Archives for June 2015

ANNA HALPRIN is, quite simply, amazing. In July she’ll turn 95, but she is still actively teaching, experimenting, creating, performing, and changing people’s lives through her approach to dance. “I have an enduring love for dance and its power to teach, inspire, heal, and transform,” she affirms. “I’ve spent a lifetime of passion and devotion probing the nature of dance and asking why it is so important as a life force. I find great excitement in sharing my deep love of dance with ordinary and diverse people. Their unique creativity inspires me to make dances that grow out of our lives. I want to integrate life and art so that as our art expands our life deepens and as our life deepens our art expands.”

Merce Cunningham declared Anna’s work “a very strong part of dance history.” She helped shape the seminal Judson Dance Theater in New York through her students Simone Forti, Trisha Brown, and Yvonne Rainer. Many others, from all fields of art, have worked with her, including dancers Meredith Monk, Eiko and Komo, and Carla Blank; visual artists Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Carrie Mae Weems, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha; musicians Terry Riley, LaMonte Young, and Morton Subotnik; and poets Richard Brautigan, Michael McClure, and Wanda Coleman. Currently she is collaborating with artist Janine Antoni and choreographer Stephen Petronio on a project for the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. Further attesting to her impact are all the festivities for her 95th birthday: Dances for Anna organized by the Tamalpa Institute in more than 40 locations worldwide (see dancesforanna.org) and 95 Rituals created by inkBoat (see 95rituals.org)

How much Anna is still giving to others was apparent when I traveled with her to Israel last fall. There she completed her trilogy Remembering Lawrence, honoring her late husband, who helped found an early kibbutz and designed several Jerusalem landmarks. Anna led over a hundred Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Druze women on a silent peace walk along the Goldman Promenade, designed by Larry, situated between East and West Jerusalem. “I really personally was interested in how dance as an art form could bring people together and bypass all of our prejudices,” she told Drew Himmelstein of the Jewish Weekly. “I really feel strongly that dance is a way to heal. It’s a powerful art form.”

A few days after the walk, in a workshop that included participants from Russia, Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine, people whose countries were at war came together in a joyous way. Anna showed how, in her words, “as we tap into the deep sources of bodily wisdom through creative art expression, we dance the renewal, re-creation, and healing of ourselves and our world.” A student from Ramallah later wrote, “Through every exercise Anna gave I felt something amazing. This feeling made me connect all the exercises with the reality that I live in…. I learned a new method which will be very helpful to my dancing community work.”

Next, Anna worked with the Vertigo Dance Company, introducing them to her process of collective creativity by collaborating with artistic director Noa Wertheim, musician Miguel Frasconi, and the dancers on an Israeli version of her renowned Parades and Changes. “Rather than imposing an American aesthetic, I wanted to evolve a dance that was meaningful both to the performers and to an Israeli audience,” she said. One of the dancers affirmed: “It was wonderful that you always wanted to hear our thoughts and experiences, and really wanted to create this piece with us, so that it reflected each of our different personalities.”

“Your body is your instrument,” Anna explained to the dancers, guiding them in
explorations of how the body works, rather than imposing a style, so they could move from a place deep inside. “Because the workshop was dealing with emotions and internalizing, I felt I was letting all my emotions out, and I was crying so much!” one dancer later wrote. “This workshop allowed me to discover new sides of myself and changed me as a performer (and perhaps a person).”

A highlight of the performance was when Anna took the stage, poignantly playing her harmonica to call the dancers back to life following a sequence of shooting/falling. After a rousing Stomp Dance the piece ended with a spirited run for peace among peoples and peace with the earth (a modified Planetary Dance). To Anna’s delight, children from the kibbutz, including a mother carrying her baby, joined in. One young boy was so moved by it all he couldn’t stop crying. “What gets renewed every time with Parades and Changes is our ability to express our humanity through the language of dance and art,” Anna says.

Anna is always asking herself: Why am I dancing? Can dance make a difference? Throughout her career she has addressed social-political concerns with dance. Ceremony of Us (1969) responded to the Watts riots by bringing an all-black and an all-white group together. Circle the Earth: Dancing with Life on the Line (1989), created with men and women with AIDS and cancer, attempted to heal fears around these diseases and embody the wish to live. Seniors Rocking (2005) addressed the isolation of the elderly, while Intensive Care (2000) confronted anxieties about dying, sparked by a real-life health crisis of her husband’s.

“What I hope that I’ve accomplished in my lifetime is to redefine what dance can be,” Anna told Mary Ellen Hunt at the San Francisco Chronicle in 2013. “I hope that people will understand that dance is a powerful tool— for healing, for education, for building community, in the quest for peace. I hope that will be my greatest legacy.”

One dance that Anna sees as key to her legacy is the Planetary Dance, a peace dance now in its 35th year, which has been performed in more than 50 countries. “I feel that a healthy community is one that can find a way to create together,” she explains, and that is the aim of the Planetary Dance. “Western culture,” she notes, “has mostly lost its connection to the origins of dance, which always served a purpose. Dance brought people together to confront life’s challenges, whether hunting for food, praying for rain, entering into adulthood, or healing illness. You did not dance for yourself; you danced for others, for the community as a whole. That intention underlies the Planetary Dance…. This dance fulfills my dreams for a global art that transcends cultural and temporal barriers, speaks to the needs of the community that makes it, and is flexible enough to address changing social issues. It gets right to the core of our humanness.” (This year’s Bay Area Planetary Dance is on June 7; see planetarydance.org.)

Anna also sees the Tamalpa ArtCorps program as carrying out her hopes for dance as a healing and peace-making force. Students training in the Halprin Life/Art Process at the Tamalpa Institute design a project that uses artistic expression to help a community in need. Recently one graduate took the Tamalpa approach to survivors of human trafficking in Kolkata, India. Other graduates are working with victims of domestic violence, LGBT communities, cancer patients, and impoverished children. In addition, scholarships allow people already involved in the social justice arena worldwide to complete the Tamalpa training. (For more information, see tamalpa.org/about/artcorps_2015.html)

Repeatedly in interviews, Anna has underlined her search for ways to close the gap between art and life, using dance to connect us to real issues in our lives. “You do not have to be a professional to dance,” she emphasizes. “Everyone, at any age, no matter what their physical ability or ethnic background, can be a dancer.” All of us, she stresses, can tap into the incredible power of dance to “heal, transform, inspire, regenerate, and build community.”

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This article appeared in the June 2015 issue of In Dance.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on SF Weekly’s Exhibitionist on April 10, 2015 and is reprinted in In Dance with their permission.

AN ATMOSPHERIC OOZE overlaid with an intricate rhythm and the vivid interjection of a West African kora. A baroque ornament nestled within a dubstep pulse. Ambient haze cut through by the bright hue of a Japanese sho. Dancers getting sweaty on the fl oor. It isn’t late night at the club, but 10 a.m. at the dance studio, where concerts are being played live every morning by some of the most fascinating experimental musicians in the city. Albert Mathias, Daniel Berkman, and Ben Juodvalkis are among the many musicians who play live for dance classes at ODC, LINES, and other studios, delivering not Chopin or Tchaikovsky but a steady stream of never-before experienced music devised on the spot using acoustic instruments and electronics. Coming from diverse backgrounds and fi lling an unusual niche, these artists create new work daily and share perspectives on the joy and consequences of making art in a city that grows increasingly inhospitable to the brave few that make their home here.

On beginnings:

ALBERT MATHIAS: I started in musical theater. I sang in the choir and played cello, then decided I wanted to be a drum set player. I was in a band for 10 years as a kid. We’d rehearse all the time and play one or two shows a year in Chicago. And then I went to the Ali Akbar College of Music in Marin. It’s classical North Indian music. I was obsessed with him as a kid and came out here to study with him, and eventually I wound up at Cal Arts, studying with his accompanist.

DANIEL BERKMAN: My grandparents were musicians, and my parents are musicians. My grandparents on my father’s side were cofounders of the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford, My mother’s father was a banjo player and guitar player, so that’s where I get my string chops. I’m an amalgamation of piano and theory on my father’s side and traveling bard/musician
with a guitar slung on your shoulder. So I’m a mix of those things, an academic snob and a gypsy. I grew up with a piano in the house and classical music and discovered rock and roll on my own. It was my first love.

BEN JUODVALKIS: I grew up in a house that had a piano, and I’d play it ever since I could reach it. After awhile, my parents decided it would be better for everyone if I got lessons, so I had piano lessons since I was 9. When I was a teenager, I rebelled and played drums. Joined the high school marching band, wore the outfit—as nerdy as it gets. I had to leave piano behind there—the classical arts fi eld can wear you down, but in college, I was able to reconnect with it on my own terms and fall back in love with it. I got a music degree from UCSC, 2005.

On playing for dance class:
AM: It’s almost like giving the room a hug. If I push too hard rhythmically, people will get hurt. I’ve had people slam into each other, have epileptic seizures in class — it was prompted by the energy in the room, which I’m majorly contributing to. The electronic version uses any kind of instrument, any kind of software, mixes and mingles with any kind of aesthetics, I don’t care if it’s drum and bass or dub step or hip hop. There are so many possibilities with electronic — my whole thing is to turn their brains off, do this Sufi thing where there’s enough going on that the critical brain can’t track it, you have to just experience it.

Instead of starting from scratch every time, I’ve developed a session that has all the dynamics I would need. I can go to my library and grab specific flavors if I need them. I’ll use that document for a year, and I’ll just keep reinventing, reinventing. It’s all about twisting, putting something backwards, dragging it into a sampler, playing something with the keys, using my voice, or using my phone as a tone generator. There’s so much room, and all we’re talking about is low frequency to high frequency, or in its basic form just boom and bap.

DB: I enjoy that the process elicits so many thoughts and feelings. The core thing for me is being able to communicate and tell some kind of story without playing something you already know. It’s a test, a challenge. If someone gives me a tempo, I can give them beauty, darkness, sexuality, sensuality—I can give them something else they can work with as they’re dancing. I can give them context. It challenges me to try things and try to get better at trying things. It challenges me to tell a story as I’m trying things.

I also feel I’m educating. I remember, years ago, I was really into Japanese gagaku. I had this fantasy of having a sho, a mouth organ, a key instrument in gagaku, when I was working for San Francisco, for the kids, I’d play some of these sounds that I’d play on my HandSonic that sounded like gagaku. No one knew what it was. I would be replicating the drum sounds, the pipa sounds, the sho sounds using electronic instruments. It’s a language. Very few people know the full range of it — West African to jazz to Indian — I bring all these elements in and look around to see if anyone notices. I want to share this thing that I’m obsessed with, that’s inspiring me.

BJ: There are different radiuses of movement. The full 18” around from the center of your body in plies. Bigger turns, jumps, different sizes of movements — I try to notice that and reference that in the music. A lot of it’s intuitive. Ultimately, I try to transcend what’s in the room, turn it from an exercise into something beautiful.

I started bringing in electronic elements to make loops and expand textures and bring in percussive elements. I’m an urban, mobile professional, so I can’t be carrying a whole drum set — I really seriously dove into building an instrument for myself. I started with a pedal looper — I’d play sounds off my laptop and record it into that thing. I realized it made more sense to keep it all in the laptop, so I adapted existing musical software, and it grew. I had this big metal case that was 50 pounds, which now I’ve consolidated down to a backpack. By now it’s an instrument I’m just as good at as piano or drums. I built it for dance classes, but once I started getting commissions to compose, I just used the same instrument. I can do the same thing that I used for a beginning youth class and then go to LINES ballet rehearsal and make their piece from that. It expanded way farther than I initially planned.

On the practice:

AM: It’s almost a show. I take it that seriously. It’s never boring to me. I go into it and make myself come up with something new. Instead of thinking in my own studio on my own time I can come up with some brilliant concept I can then implement on people, I have to have an idea of the types of things that can work — slow it down, stretch it out so people can hear it and feel it.

DB: I consider class my laboratory. I don’t practice at home. I practice in class. I do class every day, and I have to be on. I can bring an instrument that I don’t know how to play at all, and as long as I’m on the clock, I have to play it in tempo, on pitch, start and end at the right time, and have it sound musical — just talking about it excites me.

Starting with noises is fun. Sensations. Putting your hands on something. It’s a noise before it’s made sense of. Noise could be a major chord. First, it’s a noise, which I think of positively, retaining a sense of awe and mystery.

BJ: It’s shaped me a lot and broadened my ideas of what music is and what can be effective tremendously. Having to work under such pressure and so quickly has helped silence my critic, which says, “oh, this isn’t clever enough,” or “what does this mean?” or “what would Beethoven think of this?” That critic and self-consciousness can go away because there’s so much going on and so much feedback that I don’t have to think about it. I have to be so fast in dance class, just throw it down, so I designed my system — no one else can work that quickly. I can be just another voice in the room — the choreographer works on the dancers, and I work on this. That’s the best.

On the joys and challenges facing artists:

AM: I appreciate that I came to dance because I have to get up in the morning — I have a class. I started touring with dance companies early on, so I was able to see a different side, not just the “rock star.” I got signed when I was really young — Bjork’s label signed me when I was 23, we toured Europe, and I thought I was going to be famous. I got signed twice in my 20s, and once you got there, historically you were good, you know what I mean? But I think it’s better the way it turned out, because I still play music every day. When I was a kid, I wished I would just play music all the time — I don’t think I understood what that would mean. I think I was looking at it like KISS or whoever was super famous at the time, but the truth is, I got what I wished for. I’m still on the path. And this path can continue.

It used to be cheaper to live here. When I moved here it was three hundred bucks for a room — and that still felt expensive — but I could pay my rent with accompaniment. It used to be a little more freaky here. A lot of people left in the late 90s. The fi rst dotcom boom looked like this, and some of us stayed, and in three years the bubble busted and things kind of went back to normal — well, they stopped getting worse. Right now things are really hard. I don’t know what people do in their early 20s anymore. I’m 43. I have work, I know people, I have a career. I was signed a number of times. I had a number of bands. I’ve done OK. But I look at the struggle I faced, trying to find my voice, trying to create opportunities for myself, and I could cry. It’s tough for people now. The type of person who can survive right now is super Type A, super organized, maybe from money, maybe smart enough to monetize what they’re doing, less introspective and experimental. I’m not the weirdest one out there, but I’ve been able to experiment until I was blue in the face, until I found my edges and found my voice, and I don’t know how much that’s happening anymore for younger artists.

People say, oh, you get to do what you love. And it’s like, yeah. But I gave up everything to do it. I don’t have children. I don’t have a wife. I don’t have a home. I don’t have any retirement. On some level, there’s a real reality check around this. Most of what we have, we created for ourselves, but it could disappear tomorrow. It’s important that people know that at some point, there’s no way out. I have this work history, most people look at and they’re like, “I don’t know what this means.” It’s extraordinary, but that’s the paradox. I sort of live with that, and I happily live with that because I chose it, I really did.

DB: I’m attracted to things of a unique and rare nature, that only happen once in a lifetime, that are unexplainable, mysterious, fleeting, magical, mystical. I don’t know how else to put it. What happens in my mind in dance class? It’s revelational: gagaku: ancient Japanese court music. The world needs to hear it, one time only, here — in dance class, gagaku! A theremin! Viola da gamba! They’re all revelations. Unique. Happenings. I can make them happen now. A dance class is a happening. How can I make it more unique and mysterious than just playing the bongo and a piano. I am seeking the next musical revelational, experiential high. I had an upbringing in music, in art — it’s in my blood. It hasn’t been a choice for me. I got the bug and I could never get rid of it. I found a passion in it. It’s a passion that goes beyond the physical realm. It gets into spirit, the unseeable, the unknowable. For me music is mysterious. It’s magical. It’s so real, even though you can’t touch it. You experience it in the moment. There are so many different ways to experience it, there are so many ways it hasn’t been experienced yet. It’s the greatest gift in the universe.

BJ: I exist totally out of any music industry. The whole conversation of what matters in pop music or classical music has completely bypassed me. No one in classical music knows what I’m doing at all, so I’ve been able to learn and create my identity without any sort of judgment. It’s a totally different world. No music critic from the paper is judging me.

My part of it is to make people feel beautiful and remind them that there’s meaning. I’m a servant, but I’m lucky to be a cool one. That keeps me grateful and hopefully humble. I worry about financial instability, and I worry more about losing inspiration. Honestly, what I do is disposable. I write a score, it’s performed four times, and then it’s gone. I’ve been lucky, some of them have toured all over the world. But most of them don’t. But I think I’m really honing my skills for something that may serve me when I make something that will stand the test of time.

There’s the artist mantra about making it for yourself, but I really doubt that it’s true, because you’re using it to connect with people. It’s the best way that I know to communicate and relate to people. A musician can turn a normal moment into something you care about. It’s just an experience. It goes away. You have to do it again.

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This article appeared in the June 2015 issue of In Dance.

Lineage
Modern/contemporary dance is experiential and its practitioners have a penchant for fusion, integration, assemblages and communal intent. Modern/contemporary dance is also known for being an open-minded forum in which the intermingling of art forms, genres, historical approaches and new experimentation is encouraged.

Given this complex number of inputs and inspirations, it is both common and seemingly acceptable practice for a modern dance teacher to present movement without necessarily acknowledging the artistic family tree it is likely derived from, to effectively not pass on whose kinesthetic findings are being cited through the enlivening exercise of dancing. To effectively function outside of any stated or implied lineage.

This article and its research investigates the perceived value for students when dance teachers ‘name names’ as they conduct technique class, thus facilitating a sort of untangling of origins of movement sequences, methods, and whole styles in some cases. Based on data collected from college-aged respondents to an anonymous survey and analyzed using a constant-comparative analysis and open-coding process, the findings reveal some possibly surprising insights about the next generation of dance artists.

Fusion as a Given
In an era of fusions and borrowings in which an artist is expected to be a uniquely formed creature ready to synthesize and embody the multiplicity that is one’s training, it becomes apparent that at some point, the concept of the real origin of movement sources for dance teachers, as well as students, can become clouded. By definition, modern dance is big, and it appropriates.

I would argue that the ephemeral art of dance is not so ephemeral as we might assume it to be. By that I mean, things actually kind of stick around. We share ideas through time, one might say, intergenerationally; but we also share in the immediacy of our peer group, laterally, in the present. Sometimes movement ideas are conveyed slowly with great deliberation and care, though sometimes with great haste and fervor. Movement ideas become ingrained, entrenched, absorbed and are hard to shake out. Oral and kinesthetic tradition keeps them as alive as stories of old. With greater understandings and appreciations of the notions of appropriation, remixing and ultimately issues of plagiarismat the forefront of other fields (music, for example) it is timely to look at where the teaching of modern dance is positioned in terms of tendencies by teachers to either hide or reveal the historicity of “their” technique.

The teacher of a modern dance technique class is a product of various trainings that effectively create a new synthesis and understanding of what to teach and how to teach it. Except when teaching an unmodified, single origin curriculum, as in Martha Graham or Merce Cunningham’s technique, though those certainly changed through time, a teacher of dance is likely to have been exposed to dozens of techniques that might inform pedagogy and praxis, all of which he or she intends surely to pass on, at least in an embodied fashion, through movement. All of this can be done with or without any reference to lineages.

I did not come to this research because I experienced this lack of orientation but for the opposite reason – I had this style of clear explanation throughout my childhood training in JoAnne Black’s Willow Glen Creative Dance Center for Children. But from then on the rest of my education in dance tended to be different. Rather than sort all these experiences out verbally, it seems more common for a modern dance teacher to present movement without necessarily acknowledging the artistic family tree that a movement is likely derived from.

Some movements are not necessary to acknowledge the origins of every time we utter them – every French term (used in a non-Francophone modern dance class context) is derived from Ballet, and every dancer knows that “the Ballet” is therefore the source of the ubiquitous “plié, tendu, degajé, relevé, etc.” However, though ballet styles vary, nevertheless, ballet as a general origin of movements having French-named terms is infinitely more transparent when quoted by modern dance doers. Unlike ballet, however, modern does not have codified terms. Many movement sequences that certain modern dance artists invented do not have names, but are called something for convenience, such as “Jose Limon style brush lunge swings.” Lester Horton numbered his etudes and fortifications and one can refer to them that way. But entire modern/contemporary classes occur everyday in every country that are entirely movement based with no reference to the name of an exercise, or any personal or communal origins.

Therefore, it seems, though it remains to be proven, that most movement is presented as ‘unsourced.’ This research investigates the effect of teaching modern dance technique in a manner that calls explicit attention to the sources of particular movements whose origins are traceable to a particular culture, time period, artistic movement or individual visionary. Under examination is the perceived interest among young adult dancers in having their teachers ‘name names.’

By surveying a group of dance students who have had many different modern dance teachers and have therefore been exposed to multiple styles of modern dance, possibly even both ‘unsourced’ and ‘sourced’, the research did not reveal a preference for “just movement,” without explanation, but rather a preference for “movement, plus” a knowledge of the origins of movements on the part of today’s learners. The question of ownership/appropriation/plagiarism becomes especially charged when the derivation is readily traceable to a singular artist of the past or school of thought that permeates our work still today. How much do students value knowing about the collaboration and collision that creates the prismatic field of modern dance?

To take things from another’s culture or tradition and adopt them for one’s own is to appropriate. Appropriation in itself is neither good nor evil and some would argue that on some level all ideas shared that lead to new actions or behaviors require some amount of appropriation. It has negative connotations because we often are referring to negative ways people have carried out appropriation.

Teachers gain cache, they stand to benefit from their knowledge, or rather from the knowledge they impart that we associate them with because they imparted it. They can experience increased student interest, student engagement, teacher ratings, higher school enrollments, cache as an artist, etc., by having the latest or greatest techniques or methods that attract developing performing artists to be associated with their persons. So where collaboration and appropriation mingle there are some penetrating questions to ask ourselves. This article can only pose questions regarding appropriation. Fuller studies exist that elucidate this point.

The title “Naming Names” refers to the pedagogical practice of intentionally connecting what we are doing in the dance class to the origins or originators of the exercises, when these are known. The definition of “origins” is deliberately left open, because in dance we could have learned something from an individual person who herself was passing on someone else’s findings, an oral tradition, a book, a film, a company’s or group’s training method, a YouTube video, a conceptual framework or another field altogether. Though we may love the beauty of the mosaic with all its mystery and wholeness seen from afar, I wondered if the next generation of dancers also may appreciate the opportunity to understand the sources of some of the more prominent pieces that comprise the total picture of a dance teacher’s training.

I figured that dancers who are mid-career like myself might have a different view of the importance of history or a different relationship to lineages in the teaching of the arts. In fact I was fully prepared to consider that after analyzing the data, I might learn that it makes no difference to my students or others’ whether we ‘name names’ or not, and they might have been politely tolerant of this penchant of mine for many years now. That would be good to know.

Whether one would adjust one’s pedagogical approach based on apparent lack of interest by one’s students in ‘naming names’ remains a question – sometimes the values of a teacher being different than students allow for a cross-generational exchange of ideas and attitudes that would all but dry up if student interest led all subject matter and content delivery. This said, anything a learner might perceive as irrelevant deserves close scrutiny.

Ultimately this small study does get at the ethics of teaching and what we believe in imparting—whether students would report they wish for it or not. So here are the findings of this preliminary research in a nutshell:

All respondents reported at least 4-6 years of dance training with the overwhelming majority of respondents falling into the ‘over 10 years’ of training category. The average intensity of involvement was listed as 3 times a week for intensive technique classes or equally demanding rehearsals, with 25% of respondents noting that they engaged at this level with dance training for 4 or more classes a week regularly. So the respondents are not comprised of casual visitors to the field of dance.

Respondents noted in 86% of the cases that the majority of their teachers in modern/contemporary appeared to mix styles, so they were aware that fusing is happening. Moreover, 32% of the total polled said they would characterize 90% of their teachers as mixing sources of movement in teaching technique classes.

According to this data, a low percentage of dance teachers never explain the sources of movements, sequences or principles they are using in dance class. Only 8% according to responses never explain anything in this regard. 75% of teachers sometimes explain. Only 17% usually explain origins or sources.

Apparently, whether teachers acknowledge others or not, they don’t overwhelmingly take credit for their content either. 27% reported never having a teacher claim ownership in any way of any material taught. 18% said teachers rarely claim ownership of material for themselves. 45% said that teachers occasionally claim ownership and no one said it was a usual circumstance.

Regarding sorting, while 15% of the students surveyed claimed that they would be able to usually sort out the origins of movements in a class with mixed sources, most students said they would not be able to sort out the origins of movement, with 40% saying they would sometimes, and 40% saying they would not be able to do it at all. The most fascinating finding for me was that 83% of the respondents said that overall, they would really prefer that their teachers would reference origins or name names as long as it doesn’t slow down or interrupt the flow of class. The remaining participants stated no preference. Though it was also an option, no one said they really like the idea of just dancing/moving/experiencing a blend of things and not having their teacher(s) referencing origins or naming names.

Though this article provides just a summary of some of the findings from this study, and though there is more research underway with a larger sample size, the findings here seem to imply that teachers ought to divulge more, not less, regarding their own influences along their own journey, without sacrificing the pacing and rigor of the technique class. The findings might lead us to question the common and highly acceptable practice of fusion without regard for sources, in which historical origins are rendered the purvey of dance history seminars alone. Today’s students seem to be in tune with the idea that they are connected to a history that is not always revealed to them in its fullness. Today’s teachers of modern/contemporary dance, in doing more to reflect on and reveal their own sources, may engage and enlighten a student’s sense of purpose, belonging and groundedness in the art form. Perhaps too, dancers who witness a teacher’s practice of naming names might be more likely to honor that teacher later for any enduring, unshakeable notions, approaches or forms that continue to enliven and inform their practice as artists.

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This article appeared in the June 2015 issue of In Dance.

THE 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) represented many things to many people in its time, but one of the most notable outcomes of the festival was that it introduced the Hula dance and music form to the United States. Hawaii became a territory of the United States in 1898, but it was through the Exposition that mainland Americans were able to interact with some of the culture of the islands. This exposure made Hawaiian music incredibly popular, and only a year after the Exposition, Hula music recordings, many featuring the Ukulele, outsold all other styles of music purchased in the United States.

This June, the Rotunda Dance Series continues to celebrate the PPIE’s centennial with performances of both traditional Hawaiian dance and music by Halau o Keikiali’i and Halau ‘o Ku’ulei, two Bay-area based Halaus (Halau roughly translates to “school” or “group”) that are sustaining traditions. Recently I sat down to chat with the Kumu Hula of Halau o Keikiali’i, Kawika Keikiali’ihiwahiwa Alfiche about his background and their performance at the event.

The son of mixed Hawaiian/Filipino parents who both worked for the Airlines, Kawika was born in San Francisco, but grew up with strong Hawaiian connections: “My parents brought us up the way they were brought up…the food, the culture and etiquette, everything was done in the Hawaiian and island traditions.

Because his parents worked for the airlines, Kawika was able to easily travel there to spend a great deal of time in Hawai`i where, “all of my cousins, and all of my aunts danced, and the uncles all cooked but none of the men really danced, but it was something I wanted to do.” While his desire to dance was not exactly forbidden, it wasn’t encouraged (“I think my dad would have preferred it if I continued sports”), and Kawika didn’t begin formal Hula training until high school – ”because I could take myself to Hula.”

I used the word ‘professional’ while asking about the decision to devote himself to Hula full time, and Kawika stepped back from the term (“It makes it sound like a job.”). He tells me that in terms of dedicating so much of his life to Hula, that “I didn’t really make a decision. I danced.”

Hawaiian culture developed over a thousand years before it came to the United States, and understanding Hula (even in the very limited way an outsider like me can understand it) means grasping a sense of how the form was cultivated over time, which ultimately requires an appreciation for the role lineage plays in the development and evolution of Hula. One doesn’t learn “Hula,” the exact same way from each teacher—one follows a distinct lineage that is passed from teacher to student over time, and each lineage reflects the style and method of each Kumu Hula (master teacher).

To become Kumu Hula within a lineage, a dancer goes through an “`uniki,” or graduation process with a Kumu Hula whom they have studied under. However, the terms of the training and the `uniki are set by that older Kumu—there’s no formal Hula college, or set curriculum. The knowledge (dance, music, lei making, prayers, chants, etc.), is largely the same, but how it is passed on can be vastly different.

Kawika’s journey is a fascinating example of the complex pathways that a dedicated dancer can take. The first Kumu he trained with was Tiare Maka-Olanolan Clifford, who passed away in 1992. After that fell under the care of Harriet Keahilihau-Spalding. “Aunty Harriet” was from Keaukaha, and two years after mentoring Kawika she had Kawika start his Halau and made Kawika the Kumu Hula or leader.

As Kawika describes it, “I was very young—21. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it—it wasn’t even a thought. I was just doing what I was supposed to do. She said here’s the name of your group, and I’ll mentor you for as long as you feel you need.” The name of the group was, and still is, Halau ‘o Keikiali’ (“School of Keikiali’”— it was named for Kawika), and Kawika is still the Kumu.

I ask him about Keahilihau-Spalding’svision Halau o Keikiali’i, and he tells me that it was (and still is) a vision of the “halau as something that helps and supports the community.”

Part of that vision that was passed down to him meant that Halau o Keikiali’i wouldn’t participate as a contestant in the world of Hula competitions, which for some is the core reason to dance Hula. Kawika tells me that for some people in the Hula world, “there’s a sense that because my halau doesn’t participate in competitions, we must not be as good as other companies.”

But his reason for not participating is very specific: “I saw this cut-throat part of it, where it wasn’t as important to learn what the dance was about as it was to present the dance.” Kawika “would much rather spend my time in a ceremony than on stage in a competition. And there are lots of people willing [to participate in competitions], so there’s no need for me to be a part of that. I support competitions, I play in them, I help my friends who do it, but it’s not my deal.”

But not participating in competitions does not mean he has retreated from the world. He has traveled extensively internationally, sharing hula as a performer and teacher. This has been in large part the result of work he began with his last Kumu Hula: Rae Kahikilaulani Fonseca, a widely respected Kumu who had been a student of George Lanakilakeikiahiali’i Na’ope, one of the most respected Kumu Hula of the 20th century and a founder of the Merrie Monarch Festival, which is the Super Bowl of Hula dance competitions. Kawika trained under him from 1996 until Fonseca passed away in 2010, going through a formal uniki ceremony in 2007. Kawika was one of only six people to attain Kumu status under Fonseca in the 30 years he taught, and was the only one of the six who lived outside of Hawai’i

It was with Fonseca that Kawika also began taking Hula to new places. The national explosion of interest in Hula that began after the 1915 exposition ebbed and flowed throughout the 20th century as a global phenomenon. Kawika points out that “people have been dancing and singing to the songs from the 20s and 30s all around the world. Shirley Temple did it, Elvis did it–it was huge.” Fonseca had discovered that there were groups all over Mexico who were passionate about Hula as a result of this infusion into other cultural forms. Some Mexicans had also traveled to Hawai’i, learned some things and brought it back to Mexico. So Fonseca began traveling around Mexico and teaching his style of Hula.

Kawika began assisting him as part of his own training “[Fonseca] treated everyone he taught there as if they were his own students, and he provided them with foundational training they didn’t have from just studying popular Hawaiian dance,” that they had picked up through media representations or through brief visits to the islands. “You go [to those Mexican communities] today and when you watch them dance it’s all Kahikilaulani (Fonseca’s style of Hula). You can see it in their dances and their movements. They may not even know that, but they’re dancing our style because of the work he did.”

Kawika has continued to work in Mexico and in other parts of the globe. “All of my work is international or on the other side of the nation—New York, Boston, DC. I go to Japan every two months, and to Mexico every three or four months.” He’s planting seeds of Hula in these other locales, but letting the communities cultivate the tradition on their own: “It’s not for me to become their Kumu but to put them on a path so that one day they can find their own Kumu.”

This international expansion of Hula brings up the challenges of Hula as an evolving form. Kawika is pretty clear where he stands on the issue: “It’s 2015 Hula has to evolve, but the challenge is making sure it’s evolved by people who have a strong foundation in the culture and form. There’s lots of people making changes and evolving the dance, but they haven’t gone through a formal process of training.”

Kawika breaks it down for me in more specific detail: “Kaholo [a side-to-side movement] is one of the most basic movements in Hula, and maybe you have a glimpse of what Hula is after doing a Kaholo a million times.” The challenge comes when a new dancer/choreographer “has done a Kaholo 10 times, and then decide they are ready to start incorporating all of these other things into the form—that is a scary thing for me.”

Kawika describes his role and goals as a Kumu to me: “I think we have some
wonderful songs and chants that have been passed on through generations. My job is to completely share those things with my students so they are passed on to future generations, and to make sure they know these dances so well they don’t have to think about it when they do it. And there’s a way to present those dances and make them as interesting as anything else without other elements being added to it.”

As part of his upcoming performance at the Rotunda Dance Series, Kawika and his Halau will focuses on songs of the Ukulele and song from the era that came after the 1915 PPIE. “I grew up dancing to these songs and I hated them (laughs)—they were so corny and felt so kitschy at the time. I want to dance to songs in Hawaiian, I wanted to express myself in Hawaiian songs and words. But it’s a definite bona fide era of Hula. Now, I love playing them and singing these songs.” Before the Ukulele piece, they will open the show with Hula Pahu— ceremonial songs done on the Pahu Hula (shark skin drum).

As is the case with many of the artists I speak to who carry a tradition forward, I ask Kawika about the pressure of sustaining tradition, and he agrees that there is pressure. He shares a Hawaiian word—the Kuleana: “It’s your duty. Some people like to translate that as responsibility, but I like to translate as duty—no choice” But the way he describes Kuleana sounds liberating, and his tone resolutely upbeat, as he concludes “at the same time, I am really, really honored to have been chosen.”

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This article appeared in June 2015 issue of In Dance.

Editor’s Note: As a way to further contribute to the 95 Rituals project that offers a variety of opportunities to pay tribute to the work of Anna Halprin, In Dance reached out to a select group of Halprin’s collaborators, friends and family and asked if they could share 95 words about what she has meant to each of their lives and artistic work.

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Dear Anna,
95 words for 95 years.
Impossible, of course.
Ninety-five thousand words didn’t
cover the first 87 years of your life
when I built a net of ten chapters to
try to put your remarkable life and art
between the two covers of a book.
So I compress my remaining 44 words
now into three for each epoch of
your life/art/processes – your recipes
developed over a lifetime of turning
life into art.
Rebellious child
Miss H’Doubler & Larry
Bauhaus
Bay Area
Beats
Haight-Ashbury
Participatory
Emotions are Facts
Illness as Performance
Choreographing Disappearance
Love,
Janice
—Janice Ross, Faculty Director, ITALIC Professor, Dept. of Theatre and Performance Studies, Stanford University

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Anna is a friend, a generous performer, a gifted teacher, an instigator of movement revolutions that are of the moment—she has not been afraid to tackle difficult issues of our time—for peace and healing. She inspires me to question, to believe in and desire the impossible. Her life’s work is imbedded in the environment, and on stages made and found, with movement scores that are lovingly shaped by a desire for change. Anna motivates me to imagine movement in the world as boundless, and my dance with her is imbedded in my heart.
—Wayne Hazzard, Executive Director, Dancers’ Group

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Now Anna
Now

I’ve known tricksters,
sly harbingers of joy
but none like Rabbit
Anna.

Now
I’ve known healers + dealers
Known to Dance off Dis Ease
But none like Wish Doctor
Anna.

Now
I’ve known Bohos
Primordial line of Mad Hatters
But none who tip + tilt like
Anna.

Now
I’ve seen scores of dance
+ even more dancers
Makers making for making’s sake
But not quite enough for
Anna.

Now.
I’ve known Queens
+ divas + dragons
but none like Queen
Anna.

Now, Anna…
Anna, Now.
Now Anna!
Anna! Now…Now…
Anna.
Now.
Now.
Anna.
—Joël Barraquiel Tan, Writer and Community Engagement, YBCA

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What Anna taught me:
-Ideas at the start of a project often fail. Fruitful ideas blossom from watching, listening and then responding to those initial failures.
-Intimacy is as important as spectacle, tiny and grand can be the same thing, and frankness is a virtue.
-An audience should not always have to watch what’s onstage.
-There is a difference between raising one’s arm in a small room versus raising one’s arm outside.
-Generosity, curiosity, optimism, honesty, and laughter: these create a vibrant creative atmosphere.
-Live in the unknown as often as possible. Appreciate being lost.
—Kegan Marling, Photographer

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She beats a drum so that rhythm is echoed in the way every limb and cell
moves. She dances outdoors, to echo the movement of tree, stone, bird,
wind, ocean, deer. She makes breathing a dance. She took her leotard off
and danced the way the body was born to dance. She wants every feeling,
story, every part of the body to dance. She wants an em- bodied democracy!
She opens the doors of dance, and keeps them open to everyone.
Anna calls out for the echo of everything human in the way we move.
—Daria Halprin, dariahalprin.org

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Everyone has a morning routine. Many call it their morning ritual. Athletes talk about a pregame ritual, or is it a superstition. New Agers appropriate rituals from everywhere. Once, in the dark, at a Karuk sweat in Marin someone called out “No Om-ing” someone else farted and the built-up tension was released. Today we find ourselves searching for rituals with meaning, and equally for the meaning of ritual. Ideally a ritual helps us unite body, mind, and spirit. Practiced respectfully, and together, it can bring us all to a deeper understanding than we might achieve by other means. And yet it’s really a mystery.
—Larry Reed, Artistic Director, Shadowlight Productions

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A score for you, in ninety five
words, that is something
like my time with Anna.
TAKE YOUR HANDS, YOUR FEET,
YOUR NOSE, YOUR HIPSANKLESSPINES
HOULDERBLADESCROTCHWRISTSFINGERT
IPSBACKSOFKNEES PELVIS,
AND ALL THE IN-BETWEENS.
RUN.
JUMP,
CARRY
FALL
CARESS
ROLL
SMASH
SIT
STAND        listening to trees
THE SMELL OF REDWOODS, DIRT,
SALT, bodies

someone’s weight pushing yours

FEEL
SUN ON YOUR EYELIDS
BREEZE ON YOUR LIPS
A POUNDING HEART
AND A BIT OF SWEAT IN YOUR PITS

LAUGH
CRY
CHANT
SHOUT
HUM
PANT
SING

laugh again.
again.
KNOW YOUR INTENTION.
THIS IS NOT JUST A DANCE.
—Ian Heisters, Dance/Installation Artist

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In 2013, Anna re-presented her dance, Parades and Changes, at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The dance was first performed at BAM/PFA on the occasion of the opening of the Bancroft Way building designed by Mario Ciampi. To have Anna offer this work again, so many decades later and just before our departure to BAM/PFA’s new downtown home was a tremendously beautiful experience for everyone. Anna is the heart of the Bay Area. Her inspiration to others is so immense and powerful. She just keeps on dancing. We love Anna Halprin!
—Lawrence Rinder, Director, UC Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA)

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“Wheeeee” escapes from Theresa Wong as she, with childlike ease, hops along, breaking the reticence of the cast for Parades and Changes, all naked, ready to rehearse, but feeling the bareness of nakedness. Just moments before, feeling the hesitation among the cast to undress, Anna says with exasperation “Oh, come on…!”

Cut to: the cast party for Spirit of Place, in honor of Larry Halprin. He is sitting in the living room. Anna begins a sexy dance, teasingly advancing on him, teaching all assembled what it means to move your hips. Anna Halprin, ice-breaker sensei.
—Shinichi Iova-Koga, Director, inkBoat

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1963, invited by Ann to work with the company, I went to see them dance. It began; two men at a table arguing; suddenly, suitcase in hand, Ann(a) erupted through the rear door, “what’s going on here?” as she skip-hopped her way down to the stage on the armrests between the seats and jumped onto the stage engaging the other two. What a powerhouse she was, remained and still at 95 is! It began that day, our working together for so many years; am so happy to write these 95 words for her 95th; remembering.
—Morton Subotnick

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This article appeared in the June 2015 issue of In Dance.

IN MY OFFICE RESIDE A RANGE OF BOOKS that fill me with ideas of how to think about concepts like community engagement, management, data collection, and such. And of course, I have books filled with exquisite pictures of dancers, and others brimming with thoughtful texts investigating a variety of traditions and topics; some, but not all, dance-focused.

One of my favorites, Experience as Dance, is Janice Ross’ exceptional tome, which lovingly details the life and work of dance pioneer and maverick Anna Halprin.

Janice’s page-turning biography is a primer for considering concepts of dance’s more modernist experiments and ideas, and how these now-often-taken-for-granted notions are fully imbedded in most dancemakers’ palettes. The book chronicles the questions Anna, and others, had about dance’s conventions, which have shaped what we now know as post-modern dance. While revisiting this book, I was reminded of her many creative periods that were deeply impacted by the politics of the time. With her, in the moment, the wisdom of consistently believing in the healing powers of movement was shared in her stalwart belief that creative actions change our internal energies into points of departure to move forward, and heal not only the individual but also the world’s many ills.

This larger than life person is a humble woman who continues to teach and make work into her mid 90’s. For the past two years, Dancers’ Group has been involved in developing a project to add to the many celebrations and tributes marking her 95th birthday, on July 13, 2015. Our project started simply as the charge to make 95 dances for Anna Halprin, and as we know, the simplest ideas are the hardest to implement. The endeavor to pay tribute to her turned into a commission of a new work by Shinichi Iova-Koga that will culminate in performances this July at the Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco, with a special event this month at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on June 21, which is free to the public, as are all of the 95 Rituals events.

With a website dedicated to the project—95rituals.org— you can find locations and times for events that are being produced by Dancers’ Group. The Tamalpa Institute—the highly regarded school that Anna co-founded with her daughter Daria, which integrates movement, visual arts, performance techniques, and therapeutic practices—is organizing celebrations of Anna across the world including remounting seminal works.

This month, Sue Heinemann offers additional insights into Anna’s storied history and talks about her current projects that reveal an artist not slowing down anytime soon. To compliment our honoring of this artist we have asked for community members to sum up their thoughts about Anna, in exactly 95 words, providing proof that the poetic impact of Anna’s work has resonated in so many.

The words ‘pioneer’ and ‘maverick’ are fitting to describe Anna, in addition to so many artists, especially the numerous gifted women in our community who bring new opportunities to our field. These women, who are not always acknowledged for their pioneering work, have helped shape the notions of who can dance, expanded the definition of a dancer, and constructed works that enlarge the interpretation of dance in thrilling ways.

Pioneering opportunities abound. Yee-haw!

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This article appeared in the June 2015 issue of In Dance.