That Was the Hygienic Egg

The Hygienic Egg was a remarkable look at the poetry of Adrienne Rich on the part of dancers, hoopers, poets, monologuists, singers!  

The event moved from the entrance area, where, after Marya greeted everyone,  She read a portion of the forward to the collected poems of Adrienne Rich- up to 1974, a sort of call to arms for the time, and for today.  Christie Williams then read “Dedications” to invite us all into the poetic voice of Rich.

 The audience followed Marya to the basement gallery, which had a relaxed, industrial, art-in-progress feel to it.

 Here Cristin Cawley performed her passionate piece, inspired by “Final Notations”, followed by Arianna reading “From an Atlas of the Difficult World” -the same words Christie had read, but now in the voice of a young girl.  

Upstairs, we found Serena hooping to music by Ani Difranco, inspired by the poem: “That Mouth”.  

We then turned to hear blues monologuist Jason Rabin deliver a contemporary meditation on the work of the poet.  

The middle gallery held Christine Poland, and poet Tasha Levy, to a poem by AR, and then to one by Tasha, inspired by Rich’s work, in which we were led to step through the one door.  

Nora Fox sang a delicate poem in the doorway, with wisps of shadow in it, while the St. Patrick’s Day drums passed by.  

Kathleen Smith, Amelia Smith, and Ann Shenk performed in the front gallery, a piece rendering “Translations” into movement, crossing bodies and decades.

The show was closed with a reading by Bill Hossack of “Here is a map of our country”, “here is the Sea of Indifference, glazed with salt” – truly a call to action.

The performers were amazing and generous, and the audience was too.  We thank the Hygienic Arts for their spaces, their openness to our work coming to wander through, every March.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 12th, 2017 at 10:36 pm. It is filed under Featured, News, Special Events and Performances and tagged with adrienne rich, all ages, arts, dance, hooping, hygienic egg, hygienic gallery, monologue, poetry, readings, theatre. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.