Oh can you next give us video of her dance sign.
This is the first article I have encountered that brings this up. I always have wanted Edwin Denby of Dancers, Buildings, and People On The Street to meet sign language that danced. But especially since Christmas time of 1996 in Atlanta Georgia’s Underground as a 2-4 hr line to enter a nightspot waited.
Young, slender, medium to light, AfroAmerican, deaf lady entranced the line waiters and us onlookers for 2-4 hr well past midnight with a sign I have never seen elsewhere that everyone could read—the laughter and tears, joy, cold fire, sparkling love as nonstop she talked. And outrageous humor making us crackup, then tears of tragedy, rebounding joy, cold fury blazing into kind caring.
American Sign was created by talkers to be clear. This lady was so clear, joyful, funny, sad, alive, that we transcended the cold air to join as few audiences ever join the performer in a masterpiece.
Some who knew her told me this was how the young lady was all the time. Some years later the NYT in an article mentioned that at international sign conferences by the second week the deaf were all fluently conversing even though their native signs had different origins. Somewhere in our brains is sign that can come if needed and join other sign.
Maybe NYT can follow up with that. Imagine if deaf actor/dancer/comedians from all over the world for a summer got together at a modern version of a Shakespeare Festival! And it were videoed.
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