Art Review

On Thursday, my English class hosted Stephanie Batiste. Instead of a lecture she along with a dancer and singer preformed, "Stacks of Obits," a choreopoem which Stephanie wrote and has previously performed at UCSB. The performance involved spoken word, by Stephanie, song, and dance which interpreted the words. "Stacks of Obits" stands for the stacks of obituaries mostly of young black and hispanic man living in the LA area. As Stephanie spoke, slides were shown of the city giving geographical reference to her descriptions. This performance has been considered controversial due to the racial, cultural, and political statements it makes. Professor Batiste claims the goal of the reading is to "close the gap between performer/audience, text/performance, and victim/killer. She stated that the performance offers no catharsis because it is based on real lie tragedies which continue to happen today. Although there was no enough time for the whole performance, what was shown was still powerful and moving. I had never really seen any spoken word performances before this one. The way in which song and dance were incorporated gave more meaning to the words. Even the dancer explained that he was doing "lyrical dancing" where each movement explained the words being spoken in a symbolic way. I have taken a black studies class before and watched numerous documentaries but I thought this was an interested take on presenting controversial subjects in an artistic manner. The facts were not just blurted out but structured in a way to tell a story and stir up emotion within the audience. I hope I will have the chance to see the whole performance one day.