Fare Well & Hell O! - The End of the World As We Know It OR Dancing Your Way to Paradise! is a multimedia work that brings insight and vibrant critique to the contemporary issue of end time through movement, music, text, and visual installation (images and visual poems).

Multimedia/human performance
Saturday 10 PM
Sunday 7 PM
Library Auditorium

The End of the World as We Know It OR Dancing Your Way to Paradise!

Fare World
Maida Withers: Concept / Director / Dancer / Filmmaker

Steve Hilmy: Composer / Musician
Ayodamola Okunseinde: Multimedia /Electronic Artist

Alex Caldiero: Poet / Sonosopher
and other persons as needed.

Fare Well & Hell O! - The End of the World As We Know It OR Dancing Your Way to Paradise! is a multimedia work that brings insight and vibrant critique to the contemporary issue of end time through movement, music, text, and visual installation (images and visual poems). Fare Well... is as extreme in its moods and absurdities as we might think of "extreme weather."  We watch hypnotized, immobilized, arrogant, innocent, and powerful - as the fires rage, volcanoes erupt, the Arctic melts, and the seas rise. "Did we do it?" - Going to extremes, the audience is brought in through humor, irony, and anti-narratives.

Fare Well & Hell O! will be danced by pioneering choreographer, Maida Withers - known locally (Washington DC) and internationally for her innovative choreography, her intensity as a dancer, and her interactions with other dancers and collaborators.

The work also includes a captivating art video by Ayodamola Okunseinde, multimedia and electronic artist, and Maida Withers that will be projected onto the space (floor and backdrop) creating a spectacular environment for the performers and audience.

Alex Caldiero, poet and sonosopher, will present scrolling texts and perform sound-text pieces touching on notions about the utopian dream, apocalyptic thinking, current scientific views ranging from denial to doomsday predictions about end time, and the next step from here on and out.

Under consideration is a real-time stream of consciousness writing/projection on computer with the poet stopping, deleting and substituting new words to give new contexts. Selections from text/stories and sound/song poetry will be developed for inclusion as fragments told and expressed by the poet and, in some instances, by the audience. 

This project will also features original music created and performed by Steve Hilmy, electronic musician/composer, with his real-time interactive electronics, his experimentalism and post-apocalyptic noisemaking. 

Artist Bios

Steve Hilmy 

Steve Hilmy received his Bachelor of Arts, 1984, from The George Washington University, and his Master's of Music in Composition, 1991, from The Peabody Conservatory of Music of The John Hopkins University.  Hilmy was born in Aberdeen, Scotland.  He studied composition with William Albright at the University of Michigan and with Jean Eichelberger Ivey and Chen Yi at the Peabody Conservatory. Hilmy has been on the faculty of The George Washington University Music Department since 1992, where he is Director of the Electronic and Computer Music Studio. He has won awards from such organizations as the Southeastern Composers League, ASCAP, BMI, the Peabody Conservatory, and The Virginia Center for Creative Arts, including First Prize in the Philip Slates Memorial Composition Contest for "Icarus Falling" (piano and electronics, 1989); the Gustav Klemm Prize for Composition from the Peabody Conservatory in 1991; and 2nd place prize in the Prix d'été II composition competition at the Peabody Conservatory for "Us" (tenor saxophone and electronics, 1999).  Hilmy has worked with Maida Withers Dance Construction Company for several years, improvising in events and creating music for Thresholds Crossed and other choreography, touring with the Company in Russia and other countries.

Find out more about him at his GW profile. 

Ayodamola Okunseinde

Ayodamola Okunseinde - Multimedia / Electronic Artist.  Born in Montclair New Jersey, Ayo spent his formative years living in Nigeria, Oman and Holland. He studied at Rutgers University Mason Gross School of Art and New York Film Academy, La Femis Film Program, Paris, France. Ayo's extensive travels (33 countries) have influenced his work and artistic direction. As creative director and visual artist working in the multimedia field, Ayo has worked with notable artists like Donald Odita and Ike Ude.  He has made significant contributions to the Washington D.C. arts scene through his projects "Smacktv: a contemporary arts show", "SCENE" and "Variance". Collaborating with local artists, Ayo has helped to foster interdisciplinary arts projects including "Arabesque Rising," "New Music Compositions," and the "Fresh Produce Film Festival."  Heavily influenced by mass media and popular culture, he weaves these elements into his works. His skill and experience places him at a junction that allows him to speak of the vibrancy and interconnectivity of the arts and contemporary society. He speaks Yoruba, French, Japanese and aims to add Mandarin as an additional language. Okunseinde owns and operates Dissident Display Studios and Gallery on H St NE, Washington, DC (USA).

For more information, visit www.dissidentdisplay.com and www.smacktv.com.

Maida Withers

Maida Withers (Artistic Director, dancer, filmmaker, choreographer) is the founder and artistic director of Maida Withers Dance Construction Company (1974) and founder of the DC International Improvisation Plus+ Festival (performance art, dance, new music) now in its 14th season. Maida is known for her power and daring as a performing artist. She has created over 75 groundbreaking performance art works and dances for stage, sites, video and film.  Her works have been performed in the U.S. at the Kennedy Center, the WareHouse, Lisner Auditorium, Warner Theatre, and many international venues. Maida is recognized for the poignancy and innovation of her evening-length works related to technology, social, political and other global issues and for the originality and intellectual edge of the works themselves. Maida engages in a unique collaborative process with musicians, visual artists, scientists, and filmmakers. Projects often involve international artists resulting in tours to such diverse places as Norway (2001), Venezuela (1998), Brazil (2001,1999), Mexico (1987, 1988) France (1997), Germany (1981, 1963), Poland (1997), The Netherlands (1996), Russia (1997, 2003, 2006, 2007), Korea (1993, 1994, 1995), Japan (1993, 1995), China and Hong Kong (1994), and Malaysia (1994). Projects often feature real-time interactive visual and audio technology (laser beams, cyber worlds, ultra-sound, rotating loudspeakers) and film and video installations. Withers video art works have been exhibited in Europe at the IMZ, at AFI, Kennedy Center, for Women in Film, Rosebud Festival, DC Environmental Film Festival and a ten-part series on dance for NBC TV.  Award-winning video documentaries have been shown on Metro-DC cable programs featuring the arts. Through the use of scripting/scoring and improvisation, Maida has created many evening-length site-specific performances for the Lenin Museum, Krasnoyarsk, Siberia; Kazimierz ul. Szeroka, Krakow, Poland; Akademie der Kunst Festival, West Berlin, Germany; Rio de Janeiro's Museum of Modern Art Rock Garden; and in Washington, DC at the Smithsonian International Gallery of Art; Kennedy Center Terrace; Corcoran Gallery of Art; Theodore Roosevelt Island National Park; Renwick Gallery; The National Plaza; Holy Rood Cemetery; and others.  Projects have receive support form the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Ford Foundation in Russia, American Scandinavian Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Virginia Commission on the Arts, Goethe Institute, Asian Culture Council, U.S. Embassies, and other foundations and institutions. Awards and commendations to Maida include the Pola Nirenska Lifetime Achievement Award; the 2006 Metro DC's highest award annually for dance, "Outstanding Overall Production in a Large Venue;" the 2006 Washington DC Mayor's top prize for "Distinction in a Discipline," and many others over the years.  The last two awards were presented in ceremonies at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.  Maida has been a member of the board of directors for the International Celebration Conference (1992-98); Washington Project for the Arts; Founding Board, Program Chair (1978 - 85); Kennedy Center, Committee on Programs for Children and Youth, Education (1979-81); National Endowment for the Arts, Artists in School, specialist & review panel (1973-79), and others. For information: http://www.maidadance.com. Poet, polyartist, sonosopher, and scholar of humanities  that sometimes appear as language or pictures of your own mind.

View her website at www.maidadance.com.

Alex Caldiero

Alex Caldiero, "New York-reared Caldiero has created distinguished sound poetry and performance, as well as visual art, most of it as elaborate expositions of spiritual themes that draw upon his European (Mediterranean) background. ‘The sacred and the secular have been at the very core of my formative years,' he writes. ‘For me this twin presence is a pivot between sideshow and temple, between entertainer or jester and priest. In the process of making and presenting a work, this precarious position is the opening by which I can hope to glimpse the Real'....[His} Or, Book o' Lights ranks among the most imaginative and ambitious visual-verbal books of the 1990s." (From "Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes by Richard Kostelanetz). He is on the Philosophy/Humanities faculty at Utah Valley University where he is Poet/Artist in Residence. Caldiero is the author of numerous publications, visual works, CDs, and videos, including Body/Dreams/Organs (Elik Press), Various Atmospheres: poems and drawings (Signature Books); Sphota Probe (CD), Ah Bh Gh (artist book), U Latti Di La Matri/ The Milk of the Mother (bi-lingual Sicilian poems, CSSSS, Catania), Said Z (artist book), From Stone to Star (Incurve Press), Or: Book O= Lights (artist book), Pieces in Places (CD),Toy Blood (limited ed. self-published), Words: Exterior/Interior (video, produced by Steve Olpin), Illegible Tattoos (artist book), and recently SOUND WEAVE, word-music CD w/ Theta Naught. Caldiero is anthologized in Text-Sound Texts (Richard Kostelanetz, ed., Morrow, NY), and featured in the Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (Routledge, London/NY) and Utah: State of the Arts (Trudy McMurrin, ed., Meridian International, Ogden, UT).

To contact Alex, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .