Sunday, July 10, 2011

To: The lesson on Roots and Culture


I've heard Wole Soyinka (world renowned West African writer) talk about the difficulty in having to work with Americans, that is, African Americans having to perform his plays under his direction in the United States. That is, that he has numerous challenges with dance and choreography. I've heard a British educator on TED talks lament how cerebral Europeans are, and what it does to alienate the rest of the body from itself.

I found the colonization at a hip hop concert tonight in Brooklyn. I mean it's Brooklyn though. One of the most culturally black spots on the continent, and it occurred to me to pay attention to my body movements, granted my feet were tired, but it had all been the bobbing of the head, the occasional shift of the torso, with feet planted, not moving. I remember dancing to reggae back home, it was a full involvement of myself, maybe it's because hip hop has so many isolations to it. I found that my dancing has no fluency to it anymore, it's just rigid and definite.

I feel like I need to reclaim that part of myself. The Afro-Caribbean me. There is a core of yourself that becomes ignored in the West. Everything happens above the stomach. I'm also supposed to start taking dance lessons in African cultural dance in the fall. we're also hoping to stage a play, us black women next semester. What is black theater without choreography? Where did this disembodiment of mine come from?

I like what he says in the video below:
On Childhood Education - "As children start to grow up, we educate them from the waist up, and then we focus on their heads,... and slightly to one side."
On Academia- "If you want real evidence of out of body experiences by the way, get yourself a long to a residential conference of senior academics and pop into the discotheque on the final night.And there you will see it, grown men and women riving uncontrollably...off the beat."





I haven't been keeping up with my blog lately not because I don't have the time, because surely, it's something you need to make time for. I just don't know how to make sense of my last month. That is, my return home as relates to my parents, friends, who embraced me, who pushed me away, things I wish I could've made better, decisions we've had to come by, I just don't feel settled about things yet. Maybe vacation has an interruptive way of making days, and I will be more definitive when I get back to a routine.

I'm waiting on a response from CUNY to see if they accept my proposal for my own study path of Applied Theater. It's the same anxiety of having applied for your first choice college. I pray they accept it though. Also, BNV in San Fransisco is coming up in less than a week, which means i have poems to finish and to learn and to work out performances for. I'm both really hyped and anxious over it all.

I thank God for the men in my life tonight, for those who've encouraged and supported me in these last few weeks, days, hours. For my lover, my father, my brothers back at home like Gamma, Chike, Jabari, even uncle Mark for tonight. They are crucial to my survival out here more than I may like to admit sometimes, and have been here. always. I miss my real friends.

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