THIS Wednesday, June 29 at 8:00pm

::Southsol::
Moritat
Pezzettino (Brooklyn)
Archeology (Portland)

The Double Door
1572 N. Milwaukee Ave,
Chicago, Illinois

Scarlet Monk and I finished this show with a couple songs off of Scarlet’s new album set to an installation and Dance.  The show was critics pick in Time Out Chicago.

Here’s a sample of what to expect from the new album! It’s not a final mix yet but it sure it gorgeous!
It was performed with Labratory Dance Collective in Pilsen.

Let It Go
by Scarlet Monk 2011

Lessa Bouchard, Core project, and Image Unit asked me to build the sound deign for Feeding the Moonfish, by Barbara Wiechmann. The most provocative task was to build a chorus if fish out of sound, that translated from place to place on stage. The sound was the only representation of these moonfish besides light from the projector. I also recorded sounds and wrote a theme for the start and end of the show. This was performed at the Galaxie, in Chicago, where I was also able to help with lighting, set design , and projection.

Milkweed was a one woman show written and performed by Core project and Misty Deberry, a fierce talent. I constructed a sound design from a variety of sources and got the freedom to write multiple themes for the production. I also got to trouble-shot video projections and offer some interesting solutions for the production. Here are some details:

Milkweed is a solo play fusing poetry and theatre for an intimate look at three African-American female survivors of gender-based violence who are living in bodies which have been the scenes of horrific crimes. The play bears witness to the journeys they make and their individual will to survive.

Written and Performed by Core Project Artist
Misty De Berry
Institute Fellow Winter 2006

Directed by
Cheryl Lynn Bruce
Institute Fellow Spring 2006

Co-Produced by
Misty De Berry
Jane M. Saks
Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender
in the Arts and Media
Columbia College Chicago

05.08,09 + 05.09.09
10% of proceeds donated to Porchlight Counseling Services.
Sponsored in part by Links Hall Linkages program.

This was a collaborative project done between Erin Rehberg and Core Project. It was Erin’s thesis project. The charge was to make a 25 minute dance from hours of prerecorded conversations between the five dancers and their mothers. he conversations were all about the distances in their relationships. I wrote original music for the score and edited the voices to move their bodies to expose the depths and complexities, commonalities, and particulars of their meaningful relationships. The result was a gestural language that really followed the peaks and valleys of human expression.

Suspended is the original title for the concept of this piece. The actualizatio, was a collaboration with artists Stephanie Lupu and Misty Deberry, entitled, Relier.

This installation transformed an office space into a warm, inviting kitchen set slightly at an angle towards the entrance. The moment captured is that of a woman washing the dishes in silence. No matter what the audience does, they leave little to no impression on the performer, who is lost in thought.

I used to watch my mother do the dishes this way for years, exhausted from working a dead end American job, forced to clean a perpetually dirty apartment in comparison to what she had in Haiti. She would listen to Edith Piaf those nights and I could feel the loss in our lives.

At the base of the sink are projections of scrolling poetry about the relationships between the artists and their mothers. The music emitted from the tape player is a digital slowing of a Piaff chanson played through an old cassette player. On the wall are projections of snowy days blending into hibiscus flowers much like the ones back home.

Promise

The fireflies always seemed to find us
Hidden in the brush, slingshots in hand,
Clinging to the mountain side
Or under a mango tree just before dinner.
They once found me
Cursing your grandfather
In the willows behind the house.
By their light,
I never forgave him,
But still made my way back home.

I was searching for summer smiles
When I met your father.
With eyes like little magnets
He danced over my body,
Suspending me by my own breaths,
Buoyant with the promise of our love.

You were the promise of our love,
With eyes like little magnets
And a firefly in your hand
You made your way into your grandfather’s arms,
Both of you silly with summer smiles.

: :

Flashing back the glow of street lamps
Hung in the languor of November,
The silver settles.
Between the cracks in the window pane,
It licks clean the corpses of fireflies,
Failed beacons of promise
For children searching for summer smiles.

Forced from the willows, forced from our home,
Built stone by stone for you my boy,
We took that flight.
We traveled so far, strait up and so high,
Climbing,
Only to settle for a shoebox,
For Niederman, a racist,
And his super,
Alcoholic and all.

How a dirty home breaks my spirit.
I make us into engines.
We scrub and scrub
Our fingerprints thin.
Backs bent,
We hummed to the shame
of one another.