Residency with Liz Lerman and Jawole Zollar

For those who have been keeping track, just wanted to share some pictures and thoughts with you. I was asked a few months back to work with Liz Lerman and Jawole Zollar in one of their "Must Do Now" Residencies. In this case we were in the wonderful facilities at FSU in Tallahassee. I am still surprised they were willing to face the challenges of including a flamenco dancer in the group of artists. Yes, the usual, shoes were an issue to work around, sound was unexpected and didn't always fit and the many ways in which the body is present was constantly evidenced. All in all though, it was an amazing experience. The work which looks at Poverty and its implications has given me much to think about. Primarily as it pertains to issues of gender and the allostatic load. I wonder about how we position ourselves and what that means in the larger scheme of things. On a structural level it's brought me to wonder about positioning what I do as a Contemporary Flamenco artist in a post-modern aesthetic. The process was expansive and I'm still dusting myself off. Overall just thinking still and formulating...more to come on this in the future. I'm sure the fact that Ralph Lemon was also sharing space with us has something to do with it all. For now the pictures... In them you'll see Keith Thompson, Amara Tabor-Smith, Martha Whitman, Samita Sinha, Nia Shand and the wonderful FSU grads/students who so graciously gave of their time and artistic voices. Thanks Lauren, Tabytha, Trent and Yamal! All photos were taken by Aubrie Rodriguez

From Liz Lerman's Website: I have known Jawole Willa Jo Zollar of Urban Bush Women for over 25 years. Finally we are doing a project together. Initiated by the Shalom Center to honor the friendship of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and Abraham Joshua Heschel, we have becme inspired by their texts to make a dance, a lecture series, and to animate with performance prayer breakfasts, teach ins, freedom schools and other organizing tactics fo the civil rights era. The project began in New Orleans last summer at Urban Bush Women's Summer Leadership Institute and picks up again in January with a week in residence at the Manhatten JCC. In April we will be at Center Stage in Baltimore. Follow the project here or at UBW website link. Here is my current favorite text from Rabbi Heschel: "It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion--its message becomes meaningless." ― Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism. Jawole will also be in Miami at the end of October. For those of you who are around, check out the information through the South Campus of Miami Dade Colllege!