Tag Archives: death penalty

Can “Troy Davis: The Human Face of the Death Penalty” Change Your Mind?

On September 21, 2011, the state of Georgia executed convicted murderer Troy Davis, despite the fact that over the years–police officer Mark MacPhail was killed in 1989–multiple witnesses had recanted their testimony, saying that Georgia police had pressured them into testifying.

On March 17, Amnesty International USA, Washington Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation, and Safe and Just Alternatives are uniting to present “Troy Davis: The Human Face of the Death Penalty,” held at the Keystone Church (5 p.m., 5019 Keystone Place North) in Seattle. The event is free, but donations for the Davis family will be accepted.

It’s a reminder that Washington State enforces the death penalty (by lethal injection and hanging)–as recently as September 2010 when Cal Brown, convicted of stabbing and strangling to death 21-year-old Holly Washa in 1991, was put to death. The event’s co-sponsoring organizations all argue for replacing the death penalty with life without parole

The evening is built around video footage, photos, and stories about Troy and his family, provided by Seattle documentary filmmaker and author Jen Marlowe (interviewed previously). Marlowe met over the years with Troy Davis and his family, working to prevent his execution, and will talk about Davis’s case and about the human impact that can’t be summed up in a screaming headline.

Marlowe says she wants to talk in particular about the effects the death penalty has on families, and warns that she will have footage from the vigil outside the prison in Jackson the night of Troy’s execution.

Sarah Craft, from Equal Justice USA, will pick up on Davis’s legacy, as encapsulated by his recognition in TIME Magazine’s People Who Mattered in 2011. In his final statement, he asked for his defenders to “Continue to fight this fight” against the death penalty.

“We need to remember the death penalty is not unique to Georgia,” says Craft, who will talk about efforts in Washington State to lead a legislative effort for repeal. (Like many other states, Washington has had its problems with making death sentences stick. The Seattle Times brought you the story back in 2003:

When the state wanted to execute Benjamin Harris, they said he was perfectly sane. When his conviction was overturned, they locked him up for being crazy. And recently, the state considered Harris sane enough to ask him to testify as a prosecution witness in court.

Such is the unusual tale of Benjamin Harris, the only person ever exonerated from Washington’s death row.

Oregon’s governor, John Kitzhaber, placed a moratorium on all executions in November of last year, saying the state’s capital punishment system is too broken to defend; here is Governor Gregoire’s lawyerly statement refusing to commute Cal Brown’s death sentence to life without parole.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has repeatedly made time to hear arguments for abolishing the death penalty the past three years. Publicola has more on that history, and the “surprising” lack of pushback to Sen. Ed Murray’s bill. Craft is hopeful for a House hearing next year.

Marlowe understands that people have mixed feelings about the death penalty’s application. That, she says, is what the evening is about, exploring what it means to allow the state to kill someone, and whether mixed feelings should be a call to action.

For Whim W’Him’s Olivier Wevers, A New Dance is Life or Death

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Lucien Postlewaite and Chalnessa Eames rehearsing "thrOwn" (Photo: Whim W'Him/Bamberg Fine Art)

Chalnessa Eames and company rehearsing "thrOwn" (Photo: Whim W'Him/Bamberg Fine Art)

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No one needs to tell choreographer Olivier Wevers that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. On the same bill with his death penalty dance, thrOwn, this weekend at the Intiman, are two lighter works: la langue de l’amour, a “very naughty” solo for Chalnessa Eames; and Flower Festival, with August Bournonville’s flirtatious, teasing pas de deux, Flower Festival in Genzano, re-imagined for two men who begin the dance in suits, but then there arises a “jousting” feeling, says Wevers, promising very “kinetic” movement.

Still, Cast the First Rock in Twenty Twelve (January 20-22, tickets: $25 in advance) will likely come to feel all of a thematic piece–if, as Wevers tells me, he took up the idea of death by stoning as a metaphor for capital punishment, there remain places in the world where his accompanying “quirky comedies” could prompt arrest for moral turpitude. thrOwn is not political, Wevers is careful to say, in the sense of tsking at Islamic theocracies from an elevated moral plane. He wants instead to explore the continuum of judgment that leads from personal disapproval to condemnation at the hands of society.

In thrOwn, the always entrancing Chalnessa Eames plays a married woman who has an affair (Lucien Postlewaite is the lover, Andrew Bartee the betrayed husband). The music, blending traditional and contemporary styles, includes compositions from Iranian-American composers and Canadian anarchists Godspeed You! Black Emperor–“rebels,” says Wevers, happily–and the set is based upon the art of Steve Jensen. (Not just “based”–Jensen worked on it for three weeks with a scenic painter.) Costumes are by Christine Joly de Lotbinière.

It’s also, Wevers, a former Pacific Northwest Ballet dancer, notes, his first barefoot dance. (Not to worry, bunhead-heads, Eames’ solo may be naughty but it is en pointe, set to harpsichord music by Scarlatti.)

I procured all this information from Wevers at a break in rehearsal. He was working with Eames and Tory Peil on specific movements, with a kind of specificity that is daunting to describe. “Really try to get the elbows,” he called out to Eames, who immediately reacted, and “Keep your knees together.” Eames danced backward, looking over her shoulder. “Find a hole,” Wevers said, and leaning backward, she planted her right arm, and spiraled down to the floor. Wevers walked over for a huddle. “I thought you said…,” Eames told him, showing a move. “Use your hand, but keep down,” clarified Wevers. “Ohhh…that’s harder,” said Eames. Wevers waited expectantly to see it again, Eames calling out her discoveries as she went along.

In performance, this transition will take about five seconds, and it will look as natural as turning a doorknob. Next, Eames and Peil polished the end of a dance the two have. “Did I set that?” wondered Wevers about a lift at the end. “No,” admitted Peil, “it felt better for me to lift her.” “It’s good!” said Wevers. He demonstrated an almost Chaplinesque broken-kneed walk for Eames–“Agh!” flinched Eames. “That’s gross.”

By next season, Wevers hopes Whim W’Him will be performing longer runs–this weekend is your one shot to catch “Cast the First Rock”–and leaving town on tours. Given the acclaim of 2011, as recapped by Michael Upchurch in the Seattle Times:

In August, Wevers won a Princess Grace Foundation Choreography Fellowship for a work to be set on Seattle’s Spectrum Dance Theater. (Zoe Scofield won the only other PGF Choreography Fellowship, making it a clean sweep for Seattle.) In November, for the second year in a row, Wevers and Whim W’Him won the annual Dance Under the Stars choreography competition in Palm Desert, Calif., with “Monster.” Whim W’Him’s “FRAGMENTS” got the grand prize in 2010.

…Whim W’Him seems to be developing right on schedule.