Carla Blank

KOOL - Dancing in my Mind, a multi-media performance portrait of the late legendary Japanese choreographer and dancer Suzushi Hanayagi, premiered at NYC's Guggenheim Museum, Works & Process Series, April 17 & 18, 2009, was further developed at East Hampton's Guild Hall, in August 2009, and in 2010 enjoyed its international debut at Berlin's Akademie der Künste and a showing at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. A review on the Huffington Post described the August performance as "sublime." Carla Blank served as dramaturge and choreographer in this collaboration with director Robert Wilson and filmmaker Richard Rutkowski. KOOL combined live dance with archival material from the 1960s through the 1990s and newly filmed images. The work reflected Suzushi Hanayagi's state of dementia during the time the work was created (2008-09) and served as a poetic monument to the artists' working friendships. In 2010, SUZUSHI HANAYAGI: A Moving Life, a short film by Richard Rutkowski including KOOL research and performance materials, premiered on the French television station ARTE, followed by U.S. showings on PBS and the Sundance Channel. In January 2012, The Space in Back of You, a 65-minute film by Richard Rutkowski premiered at Lincoln Center's annual film festival, Dance on Camera. It collages many interviews with artists who collaborated with Ms. Hanayagi, including Carla Blank, with archival photographs, videos, and clips from the Guggenheim rehearsals and performance.

Carla Blank (R) and Suzushi Hanayagi (L) performing a section of Wall St. Journal (1966) that was performed by Sally Gross and Meg Harper in KOOL - Dancing in my Mind (2009). Photo by Isamu Kawai.

Carla Blank as "Cat Woman with Sticks" (Work, MA Thesis Concert,  Mills College Concert Hall, 1972).  For KOOL - Dancing in my Mind (2009-2010), six sequences from this score developed by Suzushi Hanayagi and Carla Blank, were performed as solos by the six (unmasked) dancers (Jonah Bokaer, CC Chang, Illenk Gentile, Sally Gross, Meg Harper, Yuki Kawahisa). These moments ended the work's six sections with considerable clatter, and in subsequent performances the wood sticks, a favorite prop of Suzushi Hanayagi, reappeared, each carried by one of the six performers, who dropped them, one by one, to end the performance.  Photographer unknown.

Carla Blank (L) & Suzushi Hanayagi (R) performing "2 Face Dance," in Ghost Dance at Sogetsu Hall, Tokyo, 1973, a score reinterpreted by Jonah Bokaer and Illenk Gentile in KOOL - Dancing in my Mind (2009-10). Photographer unknown.

Suzushi Hanayagi (L) and Carla Blank (R) perform "Phony Original Men" in a 1978 performance of Animuls at the Oakland Museum. CC Chang and Yuki Kawahisa performed a reconstruction of this duet in KOOL, Dancing in my Mind. Photo by John Roberts.

From 2003 through 2011 Blank served as dramaturge and director of The Domestic Crusaders, the first play by Muslim Pakistani American playwright Wajahat Ali. Starting from a standing room only staged reading at a restaurant in Newark, California, showcase productions were mounted in 2005 at the Thrust Theatre (of Berkeley Repertory Theatre) and San Jose State University Theatre. An Off Broadway 2009 five week standing room only production at the Nuyorican Poets Café garnered wide media acclaim, followed by an international debut at the 2010 MuslimFest in Mississauga, Canada, an 11/14/2010 appearance at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Hall in Washington, D.C., and a showcase production as the anchor for The 9/11 Performance Project at NYC's Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College in September 2011. A 28 minute video, "The Making of 'The Domestic Crusaders," based on the Nuyorican performances is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-ySND7o-6Y.  Photographer unknown.

Yuri Kageyama's News from Fukushima premiered in September 2015 at La MaMa, one of New York's most venerated Off-Broadway theaters. It was developed in July 2017 performances at Z Space, a theater presenting new works in San Francisco. A documentary film of the 2017 performance by Yoshiaki Tago premiered at the 2019 Berkeley Video & Film Festival, where it received a Grand Festival Award: cine-dance poem, and continued to gather recognition at over thirty international film festivals.

Takemi Kitamura created this sword dance, inspired by a line dance from Aizu, the westernmost region of Fukushima, where annually it is offered in remembrance of 19 of the over 300 Byakkotai warriors, teen-age sons of samurais in the White Tiger Battalion who in 1868, during the Boshin Civil War, committed ritual disembowelment (seppuku or hara-kiri) because they mistakenly believed a fire had consumed their lord's castle, which would mean their city had been captured and their families killed. For me, this dance particularly resonates because of where it comes from, how contemporary its formal choices appear, and how as the strokes of the blades go every which direction, it become a metaphor for the ways life can slice us also. Photo by Annette Dorfman.

"Prelude: Hiroshima," a shadow dance by the actor/dancers (Takemi Kitamura with Shigeko Suga and Monisha Shiva), Z Space performance, July 8-9, 2017. Photo by Tennessee Reed.

Monisha Shiva as the Poet (C) with Takemi Kitamura (L) and Shigeko Sara Suga (R) delivers "Little Yellow Slut." Z Space, San Francisco, 2017. Photo by Tennessee Reed.

"Mythical Monsters" with Monisha Shiva (front), Takemi Kitamura (center), Shigeko Sara Suga (back) in the Club at La Mama performance, 2015. Photo by Tennessee Reed.

Actor dancers Shigeko Sara Suga (c) and Monisha Shiva  (r) dragging Takemi Kitamura (inside standard nuclear waste containment bag) with projection of nuclear waste storage area by Yoshiaki Tago. Photo by Tennessee Reed.

Following virtual readings hosted by the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, The Slave Who Loved Caviar premiered in a full production at NYC's Theater for the New City from December 23, 2021 through January 9, 2022.

Reed writes: "My play...challenged the perception promoted by the Manhattan art industry that painter Jean-Michel Basquiat was Andy Warhol's "mascot." Or that it was because of Warhol's beneficence that Basquiat, born of Haitian and Puerto Rican parents, became famous.  Warhol's reputation was declining when he began the collaboration, and according to some observers, Basquiat's 'new blood' resurrected Warhol."

In a cartoon styled play-within-the-play, Reed offers a campy vampire son of Dracula, Baron de Whit, whose agent Antonio Wolfe convinces him to find a young, Black graffiti artist to give his work "new blood," while a parallel investigation by two forensic experts working within the New York Police Department seek to solve who was responsible for the death of Basquiat at the age of twenty-eight because, as one of the forensic experts explains, "Until the lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero." 

NYPD Forensic Experts I: Grace (Laura Robards, L.) and II: Raksha (Monisha Shiva, R), doubting the popular wisdom that Basquiat died of a heroin overdose, reopen the cold case in order to bring the perpetrators to justice. Photo by Tennessee Reed.

Young Blood (Brian Anthony Simmons), a brash grafitti artist in shorts made with the colors of the Black Nationalist Flag, berates down on his luck abstract painter Jack Brooks (Robert E. Turner), outside of the Hottentot Gallery which is about to open a show of the works from the collaboration between Baron DeWhit and Young Blood – Photo: Johathan Slaff.

NYPD Detective Mary Van Helsing (Roz Fox, L) rescues Jennifer Blue (Kenya Wilson, R), who had become a victim of the vampire Baron De Whit, after she accepted his invitation to attend a party at his New York City townhouse. Photo by Jonathan Slaff.

In a shadow dance scene, "Richard Pryor of the Dream," Pryor (Kenya Wilson, standing) describes the mistakes he made to a sleeping Basquiat (Raul Diaz), to try to warn him why he should leave New York before it is too late.  Photo by Tennessee Reed.

Ishmael Reed's play, The Conductor, continues the tradition of the Federal Theatre Project's Living Newspaper Project, where playwrights and journalists collaborated to create dramatizations of current events (1935-39).

Brian Simmons, as journalist Warren Chipp, organizing his research to find what moneyed and political influences were behind the 2021 recall of 3 members of the San Francisco Unified School District's School Board.  Photo by Tennessee Reed.

Journalist Warren Chipp (Brian Simmons, R) shows Recall activist Shashi Parmar (Sri Chilukuri, L) a newspaper article, that reports his betrayal by a white proponent of the SF School Board recall (Aug.-Sept. production).  Photo by Tennessee Reed.

Warren Chipp (Brian Simmons) views White Lightning Network TV anchor Hedda "Buttermilk" Duckbill (Laura Robards) with guest comentator Gabriel Noitallde (Emil Guillermo). Photo by Tennessee Reed.

Kala Parmar (Monisha Shiva, center) joins an interview by journalist Melody Wells (R) with Warren Chipp (Brian Simmons, L), where they inform him that he has won a lawsuit and will be reinstated as a San Francisco Chrysalis journalist. Photo by Tennessee Reed.