The Clothesline Muse - PMG Arts Management

PMG ARTS MANAGEMENT
[email protected] • www.pmgartsmgt.com
For booking information
contact Pam Green: 919-813-6092
“Each of these three women could create a
fabulous show on their own... You
don’t want to miss this”
– Lisa Nelson-Haynes, The Painted Bride
The Clothesline Muse
Featuring Nnenna Freelon
APAP Showcase
January 11, 2014, 1:15 pm
PMG Artist Showcase
City Center Studio 4, New York, NY
World Premiere
March 14 - 15, 2014
The Painted Bride Arts Center
Philadelphia, PA
Available to tour in
2014-15 and 2015-16
National Theater Project
fee subsidy available
Booked in partnership with Ed Keane Associates
The Clothesline Muse
will transport you to a
different world, where
the onerous yet honorable
task of washing clothes
by hand is transformed
into beautiful imagery,
dance, and song. This
multi-disciplinary theater
performance combines
the talents and knowledge
of three incredible artists to create an evening of live
dance, live music, spoken word, video, and interactive
art. Much like the internet, the clothesline connects us to
one another, allowing us to share stories and connect our
collective histories.
This is a history and legacy that turned the very
wheels of our country. It includes the first US labor strike
- of Atlanta washerwomen in 1881. It encompasses the
deep compassion of laundress Osceola McCarty. And it
reverberates from the multitude of women who pulled their
families up from poverty using only their clotheslines. Your
audience will experience these stories and more with The
Clothesline Muse and walk away changed.
Nnenna Freelon’s soundscape is both rhythmic and
beautiful as she portrays The Clothesline Muse. She
reminds us of outdoor labor and work song, while lovingly
preparing clothing for its next destination. In this way,
she creates a soft conflict of intent and purpose which
reinterprets the mundane into an extraordinary event.
Kariamu Welsh’s choreographed movements mimic
hand washing, drying, folding, and ironing. Borrowed from
their original significance as domestic work, these motions
of washing, pressing,
and wringing become
powerful and significant
conveyors of history.
Maya Freelon
Asante’ still and moving
projections reflect the
history and future of
the clothesline. Her
colorful and delicate
tissue paper art hangs
on the clothesline itself,
endlessly drying as
laundry in the sun.
www.clotheslinemuse.com
Collaborators
Nnenna Freelon
Six-time GRAMMY® Awardnominee Nnenna Freelon has
earned a well-deserved reputation
as a captivating performer,
most recently in 2007 on In
Performance At The White House
to celebrate the 20th Anniversary
of the Thelonious Monk Institute
of Jazz. At the 43rd annual
GRAMMY Awards, she inspired
an enthusiastic standing ovation
from 20,000 music industry
insiders and celebrities. Prior
to that appearance, Freelon’s
performances for the legendary Julie Andrews at the
Society of Singers’ “Ella Awards,” Variety’s The Children’s
Charity, Jerry Lewis’ Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy
Telethon and at famous jazz festivals around the globe
have all been rousing successes.
On her Grammy-nominated release, Blueprint Of
A Lady: Sketches of Billie Holiday (2005), Freelon paid
tribute to quintessential jazz vocalist Billie Holiday. As
inventive as ever, Freelon turned these Holiday-associated
songs and fulfilled Billie Holiday’s message to all artists:
”No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that
way with music or it isn’t music.” Freelon is a winner
of both the Billie Holiday Award from the prestigious
Academie du Jazz and the Eubie Blake Award from the
Cultural Crossroads Center in New York City.
Kariamu Welsh
Kariamu Welsh is a choreographer and professor in
the dance department in the Boyer College of Music and
Dance at Temple University in Philadelphia. She received
her Doctor’s of Arts from New York University and her
MA.H. from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
She is the author of two published books by Africa
World Press,: Zimbabwe Dance: Rhythmic Forces,
Ancestral Voices and An Aesthetic
Analysis and Umfundalai: An
African Dance Technique. She is
the editor of The African
Aesthetic: Keeper of Traditions
and African Dance: An Artistic,
Historical and Philosophical
Inquiry. She co-edited African
Culture: Rhythms of Unity. Dr.
Welsh is the artistic director of
Kariamu & Co.: Traditions.
Kariamu is the recipient of numerous fellowships,
grants and awards including a National Endowment for the
Arts Choreography Fellowship, the Creative Public Service
Award of NY, a 1997 Pew Fellowship, a 1997 Simon
Guggenheim Fellowship, a 1998 Pennsylvania Council on
the Arts grant and a Senior Fulbright Scholar. Kariamu has
received many honors and awards including The Dance
Scholar Award given by the dance department and the
office of Multicultural Affairs at Salisbury State University
in Salisbury Maryland on February 2, 2009. Norfolk State
University and the 26th Annual Black College Dance
Exchange gave her the Award of Excellence on April 2007.
The International Association of Blacks in Dance gave her
a Pioneer award in 2010.
Maya Freelon Asante
Maya Freelon Asante is an awardwinning artist whose artwork was
described by poet Maya Angelou
as “visualizing the truth about
the vulnerability and power of the
human being,” and her unique
tissue paper work was also praised
by the International Review of
African American Art as a “vibrant,
beating assemblage of color.” She
was selected by Modern Luxury
Magazine as Best of the City 2013
and by the Huffington Post’s Black
Artists: 30 Contemporary Art Makers
Under 40 You Should Know. Maya
Freelon Asante has exhibited her
work nationally and internationally including Paris, Ghana,
and US Embassies in Madagascar, Italy, Jamaica, and
Swaziland. She has been a professor of art at Towson
University and Morgan State University. Asante has
attended numerous residencies including Skowhegan
School of Painting and Sculpture, the Korobitey Institute
and Brandywine Workshop. She earned a BA from
Lafayette College and an MFA from the School of Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston.
Serena Ebhardt
A founder of EbzB Productions, a
nationally recognized professional
touring theatre, Serena Ebhardt
brings directing and dramaturgical
flair to any production. Her directing
credits include the national tours:
Dar He: The Murder of Emmett Till,
The Night Before Christmas Carol,
The Wrights of Passage, Anne Frank
and The Best Christmas Pageant
Ever. And regional tours: The
Foreigner, Fit To Be Tied, The Long Christmas Dinner and
A Christmas Memory. University and Community: Search
for Signs of Intelligent Life, Where It’s All Warm and
Secret, Chamber Music and The Tempest.
As a professional actress, Ebhardt has wowed crowds
in - Off Broadway: Winding The Ball. National Tour: War
Bonds, The Parchman Hour, and Anne Frank. Regional:
Alcestis, Chapter of Thanatos, Travesties, The Beggar’s
Opera, Sister Carrie, Pump Boys and Dinettes, A Christmas
Carol and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, along with various roles for
New River Dramatists Playwrights’ Project.
International credits – Canadian Tour: Nunsense.
Canadian Regional: Nicholas Nickleby, Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof, Chicago and The Rocky Horror Picture Show;
European Concert Tour: France, Germany, Holland,
Austria, Switzerland. Film: The Dead Poet’s Society, The
Lemon Sisters, Because of You, Postcards, Birthmark and
David Huling; Television Commercials for Toyota, New
York Carpet World, NC Symphony in Meymandi Hall, Nike
and Duke Medical Center.
Ebhardt has been critically recognized for her creative
contributions with the ITVA Silver Reel Award and YWCA
Academy of Women, 2003 DAC Emerging Artist award.
She also adapts, arranges and directs the offerings of
EbzB Productions.