New Orleans
For those of you who don’t know what on earth we’re doing here, a little background: We were supposed to have been in New Orleans in September, creating a dance/video/performance project at Tulane, with a community cast of over 60 artists, students, kids, engineers, and assorted adults. It was to be the culmination of three years of residencies in New Orleans, during which time we fell, to put it mildly, in love with the city and the surrounding swamps. This project was to feed into an even bigger performance in 07, which was to take place throughout the Center for Bioenvironmental Research’s future RiverSphere site, a 77,000 square foot defunct casino on the Mississippi river replete with a Disney-esque faux French Quarter. All of that (and 75% of our company’s work and funding for the next two years) was washed away with Katrina. As we sat stunned with grief in our East Village apartment throughout the ensuing days and weeks, an old Minnesota friend, alarmed at the state we were in, ordered us to go back into the studio, lie down, breathe, and the next piece would come. And so it has — Katrina, Katrina: Love Letters to New Orleans. Please download our New Orleans Journal Feb-March 2006.
