Friday.
4:00 PM
Show day, we start the way we began—with class, Christal teaching, running it in the Ashé space. During leg-swings, Christal has us count down, yelling out the number of the swing we’re on—the sound echos off the walls, and the women working peek their head into the space to watch.
5:00 PM
We run the piece, full-out, in dress.
8:00 PM
We run the show.
9:00 PM
Afterwards, sweaty and panting, we meet the audience. They come from all walks, from a couple of women we taught yesterday, to the ballet teacher from Tulane. Wendell Pierce, also known as The Bunk from The Wire and currently the lead of Tremé, also is in attendance—as is Jordan Flaherty, the author of Floodlines, a book we were assigned and mostly read before we came. Dane introduces us to his family.
And slowly, we catch our breath. The audience winds out, slowly, leaving in ones and laughing, talking twos. The boys go out to smoke, the girls pack up their costumes, and the adrenaline and sweat and exhaustion slowly seep away. Five months of work, 45 minutes of dance, four pieces, three performances and outside, the New Orleans air is cool and quiet as we leave, bundling into cars and vans, street-clothes on and costumes packed, going on our way back home.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Roll With Me (Rock With Me)
Thursday.
3:00 PM
Tech rehearsal at Ashé.
6:00 PM
Next door to Ashé, Company teaches a class for the Sisters Making A Change. It’s half-made up on the spot—we pair off and all teach a part (except for Christian, who comes up with an across-the-floor phrase to teach and then goes home to nurse his illness). Sonia and James start off with a warmup, and then Cat and Jess teach the across-the-floor, part by part. Finally, Hannah (and the entire company, really) demo and help teach a segment of Falling Sun, Wanting Moon while Christal coaches, alternately cajoling and pushing the women to move. It’s a lot of the same faces as Tuesday, and some new ones—and oddly, the class divides by age, with the youngest kids in the front and in the back of the class, a group of older ladies laughing and following along, teasing each other while they do.
3:00 PM
Tech rehearsal at Ashé.
6:00 PM
Next door to Ashé, Company teaches a class for the Sisters Making A Change. It’s half-made up on the spot—we pair off and all teach a part (except for Christian, who comes up with an across-the-floor phrase to teach and then goes home to nurse his illness). Sonia and James start off with a warmup, and then Cat and Jess teach the across-the-floor, part by part. Finally, Hannah (and the entire company, really) demo and help teach a segment of Falling Sun, Wanting Moon while Christal coaches, alternately cajoling and pushing the women to move. It’s a lot of the same faces as Tuesday, and some new ones—and oddly, the class divides by age, with the youngest kids in the front and in the back of the class, a group of older ladies laughing and following along, teasing each other while they do.
Dip, Baby, Dip
Wednesday.
10:09 AM
We take a streetcar through the Garden District, towards Tulane University to take a couple of dance classes. Sun shines dappled through Louisiana Live Oak, the trees making a corridor alongside the tracks. It is an improbably picturesque day, the kind of day that makes one realize that once movies were based on real life, that real life can sometimes be obscenely beautiful.
10:29 AM
We disembark from the streetcar, walk along the sidewalk towards the university. A trash can attacks Hannah along the way. Christal comments, “Who does that can think he is? Hannah gives a good account of herself.
11:00 AM
Ballet class. Jessica is ridiculously happy. James is not.
12:30 PM
Modern class. The teacher is ridiculous. No one is happy. Paloma gives a good account of herself.
1:45 PM
We break for lunch in the Tulane cafeteria, where we also meet up with Dane for our afternoon NOLA tour. There are about five or six restaurants in the cafeteria, and Nicki Minaj on the flatscreen TVs in the mess area. Christian fanboys out.
2:02 PM
Cat is attacked by a fern.
2:50 PM
We visit Dane’s old school, the New Orleans Charter Science and Mathematics High School, or as they nickname it, SciHi.
It’s housed in a building with four huge columns, that we are told used to be an elementary school pre-Katrina. There’s a buzzer to get in, and arrows painted into the walls dictating whether a staircase is an “UP” or a “DOWN”. We walk in during passing period, and one kid yells out “Get outta my school!” A security officer makes us sign in, and wear Visitor badges. Here, we meet the principal and half-a-dozen other teachers, all of whom greet Dane with the same “Daaaannneee!” tone in their voice, the tone teachers use for a far-achieving student who’s just returned home. We introduce ourselves to the principal, an older white-haired woman who invites us back to speak to some of the Seniors and Juniors about the possibilities of attending colleges out of state, and the challenges involved. “There isn’t enough sense of urgency…” she says, in reference to the motivations of her students. We agree to come back Friday.
4:07 PM
On the streetcar back, at one stop there’s a crashing sound as a man falls out of the exit. The entire car falls silent. The man (a 20-something slender young man, with a hipster scarf and a bruised ego) limps off. A woman up front comments—“It’s recommended that you wait until the car comes to a complete stop.” Everyone bursts out laughing.
Christian decides to leave the tour early, on account of needing to rest in the hotel room due to sickness.
4:22 PM
Christian falls out of the streetcar.
4:37 PM
We hit the French Quarter. Dane offers to show us a hat store. We visit the hat store. There are hundreds of hats lining the walls, piled in boxes, overflowing, with six or seven men of varying ages manning the counter, offering their advice on what kind of brim befits a man or a woman. James is ridiculously happy.
5:22 PM
We pass a kid, tapdancing along the side of the road. His tap shoes, Dane tells us, are made by tacking bottle caps or the bottoms of coke cans to the soles. He’s pretty good—we stop to watch for a moment.
5:24 PM
Jackson Square, we run into a marching band. It’s made up entirely of elementary to middle-school-aged kids, lead in front and behind by a couple of teachers who amble along. They are seriously well-trained, marching in perfect unison, followed by two cops on horses. They play, studiously ignoring the crowd of tourists forming on the sidewalks they pass, snapping photos. The teachers wear the jackets of the Treme Brass Band.
5:31 PM
We stop by the Café du Monde for beignets and café au lait. It’s a large, open-air place, with a tent to shield sitting patrons from the rain—when we get there, it’s about half-full. A young waiter with silver stud earrings takes our order. Beignets, for the unfamiliar, are a kind of fried doughnut. When they arrive, they are covered in enough powdered sugar to give Al Pachino a heart attack. They are also incredibly delicious.
6:23 PM
Running through the French Quarter, attempting to catch a streetcar back to the hotel and then to rehearsal, we see the official Treme brass band on Bourbon Street. They are all in suits, like grown-up professional versions of the kids we saw earlier—maybe 20, 30 strong and marching slowly down the street. The tourists who are stumbling drunk give them a wide berth.
7:00 PM
With the help of John Grimsley, the tall, bearded, beatnik techie at Ashé, we run lights and sound for our tech rehearsal.
10:09 AM
We take a streetcar through the Garden District, towards Tulane University to take a couple of dance classes. Sun shines dappled through Louisiana Live Oak, the trees making a corridor alongside the tracks. It is an improbably picturesque day, the kind of day that makes one realize that once movies were based on real life, that real life can sometimes be obscenely beautiful.
10:29 AM
We disembark from the streetcar, walk along the sidewalk towards the university. A trash can attacks Hannah along the way. Christal comments, “Who does that can think he is? Hannah gives a good account of herself.
11:00 AM
Ballet class. Jessica is ridiculously happy. James is not.
12:30 PM
Modern class. The teacher is ridiculous. No one is happy. Paloma gives a good account of herself.
1:45 PM
We break for lunch in the Tulane cafeteria, where we also meet up with Dane for our afternoon NOLA tour. There are about five or six restaurants in the cafeteria, and Nicki Minaj on the flatscreen TVs in the mess area. Christian fanboys out.
2:02 PM
Cat is attacked by a fern.
2:50 PM
We visit Dane’s old school, the New Orleans Charter Science and Mathematics High School, or as they nickname it, SciHi.
It’s housed in a building with four huge columns, that we are told used to be an elementary school pre-Katrina. There’s a buzzer to get in, and arrows painted into the walls dictating whether a staircase is an “UP” or a “DOWN”. We walk in during passing period, and one kid yells out “Get outta my school!” A security officer makes us sign in, and wear Visitor badges. Here, we meet the principal and half-a-dozen other teachers, all of whom greet Dane with the same “Daaaannneee!” tone in their voice, the tone teachers use for a far-achieving student who’s just returned home. We introduce ourselves to the principal, an older white-haired woman who invites us back to speak to some of the Seniors and Juniors about the possibilities of attending colleges out of state, and the challenges involved. “There isn’t enough sense of urgency…” she says, in reference to the motivations of her students. We agree to come back Friday.
4:07 PM
On the streetcar back, at one stop there’s a crashing sound as a man falls out of the exit. The entire car falls silent. The man (a 20-something slender young man, with a hipster scarf and a bruised ego) limps off. A woman up front comments—“It’s recommended that you wait until the car comes to a complete stop.” Everyone bursts out laughing.
Christian decides to leave the tour early, on account of needing to rest in the hotel room due to sickness.
4:22 PM
Christian falls out of the streetcar.
4:37 PM
We hit the French Quarter. Dane offers to show us a hat store. We visit the hat store. There are hundreds of hats lining the walls, piled in boxes, overflowing, with six or seven men of varying ages manning the counter, offering their advice on what kind of brim befits a man or a woman. James is ridiculously happy.
5:22 PM
We pass a kid, tapdancing along the side of the road. His tap shoes, Dane tells us, are made by tacking bottle caps or the bottoms of coke cans to the soles. He’s pretty good—we stop to watch for a moment.
5:24 PM
Jackson Square, we run into a marching band. It’s made up entirely of elementary to middle-school-aged kids, lead in front and behind by a couple of teachers who amble along. They are seriously well-trained, marching in perfect unison, followed by two cops on horses. They play, studiously ignoring the crowd of tourists forming on the sidewalks they pass, snapping photos. The teachers wear the jackets of the Treme Brass Band.
5:31 PM
We stop by the Café du Monde for beignets and café au lait. It’s a large, open-air place, with a tent to shield sitting patrons from the rain—when we get there, it’s about half-full. A young waiter with silver stud earrings takes our order. Beignets, for the unfamiliar, are a kind of fried doughnut. When they arrive, they are covered in enough powdered sugar to give Al Pachino a heart attack. They are also incredibly delicious.
6:23 PM
Running through the French Quarter, attempting to catch a streetcar back to the hotel and then to rehearsal, we see the official Treme brass band on Bourbon Street. They are all in suits, like grown-up professional versions of the kids we saw earlier—maybe 20, 30 strong and marching slowly down the street. The tourists who are stumbling drunk give them a wide berth.
7:00 PM
With the help of John Grimsley, the tall, bearded, beatnik techie at Ashé, we run lights and sound for our tech rehearsal.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Day 2- Living in the Sixth, Living Do or Die
Tuesday.
9:41 AM
It is drizzling when we arrive by cab to the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, for our workshop on racism. The institute is located in an unassuming house in North Carrolton—inside, the place has been converted to small homey offices and a study, where coffee, tea, a bunch of chairs and couches, and King Cake awaits. King Cake, as it is explained, is a traditional cake served to commemorate the gifts brought by the Wise Men for the baby Jesus. It’s sort of like a flat, sparkly bunt cake, a circular pastry that, we are told, contains inside it a small plastic baby. (Presumably, the baby Jesus, although the consequences for accidentally biting the lil’ Messiah are not elaborated on.) If you get the baby, you have to buy the next King Cake. (Christian, naturally, gets the baby.)
We meet the people who staff the center—chief amongst them Ron Chisolm, one of the cofounders of the center. He looks like a jazz musician on his off day—an older black man, with tinted glasses, pressed-pleated khakis, a brown newsboy cap. Next to him is Diana Duan, an grey-haired white woman with large silver jewelry, with a face that alternates between grandmotherly kindness and hard-boned activism. These two will lead the workshop, along with a third woman (Dr. Kim, who is late). The workshop, they explain, is different in that they are attempting to get beyond the verbal gymnastics of talking about racism, to get more into the practise of how to combat it.
10:31 AM
In the midst of getting to know each other, conversation flags. We talk about food.
10:40 AM
Two women peek their heads in through the door—Ron invites them in. (This, it should be said, is not a part of the workshop—they just happened to stop by.) One of them is a wire-thin older blond woman, dressed in pale clothes, who moves with a slight suddenness, almost birdlike. The other is a black woman, 50-something, in dark colourful clothing, short-haired, with an easy smile. They introduce themselves: Phoebe Plessy, descendent of Homer Plessy of Plessy vs. Ferguson, and Leona Tate—“one of the four little girls who integrated the school system.” They are here, in Leona’s words, to “undo history’s ghosts.” Instantly, the room dynamic changes.
11:10 AM
Leona tells her story, which, like all good stories, begins with “In the beginning…” Someone asks her if she was afraid of the hatred she encountered, of going to school—she says it’s not the point, really, whether or not she was. In her words—“Mama said I had to go. So I had to go.”
(Christal smiles and claps. G.J. is silent.)
11:20 AM
The workshop resumes. We discuss poverty, power—how poverty is more than simply a set of needs or problems, but that for active and lasting social change, the assets that it has must be recognized too. We also spend some time discussing who makes a definition—how words are created.
12:55 PM
After a 45-minute lunch break, our workshop resumes. Frustrations with the process are voiced. We discuss how culture is created as a method of solving problems, and also the concept of gatekeepers—those who make it their business to decide the fates of others, and what their obligations are—where their accountability lies. We also meet Dr. Kim, a black woman with graying hair wrapped in a colourful turban. She is soft-spoken, pronounces her words with great care, and youthful in her gravitas. She brings up the famous experiment “A Girl Like Me” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWyI77Yh1Gg) and internalized self-hatred—and makes the point that what we internalize is a two-way street. Both the oppressed and the oppressors are dehumanized by it.
We talk about how language determines reality, and the history of the words “white” and “black”. What gives her hope, she says, is that the concept of race is about 500 years old—young enough, she thinks, that it can be overturned. Finally, as the workshop winds down, they bring the People’s Institute definition of Racism, which they share with numerous others: that racism, at the end of the day, is Race Prejudice + Power.
6:00 PM.
We walk over to Ashé Cultural Center and rehearse the concert, with lights, for the first time in the new space. The new space is considerably smaller. As we mark the entire piece, there is only mild panic and fear. Christal lets us go home early.
9:41 AM
It is drizzling when we arrive by cab to the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, for our workshop on racism. The institute is located in an unassuming house in North Carrolton—inside, the place has been converted to small homey offices and a study, where coffee, tea, a bunch of chairs and couches, and King Cake awaits. King Cake, as it is explained, is a traditional cake served to commemorate the gifts brought by the Wise Men for the baby Jesus. It’s sort of like a flat, sparkly bunt cake, a circular pastry that, we are told, contains inside it a small plastic baby. (Presumably, the baby Jesus, although the consequences for accidentally biting the lil’ Messiah are not elaborated on.) If you get the baby, you have to buy the next King Cake. (Christian, naturally, gets the baby.)
We meet the people who staff the center—chief amongst them Ron Chisolm, one of the cofounders of the center. He looks like a jazz musician on his off day—an older black man, with tinted glasses, pressed-pleated khakis, a brown newsboy cap. Next to him is Diana Duan, an grey-haired white woman with large silver jewelry, with a face that alternates between grandmotherly kindness and hard-boned activism. These two will lead the workshop, along with a third woman (Dr. Kim, who is late). The workshop, they explain, is different in that they are attempting to get beyond the verbal gymnastics of talking about racism, to get more into the practise of how to combat it.
10:31 AM
In the midst of getting to know each other, conversation flags. We talk about food.
10:40 AM
Two women peek their heads in through the door—Ron invites them in. (This, it should be said, is not a part of the workshop—they just happened to stop by.) One of them is a wire-thin older blond woman, dressed in pale clothes, who moves with a slight suddenness, almost birdlike. The other is a black woman, 50-something, in dark colourful clothing, short-haired, with an easy smile. They introduce themselves: Phoebe Plessy, descendent of Homer Plessy of Plessy vs. Ferguson, and Leona Tate—“one of the four little girls who integrated the school system.” They are here, in Leona’s words, to “undo history’s ghosts.” Instantly, the room dynamic changes.
11:10 AM
Leona tells her story, which, like all good stories, begins with “In the beginning…” Someone asks her if she was afraid of the hatred she encountered, of going to school—she says it’s not the point, really, whether or not she was. In her words—“Mama said I had to go. So I had to go.”
(Christal smiles and claps. G.J. is silent.)
11:20 AM
The workshop resumes. We discuss poverty, power—how poverty is more than simply a set of needs or problems, but that for active and lasting social change, the assets that it has must be recognized too. We also spend some time discussing who makes a definition—how words are created.
12:55 PM
After a 45-minute lunch break, our workshop resumes. Frustrations with the process are voiced. We discuss how culture is created as a method of solving problems, and also the concept of gatekeepers—those who make it their business to decide the fates of others, and what their obligations are—where their accountability lies. We also meet Dr. Kim, a black woman with graying hair wrapped in a colourful turban. She is soft-spoken, pronounces her words with great care, and youthful in her gravitas. She brings up the famous experiment “A Girl Like Me” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWyI77Yh1Gg) and internalized self-hatred—and makes the point that what we internalize is a two-way street. Both the oppressed and the oppressors are dehumanized by it.
We talk about how language determines reality, and the history of the words “white” and “black”. What gives her hope, she says, is that the concept of race is about 500 years old—young enough, she thinks, that it can be overturned. Finally, as the workshop winds down, they bring the People’s Institute definition of Racism, which they share with numerous others: that racism, at the end of the day, is Race Prejudice + Power.
6:00 PM.
We walk over to Ashé Cultural Center and rehearse the concert, with lights, for the first time in the new space. The new space is considerably smaller. As we mark the entire piece, there is only mild panic and fear. Christal lets us go home early.
Day 1-The Journal Starts Late...
Monday.
11:23 AM-
We’re headed out of New Orleans today, towards Laura Plantation. Our transport is an old schoolbus from Jefferson Parish, driven by an elderly lady named Linda. The freeways are elevated over swampland, and in the diffuse, odd light of midday the dead trees springing up thick as fog. The day is warm, the air is humid, and it’s not hard to imagine why the bayou is home to so many ghosts. The roads are pitted, or the suspension on the bus is burnt—either way, the ruts make us bounce two or three inches from our seat, like startled cats. Christal and Paloma and the rest of the company make it a game with the baby—headbanging and bouncing along with the sudden shocks. Oddly, like any classic school bus, the girls are up front, and the boys are in the back.
Laura Plantation is halfway to Baton Rouge on Freeway 18, and the brochure (stolen from the lobby of our hotel) describes it as a Creole plantation—on the back, an endorsement from the Lonely Planet Travel raves “Best history tour in the USA!”. Bit of a strong statement. It is, apparently, the largest collection of family artifacts original to a Louisiana plantation, and also home to where the original Br’er Rabbit folktales were recorded. The tours are apparently 70 minutes long. Our schedule has us there until 4:15. This discrepancy confuses the boys in the back.
11:54 AM-
The freeway opens up eventually into flatland. A sign points to Laura Plantation off to the right. The area is sparse, decayed—houses close enough only to be loosely called neighbors. A Family Dollar store sits down the street from a First American and a United Way bank. Across the street, a handwritten sign advertising barber services hangs on the door of a ruined brick building. We come up on Laura Plantation, and pull in. It’s much as you would expect, with the entrance/exit of the tour leading through the gift shop. Peculiarly, a sign states that we should now allow 55 minutes per tour. (This confuses the boys even more.) The shop also smells of molasses.
The tour had just departed, but a woman named Amethyst offers to catch us up. Laura Plantation is much as one would imagine a plantation to look like—a vast, colourful house overlooking vast fields, with smaller shacks out back serving as slave-quarters and animal pens. Huge, gnarled trees greet us as we are led down to the basement where the other tourists, and our tour guide Joey, meet us.
Joey is of medium height, wire-framed glasses, stubble, late 30s (though I suck at evaluating age) and speaks in the present tense about people who have long ago entered the ground—“The Viscont continues to be governor until America annexes Louisiana…” He also frequently gestures at the painted flat-wood representations of the figures whose life he narrates, who are wrapped in period clothing and thus look peculiarly like friezes, or statues flattened by history. His patter is fluid, well-rehearsed, carefully funny. He pronounces “memoir” as if he has said it a thousand times.
The Laura Plantation is intriguing in that it seems it is a good example of illustrating a lot of cultural differences between Creole-Louisiana plantations and Deep South plantations. For instance—it was run for 84 years, across three generations, solely by women, a statement which, for relevance to the past is classic Creole and for relevance to the present brings a lot of knowing grins to the lips of the ladies in the tour group. As our guide runs through the history of the family, starting in the past and working forward, he moves us through the basement, which is dusty and frozen—the way museums set in old houses often are, that peculiar feeling of preserved time. The story that he tells, which he spins as he moves through the house, is peculiarly Southern Gothic—a mother, for instance, shutting herself in her room for 20 years as self-imposed punishment for her role in the death of her child.
12:39 PM-
The tour guide points out the first sign of Katrina—a grandfather clock, that had been left in the care of a family whose home had flooded. On the clock is a border on the wood, under which the lacquer has faded. It is about 5 ½ feet high.
Laura, whose memoirs comprise the core of the tour, is a descendent of the family who owned the plantation who lived from 1861-1963—an extraordinary span of years, as the tour guide pointed out, in that her early years saw slaves working on the plantation and her final years saw the heyday of civil rights, and the end of segregation. This life-meets-history twines oddly with what we are doing here—learning the stories of others, and finding out how to use our own.
3:13 PM
Leaving Laura Plantation and back near the hotel, we grab a meal at the Please-U Diner, which pretty much looks exactly like its name: decorated in tones of brown, homey, filled with cluttered charming decorations of random tchotchokes and a TV with HLN on soft in the back. The waitress, a middle-aged blond woman by the name of Dee, takes our order—she calls us, individually, either “baby” or “darlin’” and makes sure we never go wanting for sweet tea. The food is massive, fried, Southern, and delicious.
5:25 PM
We arrive at Ashé Cultural Center and meet Mama Jamilla, who (in keeping with many of the women who run Ashé) is a powerfully-built black woman, the kind who immediately commands respect. Ashé itself is housed in a large, warehouse-style room which has been broken up into little rooms by plasterboard partitions. It’s filled with African art and clothes, mingled with photos of various seminal Civil Rights moments (including many of Dr. King). It’s an intriguing combination of art gallery, shop, kitchen, cultural hub, and information center. The women are entirely welcoming. They apologize for the smell of burnt popcorn.
7:19 PM
Christal leads a class with Sisters Making A Change—a community program based out of Ashé that provides health and wellness services as well as exercise and movement classes to any that come. Those who come are mostly women, mostly of colour—they range from 70 to an adorable 7 (and a half!)-year-old, who rocks out to Christal’s movement, which is intense enough to break a sweat, but not so intricate and intimidating that everyone gets lost. There are about 30, 40 people dancing. Christian DJs—thus, we fly across the floor to the croons of James Brown and the howls of Michael Jackson. Afterwards, the Sisters showcase the most epic second-line the Company has ever seen, a rousing dancing circle up on the stage where each sister individually takes a solo, showing off their moves, dancing with a palpable joy. We are seriously impressed.
In return, we show the beginning of Falling Sun, Waking Moon, as a sampler for our show. The stage is somewhat smaller than at Middlebury—James cracks his head on one of the crawl-backs into the wall.
The Sisters serve dinner—rice & sausage and green-bean stew. As we eat, Mama Jamilla lays out the history of the program—a service that, in her own words, provides assistance for “everything from Acne to Zits.” Ashé itself is steeped in social justice—founded in the 70s, it is down the street from the Free Southern Theater, and was established as a haven for artists who didn’t have a place to show their art. It should be said, though, that it is not exactly for Abstract Impressionism—as Mama Jamilla says, it’s not “an art for art’s sake place.” Carol, the program director, adds: it’s a place for “creating opportunities to share stories.”
7:54 PM
Introductions all around. Christal starts by introducing Middlebury College, and explaining what it is—“not a trade school, but a school where you learn to think.” Then Company sounds off, running down the line with names, majors, and place-of-birth—and then the Sisters introduce themselves. They are everything from schoolteachers, both retired and continuing, to lifelong dancers, to a woman who describes herself as an ex-substance abuser, to a woman who described herself as a “Katrina survivor” (the only one who mentions it in the room—here, Katrina wells up through the cracks, like water under floorboards, present by how little it is seen.) After the introductions, a peculiar thing happens—the atmosphere of the room changes, subtly. We are not part of this family, suddenly—make no mistake—but our outsider tinge has lessened. After the introductions, we break off into little groups, and mingle—Sister and Company alike.
11:23 AM-
We’re headed out of New Orleans today, towards Laura Plantation. Our transport is an old schoolbus from Jefferson Parish, driven by an elderly lady named Linda. The freeways are elevated over swampland, and in the diffuse, odd light of midday the dead trees springing up thick as fog. The day is warm, the air is humid, and it’s not hard to imagine why the bayou is home to so many ghosts. The roads are pitted, or the suspension on the bus is burnt—either way, the ruts make us bounce two or three inches from our seat, like startled cats. Christal and Paloma and the rest of the company make it a game with the baby—headbanging and bouncing along with the sudden shocks. Oddly, like any classic school bus, the girls are up front, and the boys are in the back.
Laura Plantation is halfway to Baton Rouge on Freeway 18, and the brochure (stolen from the lobby of our hotel) describes it as a Creole plantation—on the back, an endorsement from the Lonely Planet Travel raves “Best history tour in the USA!”. Bit of a strong statement. It is, apparently, the largest collection of family artifacts original to a Louisiana plantation, and also home to where the original Br’er Rabbit folktales were recorded. The tours are apparently 70 minutes long. Our schedule has us there until 4:15. This discrepancy confuses the boys in the back.
11:54 AM-
The freeway opens up eventually into flatland. A sign points to Laura Plantation off to the right. The area is sparse, decayed—houses close enough only to be loosely called neighbors. A Family Dollar store sits down the street from a First American and a United Way bank. Across the street, a handwritten sign advertising barber services hangs on the door of a ruined brick building. We come up on Laura Plantation, and pull in. It’s much as you would expect, with the entrance/exit of the tour leading through the gift shop. Peculiarly, a sign states that we should now allow 55 minutes per tour. (This confuses the boys even more.) The shop also smells of molasses.
The tour had just departed, but a woman named Amethyst offers to catch us up. Laura Plantation is much as one would imagine a plantation to look like—a vast, colourful house overlooking vast fields, with smaller shacks out back serving as slave-quarters and animal pens. Huge, gnarled trees greet us as we are led down to the basement where the other tourists, and our tour guide Joey, meet us.
Joey is of medium height, wire-framed glasses, stubble, late 30s (though I suck at evaluating age) and speaks in the present tense about people who have long ago entered the ground—“The Viscont continues to be governor until America annexes Louisiana…” He also frequently gestures at the painted flat-wood representations of the figures whose life he narrates, who are wrapped in period clothing and thus look peculiarly like friezes, or statues flattened by history. His patter is fluid, well-rehearsed, carefully funny. He pronounces “memoir” as if he has said it a thousand times.
The Laura Plantation is intriguing in that it seems it is a good example of illustrating a lot of cultural differences between Creole-Louisiana plantations and Deep South plantations. For instance—it was run for 84 years, across three generations, solely by women, a statement which, for relevance to the past is classic Creole and for relevance to the present brings a lot of knowing grins to the lips of the ladies in the tour group. As our guide runs through the history of the family, starting in the past and working forward, he moves us through the basement, which is dusty and frozen—the way museums set in old houses often are, that peculiar feeling of preserved time. The story that he tells, which he spins as he moves through the house, is peculiarly Southern Gothic—a mother, for instance, shutting herself in her room for 20 years as self-imposed punishment for her role in the death of her child.
12:39 PM-
The tour guide points out the first sign of Katrina—a grandfather clock, that had been left in the care of a family whose home had flooded. On the clock is a border on the wood, under which the lacquer has faded. It is about 5 ½ feet high.
Laura, whose memoirs comprise the core of the tour, is a descendent of the family who owned the plantation who lived from 1861-1963—an extraordinary span of years, as the tour guide pointed out, in that her early years saw slaves working on the plantation and her final years saw the heyday of civil rights, and the end of segregation. This life-meets-history twines oddly with what we are doing here—learning the stories of others, and finding out how to use our own.
3:13 PM
Leaving Laura Plantation and back near the hotel, we grab a meal at the Please-U Diner, which pretty much looks exactly like its name: decorated in tones of brown, homey, filled with cluttered charming decorations of random tchotchokes and a TV with HLN on soft in the back. The waitress, a middle-aged blond woman by the name of Dee, takes our order—she calls us, individually, either “baby” or “darlin’” and makes sure we never go wanting for sweet tea. The food is massive, fried, Southern, and delicious.
5:25 PM
We arrive at Ashé Cultural Center and meet Mama Jamilla, who (in keeping with many of the women who run Ashé) is a powerfully-built black woman, the kind who immediately commands respect. Ashé itself is housed in a large, warehouse-style room which has been broken up into little rooms by plasterboard partitions. It’s filled with African art and clothes, mingled with photos of various seminal Civil Rights moments (including many of Dr. King). It’s an intriguing combination of art gallery, shop, kitchen, cultural hub, and information center. The women are entirely welcoming. They apologize for the smell of burnt popcorn.
7:19 PM
Christal leads a class with Sisters Making A Change—a community program based out of Ashé that provides health and wellness services as well as exercise and movement classes to any that come. Those who come are mostly women, mostly of colour—they range from 70 to an adorable 7 (and a half!)-year-old, who rocks out to Christal’s movement, which is intense enough to break a sweat, but not so intricate and intimidating that everyone gets lost. There are about 30, 40 people dancing. Christian DJs—thus, we fly across the floor to the croons of James Brown and the howls of Michael Jackson. Afterwards, the Sisters showcase the most epic second-line the Company has ever seen, a rousing dancing circle up on the stage where each sister individually takes a solo, showing off their moves, dancing with a palpable joy. We are seriously impressed.
In return, we show the beginning of Falling Sun, Waking Moon, as a sampler for our show. The stage is somewhat smaller than at Middlebury—James cracks his head on one of the crawl-backs into the wall.
The Sisters serve dinner—rice & sausage and green-bean stew. As we eat, Mama Jamilla lays out the history of the program—a service that, in her own words, provides assistance for “everything from Acne to Zits.” Ashé itself is steeped in social justice—founded in the 70s, it is down the street from the Free Southern Theater, and was established as a haven for artists who didn’t have a place to show their art. It should be said, though, that it is not exactly for Abstract Impressionism—as Mama Jamilla says, it’s not “an art for art’s sake place.” Carol, the program director, adds: it’s a place for “creating opportunities to share stories.”
7:54 PM
Introductions all around. Christal starts by introducing Middlebury College, and explaining what it is—“not a trade school, but a school where you learn to think.” Then Company sounds off, running down the line with names, majors, and place-of-birth—and then the Sisters introduce themselves. They are everything from schoolteachers, both retired and continuing, to lifelong dancers, to a woman who describes herself as an ex-substance abuser, to a woman who described herself as a “Katrina survivor” (the only one who mentions it in the room—here, Katrina wells up through the cracks, like water under floorboards, present by how little it is seen.) After the introductions, a peculiar thing happens—the atmosphere of the room changes, subtly. We are not part of this family, suddenly—make no mistake—but our outsider tinge has lessened. After the introductions, we break off into little groups, and mingle—Sister and Company alike.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Lighting moments 10, 11, 12
Lighting moment 10:
I was sitting in my room the other day with my blinds up. It was the early afternoon and it was only beginning to get dark. I was deeply immersed in a paper that I was working on, and after an hour of intently working on the paper, I looked up, out my window, and realized that it was completely dark. The gradual coming on of darkness is something that could be especially effective in theatrical and dance lighting.
This could be replicated in a dance space by slowly dimming the lights in isolated patches in the space. Over the course of time, as the lighting dims, the space could go from being completely light to completely dark, without the audience recognizing any sudden shifts in lighting.
Lighting Moment 11:
The other night, as I was leaving the music library, I noticed how the slowly falling snow affected the light patterns on the ground. The weak, yellow light of the lamps on campus, create large circles around their sources. As the snow became more intense, the granular variations in the circle of light became more and more pronounced.
The recreation of this is something that, techinically, I'm not sure how to re-create. The first idea that comes to mind is a concept of moving Gobos. An artificial recreation of this could be achieved by stacking Gobos on top of Gobos over time. This would create the time-lapse of intensity and also stay true to the paterns on the floor created by the snow.
Lighting Moment 12:
I woke up the other night in the early morning and couldn't fall back asleep. I went on my computer and messed around on the internet for a while. After about a half hour of messing around on the internet, I realized that I hadn't bothered to turn any lights on. I examined the light surrounding me at the computer.
Everything was illuminated with a blueish-chrome hue. The shape of the light was circular and did not light a clear pattern on any surfaces. The effect reminded me of a dim sidelight, dramatically shadowing it's surroundings but not making an explicit shape on the floor.
I was sitting in my room the other day with my blinds up. It was the early afternoon and it was only beginning to get dark. I was deeply immersed in a paper that I was working on, and after an hour of intently working on the paper, I looked up, out my window, and realized that it was completely dark. The gradual coming on of darkness is something that could be especially effective in theatrical and dance lighting.
This could be replicated in a dance space by slowly dimming the lights in isolated patches in the space. Over the course of time, as the lighting dims, the space could go from being completely light to completely dark, without the audience recognizing any sudden shifts in lighting.
Lighting Moment 11:
The other night, as I was leaving the music library, I noticed how the slowly falling snow affected the light patterns on the ground. The weak, yellow light of the lamps on campus, create large circles around their sources. As the snow became more intense, the granular variations in the circle of light became more and more pronounced.
The recreation of this is something that, techinically, I'm not sure how to re-create. The first idea that comes to mind is a concept of moving Gobos. An artificial recreation of this could be achieved by stacking Gobos on top of Gobos over time. This would create the time-lapse of intensity and also stay true to the paterns on the floor created by the snow.
Lighting Moment 12:
I woke up the other night in the early morning and couldn't fall back asleep. I went on my computer and messed around on the internet for a while. After about a half hour of messing around on the internet, I realized that I hadn't bothered to turn any lights on. I examined the light surrounding me at the computer.
Everything was illuminated with a blueish-chrome hue. The shape of the light was circular and did not light a clear pattern on any surfaces. The effect reminded me of a dim sidelight, dramatically shadowing it's surroundings but not making an explicit shape on the floor.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Lighting Moments 10, 11, 12 AV 360
10) Two days ago I had a dream in which I was going through a black tunnel with blue rectangular slits/ openings/ windows on the walls. I couldn't get out through the side blue things, but I was running through the tunnel trying to get somewhere. Who knows where. I probably would just project blue rectangles on the cyc from the front (maybe a stripy gobo with a blue gel could do the trick) and if I wanted to recreate the running, I could go horizontally across the stage. I could even have like 10 people running back and forth!
11) I saw this video of Alessandra Ferri (the ballet dancer) and she was dancing on this little rectangular stage on the beach with a bright light shining on her from each corner. It would be really awesome (and hard?) to put another stage on the stage. It seemed like Ferri was dancing for herself at her favorite place. Maybe the dancer could set up the lights (fresnels or something kind of soft but strong) at each corner. Then when she is done, she moves the lights. It would also be nice to create a blue watery effect (with the BAX & high sides) on the real floor so it seems like she is at the beach or near some body of water.
12) After watching the matrix trilogy, I think it would really cool to try out some neon colors onstage. Maybe with a neon green grid gobo shining on the floor. Maybe neon yellow specials to create 9 yellow circles on the floor to travel around in. Maybe neon rays shining in all places like a club (nah, that would cheesy). I'd probably go with the neon grin grid because it reminds of something high tech and sophisticated. I don't think any other lighting would be necessary. Well maybe some front light since we want our dancers to be seen!
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