Life is Living: A conversation with Marc Bamuthi Joseph

Youth show off their decorated bicycle wheels in front of a painted graffiti wall at a Life is Living festival in Oakland, California.

Photo by Scott La Rockwell

Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a National Poetry Slam champion, Broadway veteran, featured artist on Russell Simmons' Def Poetry on HBO and a recipient of 2002 and 2004 National Performance Network Creation commissions. Joseph begins a two-year long residency with University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, which will culminate in a new performance work, red, black, and GREEN, a blues. The project kicks off with the Life is Living festival at Discovery Green on November 7th. Life Is Living is a national campaign that generates partnerships between diverse and underserved communities, green action agencies, local community groups, urban environmental activists, and the contemporary arts world. Joseph fills us in below.

Dance Source Houston: Talk about some of the thinking behind Life is Living.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph: Before action there's thought and conversation to spur thought. As our vocabularies change and we focus on less global and more specific and local efforts, it's an easier mountain to climb. What happens in environmentalism is that it feels above us, often monumental and external. We think about the plight of polar bears and the rainforest, and other things that lay way outside of our preview. Also, Life is Living is not a 100% green event. We don't generate more energy more than we consume. We connect the environmental movement to the urban environment through the arts.

DSH: In addition to the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center, Life is Living is partnering with Houston Arts Alliance, the Office of Texas Senator Rodney Ellis, Meta-Four Houston, Aerosol Warfare, The Last Organic Outpost, Project Row Houses, Workshop Houston, DiverseWorks and the University of Houston College of Architecture. Is connecting to the people in the host city a key part of your mission?

MBJ: I rely on the local folks, as it should be. It would be less than strategic if I came and dictated the pathway to success. It's important to illuminate the environmental work that folks are already doing. Life is Living connects the dots.

DSH: So far, you have done Life is Living festivals in Oakland, Chicago, and San Francisco. I imagine each city is different.

MBJ: Absolutely. The festival takes on the character of the city. Part of our plan enables participants to connect environmentalism to what's important to them. For example. in Chicago there was an emphasis on celebrating young people's lives. They had just experienced a year where 36 public school children had been murdered. We held a celebration of life with marching bands and mothers who had lost their children. We planted trees to honor the children. Karen Farber, director of the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center came to that festival. That's another thing we do, we invite curators to come see what we are doing, so there's some cross pollination happening.

DSH: I am curious about your background. You were a child tap star and understudied Savion Glover in the Tony Award-winning Broadway show, The Tap Dance Kid. Your style of spoken word seems rooted in dance. Like any hip hop artist, you easily slide between categories. Do you see yourself as still rooted in dance/movement?

MBJ: It's a large part of what I do. I very connected to poetry, and using the body as metaphor. But I don't necessarily adhere to a particular school of movement thought. It's organic to me in terms of communication. I use the body as a means of figuratively complementing the literal speech. I am interested in communicating a narrative. The best way to do that is to be holistic about it, to use everything I have available, which includes a ritual and spiritual grounding in the body as an instrument.

DSH: Describe your training.

MBJ: I studied tap, jazz and ballet. As I got older, I added west African Afro-Cuban. But it wasn't so linear. When I was tapping I was working with Savion Glover; he introduced me to hip-hop, although it was more social than structural.

DSH: The event on November 7th is the kick off for your two-year residency, which will culminate in the development of your new work red, black, and GREEN, a blues.

MBJ: The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center is a commissioning pillar for us. I will be collecting interviews, photographs, murals and doing some film work. There's a narrative spine and a figurative spine. The narrative spine focuses on two brothers, Potter and Pocket. Potter fashions miracles, while Pocket hustles miracles. The piece highlights folks' relationships with life itself and the global environment.

DSH: What will you be performing on Nov 7th Discovery Green?

MBJ: I will be performing one or two straight poems and a text and movement piece.

DSH: Describe the day.

MBJ: There's participation and an opportunity to watch. The day is grounded in MC Lyte's performance. She's a pioneering figure in hip hop culture and one of the first women to push forward positive ideas. Aerosol Warfare will be creating live murals, an exhibition of graffiti murals from “Life is Living” festivals in Oakland, Harlem and Chicago, and an open air green market. It will be a day to activate the imagination.

The University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts in partnership with the Living Word Project and Youth Speaks, Inc. will host a “Life is Living” Sustainable Survival Eco-Empowerment Festival on Saturday, November 7th , 11am-3pm, at Discovery Green. Free. Visit www.lifeisliving.org or www.mitchellcenterforarts.org.

Reprinted from Dance Source Houston.

Billboards as Art

Installation artist Karyn Olivier brings her space morphing work to Houston with INBOUND: HOUSTON, presented by The University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts. Billboards of images of what we would see if they were not there will line Houston freeways. Olivier, a former Glassell Core Fellow and now a professor of sculpture at Tyler School of Art, sat down to share her ideas behind the project. Inbound: Houston

29-95: Familiar objects, like chairs, tables and playground equipment, often factor into your installation work. How did billboards, another almost too-familiar object in our everyday world, end up your list of things to play with?

Karyn Olivier: I think it comes from the fact that I didn't come from the art world. I majored in psychology and then worked in business and retail. Fashion is a world full of props, almost like a still life. Coming to art late in life, I had to make sense of a world I didn't yet understand. When I moved here it seemed that Houston was all about billboards and sky. So billboards have this presence for me. While I was here I did a billboard project in a park as part of Project Row Houses.

29-95: Is it still up?

KO: The billboard is, but the photograph has changed, which was exactly the idea I had in mind when I did the piece.

29-95: Your work often involves a perceptual puzzle and this piece is no different, in that the work is both additive and subtractive.

KO: I am always trying to do something impossible in that I am trying to catch something that is a bit off and also right as the same time. Depending on how tall you are, the time of day, the image will match up differently. The billboards are both real and artifice.

29-95: How did you choose the time of day to take the photographs?

KO: I thought the morning commute would work best. It's a good time to awaken yourself.

29-95: I used to do the commute grind and arrive at work without any memory of how I got there. I can imagine drivers looking up and wondering, did I just see that?

KO: It will be an uncanny moment. It's a reminder that the sky should be there, but it's by no means an anti-billboard piece.

29-95: David A. Brown actually took the photographs that will be used for the billboards. How did your paths cross?

KO: He came so highly recommended and knew the city so well, he was a natural fit for the project.

29-95: How does your psychology background inform your work?

KO: Certainly in my focus on perception, what's assumed and what shifts. But also in a sense of nostalgia, a kind of pining for time where people can pause. I hope to make work that allows people to be present.

29-95: Did you actually have to buy billboard space? KO:
Yes, I thought I could get it donated but that wasn't possible. But, due to the recession, they were about a third of the cost they would have been in 2005. I worked with CBS Outdoor in securing the billboard space because have an investment of the arts.

29-95: Who knew the recession could have an upside to artists? Logistically, the piece can't have been easy.

KO: That's why it took me so long to actually put it all together. I got the grant in 2005, but I needed to find partners and it just so happened to make a perfect fit for the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center.

29-95: I noticed most of the billboards are on I-59 and not I-45. What's wrong with I-45?

KO: It was too dense already with billboards so there was already too much visual stimulation. Also I was more familiar with 59. When I lived here, it was a road I traveled, and the billboards are more evenly spaced out.

29-95: There's also a music concert with original compositions by UH AURA Ensemble composers Joel Love and Paul Wadle, which also features a film by Grant MacManus. How does this fit into the project?

KO: I wanted to enlarge the event, and music can embellish an experience. Also, the film is shot at night, which will be very different.

29-95: What will happen when the show is over and we see ads back up on those billboards?

KO: It will be kind of poignant when it comes down. I know people are going to miss it, that's often thread in my work.

The University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts Presents INBOUND: HOUSTON: A Public Arts Project by Karyn Olivier, on October 26-November 22, 2009. AURA Contemporary Ensemble will present a concert on Monday, November 16th at 7:30 PM at the Moores School of Music. Call 713-743-3313.

Reprinted from 29-95.com.

America's Favorite Dancer Hits Houston

Fox Television: Jeanine Mason

America doesn't get that many things right, but the 21.6 million voters that put Jeanine Mason in the American's Favorite Dancer slot on the FOX's So You Think You Can Dance did just fine. Mason wowed the judges, her fellow contestants, and voters with her winning smile, a killer arabesque and uncanny ability to look good in any dance style. The So You Think You Can Dance tour comes to Houston's Reliant Arena tonight. Mason, 18, took a break from her grueling tour schedule to chat. Fox Television: Jeanine Mason

29-95: When I told people I was interviewing you, they hoped I would get the inside scoop on the show. I just want to know what you eat for lunch.

Jeanine Mason: Ha! I try to eat healthy because we dance all day and it can take a toll on your body. I am a cereal freak, so I have lots of those kinds of snacks. Otherwise, I stick to salads with chicken. I am a pretty healthy eater, but I need a tiny little treat at the end.

29-95: You all seemed like best buds, but you were in competition. Was that an act, for real, or what?

JM: It's not an act; we honestly get along really well. We are so lucky to be such a close-knit group. True, we do get a little worked up, loud and crazy. You might not want to be sitting next to us at a restaurant, but it's always fun to ask for a table for 12.

29-95: Was there a moment when you thought I could do this thing?

JM: Not really; I never thought it was possible. I didn't aim to win, but to learn a lot and have an amazing time, and that's exactly what I did. It's so easy to cherish every single minute of this experience when you are around people who love what you love.

29-95: Was there one piece on the show that you felt was made exactly for your considerable set of skills?

JM:Travis Wall's contemporary piece that I danced with Jason, set to Jason Mraz's If it Kills Me would be the one. Travis was like a mentor to us; he told us that he was secretly praying he would get us. It was also his choreographic debut on the show.

29-95: As a former member of the contemporary dancer tribe, I have always found ballroom dance a mystery. So I am always amazed at how well the SYT dancers pick up ballroom styles, with the exception of the dreaded quick-step, which should be banned. You were especially natural in your ballroom numbers. Did you sneak out at night for lessons?

JM: No, but that would have helped. I did get a lot of the Latin dances, and as a Cuban-American, I grew up listening to those rhythms.

29-95: The tour hits Houston tonight. Are you ready for thousands of kids wearing I love Jeanine T-shirts?

JM: I'm not ready for that at all; it still feels kind of surreal to me.

29-95: Phillip Chbeeb, your former partner, is our Houston son. Will you be dancing with Phillip at all for the tour? Houston wants to know.

JM: Yes, Phillip is an incredible dancer and the most amazing mover I have ever met. Because he didn't have a technical base, we had to work really hard to perfect our pieces. There was so much learning going on. We will be dancing our Hip-Hop number to Ne-Yo's Mad.

29-95: Are you still planning to major in communications at UCLA after the tour? Why not dance?

JM: The show has opened so many doors, so I will be doing my dancing outside of school. I will be taking three classes a semester, so hopefully there will be time to do it all.

29-95: You are Dance Spirit's cover girl this November. (I should disclose that I'm also a proud contributor to DS.) Every young studio darling gets that magazine. How does it feel to be in the role model seat?

JM: I am so honored to be on the cover and can't wait to read the story. I hope I sound good in my quotes. I had so much fun in the shoot, the staff was so wonderful to work with. I know it will turn out great. I have been reading Dance Spirit forever, it's my bible.

29-95: I understand you have two mentors at your home studio, Focal Points Dance Studio in Pinecrest, FL.

JM: Yes, Amanda Tae, my choreographer, has been pushing me since I was nine by making great pieces for me to grow in. Ingrid Houvenaeghel, my ballet teacher, is a stickler for technique. Both made me the dancer I am today.

29-95: How was it for them watching you on network television?

JM: They were freaking out.

29-95: In your mind has the show brought concert and commercial dance closer together or further apart?

JM: That's a good question. I would say closer, in its own funny way. Prior to these shows, dancing wasn't as highly regarded as it should be. It's such a difficult art form in that it's a mesh between athleticism and artistry; it's a beautiful mix. The show brought dance right into America's living room. It's both advertising and lifting dance and that's all we were hoping to do.

29-95: What's your ideal dance job?

JM: I would love to be a movie musical.

29-95: Do you know there's never been a SYTYCD audition in Houston?

JM: No way, I will try to pull some strings.

Reprinted from 29-95.com.