Is it serendipity, a small world, or is it just that like-minded people tend to gravitate to similar activities, groups, and people? I’m going to call it serendipity. Because it sounds like me and Johnny Depp, who I have a crush on. Sara-n’-Depp-ity.Getting back to my point, Donna Garrett and I had chosen some of our pieces to include in our collaborative project, but were still tossing around ideas and themes,
Cherry Steinwender
at Dancepatheatre's
International Women's Day Soiree
while I was trying to pin down a date for the event at Barnevelder. One of the available dates happened to be on International Women’s Day, which Louie (Barnevelder manager and community dance activist) intuitively mentioned to me. We jumped on that date.
That’s when Cherry Steinwender sprang to mind as the community leader for Dancepatheatre to honor for International Women’s Day. Cherry’s work and that of her organization, Center for the Healing of Racism, had a transformative effect on me about ten years ago when I took the weekend intensive Dialogue Racism workshop that they offer. I knew she was out in the community, bringing her healing, transformative work into schools and other organizations. One of my works that was sitting on the shelf, waiting to be resurrected, was the monologue, Not, a product of artist insomnia from my weekend in the Dialogue Racism workshop. (Interestingly, its premiere was in a Women’s Works performance that also featured Donna Garrett, curated by Elizabeth Gilbert, the other poet with whom I have collaborated. Small world?)
Having some familiarity with Donna’s works, I suggested that we expand our theme of identity and women at various ages to include healing racism, and let that steer our choice of Donna’s poems and my works. Once that decision was made, everything fell into place. And so Caution: Women at Work was born.
It wasn’t until we were well into our creative process that I even discovered that Donna and Cherry knew each other. Two of Donna’s works we chose are accompanied by music recordings created specifically for Donna’s poetry by musicians in Taipei when she was there by invitation for Black History Month. Donna revealed to me that Cherry mentored her in preparation for her journey to China. Donna, too, had performance pieces emerge from her workshops with The Center for the Healing of Racism. Donna felt, as I did, that Cherry and her work had had a transformative effect on her, and was as excited to honor Cherry as I was.
This kind of thing makes it feel like “it was just meant to be”…it’s magical. Or maybe it’s just to be expected of three people in the same city who are each dedicated to finding their own way to help people to more deeply understand themselves and others, via whatever may be their particular talent and vehicle. Perhaps, just like the “seven degrees away” number theory, this is just a mathematical thing. But I like to think of it as serendipity.
The beginning of the Al Andalus Project had the same kind of amazing serendipity, and I am starting to see those kinds of serendipitous connections reveal themselves regarding our June 20, 2009 Memories of Spain concert, too, which will continue our Al Andalus Project, among other things. Maybe Johnny Depp will even show up. I’ll report back to you on that and other interesting aspects next month.
