Photo: (housed) Sidra Bell Dance New York; used in relation to MUTE, the dance with permission from Sidra Bell
Please do not reproduce without permission
Photo Credit: Umi Akiyoshi Photography 2019
An odd, clueless, possibly crazy, older woman with no discernible power looks for her son.
Mute, written in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic when structural inequalities were starkly on display, explores helplessness when social structures you have no control over take what you love away from you; when those structures reward doing what you are told based on your place in those structures, including turning away when apparently official or legal and harmful things happen to people whose place in those structures is, or becomes, precarious. The novel also explores different kinds of awareness of and engagement with the world, especially listening and speaking from the skin. Listening and speaking from the skin is a phrasing I recently encountered in a reflective commentary by Chip Livingston, a Mvskoke (Creek) poet, on a poem by Chrystos, a Menominee poet; this phrasing is resonant with the way Madamute, the protagonist of Mute engages with the world.
I am currently collaborating with Sidra Bell and Fernanda Aoki Navarro on a dance project based on this novella.
Sidra Bell, Artistic Director and Choreographer; also see https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/16/arts/design/flight-into-egypt-performance-met-art.html AND https://www.today.com/video/how-this-choreographer-is-blazing-a-trail-for-the-next-generation-185220677902
Fernanda Aoki Navarro, Composer; also see https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/arts/music/classical-youtube-moments.html
Please do not reproduce without permission
Photo Credit: Umi Akiyoshi Photography 2019
An odd, clueless, possibly crazy, older woman with no discernible power looks for her son.
Mute, written in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic when structural inequalities were starkly on display, explores helplessness when social structures you have no control over take what you love away from you; when those structures reward doing what you are told based on your place in those structures, including turning away when apparently official or legal and harmful things happen to people whose place in those structures is, or becomes, precarious. The novel also explores different kinds of awareness of and engagement with the world, especially listening and speaking from the skin. Listening and speaking from the skin is a phrasing I recently encountered in a reflective commentary by Chip Livingston, a Mvskoke (Creek) poet, on a poem by Chrystos, a Menominee poet; this phrasing is resonant with the way Madamute, the protagonist of Mute engages with the world.
I am currently collaborating with Sidra Bell and Fernanda Aoki Navarro on a dance project based on this novella.
Sidra Bell, Artistic Director and Choreographer; also see https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/16/arts/design/flight-into-egypt-performance-met-art.html AND https://www.today.com/video/how-this-choreographer-is-blazing-a-trail-for-the-next-generation-185220677902
Fernanda Aoki Navarro, Composer; also see https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/arts/music/classical-youtube-moments.html