Monthly Archives: August 2009

4 Aug, 2009

Freedom

2009-08-04T20:21:52-07:00By |Categories: Adia Tamar Whitaker, CounterPULSE, Performing Diaspora|Tags: , , |

middle (line) Look fast. Move slow. The ground is on fire, but I don't worry myself with that anymore. If I was at home I would ask if the fumes were toxic. Now, toxic is relative and intersections are the eye of the storm. In Ghana, 'Nature' is the holy book that tells people what to do and how to do it. The land is Jesus. The people his disciples. Judas is the juju that prevents progress, but holds the

5 Aug, 2009

Words First: A Monthly Solo Performance Series

2009-08-05T19:30:36-07:00By |Categories: Events|Tags: , , , |

Wed. Aug. 5, 7:30pm, $7-10 (Members $3-5)

Janine Brito, in "Poetry for the Pathetic & Repugnant," is having trouble surviving her day, let alone her breakup. Alex Koll lets you into the world of a balloon animal-maker in "I'm That Guy." Zahra Noorbakhsh (photo, right) is an Islamic preteen, struggling to save her mother from the fiery pits of hell in "Hijab or Hammer-Pants?" Buy Tix Now!
13 Aug, 2009

Riser Rebuild

2009-08-13T17:39:10-07:00By |Categories: CounterPULSE, Images|Tags: |

Last weekend, a small group of volunteers, including yours truly, carefully demolished the old risers at CounterPULSE. Having never used a power drill before, and in the company of those who have, I faked my way through the day, unscrewing, de-nailing, and generally having a blast. Apparently, I have a knack. The cool part of deconstructing the risers was seeing how much care had gone into building them in the first place! Everything was carefully put together, thus making it

15 Aug, 2009

Live from Riser Rebuild

2009-08-15T16:37:06-07:00By |Categories: CounterPULSE, Video, Volunteers|Tags: , , |

Hi friends, This is Jez here, Board Prez of CounterPULSE. Last week Lily wrote a blog post about our exciting new riser rebuild. If you're interested in helping out, contact Julie at 415.626.2060 or via email (julie [@] counterpulse.org) to find out more! I just got back into town and decided to stop by and join the volunteers to help with the rebuild. Here's some quick photos I took to share with you. But first, an introduction by CounterPULSE Board

18 Aug, 2009

Introduction to My New Work”From Beijing to San Francisco”

2009-08-18T02:27:29-07:00By |Categories: CounterPULSE, Performing Diaspora, Wang Fei|Tags: |

My project “From Beijing to San Francisco” at CP  is a newly commissioned musical piece, bringing the guqin, a Chinese scholarly art, into an innovative, multidisciplinary stage performance, and introducing the ancient, living tradition of the guqin into modern life. It uses a guqin player’s own story to illustrate the fate of the guqin, an ancient Chinese art form, reflect on what has happened in China during the last 30 years, and interpret the period of the Cultural Revolution (1960s to

19 Aug, 2009

The Memo

2009-08-19T10:19:12-07:00By |Categories: Adia Tamar Whitaker, CounterPULSE, Performing Diaspora|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

I didn't get the memo. You know the one that breaks down the ways in which descendants of enslaved Africans have a different (but just as post traumatic stress disordered psychosis) than the descendants of colonized Africans. To be fair, I looked completely different when I've traveled abroad before (I had long hair), AND there is no pronoun for "he"or "she" in Ghanaian language. Word. My bad. Yet and still, I was expecting some kind of Haiti-ish/Southern American Negro/Caribbean stratification

19 Aug, 2009

Towards Chicano Dance

2009-08-19T13:33:23-07:00By |Categories: CounterPULSE, Gema Sandoval, Images, Performing Diaspora|Tags: |

When you choreograph folk dance and work to transfer movement from its natural habitat to the stage the considerations are: : Is the representation accurate? Am I being true to the spirit of the dance? Have I accurately reflected the integrity and idiosyncracy of the music, dance and people of that area? As important as these questions are, they are also the very elements that discourage creative evolutions from that dance. Additionally, I have always been keenly aware that ,

20 Aug, 2009

Approaching the Feminine – Prumsodun Ok for Performing Diaspora

2009-08-20T04:41:20-07:00By |Categories: CounterPULSE, Performing Diaspora, Prumsodun Ok|Tags: , , , , , , , |

"He, who is described as male, is as much the female and the penetrating eye does not fail to see it." - Rigveda It is 4.06 AM.  My eyes tell me that I need to sleep but lying in bed is proving useless as thoughts race through my head.  I was in Cambodia for ten days, just two days ago and have brought so much back with me.  New knowledge, new costumes, new energy, and the pop song that currently

21 Aug, 2009

Do You Have Those in Black?

2009-08-21T19:31:38-07:00By |Categories: CounterPULSE, Images|Tags: , , |

Ok so we aren't quite finished but we are nearly there.  We had to use the white because in the entire Bay Area it is apparently the only color in which they make Fire Retardant paint.  Patrick Simms and I slapped the first coat of black on before we left yesterday and I think they are going to look great.  We are looking for a big push over the weekend to bring this puppy home, so come lend a hand

25 Aug, 2009

Bihag, my choreographic take on the Hip hop Tinikling – part 2

2009-08-25T21:33:52-07:00By |Categories: CounterPULSE, Dulce Capadocia, Performing Diaspora|Tags: |

Archival Photo of  Silayan Dance Company  featuring dancers Sandy Mendez and Mandy Burgos  from article on  "Filipino Life",   Los Angeles Times 1986 (Costume idea for Tikling Bird Goddess in "BIHAG" - look at male dancer in the back) I write in my pajamas in this late bright sunny afternoon wondering why I haven’t changed since the morning.  I hesitate;   feeling deeply exhausted  from last month’s activities,  I am slow to  recuperating.   I keep having to convince myself that being

26 Aug, 2009

developing the script… the bare bones

2009-08-26T10:01:34-07:00By |Categories: Ana Maria Alvarez, CounterPULSE, Performing Diaspora|Tags: , , , , , |

So I haven't been good with updating the blog regularly - I am the same way about my own personal blog - but when I do it is thorough! We have been traveling all summer and I have been very in my head about this work - working on skill building and movement material but not setting anything - that will begin next week - what I have been working on this summer is more the structure and 'script' of

28 Aug, 2009

Koreni, making peace with the past to move forward as life gets in the way of ART

2009-08-28T15:09:33-07:00By |Categories: CounterPULSE, Danica Sena Gakovich, Events, Performing Diaspora|Tags: |

The very spontaneous nature of art rarely gives way to "schedules", ie. scribbling notes on a bathroom floor at 4am so as not to wake up the household, 2-hour rehearsals that turn into 10 hours, starting with violins and ending up with tambourines, constant breaking of commitments due to double-booking or financial constraints...and yet as performers, choreographers, collaborators we must adhere to some semblance of organization so as not to disappear into our microcosmic "bubbles".  A famous Spanish dancer who

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