Platform 2016: the skeleton architecture, or the future of our worlds
Curated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa.
Sparked by Audre Lorde’s essay, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” writer Eva Yaa Asantewaa presents an evening highlighting the power of Black women within community. This evening imagines and activates Danspace Project as a site of InterSections – like crossroads, places of high-stakes risk, as well as magic. Over two hours, 20 Black women and gender nonconforming dancers from different generations and dance genres channel and manifest InterSections, crossroads sites within Danspace’s sanctuary, responding, in improvisation, to the following prompts: the walk, the sermon, the flood, the haunt, and the planting.
Participating artists include Angie Pittman, Charmaine Warren, Davalois Fearon, Edisa Weeks, Jasmine Hearn, Kayla Hamilton, Leslie Parker, Marguerite Hemmings, Marjani Forté-Saunders, Maria Bauman, Marýa Wethers, Melanie Greene, Nia Love, Ni’Ja Whitson, Paloma McGregor, Rakiya Orange, Samantha Speis, Sydnie L. Mosley, Sidra Bell, and Tara Aisha Willis.
Music performed live by Grace Osborne.
Part of PLATFORM 2016: Lost and Found
#platform2016 #lostandfound
Eva Yaa Asantewaa (Bajan-American, born and raised in New York City) was first published as a dance writer in 1976. Her work has appeared in Dance Magazine, The Village Voice, SoHo Weekly News, Gay City News, The Dance Enthusiast, Time Out New York and other print and online venues. In 2007, Ms. Yaa Asantewaa founded InfiniteBody, her popular arts blog (infinitebody.blogspot.com). She is a member of the inaugural faculty of Montclair State University’s new MFA in Dance program. As a WBAI radio broadcaster (1987-89), Ms. Yaa Asantewaa worked with the Women’s Radio Collective and the Gay and Lesbian Independent Broadcasters Collective, co-hosted the Tuesday Afternoon Arts Magazine, and produced her own specials. Since the 1980s, she has also been active in service to numerous LGBTQ, feminist, POC and arts organizations and initiatives as a workshop facilitator in alternative practices of meditation, divination, ritual and wellness. She makes her home, with her wife and cat, in the East Village.