Folds of Gold New by Sha Sha Higby 2011 (all rights reserved)

Long is the journey before us
Today we don our traveling dress
Clad in traveling attire
We take Boat.
Soft Spring breezes belly our sails
Gazing ahead and behind
For Days past Count
Till what once seemed Remote
Drifts into View

The breezes murmur in the Pines
The day is closing in
The bell on the hill tolls
The shore mists veils the waves.

Countless years have passed
Dropping a snowy mantle on our heads

...A thousand years of evergreen fill my palms
Plucking a sprig of plum
Petals like spring snow fall over my robe
O blessed vision under the lovely moon.

Dread spirits quelling as arms are stretched out
Life and treasure gathering as arms are inward drawn
"A thousand autumns! Rejoices the people's hearts
Ten thousand years endows new life
With the swishing of the wind in the Twin Pines
Gladness fills each heart.!
Gladness fills each heart!

From Takasago
The Noh Drama Ten plays from the Japanese
Tuttle Books




SHA SHA HIGBY-COSTUMER AND PERFORMER
International performance/sculptural artist, Sha Sha Higby is known for her evocative and haunting performances using the exquisite and ephemeral body sculpture she meticulously creates herself and moves. Elaborate sculptural costume, dance, and puppetry explore magic and emotion; creating an atmospheric world within the borders between death and life's Higby started out making dolls and pursued the art of puppetry and sculpture in her early years. Ms. Higby has performed her unique body of work throughout the United States, and internationally in Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Singapore, Australia, Switzerland, England, Belgium, Germany and Holland. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the National Endowment for the Arts Solo Theater Artist Fellowship, The Zellerbach Family Fund, and the California Arts Council New Genre Individual Artist Fellowship.

She studied for one year in Japan in 1971, observing the art of Noh Mask and theater and then received a Fulbright-Hayes Scholarship to study dance & shadow puppet making and performance arts in Indonesia for 5 years at the Academy of Music, Central Java, Indonesia. In addition to traveling throughout Southeast Asia to Thailand and Myanmar (Burma), she received an Indo-American Fellowship to study the textile arts of India, and a Travel Grants Fund from Arts International to study in Bhutan. She has also recently studied lacquer arts in Tokyo and Kyoto, Japan through the auspices of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Performance art
• sculpture
• theater
• dance
• mask