good follow up to Mr.Red - "My Son is gay, or he's not. I don't care"

http://nerdyapplebottom.com/2010/11/02/my-son-is-gay/

FULL ON MR. RED!

He Came Out for Halloween and took me for a wild ride!  He wouldn't leave the house with out his red purse and boa.

to see the full set go HERE

I use this as my response to New Mexico election results. I too weep, need to get to a dance floor today and dance my prayers

"But I am left to wonder if they would still lie cheat and steal if they had curled and creeped, crawled and walked and danced with us that day. I don’t think they would. I don’t think they could.
And I wondered if a government would declare war on a country full of people that they have danced their joy with. I don’t think they would. I don’t think they could.
And I wonder if man would raise his hand against another, against a child, against an animal, against the earth, if he shared our dance? I don’t think he would. I don’t think he could.
I wondered. Who would we be if everyone in the universe danced? Who would we be if the universe danced?" 
Jenny Block 
see full blog here http://movestudio.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/i-weep/

This was posted yesterday before the election results came in.  There is a way a dancer can feel things in her body before they happen.

Redamorphed

Redamorphed from Mano Sipowicz on Vimeo.

performed by
Danielle Louise Reddick & Mano Sipowicz
film & editing by Mano
special thanks to Bett Williams and her arroyo in New Mexico

Redamorphed is part of RED, a series of improvisational collaborations by the Painted Ladies - Danielle Louise Reddick
Mano Sipowicz
Michelle Vest
Saschia Ryder

Red Within Me

 




to see the full set go HERE

There is something about painting myself red that is so stimulating for me. 
The Painted Ladies painted ourselves red for the first time back in August.  We moved in the tall green grasses at one of the most Northern parts of the Santa Fe River.  I was so buzzed after that I needed to go back out and play some more.  I ended up back at the river again but further down stream.  I ran around like a maniac while I took pictures of myself.
It was that first day with the painted ladies, I was rolled up in a ball under a tree and I just had a strong sense of the red ball that lives inside of me; my very creative source that is fiery and yet round.  There have been times working with this color that I have felt almost over stimulated, it is a very humbling sensation to be tapped into.  And I am not always sure I am so good at productively channeling it, there are times it has ended up being channeled into neurotically facebooking.
Fear runs along side my red.  I feel like when I touch red I am touching something within me that has been forbidden, it seems a bit like a Pandora’s box, and then you put in the mix red of others and well a whole lot of potential lives there.  I have this assumption that red demands a kind of strength, like being able to ride a wild horse and I’m not sure I have the skills yet to fully take that on.  And yet dancing around the edges of a storm can actually be the most dangerous place to be.
Red demands that I show up with all of my capacity.  Do other colors do that, hmm, we will see.
Looking at these photos again, i think that day i was the wild horse with out a rider.

Friends Gone Red In the River

to see the full set go HERE

RED is a collaberation of the Painted Ladies,

in these photos

Danielle Louise Reddick

Mano Sipowicz

Michelle Vest

These shots were taken on the same day as the video “In The Valleys”, you can see HERE

While all these photos where taken by myself, we all went out with cameras that day.

It has been healing for me to be my own documenter.  To participate while I observe so I am not just objectifying.  And to take back that power of the eye, the one observing and communicating. If you have read my blog you know that I have identified in the past with being the silent dancer or the pretty girl that has nothing to say, the one who is only to be looked at but not talked with.  My being labeled as having a learning disability back in the fourth grade did not help with this idea that all I had to offer was my beauty there was nothing else of value in this person but my body.

This day out in the Santa Fe River felt like perhaps how it can be amongst women friends, a celebration of our beauty, our love for each other and ourselves. 

It is thrilling for me to see the shots where we catch each other photographing ourselves.  There is a way that this is a red act in itself.  Capturing women taking pleasure with each other with out the presence of a man.   So often this is seen as vanity or perverse, and here I hope others can feel what I felt that day, beauty that is felt from deep within, a celebration of beauty that then becomes sacred and shared between women rather than coveted or even hidden.  When I hold the camera I reclaim beauties value in this world. 

Radical Fairies

I did a search on Radical Fairies and came across this web sight http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~religion/newifo/religions/alternative/index/faeries/essay1.shtml there you can find some history of the Radical Fairy movement in the 70's and 80's, supposedly it started here in New Mexico, hmm.  

While this article is focused on gay fairies, i have met recent ones and they are not always gay, but yes very pagan.

The following poem was also on this web page by gay author Michael Rumaker, i like this very much!

"The Fairies Are Dancing All Over the World"

The fairies are dancing all over the world
In the dreams of the President
they are dancing
although he dares not mention this at his cabinet meetings
In the baby blood of the brand new
they are dancing O most rapturously
and over the graves of the fathers and mothers
who are dead
and around the heads of the fathers and mothers who are not dead
in celebration of the sons and daughters
they've given the earth
The fairies are dancing in the paws and the muzzles
of dogs larking in the broad field next to the church
The fairies have always danced in the blood of the untamed
in the muscular horned goat
and in the shining snake
in the blood of Henry Thoreau
and most certainly Emily Dickinson
And they skip in the blood of the marine recruit
in his barracks at night
his bones aching with fatigue and loneliness
and pure dreams of women
and his good buddy in the next bunk
They are most lovely in the eyes of the black kid
trucking in front of the jukebox
at the local pizzeria,
more timorous in the eyes of his white friend
whose hips are a little bit more calcified
with hereditary denunciation of the fairies
May the fairies swivel his hips
On sap green evenings in early summer
the fairies danced under the moon in country places
danced among native american teepees
and hung in the rough hair of buffalos racing across the prairies
and are dancing still
most hidden
and everywhere
In some, only in the eyes
in others a reach of the arm
a sudden yelp of joy
reveals their presence The fairies are dancing from coast to coast
all over dead middle America
they're bumping and grinding on the Kremlin walls
the tap of their feet is eroding all the walls
all over the world as they dance
In the way of the western world
the fairies' dance has become small
a bleating, crabbed jerkiness
but there for all that, a bit of healthy green in the dead wood
that spreads an invisible green fire
around and around the globe
encircling it in its dance
of intimacy with the secret of all living things
The fairies are dancing in even the Pope's nose
and in the heart of the most stubborn macho
who will not and will not
and the fairies will
most insistently
because he will not
In the Pentagon the fairies are dancing
under the scrambled egg hats
of those who see no reason why youths should live to old age
The fairies bide their time and wait
They dance in invisible circlets of joy
around and around and over the planet
They are the green rings unseen by spaceships
their breath is the earth of the first spring evening
They explode in the black buds of deadwood winter
Welcome them with open arms
They are allies courting in the bloodstreams
welcome them and dance with them