Ione, Lisa B Kelley, & Jaguar Mary X

IONE is an author, director and performer whose works include the critically acclaimed memoir, Pride of Family Four Generations of American Women of Color, and Listening in Dreams and This is a Dream! She produced Letters; a Magazine on the Air on WBAI -Pacifica Radio for a number of years in the 80s. She is the playwright and director with her creative partner and spouse, composer Pauline Oliveros, of several large theater works including Njinga the Queen King; The Return of a Warrior (premiered at BAM’s Next Wave Festival), The Nubian Word for Flowers; A Phantom Opera, “a deep dream exploration of Nubian Soul and the Colonial Mind,” premiered at Roulette Intermedium and the NYPL @Lincoln Center, the Dance Opera Io and Her and the Trouble with Him, and The Lunar Opera-Deep Listening For_tunes. The two performed internationally as a duo (The Horns of Hathor) and currently IONE disseminates Oliveros’ works world wide. She recently presented The World Wide Tuning Meditation at Carnegie Hall as a part of Claire Chase’s Pauline Oliveros @ 90. Two days of celebration included an ensemble performance of The Witness and The Day of Listening (for families with infants and featuring Oliveros’ Adaptive Use Musical Instrument, AUMI.) She is an Executive Producer of Daniel Weintraub’s seminal film; Deep Listening; The Story of Pauline Oliveros, currently showing in selected theaters world-wide. (PaulineOliveros.us) IONE is the Founding Director of the Ministry of Maåt, Inc (MinistryofMaat.org) and Former Artistic Director of Deep Listening Institute, Ltd. (now The Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer). The recipient of the 2019 Arts Mid Hudson Individual Artists Award and a Certificate of Merit from the General Assembly of the State of New York, IONE was a member of the Kingston, NY Arts Commission for several years. A member of the Distinguished Mentors Council of Composers Now, IONE’s recent opera, TOUCH, with composer Karen Power, premiered at Irish National Opera in 2021.
Her new VR/AR opera Time Being with the same team, is currently in development.
Ionedreams.us

 

 

 

 

Photo: Michael Kirby Smith

LISA B KELLEY is a vocalist and performance artist residing in Kingston, NY. Steeped in traditional theater, vocal and performance studies in her youth, Lisa’s creative process continues to revolve around investigations of identity, musical genres and styles, dream action theater, her family’s immigration memories from the Philippines, universal archetypes, Eastern philosophy and a recognition of the metaphysical and spiritual. Lisa’s performances and writing explore womanhood, grief and loss, dreams and the confluence of self in nature and the cosmos. Lisa is a Deep Listening certificate holder and an ordained high priestess and board member of the Ministry of Maåt. Lisa is currently the founding Executive Director of the Kingston Midtown Arts District and an arts commissioner for the City of Kingston. Lisabarnardkelley.com

JAGUAR MARY X  is a glossolalia vocalist, ritual performance artist and mover, making work informed by queer and black feminist discourse, afro-futurisms, plant sentience and shamanism.

Jaguar Mary X attended the Whitney Independent Studies Program in 1995 and completed MFA degrees at California Institute for the Arts (Film/Video, 2009) and at Pratt Institute (Performance and Performance Studies, 2019) in Brooklyn. They identify as non-binary, agender. Originally from Washington, DC, they are currently in residence at the Art Life Institute founded by Linda Montano in Kingston, New York. They are the creator of the yearly, Queerteenth Performance Art Festival in Kingston. In 2022 they received the honor of City of Kingston’s Distinguished Artist Award for 2022-24.

Jaguar Mary X is on Radio Kingston twice a week as the voice and creator of Midday and Midnight Medicine Journey, a program that centers ancestral appreciation and international music by BIPOC experimental, electronic and ambient producers.

After a life-shifting experience with mugwort, they began to share the plant’s healing properties, organizing ritual smudging performance happenings. Jaguar Mary X developed Artemisia Negra, a pop-up event offering handmade incense and other healing tools infused with mugwort (L. artemisia vulgaris) in 2019.