Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 59F. Winds light and variable..
Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 59F. Winds light and variable.
Graphic artist Karen Davidson Seward poses with her new Memorial Field installation, “Spiraling Round the Promise Of The Right To Vote” at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in North Elba.
EMERGE 125 dance performed Monday at the John Brown Farm State Historical Site in Lake Placid.
Tom Morello is a musician, singer, rapper, songwriter, actor, and political activist. His musical affiliations include Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, Prophets of Rage and his acoustic solo act, the Nightwatchman, and Street Sweeper Social Club.
Graphic artist Karen Davidson Seward poses with her new Memorial Field installation, “Spiraling Round the Promise Of The Right To Vote” at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in North Elba.
EMERGE 125 dance performed Monday at the John Brown Farm State Historical Site in Lake Placid.
Tom Morello is a musician, singer, rapper, songwriter, actor, and political activist. His musical affiliations include Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, Prophets of Rage and his acoustic solo act, the Nightwatchman, and Street Sweeper Social Club.
LAKE PLACID — This week was bracketed with celebratory milestones at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in Lake Placid.
The party continues with John Brown Lives! Annual John Brown Day and this year’s distinguished Spirit of John Brown Freedom awardees feted on Saturday, May 14, 3-5 p.m.
The award is given annually by the freedom education and human rights project to recognize individuals and organizations whose work invokes the passion and conviction of the 19th-century abolitionist who dedicated his life to the cause of liberation and full human equality, according to a press release.
The 2022 awardees are Karen “Ren” Davidson Seward, creator of the Memorial Field for Black Lives; Tiffany Rea-Fisher, choreographer and artistic director of EMERGE125 dance company; and artist and activist Tom Morello.
“It’s accidental, but no accident, that our Spirit of John Brown Freedom Awardees this year are artists,” said JBL! Executive Director Martha Swan.
“John Brown was a man of action, and in their unique ways, with their distinct and powerful voices, Tom, Tiffany and Ren are artists of action whose work inspires, fuels and fires us up to work for justice and a just peace.”
Rea-Fisher cushioned her never-ending two-weeks shuffle here and then two weeks in New York City with a March purchase of a Saranac Lake residence.
“I got a couch delivered yesterday,” she said.
“It’s been great, and I just love it so much.”
The Lake Placid School of Dance is prepping for its June 5 recital.
“I’m excited about that,” Rea-Fisher, director and choreographer, said.
“It used to be just a school of ballet. It was only ballet. Since taking over four years ago, I’ve introduced modern and jazz. We used to have jazz and tap, but it was only for the little kids. It wasn’t something that I felt was taken seriously. Both of those have roots in Black culture, so it was important to me that that be part of our curriculum.”
The school not only has only modern and jazz for all levels, but also dance history classes.
“So that the students start to understand kind of the lineage of what these things are and how it relates to what they see on Broadway or on TV or in other places. So that’s been really wonderful, and we have started creating more well-rounded dancers.”
One student was accepted into the Ailey School and Fordham University program, an innovative Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in dance.
“This hasn’t happened in forever,” Rea-Fisher said.
“We had another student who is moving next year to Harlem to the Dance Theatre of Harlem full-time.
“For the Nutcracker, I had brought in DTH dancers. When we had our virtual recital the year before that, all the women dancers in the DTH company had shown up to give words of encouragement.”
Rea-Fisher has really tried to solidify that partnership.
“It’s really exciting” she said.
“It’s always bittersweet when your students leave you, but that’s what you should do if they are serious about dance. They have to go somewhere else. They have to go to these places where you can actually get jobs and do this for a living. That has been really wonderful with the school.”
The school has really ramped up adult classes, for example, line dancing classes on Tuesdays through Fridays.
“Each day, you learn a different line dance, and it’s just been so much fun,” she said.
“We have adult ballet, which people have been coming to. We have a cardio class, ‘Sweatin’ to the 80s.’ All the music is from the ‘80s, so it’s super fun.”
When Rea-Fisher taught, she wore a sweatband and leg warmers.
A “Dance With Me” class pairs 2-year-olds with their caregivers.
“During the pandemic, we realized we needed to expand our offering just to help parents out,” she said.
“We started that class two years ago, and it has really taken off. Now, we have people from 2 until their adulthood being able to dance all different genres, which has been really great.”
Next year, the school hopes to offer Latin social dance and ballet class where participants wear their baby, on the front or back, in a baby sling.
“We should offer that because I think sometimes parents feel like, ‘I can’t go and get my exercise,’” she said.
“No, just throw them on your back or front and let’s go. That’s been really wonderful to expand the programming in the school that way.”
EMERGE 125 has two new male dancers to the company.
“That has been really, really fantastic,” Rea-Fisher said.
“We’ve been rehearsing, rehearsing, and getting up to speed because we have our season in New York at the end of this month. It’s May 26-29. It’s our first season since our name change. We used to be Elisa Monte Dance. We are now EMERGE 125.”
As part of Saturday’s celebration, Theresa “Bear” Fox will perform traditional Mohawk songs, and MaryNell Morgan and Paul Murray will sing a freedom song adapted by Freedom Riders from Harry Belafonte’s “Calypso Freedom.”
Swan expressed that John Brown’s work is still meaningful today because systemic anti-Black racism and violence continue, unabated, in our country.
“It’s especially important for White America to understand that Brown was not only anti-slavery,” she said.
“He was an anti-racist ally, friend and neighbor to Black people and he believed that it was his duty, as a White person, to take up the struggle of Black America — to end slavery and secure the same liberties, rights and blessings of citizenship — as his own.”
Karen “Ren” Davidson Seward’s new installation,” Spiraling Round The Promise Of The Right To Vote,” arose from her concern about the upcoming midterm elections and the history of voting rights in the United States.
WHAT: John Brown Lives! will celebrate John Brown Day and this year’s distinguished Spirit of John Brown Freedom awardees .
WHEN: Saturday, May 14, 3-5 p.m.
WHERE: John Brown Farm State Historic Site, 155 John Brown Rd., Lake Placid.
CONTACT: For more information visit johnbrownlives.org or email info@johnbrownlives.org.
“I was so touched. I’m the first choreographer to get this, so that really means a lot. But I think also just understanding what John Brown stood for. I just like to describe myself as free. If you think of free Black people, I’m very much free and really lean into bringing my culture with me into my art and into my teaching and into everything that I do. It really feels wonderful and like a continued legacy of what we’re hoping to do. I really love this place and being able to be recognized by a community that has been so generous towards me. But it has allowed me to really grow as an artist and share my art for almost two decades with them. It’s really incredible. Every time I go to the farm, I am overwhelmed. Sometimes history can be a little evasive with us and illusive. It’s just baked into the soil. I had a performance on Monday, and one of them is just a short little piece that’s dedicated to John Brown. Being able to do that with the statue behind, on his family farm, it’s like really special. There are a lot of people doing a lot of important work, so if they feel like what I’m doing is of that quality and caliper, feels amazing. It’s great. I think to receive it with Ren, we’ve worked so closely together, so that we get to receive it at the same time also feels really special because we’ve become artist partners.
“It’s such an affirmation as an artist when you put your work out into the world, you feel, at least I do, an insecurity about how people are going to respond,” she said.
“These last two years have proven that there is a need to voice this kind of thing and create a scared space where we can come together to mourn the loss of innocent people due to lawlessness in our country. “This is a huge affirmation for me of very emotional work. It’s emotional to make it. It’s emotional to research it, to write it, to have it in the field, to see people interact with it, to talk to people about it.
“This is a profound honor to follow in the footsteps of John Brown. I’m certainly not carrying on in the passionate way he did, but I think John Brown as a true humanitarian, who treated all people with equality and respect. And in that, I am trying to mirror the spirit of John Brown with this work.
“The people that are sharing the stage with me, certainly precede me in this work, are such powerful forces in this work that it blows my mind.”
Robin Caudell was born and raised on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. She holds a BS in Journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park and a MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She has worked at the Press-Republican since 1990
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