morning musings: new work for in bloom

image description: a dancer wearing navy cropped pants and a forest green shirt is in a white-walled studio sitting on her left thigh, with her hair, black with blonde tips, completely obscuring her face. Her left hand is pulling a bunch of strands of hair straight out in front of her. Her right knee is bent with her foot on the ground, making her knees form a “v” at a 45-degree angle. Her right arm is extended straight between her legs and her fingers are naturally curved.

I’ve been loosely working on a thing for In Bloom, a work-in-progress showing/gathering I’m performing in next week at The Center for Ballet Arts at NYU. My organization, Isogram Projects, is also co-producing with Sarah McCaffery/Gold Standard Arts Foundation. (I designed the flyer too!).

Until yesterday, I had been primarily brainstorming. Since the thing is just over a week away, I told myself I that I ABSOLUTELY had to make the entire thing on Monday (yesterday) so that I’d have time to rehearse it and make (hopefully) minor edits.

I thought I’d never make work about motherhood. The idea used to make me cringe, frankly. But now I’m feeling it. The thing I’m showing next week are sketches for a performance portrait of motherhood, ambition, and rage. So far, there is music (looped vocals and Push 3, featuring a drum rack I made with my piano) and dance. If I can get it together there may also be some kinetic drawing. We’ll see!

This is going to be an installment of my Test Sites series, short experiments in process that started in 2016. They aren’t meant to be precious, but I’ve felt so precious about them lately. I’ve made seven so far, and I’ve usually been happy with all of them, except for the most recent one.

I used to work with tight timelines frequently and have something finished by the end, I’m talking one or two weeks, and I’m finding that so hard to do these days. I used to be very confident about simply “fulfilling the task” and now my tasks tend to sprout other tasks and so on, so the thing keeps expanding, but I need to contain it and tell it to just wait till after the 28t so that I have something to show next week!

I made Test Site 7 four months after giving birth. It was rough. It’s the only one I haven’t posted on the Test Sites page. And frankly, this new one, Test Site 8, sort of feels like that again; I feel a familiar pressure. But I feel better about this one.

Tickets for the performance are here, and they’re free for artists and art workers. Get them soon! I imagine an event with free food will sell out fast.

Women's March on NYC

There was so much positive energy at the Women's March on NYC. People were friendly and courteous even though it was crowded. When we started marching it got really tight, but no one got physically agressive; we just moved slowly and huddled together like penguins keeping each other warm (although thanks to global warming, it wasn't very cold). There was one dude who was smoking a cigarette in the middle of the march, which those of us around him thought was très rude (PSA: please do not smoke a cigarette at a march) but that was the only small annoyance of the day and was ultimately NBD, as it was immensely inspiring to see so many people rally for equality and human rights. Anyway...photos!

Rite of Passage at Federal Hall

I had started this blog post and completely forgot about it. The farthest I got was inserting an image then saving the draft. Anyway. A couple of weeks ago I saw performance artist Erin Helfert's Rite of Passage at Federal Hall with sound design by composer Nina C. Young. Helfert stood in the center of the circular hall, where she would turn towards different directions of the space, and repeatedly recited a monologue about her rape and her 5-year struggle to seek justice for it. (You can read about her experience in more detail here.) 

Rite of Passage was powerful while it remained relatively simple. There were no other visuals aside from the artist herself, speakers, the space we were in, and other spectators. Helfert’s monologue, spoken into a microphone with live processing and electronics manipulated and created by Young, referred to “this body” and what it endured, the body that we were seeing right in front of us. To me, she was like a medium, channeling the past and speaking of it with both emotion and distance. The format of the piece itself, taking place in a government building, an amplified voice talking to strangers, took us back in time to the days of the trial. In her Chime for Change piece, Helfert writes: “Countless times, I’ve had to repeat the details of my rape before a room full of strangers, often into a microphone, the speakers blaring to a crowded courtroom audience.” 

It was a gray day when this took place and I was almost too lazy to leave the apartment but I’m so glad I did. I was moved by how Helfert, with Young, both created something beautiful and demonstrated great strength after such an ugly and horrific experience.

Music in a Memory Palace

On February 21, I'll be performing at La MaMa with composer and singer Lacy Rose in harunalee theater company's to the left of the pantry and under the sugar shack, an immersive theater experience. I saw the set for the first time during our tech rehearsal and I was blown away. I loved the entire aesthetic and I just wanted to touch everything. While it’s rare, things sometimes the stars align, as they are right now for me creatively: I have an experimental theater fellowship, I’m making my first solo piece, and now I’m involved in this production. This will be my first performance in a theater piece and it couldn’t have been more fitting for me, as I still get to play my role of pianist. (I’m pretty sure all this was sparked by my trip to Joshua Tree last Fall).

harunalee's website describes to the left of the pantry and under the sugar shack as "an exploratory installation which is a little bit cosmos and a little bit party, carefully designed and built so you can crawl into it at your leisure." The company accepted submissions of memories from the public. Each evening there will be different performers who work in various mediums, including dance, drag, music, and more. For our performance, I will accompany Lacy on three songs she composed especially for the installation. One composition is an invocation of the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, another piece is inspired by one of Lacy's memories, and the third is a piece inspired by a participant's memory. It only seats 35 at a time, so it's best to reserve your tickets in advance, which you can do here.