Catastrophe/Bliss

Last weekend I visited Portlandia. Luckily I was able to hitch a ride with Tonya & Brant + touch base with Michelle & Toru. My friendships deepened during this time partly because of how the earthquake in Japan continues to resonate close to home.

Two questions from our conversations:

How do you respond to catastrophe?
If you could follow your bliss, what would that be?

Thinking about responses to the devastation in Japan, I created this video slideshow of Ji Mo 寂寞: The Stillness of Solitude.

Perhaps it is old fashioned to think that art can bridge the place between distress and comfort. Nonetheless, I offer this slideshow as an initial response. The music is a remix from a live performance at Lincoln Hall in Portland. The photos are from an early morning at Kubota Garden in Seattle. This stillness of solitude is a reflective space to recompose.

放火 火の粉
hōka hinoko
fire sparks

放火 炎
hōka hono(o)
fire flames

放火 火事だ
hōka kajida
fire roars

Seattle-based artist Diem Chau responds by offering two crayon family portraits as part of a raffle on her blog. Chau will donate raffle proceeds to the Japanese Red Cross.

Here are other ways to alleviate suffering and oppression:

• American Red Cross
• Mercy Corps

Have you found more responses worth noting?

 

Mother of Us All CityArts magazine review

Marsha Mutisi told me to check out Rachel Gallaher’s astute impressions of The Mother of Us All in CityArts Magazine. Gallaher writes about her experience of the performance and quotes Donald Byrd from the post-show discussion to give a deeper context for the work.

Here are the final four paragraphs of her article:

The music (an original score composed by Byron Au Yong), live spoken word (Marsha Nyembesi Mutisi) and recorded soundtrack of various commentators spouting newsworthy phrases like, “This year Barack Obama will devote special resources to Africa,” blend together at times in a cacophonous blur that adds to the chaos factor of the show. Moments of unintelligible political jabber fade into background against the virility and emotional life of the dancing.

In a post-show discussion Donald Byrd spoke about the overwhelming accessibility of conflicting news stories and the wealth of information available about Africa.

“One of the things I was interested in is that the audience curate their own experience,” he said. “I don’t know what the answer is; even the people in Africa don’t know what they answer is. I never felt that the goal of any of these projects was to present a solution. The goal of this piece is to get people to think about Africa during the entire piece. Most people don’t even think about Africa once during their day.”

The audience can’t help but think about Africa during the performance, as the soundtrack provides a constant, needed reminder that that in fact is the focus of the piece. Without it, The Mother of Us All would be just another beautifully danced work from Donald Byrd.

Read the entire review called “The Mother of Us All” Presents Open-Ended Views of Africa at CityArts Magazine.

 

Mother of Us All SunBreak review

SunBreak editor Michael van Baker wrote a comprehensive review of Spectrum Dance Theater’s The Mother of Us All. He begins with the challenge “Is that what Africa has come to mean, African aid?” and continues with “How do you dance a phenomenological investigation?”

The article is an incredible read. Here is the concluding paragraph:

The surreal, CNN-gone-wild scenic and lighting design by Jack Mehler is joined to a score by Byron Au Yong, with live performance on the kora by Kane Mathis. The kora is an old, old instrument, and Au Yong has it almost vanish within a river of electronic, industrial sonic artifact, only to reappear here and there, never completely overwhelmed. The score is perfectly suited to what you see. Byrd says his goal is that the work will spark in viewers a curiosity in Africa, our de facto “container” so long for the the disempowered and revolutionary, as Africa, here and there, finds its way to a middle class existence (at the same time as the U.S. middle class increasingly finds itself under new strains). Au Yong took that to heart, so there’s none of the Afro-pop percussion you might expect (again, an emphasis-shifting elision that effaces a cultural mode that has been reasonably important to Africans, at least). This music, this dance, is more tectonic, filled with subsidences. At the end, you realize that one reason the dancers have tried so strenuously to maintain contact with the ground is that it’s moving beneath them.

You can read Baker’s “Truth? You Can’t Handle SDT’s ‘Mother of Us All” at SunBreak.

 

Mother of Us All Seattle Times review

Michael Upchurch focuses on the power of the dance despite the barrage of audio in his review of Spectrum Dance Theater’s new production The Mother of Us All. For the music, Upchurch writes:

The air fills with musical fragments, ambient street sounds and a series of talking heads holding forth on the challenges facing Africa. The sound tableau, composed by Byron Au Yong, mixes recorded material with Kane Mathis performing live on the kora (West African harp) and some laptop wizardry by Au Yong himself….

It’s that aural backdrop that’s the problem, however. Au Yong divides his score into distinct sections, but he shapes each one so similarly that the effect is monotonous. Mathis’ kora is usually lost in the mix. The news analysts/politicians/foreign-policy experts are layered over one another, with some phrases audible and some lost in the shuffle. After a while, you just want to tune them out and concentrate on the dance … which kind of means tuning out “Africa,” because it’s only subliminally present in the choreography.

Read The Seattle Times (PDF version) review called “Spectrum Dance Theater delivers meaty moves, but the audio trimmings are too much.” The comments are fascinating as well.

If you experienced The Mother of Us All, what did you think?

 

Mother of Us All preview

Seattle Times arts writer Michael Upchurch speaks with choreographer Donald Byrd about the upcoming performance The Mother of Us All to premiere at The Moore Theatre this Thursday through Saturday. Read the comprehensive interview called It’s complicated: Spectrum Dance Theater explores Africa in Donald Byrd’s ‘The Mother of Us All’ to learn more about the Beyond Dance: Promoting Awareness and Mutual Understanding (PAMU) series.

Here’s an excerpt:

To viewers who protest that they don’t know where to focus their attention, Byrd asks, “Well, do you know where to look in life?”

Byrd admits that theater audiences are used to being told where to look and how to feel. But for this particular subject matter, he believes, streamlining or simplifying the stage action would be the wrong choice.

“I want people to gather the information however they can and make whatever sense out of it they can.” Their role, as he views it, is to “curate” what they’re seeing.

“I can maybe direct them or guide them in a certain direction,” he says. “But I don’t want to come to a conclusion for them.”

It’s not just an aesthetic but an ethical stance on Byrd’s part.

“It minimizes the complexity of the subject to simplify it so much that it’s easy to follow,” he says. “It would be presumptuous on my part to reduce it to something that’s easily digested.”

Read the full preview at The Seattle Times (PDF version) and come to the show.

SD+ and STG present…
The Mother of Us All
3-5 March 2011, 8PM
The Moore Theatre, Seattle