In 1996, I bought Yoko Ono’s album RISING and was blown away by its ferocity, vulnerability, and accessibility.  I first discovered Ono’s music at the age of nine, the same time I discovered The Beatles.  In fact, Ono was my first exposure to the Avant Garde.  I found her work raw, funny, smart, naïve, and uneasy to dismiss.  At that time, the world had a very black and white view of Ono, not only as an artist and musician but as a person.  Reviled for breaking up The Beatles, she ignited the underlying flames of racism and sexism within even the most progressives of society.  Ono was branded a Witch.  A title she held proudly and defiantly.  By the release of RISING in 1995, the times seemed to have caught up with Ono.  Her public image, her art, and her music were being reconsidered and re-contextualized, most notably the YES YOKO ONO retrospective in 2000 that toured internationally.  With RISING, the themes of survival, loss, anger, and mourning resonated deeply within me.  Workshopped in 2007 at SITI Company and again in 2008, this project saw a portion of it presented at Dance New Amsterdam as part of their works-in-progress series.  I look forward to explore with collaborators in theatre and in dance this powerful and dramatic music in RISING A DANCE PLAY.

“The making of [the album RISING] served as a purging of my anger, pain and fear.”

--Yoko Ono

“RISING is not a collection of greeting-card pleas for world peace but a song cycle for the dying and the ones left behind. . . crawling through shit to get to the sunlight.”

--Rolling Stone review, 1995

“Yoko’s work is very dangerous.  If one is not careful, it could get one thinking and may cause one to form an opinion.  A subversive notion if there ever was one.”

--David Bowie

“Yoko is the most famous unknown artist in the world. 

Everyone knows who she is, but nobody knows what she does.”

--John Lennon

In Development