Water.Bodies.Land Performance Program

Welcome to Water.Bodies.Land, a celebration of black women through poetry, song and dance. Our intention is to offer healing medicine rooted in the words of some of our nation’s most powerful poets whose art offers guidance, balm, inspiration, strength, grace.

We believe that black women’s voices must be heard and acknowledged, and that these acts are essential to our survival as a human community. For we are part of the natural fabric of this world.

We are so glad that you're here with us. Thank you!

'Water.Bodiess.Land' was made possible with the support of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, generous friends, family, donors, audience members, & the AMAZING team at SOMArts. We are grateful!

listen, you a wonder. you a city of a woman. you got a geography of your own. listen, somebody need a map to understand you. somebody need directions to move around you. listen, woman, you not a noplace anonymous girl; mister with his hands on you he got his hands on some damn body!

Song for a Thin Sister

Audre Lorde

Either heard or taught as girls we thought that skinny was funny or a little bit silly and feeling a pull toward the large and the colorful I would joke you when you grew too thin. But your new kind of hunger makes me chilly like danger for I see you forever retreating shrinking into a stranger in flight— and growing up black and fat I was so sure that skinny was funny or silly but always white.

Boxes of Andromeda

Athena Dixon

There are no such things as domestic goddesses anymore. Sundays aren’t filled with radio static and good

R&B. No lemon Pledge/ dust rag/ t-shirt remnants. There are no more altars.

In my house there never were. My mother, hearty Midwesterner, swathed in sleeveless work

shirts and steel-toed boots was not delicate. She was not always clean.

She chained to a rock of dust and soot and manual labor: chained to early morning

piece work; and desperate need for overtime. My mother was a goddess of rough heels and unpainted toes.

Nothing sweet about the sweat clinging to her armpits and forearms and breasts and back

and forehead creased and pinched and all things pained at the end of the day.

Each night her head lolled against the back of the sofa, snapping back when she left herself falling. Snapped back because the rock

of dust and soot and manual labor never quite left her skin. Was not quite hidden by the plum lipstick puckering her mouth or the fleeting hints of perfume that lingered longer in the bathroom then it did on her flesh. But she was woman. She was god. Mule and spike and post and pine.

A cobble of things lifted and stored, but not delicate. A woman commanding space in circles manual labor afforded.

That piece work allowed. That over time the overtime let her daughter know the joys of hands free of callous and a whole body.

To know the sleep of falling, To know the snap of falling, To know the altar and the pearl.

What My Child Learns of the Sea

Audre Lorde

What my child learns of the sea of the summer thunder of the riddles that hide in the curve of spring she will learn in my twilights and childlike revise every autumn.

What my child learns as her winters grow into time has ripened in my own body to enter her eyes with first light.

This is why more than blood or the milk I have given one day a strange girl will step to the back of a mirror cutting my ropes of sea and thunder and spring. of the way she will taste her autumnstoast-brittle or warmer than sleepand the words she will use for winter I stand already condemned.

fromThe Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

Earth Eyes

Amanda Gorman

What we have done.

Currently our jaw is clamped down, our shoulders nailed to the ears, bones braced for brutal battle. By Think of the next generation we mean: Every day this very ground spoils beneath us, for we are bringing to all the ends of the Earth the end of all the Earth. Please believe us when we say we, too, ache to imagine something new Reparation lies not in the land we own, but the very land we owe, the soil & the toil we thieved in from the start. Nothing is a grander summitry than this: water, drinkable; our air, breathable; birds, built & blurred on a breeze; trees heaving huge sighs into the heavens; our children, giggling & gilded in grass. Earnest for the first time, we must earn this turned Earth back. Now we are begged to save it. We screech with kids who must fix the world because braving it is no longer enough. The youth will save us, they say. But even that is its own release. Our short lives now aimed at the oily-headed monsters that reared their teeth before we even gave our first wet croak. Generations of the past order, be our recruits, not our rescues. Oh, how we want our parents red & restless, as wild & dying for a difference as we are.

from Call Us What We Carry

Meta Rhetoric

June Jordan

Homophobia

Racism

Self-definition

Revolutionary struggle

the subject tonight for public discussion is our love we sit apart apparently at opposite ends of a line and I feel the distance between my eyes between my legs a dry

dust topography of our separation

In the meantime people dispute the probabilities of union

They reminisce about the chasmic histories no ideology yet dares to surmount

I disagree with you

You disagree with me

The problem seems to be a matter of scale

Can you give me the statistical dimensions of your mouth on my mouth your breasts resting on my own?

I believe the agenda involves several inches (at least) of coincidence and endless recovery

My hope is that our lives will declare this meeting open

Three/Quarters Time

Nikki Giovanni

Dance with me…dance with me…we are the song…we are the music…Dance with me…

Waltz me…twirl me…do-si-do please…peppermint twist me…philly

Squeeze

Cha cha cha…tango…two step too…

Cakewalk…charleston…bougaloo…

Dance with me…dance with me…all night long… We are the music…we are the song…

fromThe Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni

The Clitoris

Nikky Finney

is 9 cm deep in the pelvis.

Most of it scrunched & hidden.

New studies show the shy curl to be longer than the penis, but like Africa, the continent, it is never drawn to size.

Mapmakers, and others, who draw important things for a living, do not want us to know this.

In some females, the clitoris stretches, unfurls, 8 in, with 2 to 3.5 in, shaft free, outside the body.

The longest clitoris of record Has been found in the blue whale.

In water desire can rise, honor sea levels, ignore land-locked cartographers.

In water, desire refuses retreat.

from Head Off & Split

Haint

Teri Cross Davis

no amount of di hemorrhaging a could’ve erased the pulp of your made with the s of a still forming science tells me you are still whi inside my bones that years from cut me to the m and microscope the rings of your no matter the in coupling of timi even now when disappoints our do you still cling to let another ca home?

from

poem in praise of menstruation

lucille clifton

if there is a river more beautiful than this bright as the blood red edge of the moon if there is a river more faithful than this returning each month to the same delta if there is a river braver than this coming and coming in a surge of passion, of pain if there is

a river

more ancient than this daughter of eve mother of cain and of abel if there is in the universe such a river if there is some where water more powerful than this wild water pray that it flows also through animals beautiful and faithful and ancient and female and brave

from The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton: 1965-2010

Out in the Country of My Country (Peterborough, New Hampshire)

June Jordan

Filing my eyes with flowers of no name that I can call aloud: This northernmost retreat of white pine or aching birch of meadow mouth opening the body of a perf l d that throws away birdsong on the rushes of hard rain

Testing my heart with precipice and crest accumulating timber trails or fern beside the mica sparkling road that peaks at mountain heights of granite situated next to purple lilac feeling out the light of short cold days

Choosing my mind between mosquitos and the moon that dominates a darkness larger than the stars close by: I (what do you suppose)

I battle with the spirits of a winterkill that spoils the summer berries: Blunts the nipple points of love

Chasing my face among the displacements of a stream I behold the Indian: I become the slave again I am hunting/ I am the hunted in these snowy woods again I am the eagle/I am scrambling on the summit rocks I slip I scream I soar I seek the dancing of the spirits from the grave from Directed by Desire

Still I Rise

Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard

You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

THE ARTISTIC TEAM

AMIE COTA

Producer/ Composer / Vocalist

SARAH CROWELL

Director / Choreographer in collaboration with dancers

NICOLE KLAYMOON

Choreographic Collaborator

Poet

NAKACHI CLARK-KASIMU CLARISSA DYAS NY’AJA ROBERSON Dancer / Choreographer Dancer / Choreographer

MAKHISSA SANO

MusiccomposedbyAmieCota

ChoreographycreatedincollaborationbyCrowell, Dyas,Klaymoon,Roberson&Sano

Video&SounddesignbyAmieCota&SarahCrowell

LightingbySarahCrowell

CostumesbyAngieWilson

StageManagementc/oChijunduOkonmah

TIA ALLEN TITILAYO AYANGADE ALEXANDRIA HILL viola cello violin (LT) (CNTR) (RT) Dancer / Choreographer

VIDEO CREDITS

Note: Water.Bodies.Land features archival photos and video footage. Select credits listed as known:

Nikky Finney - National Book Award Acceptance Speech (excerpt), 2011 California Beaches: 3 Hours of Soothing Meditation on The Carmel Coast, MyTranquilitee

lucille clifton - “homage to my hips”, BillMoyers.com, date unknown

Maya Angelou - Maya Angelou: Raising the New Generation, visionaryproject, 2002

“Brown Skin Girl” (video excerpt), Beyonce, 2020

Amanda Gorman – “Earthrise” (excerpt), The Climate Reality Project, 2018 Climate Change | Short Film (excerpts), Philip Kapadia, 2019

One Earth - Environmental Short Film (excerpts), Romain Pennes, 2020

“Brown Skin Girl” (excerpt), Beyonce, 2020

June Jordan – June Jordan at the Brockport Writers Forum, 1981

Audre Lorde –“ on being a Black Lesbian in the 50s” (video excerpt), from Before Stonewall, 1984

Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde reads “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power” (excerpt), date and original source unknown

Blooming Flowers Timelapse! (excerpts), Relaxation Time, 2021

“I'LL KNOCK HER THE F OUT Alycia Baumgardner post-fight Interview” (excerpt), DAZN Boxing, 2023 lucille clifton

Introduction to “ poem in praise of menstruation,” audio Recorded Nov. 30, 1989, in the Montpelier Room at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., for the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature

Missouri Representative Cori Bush, Representative Barbara Lee of California - US congresswomen including Cori Bush share their own abortion stories, Guardian News, 2021

3 Hours of 4k Drone Winter Scenery in New Hampshire (excerpts), Arthur Caverly, 2023

USA Northeast Scenic Nature Relaxation 4K Drone Film (excerpts), Destination Paradise, 2021

Maya Angelou

“Still I Rise” (excerpt), from 'Maya Angelou - Live and Unplugged ” Filmed in the Lewisham Hippodrome and aired in 1987.

lucille clifton –“what the mirror said,” (audio) Lucille Clifton talks of her books of poems, including "Good Times", the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society, 1991

–

Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook

Articles inside