#Lucy Negro Redux

[lifeinpoetry]

I want a named, holy thing to fuck my brains out, to turn my need to be filled up and spread out and hungry into some kind of Grace.

I want to cuss my lover’s name in ecstasy and have it be the prayer I always hoped it was

— Caroline Randall Williams, "Transubstantiate, Redux or, Sublimating Lucy Whilst at Church," Lucy Negro, Redux

[shakespearenews]

It is this idea of reanimating the archive, and the Black lives Habib locates within it, that inspires the work of the poet Caroline Randall Williams, which I have been teaching and writing about. Williams’ Lucy Negro, Redux, published in 2019 with the subtitle: The Bard, a Book, and a Ballet, tells the story of Shakespeare’s Sonnets from the point of view of a figure from the archives who has been called “Lucy Negro”, and whom some have seen as a possible model for the so-called “Dark Lady” to whom the later part of the sequence seems to be addressed. 

“In August of 2012, I got it into my head that Shakespeare had a black lover,” Williams writes, “and that this woman was the subject of sonnets 127 to 154.” Lucy Negro, Redux intersperses Williams’ poems about Lucy with a prose account telling the story of her meeting with English professor Duncan Salkeld and, consequently, with the figure of “Black Luce” in the archives of Bridewell prison. Interweaving archival narrative with original poems Williams recovers and reclaims an overlooked Black life from the English archive in ways that resonate with Habib’s own critical and creative project.

[nonesuchrecords]

"I am still pondering the artistic miracle that unfolded before me last weekend in a sold-out series before the most diverse audience I have ever seen at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Polk Theater. Attitude: Lucy Negro Redux was a beautifully choreographed ballet, but it was more than a ballet: It was also a spoken-word incantation and a showcase for the musical genius of Rhiannon Giddens ..." —Margaret Renkl, The New York Times

[phoenixonwheels]

A true daughter of the confederacy has written what should be the last words on the monuments:

By Caroline Randall Williams

June 26, 2020

I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South.

If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.

Dead Confederates are honored all over this country — with cartoonish private statues, solemn public monuments and even in the names of United States Army bases. It fortifies and heartens me to witness the protests against this practice and the growing clamor from serious, nonpartisan public servants to redress it. But there are still those — like President Trumpand the Senate majority leader,Mitch McConnell — who cannot understand the difference between rewriting and reframing the past. I say it is not a matter of “airbrushing” history, but of adding a new perspective.

I am a black, Southern woman, and of my immediate white male ancestors, all of them were rapists. My very existence is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow.

According to the rule of hypodescent (the social and legal practice of assigning a genetically mixed-race person to the race with less social power) I am the daughter of two black people, the granddaughter of four black people, the great-granddaughter of eight black people. Go back one more generation and it gets less straightforward, and more sinister. As far as family history has always told, and as modern DNA testing has allowed me to confirm, I am the descendant of black women who were domestic servants and white men who raped their help.

It is an extraordinary truth of my life that I am biologically more than half white, and yet I have no white people in my genealogy in living memory. No. Voluntary. Whiteness. I am more than half white, and none of it was consensual. White Southern men — my ancestors — took what they wanted from women they did not love, over whom they had extraordinary power, and then failed to claim their children.

What is a monument but a standing memory? An artifact to make tangible the truth of the past. My body and blood are a tangible truth of the South and its past. The black people I come from were owned by the white people I come from. The white people I come from fought and died for their Lost Cause. And I ask you now, who dares to tell me to celebrate them? Who dares to ask me to accept their mounted pedestals?

You cannot dismiss me as someone who doesn’t understand. You cannot say it wasn’t my family members who fought and died. My blackness does not put me on the other side of anything. It puts me squarely at the heart of the debate. I don’t just come from the South. I come from Confederates. I’ve got rebel-gray blue blood coursing my veins. My great-grandfather Will was raised with the knowledge that Edmund Pettus was his father. Pettus, the storied Confederate general, the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, the man for whom Selma’s Bloody Sunday Bridge is named. So I am not an outsider who makes these demands. I am a great-great-granddaughter.

And here I’m called to say that there is much about the South that is precious to me. I do my best teaching and writing here. There is, however, a peculiar model of Southern pride that must now, at long last, be reckoned with.

This is not an ignorant pride but a defiant one. It is a pride that says, “Our history is rich, our causes are justified, our ancestors lie beyond reproach.” It is a pining for greatness, if you will, a wish again for a certain kind of American memory. A monument-worthy memory.

But here’s the thing: Our ancestors don’t deserve your unconditional pride. Yes, I am proud of every one of my black ancestors who survived slavery. They earned that pride, by any decent person’s reckoning. But I am not proud of the white ancestors whom I know, by virtue of my very existence, to be bad actors.

Among the apologists for the Southern cause and for its monuments, there are those who dismiss the hardships of the past. They imagine a world of benevolent masters, and speak with misty eyes of gentility and honor and the land. They deny plantation rape, or explain it away, or question the degree of frequency with which it occurred.

To those people it is my privilege to say, I am proof. I am proof that whatever else the South might have been, or might believe itself to be, it was and is a space whose prosperity and sense of romance and nostalgia were built upon the grievous exploitation of black life.

The dream version of the Old South never existed. Any manufactured monument to that time in that place tells half a truth at best. The ideas and ideals it purports to honor are not real. To those who have embraced these delusions: Now is the time to re-examine your position.

Either you have been blind to a truth that my body’s story forces you to see, or you really do mean to honor the oppressors at the expense of the oppressed, and you must at last acknowledge your emotional investment in a legacy of hate.

Either way, I say the monuments of stone and metal, the monuments of cloth and wood, all the man-made monuments, must come down. I defy any sentimental Southerner to defend our ancestors to me. I am quite literally made of the reasons to strip them of their laurels.

Caroline Randall Williams (@caroranwill) is the author of “Lucy Negro, Redux” and “Soul Food Love,” and a writer in residence at Vanderbilt University.

[krispyweiss]

Rhiannon Giddens to Release Four Children’s Books

- First title, “Build a House,” to appear in fall 2022

Rhiannon Giddens is adding children’s-book author to her already-impressive resume.

Giddens has contracted with Candlewick Press to release four titles for youngsters. The first, based on the lyrics to “Build a House” and illustrated by Monica Mikai, will be released in fall 2022.

“Stay tuned for more,” Giddens said in unveiling her new author’s website.

A 2017 MacArthur genius grant recipient, Giddens is artistic director of Silkroad; a solo artist; a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Our Native Daughters; an actor on “Nashville;” scorer of the 2019 ballet “Lucy Negro Redux;” and the composer of “Omar,” an opera premiering in May 2022.

And, she’s an author.

6/24/21

[miamistax]

For those of you still whining about Confederate statues, read the following.

A true daughter of the confederacy has written what should be the last words on the monuments:

By Caroline Randall Williams

June 26, 2020

I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South.

If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.

Dead Confederates are honored all over this country — with cartoonish private statues, solemn public monuments and even in the names of United States Army bases. It fortifies and heartens me to witness the protests against this practice and the growing clamor from serious, nonpartisan public servants to redress it. But there are still those — like President Trumpand the Senate majority leader,Mitch McConnell — who cannot understand the difference between rewriting and reframing the past. I say it is not a matter of “airbrushing” history, but of adding a new perspective.

I am a black, Southern woman, and of my immediate white male ancestors, all of them were rapists. My very existence is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow.

According to the rule of hypodescent (the social and legal practice of assigning a genetically mixed-race person to the race with less social power) I am the daughter of two black people, the granddaughter of four black people, the great-granddaughter of eight black people. Go back one more generation and it gets less straightforward, and more sinister. As far as family history has always told, and as modern DNA testing has allowed me to confirm, I am the descendant of black women who were domestic servants and white men who raped their help.

It is an extraordinary truth of my life that I am biologically more than half white, and yet I have no white people in my genealogy in living memory. No. Voluntary. Whiteness. I am more than half white, and none of it was consensual. White Southern men — my ancestors — took what they wanted from women they did not love, over whom they had extraordinary power, and then failed to claim their children.

What is a monument but a standing memory? An artifact to make tangible the truth of the past. My body and blood are a tangible truth of the South and its past. The black people I come from were owned by the white people I come from. The white people I come from fought and died for their Lost Cause. And I ask you now, who dares to tell me to celebrate them? Who dares to ask me to accept their mounted pedestals?

You cannot dismiss me as someone who doesn’t understand. You cannot say it wasn’t my family members who fought and died. My blackness does not put me on the other side of anything. It puts me squarely at the heart of the debate. I don’t just come from the South. I come from Confederates. I’ve got rebel-gray blue blood coursing my veins. My great-grandfather Will was raised with the knowledge that Edmund Pettus was his father. Pettus, the storied Confederate general, the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, the man for whom Selma’s Bloody Sunday Bridge is named. So I am not an outsider who makes these demands. I am a great-great-granddaughter.

And here I’m called to say that there is much about the South that is precious to me. I do my best teaching and writing here. There is, however, a peculiar model of Southern pride that must now, at long last, be reckoned with.

This is not an ignorant pride but a defiant one. It is a pride that says, “Our history is rich, our causes are justified, our ancestors lie beyond reproach.” It is a pining for greatness, if you will, a wish again for a certain kind of American memory. A monument-worthy memory.

But here’s the thing: Our ancestors don’t deserve your unconditional pride. Yes, I am proud of every one of my black ancestors who survived slavery. They earned that pride, by any decent person’s reckoning. But I am not proud of the white ancestors whom I know, by virtue of my very existence, to be bad actors.

Among the apologists for the Southern cause and for its monuments, there are those who dismiss the hardships of the past. They imagine a world of benevolent masters, and speak with misty eyes of gentility and honor and the land. They deny plantation rape, or explain it away, or question the degree of frequency with which it occurred.

To those people it is my privilege to say, I am proof. I am proof that whatever else the South might have been, or might believe itself to be, it was and is a space whose prosperity and sense of romance and nostalgia were built upon the grievous exploitation of black life.

The dream version of the Old South never existed. Any manufactured monument to that time in that place tells half a truth at best. The ideas and ideals it purports to honor are not real. To those who have embraced these delusions: Now is the time to re-examine your position.

Either you have been blind to a truth that my body’s story forces you to see, or you really do mean to honor the oppressors at the expense of the oppressed, and you must at last acknowledge your emotional investment in a legacy of hate.

Either way, I say the monuments of stone and metal, the monuments of cloth and wood, all the man-made monuments, must come down. I defy any sentimental Southerner to defend our ancestors to me. I am quite literally made of the reasons to strip them of their laurels.

Caroline Randall Williams(@caroranwill) is the author of “Lucy Negro, Redux” and “Soul Food Love,” and a writer in residence at Vanderbilt University.

[swanlake1998]

Pointe Magazine Article: Kayla Rowser Says Goodbye to Nashville Ballet, But Not to Activism

By: Steve Sucato

Date: May 27, 2020

Kayla Rowser says her decision to retire from Nashville Ballet after the 2019-2020 season came peacefully. So too, she says, was her coming to terms with how the COVID-19 global pandemic forced her to end her 13-year career there early, without a final onstage farewell.

"I have found so much comfort in looking back at all I've been able to experience in this art form," says Rowser. "My career may not be ending exactly as I always pictured, but it still surpassed my wildest dreams. For that, I will be forever grateful."

Originally from Conyers, Georgia, Rowser trained at the Magdalena Maury School of Classical Ballet and with Georgia Youth Ballet before dancing professionally with Charleston Ballet Theatre for one season. In 2007 she joined Nashville Ballet's second company, NB2, and in 2010 was promoted to the main company. The award-winning Rowser has performed a multitude of roles, including Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty and the title role in Paul Vasterling's Lucy Negro Redux. Sheltered at home in Nashville with husband Nick Tazik, the 31-year-old opened up about her career, being a social advocate and what's next for her.

How did you know it was time to end your career with Nashville Ballet?

I never really imagined I could do the things I have been able to do in my career. Each year I just re-evaluated if I wanted to keep doing this and I did. But I think there comes a time with dancers when all the other things they want to do that have been on the back-burner start to come to the forefront. That time is now.

Do you feel there was an advantage to spending the bulk of your career with one company?

Yes, I think just having some consistency throughout. I have had a home audience that watched me grow up onstage and rooted for me. If we had constantly toured outside of Nashville, I don't think I would have that kind of relationship with them or our other supporters. The company has a really great repertory, including all of the big story ballets, and we get to dance a lot. We also have a city full of other artists that have supported us fully.

What will you miss most about company life?

The camaraderie in the studio — you know what every single person has on their plate at any given time. It brings people together in a way that is beautiful and I think is unique to ballet. I will also miss being able to truly express myself without words.

Many will recognize you from your activism on diversity in ballet and the lack of opportunities given to dancers of color, as well as to dancers of different body types. How has that impacted your career?

Just being black in ballet, you really don't have a choice in it being apparent that we stand out. It's a torch that has been handed to me but I also wanted to show people that just because of my skin color and that I am a little bit shorter [5'2"], there is still a place for me in ballet. If ballet is to stay relevant, audiences have to see themselves in the stories being told and in the bodies onstage. It is not just about having dancers of color, it's about having dancers of color who are excelling. I have been able to show a bit of what that can look like when someone takes a chance on a dancer and lets them grow within an organization.

Will your activism continue now that you are retired?

Absolutely, my role in activism is not just through the lens of ballet. There is a lot of work still to do on this topic. It will be a part of my journey always.

What's next?

I will remain in Nashville and am working on finishing my online communications degree from the University of Arkansas. I am also absolutely open to doing some guesting work.

What advice do you have for young dancers wanting to follow in your footsteps?

There are going to be people in your life who are not going to understand what you are trying to pursue. Don't let that get in your way. Make sure you find qualified and caring training that is supportive of you.

[jkottke]

Caroline Randall Williams: "My Body Is a Confederate Monument"

In an opinion piece for the NY Times, Caroline Randall Williams writes You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument. I've never read an opening like this; I could barely continue:

I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South.

If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.

Only the truth is so devastating. Please read the entire essay. Williams will be reading this essay on Instagram on Tuesday, June 30 at 7pm ET -- I'll be there. And I just bought her book, Lucy Negro, Redux: The Bard, a Book, and a Ballet.

[yourmusicmypleasure]

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[mironivanov]

In Nashville, ‘Beauty Herself Is Black’

The ballet ‘Attitude: Lucy Negro Redux’ is a forceful claiming of female desire and sexual self-determination.

[hulusan]

In Nashville, ‘Beauty Herself Is Black’

By MARGARET RENKL The ballet ‘Attitude: Lucy Negro Redux’ is a forceful claiming of female desire and sexual self-determination. Published: February 18, 2019 at 03:30AM from NYT Opinion https://nyti.ms/2NcBXfF

[lifeinpoetry]

I want to have sex in a church and feel undivided— communion is intercourse, after all, the taking of a man’s body and blood into mine—

to feel undivided when I wrap my legs around some body I do not love just because he’s a big boy,

and that is the only way a man ever seems in charge in this life.

It is the same want. It is the prayer I cannot pray alone.

— Caroline Randall Williams, "Transubstantiate, Redux or, Sublimating Lucy Whilst at Church," Lucy Negro, Redux

[shakespearenews]

In the ballet, “Attitude: Lucy Negro Redux,” which is to have its premiere on Friday in Nashville, Ms. Williams’s poetry is both script and part of the music. She will read some poems onstage, including a sequence that Mr. Vasterling said inspired a danced montage of Lucy’s past, her life as a prostitute, her struggles and, finally, her claiming of her own power. A pas de deux with Lucy and Shakespeare was inspired by a section of the book called “Happy Duet of Lucy and Shakespeare.”...

The production’s creative team places three women of color front and center: Ms. Williams, the ballerina Kayla Rowser and the musician Rhiannon Giddens. If the ballet is about Lucy’s power and otherness, its back story is about the collaboration of these women, who with Mr. Vasterling and the jazz composer Francesco Turrisi, are bringing Lucy to the stage...

One thing Ms. Rowser knew right away, she said, was that she wanted to be on point for the whole ballet, though Mr. Vasterling had planned to use point only at the end when “Lucy finds her strength.” But for Ms. Rowser, “her strength was always there.”

Ms. Williams, 31, didn’t start as a poet. She grew up in Nashville wanting to act in Shakespearean plays. But she couldn’t find multilayered stories about black women in that repertory. So, at the advice of her mother, Alice Randall, she wrote “Lucy Negro, Redux,” to help fill that gap — and to give her a role with which she could identify.

[nonesuchrecords]

Toi toi toi to Rhiannon Giddens and Nashville Ballet on tonight’s world premiere of Lucy Negro Redux, a new ballet scored by Giddens! She and Francesco Turrisi will perform the score live.

Photo by Noelle Panepento

[izayoi1242]

In Nashville, ‘Beauty Herself Is Black’

By MARGARET RENKL The ballet ‘Attitude: Lucy Negro Redux’ is a forceful claiming of female desire and sexual self-determination. Published: February 18, 2019 at 09:00AM from NYT Opinion https://nyti.ms/2NcBXfF via IFTTT

[topnewsfromtheworld]

In Nashville, ‘Beauty Herself Is Black’

By MARGARET RENKL The ballet ‘Attitude: Lucy Negro Redux’ is a forceful claiming of female desire and sexual self-determination. Published: February 18, 2019 at 01:00AM from NYT Opinion https://nyti.ms/2NcBXfF