A Meeting At Noon

"Thanks for meeting me like this." His words came haltingly as though he was searching for an opening to reveal some secret.

"You know I would always come. I rearranged things the moment I received your message."

"I had hoped you would meet me, but I half expected that you would reply you already had an appointment."

He took a sip of his café con leche. He had always loved this restaurant, which seemed to combine the worlds he loved, the Mediterranean, the Brazilian, the Cuban. On the wall was a huge picture of a 4 door version of the Chevy coupe he had driven in college. Same model and exact color. Somehow the coffee always reminded him of travels in Italy and Portugal. Those were idyllic times for him when his closest friends were still alive, and the future loomed fresh and exhilarating. Now time had taken its toll, and the last few years had led him toward the Hemingway solution which he calculated would be a year from now, on this last day of the cycle.

He had just learned about this nine-year life cycle from his dear friend who had agreed to meet with him on this final day.

"You are in the eighth year of a nine-year cycle," she explained. This declaration suddenly made perfect sense to him, and why he had chosen September 4, 2011 as his final day. But in the past year, he had dismissed this calculation after meeting new friends who broke through the barriers that had blocked his creative work. He entered a personal renaissance based on this deepening awareness.

He looked out at the trees of September. Today they were splendid in their radiant green presence. The air was fresh. It was the September of his dreams, of his latest venture, of his idyllic narrative that somehow was the summation of all that he held precious.

He looked across at his friend, a friend that had seen him through more than a decade of experience and hardships. Such friendships distill the present and are to be savored like a rare and fragrant liqueur. This insight had escaped him for months in a period of doubt and self-denial.

"Today seemed like it would be so bleak that at the last moment I thought of you as someone who might come to my rescue... someone to share the day that I usually experience alone with such dread." The words came slowly. He was searching for a pathway, a direction that might divert his despair. "I am really grateful that you would come."

"We are similar," she said. "We share much in common." She smiled. "But I am hurt that you would not consider your younger friends in your equation. That isn't fair. I want you around for at least the next cycle and beyond."

"On one level, I know you are right," he admitted, "but most of my closest confidants that were my contemporaries have vanished from my life. On that level, I feel quite alone and disconnected."

Yet, even as he spoke, he knew there were contradictions. He had simply shifted so much of his faith into new projects that when the prospect of their unraveling became apparent he was thrown into despair. He had not prepared himself that he might be betrayed by his own blindness.

She spoke of her own struggles. She had lost so much and had been challenged for her own survival, but she had persevered, and from her anguish, new experiences had led her to refreshed places that now shaped a better juncture. Although she knew her own journey could not serve as a prescription for his, she hoped that somehow he would see through the illusions that held him captive.

The wind swept gently through the trees overhead. The sunlight through the branches shimmered like an incandescent projection of patterns through the leaves, leaving shadows on the sidewalk that looked like swirling distant galaxies. This was September. He was entering his favorite time of the year, but now he faced it with a fear that seemed to grow in the silence and accruing doubt.

It was September. The days were lingering in the fullness of summer, bountiful and beautiful in their splendor. This was a time to harvest all that had been sewn in spring and summer. This was a time when the promise of all he had worked for was pregnant with possibilities... it was a time to open the dream for others to experience and to invite their collaborations. Yet, even as he understood this, fear gripped him that he might not be equal to the challenge.

"Remember these days..." he thought, half singing the words to himself, "They're passing so fast. Just look for the ways to make these days last. Remember these days."

He wanted to capture this moment with his friend sitting across from him on this final day of his year. He wanted to hold it forever as part of the recurring dream that haunted him when a stranger meeting him for the first time tried to explain relationships in the Land of Forever, where a rendezvous at noon was more than marriage.

Endings and Forever

When you live in Forever, endings are different.

I have always dwelled in the Land of Forever, and I am not sure how I got here. I realize this is a place where space and time exist as a single dimension and the sole sensory apparatus is awareness. Many times I have written about this place without realizing it.

Many times I have been tempted to write a book about the Land of Forever, but I have seen others attempt it, and I know how difficult a task this can be. Judy Blume did it. Not my cup of tea. Jude Deveraux not only wrote a book, but a whole Forever series, perhaps replicating the subject as never ending. Many writers have taken it on. Mostly women. Several men. My favorite is Pete Hamill who takes us through history with a singular figure who lives forever. But my version is about the Land of Forever, which exists as a state of consciousness. Most of the time I am present without even realizing that I am occupying a different reality than the person next to me or the friends around me. Occasionally I will come upon some who also dwell in Forever, but are not aware they are in a special place.

Endings are different in Forever because they are simply landmarks along the way. Forever stretches out endlessly in all directions. Not only can you go back and leap ahead, you can take side trips and diversions that open up new possibilities of discovery.

So as I post on this last day of August, I am deeply aware of the Endings that seem to be crashing down on me, collapsing around me like shards of icebergs that have wandered into the warm oceans and disintegrate. Today is a summing up. A goodbye. A farewell to all that. Tomorrow I may take up paths that seem to be from the past, but they will be new. They will be the beginnings of something else and not a pattern from the past. Even friends will not be their old selves, but new beings, new sensibilities that appear to be vested in old trappings, but are in fact newly generated as though they had shed every cell and replaced their molecules with a new identity.

I realize that although this year has ended, it is fully a new beginning. My actual new beginning starts September 5, my cycle of renewal. I am on the verge of new discoveries and new journeys. I reflect over the past year that took me through terrain I have not seen before, and now I know that the new friends and colleagues enriched my life way beyond my deepest and wildest dreams. And I wanted this to go on forever... forever... and forever...

But forever is cyclical. Renewal is an essential element. Dying is also essential. Ideas wither even though nourished, and friends exit as freely as they entered. They are on to their fresh starts and new beginnings as they wave goodbye. I try to grab their hands, to detain them, but they vanish so quickly.

In this cusp of endings and beginnings I discover an unexpected ending. The surprise rips through me like a sharp gust of wind opening a wound of emptiness... an unanticipated absence now lost. This was something that I hoped would never end, a part of the consciousness of Forever. But now I realize how fragile such connections are...more gossamer than steel... more in flux than grounded... transient and in the moment – until the moment vanishes.

But I wish my friends well. I know in the Land of Forever, they always populate my life, no matter what appearances may declare. Maybe I'll catch them next time round.

So goodbye to all that was so vital and compelling through this past year. Whatever continues does so as the natural projection of ongoingness. Whatever ends, makes way for emergent realities. I am lucky to dwell in this Land of Forever. It does make relationships interesting, and I realize that I search for wholeness that is the promise of Forever. Wholeness is an Infinite state of existence very difficult to sustain as a mortal in a transient world. I was in a time of renaissance, and such periods are often bursts of new ideas that sometimes are extinguished prematurely. In such surges, we harbor the illusion of wholeness and invincibility. For a moment, we touch immortality.

I am always baffled when something beautiful comes to an end. I believe that such beauty should continue forever. And it does. This eloquent contradiction is an equation that is more powerful than E=MC². This is a profound sad/happy moment in my meandering journey. I shut my eyes and listen to everything around me in the Land of Forever, and I know you are waiting there as you always have been. Waiting for me to open my eyes and listen to the new music.

August and the Death of Summer

My last post was about the end of August and destitute destinies.

It was actually an attempt for the finale of A Song for Second Avenue, which I rejected. Even so, there is something of Suna and something of my muse embedded in this failed lyric. I have struggled through this linguistic meandering so much and so often, it is easy to get lost in parallel paths along the way, stumbling into some blackhole of forgetfulness where I can't remember why I am there.

None of this matters very much anyway, except to say that today there was a breakthrough. I did finish the tragic ending and now have started upon the alternate paths. It is just a draft, I know. It is just a draft---it will change, I know. But it is there. The words mask the ideas, and the foundations of awareness seek out words adequate to the vision. That is always the task... a language adequate to the moment. Thought structures transcend language, but are intimately associated with the languaging of emerging reality.

I think of my friends now struggling to know English more thoroughly, and I say to them, I am with you on that struggle. You are forging new paths through consciousness. Even though you think you follow the trails of others who have gone before, you are unique, alone with your reality. Say something to me. Anything. ...and I will learn.

Here as I struggle to chart my own paths, I walk by a table of books for sale on West Fourth Street... and there is The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison: Wilderness. I discover he is a fellow traveller. He also lost his way, but he had the perception of mind to say "Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything, it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through any one that suits you." I find Morrison opens many doors for me, and I fall through them like Alice in Wonderland. Words and metaphors spill across my mind in a myriad of kaleidoscopic images.

Jim Morrison was waiting for me to pick up loose ends. Here I am... Here he is, saying the same thing I was muttering in my last post in his own eloquent elegy:

The Endless quest a vigil
of watchtowers and fortresses
against the sea and time.
Have they won? Perhaps.
They still stand and in
their silent room still wander
the souls of the dead.
who keep their watch on the living.
Soon enough we shall join them.
Soon enough we shall walk
the walls of time. We shall
miss nothing
except each other.

Destinies in the End of August

Destinies in the end of August…
Our lives entwined, embracing our mutual fate,
Inevitable disasters skim the horizon
With broken dreams and lost lives
We pay our own price for dreams,
In wordless tribute to a future
Diverted from destiny
By our blind journeys.
We cling to shadows
To light, to disguised destruction
That rambles through our lives
In shattering thunderclaps
Across our vacant horizons.
We have ourselves to blame
For we have not touched,
Anything more than an illusion…
Only shadows and some distant hope
The failed imagination that seeks
To be some emerging miracle
But finds no ground beneath our feet.
We walk on shimmering clouds
Enveloped by the beauty of a world
Withheld from us
We cling to love,
To touch each other…
But as we extend our grasp,
As we reach out to embrace,
Our world collapses...
And in the swirling debris
Of our anguish and despair,
We laugh and recognize
That at least we lived,
At least we were…
It was never more than this:
To relish life
Like the mayfly…
To celebrate,
And then to disappear
Without consequence
Or regret.

Out of Sync

Those of you that attempt to follow this Blog know that some times I am very prolific and other times the words lie fallow in limbo as I devote my time to video, FaceBook, and other projects. Maybe the rest of August will be productive. Much of it depends on the state of my MoviOp, A Song for Second Avenue, as I currently struggle with the text of the final scenes.

I know that I am out of sync with the world around me, with my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, and more importantly with those several close allies who brought new definition and inspiration to my world. But there is nothing I can do about it, because this anomaly is a microcosm of the forces of the universe which control Time. It is all about Time.

In the mornings when I wake up (if luckily I have found a way to go to sleep), I find myself in a nether land of fantasy where I am imagining I have a performance later that night or perhaps tomorrow, and I have so much to do to prepare for the performance. It usually takes me several hours to descend from the stratosphere of that fantasy to the real world and the routines needed to survive the current day. Soon I realize that the performance I think I have is the accumulation of the energies of all performances past and future, and I am caught in a web of simultaneity where time is compressed.

Yesterday, after improvising at the keyboard for several hours, I walked down University Place. It was a wonderful August afternoon with rain clouds gathering in tall stacks above me. The city had slowed to a pace of expectation of a gathering storm. The rumble of thunder shuddered across the sky as though someone was rearranging gigantic furniture overhead. I was on the street, but also strangely absent. The silence, punctuated with rumbling, grumbling sounds of thunder had a mesmerizing effect, as though I was someplace else and merely looking at the scene through a looking glass.

The air smelled of summer rain, a fresh, humid smell that reminded me of my first days in New York. However, in those days I was more in sync with the city and my friends. I was always in the moment. But now I was out of the moment, an observer...until I started to feel the warm drops of rain. They were big, soft, splashy drops. coming slowly, almost randomly, urging me to scramble out of the path of the storm before it hit full force. But I was in the same frame of mind as when I wake up in the morning in a fantasy of performances awaiting me, moving at a snail's pace while my mind searches for the clarity of reality.

Reality hit me with the fury of a drenching downpour. I seemed trapped within this summer storm almost by design and desire. It was a way to connect with the world for a moment, even though I was disconnected from the immediacy of my friends. I could taste the rain, feel it running down my face... strangely connected and disconnected at the same time.

For some reason, my father's image came to me and I heard him describing his experience years ago of being out of sync with his world. He described it as a condition of growing older. "We are Time Travellers," he said to me. "As you get older, more and more of your friends who are travelling with you, slip away into their own rendezvous with Time, and your circle of close friends gets smaller. Soon you are surrounded by Time Travellers who seem parallel to you but are in a different dimension. Their needs and interests are with their fellow travellers. Although they can see you, they can't relate to you. You are an interesting constellation, an older Time Traveller without much in common with them...someone about to slip away to a private and perhaps terrifying destiny... like a comet burning itself out crossing the night sky. They will tolerate your presence, but they want nothing to do with you. You exist as a reminder that they too are on that same collision course with destiny. You are alone."

I can understand that I am on a different path, a different time, a different velocity. I can understand that this puts me out of sync with everyone that I cherish and love. I can understand why they can hardly tolerate me and need to be with their own kind. I can understand why I am alone. But I also understand it is an inevitable consequence of Time Travelling and the Big Bang.

IMPACT 2010: Rhythm Of Chaos Explores New Terrain

Collaborateurs of IMPACT 2010 produced a theatre of new genre which might be referred to as multimedia. Unfortunately the commercial world of computing has distorted that term, which has come to mean a computer system with sound and video. Originally, the term referred to simultaneous and competing media in a theatrical or gallery setting in which the elements of media competed for attention, and the viewer/listener assembled these into a private assemblage that varied from viewer to viewer. This was in contrast to Intermedia, in which the media were carefully orchestrated by the creators for a predetermined effect and mixed media, which was inherited from visual art culture and rested somewhere between the two other genre, including competing and coordinated media.

IMPACT Director John Gilbert has been experimenting with these genre since the 1960s, including his "multimedia" opera Rotation, which tested these ideas in various combinations. But now concepts of collaboration, new digital technology, networking, social platforms, and intermedia, create greater textural and conceptual possibilities. To enable these collaborateurs to realize their conceptions, IMPACT 2010 assembled an excellent staff to help the IMPACTORS shape their dreams into reality. Incidentally, collaborateurs is a word coined by JoEllen Dolan. It is a very appropriate term since it describes people working together who are very focused and extraordinary artists. More than just collaborators, collaborateurs.

What has changed dramatically in recent years, is not only the technology, but the 21st Century notion of collaboration, which is still undergoing transformation and means much more than accepting compromise among competing ideas of collaborateurs. IMPACT 2010 puts everyone at a new entry point in using technology to appropriate and develop artistic expression through collaborative media.

While the genre may still be difficult to define, it was easy to experience on Thursday, August 5th at Loewe Theatre in New York City in a collaborative media production, Rhythm of Chaos. Participants of IMPACT 2010 created new media work in less than two weeks, and what emerged was perhaps a new medium in which in the disparate elements of media have melded into a new format. This is consistent with McLuhan's observation of the emergence of a new medium which absorbs the practices and content of previous media before synthesizing a new format with its own idiosyncratic features.

While the work was performed live, it was also streamed live on the Internet. What is provided here are thumbnail descriptions and critiques of the collaborative work which integrated scenes created by interdisciplinary teams into a sequence that generated contextual meaning as it unfolded moment to moment. The reviews listed below show the personnel as a historical record of the collaborative teams.

RELAY-TION-I'M was a masterful blending of Korean traditional culture, journey, connection, transformation, and individuality in the context of the whole. This work progressed seamlessly through three sections, with a strong stamp of professional stage awareness.

A ram Kim: Choreography

Min-Kyung Shin: Costumes, designs

Abigail Loutoo: Music & audio composition

Soon Taek Hong: Music & audio composition
Garam Kim: Video

Musicians: Garam Kim: Live jangu Soon Taek Hong: Live taegum

Live Dancers: A ram Kim, Min-Kyung Shin, Garam Kim, Soon Taek Hong, Abigail Louto

WALKER

This piece explored the nature of empathy through different media and technologies. Showing only the back of the walker created a distance between the audience and the subject. Placing the audience at the point of view of the subject was an attempt create empathy. The world trade center footage added a new level of political awareness. The music created a window into the mind of the subject, revealing feelings of melancholy, despair and finally hope as she walks by the new construction site of the World Trade Center Museum. Outside the theater, was a message board for exploring empathy as a concept with the audience and members of the community.

Bo-Yeon Kim: Co-director, lead actor

Soo-yeon Choo : Co-director, sound recording, dancer

Chang In Baek: Filming and cinematography, editing and mixing video

Laura Dickens: Composer, mixer

Ji Hoon Oh: Photography, ending credits

BOLLYWOOD CAMEO
A surprise appearance by Lianne Sheplar planted in the audience continued the practice of extending the theatrical space into the audience and the aisles. Performing with panache and flair, Ms. Sheplar connected with audience in a playful reference to Bollywood music and dance epics.

ETERNAL RECURRENCE AND THE TONES OF CHAOS

The scene traced the development of a person throughout different stages of life where color and light symbolize the person's relationships. An underlying scheme controlled movement and color with a shift from simplicity to complexity, staring with slow movement and flowing towards a more chaotic movement and dance. The work explored the repetitive and cyclical nature of human life and society, the life cycle as a microcosm of human evolution, and chaos, chance, and randomness.

Frank Spigner: Music, audio, props

Young Jae Chon: Video, props

Eun Byowl Song: Stage performance, props

Hyo Jung Suh: Stage performance, props

Bo Eun Kim: Stage performance, props

Guest Performers:

Bo Yeon Kim, Heeyoung Lee, Yong Woong Won, Jee Yun Hong, So Hee Jeon

CHA.OR.MONY

Set between the bustling streets of NYC and a dream world where the rules of daily life our turned upside down, the main character goes from dreaming about her future in her present day life to an upside down dream world where she struggles to make sense of the unusual characters that she meets. The work moves from confusion and chaos into harmony between the characters when the main character resolves herself to being part of this strange new world and all of the characters celebrate together.

The group used several elements to show the struggle between chaos and order. The metaphor of a grocery bag and fruit shows the struggle between the dreams of the future (the fruit) and the desire to contain them or "order" them (the grocery bag). The use of projections, electronic and recorded music, as well as live video effects, enhances the viewers experience and understanding of this original work.

Grace Choi: Lead actress, vocal recording, music design

Seunghwan Hwang: Lead actor, film director, film editor

Yoonseon Choi: Choreographer, music editor, dancer 1

Jaehyun Kang: Costume design, set design, dancer 2

Lianne Sheplar: Director/ C flute, alto flute, music design, dancer 3

CHOICE

This scene explored "what if we can choose our relationships…?” Three projections reveal the past, the present, and the future. These become the entanglements that trap us. This scene produced some of the most stunning images, revealing a character struggling with inner chaos in a search for order.

Charlotte Ahlstrom : Shooting video, making sound, editing video, dancer
Hyo Eun Jang : Shooting video, making sound, editing video, dancer
Hyun Joo Kim : Shooting video, editing video, making materials, dancer
Hyun Ji Lim : Shooting video, editing video, making materials, dance
Jae Hwang Lee : Shooting video, making sound, editing video, main character

GOD AND GIRL

The scene began with everyday life as a repetition from God’s perspective, then added relationships among people to change the direction of the narrative. It also shifted to the perspective of a girl. The effects move realistic background scenes to abstract shapes that react in real time to the sounds generated on the stage, the drum, the basketball, the sounds of a newspaper, painting, and feet stomps. We see a girl painting, and suddenly a girl, who is video taping in the park, focuses the camera at the painting and the audience sees the work as it is completed.
Yong Woong Won: Basketball player
Li Shiyao: Tourist
Hee Young Lee: Drummer, God’s voice
Jung in Hur: Painter
Hanaro Kim: Girl , girl’s voice

PROGRESSION INTO THE FUTURE

The artists sought take the audience on a journey from present to future. Along the way, the performers show some of the obstacles that we still face that pose a threat to ourprogression. The performance illustrates that overcoming such challenges will unlock an era of endless possibilities.

Connor Hubeny: music

Jingya Liu: Live music, choreography

Eun Young Jeo: Costumes, choreography

Hye Won Han: Visuals

Sohee Jeon: Visuals

COLORS OF CHAOS
This explores a painter (chaos) from the past whose lover is a singer (order). To brainstorm his future with her, he draws a colorful picture of the singer’s wedding dress which is sewn by a seamstress on stage. Thus commences the chaos and chase…which unfolds as a delightful parable that might be from a Rossini opera or a Saturday Night Live skit.

Heakyung Woo: Singer, bride, audio editor

Yee Seul Ok: Dancer

Jiwon Park: Dancer

Robert Chen: Painter, video editor, groom

Sunghyun Kim: Fashion designer, minister

These works are kernels of ideas that have been nurtured through interaction, discussion, and use of technology to articulate and illustrate concepts.The composer Tan Dun observed this work and experiments going on at NYU in integrating and extending media and technology as narrative. He described the work as being an extension of opera, the fundamental narrative form that was first to integrate media. Film is simply an extension of opera, and now this new medium absorbs those practices and creates new ones.

Their focus is on collaborative technology, the tenet that technology extends the reach of humanity. The new technologies of the Internet, the social networks, and the professional alliances have increased the range and speed of communication. Yet the IMPACT workshop demonstrates that much more is needed to achieve understanding. Communication is just the beginning of developing mutual understanding and appreciation. IMPACTORS have discovered that technology can extend the range of human and artistic expression, but deep understanding across cultures and languages continues to challenge us.

IMPACT 2010 Rhythm of Chaos Collaborative Achievement

Glancing through the program of IMPACT 2010's Rhythm of Chaos uncovers many layers and threads of connections among participants of the NYU Steinhardt International Workshop, July 19-August 6. The performance on August 5th in Loewe Theatre was a resounding success. In less than three weeks the participants developed a consensus for a theme and collaborated in teams to produce a multimedia work that can be best described as a new genre for theatre.

In addition to the stellar planning and performances of the IMPACTORS (IMPACT is an acronym for Interactive Multimedia Performing Arts Collaborative Technology), credit must be given to an outstanding professional of gifted technician artists and counsellors who helped steer this complex constellation to its successful launching.

John Gilbert, Producer, Director of IMPACT
Youngmi Ha, Director of Music & Registrar
Chianan Yen, Director of Operations & Graphics/Imaging
Deborah Damast, Director of Dance (on Leave of Absence)
Tom Beyer, Technical Director
Julie Song, Administrative Director
Kevin Pease, Theatre Director
Heather Heiner, Dance & Movement Director
Keith Sklar, Visual Arts Director
Cris Dopher, Lighting Designer
Sooyeon Hong, Stage Manager
Sunmin Kim, Production Management, Counsellor
JoEllen Dolan, Assistant Technical Director
Kenji Calderón-Miyamoto, A.V. Technician
Kevin DeYoe, A.V. Technician
Jessica Goldberg, Camera 2, Counsellor
Jee Yun Hong, Camera 3, Counsellor
Jessica Lin Yeung, Camera 1

The performance capped three weeks of intensive immersion in technology, arts specializations, combined arts, and collaborative process.

IMPACT 2010 Rhythm Of Chaos

Chaos may not exist except as a concept. Thus the Rhythm of Chaos may suggest that all seemingly chaotic essences may really just be complex and irregular systems and may possibly define the structure of the universe. Maybe we are just encountering a delectable fractal concoction with high levels of coherence. So it is no surprise that IMPACTORS have come up with The Rhythm of Chaos as the title of their experiments in media. Rather than a contradiction, it represents a synthesis of polarities rich with meaning.

IMPACTORS from NYU IMPACT 2010 (Interactive Multimedia Performing Arts Collaborative Technology) have been exploring Chaos and Order, among other things, in creating new work for a production that is the culmination of their investigations and collaborations. Their work has been intense. There are 42 IMPACTORS and 17 staff intent upon using technology in the service of human expression in a final performance in Loewe Theatre on August 5 at 7:30 p.m.

They have gone on location shooting to South Street Seaport and the World Trade Area including the World Financial Center with its famous Wintergarden, Tear Drop Park and taken the Staten Island Ferry to video materials for their multimedia works.

This year IMPACTORS (a term invented by IMPACT's Administrative Coordinator Julie Song) have been organized into groups named for the solar system, the planets and other constellations. These teams emphasize interactivity and collaboration as they acquire new skills and understandings that relate technology to text, the performing arts, and the visual arts culture.

In addition, NYU IMPACT 2010 has become vividly present on FaceBook, transforming a social Internet platform into a professional forum where the business of the group is conducted, and works in progress are displayed and shared.

KUPALA 2010 (Summer Solstice)

Kupala is a Ukrainian celebration of summer solstice, which also couples with a midsummer's night dream, and has its origins in the original pagan festival (Kupalo was the god of Love and Harvest). Christianity appropriated it and combined it with the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. Somehow Summer Solstice is also appropriated as a significant part of the celebration as the longest day... the ultimate triumph of light over darkness awaiting the return of increasingly dark days as the earth swings into the next arc of the orbit when night regains its ascendancy.

At the Ukrainian Sports Center on Second Avenue in the East Village, Virlana Tkacz, Founding Director of the Yara Arts Group, created an evening of Kupala 2010, complete with entertainment, rituals, love potions, and a surprise guest. There were also two installation pieces: Infinity by Marybeth Ward, and Kupala, North Collins, NY by Andrea Wenglowskyj. It was an evening full of fun, and for me, a revelation of Ukrainian lore, which I have been investigating in preparation of creating new work.

All the women fashioned garlands that they wore for the celebration, which originally once meant the availability of the young girls for marriage. Everyone wrote a fortune that was fastened to a tree, and all were given candles.

The program began with a film Dora Was Dysfunctional by Andrea Odeznyska which was a beautiful, achingly funny account of the romantic life of a Ukrainian woman in L.A.
Cruel Love Songs were featured by Odarka Polanskyj-Stockert singing as she accompanied herself on an electric harp, supported by Redentor Jimenez on guitar. The delivery was soft and undulating, alluring and charming. "On the Night of St. John's Eve" was an evocative poem by Olena Jennings, enthusiastically received by the revelers of midsummer's night.

One of the highlights of the evening were the poems read by Bob Holman with the brilliant Bandura performer Julian Kytasty. Featured was a new poem about the Solstice, "Midsummer Night~My Heart is a Real Thing", performed by Bob Holman in association with Julian's intimate and mesmeric music. There was a casual presence in the execution that was attractive and sensitive to the moment.

A surprise celebrity was violinist Valeriy Zhmud who performed with the "technical support" of his iPod "ensemble," selections that were even more electrifying than his electrified fiddle. His work was dazzling and fearless, the music exploding from the strings with bravura and passion.

The Songs and Rituals were performed by a group, Girls, Girls, Girls, made up of Laryssa Czebiniak, Lycyna Kuncio, Olena Martynyuk, and Meredith Wright. Their singing created a sense of festivity during the candle lighting/floating ceremony and the distribution of Olesia Lew's love potion.

Closing out the program was The Debutant Hour, a girl's trio that was inventive, humorous, and lively. At the end they sang Happy Birthday to to Virlana, who is the spirit that drives and defines these wonderful events. As the audience dispersed, we each picked our fortune off of the tree. Mine was that "something interesting would happen to you under a bridge." I'm still waiting, but it clearly was more evocative than most fortune cookie messages.

As I reflect on the spirit of Kupala and my experience of cultural nuances that influence my work, I understand that the Ukrainian culture permeates the East Village, and the cultural energies of other groups intersect with the Ukrainian in forging an emerging identity that continually shifts and adjusts to the needs and vagrancies of time, place, and peoples. The Ukraine serves as the gateway to Russia from the West and the entrance to Europe from the East, assimilating the great traditions of the world into its own unique vision and art. Wandering around the Ukrainian Museum in the East Village, I began to see the Ukraine as a metaphor for humanity's struggle for freedom. I am told that the word Kozak (Cossack) came from an Arabic word that meant "free man".

The Ukrainian culture in the context of the East Village assimilates and distributes its energies into emerging identities that embrace the great traditions and cultures of the world. That may be the source of potency that makes the East Village so vibrant. It is East and West and South and North, pinpointed with an intensity that makes everyone a vital constituent in an an emerging cultural personality.