28 November 2012

The End of Shame and Witness

Today's New York Times (page A16) has an article "Gay 'Conversion Therapy' Faces Test in Courts". Well, it's about time. I'm putting my 2005 work, The End of Shame, onto YouTube for the world to see. 

Also, in honor of AIDS Day 2012,  I was asked to submit my 1990 work, Witness, to Portraits of Hope, a multimedia exhibit from EDGE Media Network at edgemedianetwork.com. 
Witness was created in 1990 for a cast of men at University of Michigan. By that time, most of the male dancers I'd shared the stage with during my professional career in New York City were either sick or had passed away. (I did not know that in a few years, I'd also lose my lover, Chris Montagna, and my youngest brother, Dan Sparling, to AIDS.) I wanted to invest in the young student cast a sense of the unbearable gravity of the crisis and at the same time acknowledge the grace of so many noble souls. In the two-part dance, I attempted to contrast the "dark night of the soul" of the individual's plight with the supportive community of friends, relatives and fellow sufferers.