MCNAMARA, Brooke (United States)

Title of contribution:

Choose One                                                         

Feed Your Vow // a Poetry Performance                                                     

Where & when:

Ibiza II.
Friday, 25th 16:10-16:45

Ibiza II.
Saturday, 26th 12:00-14:00

Choose One

Choose One is a raw, intimate dance-theater production that sets up Lauren Beale and Brooke McNamara (Creators/Performers) in a context both fabricated and completely real. Instructing the audience that at the end of the show they must vote between Lauren and Brooke – who gets to stay and who has to go – the performance becomes a navigation of the pressure of wanting to be chosen and not wanting to be separated. In this real-time dilemma, which echoes the reality of choice and consequence, separation from those we love, and connectedness that transcends having to say goodbye, an array of competitive strategies and coping mechanisms are humorously, tenderly, and tragically revealed. Through dialogue, dance, and improvisation, the performers’ presence and humanity are under demand, as they compete, enter conflict, surrender and let go into vulnerability. Eventually, an experience of bare realness and oneness is discovered.

Feed Your Vow // a Poetry Performance

Brooke McNamara shares poetry written from the body of a dancer, mind of a zen monk, and heart of a mother. In this reading she opens a timeless beauty for listeners by encountering our everyday world with fiercely loving eyes and a powerful, compassionate voice. McNamara’s poems befriend their audience with a voice that speaks straight to their heart, inviting them to feel seen, challenged, loved and woken in a way they might not be anywhere else in their lives. Her poems exist to remind and activate the felt sense of undomesticated Love for readers – nurturing love, motherly love, erotic love, humorous love, perfectly imperfect human love, and boundless divine love – all animating the extraordinary and ordinary alike.

About Brooke McNamara

Brooke McNamara, MFA, is a poet, dance artist, mother and monk who centers her life’s work around exploring impossible questions through art, meditation, and collaboration. She teaches Yoga on faculty at Naropa University and is ordained as a monk and empowered as a Dharma Holder in the Zen Buddhist lineage of Diane Musho Hamilton, Sensei. Brooke lives in Boulder, CO with her husband, Rob, and their sons, Lundin and Orion. www.FeedYourVow.com