English Version / Deutsche Version
Footprints in the Sand?
(an exploration – excavation)
How does the ground look like
On which we walk?
What is the composition
Of the ground on which we stand
How many people
Have walked there before us?
And do we know, can we see
Footprints, imprints, inscriptions
And do they remain
In sand or stone?
How do we get to know
What those before us did for us?
Of all those who contributed to life
Who do we recognize?
Footprints, imprints on the ground
Footprints in the sand?
Stories inscribed in the landscape
Only until the coming of another wave?
Whose footprints are remembered?
Whose prints are washed away?
Whose patterns are made visible
By remembering, honouring footprints
As evidence of activity
Of journeys, and of existence
Like contributions written on the pavement
Yes for how long
Will those footsteps remain
For all to be seen?
Until the next wave
Might bury these prints like an illusion
As if these prints never existed
As if these feet hadn’t been there
Like history being washed away
Like African origins being forgotten
And so these footsteps become
At best part of the underground
Parts of the anatomy, archeology of knowledge
But then again their memory is not certain
Their existence may be denied
For lack of evidence
In order to defy
This danger of denial
Of those faded footprints
They need to be fossilized
Their stories
Need to be visibilized
Their presence remembered
Before layers of new sand
Bury what’s underneath
And fail to notice
The texture of the ground
That they walk on
This is what Fountainhead Tanz Theatre does
Fountainhead features footprints
For us to be able to
See, notice, recognize and remember
What may be buried in the sea
The people who made up
The nature of the sea
And the land
And theirs and our culture
And ours and their life and legacy
By assuming responsibility
And making sacrifices necessary
To look at lost history
And turn it into found history
Narrated story
For continuity and presence
Footprints unearthed
Like faces emerged from the shadows
Evidence of activity excavated
The story of existence expanded
The silence of empty spaces
Exchanged with information
For us to learn
And reach beyond our dimension
Footprints in the sand?
No, footprints that now stand
On solid ground
Footprints enlightened by Fountainhead
Let it be known, let it be said
There are voices talking
And they are to be heard
There have been feet walking
And they are screened
And written down in print.
© Ursula Troche, 6.12
"FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND?"
The lessons of history arrive in the form of personal experiences, books, media presentations, paintings, architecture and so on.
How these materials are interpreted and perhaps, through the ages, re-interpreted assuming the information is included, varies according to the group or the individual perspective, interests, socio-economic influences and opportunities.
As we pass through the formal educational process, we are informed of histories; others and ours.
It generally requires an enlightened mentor or parent to point out what is overlooked in the presentation of history, so earnestly injected into our academic and formative education.
Many years ago, as this awareness of history's exceptions were realized, my parents, John Willis Griffith, Edith Paulina Griffith, and my mentor, Oscar Brown Jr., pointed out the necessity for assuming responsibility and making sacrifices necessary to enlighten shadows and fill empty historical spaces.
So, the development of information, awareness, heightened sensibility and maturation leads to inevitable conclusions.
Fountainhead® Tanz Theatre from inception in 1980, remains an initiative and institution for the documentation and preservation of the existence and contributions of individuals and groups, to the societies in which they and we reside.
We are participants in the process of embedding in memories and stone, what previously might have been, "Footprints in the Sand?".
Prof. Donald Muldrow Griffith
Fountainhead® Tanz Theatre
Berlin Germany 2010
"Footprints in the Sand?" 2011 - Visual Impressions
MOTTOES "I
may not make it if I try, but I damn sure won´t if I don´t..." "Mankind
will either find a way or make one." "Whatever
you do..., be cool!" "Yes,
I can...!" "Yes, We can...!"
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Fountainhead® Tanz Theatre | ||||||
The Collegium - Forum & Television Program | ||||||
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A COMPLEXION CHANGE "View to the Future - The Flag
still flies" XXVII.
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