Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25040
As defined bV Oxford English Dictionarv: Goddess, Female Divinity. As defined bV women on the street: A woman who uses her power and uses it well. • The New Freedom lady gone bad! • A Russian bus driver I once met. She tosses off inertia like a ballast. • A Diva knows change as the intoxicating result of action. • Sleater-Kinney • She creates her own life. • Well. she hikes up more than her skirt. • My best friend Jen • A Diva's life's work and passion are one and the same. • Pippi longstocking because she's big hearted, well-traveled, underdressed, smart and defiant .• Thelma. • She who vaporizes boy paradigms. As defined bV HolIV Morris, creator and host of Adventure Divas, a new television show readv to launch this Fall: Pro-octive women who pursue uncensored potential. A Diva challenges. .. tradition, herself, a political power, a mountain. She may belt out lyrics of pride or resistance, photograph her way across Africa, or climb a 23,OOO-foot mountain to raise money for breast cancer research. Whatever her Vision, she chooses passion and creates her destiny. Holly Morris doesn't seem like a television personality. She's too real and quirky and smart. She's got none of the plastic jauntiness you often find in TV talent. And her home-an old, half-remodeled house hidden from the street by an enormous tree, and tucked into one of Seattle's residential backwaters-seems an unlikely place to start a media empire. --""""'''''Sut appearances can deceive: this is ground zero for the future of travel television. Here, with papers spread over the dining room table and two I"""",,",,,ri into the spare bedroom, she and her partners and are wrapping up work on pilot for their new show, Adventure Divas. is about telling a different kind of story through traveling," Holly tells me. "It's about seeing the Sights. It's not about knowing which hotels to stay in. It's abou its like to live in other places, and other cultures, as seen through the eyes amazing women." premise is pretty simple. Each episode, Holly and her crew take off for another land. Though the goal of their travels is to meet and profile the dynamic, independent, creative women they call Divas. The trips themselves are the medium for the stories they tell. To film the pilot, they went to politically controversial Cuba, arriving just days after the Pope's groundbreaking visit. "I wanted to go to Cuba precisely because it was such a mystery to me," says Holly. "The trade embargo has been a de facto information embargo as well, and though there was obviously more to it than this, the images of Cuba that my lifetime were of cigars, It turned out to be a great choice if only because the chaos there them fresh. when cars broke down (as they often do there) or their camera dropped off a moving train (forcing them to rebuild it from -"",..,"': parts), they couldn't just spend more money and move on to next location shot: they had to figure out how to deal with the isaster as part of their story. Which is all for the good, in terms their storytelling, because as Holly says, "Real travel is about experiencing life, not just covering ground." L.....o _ This is not the usual formula for a travel show. Few travel shows are really about the experience of traveling. Fewer still are about the lives of the people of the country being traveled to. Check out the Adventure Divas website, www.adventuredivas.com for airtimes & schedules.-Alex Steffan 37 _ _