III - THE EMPRESS
THE LIVING TAROT
Artistic Director
Cheryl Flaharty
Dancer
Danielle Noriko Paschal
Production Assistant
Brian Gustaveson
Creative Assistant
Dack Quigley
Costume and Set Design
Cheryl Flaharty
Lighting
Janine Myers
Video Editing
Neal Izumi
Creative Team
Rey Lopez, Karen Kiefer, Mo, Dee Laris, Carlyn Wolfe, Mike Pryor, Amanda Sims, April Mae Bartelme, Rose Wolfe, Ginger Royal, Trish Brubaker, Chris Barreto, Aaron Lowe, The Dancers.
Supported by the Hawai`i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, through appropriations from the Legislature of the State of Hawai`i or grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Cades Foundation, and Jean Rolles.
Photos: Darren Miller, Bryan Gustaveson, Mike Pryor, and Sergio Goes.
ABOUT THE TAROT
One of the most ancient studies of enlightenment and discovery of the authentic "Self”, Tarot images– linked to ancient beliefs, mythologies, and religious systems– form the seeds of fundamental psychological and spiritual experiences. Often associated with magic and the occult, the deck is the precursor to our well known playing cards.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Originally created and performed in 2007, ‘The Living Tarot’ was the fourth interactive production of IONA’s diverse Salon Series which offered audiences a once in a lifetime provocative interpretation of eleven of the Major Arcana Tarot cards. The show took place in a century-old house located on Oahu's Pali Highway (dubbed, 'The House of the Living Tarot'), in which the living installations became personal encounters as audience-members roamed from room to room to experience the cards they were dealt as they walked in the door. The audience experienced each of the 5-minute tarot card performances in their own unique order. The dancers performed their pieces ten times each evening - a total of 60 times through the run of the show.
ABOUT THE EMPRESS
The Empress is the third Major Arcana card in the Tarot deck. She is the archetypal Earth Mother, the Feminine Principle, the Goddess of Fertility, and Queen of Heaven and Earth. The Empress is often associated with Venus, and embodies love, creativity, fertility, art, harmony, luxury, beauty and grace.
The Empress connects us with a new dimension of awareness; for it is through her intuitive understanding rather than through masculine logic that the spirit leaps forth into the outer space to connect with celestial insights. It is she who carries the seed from which ultimately will spring a new transcendental awareness in which mysticism and science, spirit and flesh, inner and outer, can be experienced as one world.
IONA’s Empress is seated in her throne on the second floor of “The House of the Living Tarot” in the tiny sitting room filled with greenery. The three windows that form her backdrop were removed, allowing her to merge with the surrounding nature. One of the best seats in the “House” was at the feet of The Empress – gazing into her eyes and soaring with her as her body stretched out into the night sky.
BRING THE EMPRESS INTO YOUR LIFE
The Empress encourages you to strengthen your connections with the natural world which is the ground of our being. Too often false sophistications and pleasures take us far from our roots. Let the Empress remind you to keep your feet firmly planted in the Earth.
