These are a sampling of published and experimental writings. The two performance writings—Force Field and Angelitos Negros: 20 Years in the Making—are attempts to convey on the page the ‘imaginal and experiential imagery’ of danced choreography.
In 2003 I met actor Ronald Rand at The Actors Fund in New York,—Publisher/Editor-in-Chief of the newsletter, The Soul of the American Actor. Ron invited me to submit a piece of writing. In 2004 I submitted, “Aphrodite’s Eyes, Soul’s Gaze,” an essay Ron published in Volume 7 No. 1, Spring 2004.
Grace at River’s Edge is my performance CD with booklet of the text spoken throughout the dance performance. (https://www.apoeticbody.com/store/p4/Grace_at_River%27s_Edge_DVD%2FBooklet.html)
Grace in the Age of Obama was a paper delivered at the 2011 academic conference, Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (https://pcaaca.org). I soon thereafter imagined the essay in a form reminiscent of 19th century literary writings combining artwork and presented as a unified aesthetic literary pamphlet. I worked with Reno-based PACE Creative Media Co.’s CEO Manuel Becerra (https://www.linkedin.com/company/pace-creative-media-co.) and graphic artist Kelly Peyton (https://rawartists.com/kellypeyton) to re-imagine the form. During the Obama campaign I was able to hand a copy of the booklet to Joe Biden. Something quite curious occurred in the cultural lexicon shortly thereafter: the phrase, “lean in” became a familiar phrase—a quality I expound on in the essay as a characteristic of grace. It rather tickles me to consider that the essay contributed some kind of impact! Ha-ha! (https://www.apoeticbody.com/store/p5/Grace_in_the_Age_of_Obama.html)
perception (w)rites: The Work of Ralph Lemon is a rigorous experimental writing that engages the immediacy and multi-dimensionality of mental / cognitive / imaginal processes at once operative during focused experience. This piece was published in the 2011 edition of itch journal based in Los Angeles.
“Beloved Bodies: Gestures Toward Wholeness,” a doctoral chapter in my dissertation, Where Grace May Pass: A Poetics of the Body, was published by Bucknell University Press in the anthology, Toni Morrison: Forty Years in the Clearing. In this essay I track and trace the movements of four characters—Sethe, Paul D, Denver, and Baby Suggs, holy—to suggest how a human body retrieves integrative health and psychological integrity.
Embodying History: A Performance Dialectic with The Watts Prophets is an essay originally published in ENCORE! — the arts journal of Sierra Arts Foundation.
Experimental Writings
