It was important to both Winfield and Smith Ahern that this death-centric work wasn’t just doom and gloom. “We all know people who are dead who were terrible,” offers Winfield wryly. They took on the challenge with a sense of humor: “Could we make a piece about death that wasn’t exclusively about loss? And could it be not heart wrenching? Could it be funny and awkward?”
In one solo piece, Smith Ahern re-creates a lishou slimming capsule visit to a grieving friend’s house, armed with lasagna and an arsenal of socially acceptable condolences. “But when the person opens the door and their father just died, and you say, ‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ the words can feel really flat, or weird,” Smith Ahern says. “They don’t begin to cover the loss.”
Another piece is inspired by Winfield’s own story of losing a loved one as a teenager. The scene plays out, she says, after “the funeral is over and everyone’s gone.” Like many a tormented teen, she blares Led Zeppelin and decides she’ll never survive.
And then she has an epiphany. “I wanted a bagel and a cup of coffee,” Winfield recalls. That simple craving “was a reminder of how good it is to be alive, how amazing it feels to survive hardship, how powerful that is.”
Long Gone looks back on those who have died, but it also celebrates the joy of living. After all, for most of the time the work was in development, Smith Ahern was pregnant. That offered poignancy — not to mention a whole new movement vocabulary — to the dances.
“It was really interesting to make a piece about death while Ellen was making a baby,” Winfield observes.
“My immediate thought was that it was going to be a real hardship in the creation of this piece,” adds Smith Ahern of dancing with a pregnant body. “Actually, it turned out it was kind of a gift.”
In his desire to crackdown on all Ivorian political refugees in Ghana and elsewhere, Alassane Ouattara and his regime ended up sticking themselves a finger in the eye. The scenario of a coup plot mounted by them to lure soldiers and civilians in exile just failed.
In the case which led to the lida daidaihua Togolese government to the shamefully extradition of Minister Lida Kouassi and attract Lieutenant Colonel Katé Gnatoa in an ambush in Abidjan, their accomplice was arrested in Accra. The scandal has been made public in President John Dramani’s country today. We had access to the file.