Califia and the Trespassers

An installation performance work

Califia
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Music: Andrea Clearfield, electroacoustic score
Text: Quintan Ana Wikswo
Choreography: Manfred Fischbeck
Language: English
Duration: 40:00 min.
Premiere: 6/13 at Christ Church Neighborhood House, Philadelphia with Group Motion Dance Company, Manfred Fischbeck, Artistic Director and Quintan Ana Wikswo, filmmaker/poet. Partially funded by the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. Created at Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, California
Commissioned by: Pew Center for Arts and Heritage
Winner: International Alliance for Women in Music Annual Concert Competition for Electroacoustic Music
Contact Andrea Clearfield for recording:

WATCH

Watch excerpts


PHOTOS (Bill Hebert Photography)

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READ

Article in the Dance Journal

NOTES

Califia and the Trespassers is conceived as a performative meditation, reflection and indictment of ecological and human violence, ‘trespasses’ of colonialism, and the oppression and destruction of natural habitats and native cultures. Califia is the fictional Amazonian queen whom California is named after. She was part of the Black Mojave Nation who lived in California before the Spanish Invasion.

The electronic audio composition includes performers Gloria Justen, violin, Stephen Kent, didgeridoo and Andrea Clearfield, piano in addition to Andrea’s treated field recordings from the Redwood Forest in California where original film images by Quintan Ana Wikswo were also taken.

Special thanks to the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California where Andrea was awarded a Lucas Artist Fellowship and where together with guest artists Fischbeck and Wikswo, the original idea of “Califia and the Trespassers” was conceived.