A Street Car....Nicole Ari Parker Joins Blair Underwood in Stellar Cast

Streetcar was last seen on Broadway in 2005 starring Natasha Richardson, Amy Ryan and John C. Reilly. Front Row Production’s multi-racial production of A Streetcar Named Desire, is a follow-up to their highly successful Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which starred Terrence Howard, Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose and James Earl Jones, and was directed by Debbie Allen. She is best known for her outstanding performance as Teri Joseph of Showtime's award-winning Soul Food and has displayed her acting range in several blockbuster and independent films. She has been featured in Touchstone Picture's Remember the Titans, Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins with Martin Lawrence, Boogie Nights with Mark Wahlberg, the HBO Original Film Dancing in September and opposite Taye Diggs in Fox Searchlight's Brown Sugar. Parker always knew she wanted to be an actress. She began pursuing her dream at the Baltimore Actors Theatre and then it was on to Washington Ballet Company, before moving to New York to study further at New York University. She is a graduate of NYU's famed Tisch School of the Arts. She has been nominated for seven NAACP Image Awards and had the pleasure of presenting President Bill Clinton with a Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award at a ceremony hosted by the NAACP. Some of Parker’s upcoming projects include 35 and Ticking;TV movie, “Big Mike”; and she will be appearing in an episode of the new television series, “Let’s Stay Together.” In January 2009, Parker was featured in People Magazine to introduce Sophie's Voice Foundation the charitable organization she started with husband Boris to raise awareness about children and adults living with spina bifida.

Beyond the Sundance « ::Native.Strength::

It’s difficult to write about “spirituality;” it’s an individual experience. In this era of instantaneous electronic communication young Indian men and women utilize daily, it is essential to bite the bullet and write about the spiritual experience in hopes that young people will turn to cultural spirituality in times of and to develop ones identity.

Scientific experiments indicate humans retain the ability to band together to create a “group” influence on each other. Scientists acknowledge that electronic/magnetic fields have many influences over our existence.

Whoa you say! What has that got to do with spirituality?

Anyone who has experienced the group influence of either being present or participating in what we generally call a Sundance does not need me to explain how strong that influence is. The concentration on one’s personal and group relationship with the Creator/God that goes along with our ceremonies does have an influence. Some of our elders, and some of our younger spiritual leaders (Heyoka, for instance) had a heightened sense regarding these “aura”, at the risk of sounding like some crystal-stargazer groupie. Whether that heightened sense comes by “gift”, by sacrifice or by practice is open to debate. All I know is, it exists.

There is more, much more, to a Sundance ceremony than just showing up. There are preparations that go into it that are part of an annual cycle handed. The arbor is beautiful, yes, but one should experience the selection of the pieces that go into it and the prayers and songs that go into such selection and its construction. The center pole is not there just to hold up the branches, or in some cases, the dancers. The branches and willows that go into the construction of the arbor are selected with precision. The fireplace and the smudge materials are in their place for a reason. The spirits that are brought to the arbor by the families who are responsible for their feeding, watering and other care are living beings. It is taught that each thing we see in creation has a spirit. Some are lucky enough to experience these “spirits” on a personal level. When we are young, we wonder, how is it that a rock, a root, a branch, a tree, water, wood, fire and all else we see, have a spirit? Modern science will tell you that even “inanimate” objects are the sum of their parts; parts which move, have electronic and magnetic charges and whose molecular structure or atomic structure (or sub-atomic structure) is capable of change. Witness magma. The fluid form of rock. Witness smoke and heat that comes from wood. Witness steam from water on the rocks. (Hiey) Our ancestors were right. Everything has a spirit. There is no such thing as a dead substance in Creation. Scientists now say “there is no nothing” there is matter and there is anti-matter, and there is “strings” and there is light which we cannot see and so on.

The #Sun #Dance is a place of and #ceremony. You can find more of this blog at Welcome visitors!

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