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Thursday night (September 12) at the Ruthven Natural History Museum, Ann Arbor Danceworks put on an encore performance of Within/Beyond. The show was comprised of modern choreography inspired by scientific research at the University of Michigan and intriguing stories across the disciplines (including my personal favorite, a solo that told the harrowing tale of Henrietta Lacks).

Though I was not moved by a piece where dancers wore pink and orange colored outfits and tossed bouncy balls around (to illustrate the cellular process of autophagy) I was moved by everything else.

My favorite pieces were ‘HeLa’ and ‘From Afar: The Loneliest Star’.

‘HeLa’ was a solo performance that felt more like interpretive dance or spoken word performance. It was essentially the dancer (the beautiful and talented Robin Wilson) boldly telling the world the story of Henrietta Lacks.  Lacks was a cervical cancer patient in the 1950s whose cells and cancer tissue was taken and used without her permission.  “I’m not talking about an arm,” Wilson said, holding up her arm, “Or a leg” she said, bringing her pointed foot up in the air with great precision.  “I am talking about tissue” she said, running her hands down the front of her body.  As Wilson spoke, gesticulated, and brilliantly articulated the injustice of Lacks’s unknown cell donation, I was transfixed in my seat.  Feeling the insides of my body as I breathed and Wilson drew cuts of breath as she flung her hands out, grasping one wrist with the other to physically embody the imprisonment of Lacks’s DNA in the hands of scientists.

‘The Loneliest Star’ was one of three pieces in the ‘From Afar’ suite, all of which centered around the cosmos.  These pieces were by far the most aesthetically pleasing as the dancers moved in unison, creating swirling circles with their light, cream-colored costumes and curved arms.

On the whole, it was an eye-opening experience that demonstrated the human-side of science.  Even science that is very vast or very small can be brought to life when enough raw emotion is fostered into dance.

Each semester at University has had its distinct theme:
Fall 2011: HOLY SHIT THIS IS COLLEGE. THIS IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE GAY, TO FAIL, TO PUT MYSELF OUT THERE, TO NEVER SLEEP, AND TO NEVER STOP DANCING.
Winter 2012: Oh, this is what it’s like to never see the sun and to never stop reading and to lose my eyesight and myself.
Fall 2012: This is what love feels like, this is what it’s like to have people who get you and are there for you, this is what experience feels like.
Winter 2012: Things fall apart, things will be ok, the world doesn’t exist but it’s prettier that way.
Fall 2013: Summer can last into fall but winter comes quick and this is what it’s like to dive into a snowbank of knowledge and feels and space.
Winter 2013: I know myself and I love myself. I will fall I will cry I will learn I will grow I will succeed and I will become closer to myself.

After 6 (woah!) semesters I can firmly say that I am closer to knowing myself than ever before. I have changed so much and I will continue to change but I finally feel like I’m am reaching a comfortable plateau of selfhood.

I realize that I have people who are there for me. My family has grown out from the same house to inhabit two states thousands of miles away and somedays I only love technology to hear their voices. I am so happy that I live with a great friend and that I am only minutes and miles away from others. I am so blessed to have a network that believe in the same things I do and that, no matter what, they will be there to keep me rooted and keep me challenged so I can continue to grow. My network remains friendly, leftist, queer, and anti-society, and they let me know that my feelings are always valid.

But outside of the family I have and have created there are days where I seem to disappear. I float between walls and windows and lose myself to others and to clouds. But I remain trapped within the world and reality and I know my limits and know my comfort. I can feel a landslide and can feel destruction and that feeling morphs into self-care that I have finally honed.

University has taught me so much. I have taught myself so much. I am being taught everyday. Knowledge has gained an immense value this semester because it comes in the form of classes, groups, friends, parties, clubs, reading groups, books, music, and the sun. Knowing that knowing comes from everything in my life is comforting.

And after reaching this plateau I sometimes take excursions off the cliff and into the hidden depths of lakes and potholes that remain ever present. I let myself feel too much, I invest too much. And this surplus of trust that spills over into, now, ruin has helped me stay vulnerable. Vulnerability has been my biggest teacher this semester and that’s ok.

So at the end of the day, the end of the semester, and the end of winter I can say that I at least know and love myself. Some will enter my life and then leave, some will stay for a while and part ways, some will be taken from me. But there is a beautiful art to knowing myself and loving myself that I can finally say that I am starting to understand. And only in this position now can I say that I am so happy to continue to grow, to love, to learn, and to go blue.

queer love, rainbows, fire, and poetry.
until next semester,
taylor.

As Finals begin to roll around, the necessity for pleasant studying music grows exponentially. Fortunately, the funky soul duo “Milo & Otis” from Chicago supplies the perfect 11-track tape for note-taking and flashcard-making. Technically, they released their debut piece The Joy almost a year ago; however, following their stop in Ann Arbor last weekend during their Spring 2013 tour, I am just hopping on their soul-train now. Milo & Otis (adorably named after the Japanese movie about the best friendship of a cat and dog) consist of Owen Hill and Jamila Woods. Hill produces, composes and engineers the beats, while Woods writes the lyrics and soothes everyone with her magical voice. That’s the recipe: Otis lays down the track and Milo builds a mountain of entertainment on it.

When listening to the entire album for the first few times, the tracks will inevitably blend together into a somewhat indistinguishable buzz of mellow, electronic soul music. Which is not an established genre of music, making the pair all the more unique. Otis uses a wide variety of horns, electronic amplification, keyboard and drums to assemble the various beats, however they all have a similar tone and pitch. The only major tempo fluctuations occur in the songs, “Black Sheep” which speeds up the usual pace, and “1108 Troy Davis” which slows things down a bit. The album also adds variety with its featuring artists, including most notably Chance The Rapper, (another Chicago native gaining fame by the day) Nico Segal and Enrico X. The guest artists are critical to the album’s success because they provide a needed and wonderful compliment to Woods’ voice. Not that she needs any substitution, (I could listen to her for days straight with no break) but as the pair obviously has some Hip Hop influence, more than one MC is needed on an album.

As you spend more time listening, certain tracks stand out. The album begins with “Can’t Stop Now,” the second-most defining song of the album. Woods starts with the quote, “Your life’s work begins when your great joy meets the world’s great hunger” a line that sets the impression and purpose of the entire work. The Joy, unsurprisingly, encourages the pursuit of passion, and the value of chasing dreams. She preaches, “Who says everybody gotta know what they meant to do in this world/All I know is what I got in my head, I guess I might as well start there.” This mentality is continued across the next ten songs. My favorite track, “Ars Poetica,” finishes with Woods passionately repeating, “Give me something to believe in.” The song “1108 Troy Davis” also stands out, as it is easily the most moving and personal moment. Woods reminisces on the day Troy Davis was killed, singing “I dreamed he was a bird, I told him: they cage our kind, baby so fly away.” The album finishes with the song titled “The Joy” which, as songs go, is practically perfect. It seems impossible not to relate to the lyrics, “Look at your life, look at the joy you give. Look at the world, look at what’s left to live.” It is that optimism, that personal reflection that sets this band apart. In the midst of the current pop music frenzy, Milo and Otis manage to produce an entirely genuine, artistic creation that boasts impeccable, soulful vocals, a groovy, unique sound and a delightful attitude. They simply are a joy.

Listen to “The Joy“

Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist and photographer, is one of the most outspoken critics of the Communist government. He is internationally known for his witty and almost taunting art which challenge not only the methods and ideologies of the Chinese government but also our ideologies. Principles we hold so dear, he brushes aside as useless or foolish.

One of my favorite pieces of his is the series of pictures (“tripartite photograph” for all the photography buffs out there) he took of himself breaking a Han dynasty urn (approximately 2000 years old) in 1995. This piece is (aptly) named “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn”.

This was the first Ai Weiwei piece I saw, featured in an article when he was first arrested, back when I didn’t even know who he was. When I first saw it, I winced. Who did this man think he was, dropping such a precious urn, which holds so much history and heritage, as if it was nothing? But, as I later learned, that’s the point. He was bashing our obsession with idols and images, our idea that by worshipping an image or an object, we worship what it stands for – culture and civilization. This image has become, ironically, an icon of iconoclasm.

But perhaps, it goes deeper than that. Maybe he was bashing the Chinese government, demonstrating how carelessly it destroyed temples and historical artifacts to more effectively deliver its narrative of China’s past and future. Or maybe he was making a statement, showing how old culture must be destroyed in order to make way for the new. Here’s part of the caption of this picture on its online auction page:

While the triptych gained notoriety as an iconoclastic gesture, it encapsulates several broader constants in Ai’s work: the socio-political commentary on the random nature of vectors of power; questions of authenticity and value (vis-à-vis the artist’s comment that the value of “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn” has today exceeded that of the once-prized urn itself), and the cycle of creative destruction necessary for any culture’s survival and evolution.

Damn.

So, I support Ai Weiwei not only because he epitomizes free speech at its best and not only because he is a much needed activist in China but because he is a provocateur – something very few people are bold enough to be and something many more people should be.

Wo ai ni, Ai Weiwei.