In early 2010 Kim Epifano, of San Francisco’s Epiphany Productions Sonic Dance Theater, contacted me with a tenuous proposal to put a new work together with her company to represent America in a Dance Festival slated for early March in Tunisia. Of course I said ‘Yes’ without thinking. It was a no brainer – ANY invitation for me to go to Africa, almost regardless of conditions, would be very welcome. The irony of myself “representing the USA” in anything was certainly not lost on me and became even greater when the motley crew that Kim was assembling included only a slim majority of ‘actual’ Americans – Kim Epifano herself, a Texan - her office manager and right hand man – Randy Symak, whose connections inside the US Embassy in Tunis were to make the whole thing possible, and Antoine Hunter, an extraordinary Afro/NativeAmerican dancer with an advanced hearing disability. The rest of the company was made up of myself, and a wonderful French dancer, Christine Sautur-Bonansea, now resident for a number of years in SF. Nevertheless, a group very representative of the creative spirit and energy of the San Francisco Bay Area, that’s for sure.
Whilst the start of 2010 has been an extremely creative period for me, compared to previous years exploding with a velocity akin to being shot out of a cannon – what with a series of Didjeridu Summit performances with Czech didge player, Ondrej Smeykal, a tour of the US Southwest with Baraka Moon, putting the finishing touches to Eda Maxym’s new release, “Circle of Sparks” and collaborating in New Mexico with Grammy nominated Iraqi oud virtuoso Rahim Al Haj among other things – the onus of developing a full show with Epiphany Dance for a March festival in North Africa was an exciting addition, though my own availability for the seemingly endless rehearsals, that are the demand of most choreographers, was to be somewhat patchy at times. Fortunately we were able to expand and develop themes Kim and I began last year in our collaboration, Flash Real, including 2 songs that were more or less complete and formed a sizable section of the new work.
So on March 2nd, almost unbelievably, we found ourselves sipping champagne on the daily Air France flight out of SFO to Paris, with a connection to Tunis following. Due to a different return itinerary (I am going on to visit my family in England) I followed the rest of the company on a different flight to Tunis. It has been a long time since I have had my arrival through the entry procedures into a foreign country expedited by government officials but on this occasion I was surprised and delighted to be met at the gate by Kamel, who quickly rushed me through passport control via a side door and waved aside customs officials while the rest of my flight looked on aghast with Parisian disdain – “why do they pull out the red carpet treatment for that smelly freak” (at least that’s what I projected that they were thinking). If only leaving the country was to be so easy…
Mine was a night arrival, so I was unable to see anything beyond the sense of the Tunisian coastline from the plane and the lights of Tunis as I was spirited away from the airport in a limousine driven by another employee of the US Embassy. The sound track to this journey was a welcome awakening to my first arrival in an Islamic country for many years (not counting my visit to The West Bank 2 years ago – see other blogs) – Koranic verse on a radio station dedicated to only that. My driver and I discussed the message of peace it carried, and I surely felt both at peace and most welcome in Tunisia, Africa’s richest nation and one of the foremost secular Islamic cultures in the world. The Company was reunited in our hotel, in the Phoenecian Port area of Carthage, one of the most celebrated and strategic hubs of global culture for over 2000 years.
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