Madame Jellyfish
(Lands End, 2006)
After Katrina hit New Orleans, there were and are so many after-shock waves. The damage was not
only from the climatic disaster itself.
Another sinister damage seemed to crest as reports and visuals showed
that the injured were being maltreated, and being shot at and helpers were
being turned away. It wasn’t as if we, US/World will ever recover from the
horrifying violence of 9/11; or that the typhoons that wiped out parts of
Thailand and Sri Lanka were any less.
But it was the insult to injury by the US, in sight of Katrina’s
mega-devastation that summoned the dance “Madame Jellyfish”.
“Madame Jellyfish” was
an outdoor performance at Land’s End, SF.
It never occurred to me that this was going to stand on it’s own as a
solo performance. And still I see this with a large company of performers. But now looking back,
it makes sense. In Part I. there
was one dancer; Part II. there were two dancers; and in Part III. there were
three. At Land’s End, atop the
ruins of the old Sutro Baths, it was a dance of color, imagination and optical
illusion.
“Madame Jellyfish”
birthed the three part series called “Map of the Mango Planet.”
The theatrical
productions were premiered out of sequence, to build the audience’s curiosity. The first show was Part III. Fullmoon
Tango. Then months later, the next
show was Part II. The North
Pole.
I still plan to bring
Madame Jellyfish indoors, and then do a fourth culmination of the all parts of
Map of the Mango Planet in 2009 and 2010. Well, the finances never fully manifested
to develop those productions. So I
worked, and created choreography and drew up the scores and the
plans, pushing everything forward to 2010. As life ultimately determines the course of such events, the plans exist as needed.
Mango Planet, Part III: Fullmoon Tango
Mango Planet,
Part II: The North Pole
(CounterPulse, 2008)
