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| Awilda Sterling-Duprey
Since the late '70's, Awilda Sterling-Duprey has been creating experimental dance works, performed and taught throughout NYC, Europe, Latin America, Puerto Rico and other Caribbean countries. Ms. Sterling is an important influence in Trinidad/Tobago's cultural scene. She actively taught her particular understanding of Caribbean contemporary aesthetics by means of an inter-disciplinary approach, where the importance of the conscious integration of movement and the body became relevant to the overall theatrical experience. As choreographer and dancer, she has collaborated with outstanding figures of Trinidad's literary, dance and theater communities. In addition, she is an accomplished visual artist who has created several installations at BAAD!/Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance for other dance performances in Puerto Rico. Ms. Sterling has received the following awards: NEA (individual artists), PSBA (Institute of Puerto Rican Culture Artist Fellowships), FPA Puerto Rico Community Foundation), and a 2003 Community Award from the Clemente Soto Velez Center in downtown Manhattan.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT As a visual artist and performer, Awilda Sterling-Duprey experiments with traditional forms of Caribbean dance and other art forms. Her work both honors its African legacy and helps reveal its essence. Ms. Sterling informs traditional dance with her personal improvised choreography. " My primary concern is working with Orisha traditional religious dance with an aim towards going beneath the form to reveal its essence. I have a strong respect for the tradition and integrity of the form and believe that as a movement language, its vocabulary can expand in specific ways of moving the body, far beyond its original traditional form. In traversing traditional forms of Orisha dance through informing it with a more personal aesthetic, I believe participants and audiences are more able to understand its underlying essence. I want to work towards keeping this dance form spiritually alive and approachable in the 21st century. It is my belief that the aesthetic qualities in African religious communities have held a parallel standing along with the dominant Euro-Centric values in our society. We, people of African descent, are not always aware how these traditional values still resonate and dictate upon US an unconscious response that calls for bonding. My particular interest as an artist is to reverse those images that have been used against us, distorting our performance in history. I want to bring about images of liberation, beauty and joy.
REPERTORY IN MEMORY OF Mme. SYLVIA DEL VILLARD: Variations on an African Theme (2002)- this dance piece improvises to an internalized rhythm, like a jazz musician working within a song's framework. excerpts from a traditional West African women's puberty dance are accompanied by a "tumbandero" (washtub bass) a Congolese percussion instrument common to the African diaspora in the Americas. 1 dancer, 1 musician. RT:10-15minutes. CIRCLES OF THE WIND (2003) A solo piece that deconstructs Oya traditional choreography. Oya ia a Yoruba deity that governs the forces of the wind. Uses silence, arm movements and audience participation. The addition of a technological devise adds a contemporary flair to the strong traditional context. 1 dancer. RT: 10-12 minutes VEJIGANTE DECREPITO O, LA ISLA QUE PATINA (2002)- this performance piece uses "el vejigante," an emblematic icon in Puerto Rican culture to display an array of idiosyncratic movement in order to speak about the cultural decay existing on the island. Intersects elements of Caribbean carnival-like costumes, mimicking, percussion and audience participation. 1 dancer. Live drumming and taped carnival music. RT: 15 minutes SHINING STAR OF THE CARIBBEAN (2001) The title of this piece is the slogan used by the Puerto Rican colonial government to sell the island to foreign investors. The movement sequences depict the deterioration of the colonized mind. Borrowing from the rich West African religious traditions transformed in Cuba and extended to Puerto Rico and most of the Caribbean and Latin American countries, the ending proposes a call to Ogun, the Yuruba warrior-god, as a metaphor to fight back. Ms. Sterling believes that to date, the conditions that triggered the original creation of this choreography have worsened. The piece was originally created in 1994, and presented through Pepatian's Bronx Artist Spotlight series at the Lovinger Theater at Lehman College, April 2002. 1 dancer. Music: excerpts from Charles Mingus' Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, and Toque y Canto Matancero a Ogun from the Afrocuban religious tradition. RT: 15 minutes. ASUNTO DE FAMILIA (2001) - a group piece incorporating musicians and family members: Victor "Papo" Sterling and Janinardo Batista Sterling. This work mines the space of improvisation between music and dance and between family generations whose work speaks to a shared Caribbean heritage. 1 dancer, 2 musicians. RT: 15 minutes A SUL: ALTAR MAJOR (ALTAR MAJORIS) (2002) : dance-theater piece that introduces movement improvisation to contextualize traditional themes and rhythms common to Spanish Caribbean music and dance. The piece overlaps Christian and African religious iconography to speak about cultural synchretism, accentuating its validity as the regions' trademark. Its title is a metaphor in the artists' mind: "Caribbean altars hold sacred icons. Music plays ancestral voices. The dancing community impersonates the energies of nature these icons embody. Countries speak to and about the children of the gods. They are the producers of the cultural symbols that quilt the geography of the Caribbean sea. This is my tribute to my people." 2 dancers: Awilda Sterling-Duprey (General Concept/Direction; Dancer and Choreographer) and guest dancers Victor "Tetelo" Sterling. Music: Ismael Rivera, El Sonero Mayor, Rezo a Obatala-Musica Santera. RT: 1 hour 20 minutes.
CURRENT PROJECT Esto Fue Lo Que Trajo El Barco (This is the Cargo the Ship Delivered). This work was first performed in May 2002 at the Bronx Museum of Art, in a co-production with Pepatian. The project involved a full-room installation and Ms. Sterling in performance with the poetry ensemble group Universes. Esto Fue Lo Que Trajo El Barco will be in further development at a residency at the Lexington Arts Center in June 2004 with several other Bronx-based and Latino artists, including members of Universes poetry theater ensemble, with a NYC-performance in Fall 2004. This work expands on themes deriving from the African legacy present in the Americas, with particular emphasis on the European colonies in the Caribbean Sea. These islands: Cuba, Haiti and Puerto Rico play the role of giving birth to an Afro-Hispanic Caribbean culture that mothers the contemporary Latino community. Overall, this project states a profound appreciation and validation for the transformative action African presence has on the American culture since the Trans-European slave trade of the 15th century.
RESIDENCY ACTIVITY Ms. Sterling has taught all over NYC, Europe and Puerto Rico. In 1999 she was invited to co-teach at Smith, Mount Holyoke and Hampshire Colleges in Massachusetts's five-college system as a Guest Artist in Comparative Caribbean Dance. For two consecutive years, she was a resident artist at Connecticut's Ethel Walker School for the Performing Arts. Currently Ms. Sterling-Duprey teaches Introduction to Cultural Anthropology at Long Island University, Brooklyn campus and Aesthetic Expressions and Symbolism of the Latino Community in NYC at Brooklyn College where she has been an Adjunct Professor at Brooklyn College in the Department of Puerto Rican & Latino Studies for the past 3-1/2 years. Her major focus of cultural inquiry lies in the active role traditional African religions play in shaping the region's cultural values and behavioral patterns. Her special teaching project, Del Oricha a la OrillaSSantos es Salsa, is a Caribbean dance workshop that introduces cultural concepts through traditional and contemporary dance forms. This concept can extend from one-day classes, master classes, week-long intensives and seminars.
Photograph by Marisol
Diaz ©2003
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