Programs

Huang Xiang: Poet on Fire

centurymountain.googlepages.com
Huang Xiang, China’s great poet in exile performs his poetry with a tremendous energy that will light up the room!
 
Life In Balance
Performs music to amplify energy and deepen relaxation.

Mimi Jong
Plays the ancient Chinese Erhu

William Rock      centurymountain.googlepages.com

Paintings will be displayed at the CMU college of fine arts during the performance.

Solo Dance: By Descending, Performed by Allie Greene, Video Projections by Liana Dragoman, Choreographed by Joan Wagman

Yoga: Yogis from Yoga On Centre

(donation suggested for event)

Descriptions for the October 28th performances

The paintings of William Rock express the unmanifest realms of existence that are beyond life and death.  The kind of regions his sublime images serve to connect, irritate the boundaries that not only western culture, but art culture tends to implement.  Due to a masterly handing of paint and materials and an innovative multi-layered technique, the artist's transcendent images resonate with life, and yet point to another realm of existence.

 
Huang Xiang  centurymountain.googlepages.com is the featured artist for Spirit Unfolding–the Peforming Arts.  His poetry addresses these realms.  Huang Xiang has been described as “a poet on fire, a human torch who burns as a lamp of freedom and enlightenment.”  Huang is a refugee in Pittsburgh, invited by City of Asylum/Pittsburgh which provides refuge in Pittsburgh to notable creative writers under threat in their home countries.  Mr. Huang has been performing his poetry in Pittsburgh and in other cities of the United States and internationally.  His poetry touches chords of one’s soul in a similar way that William Rock’s art does.  Both play on a wide range of human experience–from the wild beast to the ephemeral sublime, where life and death are one.  He talks about destruction and renewal, he calls not for revolution, but for “long-term individual enlightenment and cultural transformation in preparation for political change.”

Huang Xiang’s poem: “The Wisp of Light” (2002) specifically brings to mind the self–no self, beyond life and death that radiates from William Rock’s art (see examples below).

       The Wisp of Light (2002)

 
        There is a kind of space
        that’s a different vastness

 
        There is a heavenly body
        that’s a different great arch

 
        The cells that permeate my body
        are unattainably distant

 
        The unreachable constellations
        find shelter in my flesh in my blood

 
        Death, not to be denied
        rises as it slowly falls

    
        Life, not to be denied
        advances as it rushes away from us

 
       Under the lit sky of this world of dust
       I grow old day after day
 
 
       In the space beyond space 
       Alone, I blossom like a youngster

Mimi Jong, a Pittsburgh resident and acclaimed architect of Chinese descent, heard her father playing the erhu while growing up in Indonesia.  Mimi was trapped in a concentration camp in Indonesia after a visit to support the refugees because it became unsafe to return to her family in the city from the countryside. She has tuned into human suffering, and has devoted many of her activities to “nurture cross-cultural understanding through arts.”  She has a deep understanding of Huang Xiang’s poetry and will accompany him and improvise sounds on the two-stringed ancient Chinese instrument, Erhu to augment and resonate Huang Xiang’s poetry.  She will play music and improvise in solo and dialogue with the poetry creating harmony.

Huang Xiang, in his poem “Writing in 3-D,” states: “the most wonderful way to write poetry is to stand right on your head with mind and body as one and dab ink on the ground!”  The violinist Yehudi Menuhin said: “Reduced to our own body, our first instrument, we learn to play it drawing from it maximum resonance and harmony . . . most of our fundamental attitudes to life have their physical counterparts in the body.”  Yehudi Menuhin discovered through the practice of yoga that “continuity and a sense of the universal come with the knowledge that each inhalation and exhalation constitute one cycle, wave or vibration among the countless myriads which are the universe.”   To demonstrate union and communion of mind and body, yogis from Yoga On Centre under the direction of its founder, Sara Azarius, will perform yoga poses.

The instrumental group Life In Balance will play throughout the evening.  Using the high-frequency transmission of Quartz Crystal Bowls and enhanced Shakuhachi for pure vibrational energy restoration, Life In Balance created a sonic environment for deep personal exploration; effectively re-patterning cellular and thought systems while expanding intuitive abilities.   Ami Sciulli says: “I feel in resonance with the healing energies when activating the Quartz Crystal Bowls.  In so doing, I become a conduit, sonically showering the listeners with the potential for expanded consciousness, enhanced synchronicity and sublime joy.

Allie Greene will perform a dance choreographed by Joan Wagman.  The dance’s name “By descending,” is inspired by kabbalah.  It focuses on the body being in the moment, being in awareness during prayer.  It describes a sense of joy that comes out of this awareness and a sense of connection with the fundamentals through losing one’s particular identity, a raw energy emerges and a sense of being under the wings of the divine.”  Video Projections by Liana Dragoman.

William Rock’s paintings will be displayed during the performance at the CMU college of Fine arts next to the Kresge Theater.  He painted the participants in this program.  His transcendent paintings depict a state wherein “the grosser mind becomes inactive allowing the subtler mind to become more active" and unfolding.