BARE// TEETH Old City, Philadelphia December 16 2011

BARE// TEETH

I rushed out of my office an hour early on December 16^th, 2011 to catch the 5:15 bus to Philadelphia from NYC to see BARE// TEETH that evening at 9pm.

It was quite an elaborate evening of installation performances of poetry, theater, movement as well as dance. I believe I walked into the spirit center of the performance art world in Philadelphia. Most of the folks I would want to connect with were all on stage, including a dear friend Indee Mitchel who I met two years prior at an Urban Bush Women Summer Leadership Institute in New Orleans. On the top floor of what appeared to be an abandoned unfinished warehouse with unfinished wood plank floors, we waited on line and slowly proceeded up the stairs. Some of the performers on duty for crowd control were discussing the safety of having such a large crowd in what seems like a partly unstable structure. In the end, it seemed all parties were let upstairs, and I hoped that the balance of bodies spread across the entire floor would level out what felt like loose floorboards from collapsing underneath our feet.

The evening began with a welcome from none other than the Indee Mitchel. The floor was packed. After checking my coat and suitcase at the front behind the bar and complimentary homemade goodies, it took me a good few minutes to make it midway the crowd to meet my friends. Funny enough, the first installation took place exactly 180 degrees from the direction the crowd was pointed from start. With impressive original scores on a variety of instruments as well as vocals, we witness a puppet show with poetry conceived by Briel Driscoll, called three daemon serenade (into the cupboard). I notice Alea Pierro, Hampshire College Theater Alum in the background assisting with props. To no surprise I believed she would be the one assisting, as I read a monologue for her Division Three (senior thesis) puppetry show about sexual trauma and survival.

BARE// TEETH was described by the originators as: about::

memories, histories, habits, visions and futures stored in our bodies, traditions of resistance, and celebration of survival and change...

Second up, we saw work by the FRACTAL Collective directed and created by Lily Hughes in collaboration with i n d e e, Neena Pathak, D.DeVore & Althea Baird. The group presented a series of performance works based in choreography and text, the first of which is called Survival Orchestra. The artist’s program notes states: ‘Survival Orchestra recalls the memories of resistance stored in our bodies and celebrates small and large acts of survival in our everyday lives.’ The work definitely demonstrated the essence of a work of ensemble creation, with various subtexts and actions occurring between various performers simultaneously at different points in space.

With a remarkable poem about gender queer identity, followed by a monologue about surviving relationship abuse, to an incredible dance solo I was flored by the energy the graced the space. And we all celebrated with a dance party to rejoice at the achievements of the performers. I definitely hope to catch i n d e e ‘s solo work she plans to bring on tour in January. I hope to write more about that soon.

Effulgent Reflections: Seeking Freedom

A. Zarinah Nuri's BFA thesis show opened today at the Nacul Center at 529 Main Street, Amherst MA. Her work will be up December 4th through 11th and is well worth the trip. When you arrive, use the entrance on North Whitney, and you will enter into an old church with beautiful stained glass lining the stairway to the gallery space downstairs.

Zarinah's work lines the walls in a curation following a story of her personal journey in visual form. All 9 works are oil on wood panels. Zarinah begins with a surrealist Kahlo inspired wing song, we witness her open skeleton and heart flying toward our first encounter with the gatekeeper, a woman wrapped in ornate cloth snaking the face of the image and masking her mouth. Thirdly we see a young girl, sitting on top of the alligators in what reminds me of the swampy U.S. South. The title: She just wanted to chase the butterfly, shows the young girl's focus so intently on the magic of the effervescent bold red flying creature, while sitting so intimately close to a source of danger we can notice only when seeing the bold yellow eye of the alligator underneath her diapered bum. I should not forget to mention a red snake coming directly toward her in a center pathway in the forrest. The trees were bare and tall.. the tops not visible in frame. Once could imagine the height to be infinite, or similar to the red woods. Thin ghostly white trunks in endless amounts in the young girl's forest, as she sits in the river on the alligator head.

Next we transition to the voiceless multicolored neon face with scratched out mouth. Immersed in a burgundy purple puddle or waveless ocean of deep emotion, we see the reflection of this face with its teeth, nose and ears defined where absent in the dominant original... suggesting the outside forces have scraped these objects away. The visual richness of color reminded me of emma amos in abstract futurist form, with a neutral gender. The symbolism and ideas definitely struct me as feminizing socialization. But perhaps, the silence and sheltered faces are felt differently but are still present throughout a variety of bodies.

We see another gatekeeper. Each is replicated with the same color scheme, action and composition with slight variation of tone, texture and scale of individual spaces/objects. Next we see a woman holding a snake like vine across her neck, similar in shape to the masking scarf of the gatekeeper. This snaking vine has two bold dark red bulbs ready to bloom.

My additional favorites to highlight are the woman standing in the ocean with the waves, defiantly looking into the distance in her corner. She is beautiful and brown, with very defined cheek bones and African facial features. She is wearing a white tank top with her hips and shoulders in the breaking water of the waves. She is defining the ocean, like Yemanja in baby blue and white.

Lastly, Zarinah concludes with a softer ocean at dusk, with sands and shores and the sun at the horizon. She carves a silhouette of a body and profile face... almost like an invisible presence or ghost with the sun in her throat.

I shed a tear from the evocative beauty in her imagery.

Congratulations dear friend.