Njinga The Queen King is a play with music and pageantry written and directed by Ione with music and sound design by Pauline Oliveros. The play is the story of Njinga, the 17th century regent of Ndongo, the country that is now known as Angola. The story spans three hundred years and documents the life of an extraordinary woman who through diplomacy and fighting, kept the invading Europeans from overtaking her country during her forty year reign. Also documented is the diaspora of Njinga's people which includes Bahia, Brazil, the Caribbean and the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, where descendants of slaves still reside, keeping ancient memories alive in stories and rituals which include stirring chants and dances. ( DVD forthcoming- Mode Records- Spring, 2009)
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Io and Her andthe Trouble with Him Pauline Oliveros, composer and IONE writer/librettist are the creators of a dance opera of one hour and forty minutes in length. There will be a cast of three lead vocalist/dancers a chorus of five vocalist/actor/dancers, five musicians and sound design. Io and Her and the Trouble with Him , a Dance- Opera in primeval time in one act, is a retelling of the myth of IO from a matriarchal perspective. Incorporating dance and voice, masks and video projection, accompanied by signing, and a Greek Chorus, the Opera takes place in primeval time, and the action moves from the Argive to the banks of the River Nile. IO, Argivian priestess of HER,heads for the river to seek water for HER. After her dalliance with HIM, she is transformed by a terrible spell and roams the world as a lovely but tormented cow. She is pursued by a terrible gadfly that HERA sends to torment her. Eventually she is befriended by the brilliant BIRD while enduring entrapment by ARGUS the terrible thousand eyed monster. With BIRD's help, she discovers the very first vowels and her subsequent storytelling is the key to her escape. High on a mountain top, she encounters FORTUNE, an imprisoned visionary, and he fortells her ensuing adventures in many strange lands. It is only upon her arrival in KHEMT (Ancient Egypt) that she regains her natural form and begins to understand the true mystery of what her journey has been about and its meaning for the future of the world.
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