What is Avalon to Us?

Performance photo courtesy Opera House Arts.

Ah, Avalon. The magical Isle of Apples. Where King Arthur goes to heal, and from the mists of which he will come again. Sounds heavenly, no? Imagine the sweet crisp smell that is apple in salty, misty air.

The problem for us moderns, in this 50th anniversary year of Woodstock, is that we've yet to get ourselves back to this garden. When patriarchy crushed matriarchy, Christianity crushed the Druids, and life became about nothing so much as conquering and consuming to show who was right and called by God we lost an awful lot.

The newly commissioned, world-premiere, site specific performance "Avalon," written by Melody Bates in collaboration with the work of sculptor Peter Beerits at his unique sculpture park, Nervous Nellie's Jams and Jellies, and produced and presented by Opera House Arts at the Stonington Opera House, wants to remind us of what we have lost--and to what we still might get back.

Beltane: the celebration of the beginning of summer, when the cattle were driven to field, great fires were lit, and our ancestors danced around the May pole. This evolved into the Christian feast day of Pentacost, marked by the tongues of those same great fires signaling the arrival of the Holy Spirit in the apostles after Christ's death.

There's no question that something holy becomes visible to us as life is reborn in the blooming of the spring fields.

Our shadow selves -- Mordred in legend and play, he who is ultimately responsible for killing the King Stag, Arthur -- are very visible in "Avalon." How easy to indulge the adolescent, narcissistic shadow, how difficult to keep it at bay. Yet at the end of this play, it is Mordred whose speech holds the biggest moment of truth for attendees: it is not he, he points out, (or Trump) who is responsible for the blood tide of war in which we live. Our choices -- each and every one, small as well as large -- make the tide. Giving more life to Mordred, our shadow selves, is a part of our collective will -- or lack thereof. And Mordred (played smartly by Shawn Fagan) is real, and therefore loveable, as well.

Neither the wizards nor the Druids (nor later, the native Americans) knew how to defeat the bloody tide of the Anglo-Saxons. Their relentless, irregular warfare -- their ability to commit genocide and still consider themselves Christians, in combination with their hatred of women -- drove civilizations and their peoples into the ground from which we have yet to emerge. We are stuck in a blasphemy of unholy leaders: men who, like their slave-holding kin before them, will let no life go unscarred, no lie be untold, in their quest for power and personal gain. The sad, lost culture in which we try to honor each other and the earth is one of taking rather than giving.

We need, collectively, to dream a better dream -- and wake to join the dance that brings it to life.

"Avalon" points the way. And for those of you who simply want to be a child again, and play in the magical woods: come wander.

Avalon
an Opera House Arts at the Stonington Opera House world-premiere production
every evening at 5:30 p.m., now through August 25
Nervous Nellies Jams & Jellies
Sunshine Road
Deer Isle, ME

Making Different Choices

The Taunton River in southeastern Massachusetts.

The picture of the Taunton (pronounced Ton-Ton by the native tribes of this area) River to the right is familiar to any of us who grew up in southeastern New England: a gently tidal, brackish waterway lined by salt marshes and once teeming with fish and life -- and now subject to marinas and both the intentional (dumping) and unintentional (boats, roads, etc.) pollution that is the hallmark of white settler colonialist development in the 21st century.

The Taunton River was one of the most sacred to the Wampanoag people, who resided here for thousands of years prior to the unchecked immigration of British Calvinists, a.k.a. Puritans, who assumed rights to what they called the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Lisa Brooks' new history of what we know of as King Philip's War, "Our Beloved Kin," gives us -- based on a careful reading of historical documents, primarily land deeds, as well as a knowledge of Wampanoag language (part of the Algonquian language family) -- a new, more balanced perspective on the white European immigration to this continent and in particular to this place.

Growing up in southeastern CT, the only histories we were provided were those told by the white settler colonists themselves -- Miles Standish, John Winthrop ("The City on a Hill"), and the various victors of numerous native extermination campaigns. One of the most notable of these, which I knew nothing about as a middle and high school student in Mystic/Stonington CT, was the slaughter of more than 700 Pequot women and children by Captain John Mason (for whom Mason's Island in Mystic is named) when in 1637 he set fire to their Pequot Fort overlooking the placid Mystic River -- less than a mile from our house.

I could go on about the mistaken impression, repeated in the Wikipedia entries on the Massachusetts Bay Colony, that King Philip's War was a native uprising against the colonists and that the natives were "soundly defeated." But you should really read "Our Beloved Kin" instead, which includes a digital companion and, for the Mainers reading this, informative sections on the Wabanaki coast of Maine as well as the Wampanoag's and southern tribes northern migrations to and through Maine as they attempted to escape the colonists.

What I want to convey in this piece instead is the devastation our white settler colonialist ancestors have wreaked on southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. If the fact that New England is not a "hot spot" in climate change is not enough for you, take a drive through these once sacred places and try to remember what the natural world once looked like here. It is next to impossible to do so, the development is so extreme.

Roads roads roads and "private" property prevent one from reaching the Taunton and myriad other rivers -- once teeming with fish and used for sustenance fishing by the Wampanoag. The traffic is intense, and there is barely a field or marsh or square foot of earth without a house, a mall, or a disheveled, suffering little town such as Taunton itself. One does not sense happiness here and most are speeding through it at 80 mph to reach the Cape.

This is what we've wrought over 400 years. The devastation not only of this continent's native peoples but of the earth they once so well stewarded. When the Puritans arrived, they brought with them livestock and an English patriarchal culture inimical to native stewardship of agricultural fields, forests, and waterways. The Wampanoag's practiced crop rotation and field maintenance that allowed them to thrive here for thousands of years. The Puritans livestock trampled these fields, and with the subsequent fencing off of paddocks and "private" property the migration of wildlife was severely crippled.

Climate change is but one symptom of our broken planet, and it is every one of our choices as to how we live that impacts how we proceed. We can all take some simple steps to try to reverse the damage we as white settler colonists have wrought upon this continent -- and on ourselves, and the future of the planet for our descendants. The choices are ours and need to be made every day in regard to all the things we take for granted and to which we feel entitled. And while some of these choices may seem to be a privilege: yes, they are. And we all need to be activating whatever privilege from which we may benefit to improve our culture and save our planet.

* Eat real, not processed, not chemically treated food. Food is sacred (for the Christians out there reading this: think last supper!)

* Do not waste food -- we have so cheapened food with subsidies and processing that many no longer hold it sacred. Food waste is the largest contributor to climate change.

* Drive less

* Stop flying

* Stop buying -- particularly unnecessary containers, plastic, styrofoam, etc. Remember that your power as a consumer is critical to what the market does or does not produce.

* Reuse what you can

* Recycle what you cannot reuse

* Run for office

* Vote in every election as if your life and the lives of others depends upon it: it does. Vote only for those candidates who recognize the need for change in American consumption and culture if we are to save our planet. Vote only for those who treat everyone around them with respect. Vote only for those who believe in being of service to others.

Every choice makes a difference. And our choices are ours. Not always easy to own, and still: ours.

Love Field

I fly in and out of Dallas from its originally airport, Love Field -- where President Kenndy''s Air Force One landed and departed on his deadly visit here in November 1963.

I was 26 months old. A year younger than the President's son.

I don't remember the assassination itself, but watching the funeral on TV is my first real memory.

My mother had taken us to visit her dear friend, Pat Regan, at her tiny Cape in downtown Old Saybrook, CT.

Pat had all the shades pulled down in her living room, creating a deep gloom around her black and white TV. She and my mother sat at the kitchen table just outside the doorway to the room, where they could keep an eye on where they allowed me to sit, transfixed, before the ghostly, flickering screen. The gray images were vague and shifting -- more dream than reality.

The dark, riderless horse with its backward facing boot is the image most lodged in my memory. John John's sad, obedient salute. And my mother and Pat crying behind me. I didn't understand then what had happened, but I knew it was very sad and ran to hug and be held by my mom.

It didn't take me long to understand. My generation was raised in the shadow of political assassinations. Within four years, four of our progressive leaders -- those trying to transition us from the World War II generation to a new era in which our nation might build its own equity across race and gender and spread its immense prosperity to create global equity as well -- were gunned down. Malcolm X (1965). Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968). And Bobby Kennedy (1968). 

The second Kennnedy death sent progressivism reeling -- not knocked out, for the anti-war and feminist and desegregation and gay liberation movements continued. We have continued slowly on our evolutionary path to consciousness as human beings. But our leadership was significantly derailed and has yet to fully recover.

Rather than a President encouraging our leadership and engagement and philanthropy and giving voice to hope -- "The American people expect more from us...For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do..." -- we got a President who resigned before he could be impeached for obstruction of justice around criminal attempts to influence an election in his favor. That was in the 1970s, yet today we find ourselves in an oddly deja vu situation, with a "mob boss" style President fearful that if held accountable for his dishonest tactics then the legitimacy of his presidency will be in question. As it is and should be.

"History, after all, is the memory of a nation." -- President John F. Kennedy

It is Easter weekend and the beginning of Passover. The memory of our nation has much for which to seek reconciliation and to make amends. When will we give up our addiction to those who will lie, bully, and strong arm voters to maintain their power and move fully and joyously toward these different values?

The memory of our nation is one of white brutality. One cannot travel across these beautiful prairies without mourning the wanton destruction of its native inhabitants. The U.S. Army used "total warfare" to wipe out the tribes,  their horses, and their sacred sustenance: the buffalo. "Total warfare" included the use of many tactics that would be prosecuted as war crimes today, from dawn raids on sleeping villages of non-combatants to the decimation of food sources to starve entire peoples.

Kennedy was no saint. He, too, was a child of privilege and he, too, felt entitled to use his privilege to his advantage.

Yet at the same time he also understood his privilege as a duty to make the world more fair and prosperous for others. He made plenty of mistakes in this work -- seeing Communists everywhere as the enemy and engaging U.S. Troops accordingly, for instance -- but his enduring legacy is to ask each of us,  and especially America's young people, to ask "not what your country can do for you, ask what you an do for your country...ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."

Leaps of Faith

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, art was everything to me. No matter how small or how ill fitting or unsafe my family's world seemed to me to be, I was able to move beyond it by plunging my nose into a book, listening to or playing music, picking up pen and ink and drawing.

I was one of the lucky ones. While I was one of millions of babies in the post-WWII era born into traumatic circumstances and given up for adoption, I landed in a loving home: a white, round-faced, red-curled baby with plenty of meat on my bones in the U.S. during a time of great prosperity.

Azam Ali and Loga Torkian of the Montreal-based music ensemble Niyaz were not so lucky. As children, they became, as Ali said during a reception last night at Coffee by Design in Portland, “forced immigrants” thanks to the Iranian Revolution.

Few Americans understand the long-standing world tragedy represented by the western colonization of Iran for oil. Iran is the former Persia: a country of great geostrategic importance, yes, given its size and location and petro-resources — and more importantly home to some of the world’s oldest civilizations. Persians were once referred to as the "first Historical People" -- because the empire they ruled from Persepolis was the largest the world has ever seen, connecting over 40% of its peoples.

“Pre-colonization there were so many ethnic and religious cultures and music [in Iran]," Ali said during her comments. "Most of which were lost to colonization. What is the Iranian identity?”

Niyaz's music -- a part of Ovations' "Seeking Resonance" series exploring artists and art inspired by or connected to spirituality -- will take us to these many, many worlds outside of Portland.  The band has, in their own words, "created a 21st century global trance tradition by seamlessly blending medieval Sufi poetry and folk songs from their native Iran and its surrounding countries in the Persian Gulf, with rich acoustic instrumentation and state-of-the-art modern electronics."

"Art became the homeland that we no longer had," Ali said.

She believes it is art that can connect us in our increasingly global and secular societies. "To thrive in a secular society," she said, "Art becomes the shining light. Art is where people go to church."

Seeking resonance.

Ali and Torkian's families, like so many world citizens, were forced to take a leap of faith and leave their homeland.

Mary Allen Lindemann, CBD's vibrant founder and an Ovations' board member, opened the evening by reading a poem written for her by a local poet: a woman who types her poems on an old-fashioned typewriter while sipping coffee at CBD.

"...we are all on our way somewhere./how can we know/how can we know where the wind,/i mean water, will carry us." wrote Katherine Ferrier on February 14, 2019 in "Leap of Faith."

How can we know. Where do we each find our resonance.

"...sometimes the practice is to leap/to leave what we know/and let the world open us/until we are river, and the sea/ that welcomes all wandering water/back home," Ferrier concludes her poem.

Often we have to leave what we know to find ourselves welcomed anew.

As Azam concluded her remarks: "And on that note, I hope I can take you to church tomorrow.”

Portland Ovations was proud to present Niyaz at PortCity Music Hall last night, March 15, 2019. For more information on the ways Portland Ovations brings the world to Portland and home back to many of its peoples, see www.portlandovations.org.

The Trocks are Coming, the Trocks are Coming!

MONDAY, MARCH 4--Last night I got to do something I love to do: sit in the dark, surrounded (mostly) by strangers, watching a movie. It is especially lovely to do this -- what feels like such a commonplace luxury -- in a small venue and community like Portland's SPACE Gallery.

Having handed out show info, greeted patrons, and introduced not only the film but the film's raison d'etre -- the Trocks are coming! the Trocks are coming to Maine via Portland Ovations! March 28 - 29 -- I'm sitting in the second row alongside a colleague who happens, similarly to the movie's subjects, to be a dancer who is also an excellent comedian.

We've both cried four times at least during Rebels on Pointe, a documentary of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo -- the first documentary, in fact, of this notoriously fun and skilled male drag ballet company founded over 40 years ago, rising out of Stonewall and Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theater Company. Any evening on which you are moved to tears multiple times by art is a great night.

I can't remember now all the scenes that moved us to tears; there were many. Maybe one time it was the young, beautiful dancer from Cuba (Carlos Hopuy) describing how he and his family (and, basically, everyone) were starving during the 1990's; and how much he wants his mother, also a dancer, to be able to get out of Cuba to come see him dance. Maybe it is the sweet faced dancer-turning-educator as he heads into his 40's, going home regularly to northern Italy between tours to visit his dad, who has Parkinson's disease. Maybe it is when the first young Trocks couple gets married -- something neither Trocks' Artistic Director and retired dancer Tory Dobrin nor I thought we would ever see in our lifetimes. Most likely for me, it is when Dobrin talks about losing half the company to AIDS during the epidemic period of the 1980's-90's -- including his own partner. I remember too well when gay men were dying all around us, every day.

And that's one of the amazing things about the Trocks: their history spans a remarkable 40 years of gay history as an integral part of their own. The up's and down's of the dancers, the support of their families, the company's growth and evolution, their rock star status in Japan: it's all within the context of queer history and male dancers in drag satirizing one of our most elite performing arts forms -- ballet.

The comedy and satire the Trocks bring to ballet ironically "normalizes" what has become, for too many, an inaccessible form. They bring ballet down to earth both with their incredible skill on pointe and their commentary on the form itself -- and of course, their humor. Broad understanding is best fed by laughter.

SPACE Gallery's screening of Rebels on Pointe was a generous collaboration with Ovations in the run up to the Trocks' arrival, and was sponsored by Maine AARP. Portland Ovations presents Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo at Merrill Auditorium on Friday, March 29. As part of our Ovations Offstage (O2) community programming around the performance you can also take advantage of the following activities and events:

Wednesday, March 27: 

• 12 p.m., University of New England: Aging with Grace and Movement -- Health Challenges Faced by the LGBTQ Community, a collaboration with UNE and SAGE. FREE.
• 7:30 p.m., Austin Street Brewery: Drag Queen Bingo with Cherry Lemonade

Thursday, March 28:

• 5 p.m. FREE Intergenerational, LGBTQIA Movement Workshop with the Trocks

Friday, March 29:

• 7 p.m. FREE pre-performance lecture, "Dancing Queens, How the Trocks Satirize Classical Ballet," with former Trock dancer and Maine resident Roberto Forleo, Merrill Auditorium
• 8 p.m. PERFORMANCE