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After Rochelle and Jenna and Laura. Some of these are by choice and some are just… weird broken parts of my brain but it hardly matters which now, does it?

• I can’t set the time on the clock in my car and it’s set to some crazy time [i.e. not like an hour or two off]. I’d like to, but this time of year if I’m not driving the car it’s too cold to be in it. Erica?
• My bank is in Washington state. While I do a lot of e-banking with them, I generally mail my paychecks to my bank to deposit them. This isn’t strictly technological in nature, but it’s definitely an old-fashionedness that looks like a tech-not.
• I can barely use my cell phone. I can take a picture. I can make and receive phone calls. I can text, but I still try to answer it when someone is text messaging me. I like to think I’d be a better study if the thing worked in my house.
• I have very little e-book curiosity. My interest in e-books is purely professional.
• I have an iPod I rarely listen to. I have an iPhone I don’t use much (both were gifts). I like to have them, but I usually just listen to the radio in my car and iTunes on my laptop at home.
• I have created more podcasts than I have listened to.
• I don’t play online games much. I play Scrabulous (come find me on facebook!) and that’s pretty much it. When you have a job that’s online, spending more time there just doesn’t seem as appealing.
• I use my TV to watch movies only, and even then pretty rarely. I was a Nielsen family earlier in the month and I sent the whole book back blank.
• I don’t have voice mail, just an answering machine. No caller ID, so please tell me who you are when you call.
• When I have to set the alarm to wake up, which happens rarely, I’m as likely to set it for PM as for AM. This is more of an absentminded professor thing than a tech-NO, but I’ve sortof never gotten the hang of setting an alarm on something without hands
• And lastly, because I grew up in the country, I pretty much don’t understand locks. I have a heck of a time with any door that locks, remembering which direction to turn the key, or rememebring my keys period.

I can do pretty much anything with any sort of computer, but that doesn’t mean I know everything or do everything with technology. How about you?

Ana Mendieta was a Cuban performance artist who lived in New York in the 1970’s. The title Where Is Ana Mendieta, not only refers to the suspicious circumstances of her death, but to the nonexistent presence of the work of women artists in mainstream exhibitions, to the absence of work that portrays the aesthetic rooted in Latino cultural identity.

Mendieta boldly explored women’s identity, sexuality, and spirituality in pieces that were deceptively simple. Her work was constructed from the elements themselves, dirt, water, and light in their most basic forms; her themes revolved around the ideas of burial, rebirth, submersion in the natural world. From a perspective beyond the dominant culture's construct of nation, a construct of governments, the hegemony of conquerors, Mendieta's work reverberates with a older, indigenous idea of nation. It challenges the viewer to envision an idea of nation and identity based on a direct relation to the Earth itself.

In a series entitled Tree of Life, Mendieta flattened herself against a large oak tree. She is naked, covered with gesso and paint to simulate tree bark. Where does the tree stop and Medieta begin? Where do we stop and our connection with nature begin? Simply done and deeply resonant. I immediately saw a connection between this piece and a Mexican/Chicano idea of rootedness to place that is not hemmed by borders, but by history and ancestral links to land, to nature itself.

In another, untitled series, Mendieta is shown in a series of photos. Again, she is naked, this time in an isolated field. Next to her is a skeleton. The photos show her climbing onto the skeleton, embracing it. She creates a powerful image of the life/death cycle, as well as a quintessential Latino commentary on mortality. At the heart of existence, life and death are united in an eternal embrace. In the midst of life, its fullness, its lushness, its sensuality, Death is constant companion. While modern, European-based culture constantly seeks to avoid aging and mortality, there are traditions that accept its centrality. Mendieta brilliantly illustrates that death is both the beginning and endpoint of all things.

Mendieta worked closely with a variety of feminist artists, but did not label herself as feminist, and I understand the reticence in using the label. The women's artistic community did not offer a truly supportive relationship, and while she had meaningful connections with individual artists, her work was not be adequately appreciated by feminist and post-feminist critics. In a nutshell, Mendieta did not invent a new relationship to body and Earth, she reclaimed an ancient one, but was never embraced by the 'larger' artistic community.

I was profoundly moved by her work. The work is poetry, visual poetry, poetry made flesh. These are clear, visceral, and direct images that I hope to use as a touchstone in my writing and performing, particularly in performing. I want to tell a personal and universal story with my body, and Mendieta has created a standard for me, as well as strengthening and deepening a physical lexicon.

Blocker’s writing is dry and extremely formal, making this difficult going as a reader, but don't be dissuaded by that. I wonder if some of the density of language was more an expression of Blocker's own inability to grasp and express the power and simplicity of Mendieta. However, the book sings when Blocker allows the work to speak for itself.

ISBN-10: 0822323249
ISBN-13: 978-0822323242

Christy Adair is a freelance writer and cultural critic, contributing to such dance journals as Spare Rib and Everywoman. Women and Dance: sylphs and sirens (Macmillan, 1992), is a text used on dance and performance courses in Britain, America and Asia. Adair contributes reviews and articles to journals, magazines, radio and television both nationally and internationally. She also facilitates a range of performance and education events. Adair is a Reader in Dance Studies at York St John University and is committed to radical performance which communicates an exhilaration of moving and challenges social contexts. Christy has significant links with the dance performance industry both locally in the UK and internationally. Her current research interests focus on gender and ethnicity in relation to dance studies and performance. Her forthcoming book is entitled Dancing the Black Question: The Phoenix Dance Company Phenomenon.

In Women and Dance, Adair introduces the reader to an analysis of Western dance from the point of view of gender and post-feminist analysis. Despite the traditionally high profile of women as principal dancers, Adair asserts that modern Western dance is far from a woman-centered medium. Due to the lack of women choreographers and directors, the genre’s vision of women continues to be rooted in patriarchal notions of the female. It is a representation of the female body that is seriously limited, still unable to reflect the depth of women’s reality.

Adair sees the most synchronous images of women having their origins in dance/performance companies that evolved as in the period post 1970. According to Adair, these groups reflected the fluid, politically progressive images of women following the last wave of the feminist movement. Their major contribution was the development of a type of performance that pushed the boundaries of gender and sex-role expectations. In a piece entitled She Is Giving Birth to Herself, Adair describes how the group Bush Mama explores the primacy of woman relating to other women, not woman-as-male-love-object.

The most useful portion of the book was: “The subversives...women’s dance practices.” It underscores Adair's central tenet that images of women will only be expanded with women themselves taking control of developing, directing, and mounting their own work. This, according to Adair, must occur despite the social and economic barriers involved.

This is particularly potent for me as I try to work more on dance and spoken word pieces. I came to the same realization over the last ten years that I needed to do whatever was necessary to control my own work, how it was showcased, etc. It's also an opinion I've shared with other writer/performers, such as Tara Betts and Sharmili Majmudar, as well as initial discussions with dramaturg and performer Coya Paz, founding member of Teatro Luna here in Chicago.

My only two hesitations in recommending Women and Dance are these: it's an extremely dense read, which made for laborious, although worthwhile reading, and that the book is expensive and better gotten through library sources. But simply put, Women and Dance a vital sourcebook for women performers across the board.

• ISBN-10: 0814706215
• ISBN-13: 978-0814706213

Sam Quinones's new book ANTONIO'S GUN AND DELFINO'S DREAM,
a book of vignettes on immigration that has been lauded in the San Francisco
Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal,
as well as having been featured by La Bloga's Daniel Olivas.

Quinones has spoken about immigration--indeed a hot topic again as
Homeland Security begins cracking down on companies that hire
"illegals"--on NewsHour, NPR, and CSPAN.

The newest feature of Sam's website, www.samquinones.com is a link
where the public can tell their "True Tale," the name of which taken
from Sam's first book, TRUE TALES FROM ANOTHER MEXICO.
Here's the link, which has five or six stories from people on it.
http://www.samquinones.com/other_stories.asp 

I, Carmelita Tropicana: Performance Between Cultures

Hello people, you know me, I know you.
I am Carmelita Tropicana.

I say Loisaida is the place to be. It is multicultural, multinational, multigenerational, mucho multi.
And like myself , you've got to be multilingual.

I am very good with the tongue.

Recipe for Carmelita's Bad Girls Show at the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

INGREDIENTS
1/3 Pingalito (Carmelita in male drag) recites
"Ode to the Cuban Man" from Milk of Amnesia
1/3 Carmelita delivers Performance Art Manifesto (which varies based on the audience, how Carmelita feels at any given moment, and the venue.)
1/3 The Art Quiz Show

HOW TO MAKE THE ART QUIZ SHOW
Sprinkle clues for the audience to guess the artwork
or artist recreated in live tableaux.
Add pinch of art commentary to taste and blend with 1 generous dollop of modern dancer Jennifer Monson (collaborator) whisked rapidly for Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase. Set aside.


IN A SEPARATE PAN MIX
1/2 cup Jennifer as Cupid with piercing arrow and 1/2 cup Carmelita moaning, hanging on museum fire escape.
Simmer to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and stir until both harden into Bernini's sculpture The Agony of St. Theresa.

Teatro Luna was founded in June 2000 by Coya Paz and Tanya Saracho, with an original ensemble of ten women from diverse Latina/Hispana backgrounds. We came together because we realized that the stories and experiences of Latina/Hispana women were undervalued and underrepresented not only on the Chicago stage, but beyond.

Many of us had similar experiences of being asked to perform stereotyped images of ourselves that were often one-dimensional and, at times, offensive: spicy sexpots, voiceless maids, pregnant gangbangers, timid "illegal" immigrants, etc. We were also concerned that the few parts written for Latina women often went to non-Latina actresses. We felt that we had to do something. Our answer was Teatro Luna, Chicago's first and only all-Latina theater.

Yo Soy Chicago/I Am Chicago

New performance about race and identity in Chicago, curated by Coya Paz of Teatro Luna and sponsored by the Center for The Study of Race, Politics, and Culture.

From a gun-toting apparition of the Virgin Mary to a humorous drag take on Puerto-Rican identity to the real life stories of young Muslim women, I Am Chicago/Yo Soy Chicago brings together Chicago's most vibrant performing artists to explore race and identity in Chicago. I Am Chicago/Yo Soy Chicago is a multimedia celebration of Chicago's culturally and aesthetically diverse performing arts communities.

Yo Soy Chicago/I am Chicago

featuring work from Teatro Luna, Idris Goodwin, Ni'ja Whitson, Grupo Okokan, Tanya Saracho, Yolanda Nieves, Awilda Rodriguez Lora, the Hijabi Monologues and more.

Francis X. Kinahan Third Floor Theater
5706 South University Avenue

sponsored by:

The Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture
Theater and Performance Studies / University Theater


Lisa Alvarado