I was just thinking about the last – and only – other time I experienced an EARTHQUAKE. It was back in 2008. My then-partner was teaching/researching in ALGERIA. She invited me for a fascinating several weeks and we stayed in a hotel in Oran for a few days seeing the sites.
I’m making PASSIONATE LOVE to her. The floor starts shaking and the pictures catapult themselves off the walls. Being the always HUMBLE person that I am, I’m thinking to myself “damn – I AM good!”
She jumps out of bed, calling to me: “get up, get up … there’s an EARTHQUAKE!” It takes a few moments for it to dawn on me that there were OTHER forces at work aside from my mad bedroom skills.
I go into the bathroom to get dressed. I’m standing in front of the mirror, fixing my hair, etc. lazily relishing in the afterglow … and she’s yelling “Now! Now! We have to go out NOW – there may be aftershocks!”
She pulls me by the hand and we run down the stairs out into the street where people gathered outside. It was a scene – everyone was there – hundreds of people in all manner of dress, from pajamas to evening wear, some with animals in their arms. It wasn’t a major quake so was more like a carnival atmosphere – everyone greeting everyone – an Algerian earthquake street party!
I still shake my head and chuckle at my reaction. I mean, I am a GREAT lover … but STILL … LOL!
Zelda (aka Judith Z. Miller) is a multifaceted artist: visual artist, performer, producer, percussionist, workshop leader and healer who live in an erotic, musical, spiritual universe. As a feminist Jew who studies shamanism, she is inspired by the beauty of nature and the guiding force of her intuition as she explores the themes of connection to the Earth, spirituality, sexuality and gender via a variety of art forms.
Under an Individual Artist Commission awarded by Arts Mid-Hudson, Zelda developed her new one-person performance Que Será, Será: A Life’s Journey of Sexual Orientation & Gender, live-streamed by Radio Kingston. She was also awarded an NEA Arts Management Fellowship in Theatre and a Fractured Atlas Development Grant to study with Tommy Joseph, Master Native American (Tlingit) Carver in Alaska. She was a winner of the British Airways Face of Opportunity Contest. She produces Zelda's Happenings, a series of black-light, body-painting, percussion dance parties.
As the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Fine Line Actors Theatre in Washington DC, Zelda produced and performed in special constituency projects, including the groundbreaking Women’s Prison Project. Zelda has produced numerous other community events, such as The Celebration of Life Be-In in Park Slope Brooklyn NY, incorporating professional and community artists of all genres honoring 9/11. Zelda produced numerous showcases at APAP (The Association of Performing Arts National Conference in NYC), and co-produced the acclaimed APAP Special Event, “Presenting Latin Music,” at Broadways’ New Victory Theatre. Zelda performed at such venues as Source, GALA Hispanic Theatre and the Kennedy Center in DC, in NYC at WOW Café Theatre and Dixon Place, and with the TMI Project in Kingston New York. Zelda was profiled in The Daily News; the subject of feature articles in Mann About Town magazine, Home News Tribune, In Brooklyn, The Park Slope Paper, The Wave, and The Daily Sitka Sentinel, and featured on NY-1 Television. Zelda is published in Inside Arts magazine, The Washington Post, American Theatre magazine, Ecosexuality: When Nature Inspires the Arts of Love, and she is a contributor to Queeries Blog and Zine. Her paper Sometimes A Tree Isn’t Just a Tree was read at the International Linguistic Conference in Morocco.
Zelda has led experiential workshops at Chelsea Piers, DreamYard Drama, Nehirim, the JCC NYC, The World Game Institute, and The Fine Line Actors Theatre, and workshops on the business of art for the Brooklyn Arts Council, The Field, and the Red Tent in NYC. She founded ZAMO! (Zelda Arts Management Organization) which for 20 years represented a multicultural mix of World Class performing artists nationwide, including Grammy nominated and Juno award winning performers. She is also a spiritual body coach and the creator of ZELDA’S Body Breathing Healing System™, a transformational system that incorporates intuition, breath, sound, visualization, and percussion.
Zelda lives at the Lace Mill artist residence in Kingston New York with her Great Dane puppy ZaZelle.
ARTIST SOUL SPEAKS 