This is a sample of the design that Christine Joly de Lotbiniere is designing for Mammal, one of the dances in Little Fictions, Ragged Memoirs.

Here is her latest note to me: “This is one of 12 panels for the skirt; each panel having a variation on a theme. I think the hand sewing of the black appliqués, though labor intensive,  lends a very interesting quality to the pattern…. we just would not have achieved this with machine stitching them down. I used vintage threads throughout, some of them from the 1950’s and the quality of the thread is so superior to what we have today! You can decide to leave the hanging threads or to remove them. I believe they lend a fantastic “mammal” organic feeling.

I purchased leggings and will be overdyeing those, possibly painting into them as well. The gloves have been patterned so they are next up: extra length added to them and ombre dyed from black at the fingertips to nude at the top of the arms, I will be applying texture and pattern to those as well. They will have latex applied on the palm and fingers.”

Exciting!  The journey of this dance has been intense. This is how I describe the dance: Mammal is a “shape-shifting” dance – a cellular, poetic echolocation that viscerally connects male and female, human and non-human at the porous borderland where they intersect and blend.

It feels like I have been invoking this dance for two years.  In the process, I have experienced a re-wiring of my nervous system and a re-configuration of my body’s systems:  fluid, bone, cells, fascia.  It is as if my flesh had to be readied to receive the transmission.

For Christine, this has meant staying in the saddle as the dance bucks, shifts and morphs.  But then, she is good at that, really, really good, which is why we have worked together for so long.

If you love dance, if you love theater, design, please help to support this audacious, ambitious project.  We are nearing the end of our Indiegogo campaign, but not the end of our work, our inspiration, and our desire.

You can help support artists and art!

Please DONATE to our Indiegogo campaign.

Thank you!

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This is how I have seen Pam (at times) for the past 30 years.  We met because she was a photographer whose work  had seen and liked.  I thought, “I want to meet her.”  I did not imagine that I would fall in love, get married and be joyfully with her for nearly 30 years (and counting).

Pam is a brilliant artist, an inspiring, generous and wise life coach, the finest soul and biggest heart I have ever known.  She is my biggest fan, my toughest critic, my most valued partner.  And the love of my life.

This project is engaging our creative spirits in many new ways.  She shot video for me for the first time.  I have taken her photographic images, edited and manipulated them into wildness.  We are still swimming in the deep end after all this time.

She is also helping to support my Indiegogo campaign.  Like I said, big, big heart.

Please join her. She believes this is a delicious project. .

Please DONATE to our Indiegogo campaign.

Thank you!

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OK, so here is how I figure it.  Our Indiegogo campaign still needs to raise around $9000.

If 300 people give $30 each we are there!

If 150 give $60, mission accomplished!!

If 90 give $100, we have it!

If 75 give $120, brava!

If 30 give $300, done and done!

If 10 give $900, VOILA!

It is called crowdfunding, so we need a crowd.  We thank and appreciate all of you who have donated. If each of you could find a friend to donate, we would be well on our way to our goal.  Please do that.  Please help us make a crowd. 

Finally, please check out our Indiegogo page to learn why this is a wonderful, soulful project.

Please DONATE to our Indiegogo campaign.

Thank you!

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I had a lovely conversation the other day with my friend Adrianne Ryan, a horsewoman and photographer who lives on Martha’s Vineyard.  We were talking about work and she said, “Well, I am blessed to be obsessed.”

Me too.  Movement – finding it, growing it, blowing it open, turning it into something ineffable, inevitable and fierce is my obsession (one of them.)

It is work and it isn’t work.  The movement claims, re-shapes and hones me.  And then I want to share it – speak through it, connect with it.

Last year, during a creative residency, I became obsessed with editing and layering these photographs taken by Pam White (above) that have become a part of The Traveler, one of the dances in the LFRM trilogy. I wanted to evoke something about layering, overlay, what is there and not quite there in all of us.

Yesterday I listened to a wonderful Diane Rehm podcast with Buddhist priest, philosopher and writer Mathieu Ricard.  He was talking about his new book Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World.

Listening to him, I realized that my wanting to share and connect with the world through movement is a form of altruism.  Maybe earlier in my career it was about something else, something less generous.  But now it is about making a connection, about sharing the best of myself and reaching out to the best in you.  I felt that so clearly when I watched Kyle Abraham’s solos filmed by Carrie Schneider, that his vulnerability was a deep gift to us.  I was/am so deeply moved by that.

As artists, I think we have to aim higher than personal ambition, beyond what we know to reach that skyward, earthly part of ourselves that connects to the skyward, earthly place in each other.

Please help me share my work with you.

You can do that by making a donation to my

Indiegogo campaign.

Thank you!!

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Seth Godin shared this post about bucket brigades.  I liken it to a good crowdfunding campaign, like our current Indiegogo effort.

We are trying to fill the lake with $$ to create wonderful art.  It takes a lot of buckets, some big some small, to fill that pond.  Every drop helps.

Please help, please donate!

A good bucket brigade

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I met Kate by happenstance.  I was searching for a projection designer, got her name, liked her and loved what I saw of her work.

I am THRILLED that we are working together.  She is smart, visionary, playful.  And her work is beautiful.  What more could one want in a collaborator?

Katherine is a multimedia designer working in theater, film, and installation. Her work is driven by the love of storytelling and the desire to turn her wildest imaginings into reality. Her background in film and computer science combine to generate work that is not only aesthetically beautiful, but pushes the boundaries of conventional theatrical video.

In addition to designing video for the stage, her installation work has been presented nationally and internationally. Venues include the National Building Museum, the Hammond Museum, 3LD Art & Technology Center, Front Room Gallery, and the World Wide Words Festival (Denmark). Her early video work includes Beatbox Flute Inspector Gadget Remix, a simple yet popular video with over 28 million views on YouTube and People’s Choice Award nomination. Kate has taught master classes at Harvard University, Syracuse University, New York University, University of Iowa, and Albany High School. Katherine is a founding member of Imaginary Media.

Here is a little sample of her work for the great Liz Lerman.

Healing Wars Backstage from Kate Freer on Vimeo.

Please Donate to our Indiegogo campaign

and help Kate do her gorgeous work.

Thank you!

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We are at 23% of our funding goal!  Thank you all who have donated, and thank you to those of you who are planning to donate.  Your help is so deeply appreciated.

Please continue to share this Indiegogo campaign with friends and family.  Even if you are unable to donate, perhaps you know someone who can.

If we can make it to 50% by next weekend that would be wildly WONDERFUL!

Please Donate and share, and thank you!

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Thank you!!!!!!

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Yesterday I had a panic attack.  Things were moving so slowly with our Indiegogo campaign.  My web guru friend said so.  Do another mailing.  Send out the press release.  Blog.  Facebook.  Twitter.  I couldn’t breathe.

Then about six people said, “Hey Paula,  breathe!  Take it easy.”  I went and hung out with some horses.  They were breathing.

Today, I am going to try doing what I am always telling other people to do.  Take a focused breath.  Feel your body.  Take a walk.  Look around.  Ask for help.  OK.

Abraham says that, “It is as easy to create a castle as a button. It’s just a matter of whether you’re focused on a castle or a button.”

I am focused on a castle.  With your kind help.

Please make a donation to my campaign.  Help support this work that I believe in so passionately and that I want to share with you.

Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.

p.s.  Tomorrow I am going to share some cool video.  Stay tuned, please.

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Deb O is our set designer.  Yes, she has pink hair.  And an amazing story.

After spending eighteen years working in a factory building ECUs (electronic control units) in the Midwest, she found herself pursuing an undergraduate degree in theatre design with a double minor in studio art and art history at Marquette University.  And went on to earn an MFA in Theater Design at Yale School of Drama. She also studied folk art at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland and Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland.

Deb O’s extensive scenography training and range of experiences as well as her background in folk art, dance and gymnastics, clowning and mask making, a bit of puppetry have all lent themselves to an innovative approaches to the creation of unique theatrical events. 

“I so love starting with a project from its infancy stage! Attending rehearsals is my favorite thing to do. Being in the room helping shape and form the production. Discussing; the palette, proportions, texture, mood, balance, harmony, contrast, space negative and positive. I feel like each project is one of my children and opening I send them out in to the world!”

Your donation helps us to bring wonderful, talented artists into the work.  Thank you!!!!!

Click here to donate to our Indiegogo campaign

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