Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Friday, November 1, 2019

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

We open the show with conversations with directors, curators, and dancers featured in the 10th Annual San Francisco Dance Film Festival, Nov. 2-4 and Nov. 9-10 at Brava Theatre.

Afia Thompson, dir. MAPENZI

Afia “Beautiful One” Thompson received her acclaim 20 years ago in West African dance. She has performed nationally and internationally in genres including jazz, hip-hop, lindy hop, freestyle, and modern dance. Afia Thompson founded Bahiya Movement in 2011 with her daughter Nafi Thompson. Bahiya Movement has participated in SF Juneteenth, Black Choreographers, and Mbongui Square. The company has graced such stages as The Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco International Art Festival, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Oakland’s Art and Soul Festivals. Recently her film MAPENZI “A dancer's love affair with Dance, Body, and the Arts"! was accepted in the San Francisco Dance Film Festival 2019.  Afia continues to teach classes in the Oakland community to professional dancers and dance enthusiasts of all ages.

WEBSITE

www.bahiyamovement.com

Laura Elaine Ellis
Photo: Andy Mogg

Laura Elaine Ellis, moderator of a discussion about activism and the arts after the Raising Voices shorts program on Nov 9, 6pm at Brava (the program includes MAPENZI and the other If Cities Could Dance-- Oakland). Ms. Ellis maintains a non-stop career of teaching, performing, choreographing and producing in the Bay Area.  Currently, she performs with Deborah Vaughan’s Dimensions Dance Theater and Jo Kreiter’s Flyaway Productions.   She has taught 25 years in the Dance & Theater departments of Cal State University, East Bay (CSU, Hayward), and the Athenian School.  Laura is co-founder and Executive Director of the African & African American Performing Arts Coalition. She is co-presenter of the Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now (BCF), with arts partner Kendra Barnes. Over the 15 years of presenting BCF, dance on film has often been a part of festival programming.  Moderating for the San Francisco Dance Film Festival’s Raising Voices program is in alignment with Laura’s love of dance, her activist spirit, and her joy of seeing dance on film. 
https://www.sfdancefilmfest.org/festival-films/2019-program/raising-voices/

Kabreshiona Tiyteea La’Shae Smith

Kabreshiona Tiyteea La’Shae Smith, also known as “the Breeze” is a 23 year old; faith based movement specialist from Richmond, CA.  She dances in the film: "If Cities Could Dance: Richmond."

As an choreographer, writer, singer, and actress she believes she was given these gifts  in order to heal, feel, and reveal. ROOTS the Movement (an acronym for rising out of the system) was founded out of the RYSE Youth  Center in 2015. the mission of the movement is to create art that reflects the biblical destiny of the so called “African American” and their connection with the descendants of Israel.


2. Mills College Dance Dept. is celebrating 80 with a New Orleans inspired Second Line. All events are free. For tickets and information: eventbrite.com/e/footwork-following-new-orleans-second-line-parades-tickets-75048890251  

We speak to RACHEL CARRICO, an Assistant Professor of Dance Studies in the School of Theatre + Dance at the University of Florida. Her research explores the aesthetic, political, and social histories of second lining, an improvisational dance form rooted in New Orleans's African diaspora parading traditions. She will give a lecture Friday evening, Nov. 1, on the intersection of New Orleans and Oakland Dance traditions.

Before joining the faculty at UF, Dr. Carrico held faculty appointments at Reed College, Colorado College, University of Oregon, and Wilson College. In 2015-16, she was the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Dance Studies at Stanford University. She holds a Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies from the University of California–Riverside, an M.A. in Performance Studies from NYU, and a teaching certificate from the Limón Institute. She parades annually in New Orleans with the Ice Divas Social and Pleasure Club.

Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Wed., October 30, 2019

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

1. SF Doc Stories this weekend! Nov. 1-4 sffilm.org 

Rachel Rosen, SFFILM 

We speak to Rachel Rosen, Director of Programming for SFFILM since 2009. From 2001–2009, she was Director of Programming for Film Independent and the Los Angeles Film Festival.


2. Kathleen Riddley joins us to talk about Ubuntu Theatre Project's production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Days Journey into Night extended. Visit http://www.ubuntutheaterproject.com/

LaDonna Trotman, Director of Top Shelf Classics

3. Top Shelf Classic's Royalty of Soul: A Tribute to Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight
Visit https://www.boxcartheatre.org/top-shelf-classics.html

Guests: LaDonna Trotman, Director of Top Shelf Classics, as well as Corporate Executive IT Project Manager, Assistant Vice President for PMO, recently retired and focusing 100% on Production Company as well as a Residential Care Facility for the Elderly. With a genuine care for making a difference in one’s life by bringing joy, even if just for a moment, If Top Shelf’s performance can touch one person with positivity and take them to a place in time that brings them peace, then our job is complete.

Wanda Diamond, Top Shelf Classics

Brenda Knight, Collaborative partner for event concepts and production
Wanda Diamond, Top Shelf’s featured performer for next week’s performance
















Music: Zion Trinity; Meklit and Quinn
Show link: http://tobtr.com/s/11530615

The Barbara Lee & Elihu Harris Lecture Series present: Anna Mwalagho's "Never Thought I Was Black till I Came to America"

Anna Mwalagho's "Never Thought I Was Black Till I Came to America" performance was a fitting continuation of the wonderful conversations The Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series co-produced by the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center and the Peralta Community College District has become so appreciated for. A free series, it was nice being at the Oakland Museum of CA's James Moore Theatre, an elegant and intimate venue which was filled.

Anna Mwalagho and Donald Lacy at OMCA
photo: Wanda Sabir

In an interview a week earlier, Mrs. Mwalagho called Mr. Harris family, and as the inaugural comedy show, there is so much wisdom in her presentation and given the federal immigrant policies in this present administration, quite timely. On the West Coast, immigration stories do not often include the stories of Diaspora Africans. So Mwalagho's story is both fresh and funny as we travel the historic legacy she is connected to. Her journey connects all of us to what is important in our lives and how much we should pay attention to such values.

Martin King spoke of a "love ethic" and how singularly important and powerful it is. With all of Mwalagho's historic and current examples, plus the people she names like Rosa Parks and Harriett Tubman, Martin Luther King and Barack Obama and the gratitude she expresses, we are left with a validation, a practical validation of our singular and collective importance in this American story. 

Anna Mwalagho
photo: Wanda Sabir

Anna Mwalagho
photo: Wanda Sabir

African people made this nation the great nation it is. As the artist recalls the MAAFA, a Kiswahili term that references "the great calamity, terrible occurrence. . .", known as the Black Holocaust, we are reminded of our singular greatness. African Diaspora people are mighty because of our ancestral legacy. My friend, Massingbe Kone-Cisse, an African business woman who has been here for over 20 years, agreed with Mwalagho on every point, especially the thanks owed to the Africans who arrived here in chains first.

Anna Mwalagho

photo: Wanda Sabir

Our ancestral lives reflect the difficulty in legislative human rights for a people deemed property. When Sojourner Truth asks the question: "Ain't I a Woman?" she is asking for acknowledgement of her personhood not just her labor.  The idea that whether a person is recently just off the boat or arrived generations ago, the orientation is similar. The systemic use of "othering" tactics based on linguistic acumen or how well one slips into the dominant cultural noose still remains a challenge. 

Mwalagho talks about intelligence and how intelligence and accent are weighted. Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, author, scholar, spoke often of how he was underestimated because he had an accent. 

She also says in an appearance at a Washington, D.C. church (reference: her DVD which was available at the venue for purchase) that her faith in something greater than systemic and exclusive policies and politics, helped her stay focused, keep moving and not give up as she navigated this foreign terrain. 

Landmines in the form of racism and white supremacy were and continue to litter this landscape, yet Mwalagho triumphantly stands before us whole, beautiful and happy.

We are encouraged.  

"Never Knew I Was Black Till I Came to America" is what happens when reparations work. It is what "400 Years of Return 1619-2019" looks like when both sides of the African Diaspora link hands. 

Mwalagho's "Never" is a Sankofa story. 

Post-1865 African immigrants are so busy trying to melt in an American stew they don't realize they are the value added.  Immigrants -- willing and those whose ancestors were captured and brought to this nation unwillingly to build its capital -- are the "extra" in the American wrapper or often discarded packaging. 

It was so refreshing to hear Mwalagho honor our African Ancestors of the Middle Passage who died away from home. The specificity of her truth and the way she articulated it with grace and humor is/was illuminating. 

Elihu Harris, Roy Wilson, Anna Mwalagho, Donald Lacy
photo: Wanda Sabir

Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, playwright, director, has a similar story of her travel in Africa and Europe. Mwalagho's work answers some of the questions raised. Barry "Shabaka" Henley, actor, playwright, director, also raises such questions of the reverse migration-- how it feels for Diaspora Africans to return to their ancestral homeland -- all tangible memories erased by distance. Another Kenyan, filmmaker,  Peres Owino, in her "Bound: Africans vs. African Americans" (2015) starring Isaiah Washington, Joy DeGruy, convenes several conversations between Africans and African Americans which look at misconceptions on both sides of the same coin. A funny aside is that Peres is also a comedienne. Historically, African American actors were only allowed certain roles on stage and that was the comic, especially a comic that made fun of her person and her community; however, African American actors embedded pride and worth in many of the stereotypical characters or popular caricatures. If it's funny, it can't be serious is the thinking.  It can't empower the viewer is the thinking, yet, like the story quilts and the coded messages in the Negro Spirituals, often these public performances were a way to humanize "Sambo", to give the caricature a perspective absence when embodied by white men in blackface. 

This type of performance seen in the colonial context is a form of erasure a disappearance into whiteness; however, comedy is a way to tease out the skeletons and Mwalagho's "Never" lays the bones of these misunderstood and maligned ancestors a place to rest, for example, ancestor, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (May 25, 1877-November 25, 1949).

Immigration can be a form of erasure. The quicker the newcomer sheds her identity the sooner she is accepted. 

I love the story of the Yoruba man who says he is English when Mwalagho greets him with warmth. He denies the continental connection, yet his facial structure tells a different story. We cannot escape our past, so we might as well embrace it. However, this is a choice. Too often what we see when we look into the mirror -- another African face, is denial. In Western culture, there is no value added to a hero with an African face.

Another story which Mwalagho shares is the African American practice of naming our kids African names without a connection to the people and culture. Her example is the parents who name their baby: "basket." 

She deftly sprinkles "Never" with references to African traditional culture through personal stories from online dating juxtaposed with her grannies' arranged marriage, to African chickens and the American franchise, Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits-- I wonder if she knows the superhero Popeye, whose fuel is canned spinach? I think it's interesting that her food of choice, chicken, is from this franchise not Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) and Colonel Sanders. I do not think African people are getting dividends from either entity. White men founded both food chains, one in New Orleans the other in Kentucky. Popeyes consumed Church's Chicken before its owner went bankrupt.

(An aside, I learned the name comes from Popeye Doyle, Gene Hackman's character in the French Connection. Perhaps the owner, Al Copeland's use of Cajun spices strengthens this link. Another funny coincidence is that Copeland was inspired by Col. Sanders's KFC in New Orleans.)

Mwalagho steers clear of obvious colonial tras. However, she has to pinch pennies and has a few stories that illustrate hard times, while also showing how we get what we pay for.  In a story about an early car purchase-- a vehicle that only turned right, I was reminded of the Sherman Alexie's collection, "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven."  The collection is adapted into a film, "Smoke Signals." In it a young Indigenous woman has a car that only drives in reverse.  What a metaphor.  Similarly is "right turn" and in another story, shoes that melt in the hot sun, leaving the actor standing barefoot on the concrete.  This example epitomizes the vanishing promises so many immigrants put in their suitcases on their way abroad. How quickly this empress notices she is wearing no clothes. All the great expectations and hopes vanish as the disappearing ink dries on visas and passports.

But, Mwalagho picks herself up.  Shops at better stores after this experience.  Invests in transportation that is a bit more reliable.  Because she knows who she is, she can celebrates herself.  She is a woman whose beauty is not delineated along a Eurocentric tape measure.

"Never" is a story of acceptance. Mwalagho recognizes and celebrates her tangible in intangible differences and what value she adds with her presence to the tapestry that is this nation. Her difference as added value not something to be ashamed of or worse thrown away is an important lesson of "Never." 

This lesson transcends person and place. The poison is assimilation. Assimilation is the bitter pill African Diaspora citizens here and abroad have been swallowing. "Never" confronts this and answers "never again." I don't need to be anyone except by beautiful African self-- a big butt, dark skin, kinky hair-- self!  

Acceptance is an inside job. Belonging is another story. That is part two of a trajectory that is both hard and harmful. After 400+ years Africans indigenous to this land still face, still struggle with. 

Donald Lacy's "Color Struck" addresses this in his solo performance which is why it was great to have him open for Anna Mwalagho. Africa is speaking to African Diaspora here, breath of African Ancestors a billowing breeze on sails traversing the circuitous triangular routes carrying precious cargo. The evening was a blessing. It was a balm, an affirmation, an Ashay to all that we are past, present and future. 

When Anna Mwalagho tells the story of the African American who goes to the African village and sees her relatives in the faces of the people . . . I could feel the audience resonate . . . we knew that story. If no one greeted us at the airport, if we made it to the village we were home. However, I saw my grandmother crossing a busy street in Dakar. I wanted to follow her.

Visit https://www.annamwalagho.com/

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=hb_HA_F7244

Wanda's Picks Radio Show Friday, October 18, 2019

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

1. Always in Season director, producer, writer, Jacqueline Olive joins us to talk about this remarkable yet tragic story about Black lives that seems to always be in season.

Roxie in SF, 10/23 (preview) and 11/1-7 screenings https://www.roxie.com

https://www.alwaysinseasonfilm.com/team

2. Adia Tamar Whitaker, Have K(no)w Fear: A Bluessical: is an undoing spell that wants to untie all the knots that choke the future at ODC Oct. 18-19 https://odc.dance/Bluessical

3. Rev. Dr. Dorsey Blake shares information about Dr. Howard Thurman and The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples which is having its 75th Anniversary this weekend, Oct. 19-20 with a Forum and Convocation

http://fellowshipsf.org/2019/10/75th-anniversary-jubilee-weekend-celebration/

Visit: http://tobtr.com/s/11530607

Wanda's Picks Radio Show Rebroadcast October 9, 2019

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

1. Adia Tamar Whitaker, Artistic Director of the 19-year old Brooklyn based dance theater ensemble Àse Dance Theatre Collective, joins us to talk about the West Coast premiere of "Have K(No!)W Fear: A Bluessical, Oct. 17-19, 2019, Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m. at ODC Theater, 3153 17th Street, SF. odc.dance/Bluessical
(415) 863-9834.

2. Jess Curtis/Gravity presents (in)Visible Oct. 10-13 at CounterPulse, 80 Turk Street, in SF. Jess joins us with Sherwood Chen and Gabriel Christian, dancers, choreographers, to talk about this new work.
www.jesscurtisgravity.org/invisible or 415-626-2060.

3. Rebroadcast 9/25/2019 with Stella Heath: The Billie Holiday Project at Feinsteins at Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, Oct. 10, 2019.

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2019/10/09/wandas-picks-radio-show

Wanda's Picks Radio Show Special Broadcast with Rev. Dr. Dorsey Blake re: 75th Anniversary for Howard Thurman's The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

1. Rev. Dr. Dorsey Odell Blake joins us to talk about the 75th Jubilee of The Church for the Fellowship of All People this weekend, Sat.-Sun., Oct. 19-20. The free celebration includes the Dorsey O. Blake Forum for Social Transformation, 10/19, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and the 24th Annual Convocation, 10/20, 3 p.m. fellowshipsf.org

Dr. Blake has served as Presiding Minister of The Church for The Fellowship of All Peoples (San Francisco) since 1994. He also serves as Faculty Associate at Pacific School of Religion. Dr. Blake has extensive field ministry experience with interfaith groups addressing justice and peace issues. Dr. Blake has conducted seminars and workshops locally and nationally including one with Rajmahon Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi. He is the recipient of numerous community service awards. In 2000, he traveled to Morocco with an interfaith delegation of Muslims, Jews, and Christians in a quest to promote interfaith respect and cooperation. 

In October 2010 he met His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and served on an interfaith panel responding to his teachings

2. We close with another conversation, from the archives, Howard Thurman Special with Rev. Liza Rankow and Rev. Dr. Blake, recorded Nov. 8, 2010. 

Listen to or watch:  Howard Thurman interview with Landrum Bolling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGX4-Wv9UD0


http://tobtr.com/11547685

Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Wednesday, October 9, 2019

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

1. Adia Tamar Whitaker, Artistic Director of the 19-year old Brooklyn based dance theater ensemble Àse Dance Theatre Collective, has performed contemporary dance, vernacular movement, Afro-Haitian, and Haitian dance in the U.S. and abroad for seventeen years. Whitaker has traveled to Haiti, Cuba, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ghana, Jamaica, and Trinidad, to study and teach dance. Whitaker received an MFA in Dance from Hollins University, a BA in Dance from San Francisco State University, and completed the Professional Division U.S. Independent Studies Program at The Ailey School. She was also an Urban Bush Women Apprentice, a Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography @ FSU Creative Entry Point Choreographic Fellow, a Jerome Foundation grantee and Isadora Duncan Award recipient. Most recently, Whitaker received the highly competitive  NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship Award in Choreography and completed her second year of her Dunham Technique Certification.

2. Jess Curtis/Gravity presents (in)Visible Oct. 10-13 at CounterPulse in SF.

Jess Curtis/Gravity presents the San Francisco leg of the rolling World Premiere of (in)Visible, a dance/performance dislocating vision from the center of your experience. Developed in collaboration with—and particularly focusing on access to culture for—blind and visually impaired audiences, (in)Visible is created and performed by an international cast of six blind, visually impaired and sighted body-based dancers/performers. Through dancing, singing, whispering and feeling, they make their way into your consciousness—bringing experimental dance/performance and sensory accessibility practices into a rich and moving interaction. 

VIDEO TRAILER:  http://www.tanzforumberlin.de/en/production/in-visible/

(in)Visible furthers Curtis’ research into the intersections of movement, culture, sensory difference and physical diversity in live performance. Curtis explains, “Specifically, (in)Visible addresses the disproportionate prevalence in our culture of sight as a tool of perception, and explores more diverse modes of perceiving.  The work embeds access accommodations —such as Audio Description—into the work itself and will include non-traditional seating arrangements, pre-show Touch Tours for every show and ASL interpretation for D/deaf audiences.

The set design by Michiel Keuper. The sound score is by Samuel Hertz.  The performers are Berlin-based dancers Sophia Neises and Xenia Taniko, Sherwood Chen (Marseilles) and San Francisco based dancers/performers Tiffany Taylor, Gabriel Christian and Rachael Dichter. Creative consultants include author and UC Berkeley professor of disability studies Georgina Kleege, writer and philosopher Alva Noë, and blind art critic, essayist, artist, photographer Gerald Pirner.

(in)Visible runs two weekends, Thursday to Sunday, October 3-6 and 10-13 at 8:00 pm at CounterPulse in San Francisco. Audio Description is available for every performance.  ASL interpretation is available one night per weekend.  Please check www.counterpulse.org for specifics.  Tickets are $10 to $30 and are available online at www.jesscurtisgravity.org/invisible or by calling 415-626-2060.

Sherwood Chen has worked as a performer with artists including Grisha Coleman, Yuko Kaseki, Amara Tabor-Smith, Anna Halprin, Min Tanaka, Xavier Le Roy, inkBoat / Ko Murobushi, Christine Bonansea and Sara Shelton Mann. He leads workshops for performers in studio and in natural and urban landscapes worldwide. For over twenty years he has served as a cultural worker in public, nonprofit and philanthropic sectors focusing on community arts programming, arts education, arts grantmaking, and as an artist advocate in the United States, with a focus on supporting tradition-based, Native Californian and immigrant artists.  www.sherwoodchen.com

Gabriel Christian is a multidisciplinary artist bred in New York City and baking in Oakland, California. Their work metabolizes the vernaculars within BlaQ diaspora –– futurity, afrovivalism, faggotry ––  through body-based live performance and poetics; moreover, they feel the bio to be an unfortunate by-product of capitalistic modes like chattel slavery. 

Jess Curtis is an award-winning choreographer and performer committed to an art-making practice informed by experimentation, innovation, critical discourse and social relevance. He has created and performed multidisciplinary works throughout the U.S and Europe with the radical SF performance groups Contraband and CORE and the experimental French Circus company Cahin-Caha. In 2000, he founded his trans-continental performance company, Jess Curtis/Gravity. Curtis is active as a researcher, writer, teacher, advocate and community organizer in the fields of contemporary dance and performance. He holds an MFA in Choreography and a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from the University of California at Davis.

http://tobtr.com/s/11530597