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Project Title: Women in Black
Recipient Organization: AXIS
Dance Company
Lead Artist: Thaïs Mazur
Genre and Date Awarded: Performing Arts, April 1997
Premiered: March 4-6, 1999 at the Cowell Theater, San Francisco;
March 12-13, 1999, Mills College, Oakland, California
Artistic director and producer Thaïs Mazur collaborated with
women artists from an array of disciplines to create “Women
in Black,” a multidisciplinary performance work about the
Women in Black Against War movement. The finished 90-minute
piece combined dance with instrumental and vocal music. The artistic
partnership creating the work included Shira
Cion and members of
Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble, composer Katrina
Wreede, sculptor
and set designer Lauren Elder, and costume designer Duston
Spear.
The finished work featured 36 performers, including nine youth
from the Betsy Blakeslee Youth Choir.
A non-violent protest movement, Women in Black Against War began
in 1988 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and, along the way, women in
25 countries throughout the world joined the silent protest, standing
in vigil against the war crimes routinely inflicted upon women
and children, protesting the disappearance of their husbands, sons,
and daughters. The Argentinean women came dressed in black
with the names of their family members embroidered on shawls and
scarves: They became known as “The Women Against the
Disappeared.” That same year in Israel, women dressed in
black stood silently in Jerusalem to protest the occupation of
the West Bank and Gaza Strip: They were joined by Palestinian
women. Later, women in Belgrade began standing to protest
the war crimes taking place in the former Yugoslavia.
The artists’ purpose in creating the work was to “present
the critical issues faced by women and children during times of
war and the universal themes of struggle that prevail in present
day society.”
Members of the collaborative team had distinctive relationships
to the movement. Costume designer Duston Spear had created
three black dresses, which were worn by women standing vigil weekly
in front of the United Nations building. Kitka, whose vocal
music is deeply steeped in Eastern European traditions, had a repertoire
of songs about hardships faced by women, and these, in part, inspired
the music written by Katrina Wreede. Further, both Wreede
and designer Lauren Elder had a long and fruitful history of collaborations
with AXIS Dance Company.
Soon after the Creative Work Fund grant was awarded, significant
changes in the board and staff at AXIS Dance Company led to Thaïs
Mazur’s departure as the company’s artistic director. Hence,
AXIS did not play a role in the collaboration as originally planned. While
this could have derailed the project, Mazur and the other collaborating
artists sustained their original vision and collaborative process. They
were joined by members of Thaïs Mazur’s Dance Company
and several independent dancers, including a Butoh dancer, Afro-modern
dancer, and theater performer.
Other than this major structural change, the only significant
departure from the original plan was inclusion of a youth chorus.
Mazur writes, “As I researched the refugee situation around
the world, I began to understand that children play a major role
in the lives of refugees. Children not only carry the stories
of war and loss into the future, they are the major reason that
most women stand in silent vigil…. Betsy Blakeslee’s
Youth Choir…is composed of children from Bosnia, East Oakland,
Israel, and Chile. Betsy, the choir director, had volunteered
in a refugee camp and brought a wealth of experience with her.”
Thaïs Mazur, the project’s artistic director and choreographer,
began her dance career in 1975 and has performed with a wide variety
of companies. In 1987, she was the founding director of AXIS
Dance Company and served as its artistic director for ten years. In
the process of developing “Women in Black,” Mazur came
to orchestrate a large scale outreach and community partnership
project, getting to know participants in Bat Shalom in Israel,
Women in Black in Belgrade, Women in Black in Argentina, and several
groups in Cuba. Amnesty International and Mills College became
project sponsors and many nonprofit refugee-serving organizations
also participated. Mazur writes, “What was scheduled to be
a two weekend dance performance has become an international project,
the Women in Black Dance Project.” Soon after the premieres,
the artists were invited to perform the piece at Saint Joseph Cathedral
in San Jose—a parish of 3,000 people, many of whom are refugees
from South and Central America. Years later, Mazur continues to
direct The Women in Black Dance Project.
AXIS Dance Company is an ensemble of dancers with and without
disabilities. Its work has received critical praise from audiences
and performing artists in both the arts and disability communities
internationally. The company’s work has been described
as “a visual and physical discovery, creating fascinating
works of movement art, sheerly outrageous and unimaginable.” Some
of its achievements include a National Endowment for the Arts supported
cultural exchange in Novosibirsk, Siberia; major grants; commissions
of works by choreographers Bill T. Jones, Joe Goode, Sonya Delwayde,
Joanna Haigood, and others; an award-winning documentary video;
and co-curating, with Dance Umbrella in Boston, an international
festival of mixed ability dance.
Thaïs Mazur
Thaïs Mazur is artistic director of Thaïs Mazur Dance
Company. She began her dance career in 1975 and has performed
with a wide variety of companies, including members of the Martha
Graham Dance Company, Bobby Wynn, Tandy Beal, Terry Sendgraff,
and Axis Dance Company. During her 20 years as a director
and choreographer, she has received several awards, including a
Silver Award from Dance On Camera in New York.
In 1987, Thaïs was the founding director of AXIS Dance Company
and served as the artistic director for ten years. Her work
with Axis won acclaim with presenters and dance reviewers throughout
the country. In 1997, the full evening length Hidden
Histories/Visible Differences by AXIS was nominated for an
Isadora Duncan Dance Award. The company’s work also
has received support from major funders, including the National
Endowment for the Arts, Zellerbach Family Fund, the Rockefeller
MAP Fund, Threshold Foundation, and Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation.
Mazur collaborated extensively in collaboration with composers
and visual artists to create original, evening-length works including The
Way In and Hidden Histories/Visible Differences. Among
other award-winning composers, she has worked with Susan Alexander,
Henry Brant, Amy X. Neuburg, Katrina Wreede, and Pamela Z.
Mazur’s pieces have been performed nationally and internationally,
including in Cologne, Germany; Novosibirsk, Siberia; at the Southern
Theater presented by the Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis; Boston
Center for the Arts; Central Park Summer Stage, New York;
CAL Performances at the University Art Museum; and Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts in San Francisco. In the United States
and abroad, Mazur has taught numerous workshops and has been a
recipient of the California Arts Council Artist-in-Residence Grant
for six years. She also has been a keynote speaker and presenter
at national conferences and holds an undergraduate degree in Dance
and an M.S. in Occupational Therapy.
Katrina Wreede (Music Director and Composer)
Violist, composer, and teacher, Katrina Wreede has been credited
by jazz historian Leonard Feather with making the “only outstanding
contribution to jazz on the viola.” She appears regularly
with ensembles ranging from symphonies and new music groups to
jazz, avant garde, tango, and gamelan; and has been soloist for
the world premieres of two viola concertos as well as many other
works. Her biography is listed in Maurice Riley’s The
History of the Viola, Vol. 2. Wreede’s music has
received many awards and grants, including the Morton Gould Competition,
and multiple awards from the Composer’s Guild. In addition
to her music for “Women in Black,” she has finished
a work for the San Jose Chamber Orchestra and a book of duets for
adult beginner violinists.
Sponsored by American Composer’s Forum, Wreede has taught
at Berkeley High School; and since 1997, Wreede has been a member
of the San Francisco Symphony’s Adventures in Music (AIM)
program, performing 100 school concerts per year, which include
some of her compositions.
As a past member of the internationally renowned Turtle Island
String Quartet, Wreede appears on nine Windham Hill and Windham
Hill Jazz recordings, including one gold record, and makes frequent
guest appearances on other recordings. With Turtle Island,
she performed in 46 states and nine countries, appearing on CNN
International, Voice of America, and in Newsweek Magazine. She
also has been principal viola for more than 30 professional symphony,
opera, and show orchestras, performing with artists as diverse
as Itzhak Perlman, Bob Hope, Johnny Mathis, Natalie Cole, and John
Denver.
Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble
Founded in 1979, Kitka began as an outgrowth of the Westwind International
Folk Ensemble. It is known internationally for its artistry,
versatility, and mastery of the demanding techniques of Balkan
and Slavic vocal styling. The ensemble’s singers have
performed and conducted field research in Bulgaria, Macedonia,
the former Yugoslavia, Russia, Hungary, Kazahkstan, and in ethnic
communities throughout America.
Kitka’s innovative programming has led to many fruitful
collaborations, ranging from a reconstruction of the medieval pageant Carmina
Burana, under the direction of early music luminary Thomas
Binkley, to work with award-winning composer Maurice Jarre on his
soundtrack for Adrain Lyne’s film Jacob’s Ladder. It
is collaborating with Ellen Sebastian Chang and others to create “The
Rusalki Cycle,” an ambitious musical project supported in
part by the Creative Work Fund.
Kitka’s voices have been featured in the motion picture
soundtracks for Braveheart, and At Play in the Fields
of the Lord, as well as several television documentaries. The
ensemble was nominated for a Drama Critics Circle Award for its
role as the Greek Chorus and Trojan Slave Women in the American
Conservatory Theater’s acclaimed 1995 and 1998 productions
of Hecuba, starring Olympia Dukakis, in which the group
sang an original vocal score by David Lang. Further, Kitka
has released several critically acclaimed recordings on its Diaphonica
label.
Lauren Elder
Set designer Lauren Elder is a visual artist working in the performing
arts, an award-winning designer, and an artistic director. Since
1977, she has contributed scenic designs to numerous companies
and individuals including: Motion, Contraband, the Eureka
Theater, the Magic Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Zeum, Pamela
Z, the Exploratorium, the New Pickle Circus, and members of the
former Blake Street Hawkeyes. She has specialized in multi-disciplinary
performance since 1978. In addition to her work with other
artists, she has created a series of large-scale, site-specific
performance pieces, including Off Limits (1989) and Surrender (1993).
Elder has won numerous awards, including two individual and one
company Isadora Duncan dance awards, a Eureka Fellowship in sculpture
from the Fleishhacker Foundation, a 1993 Fellowship from the California
Arts Council, and three grants from the National Endowment for
the Arts for Interdisciplinary Arts. She has been creating
art-for-performance with university and elementary students in
public schools since 1988. Women in Black was her
third project with Thaïs Mazur and Company.
Betsy Blakeslee
Betsy Blakeslee is the choral director of Betsy Blakeslee Youth
Choir. She teaches singing to adults and children in the
San Francisco Bay Area. Since 1994, using art, music, and
writing, she has worked with refugee children in Bosnia and Croatia
to help them recover from war. She is author of two books—a
memoir, and a study of Bosnian children’s war stories. She
holds an M.S. in Health Psychology and has counseled and appeared
on television in the field of Health Psychology in programs broadcast
to audiences in China, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States
www.mazurarts.net
www.axisdance.org
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