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Chapter Five AFFIRMINGCONNECTION Pre-Show Artists’ Performance Texts A central goal of the Austin Project is to connect national, regional, and emerging artistic voices in the jazz aesthetic tradition. In this chapter, Austin-area artists who presented work as “opening acts” for the Austin Project Showcase in 2002 and 2003 publish those pieces for the first time. Brief biographies of each are included. The artists are Martha Perez (dancer and choreographer), Darla Johnson (dancer and choreographer), Zell Miller III (interdisciplinary theater artist), Jeffery “Da’Shade” Johnson (poet and performer), and Daniel Davis Clayton (performance poet). Martha Perez In this lifetime, Martha is native to Mexico City. She has a PhD in cultural geography with a focus on the phenomenology of earth-based lifeways and the Haitian cultural landscape. She has researched ancient ways of knowing from an academic and an experiential perspective, and directs her efforts to shift our human relationship to the earth with the wisdom left to us by our ancestors. Martha’s life has brought many opportunities to be amazed at various traditional healing systems in non-traditional settings. Growing up in Mexico, she was fascinated by local curandero culture, which fueled her excitement toward ethnographic work.Martha loves to dance.She sees dance traditions as spiritual wisdom carriers. She taught Afro-Haitian dance from 1990 to 2006. In 1999, Martha wrote and choreographed White Darkness: the body as offering, a spellbound fusion of poetry, storytelling, and traditional Haitian drumming, dance, song, and religious symbolism. Martha’s ability to share the healing power of dance has touched the lives of many movers and shakers. 260 Roots-dance-jazz: Ayizan Velekete in ink and paper Ayizan means “Sacred Earth,” and her name comes from the Fon people of Benin where “ayi” is earth and “zan” is sacred; Velekete means the same for the Mina of Benin, where “vele” is earth and “kete” is sacred. The Fon and Mina ancestors seed in us the sacred path of Vodoun through this lwa (spirit). In the womb of Ayizan Velekete the child-seed is nurtured to serve the great road of Vodoun— Mother Earth purifies the vodouisant as s/he enters into the healing community. Her emblem is the tallest frond of the royal palm tree; during initiation rites, the Vodoun child is cleansed with this frond, a leaf never opened or soiled, ritually being purified through Ayizan Velekete. She is the highest frond of the royal palm; she is Vodoun—purity, integrity, force, and rectitude. She is married to Legba Atibon, the crossroads’ spirit and, along with Loko, she is protector and guardian of the priests who serve this tradition.1 Dancing Ayizan in a postindustrial setting is in many ways an extraordinary notion. It is an experiment in time that can only be brought forth by connecting to each other in a sacred way. The drums in many cultures have the explicit purpose to create a fold in time and space to bring forth who we are as a sacred being. The time that we spend sharing the richness of our being is virtually sacred time. Dancing for the deity and embodying her starts by connecting to the earth in love. Our bodies begin tuning to each other with her chant, centering, rooting the voice in the nakedness of being. There is no separation between you and me. Kreyol sonde miwa oh Legba eh, Kreyol sonde miwa oh Legba eh, Ayizan viye viye, Kreyol sonde miwa oh Legba an’ ye oh 2 Life experience is rooted in the humus of time. The Vodouisant life reaches to be the highest frond, like her royal palm tree, rooted on earth reaching to the sky, a vehicle between heaven and earth. Human life is lived on the surface of the mirror, the crossroads between dimensions of the world of separation and the spirit-world of oneness.To travel through the mirror, the sacred arts support the body in time and space to bring forth the energies of the spirits. Vodoun unfolds in sacred rhythms—music brings wholeness to the fore of our consciousness. When we experience coming together with the intention of tasting the sacred, we are together in real time as full human beings.The drummed healing arts of Haitian Vodoun transform space in this way. The drums attune us to our primordial being-ness. Dance establishes a connection opening our conscience to the possibilities of exchanging time in the presence of the divine. Working the Work [3.138.114.94...

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