Mar Português is a performance of Vasco Da Gama’s feverish dreams, as he lay dying in Cochin, India, longing for Lisbon. Created as a hallucination on the Tagus River, this is a surreal staging of intertwined colonial histories and contemporary modernities. It collides historical memories and traces of the past with the languages, cultures and practices of the present. In Mar Portugues, Tanzanian born Joseph and Portuguese performer Varino haunt Lisbon’s shores with sounds and movements from Portuguese Africa and Lusophone India.

Mar Portugues emerges out of Joseph’s investigations into the trans-oceanic connections between Indian Ocean cities linked through shared colonial histories across oceanic routes, and maritime trade networks of the Fifteenth Century. Peoples from the South China Seas were brought by the Portuguese and the Dutch to India’s Malabar Coast, and from there, to Portuguese and Dutch Africa. These journeys continued into Brazil and the Caribbean, finally bringing the histories of these passages back to Lisbon. Many coastal peoples of Africa and Asia were impacted through these encounters, morphed, mutated and transformed into today’s Cape Town, Cochin, Surat, Panaji, Mombasa, Recife, Mannahatta. Mar Portugues is a tracing of that lost history of crossings.

Harmattan Theater will be performing at sunrise in the historical site of Terreiro do Paço on Sunday May 6th, 2012.

Cabo De Tormentoso Video

Dias Beach, Cape of Good Hope, South AfricaDecember 12, 2011, 7-8 am.

In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, leading the way for Vasco Da Gama ten years later to find a sea route to Asia.  Dias initially called the Southern tip of Africa where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet, the “Cape of Storms.”  This history changing discovery paved the way for European colonisation on a global scale.  It also opened up a new era of torment and pillage of Africa and Asia.Performed at the site where Bartolomeu Diaz landed at the Cape of Good Hope, “Cabo de Tormentoso” is a performance of excavation of memory, displacement and suffering, but also of compassion, ecstasy and tranquility.  Created and performed by members of Cape Town’s Cape Malay community from the former District 6 of Cape Town, this performance is an embrace of the resilience and history of Cape Town’s muslim community.

Vasco Da Gama Square, Fort Cochin, Cochin, India.
Ocober 30, 2011 at Sunrise.
Directed by May Joseph.
Choreographers: May Joseph and Muthu Mozhi.
Theyyem Performers: Muthu Mozhi, Similesh, Aneesh.
Kalaripayyati Performers: Midhilesh, Manish.

In 2004, the Tsunami swept into Cochin as a surge, an ominous portend for the city’s archipelago like structure.  Cochin’s many
barrier islands are low lying regions facing open water, and hence vulnerable to the scenario of rising ocean levels.  When the Sea Rises
is a performance on the Fort Cochin seawall along in the historic district of Fort Cochin.  Fort Cochin was a major port  in the
16th century maritime imaginary, and hence an ecumenical crossing point for world cultures.  Vasco da Gama, Fort Cochin’s
most famous resident lived in Fort Cochin during his last days, and was buried here, before postthumously being sent back to Portugal.
When the Sea Rises is a performance exploring both Fort Cochin’s cosmopolitanism and its ecological vulnerability.

When The Sea Rises was a collaboration between local Fort Kochi performers trained in the Theyyem and Kalaripayyati movement traditions, and May Joseph, an environmental theater director trained in the Bharata Natyam dance tradition.

A Performance Marking the 200th Anniversary of the 1811 Manhattan Grid

The University-wide Urban Curriculum at The New School is pleased to announce the second annual Urban Festival commemorating the bicentennial anniversary of the 1811 Commissioners’ Grid of Manhattan. A partnership between Art in Odd Places and urban@newschool, this event will celebrate and imagine the future of the grid. The Commissioners’ Grid began at Fourteenth Street, the first street in the grid to span from the Hudson to the East Rivers. Professional and amateur performers, as well as artists will offer a condensed a two-hour event beginning at sunset on Fourteenth Street between 5^th Ave and 7^th Ave. This event is free and open to the public.

We aim to renew the grid to create new socio-cultural relations to the region’s natural resources. Our relationship with climate, food, animals and with ourselves is up for discussion. The under utilized and overlooked spaces of our city afford environments for a wilder imagination. The Urban Festival seeks to raise a discussion about ecological and social inclusion in our dense city grid.

Art in Odd Places aims to stretch the boundaries of communication in the public realm by presenting artworks in all disciplines outside the confines of traditional public space regulations. AiOP reminds us that public spaces function as the epicenter for diverse social interactions and the unfettered exchange of ideas. This year the theme of the festival is ritual: ceremony, habituation, myth, obsession, and liturgy.

The performance ‘Grid Scenes’ is a collaboration between Harmattan Theater and the course ‘Cinemetrics’. This portion of the festival will also include curated installations from the course ‘Urban Interventions’. Other participating artists include The BroLab Collective who will explore notions of labor and resolution dissolving boundaries between viewer and participant inviting the public to interact with a panel of artist and curators, as well as Hydrophony who will reveal New York City living waters through a chance-sound installation comprised of underwater field recordings taken from both Hudson and East rivers. Hydrophony is artists Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Thomas Dexter.

Photographs by Joshua Kristal

Confluence is a performance of duration exploring the waterline of Governors Island, and the textures of the Hudson River.The Hudson River and its environments are under threat of hazardous contamination.  Rights to clean water are eroding once again.  Drawing on the poetry of Walt Whitman, Dante Alighieri and Heinrich Heine, this movement piece is a walking ritual drawing on traditions of Sufi trance, Vipasana, and the Indian Environmental Street Theater traditions of working with ecology and public space.  Confluence is a demand that the Clean Water Acts be enforced.  It invokes the Hudson River as an influential site for global water politics at a time when the river’s hydrology is being compromised by environmental deregulation.

Cast: Dil Hoda, Victoria Marshall, Jose De Jesus, Ariel Herrera, Khadeejah, Carol Mathews-Nicoli, James Cascaito, Lisabeth During, David Van Leer, Arthur Hutchinson, May Joseph.
Directed and Produced by: May Joseph
Stage Manager: Geoffrey Rogers
Crew: Alex Poole, Celine Rogers.
Photographer: Riya Ortiz
Videographer: Tom Soper
Web Design: Jill Boltin
Movement Consultant: Nandini Sikand

Dreamscapes is an environmental performance about the scarcity of water,and the dream spaces of urban life.  It will be performed on Meg Webster’s ”Stone Field” a public art project on Pier 64.  Along the banks of the Hudson River,Dante Alighieri and Walt Whitman converse with Heinrich Heine, and Luiz Vaz De Camoes.  Using water from the Hudson River and Sea Salt,Harmattan Theater explores the relationship between the Hudson River, human formand the New York City waterfront.  Performers use techniques of Odissi Dance,Kalaripayatti and Vipasana to immerse the viewer in a New York spectacle.

Henry Hudson’s Forgotten Maps was performed by Harmattan Theater on June 12 and 14, 2009. It is a site specific 40 minute performance installation produced on the Eastern shore of Governor’s Island, New York City. The performance marks the importance of Governor’s Island as the first encounter between Native Americans and Dutch colonial settlers in New York City. The dramatic backdrop of a historic sandy beach, the Brooklyn Bridge, the cityscape of Brooklyn dockyards, and the crescendo of pounding waves provide the panoramic mise en scene for this mixed media performance about cartography, ghosts, ecology and indigenous rights. The piece uses theater, dance, poetry, music, text, site specific illustrations and ritual. The performance draws on archival Vingboon maps of the Dutch East India Company and the ethnographic implications of the sale of Governors Island for the price of two axeheads, a handful of nails and some white beads, to explore connections between New York City’s historic past and our urban future. Traditions of Indian environmental theater, Odissi dancing, Tango concertina,ecstatic Carnatic vocal traditions of Bhakti music, Cape Verdean tonalities and the poetry of Dante Aligheri’s Fifth Canto from The Divine Comedy ground the 40 minute performance. The ghost of Henry Hudson threads through the performance as a mournful presence in search of arrival, haunting the shores of New York City with his ghostly travels. Tracing actors’ and dancers’ movements are the street drawings in milk, sugar, and egg whites, done by Victoria Marshall and Jose De Jesus. The performance involved 10 cast members including Adam Lelyveld, Carol Mathews-Nicoli, Lisabeth During, Martine Gak, James Cascaito, May Joseph, Puma Perl, Latha Ramprasad, Nandini Sikand. Directed by May Joseph.

Video Clip