NYUAD Arts Center Profile picture
Feb 11, 2020 12 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Post performance Q&A with the cast of #Cartography and the students of @acsabudhabi Image
Q: why is a piece like this important?
A: there’s so much talk about migration and the framing and statistics impact policy. We can forget that those stories represent individual people with dreams that we can relate to #heroesjourney
On a show of hands, almost the entire audience from @acsabudhabi have lived in at least 2 or more countries. Migration is a common story in the UAE
Q: why does art matter?

A: like doctors, it’s our tool for sharing what we know, and for telling stories. Creative pursuits can be universal on an emotional level, and can bring different people together “on a level of the heart”
Art matters because it’s a language we all speak.
Student Q: what is the story of Cartography based on?

A: creators Kaneza Schaal and Christopher Myers met young migrants in Munich and spent time together. The youth asked them to share their stories. Not necessarily as “documentary” but as a telling of larger truth
Q: during a wordless scene of a raft, beautifully lit, what did they want the audience to take away?

A: you don’t want the lighting to take away from the story. When creating Cartography, they met two people from very different backgrounds who shared experience of raft travel
Q: how long did it take to make the play Cartography?

A: first workshop was 2016, then @BrooklynCollege in 2017, 2018 at @NYUAbuDhabi and world premiere was at @kencen in 2019. @NewVictory was also among the development and presenting partners
Q: why were the transition sounds so loud and jarring?
A: the boxes refer to having to leave quickly and then become waiting rooms. The loudness capture the sudden emergency and frantic need to move.
Q: There are so many issues in the world. So why this one? Why Cartography?

A: the writer Christopher Myers asked a 17year Syrian boy old whether he wanted to write a book of his story. The kid asked him “do you have dentists where you are from? When I have a toothache...
...I go to the dentist. You’re a storyteller. You’re the expert. You should tell our story” (paraphrasing)
And migration is such an urgent story of our time. Theater is a great tool to discuss it. #cartography

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More from @NYUADArtsCenter

Nov 28, 2022
Poet @thedesertpearl Danabelle Gutierrez visits @SabynJaveri’s @NYUAbuDhabi class Real and Imagined: Women’s Writing Across Worlds and discussed her transition from writing novels to poetry.
She also talks about the ongoing conundrum: where is home? She grew up in 3-4 different countries. She started her time as a poetry focusing on Love Poetry. She admits that it was in part a shield to protect herself from being self-revealing.
Discussion of @RebeccaSolnit and the way that female poets often get classified as “confessional”. “Even if I wasn’t revealing elements of myself in my poetry, people were still interpreting it as “confessional.”
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Nov 28, 2022
If you want to preserve your country and your culture, you must protect your language.

Dubai based Egyptian chanter @ZigZagGhanim visits Maya Kesrouany’s @nyuabudhabi Arabic literature class in advance of his performance at #Hekayah tonight.
Language is sacred, but not just because it’s the language of religion, but also because of the role it plays in human identity. Language is a living being.
When languages encounter other languages, they change and morph. @ZigZagGhanim’s music mixes classical language and modern forms (like house music) - question: is that encounter “fusion”?
Read 15 tweets
Oct 5, 2022
Starting the first @NYUAbuDhabi class visit by @RaviColtrane to two classes combined. Music Technology Fundamentals and What is Music?

Ravi answers the first question.

Music is organized sound.
He goes on to talk about his parents @JohnColtrane and Alice Coltrane. They were pioneers in building a home studio in their house when he was a child. John passed away before he could use it, but Alice used it frequently.
He launches quickly into a discussion of sound, and the role that microphone choice profoundly influences his sound. He built his own recording studio in 1999, built around a Tascam early 24 track unit - tape and hard disc based. It changed everything. Then Pro-tools etc entered
Read 39 tweets
Oct 5, 2022
In the wake of @NYUAbuDhabi Climate commitment yesterday, listening to the conversation on Creative Placemaking and the tension between cultural tourism vs serving local community via @GCDNet’a Adrian Ellis. Gonna listen to @AlserkalAvenue’s Vilma next

open.spotify.com/episode/1IEsvX…
Interesting conversations about what qualifies as quality of live and how the pandemic reshaped behaviors, needs, and wants, patterns of development and redevelopment. And what we need from our art.
As the conversations goes on, focus on values-based work in terms of behavior, and accountability, but also imagination, storytelling, expression and civic responsibility
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Sep 19, 2022
This morning, @candocodance Artistic Director Charlotte Darbyshire talks to Lee Singh’s Movement and Meaning class in the @NYUAbuDhabi 1st Year Writing Program. Starts with a brief history of the company and how their decision making process functions.
They started with collective leadership. Eventually funding channels led them to more singular leadership. Post-pandemic they are again thinking about collective leadership, and majority led by people with disabilities.
Discussion about creative restrictions. Charlotte reflects that their limitations are primarily financial. The big curatorial consideration is balancing well-known choreographer/ reputation with riskier, lesser known choreographer
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Sep 15, 2022
We start a dance workshop with @candocodance drawing from Jeanine Durning’s approach to “non-stopping”: “Start before you’re ready.”

#DanceReflections by @vancleefarpels at @NYUAbuDhabi
The next exercise is called “weaving.” It’s basically, we’ll be weaving.

Jeanine gave us some directions. No hesitation. Be unapologetic.

Ready?

Begin.
I think we can make our circle a little bit smaller.

Let’s give ourselves some real contact.
Read 22 tweets

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