at all.

I think it fair, though, that you know the work lasts around three hours without a break, just in case you have, say, a babysitter issue, like a dance artist in last night's audience. But don't worry; you can come and go for pit stops as you please. You can even get up for a drink in the lobby and bring it back to your seat.

Why you'd actually need a drink to sit with something as sense-filling, dizzying and sometimes impactful as OTRO TEATRO, something meant to get you high, is a serious question.

A ritual of shamanic transformation, OTRO TEATRO unfolds as...

solo/network/field

whirling dervish crossed with Sheela na gig

sights and sounds of varying amplitudes

darkness and light

being and performing

Body standing in for body and body standing in for Body

breaking and building

vagina punk and hippie apocalypse

OTRO TEATRO continues nightly through Saturday at 7:30pm. For ticket information, click here.

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Photography by Carlos Cruz-Diez at Americas Society

Carlos Cruz-Diez. Los diablos de Yare, San Francisco de Yare, estado de Miranda, Venezuela, 1951. Image courtesy of the artist.

Americas Society (Council of the Americas)

presents

Within the Light Trap: Carlos Cruz-Diez in Black and White

February 4 - March 22

Wednesday-Saturday, 12-6pm

Curated by Gabriela Rangel and assisted by Christina De León

Venezuelan-born, Paris-based artist Carlos Cruz-Diez’s longstanding research in color has won him an international reputation as one of the most important figures of Latin American modernism.
Cruz-Diez’s empirical exploration of photography is further grounded on social preoccupations the artist developed in the 1940s, when he became aware of the rapid demographic and economic transformations caused by modernization in his native Venezuela.

Since then, he has documented everyday life rituals linked to the vernacular, such as local folklore festivities in rural communities and the viral emergence of shantytowns in Caracas. He has portrayed important intellectual figures linked to popular culture and music who were key interlocutors for him and his generation. Cruz-Diez’s interest on local popular culture through photography also laid a foundation for a number of realist paintings that conveyed social concerns he later redefined with the use of color as a participatory element. 

Americas Society (Visual Arts Gallery)
680 Park Avenue (between 68th and 69th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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

Moving with ancestral spirits: Dr. Marta Moreno Vega at NJPAC

Meet

Dr. Marta Moreno Vega

Saturday, May 4 (3-5pm)

Chase Room, New Jersey Performing Arts Center

screening of 

Let the Spirit Move You!  Espiritismo in Puerto Rico

Advance screening of Dr. Marta Moreno Vega's new film and research regarding ancestral Kongo-based sacred tradition of Espiritismo in Puerto Rico. Dr. Vega explores the divine knowledge of traditional elders and practitioners and expresses the concern that the tradition will not be passed on / transferred to younger generations because traditional practices are in danger of not continuing.

Also, learn more about Dr. Vega's life-long legacy and work in the following clips, including an excerpt from the HBO documentary: Latino List.

Baraka Sele

guest curator / moderator

information and tickets

NJPAC directions

    Latino List - Marta Moreno Vega Interview on Vimeo

    Latina Spotlight: Dr. Marta Moreno Vega on New Latina

Treehugging Judith Z. Miller makes wearable art

Meet Judith Z. Miller, the artist behind the primal, nature-based Sticks & Stones Wearable Art. Click here for information about her one-of-a-kind craft and a video interview by Donna Drake.

Two great losses for the arts and humanity--Achebe and McKiver

I wanted to acknowledge two great gentlemen who passed while I was away on vacation. Even though late, this blog should not go without mention of their lives and legacy. Here are their New York Times obituaries.

Chinua Achebe, African Literary Titan, Dies at 82
by Jonathan Kandell, The New York Times, March 22, 2013

Lawrence McKiver, a Singer in Long Tradition, Dies at 97
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, April 1, 2013

Dance artist Max Pollak creates international march against violence

Led by some of the greatest musicians, dancers and artists from all over the world, MAGNOLIA MARCH a traditional New Orleans – style funeral processional will organize on April 27th, 2013 in big cities and small towns throughout the US, Canada, Asia, Australia and Europe demonstrating peaceful solidarity against acts of violence.

Too often we are witnesses to violent acts that cost lives, and that have deep impact on us, and our loved ones.  Too often excessive violence is shown repeatedly through our media, and too often we are silent in fear, dismay and helplessness.

The MAGNOLIA MARCH is a chance for all of us to take a peaceful stand by marching in the streets of our cities and towns.  With a Second Line Parade, we can drown out the violence with music for sympathy, compassion and community.

The Inspiration

Outraged by the recent Sandy Hook shooting, NYC based tap dancer/percussionist Max Pollak felt compelled to create MAGNOLIA MARCH in order to provide the public, specifically families, children and artists, with an opportunity to mourn and come together to express their feelings and pay respect to those who have lost loved ones in recent acts of violence.

Details

MAGNOLIA MARCH will honor the memory of victims lost to recent violence throughout the United States and other places all over the world.

On April 27, 2013 MAGNOLIA MARCH funeral processionals will take place at approximately the same time, in multiple cities, streamed live via www.MagnoliaMarch.com.

Those who wish to organize a MAGNOLIA MARCH in a city other than NYC, or would like to participate, please visit www.MagnoliaMarch.com for additional event information.

Facebook: Magnolia March
Twitter: @MagnoliaMarch
Email: magnoliamarchevent@gmail.com

Post-Sandy: Dances for the Day of the Dead

Gathering to Dance Amid Tragedy
by Julie Turkewitz, The New York Times, November 5, 2012

"Saharava" on the Fringe

I'm only getting around to a couple of FringeNYC shows this August. With age--and heat and humidity--comes the desire, and the right, to be more selective and dash about less. But Saharava: A Ritualized Dance-Opera, with its Tarot-related theme, called to me, and its nearby location at Theater 80 on St. Mark's Place made it an easy choice.

Described as "a primitive and raw theatrical ritual combining dance and wordless song," the hour-long production "follows the journey of the Fool through the Major Arcana of the Tarot." As wonderful as Theater 80's tiny, shallow stage can be for some shows, the ambitious Saharava needs bigger space to serve Andre Megerdichian's large, skillful cast, passionate, sometimes complex choreography and bustling stage arrangements. A little more distance between viewers and performers might also work in its favor--for example, minimizing the awkwardness of up-flipping, underwear-exposing lifts. These close-up, unsightly flashes of strange-looking, "flesh"-colored underpants beneath the women's faux-Greek tunics had unintended comical, trance-deflating effect. Megerdichian's respectable efforts--and his dancers--deserve a chance.

Fahad Siadat, who played The Magician, a symbol from Tarot's Major Arcana, also composed the instrumental and vocal elements of this "dance-opera." His influence begins in the lengthy "Prelude" of Om-like vocalization, didgeridoo-blowing and drone-droning from a dimly-lit stage, dropping the audience's blood pressure several notches. That's cool and befits a ritualistic atmosphere. Unfortunately, despite the presence of trained voices, the subsequent straight hour of wordless howling, screeching, barking, wheezing and the like sounded amateurish, suggesting an extended acting exercise more than a ritual of transformation.

I know the Tarot well, and the only archetype that read at all clear to me was The Devil (David Niles), who turns the stage into hell on earth for his driven minions. It would have been good to comprehend this work better as The Fool's Journey if other Tarot characters had been rendered with sharpness and purpose.

But see for yourself. Saharava: A Ritualized Dance-Opera continues at Theater 80 over the following schedule:

Sunday, August 12 at 1pm
Tuesday, August 14 at 2:30pm
Wednesday, August 15 at 7:45pm
Friday, August 24 at 7:15pm

Get more information and reservations on this and other New York Fringe Festival shows here.

Encountering "Guintche"

We stood before it and began to freeze inside from the exertion. We questioned the painting, berated it, made love to it, prayed to it: We called it mother, called it whore and slut, called it our beloved, called it Abraxas....

Carlos Santana thus quoted Herman Hesse's Demian on the cover of his 1970 hit album Abraxas, where he also displayed an unforgettable hallucinogenic vision by Mati Klarwein (1932-2002). Klarwein's art also graces the gatefold cover of Bitches Brew, the innovative Miles Davis album released the same year, and observers of both albums will note something that the two have in common--on the back cover of Abraxas, three imposing, richly-decorated African dancers whose visages appear to reflect ecstatic states of consciousness; on Bitches Brew, a similar single figure.

In 2002, I finally discovered the living origin of these extraordinary images when the Brooklyn Museum presented Passages, an exhibition of photographs taken in Africa by Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher. I was struck by the photographs of men of the Wodaabe--Saharan nomads--elaborately gussied up in beads and face paint for the Yaake charm dance, exaggerating their height, their widened eyes, their distended, pearly-white grins to attract potential wives. I don't know if Klarwein had ever seen Wodaabe ceremonies or only photographs of these rather feminized men going about their mating ritual, but they reside in his art.

I saw them, again, as I watched Marlene Monteiro Freitas, an artist born in Cape Verde, perform her unbelievable solo Guintche last night at Abrons Arts Center (part of Queer New York International Arts Festival).

Marlene Monteiro Freitas in Quintche
Photo: João Figueira

Of course, they are not the only beings channeled through Freitas' body as her feather-wrapped pelvis rapidly rotates nonstop for a solid, astonishing 30 minutes to propulsive drumming, her red lips distend like a ragged gash, and her face seamlessly flashes through zillions of expressions--fiery-eyed, cross-eyed, teary-eyed, shifty-eyed, on and on. Many fierce spirits--Kali, Oya and so many more--announced themselves to me. A fellow audience member saw Josephine Baker in all of this, hips awhirl, mugging--a possible influence that Freitas sort of acknowledged while firmly deflecting the notion that her Guintche character--which she has called "a rebellious and unapologetic creature" and others have called "demented" and "indomitable"--was meant to be anyone in particular.

Really, Guintche, the alarming apparition who emerges from a smoke-filled theater, should be allowed to come differently, distinctly to each beholder lest we (typically) detach and distance ourselves and evade Guintche's power. We are at ritual. Let the ritual do its work.

When Guintche and that relentless drumming eventually release you--and the post-performance Q&A moderator, Aaron Mattocks, described this well--the stillness in the room, the stillness of the pelvis and the sudden absence of sound, creates physical, aural and mental whiplash. Or, no: Think of The Exorcist (1973--and, yes, I know, it's Memory Lane Day here at InfiniteBody) and Linda Blair's slackened body slamming down on her bed when the demon releases her. (I think I remembered that correctly....) Guintche continues for, perhaps, another twenty minutes with Freitas engaging in a kind of self-puppetry that, while sharply done, doesn't quite have the same slaying force of that initial half-hour.

Freitas is a wonderfully strange and magnficent performer, and it's a shame that QNYIAF gave us only this one chance to see her.

Queer New York International Arts Festival runs through Friday at Abrons Arts Center and other locations. For a schedule of upcoming events and tickets, click here.