LADIES DOING LIFE.LADIES DOING LIFE NOMAD THEATER BOULDER, COLORADO The City of Boulder (, Mountain Time Zone) is a home rule municipality located in Boulder County, Colorado, United States. Boulder is the 11th most populous city in the State of Colorado, as well as the most populous city and the county AUGUST 5-8, 1999 In her great The Art of Making Dances, Doris Humphrey Doris Batcheller Humphrey (October 17, 1895 - December 29, 1958) was a dancer of the early twentieth century. She was born in Oak Park, Illinois but grew up in Chicago, Illinois; she was a descendant of Pilgrim William Brewster and Simon James Humphrey. warns young dancemakers against the pitfalls of using political subject matter. But rules can be broken by wise choices, as choreographer Jerri Davis amply demonstrates. Out of the grim facts of domestic violence, Davis crafts her powerful, heartbreaking Ladies Doing Life. After interviews with inmates serving life sentences in the Women's Correctional Center in Canon City, Colorado, Davis and her cast of six dance about lives diminished to the smallest detail: a spotless refrigerator, a table set just so, children kept unnaturally quiet, anything to avoid the daily threat of an explosion. The space is stark: a dim area of mystery and dread lit by designer Craig Bushman; a cagelike structure upstage (by Steve Clisset, after Bob Shannon's original design); a lone wooden chair suspended downstage down·stage adv. Toward, at, or on the front part of a stage. adj. Of or relating to the front part of a stage. n. The front half of a stage. Noun 1. right. Two large nudes by artist Dania Pettus that flank the proscenium proscenium In a theatre, the frame or arch separating the stage from the auditorium, through which the action of a play is viewed. In ancient Greek theatres, the proskenion was an area in front of the skene that eventually functioned as the stage. represent the stripped personalities of these women. Beth Quist Beth Quist, a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and composer, began playing piano at age 2. She has a 4-octave soprano voice, and plays piano, keyboards, santour (hammered dulcimer), dumbek, guitar, flute, and various other toys that she can get her hands on. lends her shimmering shim·mer intr.v. shim·mered, shim·mer·ing, shim·mers 1. To shine with a subdued flickering light. See Synonyms at flash. 2. four-octave voice to her arrangement of the Holly Near song "Sister Woman Sister"; Quist also composed the rest of the eloquent, driving score. The suspended chair is the site for some of Davis's most arresting choreography. She begins the piece there, hanging backward by her knees from its seat, her arms thrown back. In supplication? Resignation? While another character speaks of her abuse (much of the text is drawn from court testimony), Davis stands on the chair, turning around rapidly, grasping one by one the four wires holding it. The chair bucks and shakes beneath her feet, suggesting her tenuous hold on a stable life. Eventually, all the women approach the chair as a gate to something beyond--beyond their abuse, their murderous reactions, the pain they and their children continue to suffer. Then they move as one to and through the upstage bars, across the stage. Charging through the space, dancing out their rage and loss, they gather strength collectively as the dance nears its end. Domestic violence statistics Domestic violence statistics attempt to provide statistical measures of domestic violence. Issues Measures of the incidence of violence in intimate relationships can differ markedly in their findings depending on the measures used. for 1999 from the Family Violence Prevention Fund report that almost four million American women were physically abused by their husbands or boyfriends in the last year alone--one every nine seconds. Forty-two percent of murdered women are killed by their intimate male partners. When Ladies Doing Life was originally presented in 1997 it inspired University of Denver Background and rankings The University was founded in 1864 as Colorado Seminary by John Evans, the former Territorial Governor of Colorado, who had been appointed by US President Abraham Lincoln. Law School professors and students to draft the Battered Women's Clemency Leniency or mercy. A power given to a public official, such as a governor or the president, to in some way lower or moderate the harshness of punishment imposed upon a prisoner. Clemency is considered to be an act of grace. Reform Project in 1998. Then-governor Roy Romer signed the act into law, immediately pardoning five women convicted in domestic violence crimes, and shaving a quarter-century off the sentence of another inmate--one of the women interviewed for this work. Beginning in late 1999, Ladies Doing Life tours Colorado, with performances benefiting each community's shelters for battered women. |
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