IN SENSORIUM:
THE FETISH MANIFESTS
a new interactive butoh-vocal theatre installation

TUESDAY, APRIL 24th, 8-10PM
Teatro La Tea, 2nd Floor
at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center
107 Suffolk Street
between Rivington and Delancey Streets
New York, NY 10002

I have created mask art-objects inspired by the beautiful makeup styles of the Surma and Mursi tribes of East Africa’s Omo Valley (Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan).

In this live installation event, the spirits of these fetish objects will be brought to life in a collaborative performance that will also become a video artwork about the adventures of these mask art-objects.

You can register to attend this event as either an “Art-Collector” or an “Art-Lover”.

“Art-Lovers” are general audience members and can participate in this event en masse, in a dance scene that takes place on-stage. Tickets are $10 and are available at http://insensorium.eventbrite.com/. There, you may additionally purchase a line that you can say on camera.

“Art-Collectors” will be trained in performing the art-object’s role and will be filmed performing the art-object at the installation event. Costumes will be provided. There are 3 art-object roles available. These tickets are $30 and can be purchased at https://edoheart.org/in-sensorium. Training and rehearsal will take place the Sunday before the event in a 5-hour workshop that also serves as an introduction to my butoh-vocal theatre style. I am considered a notable butoh performer and teacher and I am the first performer to integrate experimental vocalizations, singing and talking simultaneously with butoh dance. I have created the mask art-objects you will be wearing after the beautiful makeup styles of the Surma and Mursi tribes of East Africa’s Omo Valley (Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan). You will be learning a spiritual choreography.

n. pl. sen·so·ri·ums or sen·so·ri·a (-sôr-, -sr-)
1. The part of the brain that receives and coordinates all the stimuli conveyed to various sensory centers.
2. The entire sensory system of the body.

Synopsis:
Edoheart, a minor princess of the Ugu Kingdom, is walking through the forest one day when she is swallowed up by an ebony tree. She finds herself in a magical land called Iso (meaning heaven) in which everyone moves and behaves strangely. She meets a princess (Itohan) and her maid (Obo) who tell her of their plight- the princess’ evil brother (Tan) has trapped her good brother (Uyi) in a prison of binary oppositions. It’s a prison from which no one has ever escaped! Edoheart resolves to help them but on their way to the palace, they become trapped in a goddess’ lake of possessed bodies. 

Available roles: 
Tan – the evil prince and Itohan’s uncle
Itohan – the princess 
Obo – a professor / scientist and Itohan’s guardian

Played by the general audience: 
Imayayi – the lake goddess of possessed bodies

Edoheart
https://edoheart.org/in-sensorium

Dear Friends, I’ve got a new EP out, a SICK new music video, an ART/TREK NYC single, a remix contest with Akwaaba Music, was just on a TV show; am planning an EP release party, new artistic collaborations and works in visual art and dance… Amen! But something pressing on my mind at the moment is Nigeria’s oil-subsidy and Boko Haram wahala, the Arab Spring movements liberating the globe, our escalating misunderstanding with Iran and the Occupy movement. If you’ve ever shared one plate of eba and okro soup with Mama, bros, some visiting ogas and the area pikins, you know the short-limbed or thoughtful will leave the table hungry. It’s time to DO SOMETHING. I want to ask you a question: is the status quo sustainable and if not, what must change? Must we forever break our heads over history’s unequal partitioning of power? I present an article from a website whose listserve I’m on- Otedo.com. It forwards me scholarly writings by Africans (mostly Edo-oid). Consider this surprising proposition about how to FIKS AFRIKA:

——————————

Give Africa back to its traditional rulers!

The post colonial leaders in Africa have been a disgusting assortment of military coconut-heads, Swiss bank socialists, quack revolutionaries, crocodile liberators, briefcase bandits, kamikaze looters, vampire elites, and crackpot democrats. They only know how to do 3 things very well:

1. Loot the treasury.
2. Brutalize and squelch all dissent and opposition to their misrule,
3. Perpetuate themselves in office.

Ask them to develop their countries and they will develop their pockets. Ask them to seek “foreign investment” and they will invest their loot in a foreign country.

Name me just 10 African leaders who do not fit this bill.

Give Africa back to its traditional rulers. In traditional Africa, chiefs and kings are chosen; they do not choose and impose themselves or stupid alien ideologies on their people. Further, chiefs and kings are held accountable at all times for their actions and are removed if they do not govern according to will of the people.

Go back and re-read the history of the Oyo Kingdom, Benin Empire and the Ashanti Empire, which was governed with an elaborate system of checks and balances in the 17th Century — well before the U.S. became a nation. The modern leadership is a despicable disgrace to black Africa. They are a far cry from the traditional leadership Africa has known for centuries.

And get this, Lil Joe. Africa has not just a traditional political culture and heritage based upon consensus but also an economic heritage of free village markets, free enterprise and free trade. Challenge this. Marxism was never part of indigenous African economic heritage. Get that straight.

I am fed up with quack revolutionaries and crackpot intellectuals who seek to impose alien ideologies and systems on the African people. There is nothing wrong with Africa’s own indigenous institutions; nor does Africa have to reject them in order to develop. The Japanese, Koreans and other Asians did not have to reject their culture in order to develop. Only educated zombies think Africa has to. The continent is littered with the putrid carcasses of failed imported systems. Now we are being told to go Chinese! Such stupidity.

Africa’s salvation lies in returning to and building upon its own indigenous institutions. Africa’s salvation does NOT lie in the corridors of the World Bank, the inner sanctum of the Chinese politburo. Nor does Africa’s salvation lie in the steamy sex antics of cockroaches on Jupiter!

George Ayittey,
Washington, DC

(Culled from yahoo internet conversation)

Direct Link: http://ihuanedo.ning.com/group/owaafrica/forum/topics/give-africa-back-to-its-traditional-rulers?xg_source=msg_mes_network

Dear friends,

It’s been a long time since I updated this blog. Thanks to you all who are following! Things have been wild and surprising since my last post.

I was accepted to NYU – Tisch’s Performance Studies Master’s program and have been reading all sorts of beautiful, inspiring and complicated theories about the ways we humans perform ourselves and our identities and how we structure society and experience…

I made a trip to Nigeria in which I narrowly missed being in Abuja on the same day of a bombing that claimed many lives.

I’ve also gotten into a television series that will premiere on channel 25 here in NYC but that’s another story for another time.

Before I began my studies at NYU, I collaborated with some friends on a new and I think, final, installment in my Fire Butoh Series that began in 2007.

I have been very emotionally affected by fire all my life. The basement of of our first house in America caught on fire once… and I’m a fire sign. Fire keeps us warm, lights our way in the dark, cooks our food and dances. I hoped to be that magical and have given much consideration to this living organism, fire.

Without further ado, I present to you, “Fire Butoh 4!”

Thanks to Mikhail Torich, Teddy Bonsu, Kristen Bacino and Bryant Keller for all their help on this shoot! Lots of love!! -E.

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