The Witness Project/Mesa 2.0

Honoring the search for self with witnesses for the journey

"Ideas of home, heritage, ceremony, and tradition, as seen through the eyes of urban Indians from New York City visiting the American Southwest" – Native Peoples Magazine

About The Witness Project/Mesa 2.0

at La MaMa E.T.C. and the National Museum of the American Indian (2009)

Mesa 2.0, by choreographer Tom Pearson (Coharie), marked the fourth collaboration with composer/performer Louis Mofsie (Hopi/ Winnebago) and the sixth with performer Donna Ahmadi. The project began as a shared journey to the sites and communities of their respective Native lineage. The journey and performance borne from these travels were an attempt to understand and reconcile the realities of being mixed heritage artists living and working in an urban landscape.

The project honors the search for self (obscured to some degree by history and geography) and provides witnesses for the journey. Bolstered by previous collaborations at Lincoln Center, NMAI, and others, the artists extrapolate structure and meaning from Native tradition and reformulate it into contemporary expression. Louis' haunting music, Donna's dynamic movement, and Tom's nuanced choreography together create dense, evocative worlds that illuminate the transient and transformational.

Mesa 2.0 asks questions of hybrid identity, cultural inheritance, and articulations of urban American Indians in the present tense. Their goals and the mission of NMAI are synonymous in their efforts to advance knowledge and understanding and promote the continuance of culture by presenting Native performers in the here and now in all their complexity of experiences.

Mesa 2.0 premiered as part of the La Mama Move’s Dance Festival from May 22-24 and performed again June 4 & 6 at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York. Musicians Alan Brown (Lenape) and Ray Two Feathers (Tsalagi) from the Heyna Second Sons accompanied Louis Mofsie.

  • Tom Pearson

    Photo by Paula Lobo

  • Louis Mofsie, Tom Pearson, Donna Ahmadi

    Photo by Chad Heird

  • Louis Mofsie

    Photo by Enid Farber

  • Tom Pearson, Louis Mofsie, Donna Ahamdi

    Photo by Paula Lobo

  • Tom Pearson, Donna Ahmadi, Louis Mofsie

    Photo by Paula Lobo

  • The Cast of Mesa 2.0

    Photo by Enid Farber

  • Donna Ahmadi, Tom Pearson

    Photo by Enid Farber

  • Alan Brown

    Photo by Enid Farber

  • Ray Two Feathers

    Photo by Enid Farber

  • Tom Pearson, Donna Ahmadi

    Photo by Enid Farber

  • Donna Ahmadi, Tom Pearson

    Photo by Enid Farber

  • Louis Mofsie, Tom Pearson

    Photo by Paula Lobo

  • Tom Pearson, Donna Ahmadi, Louis Mofsie

    Photo by Paula Lobo

About the Process

In the first phase of the project, Louis, Donna, and Tom followed a roadmap, made cryptic by fragmented upbringings and genealogical puzzles, to travel together to each other's tribal lands (North Carolina, Tennessee, Arizona, Nebraska), to learn their topographies and uncover the specificities of their relationships to their original communities. As two young mixed-heritage American Indians (Donna and Tom) traveling with an elder (Louis), the significance of journeying took on deeper meaning in a partnership where they served as witnesses for each other's experiences. Native knowledge, passed down through cultural tradition and the ineffable exchange of wisdom that comes from spending time with an elder and one another is powerful. In our increasingly disconnected world, we are constantly at risk of loosing inherited wisdom. Mesa 2.0 (which during the process phase used the working title, "The Witness Project”) proposed to rekindle this mode of communication in a way that is resonant, contemporary, and inclusive. It was vital to the project to dig deep into heritage and creatively translate findings into something audiences would recognize as the desire to find/create community.

Performance vignettes were developed throughout the research period and in dedicated studio rehearsals. NMAI's collections provided valuable resources on cultural legacies and as inspiration for design elements. Travel occurred in 2008, culminating in performances spring 2009.

Credits

La Mama E.T.C
& The National Museum of
the American Indian present

MESA 2.0

Creative Team

Created and Performed by Tom Pearson (Coharie)
in collaboration with Donna Ahmadi, and Louis Mofsie (Hopi/Winnebago)

Music by Louis Mofsie
with Additional Music by Rob Mastrianni

Live Music Performed by Louis Mofsie with b (Lenape) and Ray Two Feathers (Tsalagi)

Production Team

Stage Manager (NMAI): Karen Oughtred

Project Support

Mesa 2.0 is supported, in part, by a Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian 2008 Expressive Arts Award made possible by the Ford Foundation; by the Live Music for Dance Program of the American Music Center; by La MaMa E.T.C, and by Third Rail Projects, with support from individual and institutional donors.

Mesa 2.0 is created for the La MaMa Moves! 2009 Dance Festival and for the National Museum of the American Indian in New York. Tom Pearson. Donna Ahmadi, Louis Mofsie and Third Rail Projects gratefully acknowledge La MaMa E.T.C. and NMAI’s support for the creation, rehearsal, and presentation of this work.