all photos are by Matt Haber
Peace About Life; Dancing with Parkinson’s
danceNAGANUMA
www.dancenaganuma.com

A few weeks ago I enjoyed the privilege of visiting San Francisco’s CounterPulse Theater for DanceNaganuma’s Peace About Life show. Performers of all ages, including very young children and older adults with Parkinson’s disease, moved about the stage. Sometimes soaring and gliding like ballerinas, and other times marching, brushing each other off, and conveying tension through more rigid postures, the dancers illustrated the different moods and aspects of the lives of those living with Parkinson’s disease.

Anecdotes about life post-diagnosis served as a background for some of the dancing: one woman resolved to push her body as far as possible through exercise rather than resign herself to helplessness, another man made peace with the wavy lines in his paintings after losing some control of his hands. Yet, the presence of people of all ages, with and without the disease, and the reliance on universal themes of interdependence, family relations, coping with aging and life transitions, rather than on specific medical details, made this dance performance a piece on the stages of life, relevant for many people outside the Parkinson’s community.

Some medical research at the University of Colorado-Denver currently looks into possible health benefits for Parkinson’s patients who dance or engage in other forms of exercise. Dance may actually prove especially beneficial as it encourages practice in the accurate, mindful motions which the condition tends to make difficult.

 However, DanceNaganuma’s performance exists as much for the audience as for the cast and crew. This is not a physical therapy session, but a presentation of complex emotions and life’s confusion (in particular, a standout piece where dozens of young voices and bodies surround a few performers, all simultaneously chanting different ideas on what is most important in life.) This piece created the visceral effect in me which the choreographer hoped to convey: I had to restrain myself from jumping up and screaming for everyone to be quiet! In another scene, which earned my nods of recognition, many different people surrounded a single young healthy woman, attempting to pose her, make her smile, make her look presentable, and she fell out of line each time. Those with Parkinson’s themselves are not the only ones affected by the condition, or by aging in general – and I appreciated the attention paid to the effects on family and friends.

Not every piece seemed jerky and confused: some, especially the opening segment with dancers in flowing orange robes, reflected the grace and beauty still present within the participants’ movements. This gave dignity to all of the dancers – by allowing them to show off the best they could do in whatever condition life had brought them, rather than having them convey imposed ideas of ‘weakness’ or ‘age.’

Overall, Dance Naganuma’s Peace About Life: Dancing with Parkinson’s excels at living up to all the aspects of its name. The cast strikes a balance between illustrating life with a serious movement disorder and presenting their company’s skill at creating beautiful movements and stage pictures. Through conveying the disease’s effects through nontraditional methods (spoken word anecdotes, abstract renderings of emotion) and through the mix of ages and ethnicities present on stage, the company communicates a real sense of peace about life: that although one’s looks and ability to move will change with one’s age and health conditions, there is still a place where all people are welcome to come out and participate in public, where we do not have to camouflage or ignore reality to find and present the beauty of the human body, of movement and life in all its forms.

About Claudine Naganuma, the company’s founder:

Claudine Naganuma founded danceNAGANUMA in 2001. She has served as the Managing Director of Danspace since 2002 where she teaches modern dance, ballet and composition. Her company danceNAGANUMA is in residence at Danspace and has been producing work and performing in festival settings annually. She was selected as a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Hong Kong/San Francisco exchange artist in 1999. She also received a Jack Loftis and Vibeke Strand Honorary Fellowship while at the Djerassi Artist in Residence Program. Her costume designs merited an Alexander Gerbode Foundation Award as well as two Isadora Duncan nominations for costumes in 1995 and 1992. She received her M.F.A. in Choreography and Performance from Mills College and her B.A. in English Literature from Dominican College. She studied Early Childhood Education at the Mills College Children’s School and continues to teach specialty classes at Aurora Elementary School and St. Paul’s Episcopal Schools in the East Bay. Claudine served as the Artistic Director of Asian American Dance Performances from 1992 to 2004 taking it into its 32nd anniversary.

From Elijah Plummer:

Paraphrased from Cynthia’s description of this piece:

Cynthia’s son Elijah wrote this for his cousin Bethany, who was like a little sister to him. He would go stay with the family nearly every weekend for several years before he passed away at age twenty-six.

Though he wrote many sad poems, he lived with passion and purpose. Psychology fascinated him, and he may have been somewhere on the autistic spectrum. He was a beautiful soul, and I am honored to share this piece of his with you.

Cynthia Lamanna may be reached at cynthialamanna@yahoo.com

BIO
___
Used to be 404 and 770.
Now, I’m 415 and 510.
Seven years spent
Taking in all this Area by the Bay gives me.
The good,
The bad,
The strange
From my adopted home on the range.
“Consume all of it,
Grow strong and
Put in the work you’re meant to do”,
My heart whispers.
Always down for the Struggle
In defence of all life
Encompassing nature, all races, sexes,
      species and certain classes
Especially the Poor—-
________________________
W: 9.26.09
[For Lisa Gray-Garcia aka Tiny.]

TORCHLIGHT
___________
From a marble pit in Athens,
A perpetual pyre burns on.
Re-housed in a cone hand-held,
Made of titanium steel, part of the pyre is
Glowing, flickering, blazing, illuminating
With its own newfound life.
Traveling the globe
In a cyphre, the steel torch is gripped & carried
Providing light.
Torchlight tells us that the games are coming.
Yet whenever the torch approaches,
What some see as a symbol of sportsmanship
And good will, most see
Lost blood, damaged lives, mouths sealed shut
In the “people’s republic” of the Far East.
Visions of nightsticks, shields, boots kicking in
Ribs, filling jails, extracted innards, outlawed
Faiths & politics, support for starving children,
Divide & conquer in another besieged land
Covered in African dust & endless warfare.
Visions alive & well in the public mind.
Torchlight darkens its path through
Old cities of the Earth.

Torchlight tells us that the games are coming.
And with them,
Displacement
Repression
Surveillance
Follows.

Looking at evil transpiring
Elsewhere
Makes it easier to cast
Thousands of blinded eyes on
Atrocities in the land of plenty.

Displacement
Repression
Surveillance
In their harshest forms
Happen here, too.

Never mind Tibet. Never mind China.
Free Hunter’s Point. Free Oakland.
Better yet, free Amerikkka
From its hypocritical self.
____________________
W: 4.28.08

TORCHLIGHT 2
_____________
Torchlight
Burns bright
Torchlight
Holds flame
Torchlight
Carried in different hands
Torchlight
Carried across continents
Torchlight
Means games
Torchlight
Brings crowds
Torchlight
Means sportsmanship
Torchlight
Brings tenfold
Catastrophe
To women,
To black bears,
To legions of impoverished on the street,
To non-surrendered
Indian land
Torchlight
Means corporate sponsorship
Torchlight
Brings happy consumers
Torchlight
Means merchandising
Torchlight
Brings pale green
Cascades, the kind that fills
Bank vaults well
Torchlight
Is development
Of paradise for wealthy, smug ones
Torchlight
Is removal
Of mountains & forests
Torchlight
Is cleansing
The city of their weary, tired
And dirt-poor with nowhere
New to breathe free
Torchlight
Is feeding
The two-week, five-ring
Spectacle billions of the workers’ dollars
Straight line to debt
Torchlight
Is the beacon
Flickering, attracting
Businessmen, snipers, militarised
Cops, their hated armoured flesh
Lent to a powermad, sickened dream
Torchlight
Shines its brilliance
On a vision its backers want materialised:
Steel-gated, multi-camera, heavily-guarded
Checkpoint AR-15
Panopticon future
Guaranteed not to disappear
When the games do
Torchlight
Is the symbol
For Fortress KKKanada
Torchlight
Means runination
For Vancouver—-

The natives
Saw this coming long ago.
Together, they fight
The torch & the chaos its brings.

Bulldozers sabotaged.
Roadways blocked.
Flags stolen.
Corporate offices wrecked.
Relay runs disrupted.
Billboards defaced
With spray-paint warnings subtle
As a car crash.

For all its powerful shine & magnitude,
The torch

Have nothing on the wolves.
There’s more than enough to
Snuff out the flame.
The packs are gathering,
Moving in for the big strike
With glowing hearts.
The digital clock
In the downtown square is ticking.
Captains of industry are ready
And so are the furious wolves,
Emerging from hiding in the woods.

The games have already begun
On the streets.
_________________________
W: 11.12.09
[For Gord Hill aka Zig Zag.]

NO OLYMPICS ON STOLEN NATIVE LAND.

Dee Allen performs and writes at social-justice events all over the San Francisco Bay Area. You may reach him at pathogen@sanfranmail.com

Max Ehrman (Eon75) was first slapped in the face by this obsessive art form called Aerosol Art in 1995 when we was studying architecture in Gainesville, Florida. In Gainesville, there is a legal wall for muralists and graffiti artists to express themselves and execute large scale murals. One day two international graffiti artists painted the wall and blew him away with their concept and execution of technique. The mural was amazing and it sparked a fire in Max. The next day he bought a few cans of paint, went to the wall, and has not stopped painting ever since.

(This was originally posted on Craigslist 12/24/2001. I’m not the author but it helped me during a sad time in my life so I post it every year on behalf of the real author in the hopes that it might help someone else.)

Christmas bums me out. I have no family, and most of my friends have died. I have no place to go for a friends & family & tree dinner and day of Yule Tide Spirits. However, I won’t pule about my misery. I’ve done this for the past four years and it works for me.

But. This is what I do to make Christmas bearable for me.

Preface this with saying that this Christmas looks like it’s going to be nice weather, so no reason to sit isolated at home!

OK? These are just my things. Think of some of your own, too.

1. Get out of your apartment.

2. Take a walk.

3. Ride MUNI somewhere neat. The drivers aren’t happy about working Christmas, so be nice to them and greet them with “Merry Christmas,” and thank them for the transfer. Make eye contact with other passengers and smile.

4. Go to different parts of town you’ve not been to.

5. Round up some of that spare change you have in a jar or such … carry it around with you and give it to panhandlers and watch their surprize … sure, let ’em buy a beer or cigs or whatever. It’s Christmas for them, too. Who am I to judge?

Continue reading →

Everyone, sorry for the late notice, but we’re hosting our traditional annual online New Year’s Eve party in this journal (http://ladycatherina.livejournal.com/) again this year. Got started back when I first moved to the Bay Area and everyone I knew was scattered among various states and countries or didn’t have the cash for food for a party or gas to get there.

How this works is that somewhere around the morning of New Year’s Eve Pacific Standard Time, I will post a virtual description of a party – complete with a decorated house, food, music, drinks, and a place to share memories of 2009 and hopes and dreams for 2010.

For an idea of how this works, here’s a past year’s virtual party: http://ladycatherina.livejournal.com/300058.html

Everyone from around the world is invited to come along and participate at any time that night or the next day – write a comment there describing what you’re wearing, what you’re doing, what you’re bringing (recipes are great!) and talk with anyone else by responding to their comments along with me! In past years people have danced, played Pokemon, traded gourmet recipes, and talked philosophy and remembered loved ones, through hundreds of comments.

All are welcome, regardless of whether you’re friended to ladycatherina on LiveJournal or not…and we’re inviting Synchronized Chaos Magazine’s readers and others I know from other communities.

I view New Year’s as a philosophical/spiritual holiday as well as a fun time for a get-together…this is the truly democratic, inclusive winter or summer) holiday, as everyone, regardless of how lonely or broke or sick they are, can have hope and resolutions for the new year. It’s a time when we can choose to forgive, let go of past grudges and move forward into a future with unlimited possibilities, when old barriers can be broken and new dreams realized.

New Year’s Eve was the night in Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights when romantic antihero Heathcliff let go of years of resentment towards people who had wronged him and on whom he’d previously spent most of his time exacting revenge. Then, out of the power of love and honoring the best within himself rather than the worst, he broke through the boundaries of life and death, time and memory, money and class, and found a real spiritual connection with nature and others and his departed lover, Catherine.

So, in that spirit, let us all join in forgiving the past and embracing the future, the promise of infinite creative possibilities where all are welcome.