terraNOVA Collective is proud to present the second SUBTERRANEAN, a new monthly party at the D-Lounge, a cabaret-style venue at 101 East 15th Street at Union Square. terraNOVA Collective strives to create a creative home for artists from a variety of different genre's. As the newest addition to terraNOVA's residency at the DR2 Theatre & D-Lounge, SUBTERRANEAN presents a variety of monthly performances including spoken word, music, burlesque, magic, storytelling, short play readings, vaudeville acts, and DJ's."
The line up for Thursday, February 5 will include slam poet, Roger Bonair-Agard, Maya Azucena & Vanessa Hidary performing excerpts from their show, Culture Bandit Soul, and DJ Popcorn spinning tunes for you.
SUBTERRANEAN curator, James Carter says, "We are happy to have Maya Azucena and Vanessa Hidary perform excerpts form their show Culture Bandit Soul, whose full performance was canceled due to the shuttering of The Zipper Factory's doors. These fierce women, along with National Slam Champion, Roger Bonair-Agard and DJ Popcorn of dancelikeforever fame, will blow the roof off the Daryl Roth Theater."
SUBTERRANEAN
First Thursday of Every Month
10:00pm
$10.00 Entry + 1 Drink Minimum
D-Lounge 101 East 15th Street
Just off Union Square
ROGER BONAIR-AGARD weaves living, breathing tapestries out of politics and the notion of home; a native of Trinidad and Tobago, Roger has lived in Brooklyn for seventeen years and his work reflects the struggles of a man in voluntary exile in a conflicted 21st-century America. A professional performance poet since 1997, Roger has appeared three times on Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam on HBO and aims to blow the hinges off what is considered possible, to create work that discomforts with the truths and lies it exposes down to every forensic detail, and so create a movement of its very own, such that when his poems are read, they birth new mythologies in the reader's memory. He is co-author of Burning Down the House (Soft Skull Press, 2000), and author of Tarnish and Masquerade, his first collection of poetry (Rattapallax Press, 2007). He co-founded and is the Artistic Director of the louderARTS Project, an organization dedicated to the evolution of poetry through the craft of writing and performance.
Roger is also a Cave Canem fellow, studying with such luminaries as Yusef Komunyakaa, Marilyn Nelson, and Cornelius Eady. In 1998, he was named the Nuyorican Poets Café Fresh Poet of the Year. That same year, he coached the Nuyorican team to victory in the National Poetry Slam. The following year he earned the title of National Individual Slam Champion while leading and coaching the New York City louderARTS team to the final four of the National Poetry Slam, a feat he repeated in 2000. While managing the louderARTS slam, Roger continues to perform and teach throughout the world, leading workshops and conducting performances in major universities, including such outposts as University of Alaska at Anchorage, University of West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and in Literary Festivals in Heidelberg (Germany), Kingston (Jamaica), Durban, Cape Town, Johannesburg (South Africa) and the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival (New Jersey). He has also appeared on The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, Air America, Pacifica Radio's Beneath the Surface and other national radio programs. He works as a creative writing instructor and teacher trainer with Urban Word NYC, Cooper Union's outreach program, and the Bronx Writers' Center, among others. Roger's work has been widely anthologized, and has been commissioned extensively through the multi-disciplinary performance troupe VisionIntoArt (www.visionintoart.com).
He has also authored a successful one-man show, and chaos congealed (1998) and the acclaimed one-man poetry concert MASQUERADE: calypso and home which has been developed and performed with the terraNOVA Collective since June of 2006. He is currently working on a new collection entitled EXTRA COVER: To be young, black and fast - poems from a West Indian cricket history.
MAYA AZUCENA Is often described as the "hardest working artist I know," Maya Azucena has planted the seeds for her burgeoning career by touring around the world. To date, she's shared stages or been on bills with legendary artists, vets and newcomers from the worlds of R&B, Soul, Hip Hop, Jazz, and Rock. Artists such as Roberta Flack, Roy Ayers, Vernon Reid, Stephen Marley, Martin Luther, Jaguar Wright, Joss Stone, Leon Ware, Richard Bona, Bilal, Lupe Fiasco, Big Daddy Kane, the Isley Brothers, Gladys Knight, Anthony Hamilton, Platinum Pied Pipers, and John Legend comprise the partial list. In addition to criss-crossing the US with riveting performances, she's toured cities in China, Philippines, Canada, Italy, and England as well as Stockholm, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Croatia where Croatian superstar, Gibonni enlisted Maya's vocal talents for a track named "Andejo U Tebi" ('Angel In You'), that consequently won 2 Croatian Grammy awards (or PORIN, as they are called). The critical acclaim for Maya has been worldwide and diverse in its acknowledgement of her undeniable talent.
