Olamina Comes Alive

grimes’ Transmedia Masterpiece Honors Butler’s Earthseed

Have you ever witnessed a performance so wonderful and so abundant in sensory perception that you wished you could see it all over again instantly?

That is Parable of Portals by d. Sabela grimes, and his collaborators in dance (including Meena Murugesan, video, movement, and textile artist), music, poetry and transmedia storytelling, a narrative method of unfolding a story across multiple platforms and formats, intricately woven together. 

The profound work performed at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center in December was inspired by author Octavia E. Butler’s  Parable  series — Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998). The eight-year project for grimes, consisted of live performances, audio-visual installations, site-specific short films, and interactive community activations. It is part of Mapping Los Angeles, a series of relationship-building collaborations and artist-led engagements across the city. 

grimes has presented a stunning visual tribute to the series as performers embody the struggles, hopes, and transformations of Parable of the Sower’s protagonist, Lauren Olamina, shaping her Earthseed doctrine — embracing change as a divine force — as she fights for survival in a post-apocalyptic world through resilience and community.

The art of d. Sabela grimes’ is itself a transmedia practice; with Parable, he is writer, choreographer, performer, as well as creating original sound, video animation, costume and design. The artist is also a composer and educator. Improvisation and collaboration are central to his practice, weaving sound, visuals, and movement into multisensory experiences. His creative practice invests in Black cultural epistemologies, the poetics of assemblage, the matters of mutability, and the magic misuse. 

During his undergraduate studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, grimes began years of exploration and deep engagement with Butler’s work. Indeed, his narration through parts of this performance sounded like the interior voice of Olamina as he weaved together world-building and transformative meditations and phrases inspired by Butler’s prophetic ideas, like “World War Whateva” and “Muck around with the dimensional fabric, you better be ready for all kinds of …”

Parable of Portals was full of magical scenes, particularly in the opening. Brianna Mims as Olamina appeared with just her head inside of a large (5”x5”) white balloon that was as big as herself, which she kept on for about 10 minutes, as she danced so gracefully. Beautiful videos played throughout the show depicting Olamina merging with nature or in the darkness of space, with alien beings and organic and sci-fi scenes of her face morphing into another face amid flora and fauna, and as part of her, or transforming artistic graphics.

Repetition played a big role too, providing a type of meditation throughout the production, in spoken word, dance, and song, in particular, where one section titled “TIME-TIME-TIME!” featured about two dozen or more excerpts of well-known, well-loved songs about time.

Amazing choreography performed by the “Olamina Oversouls” mirrored Butler’s disciplined, visionary creative process, resulting in a transportive performance. Parable’s merging of narrative, media and music — featuring a wicked mix of funk, R&B, hip hop, house rock and soul— and the collective’s undulating dance was elevated even higher by the dancers’ in-unison repetitive gestures. They raised the vibe in the room to where the audience could not just observe but had to audibly encourage them on, in response, confirming the beauty and energy before them.

Through inimitable costume, celebratory dance, poetic narrative, and a stellar soundtrack, Parable of Portals’ transmedia experience for one night built a transformative world based in art, truth and community.

As a faculty member at USC’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, grimes teaches courses in composition, hip hop and street dance histories, African and Afro-diasporic traditions, fashion and materiality, and his original system, Funkamental MediKinetics. He is the recipient of the 2023 USC Associates Award for Artistic Expression, the 2021 Bessie Award for Outstanding Performer, the 2017 Los Angeles County Performing Arts Fellowship, and the 2014 United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship.

Parable of Portals ain’t nothin but an obnoxious love letter to Octavia E. Butler. A trans-media movement manuscript. An imagining; where Butler’s Radio Imagination aligns with our Kinetic Vision. A deep groove, a real-time reckoning, an embodied shout of praise, a glimpse into and through worlds of wonder. We speaking in tongues. We turning ourselves inside out. We be. In the continuity of refusal. We embrace GOD as change, change as a divine force. We be/lieve Motion is change. Change is motion. We still. Forging a collective path through the nowness of recurring futures. For we, too, are Earthseed and our bodies are the books of the living. — d. Sabela grimes

Performers: Lauren Olamina Butler: Brianna Mims, Quantum aka Quan: d. Sabela grimes The String Theory Twins: G’bari GQ Gilliam, Shantel Urena, The Olamina Oversouls: RootedXChange (Janae Holster, Ambar Matos Ortiz, Andrea Rodriguez, Leeann “GodLee” Ross)

Details: https://dsabelagrimes.com and https://cap.ucla.edu