Let the 'flow' begin....on your mark, get set - GO!

I am excited to say this week I will officially begin working on site - This fall CONTRA-TIEMPO and I will launch a series of site specific community choreographic laboratories. Part performance, part engagement of community in art making & story sharing, these choreography laboratories will take place in four distinct bodies of water all over Los Angeles, starting at the Pacific, at Santa Monica's Annenberg Beach House. These labs will happen while we are continuing to develop a full evening length work for the concert stage that will debut late Fall 2015 and be ready to tour in the Spring of 2016.  

I am creating a framework inspired by the Tempest, challenging notions of race, gender & upheaval, and I am interested in Sycorax: the only female character of color, the indigenous witch, with a referenced origin of Africa. She is seen as monstrous, evil and vindictive and her maternal power undermines the dominating force of white male privilege. Much has been written about her character’s role that threatens to blur the boundaries of the emerging binaries of home/away, colonizer/colonized, white/black, & chaos/order. My own work and interest in existing and creating in the ‘in between’ has drawn me to her and her clear connection to Oya, the Afro-Cuban deity of the wind/storms. Oya, the most volatile and unruly of the female orishas, is feared among most. As I physically uncover multiple narratives connected to that of the Tempest I am constantly brought back to agua: waves of family betrayal, the relentless current of absent fathers, raining down of persecution based citizenship/color lines, drowning of exile & the Africanist past washed ashore. Creating in a public space where all are welcome, that was once a space where people of color were not allowed - unless serving - I am excited to connect this larger framework of race and agua to the local and specific history of this space... stay tuned as I start delving into imagining, creating and allowing this all to 'flow'...