E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E
By: Robert Kocik and The Commons Choir
Contributors: Commons Choir; Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs
Publisher: Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Brooklyn, New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 36
Other titles: Everyone
Description: E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E is the libretto for the performance, by the Commons Choir, of E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E. The libretto is the genome for the choir's entirely free and primary phenotypic expression. The relationship between the two (libretto and performance) is, ultimately, indivisibility. E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E is an epic, wishful, investigative, town hall musical that calls upon a panoply of reparative tones, tunes and intentions to plead the case for a more empathetic economy, proposing, with Thomas Paine and Martin Luther King, money as everyone's. E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E has named its idiom re-english, positing that today's economic, ecological and inequity crises are direct consequents of the sonic and connotative qualities of the English language. E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E draws upon forms and phenomena as diverse as algorithmic procedure, neuroendocrinology, choral ode, field holler, breathing patterns, dead languages and lost grammatical modes, constitutional law, triple bottom line accounting, innate awareness, blessings, dispelling, outright bad-english and even poetry to manifest one vast amulet that can re-tune, detox and de-delude our tongue, imbuing it with heretofore unheard of inherences, moods, admixtures and admonishments.
Notes: Artist statement: "THE COMMONS CHOIR, a core and variable cast of roughly 30 singers, actors, composers and people, is the performative aspect of the Prosodic Body, a new field of research founded by Daria Fain and Robert Kocik, that explores language as sound, embodiment and utmost expression. Tone, intention, rhythm, gesture, the tacit, hesitation, interaction evocation and even cosmogenesis are all acts of prosody. The Prosodic Body is a practice that manifests in various areas: principally performance, architecture, health, education and socioeconomic justice. We are at once deeply committed to the cultural cruciality of poets and performers. We call this social aspect of our work 'commoning'. One branch of our commoning work is our COMMONS CHOIR, started in 2008. The choir draws upon the breadth of our prosody research to create performances that carry socially-charged issues. Typically, surrounding our choir events, we organize symposiums, talks and teach-ins covering matters such as economic justice, income distribution, biochemistry as endogenous alchemy, universal entitlement, usury laws, plebiscite, artificial scarcity, gratitude, levity, accumulation, the history of privatization and choreoprosodia (the full fusion of poetry and movement)."--Publisher's website (viewed 09/30/2014).