Two for the Road

Chitresh Das and Jason Samuels Smith at the Palace of Fine Arts

What do you get when you combine classical Indian dance and American tap? A jubilant explosion of sound.
On Saturday, Indian Kathak dance master Pandit Chitresh Das and American tap dance phenom Jason Samuels Smith team up to present “India Jazz Suites,” part of the Chitresh Das Dance Company’s 30th anniversary celebration gala.
The performance heralds a collaboration that, since their first match-up in 2005, has received wildly enthusiastic response from audiences here and abroad.Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/Two-for-the-road-87625457.html#ixzz0l1dQJ5np

Performing Diaspora

Diaspora: A body of people dispersed from their homelands. That pretty much describes the Bay Area population in a nutshell. Beginning on November 5, CounterPULSE, the SOMA artists’ collective, presents Performing Diaspora, a series of works-in-progress culminating in three weekends of dance, music and drama featuring a baker's dozen of artists whose fresh and experimental work is rooted in cultural traditions from such diverse parts of the world as Indonesia, Serbia, the Carribean Japan and Africa.

CounterPULSE director Jessica Robinson Love says “The Bay Area has had support for artists who practice traditional forms of dance and that’s very important, especially for recent immigrants. On the other hand we have a vibrant contemporary performance community. What we were lacking was a middle ground - artists based in traditional forms who want to divert from that.”

http://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/Diaspora-dances-around-the-world-67446812.html

Avant garde dance comes to San Francisco this weekend:

Taking it to the Edge
An Evening of Avant Garde Dance at ODC
By Andrea Pflaumer

To someone of lesser mettle than dancer Sara Shelton Mann, broken bones and ripped tendons might have sent them into retirement long ago. But for Mann they only served to drive her deeper into her creative well, garnering an impressive number of accolades along the way, including four Isadora Duncan awards and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Mann, one of the world’s foremost figures in avant garde dance, presents her newest production, Shapeshifter, in a concert entitled Shared Legacies on October 3 and 4 at ODC. Joining her on the bill is her former principal dancer and protégé Kathleen Hermesdorf, whose company La Alternativa (formerly MOTIONLAB) performs their piece entitled the other edge of there is here. “I’m very honored to share a show with Sara,” Hermesdorf says. “She always attracts great collaborators and has fabulous dancers.” [Mann’s lead dancer, Maria Scaroni, created quite a stir this year with an NEA-sponsored performance of a piece by Jess Curtis that had her appearing in the nude.]

(See page 16)

http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/Launch.aspx?referral=other&pnum=&refresh=Gb519N0eZd60&EID=1dfcbb42-fcde-4678-92c3-f2b3a4bb8140&skip=true

Hey All You Environmentalists!

My friend (and webmaster) Lee Leffler has published several terrific articles about the Sustainable Living program at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa. It's a wonderful school doing some important work in the field of environmental education. This is a photo of the organic greenhouses on campus.

Check it out:

http://leeleffler.com/category/sustainable/sustainable-campus/

Book Review in the University of Toronto Women in Judaism Journal

The Girl from Foreign: A Search for Shipwrecked Ancestors, Forgotten Histories, and a Sense of Home

Review by Andrea Pflaumer

Sadia Shepard’s remarkable memoir The Girl from Foreign is as satisfying for the personal mysteries it solves as it is unsettling for the larger geo-political questions it raises. Born in Denver, the daughter of an American Christian father and a Pakistani Muslim mother, Shepard embraces her multicultural identity (‘it’s all one God,’) in a country that welcomes hyphenation. But as a young woman embarking on a writing career she learns that her maternal grandmother, who lived with and was an important part of the family during Shepard’s formative years, was not originally from Pakistan nor was she Muslim. She was, in fact, born into the Bene Israel community of Western India as Rachel Jacobs. In her grandmother’s final years she asks Shepard to ‘tell my story,’ launching the young woman on an arduous physical and emotional journey to discover her grandmother’s roots, a voyage that became one of self-discovery as well.

Joyride Art Show Review

Published in the San Francisco Weekly on-line blog "All Shook Down"

by Andrea Pflaumer

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2009/07/last_night_joyride_art_show_at.php

"I'm Gonna Live Forever...."

For those of you who like that song, you may be thinking, "in this decrepit body?". Well, here's a little different twist on the subject - from ancient India - published in Michael Laughrin's North American Jyotish Newsletter

http://jyotish.ws/wisdom/kaya_kalpa_immortality.html