The Peacock and the Sun Goddess BodyStory was an experiment for a class presentation at the Face and Body Art International Convention in 2012 (FABAIC). For my class on storytelling I tried out a new idea (new for me – see below) of taking the methods I use for telling a story via facepainting onto a painted body — using a fully painted body in choreographed movements to accompany my narrative. I had done this with several performers and much assistance to perform the story Li Chi Slays the Dragon as part of our Bodies Alive! production at FABAIC 2008, but that felt more like a theatre piece and this was meant to stay closer to the stylistic quality of storytelling.

The Peacock and the Sun Goddess BodyStory was conceived and presented as a live performance. As the concept seems well designed for video I took the fotos and video we’d made as documentation and created this video in iMovie. (The wonderful music is Indian Fever by David Starfire, which I found on the album “Six Degrees Free Indian Music Sampler” on Amazon. The model was a non-professional, so I’ll withhold her name) The next step in the video experiment will be to create a BodyStory design specifically for video, and explore what is possible without the design limitations inherent in a live performance.

See the BodyStories Page to learn more about other BodyStory projects, including “Is This the First Story?” based on an 18,000 year old cave painting.

To be clear, nothing in art is ever truly new—especially in an art form as ancient as bodypainting. In saying that these experiments feel “new for me” I’m not saying that I’ve invented something here. Aboriginal Australian bodypainting may go back 40,000 years in a continuous line and in some cases, particularly in the context of ritual initiations, their bodyart tells complex mythological tales (to name just one precedent). Nothing is new.

To learn more about our programs and performances: http://www.agostinoarts.com

Bodies Alive! — painted body performance at FABAIC 2008
Zebras — Body Painting at FABAIC 2012 with Kryolan Aquacolors
Van Gogh Starry Night — Body Painting at FABAIC 2012 with Kryolan Aquacolors
Saraswati — Body Painting at FABAIC 2012 with Kryolan Aquacolors
Gator Eating Jose: UV Body Painting at FABAIC 2012 with Kryolan Aquacolors
Painted Bodies: Africa – Video of Carol Beckwith & Angela Fisher (thestorybehindthefaces.com)

Painted Bodies: Africa — Video of Carol Beckwith & Angela Fisher

Jan22

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Wodaabe men decorated for the Geerewol celebration, making themselves attractive so that a woman might select them for courtship

Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher have been learning about and photographing the traditional cultures of Africa for 30 years, and have published several books of their work, including a seminal text on the subject: African Ceremonies (Abrams, 1999).

In September 2012 they came out with a book focusing more specifically on bodyart traditions: Painted Bodies: African Body Painting, Tattoos and Scarification (find it on amazon) and I received a link (via Craig Tracy) to a National Geographic Live! video of these two remarkable ethnologists talking about this new book and their journeys to these remote African cultures to create such a record of vanishing traditions.

VIDEO: National Geographic Live! – Carol Beckwith & Angela Fisher: Painted Bodies of Africa

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Girls of the Surma people, Ethiopia. In the video, Carol and Angela discuss how fragile such traditions are. Omo River cultures such as the Surma and Karo are going through drastic changes this year, as a new dam on the river will do away with the annual flooding that their way of life has depended on.

To learn more about our programs and performances: http://www.agostinoarts.com

The Omo Tribes: Ethiopia’s Natural Beauties. (franceleclerc.com)
About the Woodabe: Los Bororo (kysevenkuroi.wordpress.com)
Is a painted body naked?
Tribal Facepainting Concept
Destroying the Traditional Nuba —George Clooney Brings Attention to the Nuba Mountains
Traditional Bodyart – Nuba; Sudan; Africa – 1: changing my perceptions
- Traditional Bodyart – Nuba, Sudan, Africa- 2: Nuba Personal Art

Face Painting Gallery — Lion King school production

Jan3

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Face Painting for a school production of The Lion King, by Lorraine Agostino and Jennifer Wade

We participated in a number of special face painting projects this past year, including providing the makeup for a school’s production of The Lion King in March 2012. My wife Lorraine did the painting with Jennifer Wade. There were 60 students in the show, and they had a limited amount of time to paint them, which tends to be the norm for school productions. Previously we had done face painting at Field Days for this school of students with special educational needs, and have seen that some of them are uncomfortable with the tactical experience of having their faces painted. For the school production, however, the students were really enthusiastic about being transformed into their animal characters by the makeup. They did the show for the school during the day, then Lorraine and Jennifer had the chance to see how it looked and make some design adjustments for the evening show for parents — and some of the school staff got painted as well.

The students and staff had made headpiece masks like the Julie Taymor Broadway production, and Lorraine worked within that same style with makeup designs related to African body art to support the masks rather than take focus from them. In a brief video, Julie Taymor explains that her use of masks above the head (rather than over the face) allow both the animal and the human (the actor) to be perceived at the same time, a visual equivalent to the way animals are anthropomorphized in folktales.

VIDEO: Julie Taymor Talks About The Costume Design For The Lion King …

Her use of the mask above the head evokes, for me, the ceremonial lion’s mane headdresses of Maasai men, and she uses a red makeup pattern for the lion characters also evocative of the Maasai.

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Maasai warrior, traditionally wearing the manes of lions he had killed during his warrior age phase, arriving for ritual passage into elderhood, accompanied by girlfriends

learn more about our school programs at agostinoarts.com