12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens: Autumnal Equinox

Saturday, September 22nd
Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street, NYC

The sense of vitality that Spring and Summer brought to us (the rising sap which pushed forth our lushest displays of strength and densest energy in the fronds, feathers and finery of our fullest and most exuberant outward expressions – passed into the world through fruits and flowers that marked our presence with ripest beauty and sweetness, our deepest life message and meaning imprinted in pollens, seeds, and eggs – has now passed.
The Autumn Equinox marks the moment of its passing.
With the gentle, knowing glow of the goldenrod reflecting the light of the Sun’s slanting angle, a kind of fatigue gathers among our numbers and draws us inward. The seeds of our former fruiting and flowering now rely on wind, water and wing to be spread and propagated across the landscape. Our leaves yellow and our eyes soften with the accumulation of past thought, action and experience that is memory.
We reflect upon deeds and on the manifestations of consciousness of which our Life is comprised. We discover the energies of wisdom (the Sophia) that lay in our aging bodies and frangible branches. In the lulling rhythms of crickets and cicadas, we intuit the whispering of our ancestors and prepare to become ancestors ourselves, to the generations who will succeed us. What is it that we now leave behind us? As it sets in the sky, in the year, in the passing on of our lives and deeds, so the longtime Sun sets our final purpose in the Earth’s time of living, growing and doing. In the balance of Life and Death that this Equinox moment reifies, and in the cyclical conclusion it portends, we are left with mere being.

Ticketed performance times are:
7pm, 8pm, 9pm (Purchase tickets here.)

9:54pm – Culminating action at the Equinox, led by Donna Brickwood

Featuring:
Dee Dorcas Beasnael
Omie Johnson
Sibyl Kempson
Jodi Melnick
Quartet Metadata (Lynn Bechtold & Mioi Takeda, violins; Carrie Frey, viola; Jennifer DeVore, cello)
Milica Paranosic
Sarah Willis

Collaborators include:
Jed Bark: Potato Doll Being stewardship
Tei Blow: sound design
Suzanne Bocanegra: costume design
Omie Johnson: astrological dramaturgy
Kira Alker and Elke Luyten: choreography
Milica Paranosic: musical composition
Amanda Villalobos: puppetry consultant
Molly Zimmelman: stage management

Production Assistance
Leonie Bell: prop assistance
Johnny Gasper: sound assistance
Theodora Lang: costume assistance