Afterglow of NYC

The only way to write regularly on this blog, is to just write regularly. Here's hoping this time it sticks.

I just returned to the UK after spending a month in my old home NYC. It was a beautiful, fast-paced exciting month of performing, teaching, rehearsing, meeting and connecting with friends.

And as I sit in Manchester, my current home, I am thinking about race and why it's important and why I can't seem to stop thinking about it, which, if you know me, isn't a surprise at all.

And if you don't know me personally, check my artist statement (for my non-burlesque work, but still completely relevant) which I think explains a bit:

I am an interdisciplinary artist engaging with the practices of movement and words; the writing, choreographing, performance and poetics of dance and text. Central to my existence in this world is the fact that as a person I cannot and will not separate myself from my art, my race and my political beliefs. I create art for life’s sake, breath by breath. I make art out of necessity to communicate truths with the world at large. I am interested in the process and beauty and function and the mess of life, seeing the edges, breaking the fourth wall. I strive to create art that is in dialogue with communities of people, art that shares the aesthetic of blackness in all its unique glory and improvisation, while at the same time celebrates the hybridity of my experience. Art that inspires, spreads understanding and compassion and calls for a deeper look at this society’s crippling isms.

I've been told before that I'm obsessed with race. I wouldn't describe it that way. I would say I'm constantly deeply aware.

Daniel Alexander Jones, a brilliant playwright and professor who I worked with in my 3rd semester of grad school, broke it down:

"I recognize race as a social construct that has no valid basis in science. Because it was created as pseudo-scientific evidence for colonial expansion, genocide and domination of much of the globe, and because it is the linchpin of the maintenance of these colonial systems in a supposedly post-colonial age, it will always carry the violence and cruel blurring of real and unreal that are in its “dna” – it always leaves its colonial residue.

Secondly, racism is a disease. Like alcoholism, or other such addictive illnesses, it is corrosive for those possessed by the disease and destructive for all those around them; and it seduces through its provision of “answers.” Because it is a disease – it defies logic.

Thirdly, the enduring presence of the construct inside concrete social policy, as the continuing core rationale for mass murder globally, and in particular, its peculiar role in the concept of America, in the maintenance of the inequities of the socio-economic system of the country, and in the consciousness of all Americans, means that while it is a false construct, it has, through its functions, been invested with life – it is a real unreal thing."


Burlesque for me is about expressing oneself, much like my relationship and understanding of poetry and it wasn't until I heard poets besides Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson that I realized I too could partake in this art form. That people like me could have a say, share our voice, our experiences, add to the conversation and creation. With burlesque it is the same.

I'm a student of the Black Arts Movement of the mid 1960's to mid 70's in the States and the idea of institution building is at the core of how I move in the world, creating a space for oneself and for others in communities that often don't have access to present and perform their own work. That is where the idea for BGB comes from. And sometimes when I start going on about BGB to some people I can sense that they don't really see why this is so important, but experiences I had over the last two weeks I was in NYC reminded me just how crucial that is.

On Saturday May 15th, Chicava HoneyChild (Creative Producer of BGB) and myself led BGB's second one day intro workshop for our Broad Squad Institute. Wow. It was a beautiful afternoon, filled with inspiring women who are all about exploring their sensuality and creativity. Amidst the sequins and shedded feathers from the boas we shimmed and shared, talking about everything from creating a name that has meaning to you to what it means for a brown woman to take her clothes off in public.

Then the following Wednesday I was up in Harlem. Billie's Black the So Damn Happy Happy Hour with BGB curating the evening. We had a blast. The audience was primarily Black women and many who had never seen BGB before, and some who had never experienced burlesque at all. We were up there expressing ourselves, celebrating brown women's brains, bodies and stories and the feedback that I got after the show was superb. It wasn't just about us being sexy up on stage for the audience, the women in the audience felt sexy and inspired, through us they saw themselves on stage. Their own bodies celebrated. For that hour the American standard of beauty was not bombarding them from magazines and billboards and the television screen.

Till next time,
Miss AuroraBoobRealis

just a quickie about creativity and my identity

I love how creativity works, in writing a blog about U.S. Black History Month, I of course was thinking about my own identity as a Black woman who is multi-ethnic, and how in the UK people mostly would just call me mixed race, which as an American who was born into the myth of the "one drop rule" I don't identify simply as mixed race... which then got me researching the origins of the one drop rule and then I realized that this is all research for a piece I'm creating with BGB for our Culture Classics show in May. Creativity rocks!!!!

And of course since I just spent the last 40 minutes reading all this info on the one drop rule, now I'm running out of time to write this blog about Black History Month. So stay tuned...


peace and movement,
Miss AuroraBoobRealis

Musings...

I haven't glued on fake eyelashes or swabbed spirit gum around my areola since Halloween. On this last day of January I realize that means it's been three months since I've performed burlesque. Which is the longest time I've gone without since I began in 2007. But just because I haven't stepped on stage all glittered and costumed, doesn't mean I've been uninspired or lazy. I've been in a deep creative surge, it's just this creative surge has manifested itself off the burlesque stage.

I've been planning and conference calling and co-creating curriculum and lots of burlesque research, and dreaming about my next big piece... debuting on May 15th when I'll be back in NYC for our next huge show called Culture Classics.

Sorry couldn't resist throwing in a quick plug even those we're still some months away.

I've been creating more of a presence for BGB on the web, we just entered the world of twitter!

https://twitter.com/BGBurlesque

and our group blog will be launching in two weeks!

Also stay tuned a bit further down the line for our BGB website launch (this I can't take credit for at all - Dame CuchiFrita has taken the lead and is working with a great designer)

Funny, I started off this post all introspect and then suddenly I'm plugging everything BGB. Which actually is understandable if you know me, because since March of 2007 I've practically been breathing BGB.

It started as just an idea that had been sitting in my brain for a while. I have a lot of those. Some have yet to see the light of actual creation. And then one day I was talking on the phone with one of my best friends from undergrad, I don't even remember how we got on topic, but all of a sudden this idea forced it's way through the creative chaos of the rest of my brain and made itself known. I told Maya about this idea to create an all women of color burlesque troupe. Maya, being the awesome Taurus that she is, grasped on to the idea and surprised me by saying "Let's do it!" Honestly if she hadn't said those three words, BGB would still be just a thought floating around my brain, without even the name of BGB to give itself structure, because Maya also came up with the name.

And so Maya and I began by reaching out to women we knew, who were performers in other disciplines and we gathered. And talked, and shared ideas about burlesque...

What an incredible journey it has been so far. As I sit in my living room in Manchester, thousands of miles away from the rest of the women of BGB, I have a smile on my face, writing this has placed me deep in memories and excitement for what is still to come.

peace and movement,
Aurora

New Beginnings

It's been a while. In fact more then that. Basically I started this blog and then well... as you can see, it fizzled real quick. I don't think I was ready for the commitment, but now it's 2010 and I'm in a much different place.

Literally.

July 31, 2009, I moved from NYC to Manchester, UK. Definitely a change.

The first six months in Manchester I've been focusing more on my other performing identity,

1) because those were the opportunities that were most frequently coming my way

2) because it took me a while to learn the NYC and to a lesser extent, the US burlesque communities and I wasn't quite in the mood to start from scratch again

Well that's not totally true, I have met a few great burlesque folks in Manchester and actually was part of a show during the Whitby Goth Weekend on Halloween.

So I've dabbled, but I miss the glitter on a regular basis. And recommitting to this blog is my first step to focusing on creating a burlesque career for myself in my new country of residence. I don't want to just do burlesque when I return to the States.

Ahhh, new beginnings, so lovely, the fluttering in your belly and tingling in your heart.

See you soon, but for real this time.

peace and movement,

Miss AuroraBoobRealis