foi on DTW blog and election and perception and bombs

hey i'm happy to say that Dance Theater Workshop posted info about foi 2008 on their blog.. you can go here:
http://www.dancetheaterworkshop.org/blog/2008/11/11/join-a-nationwide-contemplative-action-of-protest-reflection-and-solidarity/


you can read some GREAT comments by participating artists Marissa Perel (illinois) and Diana Crum (georgia) in the comments part of the "info on the way" post.

i'm excited that we have almost HALF of the numbers that i'm hoping for for this event. i'm going to be doing my foi at The Barn in greenpoint, brooklyn. it's a great rehearsal studio/space run by Felicia Ballos, Beth Gill and Isabel Lewis. i'm really happy to be doing it there because it's a little bit out of the way from the craziness of the city, but it's easy to get to and people can come and go easily... also i'm still fantasizing about creating some kind of video streaming thing on the day of the event and there's wifi there.

i'm gonna send out another mass email about the action to my email list in hopes of finding people for the missing states. if you have any ideas about anyone, please tell them to email me at miguel@miguelgutierrez.org... i realized that the first time i sent out an email about it i sent it mostly just to my "dancer" email list. i'm gonna go to the whole list now.

i'm in blois, france, a sleepy city, where i'm getting ready to perform a show tomorrow. the french press has gone berserk over obama's election. in paris you see his face on the cover of every single magazine, i'm not kidding. people are really talking about what this means to the rest of the world. i've also heard a couple of different people talk about how they feel like this is a real signal to the government of france to consider its lack of diversity.

on a slightly different note, someone i work with here talked about how his election allows her to see the u.s. in a favorable light again, and that she was surprised to realize how much prejudice she's been feeling about the u.s. for the past 8 years during bush. i had a complicated response to that statement. i thought about how most of the people i know and myself were never for bush. how more than half of the u.s. certainly wasn't in 2000 and again, how practically half of the country voted against bush again in 2004. while i fully aware and completely happy about the symbolic nature of obama's victory, i find it disheartening to think that people in other countries were not aware of the amount of people, and the amount of frustration and hopelessness that was felt during the bush years in the states. i mean, obviously the numbers of people who volunteered their energy during the obama campaign alone are proof of this. among my friends in new york and across the country, there was certainly a feeling of NEVER AGAIN in regards to mccain.

sadly, last week i couldn't help but notice that it wasn't good news everywhere:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/world/asia/07afghan.html?scp=1&sq=aghanistan%20civilians&st=cse