Geography: Art / race / exile

About this book

Geography a rich tapestry of journal entries choreographic scores drawings and photographs leads us through the creation of an evening-long dance "Geography " a collaboration about being American African brown black blue black male and artist. This dance piece was a major departure for Ralph Lemon. In it everything is at stake -- his identity his politics his art his very way of moving. In order to create it he traveled to Africa in search of dancers and a new relationship to the stage. The intimate keenly observed passages in this artists journal give us extraordinary insights on the process of dance-making -- from the discovery of specific movements to the sometimes uneasy relationships between the dancers. Aeschylus Oresteia forms the subtext of the dance: Lemon subtly portrays the exiled son of his mother Africa. Dancing is his crime a stoning his trial and an ancestral chorus his threshold to the future. At every juncture the collaboration posed difficult questions about representing African dance and culture within the context of modern Americas post-slave heritage. The book beautifully documents Lemons ability to negotiate different dance traditions without either erasing or cementing them.