BAY AREA POETS REVIEW 

Deadline May 15, 2011

Dancing Poetry Contest

See www.dancingpoetry.com for last year's winners and additional information. Winners to be announced by July 31, and the Dancing Poetry Festival will be held Septe3mber 24, noon to 4 in the Florence Gould Theater in the California Palace of the Legion of Honor Art Museum in San Francisco.

The Danced Poem
Natica Angilly Revives an Ancient Tradition
by Jannie M. Dresser

       Svetlana Beriosova, a Lithuanian-born British ballerina, recited Andre Gide’s poetry in French as she danced to the music of Igor Stravinsky. In Japan, there is a tradition of sword-dancing to accompany poetry; in India, kathakali dance incorporates tales of the gods in sung-poetry form; and, Andrew Lloyd Webber used T.S. Eliot’s poetry to create the Broadway hit dance-musical “Cats.” It’s not entirely strange to consider the arts of dance and poetry together in one breath, yet not since the early 20th century, and perhaps for a brief time in the 1960s and 70s, have these two arts hooked up to broad cultural appeal or success.
Probably never in the history of these
combined art forms has a dancer done
as much for poets and poetry as
Richmond, California’s Natica Angilly.
    It’s not just that Angilly has created a unique program where poets vie to have their poems choreographed and performed before a broad audience. After all, only three poems get that full attention. But the Dancing Poetry Festival--now in its 17th  year--also awards prizes to other contestants and takes an ambassadorial role in an international movement.
    Angilly has had to deal with insincere questions and raised eyebrows over the issue of translating poems into dance. “Robert Pinsky said that poetry doesn’t need to be danced,“ Angilly comments without any defensiveness, “but that may only mean that his poetry doesn’t need to be danced.” On the other hand, poet Donald Hall liked the work the Angilly’s work. Thirty years ago--and under different cultural mores--their “Firebird” dance based on one of Richard Angilly’s poems drew a standing ovation of about 3,000 people. But times have changed, and the freer expression of that era has subsumed by notions of professionalism, high art, and cultural compartmentalization. The marriage between dance, drama, and poetry struggles for recognition, not to mention funding, in contemporary American culture. . . one more symptom of how far distant many artists have come from the spiritual roots of their forms.


Natica Angilly, Richard Angilly, and Judy Hardin Cheung
    “Something strange takes over when you step onto a stage to dance,” Angilly says, acknowledging an ancient relationship between the arts. In many, particularly indigenous, cultures spoken word has always been linked to music and movement. The pioneers of modern dance--San Francisco-born Isadora Duncan, as well as Martha Graham and Ruth St. Denis--explored this ground. “What we try to do is to elicit the audible ‘ah,’ at the end of a piece,” says Angilly. The pioneers of modern dance and ballet were passionately interested in the other arts and often drew inspiration from many poets, while many poets incorporate movement in their performances. While dancing poetry is not everyone’s cup of tea, it is refreshing to watch something other than the individual at the podium, brushing hair out of her (or his) face and reciting in that “poetry voice” so common these days.
    Oakland poet Lucille Lang Day was exhilarated to see her poem, “In Praise of the Jellyfish” translated into dance a couple of years ago. “Poetry evokes mental images for me. It was both strange and wonderful to see someone else’s mental images of one of my poems made manifest. It also made me want to try translating poems into dance myself, as another way of seeing and feeling them.”

    Angilly loves what she does, and what she does is mask-making, jewelry-making, costuming, choreographing, and coordinating the Dancing Poetry festival held in the fall at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. This year, the program is set for September 18. Between the close of the contest to gather poems for consideration to be danced and that date much work must be done.
    Angilly doesn’t accomplish this alone. At her side is her poet husband Richard Angilly, who does double-duty on stage as a “non-dancer.” (Angilly says that he is probably one of a handful of poets “who has an incredible wardrobe of colorful costumes.“) Santa Rosa poet and photographer Judy Cheung of Santa Rosa handles numerous administrative and public relations duties and serves as the program’s stage manager. Another long time partner  is dancer and Artists Embassy secretary Cindy Levinson whose son, Arthur Levinson, made his poetic dance debut with the company at age two when he jumped from a basket as a magic genie in a poem about a circus.   Now, after receiving his degree in film and video production, he continues as the company’s video documentarist.
     After the spring contest deadline Angilly  forms a committee to winnow the 500 or so submissions down to about 50 poems which are then presented to the dancers; they begin to experiment with movements and as a group identify which poems are the best candidates for being danced. When a poem is presented, Angilly asks the dancers: “Does anyone see movement here?”
    Angilly has honed her instincts about what works and what doesn’t work as a danced poem, noting that poems about music or dance are rarely successful. One successfully danced poem was “Mama’s Muu-Muu,” about a young woman’s need to step beyond the limitations of her mother’s life. Another poem “was so beautiful but we couldn’t figure out how to dance it,” says Angilly. Written by a Sri Lankan woman, Anne Ranasinghe , the subject of the poem was an earring that had  belonged to a famous princess; although the poem was not selected for choreography, it was awarded a 1st prize. When Ranasinghe’s town in Sri Lanka learned this, its local museum mounted an exhibit in her honor.
    “What we try to do is make poetry enjoyable, beautiful, and fun without hurting its content or context,” says Angilly. She works hard to find the right music, sometimes using original compositions by artists like Hidayat Inayat Khan, son of Hazrat Inayat Khan who  brought an Indian form of Sufism to the West and was one of India’s notable musicians of India.    
    In 2005, Angilly took her dancers to Tai Chan, China, where they performed at the World Congress of Poetry and Cultures, the first event of it’s kind to  be held in  China. They have also performed using many cultural references and languages, including Hawaiian, East Indian, Spanish, Korean and Chinese. Angilly has also created “Poet Parades” where dancers and writers bring past poets back to life via costuming and mime.
     The coordinators look for great poems “suitable for a general audience, although controversy is welcomed.” One of the most interesting productions was based on a poem about a family who were sharing responsibility for an autistic member. Another successful pair of dances were inspired by ekphrastic poems (poems about art): “Matisse in Morocco” was penned by Oklahoma City poet Sandra Soli; Sacramento poet Laverne Frith’s poem about Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.”
    With all these activities, you can understand what Angilly means when she describes their Richmond home as looking like a theater‘s “backstage.” The Angillys maintain four storage spaces for their materials, costumes and props. Recently, Angilly acquired several human-sized silk fans and several silk banners dyed in those rich colors that one often sees in Chinese dance and acrobatic performances. Angilly also crafts and custom-paints tambourines, masks, and accessories, to sell at dance festivals, such as the bellydance Rakkasah. Her work is usually on display at Café Arrivederci in San Rafael, known for its Monday night poetry and art salons. “I’m known as the tambourine lady,” says Angilly. For the Dancing Poetry Festival, the dancers usually make their own costumes.
    Angilly is democratic in involving people in the Dancing Festival; one needn’t have an extensive dance background or training, as some of the choreography may be more like acting and working with props than graceful or athletic movements. Eighty-six-year-old  Sarah Lum’s comic-timing and presence often achieve some of the most popular moments on stage. Lum, who has worked with Angilly for many years, recently played “the shark” in a performance and earned some of the program’s most enthusiastic applause.
    The company has a core of about nine dancers, but Angilly may invite others to work on specific pieces. The dancers represent many generations and cultural backgrounds. Occasionally, Angilly scouts for other performers or dance troupes to participate in the annual festival; one company traveled from Indiana to participate.
    In 2009, the contest generated 476 poems from 166 poet contestants living in 28 states and seven countries. Last year’s grand-prize poets were Nancy Rakoczy of Flushing, New York, for her poem “Eve Dreaming“; Gretchen Fletcher of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, for “Silver Sandals“; and Jeanne Wagner of Kensington, California, for “Dance of the Seven Veils.”  In addition to the winning poems, the program included several other dance performances.
    Although this year’s deadline has passed for poem submissions, if you are interested in participating in this year’s Dancing Poetry Festival contact Angilly at Artists Embassy International (415/681-0618).  You can find more information at www.dancingpoetry.com.
    The Dancing Poetry festival is a subsidiary of Artists Embassy International, a group founded more than 60 years ago by Althya Youngman to foster exchanges between artists and serve as a foundation for organizing and promoting art events, including dance, poetry, music, theater and the visual arts. Youngman, who had once sought the wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi, envisioned  an organization that could contribute to world peace through the arts and cultural exchange. Angilly was Youngman’s protégé and inheritor of AEI. Angilly shares the excitement, creative and expressive possibilities in urging poets and dancers to consider poetry as “something to dance about.”

Richard Angilly does poem-paintings that are also on display at Cafe Arrivederci in San Rafael.

Marin Poetry Center Takes Show on the Road

 
Falkirk Cultural Center

    Kudos to the thriving Marin Poetry Center (MPC) founded in 1981 by College of Marin teachers and students. Current membership is healthy at 254.
    Marin is home to Kay Ryan and Robert Hass (United States poet laureate and U.S. poet laureate emeritus respectively). Brenda Hillman and Jane Hirshfield are two other notable local poets living in Marin County. Each year an acclaimed poet presents a workshop at MPC where members can hone their craft.
    MPC, for nominal membership fees, offers a variety of excellent speakers, contests, workshops, open-mic mini-critiques, postcard announcements, debates on poetry issues and book celebrations at Falkirk Cultural Center, a Victorian mansion just west of downtown San Rafael.
    Members are also invited to submit up to five poems each year for consideration in what poet and master anthology producer David Alpaugh describes as "a beautiful anthology." The editors for 2010 are Joseph Zaccardi and Rose Black.
    As if the above events and opportunities were not enough poetic stimulation, MPC offers members the chance to participate in their Summer Traveling Show which takes place each year from May through September, with 24 weekday evening venues (mostly in Marin) hosted by a member of MPC: at each event--held at libraries, bookstores, and art galleries--five or six member poets read for about 10 minutes each. It's fun. A total of 120 poets are participating this year. The public is invited to all of the events. The Summer Traveling Show dates from 1995. This year's series coordinator is Paula Weinberger.
    For membership and other information on Marin Poetry Center check the website: marinpoetrycenter.org. Better yet, attend an event, perhaps the popular Summer Traveling Show.

Fountain in Boyd Park, San Rafael