Borders Resurfacing Assignment #6

This round, we brainstormed assignments specific to each person, while keeping in mind the upcoming performance installation in Salzburg this fall.

Shyamala: Come up with a score that combines your water ritual with Sandra's water ritual.

Meena: Keep developing video from Salaach footage, taking feedback into consideration.

Cyn and Babli: Choreograph movement for Cyn's "Mixing Waters" poem on the Saalach and San Lorenzo Rivers, drawing on vocabulary from the original gestures and remixed physical phrases we created. Sandra choreographs movement for the Saalach portion, and Cyn creates movement for the San Lorenzo version.

DUE: Sept 25

Shy's creative response #5.2 Borders Resurfacing: Words not Teeth

This is a re-write of a poem I wrote for the Familial Migration documents assignment.  I would love feedback and am also interested in moving it into my body soon!

Words NOT Teeth

I delicately examine my birth certificate, a frail ink-stained, yellowish paper.

My Father’s name squeezes itself neatly into the tiny box, whose creator didn’t anticipate the Jagarlapudis with our plentiful syllables.

His birthplace:  India.

I imagine the huge watery border he crossed and wonder how he was received when he arrived with only $26, a student visa, and his dreams.

The box for “color or race” is not filled out.  

I smirk as I observe that it contains a single horizontal line as if to mark the very category itself irrelevant.

43 years later, my year-and-a-half old son, soon to get his passport, perches curiously on a stool, pointing at the camera flash.

We love the smiley picture, but the elderly black man who runs the dingy store warns us that the rules have changed:  no smiling.

We choose the one where he looks puzzled instead.   

He is wearing his favorite color, orange, unaware of how this color is infamously linked to the 45th president of the United States.  Unaware of the president’s travel bans.  Unaware that the world’s borders are tightening and that he may never experience the freedom that I have enjoyed with my American passport and my Overseas Indian Citizenship.

This ¾ desi child who knows more Spanish than Telugu, who loves Salsa as well as Bollywood music, and who, like any almost two-year-old, simultaneously tests boundaries and clings to security.  

He knows you don’t need a big wall to feel safe.  But, like many other almost two-year-olds, he still needs practice with using words instead of teeth.  

1.  I tried a little reference to water and borders in the 6th line, not sure if it's enough?

2.  I tried to make the ending a bit more complex while still being a political statement.  What do you think of this ending?  In case you want to compare to the original:  https://postnatyam.blogspot.com/2017/03/shys-borders-resurfacing-response-3.html

3.  Any other thoughts?

Shy's creative Response #5.1 Borders Resurfacing: LASSI

I tried the water ritual that I created for the last assignment during an artists' panel at LASSI (Los Angeles Summer Solidarity Institute) last month.  I ran out of time for feedback, but Shruti had some interesting thoughts and I'll invite folks who participated to make comments if they wish as well.  Special thanks to Shruti for inviting me to participate and trusting me with trying something new, and to Yo Yo and Jools for feedback and information how to support Native communities and water protectors. 

CONTEXT: 

 I gave an overview of The Post Natyam Collective's long distance process and shared our Cyber Manifesto:   https://vimeo.com/67838947

 

I shared our current project Borders Resurfacing and the March 2016 assignment from Cynthia that inspired my "10 little" exploration:  http://postnatyam.blogspot.com/2016/03/

I performed live an expanded version of "10 little" which became titled "Not knowing of the taking" after learning of intense challenges of the water protectors at the DAPL in Oct 2016: 
https://vimeo.com/192784112 

So as not to be the representative of the Water Protectors I also shared this video of La Donna, owner of the land that housed the Sacred Stone camp where 1000s of water protectors had gathered:  (we watched from 1:45min to the end)

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=la+donna+sacred+stone+camp&&view=detail&mid=694BB5C5257F8BA96BCB694BB5C5257F8BA96BCB&FORM=VRDGAR

WATER RITUAL

Inspired Ilaan Egeland Manzzini family dance jam (tape lines and building bridges), and Barbara Dilley’s 5 eye practices (as learned from Carol McDowell)

Free Write:  

Participants did a 3 min free write about their own experiences/associations with water and borders. Then circled 3 interesting words or phrases.  To include in a  group poem

Group Poem

Eyes Closed Water Body Meditation

Ask participants spread out standing with eyes closed or soft focus.  Notice breath like waves, notice wetness in mouth, imagine blood and fluids in body circulating.  Remembering and honoring: Our bodies are about 60 percent water!  Connecting that water to water outside your body.  

Soft Focus Earth Water Walk

Invite participants to open eyes to soft focus if closed, taking room in without focusing on any particular thing.  Direct participants to begin to slowly walk around room between other bodies keeping soft focus. about 71 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water.  Honoring this thought as walk. Whenever want can pause and be still, noticing the movement around you, and then continue.

Seeing without naming connecting

Without naming them in your mind, begin to see the things both still and moving around you. Notice the shapes on the floor and if you are inspired, perhaps follow one (before start, I will have put down tape in long curved lines that sometimes criss cross). If you come across another who is moving pause for a minute and if you would like, I invite you connect briefly with a body part (head, arm, knee, back)

Seeing between bridges and tunnels

Noticing the spaces between the lines, begin to find ways to navigate over them without touching them.  If you come across another person think about how you can build a bridge, or a tunnel for others by connecting body parts. If you come across bridges or tunnels go through them.  Feel free to move on if you have made bridge and look for other connections or keep looking for spaces to go under, between, through.   

Seeing direct, borders and shapes

freeze and notice which lines you are between.  You may find yourself with a specific group of people within the same lines.  Stay with this group and do not cross into another area.  If there are others in the same space you can look them in the eye, make a group shape, adding in one at a time.  Once the shape is built any one may shift positions in the shape making the shape shift slowly as different people step out and build a new shape, you must stay within the lines around your group.  

Water shapes:  

Introduce a bottle of water to each group.  These waters have come all the way across several borders from rivers in Germany and Austria, one of which was the site of huge arrival of Syrian refugees.    If you get a bottle of water, carry it preciously without your hands, this is your permission to go to another group, take the water with you and present it/offer it to someone else and then take their place in the group shape.  

Stay with new group and make a new shape including the bottle of water in your group.  While everyone was in their last group shape, I read the group poem out loud. 

Resources for those interested in supporting the work of the water protectors:  
 RED (Red Earth Defense)
www.lakotalaw.org
 The Environmental Indigenous Network
 https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/news/who%27s-banking-dakota-access-pipeline

SHY'S THOUGHTS
It took much longer than I anticipated, and I could have taken even longer.  But even so, I was impressed at the shapes and connections everyone made for a group of people in which only a couple considered themselves movers.  I think they were surprised that it was fun (they had expressed trepidation about what I was going to have them do with all the lines on the floor), and they seemed amazed that the water really was from the Austrio-German border!!!

Interesting thought:  Shruti thought I could be a character when giving directions, perhaps something like a border guard, since I dictated when people could go and which areas they had to stay in.  I think they said it was interesting to feel how the borders were restrictive, even as they went about their activities or tasks and how they were conscious about not being able to cross the borders. 

Overall, I think this works well as a workshop.  I"m not so sure about getting random audience members to connect and build bridges etc.  Though the seeing eye practices while moving in, on, and over the borders can work. Perhaps a combination of these and some of Babli's water ritual ideas would be interesting to do with an actual audience?

FEEDBACK

If you were a participant, please leave any thoughts in the comment section below.  If it helps, here are a few guiding questions you can answer.

1.  What was it like for you participating in the ritual?
2.  What part was the most interesting to you and why?
3.  Was there anything you wondered about?  If so, what?
4.  If you are comfortable sharing your water freewrite let me know.  I took pictures of several of them but won't post unless you are comfortable!  you can write me separately to let me know shydance@gmail.com

Cynthia's Creative Response #5: Borders Resurfacing

For my assignment, I decided to expand my water ritual score from Assignment #4 into a participatory art project, Mixing Waters.  The project involves mailing bottles of water from the San Lorenzo River to people in other places, who would then do the mixing waters score.  You can read about the project here: http://www.cynthialinglee.com/mixing-waters/.  A good number of friends from different places in the US have agreed to do the score.

Partway through mailing out the bottles of water, Hurricane Harvey hit Houston.  Harvey has been called the worst storm to ever hit the United States.  Houston is my hometown, where I still have family; it is the fourth largest and most diverse city in the US (yes, even more than LA).  It is also a center of petrochemical production and has a laissez faire approach to zoning, all of which will complicate the recovery efforts from the extreme flooding that has occurred.  

I decided to take my remaining bottles of San Lorenzo water and do a durational ritual action connecting the 1955 flooding of Santa Cruz's last Chinatown to the current and ongoing devastation in Texas and Louisiana.  The ritual draws on baibai, Han Taiwanese practices of ancestral worship, as well as being somewhat inspired by my existing performance art piece, Lost Chinatowns.  I decided to do a ritual for every day that it kept raining (and as of Sept 1, it's still raining).  Harvey made landfall on August 25, and I didn't start till the 28th, so the first three days are missing.  

Password for all videos: "harvey"

Note: the documentation is imperfect (and given its ritual nature, it didn't make sense to re-film anything), and for some reason the Aug 31 video is flipped 90 degrees.  I'll fix that when I have some spare time.

Day 4: August 28, 2017

Mixing Waters San Lorenzo-Harvey 1 from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Day 5: August 29, 2017

Mixing Waters San Lorenzo-Harvey 2 from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Day 6: August 30, 2017

Mixing Waters San Lorenzo - Harvey 3 from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Day 7: August 31, 2017

Mixing Waters San Lorenzo - Harvey 4 from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Day 8: September 1, 2017

Mixing Waters San Lorenzo - Harvey 5 from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

QUESTIONS:
(1) How does the ritual make you feel?  What effect does its durational, repeating nature have on you?  How do the variations from day to day register for you?
(2) Does this piece convey anything related to solidarity or coalition building to you?  Might any of its techniques be useful to us in the larger Borders Resurfacing project, as we think about how to connect our local issues/contexts?
(3) As imperfect as the documentation is, do you feel that it is strong enough as a stand-alone project to share publicly?
(4) Any other feedback or questions?

Borders ReSurfacing: Meena's Assignment 5

This last month I've been playing around with some of the footage Cynthia and Sandra shot at the Salaach River. These are just two little experiments I made by layering two videos on top of each other, and playing with contrast, brightness, saturation, and a negative effect. I was inspired by what Sandra and Cynthia were saying regarding the concept they had come up with called "Back to Beautiful." The original footage is so beautiful and aesthetically pleasing, and yet I didn't feel like it should ONLY be that. So in post-production, I've been mainly playing with ways to interrupt or manipulate the original beauty of the videos.  I would eventually like this to be layered and/or juxtaposed with some documentary photography/journalistic images of this same river with refugees. Maybe even words scrolling over videos as well. I started looking for news footage online specific to the Salaach but only found a few things (and Sandra posted some local news articles during our research right?). I haven't had chance to play with that yet. Of course I've had some technical difficulties. It all just takes time and lots of hard drive space...but I'm having fun and would like to keep playing with this stuff.

https://vimeo.com/232076213


https://vimeo.com/232096063

Borders Resurfacing: River Freewrite

August 9, 2017, 1:50 pm, San Lorenzo Park.

the sun beats down without breeze, legs too warm in sweatpants, tiny yellow amaranth seeds clinging to my shins, evidence of where I’ve been.  the rapid sound of Spanish: I look up and see two men rolling by on their bicycles, chatting as they ride.  I wanted to walk along the river today, not on the raised concrete paths and pedestrian bridges like freeways that shuttle more privileged bodies above working class POC communities, but close enough to touch the water. 

I hate myself a little now, how my skin pulls and shrinks away as I sit on the dried up grass next to a homeless encampment in this city park.  how easily I empathize with the Chinese who once lived here, who were once seen as trash, unwanted, dirty, littering the riverbanks, and how hard it is for me to exhale and relax on this riverbank where people make their home.  I unpeel my burrito, and the salt overwhelms my mouth, lips and face purse tightly, unable to taste anything but discomfort.

the signs warned me not to leave the paved path, but I ventured among the late summer plants, green and dried out and taller than me.  deep purple brushes rising with strong straight spines, small pale bursts of lavender and white, a glory of dandelions.  the insects were huge: giant fireflies buzz-sailing through the brush, a miracle of a yellow butterfly so close to my head.  ducks with brown tufted heads and drab bodies, dipping and feeding, tail-feathers in the air.  I was alarmed at how low the water was after just one week: rocks exposed in the riverbed, resembling the Salaach more now.  the strange phenomenon of the current flowing both ways, a two lane watery highway around a rocky divider.  traces of people, but uglier than the stray crushed can and burnt rocks of refugee fires at the Salaach.  a stray black shoe with a sensible heel.  newspapers.  cardboard arranged carefully as a bed.  shampoo and juice bottles and cans of chicken soup.  faded sweat shorts, wadded up and dusty with river sand.  a pair of sturdy black sneakers, placed carefully in the shade of a shrub.  and a book with a red cover: North Toward Home.

whom do we think of as disposable, as dirt?  migrant bodies, homeless bodies, refugee bodies?  as I tread through the plant-life, causing small quivers tremors disturbances beneath my feet, picking my way between mud and slime and scrappy wildflowers, what keeps me from seeing this river -- and its people -- as beautiful? 

Borders Resurfacing Assignment #5

Further develop an existing assignment, could be yours or someone else’s.

DUE: Sept 1

Babli's Creative Response #4: Borders Resurfacing, Audience Water Score

Here a trial of a water ritual score (rough - transitions/logistics/flow not worked out yet:) for a local Salzburg audience, assuming that we are in the same room with Tomaz (which is unclear).
Imagine the audience is divided in two groups from the beginning. We are in a big hall (Blackbox without seats of risers.

The audience would first have been invited to dance along following patterns of dots in the floor, so everyone or hopefully many people would be in the middle of the dance floor, moving together.
At the end of this they would be seeing a home-video or live-feed style projection of us/some people including us gathering buckets full of water at the river Saalach.

There will be lots of big buckets of water on either side of the big hall (where the groups of audience would have been respectively and requested to go back to the side they were last on).


Steps of the ritual (parallel on bot sides, with different instructions in one step):

Step 1 - Handwash: There is a large bucket/Tub of river water with a scoop set up, as well as an empty bucket/tub. Audience instructions:
Handwash
Take the scoop and scoop out water out from the one bucket/tub
Go over to the second bucket/Tub and let the water run over your hands into the emptier tub (NOTE: Mid-November- water cold!)

Step 2 - bottling: There is a row of buckets with water and empty little bottles that can be closed.
Audience instructions:

Fill one of the little bottles with water.

Step 3: Memory. Stand in the center of the room and hold the bottle. Remember 3 situations: MAYBE HERE GROUP "RAVE" Has one or two different questions.

1) people trying to cross a national border (for different reasons) are prevented from crossing
2) a moment when you were not allowed to cross an external border (political/social)
3) a particularly beautiful moment of spending time at a river (preferably Saalach or Salzach)

For each of the above memories find one word that captures the memory.

Go to one of the tables in the room, write your three words on a piece of paper and attach it to the bottle.

Step 4 - Exchange: find another audience member and give them the bottle.
For the person receiving the bottle: go to one of the two standing mikes in the room, and read the other person's three words into the microphone.

Shyamala's Creative Response #4: Borders Resurfacing, Audience Water Score

Photo credit:  https://www.facebook.com/FamilyDanceJam/?ref=ts

This water/ritual score for audience participation (or maybe just a workshop) is inspired by Family Dance Jam by Ilaan Egeland Mazzini and Barbara Dilley's 5 eye practices.
  
Before starting, if small group can check with participants if they are OK with touch before exercise.  Also, can Let them know if anyone needs, they can step out at any time and observe.


Set up:  make sure plenty of open space in the room, a microphone would be handy with larger groups, make tape curves and lines on the floor line in the picture above. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Invite participants to spread out standing (or sit?)  eyes closed or soft focus  
   -Visualization: notice breath, like waves, notice wetness in mouth, imagine blood and other fluids circulating through your body.  Remembering and honoring: Our bodies are about 60 percent water!  Connecting that water to water outside your body.  Let an image of a body of water rise into your mind that you have a positive association with (could be a river, lake, waterful, the ocean).  Enjoy the memory that you have associated with that body of water.  Start water sounds music?
2. Invite participants to open eyes to soft focus if closed, taking room in without focusing on any particular thing.  Direct participants to begin to slowly walk around room between other bodies keeping soft focus. Whenever want can pause and be still, noticing the movement around you, and then continue.  Take a few moments to whisper under breath the memory of the precious water.  

-Visualization: about 71 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water.  Honoring this thought as walk.

3. Without naming them in your mind, begin to see the things both still and moving around you. Notice the shapes on the floor and if you are inspired, perhaps follow one. If you come across another who is moving pause for a minute and if you would like, I invite you connect briefly with a body part (head, arm, knee, back).
4. Seeing between: Noticing the spaces between the lines, begin to find ways to navigate over them without touching them.  If you come across another person think about how you can build a bridge, or a tunnel for others by connecting body parts. If you come across other’s bridges or tunnels go through them.  Feel free to move on if you have made bridge looking for other connections.  keep looking for spaces to go under, between, through.  If you are in a bridge, describe your body of water to someone you are connected to.    
5. Seeing direct:  freeze and notice which lines you are between.  You may find yourself with a specific group of people within the same lines.  Stay with this group and do not cross into another area.  If there are others in the same space you can look them in the eye, make a group shape, by connecting body parts.  Once the shape is built any one may shift positions in the shape by removing themselves from the group, stepping back and looking a the group and finding a new place to reattach.  As the shape shifts slowly, make sure your group stays within the lines on the floor.  As you connect to your neighbors, you can choose to share your water story and/or if you have any water border stories you can share that as well.  
6. Introduce a bottle of water to each group.  These waters have come all the way across several borders from rivers in Germany and Austria, one of which was the site of huge arrival of Syrian refugees.    If you get a bottle of water, carry it preciously without your hands, this is your permission to go cross a line and to another group, take the water with you and present it/offer it to someone else and then take their place in the group shape. If you have a personal story about traveling across a border, share it with your new group.   
7. Freeze to see everyone's group shapes.  Last water people join the water into the group shape with the water.  End.
8. Brief discussion about experience while  allowing folk to write group poetry on wall?  Or make group poetry together one many papers or on butcher paper on wall.  
   
   
   
   
   Questions:  
   
   
   1.  Are the directions too much?  Should I simplify?  for example, I could take the eye practices out?  Is there anything else I can do to make this more accessible to folks?
   
   
   2.  do you see the idea of the borders resurfacing here?  Are there other ways you think I could strengthen the connection of water and borders?
   
   
   3.  Any thoughts about what this experience might bring up for you if you were a participant?  
   
   
   4.  Any other thoughts/ideas?
   
   

Cynthia's Creative Response #4: Borders Resurfacing

For my creative response, I created a water ritual score, which could be done by an audience member or another artist.

Water Ritual Score: Confluence

(1) Gather some water from a local body of water, preferably one that has personal, geopolitical, or historical resonance.
(2) Hold your bottle of Salaach river water in your hands.  As you hold it, notice what images come up -- of natural beauty, personal memories, news images, etc.
(3) Hold your container of local water in your hands, again noticing what images come up.
(4) Pour the two vessels of waters into one container.  As you do so, imagine the histories, memories, and images of the two bodies of water mixing, meeting, blending, and submerging in each other.
(5) Use the mixed waters to nourish a plant, either indigenous to this soil or a migrant plant (transplant).
(6) Watch the plant grow and continue to care for it.


I did this score myself with water from the San Lorenzo River, which as you all know, was formerly the site for the last Chinatown in Santa Cruz, and water from the Salaach, the border between Austria and Germany in Salzburg.  

(1) Gathering Water

 (2) Salaach

I remember dipping an amber Nalgene bottle into your waters, the icicle-like sheaths of water falling fast from the dam, algae slipping between toes. Round smooth river rocks, sunlit skies, waters meandering green and blue, feet teasing, talking, fighting with each other. How close the other side of the border, how seemingly effortless the crossing, un-policed. Stones gathered in rings, charred stone. Blackened vestiges of campfires lit by refugees, small fires of hope, re-homing, unbelonging.

(3) San Lorenzo

today you were sandy, summery, overgrown with yellow flowering fennel, pink spires, the bees crazy with heat and pollen.  a redfaced man asked me for a quarter, blessed me when I said no.  the river was higher today, the stones of the riverbed all underwater.  I remembered the swollen brown winter floods, tree trunks drifting fast and dangerous, onlookers gaping from the concrete bridge.  across the way, a group of latino men lounge on blankets.  I think of the working class Chinese who lived and played on the riverbanks in the early 1900s, of who is seen as suspicious, now vs. then. 

(4) Mixing Waters
 

password: lorenzo

Water Ritual - Confluence

(5) Nourishing Life
I used the Salaach and San Lorenzo waters to nourish a small bunch of wildflowers gathered from the banks of the San Lorenzo.  They included California golden poppies, flowering fennel, and more. The water and the bouquet smell of licorice.

Intermixed Poem (as per Shy's suggestion in the comments):

Borders Resurfacing Assignment #4

This assignment is coming after Sandra's and Cynthia's recent explorations in Salzburg and Germany together. It's a choose your own adventure assignment!

Here are some possible options:

-Respond to or work with Salaach video footage.

-Create a water-borders ritual using bottles of river water from Germany and/or Austria

-Choreograph an animal border story.

-Make a foot dance telling a border story.

-Rewrite / transform a border news-story into another literary genre (a poem, a fable, etc.)

-You may combine any of the above elements as suits you.  

Due August 4.

Babli and Cyn in Munich- Feet-Fairytale Padam

This is a response to an assignment given by Meena and Shyamala yesterday to tell a non-animal border story in a European context using our feet.

We worked on writing a fairytale inspired by a very visible border story from the local news here (we used a German article, which was more current and extensive, but here is a short English language context, which is from January: http://www.dw.com/en/deported-afghans-dream-of-returning-to-germany/a-37352655)

We then improvised to a recording of it, framing only our feet. These are two versions of the improvisation:

Fairytale 1:
Feet-Fairytale from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

Password: Fairytale


Fairytale 2:

Fairytale 2 from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

Password: Fairytale 2

 Here is the text of the fairytale, with some small revisions from the version used in the voiceover:

"It has been many moons since words poured from my poet’s pen, dried out from the painful absence of my love. But now I glimpse the face of my love’s dear friend, bringing me news of my beloved, and my heart quickens in anticipation.

But you’ve never met my love. How could you? -- as he is trapped in a distant land.

He was a handsome young musician with dark hair from a faraway land who sang and played the oud. During the day he brought song and sweetness to the ears of those wounded by war, working with others who believed in peace across borders to heal broken bodies and the hurts of the world. At night family and friends would flock to his cozy home to play music, dance joyously, chat raucously, and share food together.

But then a new regime came to power in his land. They were stern-faced and narrow-hearted and used holy books as weapons, forbidding all singing and dancing and outlawing interactions with people of other faiths and cultures. All those who had sung openly and mingled with outsiders before the regime took power became targets of their policing gaze.

My love tried to hide his passion for song and healing, to make himself quiet and small and unobtrusive. But one day a great bomb fell from the sky and shattered his home and the bones of his brothers. In mourning, he left his land.

After many moons, many border crossings, and many mountains of paperwork, he landed in our Kingdom. He had learned many languages during his journeys, and now he had one more to learn. He wandered through his new town, learning where to buy bread and vegetables, meeting warm-hearted, welcoming people, with the occasional dark glance. After some time, he found himself in a multicolored community of artists and musicians who painted and sang visions of harmony and peaceful coexistence.

We met in one of these gatherings, where I was reciting my poetry. He looked at me with laughing eyes and spontaneously started playing a tune underneath my words.

Our love grew and flourished like a seedling nourished by sun and rain. Outside the circle of our daily sweet existence, however, rumblings of discontent started to emerge in the realm. The borders of my land started to contract from fear, tightening and squeezing the hearts of those who lived within.

One day, a letter arrived at our home stamped with the official seal of the noble lion. Curiously, we opened it. The letter commanded my love to leave our new life and to return to his war-torn homeland. In tears, we held each other tightly.

Knowing that the stone-faced soldiers would come if he stayed, my love started to pack his belongings, to say his farewells sadly to his friends and family.

The people cried out and shook their fists and filled the streets in search of ways for my love to stay. Signatures upon signatures filled scrolls of letters appealing to the officials. After all, the letters said, my love had put his life in danger by fighting for our Kingdom in his homeland. Furthermore, the streets and stages would be poorer and less music-filled in his absence. All our efforts, however, were to no avail. In outrage, my love’s friend, who came from a long line of Alphorn musicians, insisted that he would accompany my love on his journey.


My love returned to find his homeland in the grip of the stern-faced men, stripped of song, ravaged by violence and intolerance. Silently, he and his friend hid in the homes of brave friends, trying to become invisible, unrecognized by the sweeping gaze of the regime. In the meantime, I joined with our friends and family and fellow dancers and singers and poets, working together to try to bring him back. Together, we braved mountains of official paperwork and bureaucratic barriers. Now, with my love’s future in the hands of the officials in power, I take comfort in the news of my love brought to me by his friend."

Zoom Rehearsal: Animal Border Stories

We did a Zoom rehearsal together with Sandra and Cynthia together in Munich and did some improvisational explorations based on a news story of Turkey threatening to export Dutch cows for political reasons: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4316788/Turkey-s-red-meat-association-sends-cows-Holland.html

password for both: "cow"

Shy read pieces of a news article, while Meena improvised with footwork and Sandra and Cynthia with hands in response to the text.

Animal Stories, take 1 from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

On the second take, we tried to interact more with each other rather than simply responding to the text.  Shy spoke parts of the story again, while Meena, Sandra and Cynthia improvised with hands.  We attempted to choreograph the camera frames of the dancing hands so that our actions would appear to directly affect each other.  However, Zoom saved the video so that Sandra and Cynthia's frame was flipped horizontally, so it ended up looking different than we imagined.

Animal Stories, take 2 from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.