This weekend, a duo of poets who use both American Sign Language and words to perform their stories and pieces of poetry the Flying Words Project will perform a special showing at Dartmouth this weekend. These performances incorporate playful sound effects with the spoken word and ASL, and are done by a hearing and a deaf performer.
The performance is part of a special project music professor Larry Polansky has worked on in conjunction with the Leslie Center for the Humanities. The show will be unlike any the College has seen in recent years, Polansky said.
Performing in Filene Auditorium in Moore Hall on Saturday evening, the Flying Words Project will present a night of ASL poetry that is free and open to the public. The duo includes Kenny Lerner, a deaf poet, and hearing poet Peter Cook. The two have been performing together for almost 30 years and are renowned for bringing audiences a greater understanding of ASL.
"This is a way to show the wider community that ASL is more than just the everyday use of the language, but also that people can see it as the way it is used in poetry and performance, languages and art," Mary Essex, a visiting scholar in ASL at the College, said in an interview with The Dartmouth, speaking through an ASL interpreter.
The performance is accessible to both the deaf and hearing communities, with Lerner voicing words that correspond to the signs he and Cook make. According to Polansky, many of the poems resemble stories due to their use of images and symbols. This similarity to storytelling differentiates ASL poetry from written poetry.
"I haven't seen a poetic form yet which is on the same kind of semantic assumptions that very modern poetry has," Polansky said in an interview. "On the other hand, ASL poetry does many things that no written poetry does, for example the use of very sophisticated mimetic devices on one hand and linguistic exploration on the other and everything in between."
The Flying Words Project has performed at a variety of events around the world since the artists met in 1984 from their first show and lecture at the first National Deaf Poetry Conference in 1987, to performances at theaters and conferences throughout the world.
The show is sponsored by the Leslie Center for the Humanities, in collaboration with the Mellon Foundation and the music department. The Mellon Foundation has granted Polansky a New Directions Fellowship that allows him to pursue studies in an area besides his own specialty, he said. With Essex as a partner, Polansky chose to explore the presence of the deaf community and ASL in the Upper Valley and at the College.
One outcome of Polansky's fellowship is a new class in ASL poetry and performance, which will be offered for the first time during Spring term. According to Essex, she will teach ASL in class with the help of videotapes at the Jones Media Center.
"One thing I hope will come to pass is that in the spring when the ASL poetry class is offered, that students from campus will be able to take that class and to understand in a more rich way what the language is about, and then have a greater appreciation for what the poetry does with the language," Essex said.
Both Essex and Polansky agreed that this movement is important for a place like Dartmouth. According to Essex, a lot of people who are born deaf move out of the Upper Valley to obtain more opportunities available in less isolated towns and cities. Although there are still many improvements to be made, the Upper Valley is becoming increasingly accessible to the deaf community.
"I feel like the Upper Valley and the Dartmouth area has changed in ways to make it more attractive," Essex said. "Technology has improved the situation and with things like video conferencing and Internet access, I feel like I can be here and participate in the life here in a way that's different than it used to be."
Despite the small size and lack of awareness of the deaf community and ASL on Dartmouth's campus, Polansky said he is optimistic about the outcome of the performance.
"I anticipate that there will be a wonderful mixture of languages and cultures and communities," Polansky said of his expected audience.