Being (T)here: A Creative Panel Performance

Time: December 6 (Monday) , 9:30pm-11pm Location: Nuyorican Poets Cafe Inc 236 E 3rd St New York, NY Created By Amy Bonnaffons Being (T)here: Creating in the Borderlands A "Creative Panel Performance" Sponsored by Washington Square Review Far removed from a traditional panel, the evening will explore the concept of Art in Exile via text, conversation, and live performances from writer/painter Breyten Breytenbach (South Africa), poet/painter Huang Xiang (China), and performance artists Chaw Ei Thein and Ye Taik (Burma). ... We promise that this is not your typical panel - it will get your heart racing and your brain ticking! Come view exciting, genre-bending performances, hear the "Wild Beast Poet of China," and participate in a dynamic conversation about displacement and creation. All proceeds go to benefit exiled artists! There's no better way to spend your Monday night! Doors open 9:30, show will start by 10. ARTIST BIOS: Breyten Breytenbach was born in Bonnievale, South Africa. He studied fine arts at the University of Cape Town and became a committed opponent against the long held policy of apartheid. He left South Africa for Paris in the early 1960s. When he married a French woman of Vietnamese ancestry, he was not allowed to return. The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949) and The Immorality Act (1950) made it a criminal offence for a white person to have any sexual relations with a person of a different race. In France he was a founder member of Okhela, a resistance group fighting apartheid in exile. On an illegal trip to South Africa in 1975 he was betrayed, arrested and sentenced to nine years of imprisonment for high treason. Released in 1982 as a result of massive international intervention he returned to Paris and obtained French citizenship. He currently divides his time between Europe, Africa and USA. He joined the University of Cape Town as a visiting professor in the Graduate School of Humanities (from January 2000) and is also involved with the Gorée Institute in Dakar (Senegal) and with the New York University. The work of Breytenbach includes numerous volumes of poetry, novels, and essays, many of which are in Afrikaans, many translated from Afrikaans to English, and many published originally in English. He is also known for his works of pictorial arts. Exhibitions of his paintings and prints were shown in numerous cities around the world including Johannesburg, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Paris, Brussels, Edinburgh and New York. Chaw Ei Thein was born in Rangoon, Burma in 1969 Huang Xiang, Chinese poet, calligrapher and dissident human rights activist, is considered, according to the Poetry Foundation, the “Walt Whitman of China” by scholars and poets around the world. His work has been banned in China for over forty years. Huang has spent a total of twelve years in Chinese prisons and labor camps (laogai), between 1959 and 1994. In 1978 he generated the Democracy Wall Movement in Beijing; he also created Enlightenment, a journal which initiated the New Modern Democracy Movement and influenced the Misty poets, Bei Dao, Shu Ting and others. In 1997 he and his wife were granted asylum in the United States. Huang Xiang has been published in the United States, France, Taiwan, Japan, Sweden and Hong Kong. Of his twenty books, one, A Bilingual Edition of Poetry Out of Communist China, contains English translations, by Andrew G. Emerson (Mellen Press, 2004). Known as "China's Wild Beast Poet", his poetry performances are not soon forgotten. Ye Taik is a performing artist / avant-garde dancer (Born - Rangoon, Burma).He dedicates most of his time as a collaborative choreographer, performer, curator, experimental theater artist and playwright, to discovering and developing cultural interactions through art and performance. Part of the philosophical background of Ye Taik's work has been his idea of art and performance as a language onto itself without borders or boundaries, the power of art as a vital way to initiate peaceful intercultural communication, and to develop means of conflict resolution. He is not especially attached to the concept of national identity. Circumstances have brought him to move around from an early point in his life, and he has felt compelled to continue on doing so, for this experience has made him consider things in a wider perspectives without restrictions. He has had the pleasure to work with No-Where NOW-here, The Internationalists, Vangeline Theater, Around the World in 24 hours Festival , Performa 09, Williamsburg ArtneXus, AMDat, Center for Performance Research , Collaborations in Dance Festival, Triskelion Arts and public venues including United Nation Plaza. Recently , His work is in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.