Okwui Okpokwasili
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Okwui Okpokwasili
Okwui Okpokwasili (; born August 6, 1972) is an American artist, performer, choreographer, and writer. Her multidisciplinary performances draw upon her training in theatre, and she describes her work as at "the intersection of theatre, dance, and the installation." Several of her works relate to historical events in Nigeria. She is especially interested in cultural and historical memory and how the Western imagination perceives African bodies. Early life The daughter of Igbo Nigerians who moved to the United States to escape the Nigerian Civil War in the late 1960s, Okpokwasili grew up in the Bronx, New York.Hilton Als"Okwui Okpokwasili Explores Politics and the Body" ''The New Yorker'', April 24, 2017. She attended Yale University, where she met filmmaker Andrew Rossi, who made a documentary about her piece ''Bronx Gothic''. Career Okpokwasili has become a key figure in the New York experimental dance scene. She is known for several one-woman performances and for her frequent co ...
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Igbo People
The Igbo people ( , ; also spelled Ibo" and formerly also ''Iboe'', ''Ebo'', ''Eboe'', * * * ''Eboans'', ''Heebo''; natively ) are an ethnic group in Nigeria. They are primarily found in Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo States. A sizable Igbo population is also found in Delta and Rivers States. Large ethnic Igbo populations are found in Cameroon, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea, as well as outside Africa. There has been much speculation about the origins of the Igbo people, which are largely unknown. Geographically, the Igbo homeland is divided into two unequal sections by the Niger River—an eastern (which is the larger of the two) and a western section. The Igbo people are one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. The Igbo language is part of the Niger-Congo language family. Its regional dialects are somewhat mutually intelligible amidst the larger "Igboid" cluster. The Igbo homeland straddles the lower Niger River, east and south of the Edoid and Idomoid gr ...
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Bessie Awards
The New York Dance and Performance Awards, also known as the Bessie Awards, are awarded annually for exceptional achievement by independent dance artists presenting their work in New York City. The broad categories of the awards are: choreography, performance, music composition and visual design. The Bessie Awards were established in 1983. History and description The Bessie Awards were established in 1983 by Dance Theater Workshop and named in honor of Bessie Schonberg, an influential mid-20th-century teacher of modern dance and former head of the dance department at Sarah Lawrence College. The awards honor exceptional choreography, performance, music composition and visual design in dance and allied art forms. Nominees and award winners are chosen by the Bessie Selection Committee, which consists of dancers, dance presenters, producers, choreographers, journalists, critics and academics. Since 2010, the awards have been overseen by an independent steering committee in partnershi ...
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Rhode Island School Of Design
The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the accessibility of design education to women. Today, RISD offers bachelor's and master's degree programs across 19 majors and enrolls approximately 2,000 undergraduate and 500 graduate students. The Rhode Island School of Design Museum—which houses the school's art and design collections—is one of the largest college art museums in the United States. The Rhode Island School of Design is affiliated with Brown University, whose campus sits immediately adjacent to RISD's on Providence's College Hill. The two institutions share social and community resources and since 1900 have permitted cross-registration. Together, RISD and Brown offer dual degree programs at the graduate and undergraduate levels. As of 2022, RISD alumni have received ...
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MacArthur Fellow
The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 individuals, working in any field, who have shown "extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction" and are citizens or residents of the United States. According to the foundation's website, "the fellowship is not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person's originality, insight, and potential," but it also says such potential is "based on a track record of significant accomplishments." The current prize is $800,000 paid over five years in quarterly installments. Previously it was $625,000. This figure was increased from $500,000 in 2013 with the release of a review of the MacArthur Fellows Program. Since 1981, 1,111 people have been named MacArthur Fello ...
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Amos Tutuola
Amos Tutuola (20 June 1920 – 8 June 1997) was a Nigerian writer who wrote books based in part on Yoruba folk-tales. Early history Amos Olatubosun Tutuola Odegbami was born on 20 June 1920, in Wasinmi, a village just a few miles outside of Abeokuta, Nigeria, where his parents, Charles Tutuola Odegbami and Esther Aina Odegbami, who were Yoruba Christian cocoa farmers, lived. Wasinmi was a small farming village founded between the years 1845 and 1880 by constituents of the Egba subethnic group from Abeokuta. Tutuola's father and grandfather belonged to this subethnic group. Amos was the youngest son of his father; his mother was his father's third wife. His grandfather the Odafin of Egbaland, Chief Odegbami (c. 1842–1936), patriarch of the Odegbami clan, was a chieftain of the Egba people and a traditional worshipper of the Yoruba religion. His title, "Odafin" (literally "the establisher of laws" or "lawgiver" in Yoruba), signified that he had an administrative position w ...
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Bomb (magazine)
''Bomb'' (stylized in all caps as ''BOMB'') is an American arts magazine edited by artists and writers, published quarterly in print and daily online. It is composed primarily of interviews between creative people working in a variety of disciplines—visual art, literature, film, music, theater, architecture, and dance. In addition to interviews, ''Bomb'' publishes reviews of literature, film, and music, as well as new poetry and fiction. ''Bomb'' is published by New Art Publications, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. History ''Bomb'' was launched in 1981 by a group of New York City-based artists, including Betsy Sussler, Sarah Charlesworth, Glenn O'Brien, Michael McClard, and Liza Béar, who sought to record and promote public conversations between artists without mediation by critics or journalists.McClister, Nell"Bomb Magazine: Celebrating 25 Years" ''Bomb'', Retrieved October 13, 2014. The name ''Bomb'' is a reference to both Wyndham Lewis' ''Blast'' and the fact th ...
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The Brooklyn Rail
''The Brooklyn Rail'' is a publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics. The ''Rail'' is based out of Brooklyn, New York. It features in-depth critical essays, fiction, poetry, as well as interviews with artists, critics, and curators, and reviews of art, music, dance, film, books, and theater. The ''Rail's'' print publication is published ten times a year and distributed to universities, galleries, museums, bookstores, and other organizations around the world free of charge. The ''Rail'' operates a small press called Rail Editions, which publishes literary translations, poetry, and art criticism. In addition to the small press, the ''Rail'' has also organized panel discussions, readings, film screenings, music and dance performances, and has curated exhibitions through a program called Rail Curatorial Projects. Notable among these exhibitions is "Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale that Society Has the Capacity to Destroy: Mare Nostrum" co-curated ...
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Nollywood
Nollywood is a sobriquet that originally referred to the Nigerian film industry. The origin of the term dates back to the early 2000s, traced to an article in ''The New York Times''. Due to the history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition for the term, which has made it a subject of several controversies. Etymology The origin of the term "Nollywood" remains unclear; Jonathan Haynes traced the earliest usage of the word to a 2002 article by Matt Steinglass in ''the New York Times'', where it was used to describe Nigerian cinema. Charles Igwe noted that Norimitsu Onishi also used the name in a September 2002 article he wrote for ''the New York Times''. The term continues to be used in the media to refer to the Nigerian film industry, with its definition later assumed to be a portmanteau of the words "Nigeria" and "Hollywood", the American major film hub. Definition of which films are considered Nollywood has always been a subject of deb ...
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Chibok Schoolgirls Kidnapping
On the night of 14–15 April 2014, 276 mostly Christianity, Christian female students aged from 16 to 18 were kidnapped by the Islamic terrorism, Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram from the Government Girls Secondary School at the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria. Prior to the raid, the school had been closed for four weeks due to deteriorating security conditions, but the girls were in attendance in order to take final exams in physics. 57 of the schoolgirls escaped immediately following the incident by jumping from the trucks on which they were being transported, and others have been rescued by the Nigerian Armed Forces on various occasions. Hopes have been raised that the 219 remaining girls might be released, however some girls are believed to be dead. Amina Ali (hostage), Amina Ali, one of the missing girls, was found in May 2016. She claimed that the remaining girls were still there, but that six had died. As of 14 April 2021, seven years after the initial kidnappi ...
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Women's War
The Women's War, or Aba Women's Protest (Igbo: ''Ogu Umunwanyi''; Ibibio: ''Ekong Iban''), was a period of unrest in colonial Nigeria over November 1929. The protests broke out when thousands of Igbo women from the Bende District, Umuahia and other places in eastern Nigeria traveled to the town of Oloko to protest against the Warrant Chiefs, whom they accused of restricting the role of women in the government. The protest encompassed women from six ethnic groups (Igbo, Ibibio, Andoni, Ogoni, Efik, and Ijaw). It was organised and led by the rural women of Owerri and Calabar provinces. The modus operandi of the protests involved 'sit-in' by the women. During the events, many Warrant Chiefs were forced to resign and 16 Native Courts were attacked, most of which were destroyed. It was the first major revolt by women in West Africa. In 1930 the colonial government abolished the system of warrant chieftains, and appointed women to the Native Court system. These reforms were built upo ...
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The River To River Festival
The River To River Festival is an annual arts festival held in summer in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The festival presents live art and installations in public spaces and in partnership with institutions in Lower Manhattan. It is presented by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. The festival includes dance, visual and performance art, poetry, film, music, theatre, and other events that are free and open to the public. History The River To River stival was founded in 2002 by American Express, The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Alliance for Downtown New York, Arts Brookfield, Battery Park City Authority, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and South Street Seaport. It was created as an effort to revitalize the Lower Manhattan community after the September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That m ...
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Governors Island
Governors Island is a island in New York Harbor, within the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is located approximately south of Manhattan Island, and is separated from Brooklyn to the east by the Buttermilk Channel. The National Park Service administers a small portion of the north end of the island as the Governors Island National Monument, including two former military fortifications named Fort Jay and Castle Williams. The Trust for Governors Island operates the remaining , including 52 historic buildings, as a public park. About of the land area is fill, added in the early 1900s to the south of the original island. The native Lenape originally referred to Governors Island as Paggank ("nut island") because of the area's rich collection of chestnut, hickory, and oak trees; it is believed that this space was originally used for seasonal foraging and hunting. The name was translated into the Dutch Noten Eylandt, then Anglicized into Nutten Island, before being rename ...
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