Archives for April 2010

Each of us holds a story of how we came to dance, some filled with rich histories motivated by family connections to the form, others focused on pivotal moments of observing a dancer. For many, these experiences were seen on television, within a film, onstage, or now, the Internet. My story is not unique, yet it has informed a life in dance over the past 35 years.

Without me even knowing what dance was, I was first inspired watching Tarzan maneuver through vines and the choreographed fight scenes of the campy Batman series. I longed for those physical moments and it absolutely helped that these dance objects of my desire were scantily clothed.

My early observations taught me that moving in one’s body meant confidence, and this showed me that dance was obtainable. The nooks and crannies of my personal history are no more special than each of yours and those accounts are now informed through my practice of tai chi, viewing performances and walking down the street.

Learning how someone found dance is one of my favorite pastimes, because this inevitably links those shared experiences between our histories. For instance, Deborah Slater and I share teaching aerobics in the early 1980s for Rhythm & Motion. Her formidable range of work and career is marked with a milestone celebration: 20 years of presenting a heady blend of dance-theater. Our dance history continues to cross through a variety of meetings that focus on visibility for dance.

As you can tell, history resonates within this issue and under an international banner, the annual festival CubaCaribe will for three weeks investigate the expanding definitions of Caribbean dance. Through an expressive mix of dance, music and film events, the festival’s featured artists expand on the definitions of their traditional forms, all through the lens of shared chronicles.

Local choreographers Kendra Kimbrough Barnes and José Navarrete split an evening of performance at CounterPULSE that couldn’t be more different. Barnes delves into family history and mines the complex arena of dealing with an incarcerated brother, while Navarette, a trained cultural anthropologist, investigates the global and personal impact of water. These engrossing themes are told through each artist’s unique movement style.

Danae Rees, with Luna Kids Dance, contributes her final in a three-part series on dance education that has helped focus and provide a context to the progression of dance education in Australia and the United Kingdom. No doubt the conversation is complex and the need for support continues as we look to bring more resources, at all levels of education, for arts in the classroom.

This month I am hoping for another history making moment as the ruling on same-sex marriage in California is announced. Fingers, toes, elbows, etc., are crossed.

Navigate your history and enjoy discovering the path that marvels and inspires.

This article appeared in the April 2010 issue of In Dance.

The devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the destructive fury of Hurricane Gustav in 2008 and most recently, the massive earthquake in Haiti have shocked the world with stories and images of incomprehensible suffering in the often already destitute areas of the Caribbean. In spite of, or perhaps because of, these searing experiences, CubaCaribe, the Bay Area’s annual festival of Afro-Caribbean Diaspora dance and music, returns to San Francisco’s Dance Mission Theater this April in an almost rebellious fashion for an exhilarating three-week celebration consisting of traditional and contemporary dance performances, workshops, lectures and film screenings that feature an array of local artists, as well as guests from New York, New Orleans and Haiti.

Vessels of Culture

The peoples and cultures of the Caribbean have long held a special place of intrigue and allure in the collective imagination of Americans. Cuba is often thought of as the forbidden island shrouded in far-away mystery although it lies just 90 miles off of Florida’s keys. And then there is its neighbor Haiti, and its seemingly constant U.S. State Department travel warnings. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Mark Danner wrote, “Haiti is everybody’s cherished tragedy. Long before the great earthquake struck the country like a vengeful god, the outside world and Americans especially, described, defined, marked Haiti most of all by its suffering.” I had assumed that the Festival, now in its sixth year, would reflect this misery and other-ness that seemed to define the Caribbean in the minds of Americans. This year’s theme is, after all, From Katrina to Gustav.

I had the chance to speak with Ramón Ramos Alayo, the artistic director of CubaCaribe and Alayo Dance Company, after a Cuban Salsa class that he teaches at Bollywood Cafe in the Mission District. The class was coming to an end with slow cool-down stretches and a soft round of applause from the satisfied, glowing students. He spotted me waiting in the corner of the studio and signed to give him ten more minutes. Class was not over yet. The most important part of the class it appeared—the part where students and teacher stay around to talk shop, laugh or just catch up—had yet to happen.

As the last student made her way out, Alayo walked over, a large smile on his face, and promptly asked if I wanted a beer. Sitting at the bar that covers half of the studio, I thought about Danner’s quote and probed Alayo about the angst-ridden pieces that I should expect to see in this year’s Festival. He chuckled and explained, “People often think that about the Caribbean—especially Haiti. But when I do my work, when I dance, it’s not always going to be about struggle. My work is not the suffering. But then, you know, it’s not just showing big smiles and pretty costumes either. My work reflects my life and the dance is going to show all of it.”

Alayo Dance Company was formed in 2001 and has presented work in CubaCaribe since the Festival’s inception in 2005. The company is known for its innovative blend of modern, Cuban folkloric and popular dance—a ‘fusion’ that is indicative of Cuba but is rarely seen here in the United States. It has been celebrated for exploring difficult issues such as racism, slavery and cancer but without wallowing in victimhood.

Looking down, Alayo took a sip of his drink and continued on. As a producer he said he saw the theme From Katrina to Gustav as an investigation of how the Caribbean Diaspora is constantly evolving and how people are moving—sometimes because they are displaced, sometimes not—and how their art travels and changes with them. I added again that this change is often a result of unfortunate events, whether ‘natural,’ social or economic. “It is for many reasons,” he said. “Think of Oya (the orisha or deity in the Lucumí tradition that is practiced widely in Cuba). She is associated with wind and hurricanes and she also represents change. She is a warrior.”

No stranger to change, Cuban-born Alayo received a Master’s degree from Havana’s National School of Art and soon after moved to the United States, starting his own dance company. Alayo explores the idea of change as it relates to immigration in his new piece with Alayo Dance Company that premiers the third week of the Festival. His choreography presents a vibrant expression of the immigrant experience as it unfolds in a subway train in New York City, a city often seen as the epicenter of America’s convergence of cultures. Alayo has always been drawn to the Subway and how the train represents the movement of peoples, both literally and figuratively. “The number 7 train,” he said, “runs from midtown Manhattan through Flushing, Queens. It is called the ‘International Expressway,’ and there you see every type of face—from Dominican to Puerto Rican to Jamaican to Taiwanese.”

To Alayo, New York City subways are the only places in the States that resemble Havana’s over-capacity city buses. “In Cuba, everybody takes the bus,” he said, with just a hint of nostalgia. “Everybody is sweating on the bus, sharing space. It does not matter how much money you make or your color. Everybody is squished up against each other. New York it is the same thing. Business men are riding along with janitors.” He explained that in Cuba, a person’s relationship with their body and the bodies of strangers is more relaxed than what he sees in the United States. “But on the Subway, all of these people suddenly stand close together.”

Something that Alayo misses about Cuba is how art is an integral part of everyday life, with no one excluded. There, art is not only produced by professionals and consumed by spectators. The sounds of drumming, of radios playing, of voices singing are always wafting through the windows from the streets below. It is in New York City that he feels the same corazón, heart, pulse, clave of the street that he felt in Cuba. “Musicians are performing on the platforms and in the trains, not because they’re begging for money, but because they want to express themselves.” He recounted a story of a Subway musician who, after being completely ignored on a train by a couple who assumed that he was pan handling, began to sing to them anyway until they decided to get off the train. Incidents like that gave him the idea of inviting street musicians and performers, from paint bucket percussionists to pop-and-lock dancers, to join him on stage for his final piece in the Festival. Many street artists are immigrants themselves and according to Alayo this last performance of CubaCaribe highlights the common musical thread between life in his home country and the stresses, joys and challenges that immigrants encounter in the States every single day.

Preserving Spirit

The wide range of cultures represented at CubaCaribe testifies to the Festival’s commitment not only to represent the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora, but also to show the ways in which dance changes and develops when traditional forms and new environments/situations collide. For instance, dancer, choreographer and vocalist, Adia Whitaker will also present work at CubaCaribe. Whitaker is best known for her creation of multi-media dance-theater productions. This year, she brings to Dance Mission’s stage her Ase Dance Theater Collective. The Brooklyn-based collective is guided by Whitaker’s desire to deepen awareness of the 400-year African presence and imprint throughout the Americas. While continuing to rely heavily on traditional Haitian dance for their movement vocabulary, her company speaks directly to the 21st century consciousness of its audiences. She describes her work as “neo-folklore,” which, while rooted in traditional movement, does not always tell “folktales.” Whitaker is a strong choice to open the festival because like Alayo, she sees power when stories and people meet. She explains, “As people of African descent that have migrated from all over the world to fulfill our dreams of art and revolution in New York City, it is our [company’s] shared belief that all forms of African drum and dance facilitate a process of spiritual awareness. And this inspires us to create rich and transformative art that uplifts the soul.”

New to this year’s CubaCaribe programming is the addition of music and dance of New Orleans, often considered America’s gateway to the Caribbean. In the 19th century it was in New Orleans’ Congo Square where Creoles and American Indians would meet and trade and on Sundays it was where slaves were allowed to gather and dance. There, secular dances such as the Bamboula and the Calinda evolved and flourished. After Hurricane Katrina, many New Orleans residents scattered, and with them their unique artistic traditions. Slowly people are moving back and re-planting their roots. This first weekend of the Festival honors their struggle as artists present the dances of the Congo Square, as well as songs and dances of Black Mardi Gras Indians, named after the American Indians who helped and gave shelter to escaped slaves.

Shared Triumph

When asked what the second week of the Festival would be like, Alayo had one word: “Influence.” The second weekend is a mixed program that examines where the artistic traditions from the Congo, Brazil, United States, Haiti and Cuba converge and diverge. Presenters include Herve “Kayos” Makaya, a native of the Republic of Congo who migrated here in 2007 to escape the civil wars plaguing his country. He is a master of traditional Congolese music and dance and is known for possessing an incredibly energetic presence. Tracing the Caribbean Diaspora south, Afro-Brazilian storyteller Paco Gomes uses a dynamic blend of Orixa dance, modern and Capoiera. Jacinta Vlach’s Liberation Dance Theater also tells stories using contemporary dance techniques, as well as movement from Latin and African traditions. Vlach explores reggaeton in this year’s performances—from its roots in Panama and Puerto Rico to the continental United States. To conclude the weekend the Festival turns to the work of Haitian dancer, Djenane St. Juste, and her mother, Mambo Florencia “Fofo” Pierre, as well as Yismari Ramos Tellez, who brings her artistic direction to Las Que Son Son, the versatile all-female Cuban folkloric and popular dance company. This is just a sampling of the groups that will perform in the mixed program.

It must also be mentioned that Lakou, a dance troupe from Jacmel, Haiti was poised to participate in this year’s Festival. However, one of their directors died in Haiti’s horrific earthquake and their tour understandably is now in question. There are many reasons why people travel and share stores. And, there are many reasons why they do not.

Border Crossing

One of the films that CubaCaribe will screen during the Festvial is Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans, produced literally in the wake of Katrina. Finishing his drink, Alayo stood up and put his hand in pocket, pulling out a piece of paper where a quote from this documentary was scribbled. “Human beings are always looking for a way. The musicians and dancers are improvising, doing something they’ve been doing a long time. So they have the feeling, not only is this moment here something that’s never happened—it’s a moment that’s always happened.”

We stood outside of the Bollywood studio and said our goodbyes. Alayo squinted from the sunlight and shook my hand. “No te lo pierdas. El Festival va a estar buenisimo. Seguro que yes.”

The strong yet malleable artistic core of the Caribbean Diaspora not only enables us to trace the origin of its many songs and dances, but through them experience the many threads of Diaspora history. Textbooks and news reports may inform us of the adversities endured by slaves and the hardships faced by Haitian earthquakes survivors this winter, but only detailed personal accounts can evoke them. The dance program assembled by CubaCaribe interprets these stories in all their complexity and subjectivity, indelibly chronicling the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora for Bay Area audiences. Now in its sixth year, CubaCaribe continues to serve as an exciting venue for artists to come together and share their personal history.

CubaCaribe runs April 16-May 2, 2010 at Dance Mission Theater with special events held at the Museum of the African Diaspora and other locations throughout the Bay Area. Please check cubacaribe.org for the full schedule of Festival events.

This article appeared in the April 2010 issue of In Dance.

It was another chilly yet magical day in Vienna on January 7, 2009. I was trudging eagerly through the narrow snowy sidewalks to the Museumsquartier, home to the Tanzquartier and one of the largest cultural districts in the world—60,000 sq. ft. of art and culture to be exact! I was to begin Daily Professional Training, a daily three-hour class that featured new guest instructors each week at the Tanzquartier, Wien (TQW).

I had arrived in Vienna only a week earlier and was thrilled, yet a bit anxious for what awaited me, this being my first journey abroad and my German being quite rudimentary. Sean Clute and I had voyaged to Austria hot on the heels of what had been an amazing six months and on a commitment to tour as much as possible for a year. We are the Co-Artistic Directors of DOUBLE VISION, a San Francisco based intermedia dance company which we co-founded in December 2003. Nine of us had just wrapped up a five-week U.S. tour that took us to vibrant art scenes in 11 cities from LA to NYC. Now here we were in Austria, busily booking a European tour. Sean had been honored with a two-month U.S. Fulbright award and artist-in-residence at the Museumsquartier and I had been granted professional status at the TQW. Additionally, we were invited to lecture and perform in Vienna, Zurich, Prague and Pecs while abroad.

I arrived at the TQW early and began doing my favorite tendu warm-up that I had learned years ago from Molissa Fenley at Mills College. I noticed odd glances from classmates as they one after another filed in, laid down on the marley floor, closed their eyes and rested. Another American spotted me and approached me chuckling, then whispered “They don’t do those here.” Before I could ask her why, Robert Stein entered.

There is no perfect way to describe the force that is Robert Stein, a man I grew to respect greatly for his uncompromising and unique approach to choreography and performance art. He stated that he was neither a dancer, choreographer nor a shaman, but planned to teach us and himself how to be all three of these during the next two weeks. Given the application process to take the daily training, I had anticipated a rigorous, technical class in contemporary movement. Suffice it to say, Stein’s class was already not what I expected.

Training at the TQW is highly experimental and broadly based in personal interpretations of Postmodern dance (Judson era), Release Technique, Contact Improvisation, Butoh and other techniques. My daily training included first the fake-Shaman class that involved activities like attempting to die, contemplating personal sources of pain, belly dancing, and hip-hop improvisations as reincarnated animals. I also took a class in Feldenkrais taught by Georg Blaschke, which involved a daily sit-down anatomy lesson, followed by leading each other around by the crotch, then a break-neck routine (with no prior stretching). Another class, led by the British dancer Stephanie Cumming, was a more conventional dance class based in release technique. The daily training grew out of what Austrian choreographers wanted to explore, not what a director or other outsider deemed to be important. Classmates remained consistent throughout these diverse classes—they were not there to learn new techniques but to acquire a different awareness from each instructor. The transient nature of instruction was rarely agreeable to me. At least once a week I contemplated never going back to the TQW and instead finding a place where I could just do some ballet. Yet the unexpected and fun nature of the classes kept pulling me back each morning. The TQW forced me change my approach to dance training; I went from focusing on efficient, goal-oriented progress, always asking myself, “What do I need to improve my technique and choreography?” to a more nebulous and fun “What physical, emotional and mental processes will I experience today?” The TQW made me thirsty for play; an experience that had been missing from my training for far too long.

Stein also introduced us to the Choreography Platform Austria (CPA), a three day festival held in Graz, a small medieval town, two hours outside of Vienna. Headlined by Stein, it was a festival full of cutting-edge performances, lectures, discussions and evening parties, boasting three days of fifteen works with many NYC curators in attendance. With excitement in the air, candid conversations about the state of contemporary dance, and an enormous, packed theater, I immediately noticed that everyone was there to support experimentation—which is drastically different than what I’m used to back home. I had a telling conversation with a curator from one of the most cutting-edge theaters in NYC. She listed which pieces she’d like to bring to the U.S. but wouldn’t because they were simply too experimental to market and would not generate enough income.

There was no discussion of good versus bad dance, only what these new perspectives and unique views meant to the observer. One performance that particularly struck me was Krõõt Juurak’s Once Upon, a piece during which she never addressed the audience, but simply played with some seemingly random toys she had spilled out into a pile onstage. It was one of the most riveting and unique performances I have ever seen. In the Distribution of Similarities, Andrei Andrianov and Oleg Soulimenko compared shopping receipts of identical grocery items they had purchased in Russia and Austria, and later picnicked onstage whilst discovering that they each drank vodka differently. And my early TQW mentor, Stein and his partner Frans Peolestra, known collectively as United Sorry, performed the work How low can you go?, which promised to lead the audience “into a ritual of darkness, without being afraid to look the devil in the eye.” Their performance was a revelation—hilarious, beautiful, insulting, maddening, and poignant. In between personal confessions, Peolestra played a mini-keyboard, surrounded in candlelight as Stein rolled around in disheveled shorts and heels and belted out a familiar reggae tune that went “So low you can’t get under it, fuck my soul!” It was fresh, unique and I loved it.

Regarding CPA, Sean writes: “Austrian contemporary dance is perplexing. It is like watching someone achieve nothing, without trying, yet with skill and technical prowess. Following nearly all 15 performances, I wondered why or if the performance was dance. The ‘dancers’ would ebb and flow between effort and idleness, intention and aimlessness. The heart of the quandary, ‘what is dance today’ is one being questioned and redefined with a spirit of playfulness in Austria. However, it felt like dance itself, was somehow lacking in, well, dance.” I couldn’t agree more with this statement and must admit that the lack of dance was beginning to make me question my reliance upon dance in my own choreography. Sitting in the audience watching piece after piece of non-dance I began to feel incredibly old-fashioned. Self-doubt and an internal struggle with the question of not only “what is dance today” but “what is relevant and contemporary dance today” began to set in.

Later, at an after-party hosted by the critical dance journal CORPUS, Sean and I found ourselves enchanted by enigmatic contemporary choreographers. Being that everyone was toasty from Marillenschnaps, we entered into a lively conversation that started out something like “what is going on with dance in San Francisco? Last time I was there in the ’80s it was all contact improv and release technique mixed with some politics.” We wanted to answer the question, but were more eager to find answers to our own regarding dance, or the lack thereof, in Austria. Sean sought out Krõõt Juurak to discuss the performances and asked whether Austrian choreographers have a regard for the audience. She paused and replied “it isn’t that we do not care for the audiences, rather the audiences care for us. They want to know what we are thinking and feeling.” An interesting reply, one that revealed a major cultural difference between how we approach art-making and people like Krõõt do. Is this why Austrian dance appears “foreign,” undance-like, effortless? Would DOUBLE VISION dare create a work that does not have elements of entertainment or virtuosity, thus risking small ticket sales for true experimentation?

Sean’s response to this unspoken dare: “This April I think DOUBLE VISION is taking this risk. Pauline’s choreography captures some of the nothingness I felt in Austria. The nothingness is like being alien; having an awareness yet lacking the vocabulary needed for comprehension. I am not sure if people will like it, in fact, I am not sure if I even do. But the work, similar to work at the CPA, is capturing something new, something outside the conventional, blockbuster, contemporary dance. The complex and virtuosic movement travels but goes nowhere. No doubt this is artistic risk, but no risk is without reward, right? But witnessing Hysteresis is not about liking or disliking it—it is about experiencing something different, something new.”

The uncertainty expressed in Sean’s statement is logical. Prior to Austria, we entered into every project with a firm approach and concept. We knew how to make work entertaining, crowd-pleasing. That’s not to say we sacrificed our personal artistic concerns, but we cared what the audience thought and that informed the product. But something happened to me in Austria. Everything I witnessed there, from class to performance, shared the similarities of honesty, purity of idea, intrigue and a lack of inhibition or concern for critical reception. How many of us in the U.S. can say that we approach art-making, production and marketing without concern for or fear of our audience, critics, funders, friends and family? Being concerned about such things has been ingrained in me. It was frightening to think of letting go.

Before leaving Austria, Sean and I premiered several new works at the Museumsquartier. One of these works was a collaborative dance I created with Caitlyn Carradine, the American who had first told me not to do tendus. I was terrified. What would they think of my dancey-dance? But then something happened—I decided to not care and to just go for it. What came out of that performance was the seed for what is now Hysteresis, a complex, virtuosic piece full of movement invention, responsive systems, and an overarching feeling of being alien. It is quite literally an abstract autobiography of my two months in Austria.

So what changed in me that night of performing at the Museumsquartier? I found that I had emerged from my two months of experimentation and self-doubt in Austria with a renewed conviction to question everything I’d been taught about making “good” dance. I was filled with a ferocious determination to create work that was contemporary, unique, and mine, uncensored by fears of audience reception or critical review. I have tried to ignore the “right” spatial patterns, use of time and accepted structural devices such as narrative, climax and conclusion. To do this I have assembled an amazing team of collaborators and dancers—many of whom have been working with DOUBLE VISION for over five years. They have welcomed this project and the risks Sean named with open-arms and have offered continued support through what has now been a grueling year of weekly rehearsals and meetings. As the premiere approaches, I believe what began as a personal pursuit on my part has become a shared challenge for the entire team. Ultimately, we are trying to show a clear, unhindered idea that will offer the audience a genuine experience. Austrian choreographer, Sabina Holzer, echoed this shared and long-held pursuit in a recent email, stating: “I hope I am strong enough to go my way with all my concerns, needs and dreams.” For the sake of dance’s future relevancy and growth, I hope we all are.

Hysteresis will premiere at Dance Mission Theater, Fri-Sun, April 9-11, 8pm, with a post-show reception on April 9.

This article appeared in the April 2010 issue of In Dance.

I am both inspired by and gracious for the opportunity to be a Winter Artist in Residence at CounterPULSE. I have been creating work for over 13 years and realize, that just as in life, there is never a time that an artist does not need support. The moment I stepped into the studio for my first rehearsal I knew I was standing on fertile ground that would help nurture and hone my creativity while working on this piece.

What happens when one begins to re-trace his/her steps home and gets lost? One may randomly begin to point in various directions muttering “home is that way, right?” When I first heard this question, it struck me deep—to the core. I realized I had never had this experience of not knowing which direction would lead me back home. An immediate fear came over me as I empathized with this person. The more I thought about it, the more I made associations with the metaphor and how loaded the word home is for people. So I decided to begin by chronicling the innocence, genius, tragedy and rebirth of an imaginative boy. This is the story of Eli, the boy with magical powers. Unbeknownst to him, he gains strength in these powers by playing with a soccer ball. As he grows older, he turns to a life headed for ultimate destruction. It is not long before his mind ponders different ideas of home, retracing steps, questioning what is home, recalling his upbringing, deciding which direction to go.

There is so much to talk about around this topic of imprisonment and home and I find myself challenged to stay true to what I want to say and not focus on what I think others are expecting me to say. What I love about being able to do this investigation at CounterPULSE is that it allows me to challenge myself but not be confined by site-specific work. Immediately I began a whole new approach to how I was creating. Knowing that I have the support needed to bring things that will embellish my piece, I am inspired to try new set-design and multi-media concepts. I am very excited to be working with dancer/architect Shelley Davis to help frame the work and give the audience an immediate experience from the moment they walk through the door. Ears will be adorned by the magical sounds of “The Sounds of Boon” and Delina Brooks, who will create an original sound score for this piece as an important part of accurately telling the story. As we begin collaborating we keep in mind that we are aiming to touch people’s lives by sharing intimate feelings through musical and choreographic creations.

Excerpt of Text from Home is That Way?

“Not knowing what to say is a hard place to be. Not knowing what to do is even harder, in my opinion. One thing I can’t imagine is how it feels to actually be incarcerated and quite frankly I never want to know. But what I do know is how it feels to be a person on the outside that worries loves and cares for someone behind bars. What I tend to think about is the core of that person, the good that exudes from that person and I question–what happened? What led to the moment in time that was the marker for error?–the moment that said “wrong way” but all alarms were ignored. I also know the humiliation felt when visiting my loved one as officers mundanely go through bureaucratic procedures with a smug look of no concern on their faces, thinking less of me as a person for visiting someone who is locked up. Do they know who I am? Do they know that is my brother? My flesh and blood?! Painful admissions–painful acknowledgements–painful realizations–pain period. Where does the pain go and where does it come from? Underneath the layers of protection must have been a solid core of pain–that is my resolve. Seeing that pain is uncomfortable but necessary–now what do I do with it?”

This article appeared in the April 2010 issue of In Dance.

In 2007 I went to India, and on that journey I experienced everything from horror to beauty: magnificent palaces and temples contrasting with the utmost human misery. Throughout it all, water was at the core of this gigantic human drama. On the one hand, there is a scarcity of the resource due to industrial overconsumption, and on the other, there is flooding due to the building of dams which, far from satisfying the thirst of millions of people, have forced complete displacement of thousands of towns around India.

For the past few years my dance work has shifted in terms of its context and actions. There is a strong need to use spoken words, theater, movement and visual installation to create work that speaks to our time. I feel that is necessary to address the ecological disasters we are creating, and water has been at the top of my interest and preoccupation.

The challenge I face is how explicitly I want to present those issues. What metaphors should I use or how many facts do I need to present? What do I want to communicate to the audience? Will I overwhelm them with data? Can pure entertainment accomplish my goal of “mobilizing” people? Can my imagination capture the horror of misery in a profound metaphor that will touch people’s fiber?

What is the political role of an artist? The truth is that more often water is becoming a big issue for all of us. Anywhere I go, I see this issue. I have seen people carrying buckets of water for almost five kilometers and thousands of empty plastic bottles floating in oceans, rivers or on the side of the roads. People are taking baths on the streets of Kolkata with a small bucket of probably highly contaminated water, while LA swimming pools are continuously sucking the waters of our Northern California rivers. Everywhere, in what are called developing countries, one sees long lines of people waiting to fill their containers with the precious liquid. One time in Mumbai, next to the Palace Hotel that was attacked by terrorists a few years after my visit, I witnessed a quarrel between people who were saving their spots in the line to fill their containers. They started screaming at each other while others tried to prevent a big fight. I saw the anger in their faces. I heard their screams. I saw their fists. Maybe that was the same anger of those who wanted to stop the absurdity of prioritizing the provision of water to the hotels rather than to the common people—that feeling that you want to destroy everything and everybody in reaction to a system that, at its best, ignores you, and at worst, is destroying you and your people.

The project that I am now embarking upon in collaboration with Mexican performing artist Violeta Luna, New Rituals for a Desperate Era, deals with the assault of multinational-corporations’ control of water. This is how I cope with the feelings of powerlessness and defeat. I do it by involving myself and others in the struggle for real change. I will use comedy in the work because if we do not laugh about the enemy and ourselves, we will die of melancholy.

I have studied water rituals based on the traditions of tiemperos and graniceros (Mexican shamans) who specialized in balancing water provisions for their agricultural needs. They are mediators between the humans and the God of Rain, represented by the Popocatepetl Volcano, located in the outskirts of Mexico City. The shamans’ rituals help manifest the right amount of water for their agricultural needs. These shamans remind us of the connection between humans and nature. I believe the more disconnected we are from nature, the more harm we produce in the world. This is the time to find the dances that once spoke of our interrelation with nature. Let’s bring them back with the language of the present. Let’s dance them. Let’s make the sun dance, the rain dance. Let’s dance until we are exhausted. Let’s remember that without Nature we are nothing; without Water we are nothing.

The first incarnation of New Rituals for a Desperate Era is generously supported by AIR (Artists in Residence) of CounterPulse with the dynamite forces of Violeta Luna and our great collaborators: Lauren Elder, Ricardo Rivera, Javier Maldonado, Debby Kajiyama, Roberto Varea and José Maria Francos. The big change we need to have can’t happen without the consensus and actions of most of us. Please join us for the ride on April 1-4 at 8 pm at CounterPULSE.

This article appeared in the April 2010 issue of In Dance.

Anyone lucky enough to be at San Francisco’s City Hall on February 12, 2004, witnessed something extraordinary: The legal marriages of same-sex couples as well as heterosexual ones—along with the jubilation that filled the rotunda, poured out the hall doors and flowed into Civic Center Plaza. Love was everywhere on that day and during the month of marriage equality that followed.

The six years since have brought heart-wrenching annulments, cultural polarization, and Prop. 8. But love returned to San Francisco on February 12, 2010, with Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project’s Love Everywhere, three days of site-specific performances meant to raise awareness of the fight for marriage equality, sponsored by the Dancers’ Group ONSITE Program.

Ground Zero

Fittingly, Shuch and her dancers kicked off the weekend in City Hall. An international crowd of nearly 1,000 gathered around the rotunda floor as real-life newlyweds came and went, happy but perplexed, and Erin Mei-Ling Stuart and Jennifer Chien led three pairs of dancers onto the grand staircase. Representing lesbian, gay and straight couples, the dancers interwove pas de deux that evoked the arc of courtship with touching sincerity.

Courtship led to a wedding ceremony, during which dancers on the second-floor balconies recited vows contributed by members of the public. Hearing the vows in that space, and wondering whether the couples who originally spoke them had been separated by the law, it was poignantly clear what’s at stake for same-sex couples. (Can someone explain once again—convincingly this time—why we shouldn’t have marriage equality?)

A jubilant reception brought down the house. Bekka Fink and Cynthia Taylor’s spirited duet, with lyrics borrowed from more donated wedding vows, segued into a hora, a bouquet toss and, of course, a conga line. From the opening processional to the group garter-toss finale, Daveen DiGiacomo’s score, played by a 13-piece orchestra under the direction of David Möschler, recalled the warmth and charm of Nino Rota.

Shuch included first-timers as well as professional dancers in her 43-person supporting cast, taking a gamble that paid off in a performance abundant with emotion. “I wanted to make a piece that was all about love and joy, to authentically generate that feeling for both the performers and the audience,” Shuch said. “All the performers, regardless of their training, showed up knowing how to put their heart into something they believed in. They were very generous with their feelings.”

And how did she deliver such a well-defined message in a space so enormous and irregular? “City Hall itself was like a character that we created a duet with. I love characters that are conflicted and confused—and City Hall is definitely conflicted and confused!”

Taking It to the Streets

On Saturday morning, Shuch, her core dancers and a dozen volunteers reconvened for a day of guerrilla love on the streets of San Francisco.

Dressed in their street clothes, wearing nothing to identify themselves as ambassadors of Love Everywhere, the group divided up and walked down opposite sides of Market Street. When the traffic lights turned green, they ran to each other in the crosswalks, where they hugged, kissed, bewildered bus drivers, frustrated a few right-turners and inspired smiles from jaded traffic cops.

Moving down the street, they staged a seven-minute smooch session at the Powell Street cable-car turnaround. They got strangers to pose for “prom” photos in front of a homemade “Love Everywhere” backdrop. They delighted lovers in Union Square by serenading them with Frank Sinatra ballads. Singing to the couples turned out to be Shuch’s favorite part of the whole weekend: “They were instantly happy,” she said. “It felt really good to have that immediate impact on people.”

At San Francisco Centre mall, the group turned the circular escalators into a Make-Out People Mover as they rode up, one couple after another, in romantic embraces. And on the Emporium’s top floor, they slow-danced under the dome, garnering both kudos and catcalls. “One man said that our male couple was going to burn in hell,” Shuch recalled. “As theater artists, we’re always aiming to do something unexpected, but on the street, we really are providing an unexpected experience; people won’t always respond the way we hope they will.”

But the day of flashmob performance was as liberating for the artists as it was challenging for some of the unwitting audience. To Shuch’s surprise, even her own boundaries were stretched. “We’re used to approaching our work from a critical standpoint. But this wasn’t about whether it was ‘good enough.’ It made me question what I value about traditional theater.”

Amen, Friends

Reverend Cecil Williams, the leader of Glide Memorial Methodist Church, lives and works at the forefront of the social-justice movement. A voice for marriage equality throughout his career, he’s been performing same-sex weddings (whether legally binding or not) for 46 years. So Glide was a natural venue for the final chapter of Love Everywhere, which was incorporated into both the 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. Sunday services on Valentine’s Day.

Allotted 10 minutes to perform, Möschler abbreviated the score while Shuch and her dancers edited the show down to its core message. “We went from a huge space to a little space,” she said, but the logistics of the transition was the simple part—they would simply perform the sections that fit on the Glide stage. The bigger challenge would be drawing viewers into dance’s emotional peaks and valleys without showing them the entire piece.

Love Everywhere got a helpful segue from an added performer: Janice Mirikitani, Rev. Williams’s wife and San Francisco’s poet laureate. Reciting a poem she wrote especially for the day, Mirikitani led the congregation into the story, positioning them at just the right emotional jumping-off point.

The audience took it from there. Filling the pews to beyond capacity, with over 750 at the early service and over 800 at the later one, the children and parents, teens and seniors, locals and tourists of every color and orientation cheered Stuart and Chien’s show-opening kiss, and by the time the performers left the stage to dance in the aisles, the audience was on its feet, ready to join in—no wallflowers in that bunch.

Glide was bursting at the seams with love. With acceptance. With a joyous sense that, at least for this day, at least in this place, we are free to be who we are and love who we love.

“A lot of people are fighting for marriage equality through protests, and with anger,” Shuch explained. “This is my way of expressing my feelings about this issue.” If only the opponents of marriage equality could see that love really is everywhere, and it’s a very good thing.

This article appeared in the April 2010 issue of In Dance.