Loisaida Inc., PRIDA and Coquito Masters present:
Mercado de Puerto Rico
Presenting traditional and original Art and Crafts from Puerto Rican artists, also presenting the work of artisans currently displaced by Hurricane Maria. Also, “Coquito” tasting by Coquito Masters!
Loisaida Inc.
710 East 9th Street NY, NY 10009
Tale 53; Snowhite is a sinister story told inside an intriguing wooden artefact that houses a toy theatre (with two- dimentional painted puppets moving on tracks), objects, a kamishibai (for backdrop changes) and a cranky or moving panorama. It is based on “Snowhite”, the creation of reknowned Spanish author and illustrator Ana Juan.
Deborah Hunt, (theatre maker, maskbuilder and operator, puppeteer, teacher and autor) has adapted and directed the tale and manipulates the puppets and backdrops. Shanti Lalita, (cellist, poet and performer) is the composer and live musician.
Far from the disneyesque version of Snow White, our tale relates the life of a young woman who falls prey to a blood thirsty stepmother, an hostile city, hustling dwarves and a rapacious prince. Based on the original story Tale 53 (The Little Snow White) of the Grimm Brothers published in 1812, the story of Ana Juan offers a biting and pertinent stare at the situation of women still relevant to our times. Justaposed with the beauty of the puppets, objects and painted backdrops, Tale 53;Snowhite promises a unique theatrical experience.
Toy theatre is a kind of theatre in miniature that flourished in the 19th century in Europe. The small theatres, scenery, backdrops and characters were printed on paper, painted and cutout and the stories were presented in the salas and drawing rooms of private houses, often accompanied with live music.
Hunt has presented the work in Puerto Rico (San German and San Juan) at the Odin Teatret in Denmark and now in New York. It will be presented at the Festival Internacional de Títeres de Matanzas en Cuba in 2018. Additionally I can offer a daylong workshop using the artefact of the show (toy theatre, kamishibai, cranky) as a point of departure. Participants work in groups creating short stories using these techniques.
Featuring:
Victor Hernandez Cruz
Urayoan Noel
and Edwin Torres
This event is a reading, performance, and discussion among three Puerto Rican luminaries, celebrating the publication of Hernandez’ new book, “Beneath The Spanish” (Coffee House Press). It will take place at our Center on Wednesday, October 25th at 6:30pm
ABOUT THE BOOK
Beneath the Spanish is history, the clash and melt of cultures, the conquest of the New World, colonialism, bilingualism, fragmentation, and cubism. Poems built of tobacco, sugar, café; Spanish, Arabic, English; José Martí, Federico García Lorca, and William Carlos Williams. A history and exploration of Hernández Cruz’s Caribbean roots as well as a documentation of and counterpoint to the origin of the European cultural intrusion into the New World, Beneath the Spanish deconstructs and reconstructs a wounded history, offering a prayer for communication between distances, oceans, music, dance, and mountains, revealing the past in the present moment we live.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
VICTOR HERNANDEZ CRUZ is the author of several collections of poetry including, most recently, The Mountain in the Sea and In the Shadow of AlAndalus. Featured in Bill Moyers’s Language of Life series, Cruz’s collection Maraca was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall and Griffin Poetry Prizes. He divides his time between Morocco and his native Puerto Rico.
We are Puerto Rican artists living in New York who have collaborated extensively with eco-conscious nonprofit organizations, journalists and media.
In the wake of Hurricane Maria we conducted a quick assessment of needs and have assembled a list of immediate relief items focusing on portability, reuse, waste reduction and effectiveness in off grid situations.
We took this terrible situation as an opportunity to rebuild in sustainable ways, especially given the dilapidated & dangerous state of the island’s waste management which has produced toxic ashes in now hurricane stricken areas.
Visit EcoKitPuertoRico.org
You can help by fulfilling orders here. These resources will be delivered and shipped from our Center directly to trusted sources on the island.
Place an order for items on the ‘NEEDS LIST’ page
Ship items to our pick up center:
Eco-Kits Duffle Help
Loisaida Inc. Center
710 East 9th Street
New York, NY 10009
Sorted items are immediately given to our volunteer travelers.
Eco-kits get picked up at airports in Puerto Rico by our contacted community coordinators and delivered to the following list of grass-roots organizations:
Iser Caribe is our fiscal sponsor, a non profit ecological organization based in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.
Loisaida Inc. Center, extending its support to the Puerto Rican community is housing our drop-off and pickups in its Lower East Side Location.
Creatives Mean Business, supporting with communications, and design needs.
Beneficiary Organizations in Puerto Rico, these organizations are the grass-roots recipients so far of the Pre-Assembled Kits:
Taller Salud
Casa Ruth
ASPPRO
Overseas Press Club
Comedores Sociales de Puerto Rico
Centro de Periodismo Investigativo
Asociación de Foto Periodista de Puerto Rico
Casa Pueblo
Boys & Girls Club of Puerto Rico
Boricuá: Asociación Boricua de Agricultura Ecológica
Farmer Foot Brigades
Colectivo Vueltabajo
Colectivo AgroEcologico Guayabacherry
Galeria Betances
Ridge to Reefs
Biblioteca Juvenil de Mayaguez
Planeta Feliz
Loisaida Inc. Center and Afro-Inspira presents:
Merengue Prieto New York 2017
Marily Gallardo, choreographer/artivist and founder of Kalalú Danza Artes Escénicas, has come from Dominican Republic to share with us her work and provide a master dance class, interactive talk and healing circle. All funds are to support Kalalú Danza Project in keep moving forward their mission and work in Los Mercedes, Dominican Republic.
You are coordially invited to:
MASTER DANCE CLASS: Merengue Prieto / rhythm dance session – traveling steps with TAMBORA. Incorporate another perspective that focuses on the origins of popular tradition and its makers through the execution of poly rhythmic-gestural patterns and to enjoy “merengue” afro.
INTERACTIVE TALK: “Mujeres de la Candela” (Women of the Fire) / pedagogical experience on identity and black women power such as how women power and values are transmitted within the afro-descendant communities, like courage, daily intelligence, and spiritual beliefs, etc.
HEALING RITUAL: Creative full moon circle.
Class starts prompltly at 5pm followed by talk and healing circle.
Suggested Donation: $25
This event is FREE, no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Please bring comfortable clothes and shoes.
_____________________________________________________________________
Mission:
Kalalú Danza, Dominican Republic
For Kalalú Danza, the Afro-antillian concept is presented as one that encompasses and is a synthesis of thought and expression of the socio-cultural diversity of the Caribbean. From that premise, Kalalú’s pedagogical approach affirms a particular study of rhythm and movement, of its oral tradition, and symbolism which influenced by “the Afro” can be found in the popular artistic manifestations of such cultures. Such artistic manifestations provides the basis to generate performance, scenic, and pedagogical proposals which contributes to the development of the local communities as well as the individual and social transformation.
Come one, Come All!!
Loisaida Inc., Acacia Network and the Institute for the Puerto Rican/Hispanic Elderly invite you to experience the uplifting power of music with Broadway performers from Sing for Hope!
The Sing for Hope vision of art for all is informed by our belief that the arts have unique power to uplift, unite, and transform individuals and communities. Our outreach programs in under-resourced areas – from schools to community centers to healthcare facilities – demonstrate this every day.
Each Sing for Hope program is defined by the volunteer service of artists, the needs of the community, and our belief in the transformative power of the arts.
Loisaida Inc. and The Little Art Workshop present:
The program is based on the idea of taking and the largest object in this case the universe, and begin to construct maps and from there go to the smaller one the brain, in this workshop we make different artistic approaches to maps including the city/neighborhood, the country, the house and the body.
The program is made for kids starting at 5 years going up to 12, designed for groups up to 8 to 10 kids per class.
On the High Line at 14th St.
In partnership with the Friends of the High Line, join us for a day of dancing, music, and creating with recycled materials. Portions of this program will be offered in Spanish and English.
This program is geared towards children ages 0-12.
RSVP for this program beginning June 7. To be notified, please join our mailing list.
High Line members may pre-register for this event beginning on June 2.
Not yet a member? Join today.
If you’re an existing member and lost your card, send us an email.
Schedule of events:
10 – 11 AM: Storytime for children ages 0-5 years old by Poncili Creacion
10 AM – 1 PM: Ongoing activities: mobile garden with a Friends of the High Line gardener, worm bin exploration, and mural art project led by Poncili Creacion
11:30 AM: Performance by Poncili Creacion
12:00 PM: Performance by Poncili Creacion (repeat)
12:30 PM: Performance by The Brandon Project
All children must be accompanied by a caregiver at all times.
This program is held rain or shine.
SUPPORT
High Line Families is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council.
© 2000–2017 Friends of the High Line
La Lucha Continua The Struggle Continues: 1985 & 2017
“Top of the list at New York Times of must-see galleries in the Lower East Side!”
In 1985, Eva Cockcroft, founder of Artmakers Inc., gathered together 34 “artists of conviction” to create 26 political murals on four vacant buildings overlooking the then neglected La Plaza Cultural community garden. Known as La Lucha Continua The Struggle Continues, the murals addressed six political issues: gentrification, police brutality, immigration, feminism, and opposition of U.S. intervention in Central America and apartheid in South Africa. Today, the garden is thriving, the issues remain of grave concern, and only two of the murals still exist, the paint cracked and faded.
Opening Date:
Saturday, April 8, 2017
Now Extended through July 31st 2017
Viewing Hours:
Thursday, Friday, Saturday
Noon to 6:00 pm
and by appointment.
Organizer:
Artmakers Inc.
For more info and media queries: Jane Weissman, ArtmakersNYC@aol.com, (212) 989-3006
Host Venue:
Loisaida Inc. Center
(646) 726-4715
April 19, 6:30-8 PM. Panel: Loisaida: Then & Now. With Chino Garcia, Maria Dominguez, Noah Jemisin, Kristin Reed, Seth Tobocman. Libertad Guerra, moderator
April 26, 6:30-8 PM. Illustrated Talk: Protest & Celebration: Community Murals of the 1970s & 1980s in Loisaida and on the Historic Lower East Side. Jane Weissman, presenter
April 30. 1 PM Gallery Talk / 2 PM Garden Visit to La Plaza Cultural at 9th & C. (Gallery remains open to 5 PM)
*SECOND ILLUSTRATED TALK, BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND*
May 11, 7:00-8:30 PM. Illustrated Talk: Protest & Celebration: Community Murals of the 1970s & 1980s in Loisaida and on the Historic Lower East Side. Jane Weissman, presenter
*May 23, 6:30-8 PM. Illustrated Talk: La Lucha Continua The Struggle Continues: 1985 & 2017. Jane Weissman, presenter. City Lore Gallery (56 East 1st Street). Also co-sponsored by Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation & City Lore
*May 27, 2 PM Gallery Talk / 3 PM Garden Visit to La Plaza Cultural at East 9th Street & Avenue C Unless noted, all events take place at The Loisaida Center (710 East 9th Street, NYC) Part of the 2017 Loisaida Festival Weekend Programming.
All events are co-sponsored by Artmakers Inc. and The Loisaida Center
*In conjunction with Lower East Side History Month
Media Queries: Jane Weissman, ArtmakersNYC@aol.org, 212.989.3006
Co-produced by MEZCOLANZA NYC & Loisaida Inc.
Brief description of participants and their performance, visual, theatrical or musical pieces:
1. Teresa Hernández / Performance / 15 min
Title: (A) parecer
About the piece: Performance-space intervention and body. Appearance is a human condition that reveals the uniqueness of each in the encounter with the-othrx. Ten years ago he works with a woman dressed in a black suit. She has named her-the walker. She goes out and walks in and out, complains, reveals in she a-seem what she lives.
About the artist: Stage performer. Actress, dancer, creator-interpreter, author and director of her own texts, self-management activist. She has spent more than twenty-five years research and practice from the frontiers of dance, theater and performance. Looking for other ways of doing, narrating and being on stage, starting with the integral study of the body, space, and its own text. Their themes surround; Identities as shifting and complex lands; Art and it´s established canons, violence and power with its multiple faces and bifurcations. Precariousness is a fundamental part of its ethics. Hernández’s career has been recognized by the United States Artists Foundation under the discipline of Theater Arts. (USA Role Fellow-2011). She is the second Puerto Rican on the island to receive such distinction, being the only one in the field of theater. She holds a master’s degree in “Management and Cultural Management” from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras precinct.
2. Kairiana Núñez / Performance / 10 min
Title: La basquetbolista
About the piece: Set in a basketball game’s tight quarter, a Puerto Rican basketball player has to row hard against the opposite team’s defense in the presence of a referee that unfairly penalizes her and does not call the true fault.
About the artist: Actress taurine and Puerto Rican. Graduated from the Drama Department of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, (2009). He began his career in 1996 with Pedro Santaliz, and later became a founding member of the theater group in the streets Jóvenes del 98 under the direction of Maritza Pérez Otero. Later he continued his training with Puerto Rican teachers and artists Rosa Luisa Márquez, Teresa Hernández, Viveca Vázquez, among others. In Argentina, she trained at Sportivo Teatral with Mirta Bogdasarian and Ricardo Bartís (2011-2013, Buenos Aires), and was part of the Quinto Piso Theater Companies, directed by Daniel Godoy, and El Rizoma Collective (2011-2016, Buenos Aires) . In 2017 he returns to Puerto Rico, where despite the imbalance, she bets on continuing to grow artistically, professionally, Ideologically and humanely.
3. Mickey Negrón / Performance / 18 min
Title: Transgressed Body
About the piece: An emigrant, homosexual, transvesti. Strength in the voices of the minority.
About the artist: Mickey Negrón Puerto Rican artist. Artistic director of the Asuntos Efímeros art platform. Enthusiastic writer. Free thinker. Nonconforming gender. Cultural manager. Singer. Moving. Student who never finishes. Fan of pop singers and frustrated athlete. It just premiered as a critic. Currently works an artistic residence at the Center of Fine Arts to be presented in August 2017 and coordinates the second edition of Quiebre: International Performance Festival in Puerto Rico.
4. Yan Christian Collazo / Performance / 15 min
Title: Untitled
About the piece: Character that intervenes in the intermediates, comments the pieces, is ally of the public. Uses a half mask makes jokes about the current situation on the island in relation to the floating islands that we are all talking about individualism, migration and the condition of the migrant.
About the artist: Yan Christian Collazo: Actor, poet, creator, dancer. Puerto Rican. He holds a Bachelors degree in Drama with a second concentration in Foreign Languages specialized in Italian. Studied at “Universitá Cattólica del Sacro Cuore” in Milan, Italy; Specialized in poetry and Italian literature. He took workshops with Latin American theater groups including Malayerba from Ecuador and Yuyachkani from Peru. De Clown with maestro Luis Oliva of Puerto Rico, David Martínez Sánchez of Spain and with the group “Pig Iron Theater Company” of Philadelphia. In 2012, he was part of the group La Pata de Cabra, acting in the play ‘Cortadito or Capuchino’, directed by his teacher Rosa Luisa Márquez. The Festival of Theater of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture was invited. He obtained an MFA in Ensemble Based Theater. He was selected to participate in the “Mad River Festival” along with the company of the school “Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theater. He has been invited to the “2017 River Theater Festival” in Blue Lake, CA and to “California Summer School for the Arts” in Los Angeles, CA. After completing his short tour with his thesis, he will move to New York with a view to forming a multidisciplinary theater group and establishing a working and collaboration bridge between Puerto Rico, New York, California and the world.
5. Awilda Rodríguez Lora / Theater Lab MC / Contemporary Dance / 19 min
Title: Untitled
About the piece: Contemporary dance movement piece that accounts for its status as a migrant who absorbed American culture and made it theirs.
About the artist: Awilda Rodríguez-Lora is a performance choreographer and cultural entrepreneur. Born in Mexico, raised in Puerto Rico, and working in-between North and South America and the Caribbean, Rodríguez Lora’s performances traverse multiple geographic histories and realities. In this way, her work promotes progressive dialogues regarding hemispheric colonial legacies, and the unstable categories of race, gender, class, and sexuality. Rodríguez Lora is currently a host/coordinator at La Rosario in Santurce (Puerto Rico) where she is creating, researching, and producing her life project, La Mujer Maravilla, while developing new strategies for the sustainability of live arts in Puerto Rico. After more than ten years of work as a fully independent artist, she is committed to further studying how artistic economies can be harnessed to support alternative forms of life rooted in communality, creativity, and social justice. laperformera.org.
6. Jeanne D Arc / Dance / Flamenco / 15 min
Title: Untitled
About the piece: Contemporary dance & Flamenco intertwined with poems of protest by Federico García Lorca
About the artist: Jeanne D Arc Casas (1984) was born in Aibonito, Puerto Rico. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Individualized Studies from the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. In 2011 she earned a master’s degree in performance and choreography at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque where she was a Moderna and Flamenco dance instructor. Since January 2012 is part of the company Soledad Barrio y Noche Flamenca. She has made a large number of tours in the United States, Canada and Argentina Europe and the East. It also teaches lessons in modern dance, contemporary dance and body movement in different schools and universities. Recently Jeanne D ‘Arc Houses participated in the program of residential artifacts of the Fine Arts Center Luis A. Ferré de Santurce, PR where shows the show Hij @ s de la Bernarda directed by the teacher Rosa Luisa Márquez.
7. Poncili Creación Artist Collective/ Performance / Art Installation
About their piece: During the month of May Poncili Creación will be studying the Loisaida community and its mural history in order to produce a performance piece that speaks about the short comings that the community has faced in the past and still face today.
Inspired by Loisaida, Poncili Creación will create several of their unique sculptures based on Loisaida’s murals and community. Using different elements they will create a performance to be presented at the Theater Lab.
About the artists: Poncili Creación conceptualizes and designs interactive experiences for all ages. The company has been conspiring for over half a decade, in which they have shared their work with several countries throughout their international tours to the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean. Their creation technique consists of several disciplines which lead them to create complex structures that resemble different forms through different mechanisms and means of creation. These objects, often humanized, can induce placebos and metaphorical experiences to the spectating mind that often goes from passive interaction to active observation, in the attempt of decoding what happens and transforms before their eye. They currently reside in Puerto Rico and dedicate their time to the study of objects and reality.
8. Yaraní del Valle & Gabo Lugo / Music / Performance / 20 min
Title: Pura’s Lágrimas
About the piece: Musical project developed by Yaraní del Valle and Gabo Lugo that fuses pop music with electronic sound supports and stage theatricality.aims to comment and provoke conversations about identity, gender inequality, her experience as an immigrant and the devastating effects of colonialism, the political condition that Puerto Rico has been a victim of for more than a century.
About the artist: Yaraní Del Valle Piñero is a Puerto Rican actor, singer, dancer, educator, cultural promoter, and activist based in New York City. Her interdisciplinary approach to artistic creation has led her to train and to collaborate with theater directors, choreographers, musicians, filmmakers, writers, and educators as a performer, co-creator and/or curriculum developer. Some of her projects include CHAMACAS, ChicaPReneurs, Seniors In Motion and Pura’s Lágrimas and latest co-founder of Caicú, a nonprofit organization that serves as a cultural platform to empower Puerto Rican artists beyond geographical barriers.
9. Lizbeth Román / Music / 40 min
About the piece: Original music that fuses the Caribbean bohemian with multiple rhythms and a Lyric of the everyday that joins the poetic with the street jargon.
About the artist: Lizbeth Román is a Puerto Rican songwriter, theater and singer. With her scenic force accompanied by the porosity and intensity of her voice, Lizbeth has established herself in the independent scene with her original music that fuses the Caribbean and bohemian vibe with multiple rhythms and a lyric of the everyday that connects the poetic with the street jargon.
10. Alejandro Aldarondo / Art Installation / Site-Specific
Title: Durational
About the piece: Site-specific art installation uses threads or strings that seeks to trace our multiple routes. Uniting as a collective, migrants from here and there. Respecting our qualities and differences, exalting the reasons of movement of each one, looking for a common place from which to leave, is born this installation of threads that looks for the earth and wants to take root.
About the artist: Visual artist Puerto Rican, is dedicated to build facilities with textiles and thread in open spaces. Design and make clothes. Artist / installer, performer, designer, costume designer and dancer. He has a bachelors degree in Interdisciplinary Studies illustration and Drama. Associate Degree in Fashion Design. Has worked on several projects for: Wire / Mezzanine · PR / NYC / The great fantastic circus and the fashion event: Bohemian Sunset.
About TheaterLab co-producers:
MEZCOLANZA NYC 2017 – 12th Edition
Mezcolanza is a cultural platform born in 2013 in the city of Buenos Aires produced by Helen Ceballos. It gathers short pieces of artists and multi-disciplinary collectives in order to maintain a live and open stage for the processes and creations of emerging artists in different cities around the world. We aim to erase distances and expose pieces of author, which account for the social reality that is lived in our changing environments. To date, Mezcolanza has hosted over 250 artists among the cities of Buenos Aires, New York and San Juan de Puerto Rico. On this occasion, Mezcolanza visits the city of New York for the third time and celebrates its twelfth edition. We have convened 14 multidisciplinary artists. These artists work in theater, performance, movement, music, improvisation, construction, musical composition, costume making, sculptures, sound and video art. In this edition of the Festival Loisaida and within the framework of the Theater Lab. Mezcolanza presents the urban interventions of 14 outstanding artists from the local and international scene of Puerto Rico, Latin America and the United States, interlacing the scenic discourses of these creative artists with their status as permanent immigrants.