Culturemart 2019

JAMES SCRUGGS – A Voluptuary Life

“Men who love men have always been.”
A Voluptuary Life presents one man musing his many black, same gender loving lives across time. Giving a heightened, explicit, literary voice to sexual exploits, he intimately reveals the way he sought, sustained, hid or jubilated love through the filter of the moment.
Juxtaposed against time, homosexuality was unheard of, abnormal, a disease, illegal, tolerated, normal, or celebrated. One man, one personality, one extraordinarily diverse libido flickers through the years, always finding ways and means to achieve his exacting ‘sperm of the moment’ escapade. Fashioning himself as a time traveling cultural anthropologist and hunter of sexual conquests; he instead discovers something more.

LAURA PETERSON CHOREOGRAPHY – Paper Room

We only know part of what is happening in any situation, especially now. Deception, half-truths, lies are expected every time we see the news. In Paper Room, viewers are invited to consider how much of what we see is “true” or “real”, and how we fill in the gaps. Using origami paper-folding techniques to create a dynamic, moveable installation, Paper Room engulfs the performance space with constantly-shifting paper structures, while the dancers’ bodies fold and unfold in continual flux. The looped and interrupted choreography creates moments of synchronicity that dissolve into disorganization.

IMANI UZURI – Songs of Sanctuary for the Black Madonna

Imani Uzuri’s Songs of Sanctuary for the Black Madonna will be an immersive multi-movement choral and chamber orchestral theatrical work inspired by the iconography of The Black Madonna. These holy Marian icons depicted with dark skin are currently worshipped within the Catholic and Orthodox Marian pantheon, but can be traced back to pre-Christian pagan figures, most notably Isis suckling Horus. They are also embraced, celebrated and worshipped by Muslim, Hindu, Roma, African Diasporic, and other communities, in rituals and processions around the world. Her recent international research and sojourns to various altars, shrines, cathedrals and monasteries provide the theoretical framework for this new compositional work, and will bring to light songs, prayers, and images of these ancient Black Madonnas.

In this March 2019 work-in-progress iteration, Uzuri will will explore themes and creative muses from her previous works that celebrate Black femininity as divine through the lens of sacredness and sexuality, and that are informing her current process as she creates this new epic.

SPENCER LOTT & MAIKO KIKUCHI – 9000 Paper Balloons

Japanese visual artist Maiko Kikuchi and American playwright Spencer Lott use humor and puppetry to weave their family histories into the remarkable true story of a deadly secret weapon from World War II: the paper balloon bomb. During the winter of 1944, hundreds of un-marked bombs launched from Japan and silently passed over unsuspecting American citizens. Kikuchi and Lott illuminate the incredible journey of three particular balloons in this bilingual mixed media work. Exploring cultural hysteria and government censorship, 9000 Paper Balloons attempts to build a bridge between two families, one American and one Japanese.

BABA ISRAEL – Cannabis! A Theatrical Concert

Baba Israel and his band Soul Inscribed, featuring Grace Galu, use music and spoken word to explore the history of Cannabis. This theatrical concert is inspired by Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana – Medical, Recreational, and Scientific by Martin A. Lee (2012). Grounded in the Hip Hop tradition of the remix, the show mashes-up iconic music from La Cucaracha of the Mexican Revolution, Louis Armstrong and other Jazz “vipers,” to the Beat era, 60’s Rock n’ Roll, and Reggae. Israel adapts the stories of countercultural icons, grassroots activists, and the plant itself, weaving a time-traveling tale of jubilation, injustice, and transformation.