La MaMa LiveTalks: Take 16
Hosted by Ryan Leach
Featuring Yoshiko Chuma, Shauna Davis, Tarish Pipkins a.k.a. Jeghetto, Murielle Borst Tarrant
About La MaMa LiveTalks: Take 16
La MaMa presents La MaMa LiveTalks, conversations with artists, activists and thought leaders from around the country and around the world who join in discussions about art and life in times of crisis.
Join us for LiveTalks and meet with our resident artists. La MaMa's 59th Season, “Breaking It Open,” will explore how new works are created, performed, and experienced during a pandemic. The season revolves around development residencies that are customized to the specific needs and processes of each artist. Each residency is customized to suit the artist, their unique vision, and where they are at in their creative work.
Hosted by Ryan Leach
Featuring Yoshiko Chuma, Shauna Davis, Tarish Pipkins a.k.a. Jeghetto, Murielle Borst-Tarrant
Yoshiko Chuma (conceptual artist, choreographer/artistic director of The School of Hard Knocks) has been a firebrand in the post-modern dance scene of New York City since the 1980s, has been consistently producing thought-provoking work that is neither dance nor theater nor film nor any other pre-determined category. She is an artist on her own journey. A path that has taken her to over 40 “out of the way” countries and collected over 2000 artists, thinkers and collaborators of every genre since establishing her company The School of Hard Knocks in New York City in 1980. Chuma is in residence at La MaMa through a 2019 MAP Fund grant for a new work “Secret Journey: Love Story, The School of Hard Knocks.” The MAP Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshiko_Chuma
Shauna Davis, originally from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, is in a serious, but playful relationship with movement. She is a freelance dancer and choreographer based in LA performing in both the commercial/film + concert dance realms. Her works have been performed at the Dallas DanceFest and Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival and she has set work at Avant Chamber Ballet and Dallas Black Dance Theatre: Encore! 2020 has awakened a serious urgency within her to share dance and create worlds through movement.
Tarish Pipkins a.k.a. Jeghetto, was born in a small steel mill town called Clairton, PA located south of Pittsburgh, PA. He is a self taught artist and has been creating art from a very young age. As a teenager, he moved to the East Side of Pittsburgh and graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School. In the late 90’s Tarish joined the BridgeSpotters Collective and became known for his Live paintings and Poetry. He was also a Barber for over 20 years. He moved to North Carolina in 2005 where he launched his career in Puppetry. There, he fine tuned his skills by doing street performances with his puppets. In 2008 he started working with Paperhand Puppet Intervention. He has built puppets and performed in several Paperhand productions. Most recently, Jeghetto had the pleasure to work with national recording artist, Missy Elliott on her music video, WTF ( Where They From) controlling the Pharell puppet and doing some puppet building. He also worked on the Amazon Echo commercial featuring Missy Elliott and Alec Baldwin as puppets. Tarish is a former teacher at Just Right Academy, a private alternative school for children with special needs. Tarish is married and a proud father of five children. Jeghetto’s passion is promoting Oneness through the magic of Puppetry.
https://www.jeghetto.com/
Murielle Borst-Tarrant (Kuna/ Rappahannock Nations) is an author, playwright, director, producer, cultural artist, educator, and human rights activist. Murielle began working as an artist early in her life with Spiderwoman Theatre. After attending Long Island University, she began combining Native American myth and creation stories to help compose a subgenre of literature referred to as Indigenous Fantasy. She is the author of the book series “The Star Medicine” and short stories published by Miami University Press. She is the Artistic Director of Safe Harbor Indigenous Collective. She has recently produced, written and directed “Don’t Feed the Indians- A Divine Comedy Pageant!” at La MaMa. She works on the deconstructing the pedagogy of the arts within Native communities in the NYC education system. Nominated for the Rockefeller grant in 2001, she won a Native Heart Award. She served as the Special Assistant to the North American Regional representative to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Global Indigenous Woman’s Caucus Chair (North America) in 2013 to May of 2014. She has spoken at the Indigenous Women’s Symposium at Trent University, at the International Conference at the Muthesius Academy of Art in Kiel Germany, and the Norwegian Theater Academy. Murielle Borst-Tarrant is the recipient of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s 2020 National Playwright Residency Program. http://lamama.org/programs/indigenous_initiative/
La MaMa LiveTalks
La MaMa LiveTalks are conversations with artists, activists and thought leaders from around the country and around the world who join in discussions about art and life in time of crisis. La MaMa will continue to use emerging technologies to create a new venue for artistic expression that questions how art can function and how we as a society can survive challenging periods of history.