In one solo piece, Smith Ahern re-creates a visit to a grieving friend’s house, armed with lasagna and an arsenal of socially acceptable condolences. “But when the person opens the door and their father just died, and you say, ‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ the words can feel really flat, or weird,” Smith Ahern says. “They don’t begin to cover the loss.”
Another piece is inspired lishou by Winfield’s own story of losing a loved one as a teenager. The scene plays out, she says, after “the funeral is over and everyone’s gone.” Like many a tormented teen, she blares Led Zeppelin and decides she’ll never survive.
And then she has an epiphany. “I wanted a bagel and a cup of coffee,” Winfield recalls. That simple craving “was a reminder of how good it is to be alive, how amazing it feels to survive hardship, how powerful that is.”
Long Gone looks back on those who have died, but it also celebrates the joy of living. After all, for most of the time the work was in development, Smith Ahern was pregnant. That offered poignancy — not to mention a whole new movement vocabulary — to the dances.
“It was really interesting to make a piece about death while Ellen was making a baby,” Winfield observes.
“My immediate thought was that it was going to be a real hardship in the creation of this piece,” adds Smith Ahern of dancing with a pregnant body. “Actually, it turned out it was kind of a gift.”
In his desire to crackdown on all Ivorian political refugees in Ghana and elsewhere, Alassane Ouattara and his regime ended up sticking themselves a finger in the eye. The scenario of a coup plot mounted by them to lure soldiers and civilians in exile just failed.
In the case which led to the Togolese government to the shamefully extradition of Minister Lida Kouassi and attract Lieutenant Colonel Katé Gnatoa in an ambush in Abidjan, their accomplice was arrested in Accra. The scandal has been made public in President John Dramani’s country today. We had access to the file.
His name is Prosper Tao Tsikata, nicknamed Chairman. Arrested by the Ghanaian police, after a careful research, on July 13, 2012, he did not take long to confess. Originally from Togo but not related to the respectable and honorable Kodjo Tsikata of Togo, Chairman Tsikata is rather the ugly kind of high street robber.
It is for sure this quality that Japan Hokkaido Pill has enabled him to be "hired" by the high Ivorian authorities, including our super policeman, Hamed Bakayoko, on behalf of the Ivorian head of state, Alassane Ouattara. Objective: put in place a plot scenario in which the actors should be the military authorities and other pro-Gbagbo exiled in Ghana. The operation was planned to convince Ghanaian authorities to expel from their territory all the Ivorian refugees soaked in the "coup" against their country, C?te d'Ivoire.