1978  Baby It’s About Time October 27 and 28.
The first of two performances with Chasen Gaver, DC’s most controversial performance poet, was absurd, somewhat outrageous, social commentary with Dance Construction Company dancers.  The evening performance was at Dorothy Betts Marvin Center Theatre, Washington, DC.

Evening I (1978) and Evening II (1979) by Chasen Gaver with Dance Construction Company featured a selection of different poems and different content for performance of dance. Gaver wrote new poems and selected previous poems that he performed with the dancers on stage.

Chasen was considered “a Washington, DC original.”  Some say he was one of Washington, DC’s first rappers. He performed speaking his text “live” and moving alone on and, also, among Dance Construction dancers. He was a performance artist original, fealess artist, beloved by all who knew him.

Baby It’s About Time: *
ACT I: Sounds “The poems in this set are constructed around rhythms and rhymes in an attempt to appeal to the sense of movement.
Poems: Sounds;  Dance City; Does Your Family Have the Money? Le Boheme; Your Guess is as Good as Mine (dancers with ropes and pillows); Man/ipulation: Life Under My Umbrella; Love Poem for Richard Pryor;  Z Name EEEZ:….; Sonida Rico; Claudine (pajamas and robes); In Search of Nikki Butane.

ACT II:  “Poems in this set are more concerned with social comment and rhythm and rhyme provide the medium through which the message is directed.”  DADDY (Marlene sings Daddy! Maida tap dance); After 1 (marching with masks); The Oracle at Phila-Delphi; Freak Accidents; Funk Junction (dancers tied together with rope); Midge (mannequin) dancers enter side, men circling…feel heartbeat; Snap, Crackle, Poppers; Sales Talk (buy & sell) ; Give the Dancers Castanets (dancers jumping); ENCORE: DISCO.

Brook was replaced by dancer, Don Zuckerman, for the Saturday night performance:  Brook had to leave after the first evening performance and go to NYC where his second daughter, Nori/Elinor/Adrasteia was born 10/27/1971.

* Information on the two evenings of poetry are sparse.  Changes may be possible if/when video tapes are located.

“Beloved Chasen” was one of the earliest in Washington, DC to die of AIDS.  Chasen Gaver’s papers, 1977-1988  (collection number 7575) are part of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at the Cornell University Library.
http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/RMM07575.html

What the press is saying