The time has come for me to go to Africa. Yes. I know. I’ve been talking about it for a long time.

Now I go as an artist, researching and collaborating with my creative partner, Rujeko Dumbutshena and folks who  live and work in Zimbabwe.

We are in development for a new dance theater work, “The Returning Reign Project”.

I’ll keep you posted. We are fund raising now for a month residency, quite soon. December 2011.

Wish us luck and much support!

This traveling event includes a fully produced performance piece, workshops and residencies. The show will be presented in theatres, concert halls, universities, festivals and non-traditional venues. We’re inquiring about places to premiere the piece abroad, and would love to present it at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

The Mystery Tour is so named for several reasons. As we are in development and pre-production, many of the details of the project are as yet unknown, and will unfold. We hope to discover successful and new models of sponsorship, touring, fund raising and collaboration. While building and nurturing relationships to local and global communities, we also hope to entertain, teach and facilitate the sharing of artful expression. Mystery also serves as a container for the tour. A major theme of The Alma Mater Project is our relationship to earth and to all things feminine. The show and the workshops explore how the feminine principle is expressed, in personal relationships, politically and socially.

As we walk into the new year, Bella Deluxe hopes to touch the ground with inspired action. Karen Fox, artistic director, is working on a new dance piece with Adrienne Clancy and ClancyWorks dance company, based in the Washington D.C. area. Also, she and Rujeko Dumbutshena (most recently a priniciple dancer in the Broadway Show, Fela) are in pre-production for a full length dance theatre work, The Modjadji Project, based on the true story of the South African Rain Queen.

This winter we will complete the first draft of the performance text, lyrics and musical landscape and outline workshop curriculum. We are seeking an advisory board and collaborators, especially composers, musicians, touring/booking agents, and promotion/marketing specialists.

Karen wants to meet directors, with an intention to refine the piece in rehearsals in the spring/early summer of 2011.

Please check back regularly for updates about The Alma Mater Project.

We wish you all a splendid new year!

I was born on the east coast, lived and worked my way through undergraduate school, my first professional acting job, my first self-produced one-person show, and training that was so influential in the way I move and see, even as the seas pulled me east and west.

When I came to New York City the first time it was to learn the skills of an actor. I schooled, trained, conditioned and practiced. I could not be filled.

I have continued to gather and refine, listen, watch, stretch and finesse. Long ago I decided that the skills I gather have more to do with developing my self, and less with craft that is detached from specific work. Yet the work expanded to include clown, aerial, burlesque, contemporary and folk dance and forms I’ve created.

Coming home after such a long journey, I am struck by certain observations:

The strangers I met on my journey now seem like old friends.

My memories of home died when I returned home.

The home of a traveler is present experience.

I am struck by how so many artists act like merchants. In fact, I am struck by how so many people and institutions act like merchants. There is an inane and desperate fight to prove that arts have value. To who? Not sure. What for? Again, not sure. Is art’s value quantitative… qualitative…tax deductible?

These are not my questions.

Here is my prediction. Art is going back to the heart. (already well on its way)

For me, as one who spent over ten thousand hours developing this ‘instrument’ I call Karen, I am learning to exist in my own heart, all other details having fallen away.

So, Bella Deluxe is now in New York. I will keep you posted on what she is up to, and how and where the work will be presented.

Ciao.

at the House of Chen Restaurant, 732 W Hamilton St Allentown, PA 18101-2413,

one of the venues in this year’s premiere Freak Out Festival.

Come on along. She will present at around 8:30 p.m. (…ish).

Miss Bella appeared twice in the evening, lending her sultry voice and curvaceous moves to the fundraiser party. She will also perform in the festival.  Keep checking back for more news and events!

Gotta dance. Gotta sing. Gotta speak the words of

keen observation.

Hello,

I hope this note finds you well and celebrating life! I have been here in northern New Mexico for two weeks! Hats off to Alessandra and Rebekah. They are sweet and helpful hostesses and I immediately was made welcome here. The trees in the mountains are changing colors. The sky is much more ebullient than I remembered (and dramatic at times). We have chickens and many bird families in the back yard, a cat and dog. The theater seems like one of those old movie houses from the early twentieth century. I’ll have to check on that. The ‘Stage’ is very high and shallow, and there is a floor area in front of it, painted black, at the audience’s level. On the grid are theatrical lights and various aerial apparatus. I have been playing on static trapeze, tissu and rope.

In my notes, I dream of a place where powerful talented and nurturing women are celebrated. They are in our history books. Larger-than-life statues, lovingly carved in their honor, dominate city plazas. Their wisdom and accomplishments encourage children and adults everywhere to strive toward an integrated and gracious life, full of adventures and creations, rich with healthy and nurturing relationships, replete with pleasures, challenges, emotions, struggles, rewards and humor, acceptance, strength and the wisdom that comes from seeing.

A year ago I started signing my emails with The Deluxe Mystery School of Feminine Wiles and Wisdom. I did not know then what it meant. Now, as I make so many substantive changes in my life, as I look at the paths I have walked, the beliefs I have questions and re-shaped… I see the the Mystery School is an idea whose time has come.

As such I would love to hear from you. In your view, what is the wisdom and what are the wiles of the feminine? Who are important female models in your life? Why? What is the first thing that comes into your mind? Write that down and share, if you wish. No matter how strange or absurd your ideas or visions may seem, I would love to hear.

Please feel free to share this post with friends and family. And check back often.

Thanks. Here’s to a beautiful and productive autumn.

Karen

I am in New Mexico now, living in the theater of Wise Fool. After a day of unpacking and altitude adjustment, I did some training today. I had quite a fine time noodling around on the trapeze, listening to Arabic and Indian music and putting myself into ‘zones’.

I am very thankful for all the support and donations that have come to me, as I enter this new journey: a new piece and a new company. Now the time has come to roll up sleeves and get to work.

From time to time I’d like to include you in my creative process. I am attempting to develop two works while I am here. We’ll see how I manage my time. I will share more about the details of each piece as I know them.

Meanwhile, I’d like to engage you in my deeper process. Often I go about this theater making business from a very philosophical place and much deep digging. I have always been this way, since I can remember thought.

Here is the large theme: Living in a Dream World. This is a theme realm. Many stories and themes exist within it. I will share one for now.

I used to read the works of Jane Roberts. For those of you who don’t know who she was, she was a woman who channeled an entity named Seth. Whether or not you believe in channels or disembodied entities speaking through the living, the information transmitted is valuable. The basic subject of the books that were published is the nature of reality, and it is quite interesting reading. One book has as its subject, magic. The premise is simple: magic exists. Not only does it exist, it is normal and healthy.

I believe this premise. I believed it when I was three, and have had to remind myself again and again, as I have gone through a journey to unlearn let’s say dogma that was contradicting my happiness in this life. For those of you that don’t know, I have spent several decades in the study of philosophy and spirituality and the nature of reality. It is probably why I became a clown…

Anyway I want to know what other people dream…that is waking and sleeping. As for me, I have enjoyed a close relationship to my dreams since childhood. I remember many from when I was in elementary school… I can fly and breath underwater in dreams. I travel and meet many folks, who I have not yet met in waking life. I revisit places and situations over the years, and of course there are recurring themes. I would love to hear from you. What do you dream? What are recurring themes? What do your dreams look like, sound like? Who are interesting characters you have met? Animals, mythical beings?

More of this anon. I want to get out on that trampoline!

ciao for now,

Karen

Karen Fox & Bella Deluxe Entertainment

Present free events

(as part of Bay Area National Dance Week)

Dance Improvisation Workshops

Thursday April 30, 2009  -  7:30 – 9:30 p.m.

Saturday May 2, 2009  -  12:00 – 2:00 p.m.

Shawl-Anderson Dance Center

2704 Alcatraz Ave., Berkeley, CA, 94705

Students will learn dance gestures, moves and dance phrases from “The Bella Deluxe Mystery School of Feminine Wiles and Wisdom” dance project. With this vocabulary, we will employ developmental improvisation techniques, to create short performance scores.

The Celebration of Feminine Wiles and Wisdom

with Music and Dance

May 3 – 8 pm

Temescal Arts Center

511 48th street

Oakland, CA 94609

This is a free event, and part of Bay Area National Dance Week