working my rainbows: an introduction to performance studies
installment 1

Here is my first installment in my Introduction to Performance Studies portfolio, titled working my rainbows. You can also view this project at goldendharma.blogspot.com.

Happy reading!
ebony

for the orisha who order my stepsfor the ancestors who whisper in my ear
for the elders who light my path
for the contemporaries who quicken my breath with brilliance
for the unborn who inspire me to be ever true and ever vigilant

ashe!


Introduction


"Gotta Take My Time, Getting This One Together"

"…I'm the Obeah woman from beneath the seaTo get to satan you gotta pass through me'Cause I know the angels name by nameI can eat thunder and drink the rainBeen through enoughYeah they call me Nita and Pices tooThere ain't nothing that I can't doIf I choose to, if you let me…"

-from Obeah Woman by Nina Simone

Folks living in the south meditate on slowness like Miles Davis meditates on a sustained note. Mustard Greens, a delicacy in African diasporic communities, are simmered slowly with garlic, bay leaf, cayenne, onion, and ham hock hours before dinner. Sun tea is brewed in backyards full of hot sun that pierces glass containers pregnant with split lemons, sugar and Lipton tea bags. Gumbo, a Cajun stew, is conjured in coal black cast iron cauldrons nights before festive family gatherings in ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />New Orleans.
Being raised in the southern Texas, usually pronounced as three syllables, taught me how to appreciate the sensuality of unhurried happenings. The humidity rests in the bones and slows the breath to a crawl. A southern Baptist spiritual, wrestled from a sinner's throat, takes what seems like hours to sing. I have known southern lovers who studied every sinew of my body at a snail's pace, leisurely like a sunset, seriously like calculus.
I start here, with a meditation on southernity, space, sensuality and the lyrics of Nina Simone to illustrate how I enter this discipline: as a conjurer, a southern woman, a poet, and an observer and taster of the various flavors of this world. Nina Simone teaches us in her song "Obeah Woman" the power of transcending and transforming one's surroundings to accomplish mystical feats Africana women engage in daily.
Nina sings through a gravel and honey voice the importance of taking time to get things together. In her case, she is getting together God's divine work: controlling the rain, lightning, naming the angels, and fighting Satan on mankind's behalf. I fortunately, have another charge in this life, one no less difficult but different nonetheless. The essays in this portfolio begin to articulate my understanding of how and why people act the way the do in a myriad of situations. Whether in the midst of trauma or ecstasy, intention, motivation, and effect are extremely important to the manner in which behavior is perceived and metabolized.
working my rainbows represents a sustained meditation. This project seeks to critique, analyze, question performances of resistance by means of spiritual activism, intra/intercultural exchange, and social justice work. Further more, the project seeks to think about how performances of resistance inform and impact local communities striving to dismantle systemic institutions that perpetuate a culture of state violence and social oppression.
In writing these essays, several texts anchored my burgeoning understanding of this field. Namely, "Points of Contact between Anthropological and Theatrical Thought," "Stages," "Resistance of the Object," Exhausting Bodies (excerpt), "You are here the DNA of Performance," "Contact Improvisation and Anthropological Analysis," "Docile Bodies," and "Performing Citizenship". These works provide historical and cultural background, map the origins of Performance Studies, and provide differing philosophies and writing approaches employed in the discipline. I am drawn to these essays and excerpts because of how body is implicated as a central to agent of movement. Most importantly, the articles grant the novice a plethora of information in which to analyze how the body is a tool of social resistance. In essence, the articles continue my love affair with the body and the multitude of performances it stages in shifting temporal and spatial paradigms. The scholars' works bring home for me how individuals or whole communities can access the power of the Obeah women as they move to transform, transition, and transcend oppressive situations. Whether literally in dance, or ethereally, in unearthing the past to remix the present in framing a transformative narrative and politic for the future, the articles situate the body in a multitude of happenings which spark a uniquely necessary transformative response.
In compiling working my rainbows, I confronted several obstacles. Some of those obstacles included: difficulty incorporating how particular analysis relates to my larger year-long project, difficulty writing responses to articles with limited knowledge of the field, difficulty employing Womanist tradition of analysis and writing to essays distant from the lyrical and poetic nature of the aforementioned tradition. I experience these obstacles as points of possible access and growth as I work toward a longer project on Nina's Simone's oeuvre and the role of spirituality in social justice movements. I also view these stoppages as areas where I may be able to join Performance Studies, Cultural Studies, and Performing Arts discourses with a much needed voice of the Womanist scholarly tradition. Alice Walker, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Ntozake Shange, Jayne Cortez, bell hooks, Angela Davis, and Hortense Spillers are a few of voices who serve as my mentors; I am eager to continue in our tradition.
While wrought with difficulties, several successes took place as I compiled this collection. Similarly to writing poetry, I sharpened my abilities to respond to complex, gripping concepts in concise two or three page responses. Additionally, I found that I particularly appreciate the process of responding to film and dance. I could definitely foresee further research of these art forms. I was also reaffirmed in my belief of the importance of the community in the education process. Participating in class lectures assisted the development of clear thoughts about a topic or concept.
All in all, it is incumbent upon me to root my analysis of performance and creation of performance in deciphering its impact on local communities. The papers in working my rainbows assist me in creating everyday scholarship and performance that people can sink their teeth into. After composing these twelve essays I am clearer about how I will position my body in the ongoing conversations comprising this discipline. I am clearer about how I will engage in this Program, as a year long meditation on spirituality, resistance, bodies, movement, and sustained transformation of the present in the creation of a world without sexual violence in the now and ever after.