NinjaTED: the talent! The Free live-stream and EVER-EVOLVING LINE-UP POST. (Also, a patron gathering in Tacoma, WA, on Sunday morning) (Patreon)

**edit: UPDATED POST WITH AN UPDATED LINK TO THE CROWDCAST - patreon had a saving malfunction and the post went up with an old expired link... but we are all systems go now. come rsvp and say hi in the chat**

Hi loves!

Love from a plane, literally. I’m over Wisconsin. Hi Wisconsin.

Lots going on.

Quickie - PATRON GATHERING IN TACOMA!!

Tomorrow, I play in Tacoma at the Temple Theatre and I know a good lot of you will be there.

I was hoping to schedule a patron meet-up, as promised, but dropped the ball with all the other things (mothering, frantically rehearsing, figuring out my finances; it’s been a real fun week)…and then just as I hopped on the plane, a long-time patron, Julie, asked me when and if it was happening. I told her I had failed to research and set anything up but that if she wanted to organize it (she’s a born organizer) I would just fall into everybody’s arms on Sunday morning.

HERE IS WHERE WE ARE GONNA MEET - thanks to Julie, who researched and called and booked the place!

The W.W. Seymore Conservatory

in Wright Park - map below!!

We have it reserved from 10am - 12pm on Sunday the 16th. The conservatory will stay open while we're there, but there's a more private place in the back where we can gather that accommodates up to 45 people. Julie plans to be there just before 10 (which is when they open) to make sure we're all good to go. ❤

From their website: “Surrounded by the lovely grounds of Wright Park in Tacoma’s historic Stadium district, the W.W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory is one of only three public Victorian-style conservatories on the West Coast. The building was dedicated in 1908 and is listed on the city, state, and national historic registers.

Featuring a twelve-sided central dome and 3,000 panes of glass, the Conservatory will offer you and your guests the beauty of more than 250 species of exotic tropical plants as well as a beautiful, changing display of blooming plants.”

👍✅🔥

Sounds good to me. Let’s admire the blooming plants. I’ll be tired and on my way to the airport to fly to Vancouver. :)

There is free street parking in front of the conservatory on G Street. Disabled parking is right in front, and there is a paved roundabout for parking and passenger drop-off.

If you know you can come, comment. Julie and I will keep track for a headcount!!!

…..

then….VANCOUVER !!!

We are fast approaching the semi-annual NinjaTED show in Vancouver!!! We are gonna be raising money for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank, and HOORAYYY: this year, thanks to you folks here on Patreon, we are going to once again be LIVE-STREAMING THE ENTIRE SHOW FOR THE PUBLIC, so you can watch free wherever you are in the world.

(and just a quick reminder - if you are IN VANCOUVER and wanna come, tickets are still available to purchase here - for only $20 - with all proceeds going towards GVFB)

......

LIVE STREAM DETAILS:

The live stream can be seen above, or you can find it directly on crowdcast at https://www.crowdcast.io/c/2023ninjated

The Chat Is The Best! So join on Crowdcast. 

The show is happening this WEDNESDAY, April 19th, and it all kicks off at about 8pm PDT (that’s 11pm for you east coast folk, 1pm in Melbourne, 4am in the UK….sorry, pommies), we'll probably be running til about 11pm local. The crowd cast will tell you your local start time!!

The show will be staying online for a few days afterwards, so if you can’t make it live, fear not. We got you covered.

This webcast is FULLY PUBLIC, meaning anyone and everyone can watch it, not just patrons - so share the link on socials, let your friends know, come and enjoy the chaos together. We figured that for a fundraiser like this - especially with so many performers/guests joining us - it was wiser to share the joy than keep it locked.

SHARE THE LINK!!! IT IS FREE!!!!

And did I mention I accidentally booked two balkan bands? I did.

It’s gonna be hot.

......

In Case You’re New: WHAT IS TED? NINJATED? A BRIEF HISTORY...

Settle in, kids. Every year (well, Covid notwithstanding) the TED conference happens in a big convention center in Vancouver.

If you’ve ever seen a big TED talk, chances are it was filmed at the main TED conference, which used to be in Monterey, California, then moved to Long Beach, California (that’s where I delivered my talk), and for the last 10 years or so it’s been stationed in Vancouver, Canadia.

It’s pricey to attend “mainstage” TED, and random members of the public can’t buy tickets. Nope. You have to be “invited”. The TED theater fits about 1,000 people and for five days, it’s TED talks, TED talks and more TED talks. All day long you sit and watch TED talks, your brain melts, you feel wonderful and terrible about the world and yourself, and then you hobnob with people in the lobby in the breaks and eat very expensive tiny snacks and fancy coffee that TED provides. You learn a lot, very fast.

I’m a big old nerd so it is my idea of a GOOD TIME.

If I can get my act together, I am going to try to Thing some kind of journalistic essay/offering from this year’s TED. But I may just sit there and think about my life. This is the longest time I will have been away from Woodstock, NY, since returning to America. I have stopped being a traveler. I live in a kitchen now, more or less. I used to never be home. Now I live in one. Maybe not for long. I have the feeling it’s all about to change again.

Back to TED:

People come from ALL OVER THE WORLD and from a million different disciplines to speak at or attend TED. So, all of a sudden, there are a ton of fascinating and smarty-pants people all in one place: scientists, musicians, academics, inventors, architects, politicians, activists, AI geeks, climate change geniuses, social media producers...astronauts....general weirdos. There’s always at least one person giving a talk about the future of prosthetic limbs.

Since I gave my TED talk in 2013, I've attended most of the TED conferences, and I fucking love it. It's a real brain-bath.

The last TED I attended was in Spring 2018. Ash was with me, he was two. It feels like a lifetime ago.

As I said, it’s goddamn expensive to attend the whole TED conference....and most locals in Vancouver have *no idea* it's even happening in their city.

So when I attended in 2014, I decided we should bring some of the excellent minds and talent of TED to THE PUBLIC. To my peeps.

Thus NINJATED was born.

I tweeted around town to see if anyone wanted to host a salon of random TED speakers and local performers, so that the community of Vancouver could share in the talent and brains that TED brings ‘round, without having to pay a gazillion dollars to get into the conference itself.

Within 48 hours, the Vogue Theatre offered to loan us their HUGE theater FOR FREE. And a bunch of my local friends, TED speakers, and performers joined us on stage with almost no notice.

We passed the hat around the audience to raise money for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank. It was total chaos and a total blast, (as you can see from this article in the local paper).

I had so much fun that I did it again in 2016….and again in 2018….

and now... here we are again with NinjaTED number 4!!!!!!

(Yes!! We will sell this poster at the gig again - and give all the proceeds to the food bank).

......

AND Now….THIS YEAR’S SPECIAL GUESTS:

There will be special guests GALORE at this show.

As always, we will probably just keep on adding to the line-up over the next couple of days (if previous years are anything to go by, we might even be adding them right up to the afternoon of the show....)

We'll be keeping this post updated every time we confirm more guests. And we'll send out another email blast to patrons on the 19th when we have our mostly-FINALIZED guest-list.

So feast your eyes on who we've confirmed so far.....

We have included social/IG handles for most of the folks below but if you want an easier way to follow all these folks at once, just go to the IG post I made this morning where I tagged them all in!: https://instagram.com/raegansealy?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

TOLLIVER: Musician

Tolliver is the son of a preacher, but his music is anything but holy. His songs are a gumbo of soul, funk, pop and camp, as funny as they are soul-baring. His recent EP 'Daddyland' is about reconnecting with his late father via the astral plane, and realizing that he has more in common with his devout-yet-very-flawed father than he ever knew. He's been compared to everyone from War to Al Green to Andre 3000, an ethereal-yet-gritty soul survivor.

Facebook / Twitter / Instagram

......

SARAH KAY: poet

(photo by Lunar Photography)

Sarah Kay is a poet from New York City.

Twitter / Instagram

......

MACHINE DAZZLE: performance artist / drag queen

Machine Dazzle is an unapologetic maximalist, radical, queer, emotionally driven, instinct-based concept artist and thinker.  Machine Dazzle creates costumes and theater sets that push the boundaries of crafty and identity.   An artist, costume designer, set designer, singer/songwriter, art director, drag queen and all-around creative polymath, Machine Dazzle has worked with a host of New York downtown luminaries, including several projects with actor and playwright Taylor Mac.  In 2022 he opened his first solo exhibition, Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle, at New York City's Museum of Arts and Design. He won the 2017 Henry Hewes Design Award, was a 2022 United States Artists Fellow and most recently won the 2023 Obie for sustained achievement in design.

Instagram

......

MELISSA VILLASEÑOR: comedian

Melissa Villaseñor made history as the first Latina cast member of "Saturday Night Live" where she worked for six years.  Melissa Villaseñor is an actress, comedian, and impressionist.  Outside of comedy, Villaseñor is an author, visual artist, musician and host of the podcast Laughing With Myself. Her first self-help workbook, Whoops ... I’m Awesome: A Workbook with Activities, Art, and Stories for Embracing Your Wonderfully Awesome Self, was published in 2022.

Facebook / Twitter / Instagram

…….

AMY CUDDY: Social Psychologist

Amy Cuddy is a social psychologist, bestselling author, and acclaimed keynote speaker. Her writing, research, teaching, and speaking focus on how we can take control of our own thoughts and feelings to affect presence and performance under stress, the causes and outcomes of feeling powerful vs. powerless, our own prejudices and stereotypes, nonverbal behavior, and the delicate balance of projecting both our trustworthiness and our strength.

Facebook / Twitter / Instagram

…….

DAN HARRIS: former news anchor

Dan Harris is a former ABC News anchor who reported from all over the world, covering wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and producing investigative reports in Haiti, Cambodia and the Amazon. But after experiencing an on-air panic attack while hosting Good Morning America, he knew he had to make changes. Despite initial misgivings, he turned to meditation.  Harris is the author of the book 10% Happier, a #1 New York Times bestseller. He is also the host of the Ten Percent Happier podcast and cofounder of the Ten Percent Happier meditation app. He lives in New York with his wife, son and three rescue cats.

Facebook / Twitter / Instagram

…….

MARIA POPOVA: writer, thing-connector

Maria Popova is a Bulgarian-born, American-based essayist, book author, poet, and writer of literary and arts commentary and cultural criticism that has found wide appeal. Creator of The Marginalian (long ago named Brain Pickings), a reader and a wonderer reckoning with the meaning of it all in writing. The Marginalian is the record of the reckoning — a one-woman labor of love, exploring what it means to live a tender, thoughtful life of purpose and gladness, wonder-smitten by reality, governed by the understanding that creativity is a combinatorial force: ideas, insights, knowledge, and inspiration acquired in the course of being alive and awake to the world, composited into things of beauty and substance we call our own.

Facebook / Twitter / Instagram

…..

BALKAN SHMALKAN: balkan band

Balkan Shmalkan is the brainchild of a group of musicians with a long history of collaboration in traditional South Serbian Trubaci music. This project is a way of blending that music with other vibrant traditions and bringing it to the general population of Greater Vancouver.  Their funky brass dance beats are rooted in the aural traditions of Roma and Klezmorim of Eastern Europe and blended with a mixture of jazz and pop.

Balkan Shmalkan is exceptionally versatile and mobile, playing on and off stage with nothing more than the power of their lungs and a few horns.

Facebook / Twitter / Instagram

……

THE CARNIVAL BAND: balkan band

The Carnival Band is a community music project with ten years of history, based out of Commercial Drive’s Britannia Community Centre.  Instrumentation for the band includes all range of brass, woodwinds, drums, percussion, accordions, and of course voice. Stage shows also allow them the opportunity to join their bass, guitar, fiddle, banjo, piano, and keyboard playing friends.  Many of our favourite tunes are originals by band members. The remainder of our monstrous repertoire includes samba, calypso, swing, afrobeat, jazz, funk, disco, and traditional music from around the globe.  The Carnival Band believes that community music is grounded in collaboration, with the aim of empowering the individuals involved. Songs and performances are a means to creative expression and community cohesiveness, rather than an end in themselves.

Facebook / Instagram

……..

RAEGAN SEALY: musician

Raegan Sealy is a British-born, Brooklyn-based writer, singer, and teaching artist Raegan Sealy has perfected the art of finding light in life’s darker experiences through words and music.   Fusing soul, rock, and indie-pop with her distinctive velvety vocals and ballsy lyrics, Sealy delivers both haunting ballads and upbeat self-empowerment anthems with equal prowess.  Examining how music, lyrics and creative writing can help empower, heal and engage traumatized communities, she launched a nonprofit organization in 2017 which was supported by Lady Gaga’s Born This Way foundation. Her 2019 official TED Talk, also on the topic, was the first to be delivered entirely in rhyming verse, and received a standing ovation.

On Instagram here. 

.........

MORE TO COME….

……..

More about the GREATER VANCOUVER FOOD BANK

This whole event is put on to raise money for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank - here's a little bit about the work they do:

By supporting the Greater Vancouver Food Bank (GVFB), you are helping provide healthy food to approximately 15,000 individuals and families each month across Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, and the North Shore.

The GVFB is currently experiencing a record number of new client registrations, with up to 1,000 new clients each month. They also provide food support to 141 community agencies throughout these communities, such as housing agencies, women's and children's shelters, transition houses, and after-school programs, providing warm meals and snacks to thousands of people each week.

To support this growing demand, they need your help maintaining the quality and quantity of food distributed to those in need. By attending tonight's show, you are helping raise funds required by the GVFB to support the unprecedented demand and your community. Thank you!

......

The performers and theater are all giving their time and facilities for free, so all of the ticket proceeds and all merch sales on the night will be going towards the Greater Vancouver Food Bank.

The livestream is FREE to the public to watch - but we would encourage you to also donate here:

https://events.foodbank.bc.ca/fundraiser/ninjated

This live stream is being made possible by you patrons. Live-streaming is not free, camera crews need to be paid, so we are able to cover those costs from patronage, and keep the stream free to the public. After covering these costs, we'll also be donating a huge chunk of money from the Thing proceeds to the food bank as well. Everyone wins.

I hope you all tune in!

I’ll send a reminder the day of the show.

x

Afp

------THE NEVER-ENDING AS ALWAYS---------

1. if you are a patron and new to my work, don’t forget your patronage allows you access to ALL of my patreon releases to date. HERE is the link to download my latest big solo record, “There Will Be No Intermission”, and HERE is a link to download the PDF of the art/essay book that goes with it.

2. if you’re a patron reading this post via an email notification, please click through to comment on this post. at the very least, if you’ve read it, indicate that by using the heart symbol. that's always nice for me to see, so i know who's reading.

3. see All the Things (over 150 of them) i've made so far on patreon:

http://amandapalmer.net/things

4. JOIN THE SHADOWBOX COMMUNITY FORUM, find your people, and discuss everything: https://forum.theshadowbox.net/

5. new to my music and TOTALLY OVERWHELMED? TAKE A WALK THROUGH AMANDALANDA….we made a basic list of my greatest hits n stuff (at least up until a few years ago, this desperately needs updating) on this lovely page: http://amandalanda.amandapalmer.net/

6. general AFP/patreon-related questions? ask away, someone will answer: patronhelp@amandapalmer.net