Passionate Persuasions: Adventurous Performance and Educational Events

Dysfunction: An Evening of Autobiography, Conflict, and New Sound

2011-10-06T16:40:00.000-07:00

When difference is equated with dysfunction, a shroud of "normalcy" smothers some of us in shame. In this two-woman show, classical musicians Sara Banks and Martha Cargo of the Intimate Artistry Performance Troupe unravel that shame in stunningly brave autobiographical text. Music in counterpoint with dialogue journeys from conflict through compassion and into a realm of healing and understanding beyond the capacity of words alone.

The show will be performed at WOW Cafe Theater on November 10, 11, 17, 18 and 19 at 8 PM. Tickets may be purchased here at the FAB website. There will also be an Artists' Talk on November 9 at 7 PM with refreshments, free to anyone with a ticket to the show.

Cast and Crew:

Sara Banks - Cello, piano

Martha Cargo - Flute

Concept by Sara Banks

Director: Keri Seymour

Stage Manager: Zoey Howe

PR: Karly Fischer & Kirin Stevens

Lighting Designer: Sir Real
Panel Facilitator: Lee Naught

Produced by Passionate Persuasions and Lydia Love Productions

Sensual Touch and Intuitive Energy sex workshop

2011-07-05T17:48:00.000-07:00

The beginner class from 12-2 may stand alone, but the intermediate class from 3-5 has the beginner class as a prerequisite. Attendees of previous workshops wishing to attend only the intermediate class, please contact Lydia directly.

Advance tickets only. Tickets may be purchased though the FAB website.

Lisa Dowling, Double Bass

2011-06-06T08:42:00.000-07:00

When Sara asked me to be an active collaborator in this project I was immediately excited. I have wanted to participate with dancers for a while now and this seemed like the perfect setting to explore an array of relationships and emotions that ultimately occur when we are confronted with the naked human body. Pushing boundaries and exploring taboos has been a passion of mine and it has been a challenge for me to present this passion in conjunction with my music. Sara offered a safe environment of exploration and I thank her for that. I also thank Martha Cargo for her openness and uninhibited creativity during this process.

Lisa Dowling is a bassist and improviser living in New York. Her playing has been described as 'sublime and lovely' by Bruce Gallanter of the Downtown Music Gallery. Her debut CD 'The Invention Room' with Sitarist and electronic improviser Gian Luigi Diana, was praised as 'exotic' (DMG) and is distributed by the Downtown Music Gallery. As a versatile musician she performs a wide variety of music including baroque, experimental, classical, jazz and hip-hop. She considers improvising and collaborating with artists from all backgrounds essential to her development as a musician and human being. Her energetic and feisty commitment to new music and emerging composers has resulted in over 10 works for double bass written specifically for her. She has also premiered additional works from American and European composers. Her primary focus as a musician is to develop the sound world of the electric and upright bass and abolish any preconceived limitations of these instruments. She has appeared on stage with members of the Emerson Quartet, Colin Carr, Eduardo Leandro, Frank Morelli, Steven Tyler, Carolyn Sampson, Niia Bertoni, Bang on A Can, Argento New Music Project, Arcos Chamber Orchestra and has appeared as a soloist with Tactus and The New York Chamber Players. She has performed at the Sydney Opera House, The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, The Citi De La Musique in Paris and notable New York venues such as Le Poisson Rouge, Alice Tully Hall, Galapagos Art Space, Symphony Space, Miller Theater, The Tank, The Local 269 and The Downtown Music Gallery. She is the founding member of the electro-acoustic duo Blurboxer, the multi-media ensemble, Massive Time Collective, and frequently gives solo recitals in and around New York. In 2008/2009 she studied with Francois Rabbath and is now an educator and promoter of his technique. In that same year she was the first and only bassist to be accepted into Paris Conservatoire's Historical Performance Master's Degree program, studying Viennese Violone and Baroque Bass with Richard Myron. She has participated in the Juene Atlantique festival (France) working with conductor Philippe Herreweghe and the Tafelmusik Baroque Institute in Toronto. In 2007 she was a sponsored artist at the Boston Early Music Festival performing on viola da gamba and double bass. In 2010 she was a fellow at the Bang on a Can summer institute at MassMoca, MA. Lisa is a graduate of Stony Brook University where she was awarded a URECA grant for research into double bass pedagogy. She will complete her Master's Degree in Contemporary Performance from The Manhattan School of Music in May 2011. A competent arranger, she recently performed her own transcriptions of Eric Dolphy's 'Out to Lunch' album and Bela Bartok's 'Mikrokosmos' with Bassoonist Annie Lyle. Solo arrangement's include John Cage's 'Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs' and 'A Flower'. The 2010/2011 season includes solo and chamber works by Giacinto Scelsi, Jacob Druckman, Jon Deak, Gerard Grisey, John Cage, Hans Werner Henze, Luciano Berio, Elliot Carter and Bright Sheng. Lisa is also a professional DJ. She enjoys spinning Hip-Hop, Jazz, Soul, Funk and Afrobeat.

http://www.myspace.com/lisadowling

Lydia Love, Composer/Choreographer

2011-06-06T08:06:00.000-07:00

Intimate Artistry (IntArt) by Lydia Love

"It's the sound of intimacy: a little passion, a little pain" -Benjamin Coopersmith , photographer

"I've never met a more sensual composer" -Isabel Kim, clarinetist

People often ask me how classical music can be erotic. And before I began this piece, I didn't know either. In order to imagine erotic music, I needed musicians with sensual awareness. First, I asked each musician to be a complete person while playing their instrument, not simply being a neutral vessel. Secondly, I ask them to not project musical ideas for an audience's consumption and instead let sounds be a byproduct of a sensual relationship with their instrument. From there, we begin to play together. We explore archetypal relationships creating an emotional experience. We play to each other, against each other, supporting each other, exploring each other. We play in love, in lust, in pain, in longing. We are not painting a picture or telling a story about people experiencing these emotions. We are those people. We are experiencing those emotions firsthand, in that moment. We develop a heightened awareness of each other's emotional space through the music and go on an intimate journey. Our journey is based on genuine experience without regard for musical esthetic or concerns like being impressive or interesting. All we strive for is staying present and aware. What yields from this emotional rigor is an intense experience of expressive intimacy. The audience is invited to witness this.

genderbendingcontortion.blogspot.com

Lee Naught, Panel Facilitator

2011-03-13T22:04:00.000-07:00

Lee Naught is a radical, genderqueer, chican@ organizer and sex educator who has participated in a variety of collective, feminist & sexuality-focused projects, currently including Fuckin' (A) (a NYC sex positivity project), and Bluestockings Bookstore. Lee plays music in the riot grrrl band Titfit, and the screamo duo The Facts We Hate.

Simone Wolff, Sex Educator

2011-03-07T16:42:00.000-08:00

Simone Wolff is a student sex educator, writer, and queer-about-town in New York City. After growing up in Brooklyn and Guilford, Connecticut, she reunited with her beloved birth-borough of Manhattan, where she started studying Gender and Sexuality at Barnard College, Columbia Universtiy. She is the Vice President of Columbia’s Conversio Virium, the city’s only student-run BDSM education group, where she programs classes, facilitates discussion, educates about consent, and generally tries to spread the love into the kink community.

Simone has known Lydia for almost a year now and considers her a wonderful and fascinating friend. She is excited to share the fruits of their first projects together with the world.

Mx. Roo, Stage Manager

2011-03-01T00:11:00.000-08:00

Jamila Khan (AKA Mx. Roo) likes comics, community, and fixing things. They (Roo's preferred pronoun) were Ismene in Theater Transgression's 2010 production of Antigone; stage manager for Between Two Worlds: Who Loved You Before You Were Mine by Emily Nepon; and dramaturge for and performed Clytemnestra in NYU Steinhardt's 2007 production of The Eumenides. Almost always online everywhere as mxrooo.

More about 'that night'

2011-02-20T07:50:00.000-08:00

I am at a Sex Party in an apartment in Williamsburg. My date and I are in the luxurious back room having the beginnings of a fantastic fuck. The night is relatively young, and most of the other guests are still around the perimeter of the main room chatting awkwardly.

The couch in the room with the bed my parter and I are fucking on is quickly gathering eager voyeurs. My partner and I don't mind. We came to have a good time and neither of us pay them any mind. Now what I have to tell you about my partner and I is that we tend to be very acrobatic in bed. Her petite frame and rock-climbing experience combined with my lifting background from dance and cirque make for some pretty spectacular activities.

In the midst of one of our exploits, I notice that the host of the party is at the side of the bed trying to get my attention. We pause, and she suggests we move our scene into the main room. She is anxious to "get the party started" and wants more 'visibility' for, apparently, the only action going on at that point. I look to my date and ask if she minds being these people's center piece. She shrugs and says she doesn't mind. Now, I should also tell you that I was booked to do a contortion performance for this party later in the evening. But I had every intention of making full use of the accommodations before I even considered "work".

Now I'm expecting a carpet or a mattress center stage where my date and I can continue mauling each other. But as we venture into the main room, I see that there nothing but an open hardwood floor. I turn to her and invite her to climb into my arms as we'd done numerous times at fetish clubs. Our SM scenes at those clubs were pretty spectacular where I would hold her up in the air as I dug my nails into her sides and embedded my teeth in her thighs. But this was the first time I'd found myself with her where sex was permitted. She and I begin what I have since termed vertical sex.

In my standard base position for circus lifting, legs bent wide for easy climbing with a low center of gravity for stability, she moves around my arms and torso easily and sensuously. Her skin feels so extraordinary to my tongue and fingertips. Her taste is intoxicating and I seem to have an unlimited amount strength and passion for her body. For a while I just enjoy our normal positions with her hanging with her legs around my neck as I caress and tongue her delicious body. But as we gain momentum, I begin taking her into positions that we'd never tried. I find movement sequences I'd only used in dance duets with aerialists. I hold her inverted on the top of my thigh as I make-out with her crotch and cradle her in my arms as I finger her. Her legs extend in all directions as my passionate mouth worships her flesh. I notice how graceful and delicate the entire exchange is. I am realizing all of the sex fantasies I'd ever had about any dance partner I'd ever had. I even find my new favorite same-sex sexual position: She climbs over my shoulder and straddles my upper torso. I hold my arm up behind her and experience ecstasy as I finger her G-spot and lick her clitoris over my right shoulder.

After we come down from our fuck session and get a glass of water for my date and I, a friend of mine that had been watching says he was debating whether that WAS my performance, or if I was just having sex.

I was struck by his comment and began to think about the performative aspects of my sexual activities. And I realized that performative was not about creating something artificial but about sharing something powerful with an audience. The genuineness and sincerity of the act need not be avoided for the sake of performance. I thought about my relationship to performing sex with Burlesque and Porn and knew that my relationship to "performing sex" had changed. I wanted to remove the veil of artifice from the representation of sex. I wanted to share genuine moments of intimacy with an audience.

Monica Day, Performance Artist

2011-02-16T13:12:00.000-08:00

Monica Day is the founder of The Sensual Life. She specializes in creating safe spaces for people to explore, experience and express their sensuality.

Monica is best-known for finding playful ways to engage people into exploring what it means to live a more feeling, more passionate, more fully-expressed sensual life. She has spent the last 18 years as a writer, trainer and facilitator in areas ranging from personal growth and awareness, race and gender, class and power, sensuality and sexuality, communication skills, and relationship dynamics. She finds herself attracted to the edges of all experience — to the places where people are most likely to say “no” to going deeper with another…and working together to find “yes.”

www.thesensuallife.com

Martha Cargo, Flute

2011-02-16T12:57:00.000-08:00

When Sara (Lydia Love) approached me about this project last fall (2010), I had only just started improvising with other musicians at the Manhattan School of Music. I jumped at the opportunity to collaborate with dancers. The context, however, gave me pause. My own relationship with intimacy has of late expanded beyond what I thought possible; I have always kept a tight lid on myself psychologically and sexually. Intimate Art encourages us as performers, participants, and audience members to confront the insecurities and misgivings that surround the taboo netherworlds of "sex" and (gasp!) "intimacy". I would like to thank Sara for this wonderful journey, Lisa Dowling for engaging her creative genius on the stage, and the other performers for their unique and dazzling gifts

Flutist Martha Cargo embraces innovative interpretations within various genres of music, including chamber, classical, and contemporary repertoire. She has premiered works by Travis Reuter, Stephen Lewis, Zosha di Castri and Beavan Flanagan, among others, and has performed at numerous summer music festivals, including Centre Acanthes (France), Colorado College (USA), Orford (Canada), and Domaine Forget (Canada). Winner of the Columbia Orchestra Young Artist Competition and a finalist in the Encore Orchestra Young Artist Competition, Ms. Cargo worked as Director of Administration for the League of Composers/ISCM (US) and the Look&Listen Festival (NYC). She studied Chemistry and Flute Performance at Oberlin, Musicology and Art History at the Sorbonne (Paris, France), holds a Masters degree in Classical Flute Performance from SUNY-Purchase, and is currently a Masters candidate at Manhattan School of Music in the Contemporary Performance Program, where she studies with Tara Helen O’Connor. Other principal teachers include Michel Debost and Catherine Cantin.

www.marthacargo.com