{"id":27831,"date":"2018-02-16T03:57:53","date_gmt":"2018-02-16T11:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=27831"},"modified":"2018-02-14T21:48:20","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T05:48:20","slug":"salomes-rightful-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2018\/02\/16\/salomes-rightful-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Salom\u00e9\u2019s rightful place"},"content":{"rendered":"

Salom\u00e9: Woman of Valor<\/em><\/strong> will have its world premi\u00e8re at the Chutzpah! Festival March 8-10. (image by Anya Ross, graphics by John Greenaway)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

There have been many interpretations of Salom\u00e9 \u2013 thought to be the woman whose alluring dance persuaded King Herod to honour her request that he have John the Baptist beheaded \u2013 but none quite like that of Salom\u00e9: Woman of Valor<\/em>, which has its world premi\u00e8re at Chutzpah! March 8-10.<\/p>\n

The creation of this complex, multilayered work that combines poetry, music, dance and film was led by composer and trumpeter Frank London and poet and performer Adeena Karasick. It features live music by London, percussionist Deep Singh and keyboard player Shai Bachar. The poetry is written and performed by Karasick, the dance choreographed and performed by Rebecca Margolick and Jessie Zaritt, and the video analyzing Charles Bryant\u2019s 1923 silent film Salom\u00e9<\/em> was made by Elizabeth Mak. The whole production is directed by Alex Aron.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrank was intrigued by the Salom\u00e9 story due to the visual cornucopia of the Bryant film, and because it is a story where dance was at the centre, motivating the complex chain of events, and thus ripe for reinvention as a contemporary dance-theatre piece incorporating Bryant\u2019s imagery,\u201d Karasick told the Independent<\/em> about why the work focuses on Salom\u00e9 and not another Jewish historical or literary woman. \u201cHowever, he was only aware of the [Oscar] Wilde retelling of the Salom\u00e9 story and thus not really interested in her narrative. He came to me to see if I could reenvision her story in a more compelling way.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has always bothered her, said Karasick, how, within Christian mythology and entrenched in history by writers like Wilde, Gustave Flaubert and St\u00e9phane Mallarm\u00e9 and artists such as Gustav Klimt, Gustave Moreau and Aubrey Beardsley, \u201cSalom\u00e9 was seen as yet another Jewish temptress\/Christian killer \u2013 but, in fact, there isn\u2019t any evidence to substantiate this claim. According to apocrypha and Josephus\u2019s Antiquities<\/em>, she came from Jewish royalty and there is no evidence she murdered John the Baptist or even danced for Herod,\u201d said Karasick.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only historical reference that [Herod\u2019s wife] Herodias\u2019s daughter\u2019s name was Salom\u00e9 is from Flavius Josephus, who makes no other claims about her \u2013 not that she danced for Herod, not that she demanded John\u2019s head, but only that she went on to marry twice and live peacefully. The other apocryphal reference is that a daughter danced for Herod, which caused him to lose his mind and kill John the Baptist. Thus, the conflagrated Salom\u00e9 that appears in the Wilde play, [Richard] Strauss opera and all subsequent productions, is an amalgamated construct, so we felt it was our duty to set the record straight.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, added Karasick, there are three women named Salom\u00e9 in Jewish history: Salom\u00e9, daughter of Herodias and Herod II (circa 14-71 CE); Queen Salom\u00e9, her great-aunt (65 BCE-10 CE); and Salom\u00e9 Alexandra (139-67 BCE).<\/p>\n

\u201cHer great-aunt, Salom\u00e9 I, was the powerful sister and force behind Herod the Great, king of Judea and Second Temple rebuilder,\u201d said Karasick, while Salom\u00e9 Alexandra (also known as Shelomtzion) was one of only two women who reigned over Judea.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted my Salom\u00e9, Salom\u00e9 of Valor, to carry the weight of both her genetic lineage and the cultural heredity of her name, embodying the legacy and power of the women that came before her,\u201d said Karasick.<\/p>\n

Karasick, who was born in Winnipeg, grew up in Vancouver, earning her bachelor\u2019s from the University of British Columbia. She did her master\u2019s at York University and her PhD at Concordia University. Among other things, she teaches literature and critical theory at Pratt Institute in New York, is co-founding artistic director of KlezKanada and performs her work around the world. The author of nine books \u2013 with a 10th, Checking In,<\/em> published by Talonbooks, on the way \u2013 she has been awarded for her contributions to feminist thinking and, last year, the Adeena Karasick Archive was established at Special Collections, Simon Fraser University.<\/p>\n

London \u2013 a member of the Klezmatics and the group Hasidic New Wave, who has performed with countless musicians and made numerous recordings of his own \u2013 saw Karasick perform in New York in 2011. He then hired her, she said, \u201calong with Jake Marmer to design and lead the poetry retreat at KlezKanada\u2026. We hadn\u2019t yet collaborated before this, but I was always compelled by his music and the breadth of all he created as a masterful revolutionary himself, not only as a spectacularly fierce trumpet player but virtuosic composer, reinvigorating klezmer music, transcendentally intermixing it with aspects of world music, jazz, Chassidic new wave, punk \u2013 and always felt it would be a thrilling and highly symbiotic artistic match.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Frank approached her about the Salom\u00e9 project, said Karasick, they both \u201cfell in love with the Bryant film but were so perplexed\u201d about Salom\u00e9\u2019s \u201creputation in cultural history.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, Karasick started researching, \u201cporing through the multiple and conflict[ing] narratives \u2013 through Josephus and the apocrypha, locating the many discrepancies between Christian and Jewish mythologies, speaking with specialists in the field, and became fascinated with how there are so many \u2018truths,\u2019 stories, misreadings, and how imperative it is to question these grand narratives, problematize traditional cultural, moral and religious perspectives.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor millennia,\u201d she said, \u201cJews have been portrayed as the murderers of gods and prophets in other people\u2019s mythologies, so Salom\u00e9: Woman of Valor<\/em> deconstructs this mythology, exposing how she was not a demonic murderess, and opens up the possibilities for infinite retelling and how truth itself is always a construct of veiling and unveiling.\u201d<\/p>\n

About the magnitude of the project, Karasick said, \u201cAs the author of nine books invested in issues of ethnicity, gender and ways to construct meaning, as professor of poetry and critical theory, gender images in the media, and poetics and performance, Salom\u00e9: Woman of Valor<\/em> is a logical progression in my 30-year career, and has allowed me to integrate my experiences in one work \u2013 something that I have never done before.<\/p>\n

\u201cDue to the scope of this show,\u201d she said, \u201cI\u2019m able to weave together the multiple styles of writing that I\u2019ve experimented with over the years \u2013 sound poetry, homophonic translations, post-language conceptualism, kabbalistic and feminist revisionist practices, all syntactically playful, polyphonic, ironic and rhythmically complex \u2013 a fusion of my esthetic passions and expertise; opening a space of female empowerment.\u201d<\/p>\n

While London has been involved in many projects, Karasick said Salom\u00e9<\/em> might be the first for him with performance poetry at the centre.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe created Salom\u00e9: Woman of Valor<\/em> as an integration of performance poetry, dance, music and video exploring the dialectic between narrative and abstraction \u2013 it is a quantum leap forward in collaborative artistic development, challenging my conceptual processes of making an artwork,\u201d she said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t be more excited.\u201d<\/p>\n

Salom\u00e9: Woman of Valor<\/em> is already being presented in an array of venues and contexts, said Karasick. \u201cIts form and content make it appropriate to be presented at jazz, dance, poetry, new theatre, literary and electronic literature festivals; in performing arts centres, universities, avant garde text-based multimedia events, as well as events focusing on new media and cross arts,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith its feminist and mystical kabbalistic take on Jewish historical subject matter and a live score which draws from East European Jewish music (klezmer) with jazz, Arabic and Indian musics, our Salom\u00e9<\/em> is especially attractive to Jewish culture festivals and to presenters of Jewish music, language, dance and art.\u201d<\/p>\n

The libretto has been published in Italian and in English, and selections of it have been published in Bengali, Arabic, Yiddish and German. It is \u201cbeing taught in universities worldwide in departments of global literature, Jewish studies and humanities and media studies,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The artists bringing Salom\u00e9: Woman of Valor<\/em> to Vancouver are all \u201cat the forefront of their respective fields,\u201d said Karasick, \u201cand so I feel so fortunate to be working with such powerful creators, all revolutionaries in their own ways. Frank works with Shai Bachar and Deep Singh on a number of musical projects \u2013 Deep and Frank started the internationally acclaimed bhangra-klezmer fusion band Sharabi; and [Frank] co-developed Night in the Old Marketplace<\/em> with Alex Aron, so bringing her on board as a director seemed a natural fit.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the five years of envisioning the piece, we tried on a number of dance styles, ranging from tribal belly dance to sword dance\/swallowers, and, with the advice of (Merce Cunningham prot\u00e9g\u00e9) Gus Solomons, Jr., settled on the avant garde modern dance of Israeli superstar Jesse Zarrit and the stunningly poetic Rebecca Margolick, with a shout-out to the Dadaist Lo\u00efe Fuller stylings by Jodi Sperling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mak\u2019s video on Bryant\u2019s silent film, notes the project\u2019s promotional material, is \u201cpunctuated with Jim Andrews\u2019 stunning vispo [visual poetry], with special video appearances by \u2026 Tony Torn as Herod, lit by Nicole Lang.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTogether,\u201d said Karasick, \u201cwe\u2019re expanding our work in ways only dreamed possible; have created an intellectually provocative, audio-visual sensorium, informed by our (Frank\u2019s and my) ongoing obsession with excess, desire and pushing boundaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s an interest, if not obsession, with many others, as well. The Kickstarter campaign for Salom\u00e9<\/em> surpassed its goal of $20,000, about half of the project\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe show has been garnering a lot of love and support from colleagues and patrons,\u201d said Karasick, \u201cperhaps due to ways that it addresses the social and political necessity to speak the unspoken, resist stereotypes, misrepresentation and outdated myths, and fosters a thinking that leads to a hybridized syncretic culture, one that honours the intermixing of blood, belief, rhythm, texture and being. Content-wise, it addresses outdated notions of identity and ethnicity, and carves out a space where difference and otherness can be celebrated. We feel incredibly grateful, and hope that we can keep growing it. Broadway, here we come!\u201d<\/p>\n

But, first, the Chutzpah! Festival. They have also been invited to Toronto\u2019s Ashkenaz Festival and the Boston Jewish Music Festival, said Karasick, who will continue to tour with the Salom\u00e9<\/em> books. \u201cFrank,\u201d she said, \u201cwill record and release the music as a CD. We hope to see it at major festivals and venues worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n

The presentations of Salom\u00e9 <\/em>at Chutzpah! are presented in association with the Dance Centre, where the performances will take place. For tickets and the full festival lineup, visit chutzpahfestival.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Salom\u00e9: Woman of Valor will have its world premi\u00e8re at the Chutzpah! Festival March 8-10. (image by Anya Ross, graphics by John Greenaway) There have been many interpretations of Salom\u00e9 \u2013 thought to be the woman whose alluring dance persuaded King Herod to honour her request that he have John the Baptist beheaded \u2013 but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[785],"tags":[6842,7850,573,3119,6873,7848,3036,7849,387,7700,7851,7852,3021],"class_list":["post-27831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performing-arts","tag-adeena-karasick","tag-charles-bryant","tag-chutzpah-festival","tag-dance","tag-film","tag-frank-london","tag-music","tag-oscar-wilde","tag-poetry","tag-salome","tag-spoken-word","tag-vispo","tag-women"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}