    inLAND is a day-long retreat on Sunday, September 15 from 9:00 am until 5:00 pm. The retreat cost is $130. We have space for 15 beloveds. Please register early to ensure your place.
  SHEBANA COELHO is an award-winning writer and filmmaker, originally from India, who has conducted Faraway is Close cross-cultural creativity workshops in New Mexico, Hawaii, Mongolia and American Samoa. She received a Fiction Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Fulbright to Mongolia. Her stories, poems and articles have been published in US and international journals and her multimedia documentaries have been broadcast on BBC Radio Four, Public Television (PBS), and the Discovery Channel among others. More about Shebana > DEBORAH LITTLEBIRD is co-founder of Hamaatsa, an indigenous continuum and sustainable living farm where she facilitates storywork camps and contemplative retreats on a 320-acre wild land sanctuary. She is the producer of Slow Story which perpetuates the orality of tribal American people for future generations by bridging this ancient technology with today's digital technologies. An herbalist, botanical farmer and farm-to-table chef, Deborah shares her passion for plants and food as medicine. More about Deborah > inLAND is a new incarnation of the creative collaboration between Shebana Coelho and Deborah Littlebird that began with the Hamaatsa Story Video, Heirloom Food and Story and Slow Story Series.  HAMAATSA is an indigenous continuum, wild land sanctuary and hermitage retreat on 320-acres of environmentally protected aboriginal lands in the rolling Juniper foothills of the Ortiz Mountains, near Santa Fe, New Mexico. www.hamaatsa.org
FOR MORE INFORMATION littlebird@hamaatsa.org / 505.379.2598 "Sharp barbs softened by the grace of the mind and body and hands like fluttering birds moving through the fire of flamenco was a perfection." "it resonated strongly; flamenco's force and connection to source (a wordless language that will not be silenced) vying with colonialism's proper diction and dominance." "Your very personal depiction of the struggles of culture and colonization was very profound. I especially like the way you helped us understand fear, and in your own way, confront it. " - audience response to NuWorks performance at the Pan Asian Repertory Theater            Gratitude for all the collaborators and consultants
who helped shape this performance: Fernando Barros Lirola Alice Blumenfeld Deborah & Larry Littlebird Aparna Sindhoor Tan & Jivan Coelho Jayant and Kaveri Kalawar Special thanks the Navarasa Sadhana workshop, G. Venu, Natanakairali Arts Adishakti Arts  suddenly...but really it's been happening for years... suddenly...but really, the path is always unknown... suddenly....but really, the mystery of when, how, what next - that mystery matters suddenly...so much is connecting to so much else.... this solstice of gratitude the dance emerges as speech as song as rune as story the film becomes memory reimagined becomes sitting around a table with kindred spirits who want their own mystery who want to sing too in serving this light that calls to you or the dark for that matter something emerges that only you can live.. that story under the skin indigenous to the species particular to you humming under the breath Sit across the table from the beloved call the flowers by name and they will listen si pudiera decirte lo que se siente, no valdria la pena bailarlo. if I could tell you what it feels like it wouldn't matter to dance it kehta hai kaun nalaay bulbul ko be asar who says the song of the nightingale has no effect parde mein gul ke lakh jigar chaakh ho gaye look closer in the garden, see the flower, the petals torn into a thousand tatters.. ghalib in the garden always there is someone in the garden it was understood in Mongolia that it matters to take the time to sit under the flowers and call their scent to you I remember he was a grandfather and he had a thousand cattle that's how he was introduced to me may you call to you what seeks to bloom may it bloom may it bloom  I'll be performing a 35-minute excerpt from The Good Manners of Colonized Subjects as part of the Pan Asian Repertory Theater's Nuworks festival in NYC - on Wed, June 26 at 7pm; and Saturday, June 29 at 2:30pm. Tickets and Location info here   ...or rather a poem of a few years ago, called THE PARTING OF WIDOWS, published today in this journal called One from Jacar Press which is a lovely community oriented press. And it's a powerful issue, imho. http://one.jacarpress.com/ The "second look" (the last section) is revisiting the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz The other thing that's interesting about the magazine is that the editors only publish an issue when they find 21 poems that they all like... Brown Paper Tickets Ticket Widget Loading... Click Here to visit the Brown Paper Tickets event page. 
THE BARN AT GRAVITY HILL AND FARAWAY IS CLOSE
present a special preview of THE GOOD MANNERS OF COLONIZED SUBJECTS a solo play by Shebana Coelho preceded by a free creativity session 
TICKETS $20 (LIMITED SEATING)
We encourage you to buy tickets online via Brown Paper Tickets Limited tickets will be available at the door. R e a d a b o u t t h e J O U R N E Y...
On April 27, The Barn at Gravity Hill in Titusville is hosting a special performance/workshop combination to explore colonization, liberation and creativity. It features a preview of a work-in-progress play, THE GOOD MANNERS OF COLONIZED SUBJECTS preceded by a creativity session. The creativity session begins at 2 pm and runs 45 min The play begins at 3:30pm and runs 75 minutes. The free storypoem session, included in the price of the ticket, is a preview of the cross cultural embodied dance workshops that will accompany the play in the future. If you prefer, please feel free to arrive later at 3:30pm for the performance. THE PLAY The Good Manners of Colonized Subjects is a solo play about a human animal, fragmented by colonization, who journeys through memoir and myth to confront fear and reclaim lost poetry and dance, indigenous to her spirit, collective to the species. Written and performed by India-born, New Mexico-based artist Shebana Coelho, it interweaves poetry, monologues, improvisation and choreography drawn from flamenco and Sanskrit classical theater. At a time when the lingering effects of colonization are manifesting in fraught conversations about borders and fear of the other, the narrative unravels the insidious ways colonization works inside and outside the skin, through culture, history, emotion and offers a healing alchemy of metaphor and movement. The text is in English...with threads of Urdu, Portuguese, Spanish, Caló, Konkani, Mongolian. The project is currently being workshopped through a grassroots tour to preview the play, build audiences and fundraise for the final production. As part of a new cross-cultural initiative, Faraway is Close, it will be presented with creativity workshops that nurture participants to stand up in their own story. 
The Barn at Gravity Hill hosts education and community-based organizations, as well as celebrations and corporate events.Gravity Hill Farm was founded in 2005 as a small family farm, dedicated to teaching about nature—and nurturing—through organic farming and raising animals. Co-owners David Earling and Maria Nicolo wanted to create a farm rooted in their community, and of service to that community. Their non-profit mission is to offer a space and programming for issues connecting food, nature, sustainability and community. www.thebarnatgravityhill.com
This article by Jafelin Helten is such a true song. A sudden lament at 17 and years later, the seed grows into a song and twenty years after, the singer sings.... (I've heard her in Jerez and it is a joy to listen) do you choose the art or does the art choose you and is the question the answer and is the feeling all that matters and the following of it? Read the whole article here at Expo Flamenco  
Michael Meade's Mosaic Voices podcast is really medicine for this soul.
Listening to it this morning, this episode in particular - what to say, how to say it - it resonated so much I barely have words for it. The failures that bring us truth, the losses that bring us to love...whittling away, whittling away so all that remains in spirit.. There was William Stafford to begin with and Rumi in the middle and Hafiz to end with and the insights of Meade who weaves together his belief, his being, his truth about this necessity of being who you are, especially the poet you are, especially the dancer you are. In so many ways, these words in this podcast mirror...reflect....give words to the silences I live and create from. Listening to this today, I feel I went on that same journey of awakening, struggle and catharsis that forms the journey of The Good Manners of Colonized Subjects. in its own particular way, all that was spoken connected to the heart of all I am doing in my own particular way... "Cast all your votes for dancing," as Rumi says; yes, that! and Listen, here, below and more podcasts at the Mosaic Voices "Living Myth" website. 
For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid William Stafford There is a country to cross you will find in the corner of your eye, in the quick slip of your foot--air far down, a snap that might have caught. And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing voice that finds its way by being afraid. That country is there, for us, carried as it is crossed. What you fear will not go away: it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you. That's the world, and we all live there.
ONLY BREATH
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam or Eve or any origin story. My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul. I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being. Coleman Barks, Tr., The Essential Rumi (San Fransico: Harper Collins, 1995) ~my darling Hafiz~ I know the voice of depression Still calls to you. I know those habits that can ruin your life Still send their invitations. But you are with the Friend now And look so much stronger. You can stay that way And even Bloom! Keep squeezing drops of the Sun From your prayers and work and music And from you companions’ beautiful laughter. Keep squeezing drops of the Sun From the sacred hands and glance of you Beloved And, my dear, From the most insignificant movements of your own holy body. Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins The may buy you a moment of pleasure, But then drag you for days Like a broken man Behind a farting camel. You are with the Friend now. Learn what actions of yours bring freedom And love. Whenever you say God’s name, dear pilgrim, My ears wish my head was missing, So they could finally kiss each other And applaud all your nourishing wisdom. O keep squeezing drops of Sun From your prayers and work and music And from your companions’ beautiful laughter And from the most insignificant movements Of your own holy body. Now, sweet one, Be wise. Cast all your votes for Dancing! |
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September 2019
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