 |
|
|
|
Vol. 2 No. 1 |
July 5, 2007 |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Welcome to the third Cultural Odyssey newsletter!
|
^back to top
|
Welcome to the third Cultural Odyssey newsletter! There has been a myriad of phenomenal activities to tell you about! This newsletter will touch on the wonderful experiences of Co-Artistic Directors Rhodessa Jones and Idris Ackamoor over the last nine months. Suffice it to say that one picture (or video) is worth one thousand words! This e-newsletter will tell the story of the past nine months with text, music, video, and photographs. You can enter the portal at any given space or place. Click into the world of Rhodessa and Idris and witness a world class artistic expression traveling the artmosphere to Brazil, Miami, Baltimore, Trinidad, Tobago, and of course San Francisco. If any of this activity moves you, please consider making a donation to the important work of Cultural Odyssey spearheaded by the remarkable talents and energy of Rhodessa Jones and Idris Ackamoor. [click here to donate]
| COMING UP - JULY 31 - AUGUST 4 2007 - WINSTON-SALEM NC |
Cultural Odyssey will once again present the New Performance in Black Theater Series at the National Black Theater Festival. Idris Ackamoor will bring four shows from the San Francisco Bay Area including Donald Lacey in Color Struck, Sia Amma in In Search of My Clitoris, spoken word artist Ise Lyfe in Who's Krazy?, and Rhodessa and Idris in The Love Project. In addition, noted playwright and novelist Pearl Cleage will perform and her husband, noted writer Zaron Burnett, will also be in attendance. Cabaret Unkempt from Miami with performing artists Jeannylin Duany and Elizabeth Doud will also perform. Cultural Odyssey is honored to cultivate and showcase these shows to the national audiences at the Festival.
[ more information ] · [ photo gallery ]
| COMING UP - JULY 21 - 22 2007 - CSU EAST BAY |
|
|
|
Workshop at CSU East Bay
Creating New Performance: Theater for the 21st Century |
^back to top
|
Creating New Performances is a theater workshop for professional, aspiring and closet performers. Art as social activism will be the theme; addressing how arts can have transforming effects on disenfranchised communities. The class is an introduction to the performance style and training processes fo Cultural Odyssey's Co-Artistic Directors, Rhodessa Jones and Idris Ackamoor. The workshop will utilize sound and movement exercises, autobiographical musings, storytelling and musical rhythm changes. At the end of the workshop participants will perform a five to ten minute mini-performance created during the process. To register, or for more information, click here.
[ download brochure (PDF) ]
We will begin our journey at the culmination of several years work. During October and November Cultural Odyssey produced and presented The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women's latest show My Life in the Concrete Jungle. Medea Project founder, Rhodessa Jones, continues to be a prolific driving force in the national and global arena of "art as social change". The production opened the 2006-07 Theater Season at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
VIDEO EXCERPTS
- NOTE: DSL/Cable connection is required
to view video
- After clicking a link BE PATIENT: the downloads will take several minutes to complete
|
|
1. "Medea" process
|
|
Inside Jail Part 1
|
Real
|
Quicktime
|
|
Inside Jail Part 2
|
Real
|
Quicktime
|
|
2. "Concrete Jungle" performance
|
|
MAD and Black
|
Real
|
Quicktime
|
|
Message to My People
|
Real
|
Quicktime
|
|
Lotus
|
Real
|
Quicktime
|
|
|
One of the following FREE players is required:
|
|
|
Rhodessa Jones continued her groundbreaking work collaborating with the San Francisco Sheriff's Department and incarcerated women, ex-offenders, and San Francisco multicultural artists to direct My Life in the Concrete Jungle, "a magical-realist journey into the heart of the American urban wilderness," inspired by Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola's famous novel My Life in the Bush of the Ghost.
In a departure from previous projects, The Medea Project also collaborated with composer/musician Idris Ackamoor featuring a live original score performed by male musicians and spoken word artists including the rising talented poet Ise Lyfe, and pianist Fred Harris. Jazz chanteuse Cheryl Scales was also featured in the performance. This was the first time male performers occupied the stage with the traditionally all female Medea Project! [ video ] · [ photo gallery ] · [ purchase DVD ]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| Photos of Pearl and all of us |
During Thanksgiving Rhodessa and Idris traveled to Atlanta for an intensive rehearsal with renowned writers Pearl Cleage and her husband Zaron Burnett to prepare for their collaboration entitled, The Love Project, a multi-disciplinary performance piece written by Pearl Cleage and Zaron Burnett, Jr., with Rhodessa Jones and Idris Ackamoor Directed by Harriet Schiffer Scott. Performed by Rhodessa and Idris the four artists use their long time personal and professional partnerships as a starting point to examine the role of love in a world at war. The performance will be presented as a work in progress at the August 2007 National Black Theater Festival in Winston-Salem, NC. [ excerpt from script ]
Immediately after the Thanksgiving intensive Idris traveled to Rio de Janeiro. In December 2006 Idris continued to serve as a curator with the National Performance Network's Performing America's Program. Performing Americas' Mission is to establish a partnership and collaborative working relationship between the National Performance Network (NPN), which Cultural Odyssey is a member, and the Network of Cultural Promoters of Latin America and the Caribbean (La RED), with the goal of establishing a program for systematic exchange of contemporary performing arts in the Western Hemisphere. As a part of the curatorial group, Idris traveled to the Forum Cultural Mundial 2006 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil during December 2006 to select performing artists to tour to America. He was in the company of some of America's most influential presenters and arts advocates.
[ photo gallery ] · [ BRAZIL DIARY ]
After Idris' Brazil experience the Executive Director headed to Miami for a two and a half month theatrical run. Idris continues to be in-demand as a featured performer. During January and February 2007 he was featured in the M Ensemble Theater of Miami, Florida's production of Indigo Blues by Judi Ann Mason. This intriguing story of a love triangle between two Louisiana sisters and a mysterious jazz musician played to sold out houses.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
LISTEN
|
|
Real Audio (streaming)
|
download Windows Media
|
download MP3
|
|
"Mogho Naba"
|
|
Real
|
WM
|
MP3
|
|
"Queen of the Spirits"
|
|
Real
|
WM
|
MP3
|
|
|
One of the following FREE players
is required:
|
|
|
|
|
While Idris was in Miami a milestone was achieved with the January 2007 release of a 2 CD musical retrospective entitled, Music of Idris Ackamoor 1971 - 2004 on the Japanese EM label. The CD is a compilation featuring tracks from the albums Lalibela (1973), King Of Kings (1974) and Birth, Speed, Merging (1976) (Albums by Idris' legendary 70's group The Pyramids), as well as a track a piece from three of his most recent self produced albums including Portrait, Centurian, and Homage to Cuba. There are also six unreleased tracks, one track from Ackamoor's pre-Pyramids group The Collective, three unreleased Pyramids tracks, one unreleased track from the Idris Ackamoor Quartet and finally a recording of Ackamoor and his wife at the time, Margo Simmons, playing with the King's Drummers Of Tamale, Ghana!! (1973) [ purchase CD ]
|
|
|
|
 |
Black History Month
Event at the Oakland Museum of California
|
|
|
During Black History Month February 2007 The Oakland Museum of California and Laney College presented Rhodessa Jones in, In Search of Human Culture, examining the African American experience with reflections, biographical information, video, an altar, and much more. The production was supported by Members and Friends of the Oakland Museum of California, Laney College and the Laney College Black Student Union.
As an acknowledged authority in this field, Ms. Jones is always in demand to speak about the Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women and her experiences. On Saturday May 12, 2007 Rhodessa was on a panel for the Arts & Consciousness Department at JFKU on Berkeley Campus. Sunday, March 11, 2007 Rhodessa delivered a Keynote address for "Tell Your Story", an Interdisciplinary Conference on August Wilson and African American Theatre, Art, and Culture at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. Rhodessa was also on an artist panel in conjunction with the Neighborhood Public Art Mini-Grants Program Saturday, January 27, 2007 at the Richmond Art Center. She also was a keynote speaker at Assemblyman Mark Leno's Young Women's Conference entitled, "OWN IT! Your Body, Mind & Life" on December 1, 2006 at the Milton Marks Conference Center in San Francisco.
|
|
|
|
 |
Rhodessa Jones directs Lysistrata
|
|
|
During March and April 2007 Rhodessa collaborated with the African American Shakespeare Company to direct Aristophanes' Lysistrata, one of the sexiest political farces ever written. Lysistrata was first performed in 411 B.C. when Athens and Sparta were engaged in a bloody war with no end in sight. Under the determined leadership of Lysistrata, the women of the warring city-states of Greece unite in refusing their men any sexual favors until the fighting has stopped! Director, Rhodessa Jones and her ensemble cast of artists utilized music, movement and shadow puppetry to retell Aristophanes' story.
This has been a landmark year for the work of Rhodessa and Idris. They just returned from an extended residency of 3 weeks in Trinidad and Tobago Co-sponsored by the National Performance Network's Performing Americas Residency Pilot Project and the University of the West Indies in Trinidad! The residency took place from April 15, 2007 to May 5, 2007. The residency activities included workshops in the underseiged communities of Trinidad including the historic Laventille neighborhood in Port of Spain. This community is reeling from poverty, street violence and lack of proper sewage and adequate water. Rhodessa and Idris provided a workshop for the Laventille cultural workers and community activists taking them through the exercises that Rhodessa has perfected in the Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women process to help achieve personal and community self empowerment and transformation.
Another workshop was conducted in San Fernando, Trinidad with drama and music teachers from around the island. This workshop taught the teachers valuable skills to use in their curriculum to help create performances and curriculum material based on the students autobiographical and life experiences.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
VIDEO EXCERPTS
- NOTE: DSL/Cable connection is required
to view video
- After clicking a link BE PATIENT: the downloads will take several minutes to complete
|
|
Blues During Wartime Live in Trinidad!
|
Real
|
Quicktime
|
|
Sunset Over Tobago -
music by
Margo & Destiny
|
Real
|
Quicktime
|
|
|
One of the following FREE players is required:
|
|
|
The final workshops in Trinidad were conducted with undergraduate and graduate students from the University of the West Indies. The workshop was entitled, Creating New Performance and resulted in a recital at the end of the workshop attended by University professors and members of the community.
Equally impressive, Rhodessa and Idris conducted two lectures for the University community. Rhodessa's lecture was entitled, A Women for the 21st Century, detailing her work with marginal populations as well as her performance work. Idris' lecture was entitled, African American Performance at the Turn of the Century, and it detailed the activities and performance styles of the cutting-edge African American performers he has presented over the years at a variety of venues and festivals throughout America.
In addition, Idris and Rhodessa performed for a Jazz Brunch on Sunday, April 22 for members of the Port of Spain Community. Idris collaborated with Trinidadian musicians who performed his music after a series of intensive rehearsals.
On Monday, April 30 Rhodessa and Idris took the ferry from Port of Spain, Trinidad to Scarborough, Tobago to begin a week of workshops for youth from various villages and towns. A highlight of the visit was a series of meetings with the Ministers of Culture and Community Development of the island. These meetings resulted in the appointment of Rhodessa and Idris as cultural ambassadors to Tobago in order to implement methodologies in art as community activism. To this end they will return to Tobago and conduct a month long residency in 2007-08. [ photo gallery ]
· [ TRINIDAD DIARY ]
Presently Rhodessa is culminating her appointment as the Artistic Director of the San Francisco International Theater Festival. Artists are currently arriving, performances taking place and local, national, and international artists and their work are on display for the whole world. The impending success of the festival is due in no small part to the vision and hard work of Rhodessa over the past several years.
Finally, the San Francisco International Arts Festival presented Cultural Odyssey's Underground Jazz Cabaret at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts May 17-19, 2007. The Cabaret featured international musicians Aurelio Martinez, Algerian singer Takfarinas, and Peruvian singer Pepe Vasquez. In addition, the performance on Friday night featured a CD release party and a musical retrospective including the Idris Ackamoor Ensemble and highlighting a reunion of the legendary group The Pyramids.
The Friday night show with Takfarinas and Idris was amazing! Standing room only witnessed the remarkable convergence of two cultures. Idris' retrospective opened the evening followed by a North African hip swaying, jump up dance party!! What a night!!
[ Listen: "Prayers for Nefetari":
Real · Windows Media · MP3 ] ·
[ photo gallery ]
Upcoming events include:
- Rhodessa and Idris returning to Tobago as cultural ambassadors for the annual Harvest Festival in July.
- Rhodessa's month long residency and performance at the University of Maryland in September.
- Rhodessa and Idris returning to South African in October for an extended residency.
- Idris' tour to a Theater festival in Montevideo, Uruguay in October as part of the curatorial team of NPN's Performing America's Project.
|
|
|
|
