Author Archive for tdomf_5e8f2

Show about Iraq, Help needed

Published
by
Roman Baca
on May 21, 2009
in 3 and Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

: 2000-2008

Ajkun Ballet Theatre, an international ballet company, has engaged me, Roman Baca, as a choreographer for their 2009 season. Ajkun Ballet Theatre has become known as one of the country’s most original companies for its inventive and challenging repertoire.

Your help is needed to make this opportunity a monumental one.

I originally imagined the concept for my work while watching a performance in the Ailey Citigroup Theatre in NYC. The Marines with target designators patrolling down the isles. Now that dream is a realtiy.

This is our opportunity to bring something truly different to the art world. To touch people with the story of courageous men struggling to make sense of war.

I have the opportunity to set my work on a company of dancers the way I envisioned it.

To make this a reality, costumes must be bought, tickets sold, production crew engaged, dancers must be paid.

This cannot happen without you. You can help in a number of ways.

1) Purchase tickets from me to see the show. They are $35/ticket. I have to sell 50 tickets for each show. Tell your friends to buy tickets.
http://tinyurl.com/ctnxbh

2) Donate to the cause. Any amount helps. $5 pays for a dancers Metrocard. $20 pays for a studio for an hour.

To donate more than $5, change the quantity field.
http://tinyurl.com/ctnxbh

3) Donate tickets. $35 dollars sends a Veteran or Student to a show free of charge to them. $70 lets them bring a loved one.
http://tinyurl.com/ctnxbh

4) You can help or buy via check. Mail to AjkunBT, 193 Cross Street, BX-NY 10464-1225 and put Roman Baca or Roman Baca Tickets in the Memo line.

Please mark the dates on your calendar and forward this to everyone you know.

Habibi Hhaloua, at Alvin Ailey Citigroup Theatre
along with works by Chiara Ajkun, Nacho Duato and Mats Ek.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 8pm
Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 8pm
Sunday, May 31, 2009 at 6pm

Thank you for all of your help and support.

Sincerely,

Roman Baca
Exit 12 Dance Company, www.exit12danceco.com
Ajkun Ballet Theater, www.ajkunbt.org

This post was submitted by Roman Baca.

Dryhootch – helping the veteran who survived the war, survive the peace

Published
by
Bob Curry
on November 11, 2008
in Related Sites and Veterans Day
. 0 Comments

: US Army

For myself and my Vietnam brothers and sisters, we came home to a country that blamed us for all that went wrong. I quickly learned to put my war in the closet and get on with life.  But one learns that the life you left behind is forever different and it’s not just the passage of time. Your attitude, your value system has been completely turned upside down. Little noises in the night find you getting up and walking around the house checking the windows and door locks. You may feel naked, as you no longer sleep with your weapon. Smells or sounds trigger responses in you so fast, even you are shocked. Those around you wonder what’s wrong, why are you different. And how in the hell do you explain to them what you don’t even understand yourself. Wander down this path awhile and you will never see the end coming.            

For PTSD is like a leech, it sucks such a little peace out of your life each day you never notice it until suddenly its dark. You’ll slowly withdraw from those close around you, get angry for people stressing at things that don’t really matter; not in your world of life and death, sanity and insanity. Perhaps medication will help, a drink, a pill today, a little more tomorrow, until there is never enough to kill your pain.

9/11 and the Wars of Terrorisms raised those ghosts in me, and like many veterans, I turned to alcohol to cope, to make it through another day. My life literally crashed in 2002 and it was a band of Vietnam & Gulf War brothers who stood with me, got me the treatment that I needed, and saved my life.

Now we face more wars, and our troops are sent back again and again and again. And soon they will realize the war they thought they left behind, in fact came home with them. Dryhootch.org is a veteran’s nonprofit offering a veterans peer to peer counseling center centered on the social space of a coffee house. VA mental health professionals have embraced this model as a way to reach out, to connect with our new generation of warriors before they follow our path to addiction, divorce, jail, or suicide.

It is before the leech burrows in, that treatment will do the most good.  This is when one needs to find the camaraderie of those who were baptized by fire to once again sit with you. Those who were with you in the darkest of times, who feel your pain, your fears, your heartaches. You don’t have to finish a sentence if you can’t find the words, or you can’t put your heart back in your chest. They can finish it for you, because they’ve been there. And there will be those who came before you, who have walked your path and found a way out. And you will listen to him or her, for “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he (she) to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.” They, like you have been shot between the eyes. Only they can see that wound, that invisible scar of this shit storm no one else can see, and only they can show you the path back.

This post was submitted by Bob Curry.

Habibi Hhaloua (excerpt)

Published
by
Roman Baca
on August 28, 2008
in Roman Baca
. 0 Comments

: 2000-2008

This is the title of the current work-in-progress of the company.

“Habibi Hhaloua (My beautiful, the only thing I would ever have in my eyes is you…)” Is what the Iraqi translator told me the lyrics of a beautiful song he played meant.”

It became the name of this work.

It is an emotional piece, touching on the contrasts inherent in war.

It is the Marine, who he is, and who he longs to be.

It is the man where he is, and where he wants to be.

It is the Marines he is with, and the love he longs for.

Audiences who have seen the work have been amazed at not only the content and contrasts, but at the reality and the depiction of emotion within that reality.

With your support we can develop this work of love into a full length work.

www.exit12danceco.com


This post was submitted by Roman Baca.