THE WORLD
THE LIVING TAROT
Artistic Director
Cheryl Flaharty
Dancer
Jamie Nakama
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 WORLD
Card 21, The World, is the last Major Arcana Card in the Tarot Deck. As such, The World, represents an ending to a cycle of life, a pause in life before the next big cycle beginning with the Tarot’s first card, The Fool.
The dancer pictured in the card is at once male and female, above and below, suspended between the heavens and the earth. She is surrounded by a wreath which creates a safe asylum for the newly emerging self, so that its unity can never be disrupted by invasion from the outside. Symbolically this means that the self is now fully realized as an incorruptible entity. Regression is not longer possible. For this reason, the alchemists called the final stage of their process fixation. Here conscious and unconscious are united, and instinct and spirit flow together as one being whose awareness embraces and includes both.
“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is.” (T. S. Eliot)
IONA’s World is anchored in the corner, 2nd floor bedroom of “The House of the Living Tarot”. A web of bamboo allows the dancer to move freely - neither touching the living green grass on the floor, nor the painted clouds above. Against the blood red walls, murals of people, animals, and places of the earth surround her in reverence to the wisdom she has acquired on her journey.
BRING THE WORLD INTO YOUR LIFE
The stage is set for a new beginning or a favorable completion. All of your efforts are finally paying off and you have reached the end of a journey or have completed a major life cycle. You are in harmony with the One Power of the Universe. The World card also tells us that full happiness is to give back to the world, sharing what we have learned or gained.
