Special Effects Stephen Lichty & Neil Marcus

Excited to see my friend Neil's new experiment:


Special Effects
Stephen Lichty & Neil Marcus

Sunday, June 3 2012
11:00am - 1:00pm

351 Shotwell Street, San Francisco
ODC Dance Commons

In their first public collaboration, Stephen Lichty and Neil Marcus will negotiate dystonic movements to become sculpture; dystonia is a neurological disorder characterized by involuntary movement and corresponding mental intensities. At ODC, the artists will be working with and against their natural tendencies by directing those intensities around and between their bodies, minds, to objects and back at the space itself. 

Stephen Lichty (b. 1983) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Recent projects and exhibitions include, Harlan, Laracuente, Lichty / Earth, New Capital, Chicago, 2012; The Museum Problem, Frutta, Rome, 2012; Bauer. Croxson, Lichty. Wood. Foxy Production, New York, 2012; Ribbon dance in a thunderstorm at sunset, Socrates Sculpture Park, New York, 2011; Enchanted, Resort, Berlin, 2010.

Neil Marcus (b. 1954) lives and works in Berkeley, California. Marcus has danced internationally since the 1980's, received a United Nations Society of Writers Medal of Honor for his play storm reading, is included as a seminal voice in the NEA Oral History Project. Recent projects and performances include the release of his zine compendium Special Effects: Advances in Neurology, via Publication Studio, 2011; Journey to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Pustervik, Gothenburg, 2011; Burning: Cells, Transformation, Energy Transfer, an installation of influence, with Olimpias, Berkeley, 2009.

Cristina Carrasquillo, documentary poetics, dance

“no sensation on skin”

“no movement”

“…do you remember”

“no reflex on knees”

These quotes, I imagine, were spoken by a doctor at the time of cervical cord injury, They are an intro into Cristina Carrasquillo's return to blogging. Cristina wrote to me today to say she has started to blog again. A dancer with quadriplegia, a social justice activist--Cristina is a vibrant figure in the disability arts community. Read her blog at cristinamaria.wordpress.com. And, check out an article I wrote about her at Proyecto Vision      

 [Photo by Zoe Christopher]

I like the way Cristina uses quotes from her lived experience to begin blogging again. This is what I would call documentary poetics. If you are interested in working with the documents of your life (medical jargon, emails, pivotal words at major life events), please contact me about a Write To Connect class. I can work with you to shape your memories and documents into something new or, into an authentic record of your experiences. You can also contact me about a Palmetry session (similar to energy work or Reiki), in which we can sit together and find healing through touch--towards new expression for the words we carry or the words we seek.


amberdipietra@gmail.com, 415 867 1124. 


Very sliding scale, pay-what-you-can for the disability community.

W2C & Nancy Yates at Ed Roberts Campus. April 2012

On this very summery Berkeley day, 12 students flitted and rolled and navigated with white canes into the Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program's Fitness Center (housed at ERC).

Nancy has been an adaptive yoga teacher for many years--working with seniors and folks in the disability community. primarily, she has adapted much of yoga instruction for people who are blind or low vision. She asked me to collaborate with her and use my Write To Connect skills to weave poetry in to a yoga class for people with mixed abilities.

I felt like this was fitting. Many people cannot make their bodies into the shapes traditional yoga poses seem to ask of us. Just so, many folks struggle to understand or appreciate poetry. But there is a sea of breath and language in any body or mind's pattern of moving about or thinking in the world. So, why not bring poetry into the flowing realm of movement that is the yoga studio, outside of language. And why not bring the demanding movements in a yoga class into the collagey, bright flashing of words that dart across the surface of any poem? How would a poetry in motion class restore bodies and bring new ways to find expression or to hear poetry? 

In these photos, students press, or tap, or massage their jaws--to find their smiles. Nancy leads them to giggle on the lip of insanity, like Rumi, then find the centered breath.

One experiment we did involved this passage from Mei-Meu Bersennbrugge's Concordance

Then, I saw sunrise frequencies
emanate from your body, like music An excited person in light absorbs
wavelengths she herself gives off , asif light were the nutrient for feeling Color is a mirror where we seeourselves with living things , scarletneck feathers, infant asleep acrossyour heart, like-to-like

After reading it aloud, we asked students to pair up and find a way to sit back to back, which was tricky. Some students were blind, some were in power chair, some had difficulty sitting on the floor. 

Then we asked the partners to sense into each others breath and practice raising their arms , in sweeping, sun salutation arcs, trying to stay in time and in the keeping with their partners energy. This was "mirror" pose, as the poem by Bersennbrugge suggests.

When it was time for the Shavasana (corpse) pose at the end of the class, Nancy went around the room accommodating different bodies with pillows and blankets. The goal was to support all bodies in just the way they needed to be, so they could fall toward the earth, or lay with a feeling of weighty lightness. This final pose is one of rest and integration.

We shared this last poem by Walt Whitman during Shavasana:

MIRACLESWhy, who makes much of a miracle?As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,Or stand under trees in the woods,Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at nightwith any one I love,Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,Or animals feeding in the fields,Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quietand bright,Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.To me the sea is a continual miracle,The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--theships with men in them,What stranger miracles are there?

Namaste to Nancy and all the students who came today. And Namaste to BORP and the Ed Roberts campus for giving us the space to offer Poetry in Motion!

Poetry In Motion: a Nancy Yates/Write to Connect workshop at Ed Roberts campus, 4/21/12, 2pm

The Poetry in Motion poetry-yoga workshop is tomorrow. Here are some instructions for getting into the building.

Street address is 3075 Adeline St.

Note: One of the elevator entrances is closed on weekends and you cannot enter from the front of the ERC campus. Follow our directions to get in OR call us when you arrive at BART and we will escort you up. Just call Amber on 415-867-1124. In addition, we will also be going down to BART 10 minutes before class to look for anyone who might be lost. It is a busy, bustling environment at Ashby BART, but is a safe and secure environment.

Here is how you get in: 

 

No Street Crossings via BART -Easy

 

For wheelchair users and non wheelchair users

    1. Go thru BART turnstile and take the elevator that leads directly to 3075 Adeline. Their is another elevator to the left of that one (up a ramp) BUT that one will be locked.

    2. Once you are above ground, do not turn left and try to enter the front doors of the ERC campus.

    3. Turn right and you will see a driveway that leads to the back of ERC.

    4. Proceed up the driveway to the back ERC parking lot. Turn right and walk down the sidewalk until you reach some glass doors.

     5. We will be there to let you in.

         

If you have not RSVPED, please do so by the end of today. Here is the flyer:

Poetry in Motion

A poem as spoken or written breath. Yoga as a way to find your breath. Breath and words as the currents we move with.

Find your poetry in motion with us!

Adaptive yoga teacher Nancy Yates teams up with poet/disability practice artist Amber DiPietra to offer this unique yoga and creative expression workshop.

You do not need to be a writer or yogi to attend! Only ready to be bodies in warm, open space with us!

Where: BORP Fitness Center, 3075 Adeline St. Berkeley, CA 94703 @ Ed Roberts Campus, Above Ashby BART station. Easy, safe travel, no st. crossing necessary.)

When: Saturday, March 24, 2012 2pm-3:30pm

Cost: $20 or ask about sliding scale option.

RSVP amberdipietra@gmail.com, 415 867 1124 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            415 867 1124      end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

“Can you remain unmoving/till the right action arises by itself?” LAO-TZU, Tao-te-Ching

the mat, the blank page, the floating pool

Nancy Yates--my co-teacher for this coming Saturday's Poetry in Motion, poe-yoga workshop--has written an article as part of a training she gave to yoga instructors. It is called "Illuminating the Possibilities" and it is  about adapting the practice of yoga instruction for students with visual impairments.

Here are some of her guidelines from the article:

--don't omit: adapt when possible
--the mat gives a student their own private space; they can feel freer with movements

These guidelines read like lines in a poem to me. They undulate and take on light. I like thinking about the yoga mat as a blank page. How the blank page can be adapted, especially at times when it is not possible to have words for things, or perhaps, there are too many words. The mat/page can become a small clear pool where we can float. And where what can't be written can be translated into sinking/rising, an experiment in (resting lightly upon) language--which is a surface. An effortless exercise in which the student's body is held by the aquatic surface of words and new words come.

Moving through lists, pink and flaring fragments breathe

A list can be the things ome can or cannot accomplish in a day. A list of question to ask the doctor, to resolve while on the phone with the pharmacy or the health insurance company. A list can be a gentle reminder of things to notice about the weather--so as to poise yourself right on the cusp of spring. A poem can be a list. A list can be a set on instructions to write a poem.


For example, this list By Bhanu Kapil: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2012/04/how-to-write-a-poem/

13. Invent a form that allows fragments to have their own life.  To recombine.  Or perhaps to simply die off, emitting  pink, luminous flares just beyond the range of a society’s vision.

Today, Nancy and I sat down to start planning for our Poetry in Motion class--set for 4/21, the Spring Equinox.  We are inventing a form that allows for all types of bodies to find their breath, through lines of poems and yoga, in a room. Come, be pink luminous flares with us! Bring your fragmentary bodies, your fragmentary concentration, and we will work on setting them afloat on waves of breath.

"Peach-encrusted hearts", waterbirds, and Poetry in Motion class from W2C/Nancy Yates

Even though I am currently having some new health challenges, great abundance is afoot. I reconnected with my yoga teacher from LightHouse for the Blind. Nancy Yates adapts her yoga classes for seniors, veterans and all sorts of folks in the disability community. She has started offering sessions in my neighborhood--at the Ed Roberts Campus.

As soon as I walked into Nancy's class, I was filled with new light. She always speaks of our "peach encrusted hearts". Hers is most certainly goldeny-coral topaz.

Nancy and Write To Connect (me!) have made plans to team up and offer a 2 hour Saturday workshop for Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program. It will be held March 24 at the ERC fitness center and we are calling it Poetry in Motion. There will be yoga exercises, poetry read aloud and embodied writing exercises.

W2C may also be collaborating with friend Mg Roberts, a Bay Area writer and mom-extraordinaire. Mg and I would like to create writing classes for parents of special needs kids. Here is a photo of Mg's\daughter Lucille Osprey. Baby L. read some poems while her mom received an energy work session from me. I love to have my studio graced by a baby waterbird.

While you are here, check out my new Palmetry page. It includes a description of the energy work I offer. Thanks so much to my friend Shawn Amos and Fluid Social Marketing for these lovely hand photos.