COVER ART PHOTO BY FEDERICO ARIEL SÁNCHEZ
Carnival of the Animals (2024)
Poems from the Performance Work
by Marc Bamuthi Joseph
28 page PDF Book
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Carnival of the Animals is an intentional response to the January 6 insurrection, a re-framing of Camille Saint-Saëns’ classic work (of the same title) as an intricate, interwoven series of contemplations, navigating the reality of the political jungle by embodying shifting societal values and our relationship to democracy. Carnival aims to “hack” the classical, to probe the questions: What happens after democracy? What is a new future we must collectively imagine?
PARABLE:
a parable about structure, structured in parallels about animals…an accounting of covid winter fear…a memory of the day, before memory is illegal, and political movement is erased…all these animals on this here ark, and the dumb ones are gonna ruin it for everybody…
-Marc Bamuthi Jopseph
Carnival of the Animals performance work was commissioned by Meany Center for the Performing Arts, and co-commissioned by the La Jolla Music Society, Lincoln Center, Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance, Stanford University, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Wharton Center for Performing Arts, with funding from the Harkness Foundation for Dance and The MAP Fund supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, and Mellon Foundation. The poetry by Marc Bamuthi Joseph for Carnival of the Animals, in part, was originally commissioned by the National Gallery of Art.
For more, visit www.sozoartists.com/carnival
About the Poet:
Poet’s biography
Carnival of the Animals stage work, features Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Wendy Whelan and Fransceca Harper