Join me for "Centering Our Power" workshop for BIPOC

 

 

CENTERING OUR POWER

a drop-in workshop for BIPOC

 

via freeskewl 

 

Saturday, February 20, 2021

12pm EST (9am PST)

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Please respect this circle as BIPOC space.

Accessibility: Closed captioning will be available through Rev Live Captioning

 

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

Zoom link: zoom.us/j/3093774924

Zoom password: 640262

 

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

******

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

******

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California dreaming: Roya Carreras at the wild project

This weekend, Roya Carreras shows The Big Balloon at the wild project.
(photo: Jason Knade)

Choreographer Roya Carreras welcomes us into dreamy interiorized exteriors and minimized, constrained interiors in her childhood-memory piece The Big Balloon. Curated by Alexis Convento for her performance series, The CURRENT SESSIONS, Carreras multidisciplinary work will have its final show today at the wild project where aspects of it take over even the surface of a floor (film projection) and the surround of the lobby gallery and restrooms (soundscape).

Our complete immersion, executed by Carreras' team, is greatly enhanced by the close quarters of the space, the numbers of enthusiastic first-night fans and, ultimately, the convenience of a bar right there at the box office. Arrive for the roughly half-hour dance installation prelude--performed by the impeccable Fana Fraser--grab a drink, and you feel as if you have wondered into tiny East Village gallery opening.

Fraser's solo--performed just inside the lobby entrance, in the confines of a plywood enclosure filled with wonderfully-fragrant planting soil and decorated with a patch of artificial grass--interested me the most. Her relationship to the rich earth ranged from delicate and meditative to searching to aggressive. A few times, she ventured out onto the sidewalk to pick up a pot of geraniums to replant in the soil, but she herself seemed more the planted than the planter. Carreras' imageful work takes inspiration from her childhood in California where, I would imagine, the Iranian-Hispanic artist must have found solace in her family's garden.

What happens soon after the stroke of the hour, when we've wandered into the theater proper, is another matter--suggestive and fleeting, and I will not say more. Before the lights go down, Carreras allows us a hint in the stage decor that she shows and which, as the dance proceeds and ends, will perhaps become more meaningful to viewers. The dance itself--well performed by Caitlin Taylor, Elise Ritzel, Eloise DeLuca, Gregory Dolbashian and Maleek Washington--disturbed me in the way it depicted relationships between men and women. I found myself quite often checking out. But it's possible that Carreras' intent was to show us exactly what it was that turned me off.

That's a wild stab. I cannot say for sure. And I ended up not staying for the post-show Q&A. Having gotten tangled in the mob of people getting more drinks and lining up for the restroom, on second thought, I opted to just make my way home.

The Big Balloon concludes this afternoon and evening: lobby installation at 5:30pm, performance at 6pm followed by a wrap party at 7. Proceeds from ticket sales will be donated to the National Iranian American Council. For information and tickets, click here.

the wild project
195 East 3rd Street (between Avenues A and B), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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My Eiko journal: Part 2

Eiko's A Body in Places
Wednesday, March 2

11:30am Delicious Movement workshop

I arrived a tad late but slipped off my shoes, got down on the floor with everyone else and took part in the second of Eiko's weekly Delicious Movement workshops at St. Mark's Church, learning so much about the genesis of her work. I enjoyed her focus on words like "surveying" and "landscape." The thought of every part and every millimeter of the body being unique terrain to be slowly surveyed, with the aid of the floor or a partner's body, effortlessly liberates the imagination. For the first time, I understand why she calls this movement "delicious." And Eiko is wickedly, wickedly funny! If you have only seen her perform, could you have guessed that?

May she get her wish to go the UN and teach Obama and Putin Delicious Movement, the critical aesthetic of hesitation! I'm grateful to Danspace Project for giving all of us this chance to get to know her better.

3pm Eiko solo

Can Eiko just stay in the East Village indefinitely and continue to reveal it? Please secure funding.

Yesterday, we walked south on Second Avenue and turned on Seventh Street into the office entrance of Middle Collegiate Church. We found Eiko sprawled on the floor of a brightly-lit meeting room where crimson fabric spilled against cream-colored tiles.

Eiko at Middle Collegiate Church
photos (c)2016, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

In the past, I might have written that Eiko made achingly-slow, minute "adjustments." After taking her workshop, I found the idea of "adjusting" too brain-oriented and deliberate for something that arises from discovery in the complex, intimate relationship of surfaces--body to floor, body to fabric. When force or sudden movement arises, it's like a dash of strong color across canvas or spice dropped into the recipe.

She worked that red stream, burying her face in it, gently pulling it to her, reaching into it, giving a sudden tug that reduced it to a puffy triangle. She crawled a bit and then withdrew with the fabric cascading from her chin to the floor. She protected it, perhaps, hid behind it in another moment. She struggled, finally smacking it against a blank white space on the wall where a film could have been projected. At one point, I got a good look at the fabric and noticed holes and tattered edges.

Here's a moment of Eiko walking against the carpet of the church's sanctuary where she took us next:

Eiko in Middle Collegiate Church sanctuary
photo (c)2016, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Eiko's bits of business with a half-filled bowl of water, a sheet ripped from a presentation pad and the church's piano filled time in the church's handsome, empty sanctuary. That is all. But look at Eiko approaching light at the front door:

Eiko approaches Middle Collegiate's front entrance.
photos (c)2016, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Here, with the incipient emergence of her body into the light and rush of the street, the solo took on tension and poignancy.

Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect...and Eiko
photo (c)2016, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

*****

Read My Eiko journal: Part 1 here.

*****

Eiko's A Body in Places platform continues at Danspace Project and other venues through March 23. There's so much going on in this platform's programming, that Danspace Project is actually offering consultation with a docent to help you get your bearings. Really. For detailed information, 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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Afro-Haitian workshop with Adia Tamar Whitaker, September 19-20

Choreographer Adia Tamar Whitaker
of Àṣẹ Dance Theatre Collective

The International Partner Dance Intensive 

Workshop Series 2015

presents

Roots and Beyond: 

An Afro-Haitian  Intensive workshop

with 

Adia Tanar Whitaker

Saturday and Sunday

September 19-20 (2pm-7pm)

Battery Dance Studio

380 Broadway, 5th Floor (at White Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

Arguably one of the most influential of the "ethnic" dance forms, Afro-Haitian dance has had a profound impact on hip hop, commercial dance, and a variety of modern dance forms.

Join award-winning choreographer, ethnographer, dancer, teacher, and all-around powerhouse, Adia Tamar Whitaker, and musicians from her award-winning dance company, Àṣẹ Dance Theatre Collective, for two intense, joyful days immersed in Afro-Haitian dance and music. 

Limited to 30 dancers. Tuition: $135 for the 8-hour intensive. Payment plans available. Low-cost housing for out-of-town participants available.

For more information and to register, click here.

TIPDI (The International Partner Dance Intensive) is a series of workshop weekends and extended dance camps for adult dancers, based in New York City. Our full TIPDI program is a cross-training intensive, where dancers 18 and older take daily, leveled classes in all six dance forms offered--Argentine Tango, Ballet, West Coast Swing, Modern, Salsa, and Afro-Haitian dance, taught by world-class instructors. Over the course of our first three years, we've welcomed dancers from 12 states and 11 countries, ranging in age from 20-70.

Hip Hop showing and workshop with David Sincere Aiken

TOPAZ ARTS is thrilled to present Queenz Finest David Sincere Aiken for an informal showing of his latest choreography and Hip Hop workshop. As one of TOPAZ ARTS’ early dance video projects back in 2001, we are proud to present this rising star, David Sincere who is back from Los Angeles, originally from South Jamaica Queens, to bring a taste of his new moves. David Sincere’s style is a fusion of NY Hip Hop, African and Reggae style dance topped off with a technical approach. Come for an informal showing and take a workshop as Sincere and Friends prepare for upcoming shows in April 2015.

Hip Hop with David Sincere Aiken

Sunday, March 22, 4pm

Free, suggested $10 donation encouraged

RSVP by email: rsvp@topazarts.org or on Facebook

For complete details, click here.

TOPAZ ARTS
55-03 39th Avenue, Woodside, Queens
(map and directions)

[CANCELLED] "Words the Move" returns to BAX, April 11!

Hi, everyone! I'm very sorry to announce that the April 11, 2015 edition of Words on the Move has been cancelled. The good folks at BAX and I hope to be able to offer this workshop sometime in the fall. So, keep watch. Thanks for your interest!

Eva

******

Words on the Move--my workshop on promotional writing for dance and performance artists--proved to be a great success at BAX's recent Artist Services Day (February 15). So, BAX will host it again in a longer format. Enrollment is limited. RSVP soon! I'm looking forward to seeing you!

(photo by D. Feller)

Words on the Move

facilitated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Saturday, April 11 (1-4pm)

BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange

What challenges and opportunities do you face when you write about yourself? Your artistic mission? Your body of work or new projects? We will share a free-writing exercise and explore some of your promotional writing samples, building strategies for effective, satisfying expression.

Required: Bring one brief sample (~250-300 words) of your promotional writing. 

Sliding Scale ($15, $25, $45)

Limited enrollment, first come first served. To reserve your space, call 718-832-0018 or email info@bax.org.

BAX / Brooklyn Arts Exchange
421 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

See (and learn) dances of Aceh (Sumatra, Indonesia)

Asia Society

presents

Tari Aceh: Dance from Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia

Tari Aceh

Saturday, February 28

7pm -- pre-performance lecture

8pm -- performance

info/tickets

Sunday, March 1

11am-1pm -- workshop with dancers of Tari Aceh, 

exploring traditions and hallmarks of Acehnese dance

info/tickets

Aceh (Sumatra, Indonesia) is renowned for its exuberant performances combining text, poetry, dance, and movement with a distinct flavor that reflects local culture as well as a strong Islamic influence. It has been ten years since the devastating tsunami killed over 200,000 people in Aceh. This performance celebrates the resilience of the people and a new generation of young women whose traditions have provided an important part of the healing process.

One of the hallmarks of Acehnese dance is a form of body percussion in which various rhythms are created by slapping the body or clapping. One form — saman — is done in a tight line, shoulder-to-shoulder, becoming almost a singular-being moving at split-second speed. The form is not only entertaining, but also has an educational side which reflects the morals and teachings of the community.

This is a rare opportunity to see an all-female group from Syiah Kuala University, located in Banda Aceh, the capital of the Aceh province on the western Indonesian island of Sumatra.

This program is part of Asia Society's ongoing initiative Creative Voices of Muslim Asia.

Can't make it to this program? Tune in to AsiaSociety.org/Live at 7pm EST for a free live video webcast.

Asia Society
725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Thanks so much, Maria Bauman!

Maria Bauman
(photo: Lucilene Barbosa)

Last evening, dancer and community organizer Maria Bauman led a rousing community movement workshop ("Amplification and Scale"), an event of the Community Action Hub at Gibney Dance Center. Alas, the ninety minutes flew by, certainly not time enough to deeply explore Bauman's resourceful tools for engaging diverse communities around racism and other social justice issues. However, a roomful of people, who either did or did not identify as professional dancers, got completely caught up in the joy of our bodies' expressiveness, interacting with one another in an atmosphere of trust, permission and play. Wouldn't it be cool for Bauman to come back and launch an ongoing group that could bond and expand on this promising beginning?

Interested in future Community Action Hub workshops? Keep posted on all events at Gibney Dance Center here.

Emily Johnson: A vision board for neighborhoods

Emily Johnson

What a treat to take part in Emily Johnson's Community Visioning workshop at Gibney Dance Center 280 Broadway this afternoon! It was totally fun.

All photos (c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Born in south central Alaska of Yup'ik descent, Johnson is an internationally acclaimed performer and choreographer on the Minneapolis scene. She won a 2012 Bessie for The Thank-you Bar (Outstanding Production) and made another deep impression last year with the beautiful Niicugni at Baryshnikov Arts Center (read here). Now Johnson is building a New York edition of SHORE--originally presented in June in Minneapolis--for next spring at New York Live Arts. As part of her local research and development process, she offered today's free workshop, an event of Gibney Dance Center's Community Action Hub, inviting participants to think about where we live and work and what parts of our city hold special meaning for us.

Johnson started us out with black-and-white maps of the five boroughs taped to the wall, but they soon came alive with color as we decorated them with stickers (for our place of residence) and doodles (for places that strongly resonate with us).

Later, we brainstormed hundreds of ideas for fostering wellbeing for ourselves, our families, friends, streets and neighborhoods, and we turned the studio's wall into a candy-colored vision board. Choosing a few of these items at random, we gathered in small groups to further brainstorm individual actions that might help manifest those specific desires.

Visions take shape.
all photos (c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

We had a great, and fairly sizable, bunch of folks, and our collaborative work took off right away with much good-natured laughter. It was wonderful to honor parts of New York that, though I might not have seen them in years, have shaped my life. I loved sharing, with everyone, a city's worth of hopes and dreams.

Learn more about Johnson and her upcoming projects at her Web site:

catalyst, dances by emily johnson.

Big news: More chances to take my Through the Portal workshop! [ADDED DATES!]

UPDATE:

Now you can download a short audio announcement about my Image and Psyche: Through the Portal workshop here.

And, wonderful news! We'll be holding a repeat of Through the Portal on Saturday, October 4 (same time) and November 8 (same time), both in great Brooklyn locations. Please feel free to pass this along to your friends and give them the link to my Contact form here.

Journey through Tarot's portals with Eva Yaa Asantewaa [UPDATE]

I'm teaching a new Image and Psyche workshop, Through the Portal, on Saturday, September 20 (1:30-4pm), hosted again in convenient downtown Brooklyn.

Archetypal symbols in Tarot and other imagery oracles are not just beautiful pictures. They are portals to spaces for creativity, wisdom and healing. Where do they lead YOU? 

Journey with me and find out at my next Image and Psyche workshop!

Admission fee: $30 

(pre-registration required by Saturday, 9/13)

Space is limited, and I don't want you to miss out. If you're interested, scroll down to my Contact Form here, and get in touch soon. I will reply with new registration details.

I look forward to journeying with you on September 20!

******

UPDATE: Now you can download a short audio announcement about my Through the Portal workshop here. And, wonderful news! We'll be holding a repeat of Through the Portal on Saturday, October 4 (same time) and November 8 (same time), both in great Brooklyn locations. Please feel free to pass this along to your friends and give them the link to my Contact form here.

Joe Levasseur: Take a workshop with dance's wizard of lighting

Movement Research presents a workshop with Bessie Award winner Joe Levasseur, lighting designer for dance, at Abrons Arts Center, July 7-11.

Lighting Design for Dance

This classroom and practical workshop will be a technical tutorial and discussion about the process of creating lighting designs for dance. All efforts will be made to demystify lighting in order to promote informative decision making and more easeful discussion in future collaborative processes. This class is designed for anyone interested in dance lighting including dancers, choreographers, and stage technicians. Participants must be present for all workshop dates.

Monday-Wednesday, 6:30-10pm, Thursday-Friday, 5:30-9:30pm
Optional: Tuesday and Wednesday 10am-5pm

Fee: $165

Abrons Art Center
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

This Spring, look sideways with choreographer Pavel Zuštiak

ART OF LOOKING SIDEWAYS

Making work: Ideas, Practice and Process

A workshop with Pavel Zuštiak

Artistic Director of Palissimo

designed for choreographers, dancers, actors, 

artists working with body as medium

at Abrons Arts Center

Tuesday-Friday, Apr 22-25, 12-3pm 

(NOTE: Wednesday, April 23 12:30-3:30pm)

Fee: $180 ($120 if booked before April 1)

“You cannot change something unless you know what you are doing.” -- Moshe Feldenkrais

How to start? What is material? How to use improvisation /scoring? What to set? What to leave open?

The objective of this workshop is to set participants free from the notion of originality as something that did not exist before. It will introduce ways of getting away from the planned, comfortable and familiar in dance making. Four three-hour sessions are meant to unveil and develop existing ideas and motions brought to the class by participants, and help them address some of the questions regarding their own creative process.

The workshop focuses on developing conscious presence while improvising in performance; connecting technique to composition and improving skills in this area; exploring tools useful in developing and crafting the work. Attention will be given to creating structures for dance; generating movement material, editing and deconstructing it; relationships between composition and improvisation; and introducing elements of chance. Each session starts with a guided physical warm up that opens the senses, stirs up imagination and heightens physical and mental awareness and exploration of body systems that then leads to exploration and ultimately to composition.

For complete information, click here.

To register, click here. (NOTE: April 1 is the deadline for a $60 discount on the regular $180 fee!)

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

Five days with Miguel Gutierrez, making work!

Miguel Gutierrez

MAKING WORK

In this five-day workshop, Miguel Gutierrez focuses on the creative process in making body/movement-based performance/dance. A variety of approaches to creating — intuitive, improvisational, analytical — are exploited to uncover your individual interests, your process and your work. The workshop consists of unequal parts making, discussing, improvising, and watching the work of other workshop participants. Miguel’s interest is in creating a space in which traditional notions of dance are critiqued, absorbed, or discarded in the service of creating performance that comes from a vital place. An ongoing question throughout the workshop is how to make work that is located in a contemporary context.

Monday-Friday, April 7-11 (10am-2pm)

Underground Theater
Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Clowning around with Kendall Cornell: Get your ha-has out!

Clowns Ex Machina's Kendall Cornell will teach a 2-day clowning workshop for women, Saturday-Sunday, April 5-6.

"I'm not funny. What I am is brave." -- Lucille Ball

Come and unleash your inner Delightmaker. Find the truth, the open heart, the freedom, and the physical vitality of the clown. Laugh 'til you pee.

In this 2 day workshop for clowns, actors, performers, and all adventurous women we will explore: 

play, physical improvisation,
spontaneity & imagination,
character & clown psychology, comic timing,
the joyful truth of failure and more...

Saturday, April 5 (3-7pm)
Sunday, April 6 (3:30-8:30pm)

Flamenco Latino Studios
244-250 West 54th Street (between Broadway and 8th Avenue), Ste. 404 Manhattan
(map/directions)

Fee: $175

For more info or to register: kendall@ClownsExMachina.com or 646-729-1188

Kendall Cornell has been creating, directing and performing clown work since falling in love with it in 1993. At the helm of the all-women clown troupe, Clowns Ex Machina, Kendall has created and directed the shows Clowns Full-Tilt: A Musing on Aesthetics, (described as “kaleidoscopically-dizzying physical theater of the absurd with a wicked steel edge"), Clown Axioms and Clowns By Dead Reckoning, all of which played to sold-out audiences at LaMaMa. In 2007, the troupe’s Not Just for Shock Value: A Femmes-Clowns Assemblage, was called “one of the funniest and best-assembled shows in town.” Most recently, her flamenco-clown show Oil of Ole! played to sold-out crowds at LaMaMa. She and her work have been profiled in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Backstage and Spectacle Journal for the Circus Arts. Her solo clown pieces, such as The Maneater, Glamourpuss, P.S. de la Resistance, and The Wallflower have been presented at LaMaMa, The New York Clown Theatre Festival, the International Festival de Pallasses, Dixon Place, 92nd Street Y and elsewhere in New York City and abroad. Kendall was nominated for “Clown of the Year” by the New York Downtown Clown Revue. Kendall has taught clown, dance and performance in Europe and NYC, and assisted director David Shiner on the U.S. version of the circus-theatre spectacle, Pomp, Duck and Circumstance. In 2006, Kendall was commissioned to create a special clown extravaganza with her women clowns for Cirque du Soleil. Check out www.ClownsExMachina.com for more info.

A workshop on injury prevention for dancers

Steps on Broadway
presents

An Injury Prevention Workshop

Sponsored by 

Dance Spirit Magazine

Sunday, April 6, 6:30pm

Learn ways to prevent and recover from dance injuries.

Dancers, teachers, and parents will gain valuable information on such topics as the importance of a strong core, the role of physical therapy in a dancer’s recovery, and the effects that adolescent growth and dance training have on one another.

Leigh Heflin, The Harkness Center for Dance Injuries
Robin Powell, Pilates Instructor
Dr. Andrew Price, Associate Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, New York University Hospital/Hospital for Joint Disease

with special guest Sara Mearns, New York City Ballet Principal, who will offer a firsthand account of her recovery process.

For ticket information, click here or call 212-874-3678.

Steps on Broadway
2121 Broadway (between 74th and 75th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Artists and vulnerability: Mixing it up with Jaamil Olawale Kosoko

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko
(photo courtesy of Kelly Strayhorn Theater)

ClassClassClass 

presents

Preparing The Vulnerable Body

 for Performance

a workshop with 

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko

Sunday, Feb 16, 1-4pm

Abrons Arts Center

466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan

(directions)

Part performance theory, part vocalization, part group movement/thinking exploration, students will investigate themes of trans performance states, sensitivity, risk-taking, eroticism, exhibitionism, bad behavior, and vocal sounding as a means of healing the self through live performance. Together we watch and support each other by finding, exposing, and attempting to break open previously locked/hidden pathways of emotional, physical and visual performativity. Students are encouraged to bring props and costumes to the workshop to which they have personal meanings, but are willing to let be destroyed.

Kosoko with composer-musician Pauline Oliveros
(photo courtesy of Jaamil Olawale Kosoko)

Kosoko talked with me about his three-hour workshop, Preparing The Vulnerable Body for Performance, open to performing artists from a multitude of genres:

"My idea is to encourage a kind of desegregation in the classroom, to encourage a variety of different kinds of artists to occupy the same space and to learn from each other. So often, we encourage a more insular approach to the creative process and creative space-making. It’s super-important to give those of us who want to branch out of that and explore the terrain an opportunity to engage and meet and explore this idea of vulnerability with others who are working in a similar way but maybe not in the same genre, and use it as a platform to give and take in that way. 

"I also want to think about incorporating a variety of theory into the workshop, bringing in poets, music, maybe some text that I’ve been thinking a lot about--I really love the work of Daphne Brooks--author of Bodies in Dissent--and other literature that I plan to use as jumping off points to initiate certain creative spontaneity. That’s what I’m super-excited about. And then just to see who all comes and what we can share with each other and to create a safe space for that exploration to take place.

"In addition, I’ve been working a lot with Pauline Oliveros over the past year, here in Philadelphia, a legend in the sounding, experimental music, vocalization world. So, using various tactics that I have accumulated over the past ten years of my professional career, I’d love to share some of these methods and ideologies that I’ve learned as a part of my own practice for preparing my body for doing the kind of work that I do and present on the stage."

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko is a producer, curator, poet, and performance artist. He is a 2012 Live Arts Brewery Fellow as a part of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, a 2011 Fellow as a part of the DeVos Institute of Art Management at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and an inaugural graduate member of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University.

Rooted in a creative mission to push history forward, Kosoko’s work in theater and dance has received support from The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage through Dance Advance, The Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative, The Joyce Theater Foundation, and The Philadelphia Cultural Fund. His new solo performance work entitled BLACK MALE REVISITED: Revenge of the New Negro premiered in December 2013 at Miami Theater Center as part of Art Basel and Art Miami '13. As a performer, Kosoko has created original roles in the performance works of visual artist Nick Cave, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Keely Garfield Dance, Miguel Gutierrez and The Powerful People, Headlong Dance Theater, and others. Kosoko’s poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, Poems Against War, The Dunes Review, and Silo, among other publications. In 2011, Kosoko published Notes on an Urban Kill-Floor: Poems for Detroit (Old City Publishing). He is a contributing correspondent for Dance Journal (PHL), the Broad Street Review (PHL), and Critical Correspondence (NYC). Visit: www.jaamil.com for more information.

*****

In February, CLASSCLASSCLASS will also present affordable workshops by iele paloumpis (see my interview with them on Dancer's Turn), Aretha Aoki, Nia Love and Jillian Sweeney, among many other artists, at Abrons Arts Center. Click here to learn more.

Queens arts council offers visa workshop for immigrant artists

Queens Council on the Arts presents

BYOB in Brief: 

Visa Information for Immigrant Artists with George Akst

Are you an artist from another country? Ever wonder if you qualify for US Immigration’s so-called “Artist visa”? Are those visas only for visual or performing artists? Can you get a Green Card as an artist?

George S. Akst of Akst & Akst Immigration Law Firm will answer these and other questions at next month’s edition of BYOB in Brief: Visa Information for Immigrant Artists as part of QCA’s Build Your Own Business (BYOB) Workshop Series. Mr. Akst has over 35 years of experience in immigration law, including information on recent changes to immigration laws in New York City.

Wednesday, October 9, 6-8pm

Queens Council on the Arts
37-11 35th Ave (entrance on 37th Street), Astoria
M/R train to Steinway St or N/Q to 36th Ave

Admission FREE! RSVP here

ABOUT

George Akst received his B.A. in Economics from Boston University in 1972. He attended The Hague Academy of International Law in the Netherlands in 1973 and received his J.D. from Fordham Law School in 1976 where he was a member of the Urban Law Journal. He was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1977 and is admitted to practice in the Federal District Court and US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He has been a Member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association since 1984, as well as the Consular Law Society. He is also on the referral list of the NYC Commission on the United Nations, Division of International Business. Mr. Akst is a former Adjunct Professor of Business and Real Estate Law, at both Long Island University and at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. He is also the Founder and President of the Real Estate Institute of Greater New York. Over the past 35 years, Mr. Akst has been a frequent speaker to business and community groups throughout the New York Metropolitan area on the issues of business and family immigration to the US

Basil Twist's "Dogugaeshi" puppet theater returns to Japan Society

In Basil Twist's ingenious Dogugaeshi--now sold out in its new run at Japan Society through Sunday--painted images recede and shrink, or steadily press forward, growing in intensity, or playfully pop up from out of nowhere. This kaleidoscope of sliding doors, dancing panels, Shinto gateways, silhouettes of people and objects, and glowing candlelight creates a continuously altered environment, a theatrical experience that disorients and enchants.

Dogugaeshi's white fox

It's sort of a shaggy fox story--featuring, at times, a shaggy white fox puppet--with no recognizable narrative and little conventional action, just the almost neverending opening of painted portal after painted portal onto more portals, each awaiting its turn to be pulled aside. This series of revelations, this simple dance of decor--dogugaeshi means "set change"--leads you, step by step, to a final, quiet awareness of the mysterious, archetypal essence of theater.

Sliding panels and some elusive fox puppets from Dogugaeshi

Presented in a deliberately constrained space--hence the quick dispersal of tickets--Dogugaeshi flows like dream inside your head. It can be a sweet dream. (Have you met that loping, Trickster fox--familiar of the god Inari--with his gorgeous eyes?) Or, like very different types of dreams, it can be frustrating or even anxiety-provoking. My general memories suggest that, for the current production, Twist has made changes from 2007 version of Dogugaeshi, seen here at Japan Society.

Shamisen musician and singer Yumiko Tanaka in Dogugaeshi

For one thing, this new edition acknowledges and evokes northeastern Japan's 2011 earthquake and tsunami. In one section, the delicate decor's walls and panels flap and tremble; tattered panels fall from the little ceiling as Yumiko Tanaka's shamisen emits shrieks and grinding sounds. Our thoughts surely go to Japan's historic trauma, but like everything else in Dogugaeshi, what we see before us and hear from Tanaka's masterful singing and playing seem like externalizations of our own sensations and feelings, all of this experience and information looping forward and back between us and the little puppet stage.

Although you probably do not have a ticket for Dogugaeshi, you can catch up on the many other events planned for Japan Society's 2013-14 season--including a shamisen workshop with Yumiko Tanaka on Saturday, November 2 (1pm). Click here for Japan Society's general information and schedule.

For more information on Basil Twist's extraordinary work, click here.

"Points of Entry" workshop for The Dance Enthusiast

photo by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

It was so much fun to facilitate my writing workshop--"Points of Entry"--for editor Christine Jowers (top photo, third from right) and her lively, talented writers from The Dance Enthusiast. I am serving as a Master Writer in Residence for TDE through May 2014 and, in addition to tonight's workshop, will be contributing several articles or reviews in coming months.

Eva Yaa Asantewaa (right) with TDE writers
photo by Christine Jowers

Thank you very much for this opportunity, Christine. And thanks to New York Live Arts for hosting us.

Now, everyone, make sure you write and publish those fantastic reviews we talked about!