Women of a Certain Art: Blondell Cummings, 1944 - 2015

It's Fall.  I'm back at school.  The generational dislocation resumes as I sit in a class where my post-collegiate employment history precedes my classmates' birthdays.

Another friend and collaborator has died.  Blondell and I met in 1980.  I was hugely pregnant and uncertain about all things future.  She was in Waterloo, IA dancing with Bill and on her way to creating her masterpiece, Chicken Soup.  We became friends as women do with talk of lovers, past and present, work and life.  I eventually moved to New York and worked for her for a while when fax machines were a novelty.

We created 2 pieces together:  she commissioned my first dance libretto, Orpheus and Eurydice, and I wrote Act I of For JB (Blondell's meditation on La Josephine).  We stayed in touch although not seeing each other much.  She kept making work through thick and thin, somehow making a living and keeping herself housed and travelling around the world.  She eventually received a Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of her stature.

When we did chat it was sometimes about work, mostly about the this-n-that of life -- nephews, family, daughters, hair.  I sent her to Daughter No. 1 a few years back to have her hair done.  (I used to tell my friends, ask for the Dailey's Mother discount.  At least I thought it was funny.)  Dailey wasn't pleased, she finds most of my friends are too old, too indecisive, too tentative -- to make good customers.  Nevertheless, I enjoy sending her people who remember her before she could walk, talk, or make googobs of money.

So, good-bye Blondell, good-bye.

Women of a Certain Art: Leslie Li

My friend, Leslie Li.

We met in the 1990's, probably because we both attended Hedgebrook (a women writers' colony) and as the literature curator at The Kitchen I wanted to do an evening of Hedgebrook writers.  She had published her novel, Bittersweet which she read from that night.

Years later Leslie left NYC.  For Vermont.  During those years came Enter the Dragon, 3 adaptations for children of Chinese folk tales.

Leslie returned to NYC, her center of gravity, and published a memoir, Daughter of Heaven:  A Memoir with Earthly Recipes.

And now she is a film-maker.  Chronicling the life and career of her mother and her mother's sisters, Kim Loo Sisters:  Portrait in Four-Part Harmony, which is Leslie's meditation on the nature of America, identity, race and gender.  Her project's website:  http://kimloosisters.com/

Leslie's latest interview, with Jolin Yang, http://www.jolinyang.com/

The Kim Loo Sisters:

Women of a Certain Art: Simi Linton & INVITATION TO DANCE - Trailer 2013

   Long ago in a shining city far away I made an opera with Bill T. Jones and Leroy Jenkins.  While doing that I met two of the artists who danced in the piece,  Edisa Weeks and Homer Avila.  We became friends.  Then years later Homer Avila introduced me to his friend, disability activist, scholar, dancer and memoirist, Simi Linton.  Then Simi and I became friends.  We used to see a fair amount of each other.  In Central Park and Koreatown.  Then she started making a movie.  And I moved here.  Our 3D relationship is now 2D.  But whatcha gonna do?  Above is the trailer for Simi and Christian von Tippelskirch's work.

Check out the blog, Invitation to Dance, and look for the film to premiere in 2014.

Women of A Certain Art: Zusaan Kali Fasteau

Kali and I met back in the early 90's when I was writing operas with the late Leroy Jenkins, a friend and colleague of hers.  We've known each other ever since mostly over a performance or coffee in the Village.  She's a formidable musician/force of nature -- if there's an instrument she doesn't play (and play well) it hasn't been invented yet.  A sample of her music ...

 

... and of her writing, from the Megaphone column in the March 2013 issue of The New York City Jazz Record, her essay, Spontaneous Composition in the Round.

Music
offers a sweet alternative to the mundane,
transporting us to a non-logical enjoyment of being.
If you read this journal, you feel the power of music.
We musicians are lucky making music that feels good to us.
Rather than ‘improvising’ (improving) upon a preset structure,
I prefer composing music in real time, shaping the sound
energy coming through me without forethought.
The body and spirit seem electrified by
the high-voltage energy of contouring sound live.
Spontaneous composition is almost magical, producing
amazing results when the musicians are well chosen.

Women of a Certain Art: Shelley Hainer

We are all many things; not all at once and sometimes not for long.  But some things that we are, we are.  I moved to New York when I was 37.  I thought of moving there for years, and though it wasn't an inevitable migration; when I did in 1990 I knew I'd come home.  New York is the people I know, the artists I worked with and the friendships we made.  I'm here, they're there still doing the work.  I celebrate my friends.

Today I share Shelley Hainer -- poet, headhunter, seeker, dancer, actress, impresario.  She founded Bamboo Jacket in 2008.

Happy Mother's Day: Femi Agana

To my friend and admiree, Femi Agana.  Mother of 3 wonderful children.  Artist.  New Year's Day swimmer.  Carpenter and shop steward.  Feminist.  Videographer.  Clothing designer.  Volunteer aid worker.  And godknows what else.  My hat's off to you!