Rapid City Journal
October 18 2004

Project Premiere

A Rapid City poet's multimedia project will premiere this week at an international film festival in Canada.

Abena "Songbird" Naylor's "Round Dance" a collaborative effort of 50 artists on CD-ROM, will be introduced at the fifth annual imagineNATIVE Film and New Media Festival in Toronto.

The film festival, at Al Green Theatre in the Miles Centre, starts Wednesday, Oct. 20, and ends Sunday, Oct. 24.

In late September, Naylor, a poet and writer, submitted "Round Dance" for consideration as part of the new media collaborative round-robin poem was crafted from submissions from other poets through the internet.

"I received and e-mail about imagineNATIVE in June, and I thought, 'I'm going to try to enter this,'" Naylor said. "I sent it out in September, and I found out it was accepted."

Naylor said "Round Dance" will be showcased in computers at the event's multimedia venue. Festival-goers can go into a computer room and access Naylor's group's poetry performance and manipulate it, she said.

According to the film festival's Web site, www.imaginenative.org, the event includes world premiers of Canadian and international feature, short and documentary films, TV, radio and new media works. It's goal is to promote and support established and emerging Aboriginal artists.

Naylor, 47, from the Mississquoi Abenaki tribe of Swanton, Vt., has also written a book of poetry, "Bitterroot." She has lived in Rapid City for two years.

She said the name "Round Dance" came from the inclusive American Indian social dance that celebrates music, movement and life. Her poetry project began when she received a Creative Work Fund in 2001.

Then living in California, Naylor created her round-robin of poetry from submissions using an online bulletin board housed on the Native American Cultural Center of San Francisco's Web site.

"The Web site was launched on Sept. 10, 2001," she said. "The next day was Sept. 11. We were dealing with lots of feelings about the war."

Ideally, the poetry would involve Indian communities nationwide. But because of time constraints of the grant, Naylor quickly chose submissions that fit the project's goals.

"We had a very short window of opportunity," she said.

Naylor said the Web site exceeded her expectations, connecting to a broad generational, geographical and tribal representation.

After assembling the submissions, Naylor worked on crafting the transitions and finished the final piece. She then brought in graphic artists, musicians and performance artists, who participated in a multimedia presentation in October 2001.

The video-taped clips of the performance became a part of the disc. In 2002, CDs were sent to all the contributors and performing artists, she said.

Naylor said "Round Dance" will be shown in Rapid City - possibly at Rapid City Public Library - at a later date. For now, the only way to see it is at imagineNATIVE Film and New Media Festival in Toronto.

"It's pretty exciting" she said.

 
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