Thursday, November 25, 2010

#7 Space & #8 Adelaide Ocean Lullaby {10 things I want from Trinidad}


#7 Space | "My joy is stimulated by vast, wide, open spaces, both literally and figuratively"--excerpt from my 2010 artist statement

As a Visionary Space Activator, access to a diversity of spaces is essential to my creative process. Each space contributes to the stimulation of new ideas, awakens my body to unexplored movement. Every space is coded with its own spatial sensitivities, and these unique elements give texture and context to the origin and experience of the movement within that space. There is an infinite variation of movement in all spaces because each breath that we take shifts the nature of any space in a subtle, almost undetectable way. Every space that I encounter then becomes a laboratory of unconditional possibilities, informing my dance in a way that only that cocktail of space and time could.

Trinidad is a vibrant laboratory for JOYISM! for so many reasons. The fact that is a brand new space to my body speaks volumes alone. Another irresistible element of Trinidad is that it is an island, surrounded by oceans. Trinidad's spatial orientation on the planet stimulates a completely different frequency than what the east coast of the United States offers me, with its tall highways and compact concrete. The dance will birth itself anew in Trinidad, and I am eager to activate new spaces within and around me.

#8 Adelaide Ocean Lullaby | The Mother Project work-in-process...

Adelaide Fisher Brown is my great-great grandmother. She is the mother of William Brown, who is the father of Gloria Jean Brown, who is the mother of my father, Wayne. Adelaide was from Barbados, and immigrated to the United States at a very young age. There are little facts still left about her life, and so her story is largely an in-depth intuitive journey. I feel that being in the space of the Caribbean unlock parts of her dance and story that I could not have come across in Washington, DC.

The Mother Project's process engages the intuitive memory of our psychic selves and also the memory pre-coded in our biological DNA. Some strand of me is purely Adelaide, and so the dance is a physical action that gives me a real time connection to a woman who lived and died long before I ever existed. Adelaide Ocean Lullaby is a choreopoem exploring the intuitive direction that is coming through my dancing body. Her story is one of a woman who never dreams that she will be leaving home, and her mother, forever. And so she has to find a way to create peace and mother herself in the United States.

Adelaide's story is still very young in my body, but my dance journey in Trinidad will allow it to mature into its next phases. Read more about the The Mother Project and its early stages at www.dancejoyism.com.


~~~~
Stay tuned to the JOYISM! blog for the complete series, "10 things I want from Trinidad." Also, I will be writing about my dance journeys in Trinidad and posting them to the JOYISM! blog. Subscribe to the blog, join JOYISM!'s mailing list, "like" JOYISM! on facebook--stay connected to the dance!

Contribute! Make a donation to JOYISM!'s Trinidad dance residency at any time. Your support is always appreciated and is strengthening my ability to create dance and peaceful exchanges with communities around the world. Find out more about my program in Trinidad at www.dancejoyism.com.

Photos: Ganges River, Rishikesh, India February 2006; Coast of Seminyak, Bali, Indonesia, May 2006

No comments:

Post a Comment