Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman—the tag-team, two-spirited, boundary-breaking artist duo, Climbing PoeTree—have advanced what it means to be renaissance women. Poets, performers, print-makers, dancers, educators, bookmakers, muralists, designers, and new media artists, these janes-of-all-trades prove that you can be masterful in multiples. With roots in Haiti and Colombia, Alixa and Naima reside in Brooklyn and track footprints across the country and globe on a mission to overcome destruction with creativity. In a nutshell, Climbing PoeTree is a queer-feminist soul- sister co-conspiracy of acrobatic poets who moonlight as street artists and infiltrate public schools and prisons with infectious ideas of how people can shape their own destinies. Each with her own impressive background in performing, teaching, and activism, Alixa and Naima made their debut as a duo in July of 2003, when they launched a four-month tour across the nation with a riveting multi-media dance and poetry performance about the effects of the War on Drugs on the people of America’s ghettos and Colombia’s farmlands. In its premier year, Climbing PoeTree also released its first album Stethescope, and founded Fashion Statement, their sought-after line of silk-screened clothing. In 2004, Alixa and Naima joined the Blackout Arts Collective and combined forces with like- minded artists, activists, and educators of color who believe in the transformative power of art to affect change in their communities …
Video Rating: 4 / 5