Archives for October 2019

Welcome

October 1, 2019 by Wayne Hazzard

I always wanted to be a dancer, even before I knew what being a dancer was or might mean. Dreams become facts.

The human body is on a 24-hour-a-day schedule of limitless activity; it’s dancing. Even in rest—oh glorious rest—each of us breathes, twitches, shifts, extends, rolls, as all 37.2 trillion cells in the body (yes, that’s from a google search) help each person function from natural to complex to mysterious ways that provide momentous opportunities for change and healing.

Fact: there are over eight million dancers in the Bay Area. And our planet has 7.7 billion dancing people in the world, and growing.

As you might surmise from this welcome, and previous ones I’ve written for In Dance, I can get hyperbolic — maybe even a tad obsessed — in expressing that dance is a circadian occurrence. One that is natural, a birthright, a gift. While a tad gross I will cite another fact from a children’s book whose title succinctly states “everybody poops” and equally true is that everybody dances.

Dances are individualistic, cultural, stylized and many dances have and will be passed down from master artist to student, parent to child. Thanks to technology the learning potential increases with online videos that anyone with access to the internet can enjoy and copy.

Based on the ability to easily access dances, there comes the question of ownership and attribution of choreographed material. Can someone own a move? Copyright a string of moves? And what are the ways to pay tribute —or just pay—for the moves that have come from someone else, from a specific place, or culture?

This month many of the featured articles touch on the ongoing topic of appropriation and the super-complex nature of how movement and the teaching of movement mirrors the world’s struggles with capitalism, racism, sexism, patriarchy, homophobia, classism, ageism, ableism, and fat phobia. Dance exists as a forum to process and reveal these universal struggles. Dance might even demand that we take stock of ugly depictions of human behavior that reveal personal and shared histories.

First time contributor to In Dance, Parya—a dancer born and raised in Iran, now working in the Bay Area as an Associate Professor of Medicine while getting their MFA—provides readers with insights into how the advantage of privilege continues to contribute to cultural appropriation. They suggest that by talking about cultural appropriation they seek to “help break down barriers so that communities and cultures can promote their own art, speak for themselves, and profit from their work.”

Both in words and imagery you will discover in this issue entry points to movement ideas, practices, and teaching that expands a dynamic discourse. We have the opportunity to further our dance dreams: a gift to evolve, learn, heal and transform.

We can’t change what we don’t know — happy reading.

This article appeared in the October 2019 issue of In Dance.

A Tokushima Tradition – Thriving in the Bay Area Under SF Awakko Ren

October 1, 2019 by Mina Rios

Photo by David Toshiyuki

Awa Odori, dating back over four-hundred years, is one of Japan’s most beloved annual festivals and is a vibrant part of the Bay Area arts community. Artistic director Rimiko Berreman of SF Awakko Ren, a Tokushima City native where Awa Odori originated, founded the organization in 2011 with the intention of reuniting those from her region with the art form, carrying on the tradition locally, and growing its audience.

Fittingly, Berreman was visiting Tokushima City, located on Shikoku island in Japan, during the writing of this article, making this telling about the founding of her Awa Odori music and dance troupe SF Awakko Ren and synopsis on the history of the art form especially personal.

“I love my hometown,” shares Berreman, “and I hoped to feel connected to Japan in California. I wanted to bring that cheerful and inclusive spirit of Awa Odori to my community and kids in the Bay Area.”

Traditionally, Awa Odori is spelled as one word in Japanese – Awaodori. Awa refers to the former name of Tokushima Prefecture (a subdivision of the region) and Odori means dance.

As one of the biggest dance festivals in Japan, Awa Odori celebrations are both social and spiritual. The tradition is rooted in the Japanese Buddhist observance of Obon (the Festival of The Dead), held annually between August 12 and 15; a sacred time when people welcome the return of their ancestors’ spirits.

Several theories on the origin of the Awa Odori art form have been passed down through the ages. Among the most popular involves the celebration of the completion of Tokushima Castle in 1587 (approximately), when partygoers were rumored to have consumed excessive amounts of sake, motivating celebrators to break into song, dance, and uproarious laughter. As the story goes, the celebration inspired what is known as the Dance of the Fools, along with a famous quote that says, “It’s a fool who dances and a fool who watches! If both are fools, you might as well have fun dancing.”

Limits to the duration of the event were set long ago, to circumvent disorderly conduct, which explains the reason festivities could not exceed three days. Samurais were also forbidden from partaking and could not carry their weapons or wear masks.

Over the last century, both Awa Odori and Tokushima City have become synonymous with community involvement. Berreman recalls the avid participation being so far reaching that schools, parks, gyms, and most business offices were involved.

“Awa Odori was the highlight of every summer up until I moved to the United States,” says Berreman. “I grew up participating in Awa Odori as a spectator, musician, and occasionally a dancer. And in college, my friends and I formed a student group.”

SF Awakko Ren (ren – meaning a group of dancers and musicians) is comprised of members from both the United States as well as Japan. Among those from Japan is a specific group within the group, inspired by fond memories and a profound longing to unite people from Tokushima. This devout group from Tokushima is called Tokushima Kenjin-Kai.

Exceedingly proud of her native land, Berreman wants to share with the Bay Area community all that makes Tokushima City beautiful and distinct, even the native fruit – namely the Sudachi, a type of citrus widely sold in Japan; and sold in particularly large numbers during Awa Odori festivities in August. The Sudachi fruit is no doubt the subject of an expansive Awa Odori music and dance repertoire.

Sheer numbers vividly demonstrate the magnet effect Awa Odori has in Japan. More than 1.3 million attendees partake in the festivities in Tokushima City each year, serving as a certain economic stimulus Tokushima City can count on annually.

Here at home in San Francisco, all 30 SF Awakko Ren dancers and musicians are volunteers, some of whom occasionally partake in Tokushima City events. Members who visit Tokushima in August often return to dance with their former groups; a few have even gone on to join some of Japan’s most prominent Awa Odori dance groups.

“Our group is special because we keep in touch and continue our relationships outside the group,” says Berreman. “Because the majority of our members are so young, their plans are quickly evolving. Despite moving to other countries, raising families, and getting jobs, we have stayed connected with everyone, even getting together in foreign countries. Although our members leave the Bay Area, I still consider them members of a growing Awakko Ren.”

Anyone can join SF Awakko Ren. No skills or experience are required. While most members are in their 20s and 30s, some members are children under age ten.

“People start from all ages,” says Berreman. “Some begin as young as 3. The members of our group range from 3 to 70. And men and women participate equally, however, the female dance is strictly for females, whereas females can dance in the men’s style.”

Berreman adds, “Awa Odori is open for interpretation. The dance is driven by the beat of the Kane bell and Taiko drum. A Shinobue flute and Shamisen lute provide lyrical composition. Different groups take different variations on the dance. While some dance at the most basic level, others will choreograph more intricate routines.”

She continues, “There are two styles of dance, one feminine and one masculine. Female dancers can partake in both the male and female dances. The basic rule of this dance is to move your right arm forward with your right leg and your left arm forward with your left leg in turns to the two-beat rhythm.”

Over the years, Awa Odori music and dance has evolved and become increasingly popular throughout Japan. Dance skill levels have advanced, choreographic repertoires have expanded and become more elaborate and refined. Stage performances have become more regular, and costume styles have changed. Some groups have even transitioned to less traditional music.

Though audience participation in the dancing is less frequent, SF Awakko Ren hopes to revive this part of the tradition by encouraging its audience to join-in with the dancing after their performances.

SF Awakko Ren offers lectures and workshops and performs year-round throughout the Bay Area. The group is an annual participant in the San Francisco Cherry Blossom Festival, which includes stage performances as well as participation in the Grand Parade. Other venues where SF Awakko Ren has performed includes the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, and the Cupertino Cherry Blossom Festival. SF Awakko-Ren has also participated in the Osaka Matsuri Festival in Japantown and the Japanese Cultural Community Center of Northern California’s Tabemasho fundraiser.

SF Awakko Ren is always looking for enthusiastic new members, particularly during the Cherry Blossom Festival Grand Parade. While their rehearsal space varies, SF Awakko Ren is currently using rehearsal space at the Japanese Cultural Community Center of Northern California.

The group will be offering a workshop in the Spring, before the 2020 San Francisco Cherry Blossom Festival. Dates will be announced on the SF Awakko Ren Facebook page.

Dance enthusiasts – mark your calendars. SF Awakko Ren is delighted to be offering a free performance inside San Francisco’s City Hall at noon on October 11, 2019. Performing for the first time in Dancers’ Group and World Arts West’s monthly Rotunda Dance Series, six dancers will perform a collection of small pieces, along with one ten-minute piece to live traditional music by seven musicians; two Shamisen among them (a three stringed instrument). Audience participation in the dancing is expressly encouraged.

This article appeared in the October 2019 issue of In Dance.

SPEAK: What’s the Big Deal with Cultural Appropriation, and What’s the Path Forward?

October 1, 2019 by Parya

Photo by Rachel Duff Photography

Cultural appropriation is considered to be the taking of one or more aspects of a culture other than one’s own and using it for personal gain (financial or otherwise). Cultural appropriation has roots in colonization, racism, and capitalism.

The reason why cultural appropriation is important is that privileged and less privileged cultures are not on an even playing field. Marginalized peoples from less privileged cultures have less power, less media voice and visibility, less buying power, greater difficulties in moving up the socio-economic ladder, and are historically robbed of credit for their artistic innovations. By virtue of having the financial and political resources to travel or take classes, privileged cultures are at a significant advantage over millions who, for financial, political, societal, or cultural reasons, cannot afford to partake in these learning opportunities.

If you’re from a privileged culture or a high income country such as the United States, Canada, or many European nations and have profited from the art and culture of less privileged cultures or low-middle income countries (such as countries and cultures in South America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, or the Middle East [the term “Middle East” has Euro-centric origins; however, I will use it here given that it is the commonly used term to refer to this region]), you may have had a hand in cultural appropriation. From Madonna and Beyoncé, to Katy Perry and Coldplay, to Marc Jacobs and Gucci, to Coachella and Burning Man, and to the chef Rick Bayless there are many examples of the pervasive nature of cultural appropriation.

Perhaps you teach belly dancing, Persian dances, salsa, or any other exercise or art forms from less privileged countries and someone has called you out for cultural appropriation. You may have felt attacked, bullied, and defensive. Maybe you’ve thought about all the work you’ve done to get to where you are, remembered your bills, shrugged your shoulders, and moved on. However, maybe there’s still a part of you wanting to understand what the big deal is and consider alternative ways to move forward with a clearer conscience. I hope to provide some clarity on why cultural appropriation is a big deal and offer some ways to move forward. I don’t intend to shame anyone about their life choices, but I hope to bring awareness to this issue, open a dialogue, and share my perspectives.

As a dancer born and raised in Iran, I believe that it’s the years of surviving the Iran-Iraq war, secretive dance classes, performances in dust-filled basements, using my shadow to “perfect” my dance moves during air raids, teaching myself Western dance forms using scratched up VHS videos, fear of being caught dancing, shamed by being compared to a sex worker, being harassed and bullied by self-loathing teachers who mindlessly perpetuated the cycle of hate, shame, and guilt, and teachers who ruthlessly punished and ridiculed students for expressing an interest in the arts by enforcing “religious” censorship codes of an Islamic dictatorship for fear of being prosecuted themselves that enriches the beauty and pain of dances from my culture.

I see friends who have taken years of ballet and modern dance classes since a young age, attending dance performances, and expressing themselves artistically in public. I compare that to my experiences and I envy the fact that we didn’t have a level playing field. That, despite my mom’s best efforts, my growth was impeded due to a lack of access, knowledge, and finances.

This is by no means a defeatist message of self-pity. I just want you, the reader, to know that cultural appropriation without these shared cultural experiences may be hurtful to those who have lived the pain, have overcome many obstacles, and are trying to express it through their art. There are a multitude of experiences from many cultures, and I’m only sharing my own. However, it is all of these experiences that inform my embodied experiences and impacts my art. And without these experiences, one may go through the movements without an anchor in the powerful reality of life in Tehran, Cairo, or Cuba.

I’d like to emphasize that cultural exchange and learning about other cultures are not the activities under scrutiny here. Sharing cultural knowledge, seeking to understand and learn about another culture, and connecting with others cross-culturally is a beautiful thing and much needed in the world. It helps us learn about others and ourselves, and it unites us as human beings. Rather, the focus of this piece is the personal gain (financial or otherwise) from others’ cultural knowledge and practices.

To be clear, acknowledging, calling attention to, and working to minimize the impact of cultural appropriation is not about creating “gated cultures” to help promote social justice, but it’s about helping to break down barriers so that communities and cultures can promote their own art, speak for themselves, and profit from their work. I believe that it would be silly and pointless for me or anyone to say that White Americans or Europeans shouldn’t belly dance or participate in other art forms with roots in less privileged countries/cultures. However, I would like to invite you to consider a different approach to this cultural borrowing.

I believe that the first and most difficult step to addressing cultural appropriation is to acknowledge your privilege and the role you may have played in appropriating someone else’s culture. I realize that this is challenging because you have to recognize your privilege and come to terms with the fact that you’re likely more privileged than many others who did not have the opportunity to travel, take classes, explore their artistic side, and gain financial opportunities for their art.

But what can you do about it beyond humility?

A central question to consider is how you can reciprocate to the culture from which it came. I would like to emphasize that these restitutions do not necessarily have to be monetary.

Some examples of these reciprocations can be:

attending classes taught by people from that culture and supporting their growth
attending screenings of movies, cultural celebrations, concerts, art galleries, book signings, etc. of artists from that culture
involving people from that culture in your art work, asking them for feedback on your art work, and interviewing them on your podcasts and blogs
taking classes to learn the language and music of that culture
researching, writing, audio/video-recording, and documenting scholarly work on that culture (this does not mean speaking for the marginalized culture, but objectively documenting your experiences)
sponsoring other artists or movement experts from that country or culture by assisting them in traveling to your country, allowing them to stay in your home, inviting them to teach with you, and/or inviting them to create art with you
traveling to that country and providing free classes on your culture or other types of classes (e.g., free English language classes, ballet classes, etc.)
organizing educational tours to that country with local tour guides

These exchanges are sure to enhance your understanding of that culture, provide you with a deeper empathic response for the people of that culture, and give you more tools with which you can educate others.

There are many more examples of good-will gestures of restitutions to begin a dialogue of healing and making our world more equitable.

This article appeared in the October 2019 issue of In Dance.

Supporting One Educator at a Time, Over Time

October 1, 2019 by Patricia Reedy and Jochelle Pereña

By 6pm on the last Tuesday of any given month, you’ll find a Luna Dance Institute faculty member in a sweat and speed-talking as they jog back-and-forth from their office phone, to our Professional Learning library for an in-person meeting. This sweaty-session is part of Luna’s free consultations that provide back-to-back coaching sessions over a three-hour period. Each consult presents the dance artists at Luna with impromptu inquiries into dance education. The monthly marathon tests our teachers’ skills of improvisation as they listen to and support a unique spectrum of dance teaching artists working in various capacities. It’s exhausting, but it’s the kind of exhaustion that is also exhilarating. While by the end of the evening the consultant may collapse in a chair, it is not without a smile on their face, happy to have stretched their creative muscles.

When Luna began offering professional development workshops in 1994, we saw a steady stream of questions flowing in about the art of teaching dance. Eventually it became too much to answer every question immediately — there were far too many — and yet we didn’t want to abandon the mentoring and Q&A services entirely. Clearly there was a need for an ad hoc dance educator support system. Therefore, in 2008 we launched our free monthly consultations as a way to give back to the field, share our expertise, and listen to the needs of our fellow artist educators.

For more than a decade, we’ve heard a wide-range of questions from dance practitioners from throughout California, across the States, and around the globe, such as—How do I change careers from engineer to dance teacher? My curriculum is too restrictive, what can I do? How do I get a dance program going? How can I expand the program I already have? What advice do you have about a labor dispute with my employer? The questions we get run the gamut. Sometimes a question launches a long-term relationship that offers us an up-close view of a dance education leader emerging.

Julie Lebel is one such person. She first called us after reading the May 2012 issue of In Dance which included an article by Patricia, co-writer of this article, about early child development. As the founder of Foolish Operations Ensemble, Julie had been intent on continuing her work as an artist and choreographer after becoming a parent. After touring Stroller Dances, she launched Paper Playground and Dancing the Parenting, two programs that bring dancers, choreographers, parents, caregivers, and young children together to engage in creative process and performance. She visited Luna to take the first Family Dance Institute offered in 2014, then returned to Vancouver to expand her dance-parenting programs. Julie invited Patricia to give the keynote address at a conference she was organizing in Vancouver and teach several community workshops while she was there. Foolish Operations performed Yarn-Around at that conference which led to several hours of dialogue between Julie and Patricia about intention and tension trying to meet the needs of parents and children in the same space. Recently, Julie called again, requesting help to document her pedagogical theory and practice and develop a training module so that she can build capacity by teaching other choreographer-teacher-parents how to do what she does. We all saw this as a way to help Julie expand her program and allow her to continue to tour her choreographic work. We at Luna look forward to this new 2019-20 partnership to continue to push the envelope of what it means to embody multiple roles of artist, educator, parent, and community builder.

Dasha Che is another young leader Luna has engaged with. A Russian-born, Bay Area-based dance artist, Dasha came to an initial consult with a vision of bringing dance improvisation workshops to the LGBTQ+ community of St. Petersburg, Russia. Challenging the socio-political environment that marginalizes and oppresses LGBTQ+ bodies, Dasha planned to offer a creative space for folx to experience physical freedom, touch, and expression. As we unpacked Dasha’s developing program in that first consult, we talked about how the success of the workshops would rely on a strong pedagogical foundation and a reflective practice. A seasoned dance artist, Dasha decided to enroll in Luna’s Developing & Implementing Dance Curricula – A, a course that was developed to strengthen teaching skills, particularly those of curriculum design, leading movement classes, and observing and responding to the needs of students. A year later we heard from Dasha, this time thrilled to tell us about the growth of their program, Telaboratoria, that taught 350 hours of dance classes to over 200 LGBTQ+ folks over nine months. Their pilot run was ready to take off again, and while they were writing grants to fund another year of free community classes in Russia, Dasha was seeking more training as a dance educator to take Telaboratoria into its next stage. They signed up for Developing & Implementing Dance Curricula – B, which focuses on building lessons into longer units, teaching the art of composition, and creating a personalized teaching philosophy. We know we’ll continue to be in touch with Dasha as they cultivate their program and their voice as an artist-educator-activist.

While we often meet emerging dance teaching artists through our consults, expert educators call in too for fresh perspectives and curricular shifts. Lisa Simon is the Lower School Dance Educator at ‘Iolani School in Hawaii, and despite living an ocean away, she was destined to join Luna’s learning community. “I first visited Luna while on vacation about ten years ago, then reconnected recently on the advice of artistic coach Hope Mohr. As I explored Luna’s website, I was drawn to the wide range of offerings uniquely tailored to support dance educators,” Lisa explains. A veteran dance educator who has led her school’s program over the past 25+ years, she spent her semester-long sabbatical investing in inquiry and her own professional development. Lisa signed up to be a Professional Learning User, which allowed her to book a series of consults and dive deep into her questions: How can I bring classes outside to my school’s new natural playground, to play through movement and respond creatively to an interactive environment? How can I strengthen community with relationship-based dance opportunities including multi-generational participation? How can I design unique movement experiences to allow students to honor their family legacies? Lisa then flew out to take an Improvisation and Community workshop with us to glean more ideas and to put into action some of what she discussed in her consults. Lisa shares, “My Luna consults with Nancy Ng and Patricia Reedy have included rich conversations about turning ‘dream big’ ideas into the movement opportunities I design for young students. The generous offering of consult sessions sparked exciting developments for our program at `Iolani and my own growth as a dance educator.”

Local dance artists often book in-person consultations and meet us in our Professional Learning library. Besides forming meaningful, real-life connections, these face-to-face sessions allow us to pull articles, books, and resources off the library shelves to help answer questions and provide curriculum examples. Highlights of these local inquiries include helping prepare proposals for conference presentations or new programs; orienting Bay Area newcomers to the dance resources of the region; and introducing teachers to experts in their topic of interest such as special education, intergenerational teaching, or cultural dance forms.

Our Professional Learning faculty rotates in our position of monthly consultant so that we each have a turn fielding questions. When we’re on call our own creativity is challenged. We must be flexible, fluid, and quick while challenging ourselves to stretch outside of our own box. In 30 minutes we listen deeply to what is being asked (and what is not), ask strategic questions to uncover more, then offer a tidbit of advice that is meaningful to the caller. Such a great creativity workout.

These consults also benefit Luna by serving as “field research” to the pedagogy we offer in our professional learning workshops. By spending so much time listening to dance educators, we ensure our fingers are on the pulse of what’s going on in our field — what questions and inquiry are being presented now, what are the current big issues today? This influences our own research at Luna and informs the design of each year’s Professional Learning calendar of workshops and events. And there’s always that surprise call from a Luna workshop alum from many years ago. Sometimes they’re looking for a curricular refresher, but more often than not, they’re in a new leadership position and calling for advice on how to step up as an advocate for dance education. When we get off the phone we exclaim to everyone in the office, “Guess who I just heard from! And guess what they’re doing now!” We’re reminded why we are a relationship-based organization and of the impact of investing in connections. It’s exciting to reunite and even more exciting to celebrate the growth of these practitioner leaders. And it keeps us hopeful for the future of our field, as we hear about their projects and help them strengthen their voice and vision. You can read about some of these leaders and their stories on our website at https://lunadanceinstitute.org/news/blog/#teachers-creating-change.

What can we help you with? No question is too big or small. If you are curious about any aspect of dance teaching and learning—from curriculum advice to career counseling to a leadership pep talk—we’re here for you. Give us a call, or come meet us in person. Free consultations are scheduled in 30-minute increments between 3:30 and 6pm the last Tuesday of each month. Reserve your time at http://lunadanceinstitute.org/professional-learning/resources/consultations/

#DanceEducatorHotline #Askadanceeducator #ForadanceteachingemergencycallLuna

This article appeared in the October 2019 issue of In Dance.

Gabriel Mata On Using Personal Narrative

October 1, 2019 by Aries Jordan

Photo by Tom Hassing

The current immigration policy has sparked debate and protest throughout the country. For Mexican American dance choreographer Gabriel Mata dance is a form of protest. He uses dance and personal narrative to bring awareness to current unrest and remove the “facade” of dance choreography. Gabriel’s journey in dance began at the age of 16, the same time he learned of his undocumented status. Dance gave him the freedom that his newly discovered immigration status had stripped him of. What began as a stress reliever during a time of crisis has afforded Gabriel unique opportunities to explore the complexities of citizenship and risk-taking through dance. While preparing for his upcoming performance for SjDANCEco Gabriel opens up about his approach to dance, DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) immigration status and what inspires him.

Photo by Tom Hassing

Aries Jordan: Where do you pull inspiration for your choreography?

Gabriel Mata: I draw inspiration from a variety of places. My training has been in Ballet, Jazz and modern contemporary. I combine Ballet and Modern in many of my pieces because my body can access the lines of Ballet and I appreciate the groundedness that modern dance offers. I am also trained in Limón technique, developed by Mexican immigrant artist José Limón in the ’70s. His choreography accessed humanistic forms of dance expression that resonated with me. I also like the fact that it was provocative for the time it was created and intentionally makes space for the individual on stage. Another technique I pull inspiration from is the Cunningham technique developed by Merce Cunningham which is a complete contrast from Limón. He focuses on the functionality of the body in really extreme ways without a narrative.

AJ: What is your process for pairing dance moves with text?

GM: A lot of the talking dance and theater works I have created are very personal. I engage in a self-reflective process, in which I ask myself “how do I share this part of my life? How can I surprise the audience through unpredictability? And how do I layer one theme to the other?” One of my past pieces explored the theme of dreaming. I took on every angle of dreaming like nightmares, daydreams, aspirations and my DACA dreamer status. I shared my nightmares of navigating the US as an immigrant and daydreams of what I aspire to be in the future. In collaborative pieces, we research how voice can enhance movement. We look at how a push or leap can be enhanced through the use of voice and narrative.

AJ: On your website, you stated you create movement that “removes the facade of choreography,” what is the facade of choreography?

GM: Choreography has a facade that limits full access to our body and the way relationships are performed on stage. The facade conforms to stereotypical relations whether male/female or male/male. Through the use of voice, I can explore deeper relationships. The facade also includes minimizing the individual. There is so much more to the dancer than their ability to master well-known choreography. For example, when you see the Nutcracker, you always get the same kind of choreography and the same narrative every time. They may be all smiles but there is a personal narrative not being shared that is valuable.

AJ: How has your DACA status informed or influenced how you dance?

GM: I have combined the way I live with my art form. My DACA status has to lead me to believe and create radical contemporary dances that make a statement. Which is why I think the voice is so important for people who have navigated life as an immigrant whether documented or undocumented. One of my goals is to make it very clear to audiences that other narratives are out there. Many American born dancers take for granted their access and privilege that is not afforded to the immigrant community. As an immigrant, you don’t have access to grant funding and higher education needed to train or even network.

AJ: You openly disclose and explore your immigration status on stage, are you ever concerned about repercussions in this political climate?

GM: There are over 700,000 DACA recipients of many different bodies and ethnicities in the United States. My mission is to create space for others who have had similar experiences or share DACA status to see themselves. Something that concerns me is the reaction of audience members because I am a person of color, gay and undocumented. Negative thoughts do creep in the wake of the El Paso, Texas shooting, like what if someone shoots up the place because of how I identify. I am aware that there are people out there intent on hurting Hispanics within the US. I realize that I am putting so much on the line in exposing so much about myself. At times I feel like I have to tread lightly when I am performing in different places within the country. Before I perform I kiss the center of my hand and set the intention that my performance will further the narrative of what it means to be undocumented in this country. That helps to center me before any doubt starts to creep in.

AJ: You have an upcoming solo performance Where/ I begin at sjDANCEco, what can audiences expect to see?

GM: I have always held the identity of Mexican American because I was born in Mexico. This piece for me challenges any notions of citizenship based on where you were born. I came here when I was five and became who I am here! My education, profession and deepest relations with family and others have been here! To represent my experience I created an abstract design using masking tape. With voice and movement, I create spaces within the confines of the physical space. This piece tells the story of my life in which I am made to feel different even though I don’t feel different.

This article appeared in the October 2019 issue of In Dance.

In Practice: Adia Whitaker & Àse Dance Theatre Collective: Having, Knowing, and Saying No to Fear

October 1, 2019 by Sima Belmar

Photo by Orfesas Skutelis

“You shouldn’t be in a sonogram thinking, I’m going to have a little brown and black boy, and they’re going to try to kill him.”

This is Adia Tamar Whitaker, artistic director of Àse Dance Theatre Collective, talking about her visit to the doctor when she was pregnant with her son. Of the many things she told me during our conversation in August, this is what I will be thinking about when I attend Have K(NO!)w Fear: A Bluessical at ODC Theater.

Have K(NO!)w Fear: A Bluessical is an immersive dance theater performance ritual rooted in what Whitaker calls “neo-folkloric” dance and music from the African Diaspora. As one of her dancers says in a 2014 crowd funding video, “We are fulfilling ancestral promises.” Whitaker has been working on this project for a decade, and as we mark the 400^th anniversary of the beginning of slavery in North America,[1] live, embodied engagements with this history remind us that living bodies were and continue to be at stake. Whitaker, in a rare moment of understatement, said, “The piece I’m presenting is extremely relevant and will probably make people uncomfortable.”

This is not to say that Whitaker tends to overstate a case. On the contrary, she continually searches to say what’s been said without diminishing the fact that it bears repeating over and over again. That slavery begat capitalism. That black people remain under siege in this country. That confronting white fragility as a person of color is exhausting. As a dancer and choreographer, Whitaker brings this conversation to bear on the global contemporary concert dance community to critique its “race-blind,” often ahistorical focus on somatics:[2] “There is a trend of embodiment happening throughout the field of dance that is strange for a lot of people of color because we never stopped cooking own food and raising babies. We never hired people to do it for us. We never left our bodies. This trend of embodiment is a neoliberal reorganization of capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. It upholds the same structures.”

I asked Whitaker to say more about this trend: “Mind-body centering, mindfulness—wonderful. But it can also be another form of white silence as violence. A lot of the language used to guide meditations—focusing on making ‘everyone’ more mindful—doesn’t resonate with people of color in the same way, if at all. People of color need to be excused on this moment. We don’t not do this. We don’t set it aside to do. If you’re scrubbing toilets with bleach, physically farming, touching dirt, shoveling, taking babies to classes, being doormen, nannies, cooks—my parents have advanced degrees and I have them too, but I’m closer to people that were in their bodies than the many generations who hired help. We are always in our bodies because we can’t afford not to be. Our parents teach us this from the time we’re born and raise us this way.”

During her MFA program at Hollins, Whitaker had to confront the force of invisibilized whiteness that grounds much of Western somatics discourse: “Someone would say, There’s an owl in your face and snake in your back. I know why it’s in my back because I have a different reference to it in African tradition and folklore. They’re looking to Far East systems. But your people are from Europe. Go on to your Norse stuff, your Celtic stuff. Why are you going to the East? We all have the same archetypes.” When an instructor invites Whitaker to move from her synovial fluids, she balks: “I have a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old. My synovial fluids are buried because of all the things I have to get through just to get in the room.” In reference to scholar-artists who “write papers and speak so poetically,” she asks, “Why do they get paid and I become a poem? They get to be real and I get to be magical realism. They get to be the lung and I get to be the breath, which you can’t see.”[3] Most frustrating is the way mindfulness discourse is presented as “an isolated incident, not followed up by any kind of strategy-building session to change behavior. It feels like indoctrination, much like the European Christians during enslavement except without the physical violence. This kind of violence is like carbon monoxide poisoning.”

For those of you who don’t know, Whitaker is talking to a white critic-scholar, one who has been listening to the podcast About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge. So I’m supposed to know better than to ask, “What can I do to help?”[4] which lobs the responsibility to effect change right back to the person of color.[5] And yet, I asked Whitaker what I ask every artist I interview: What do you want from this article? What would serve you and the work the most? Whitaker: “I don’t have the answer. Are you going to give up your comforts? Can we really break anything open?”

Whitaker is bringing herself and eleven members of the collective to ODC— Stephanie Bastos, Tilishia Bradley Goveia, Erin Bryce Holmes, Alexandra Jean-Joseph, Tossie Long, Imani Nzingha, Brian Polite, Kendra J. Ross, Zakiya Harris aka Sh8peshifter, and Guy deChalus, “twelve black people storming the white house.” That alone will make certain people uncomfortable. “My work at ODC was not created for a proscenium space. It was created for the people, for something to happen on the street, maybe as a form of protest, more to activate space, to get people to move or shift where they may otherwise not feel safe or comfortable doing so. All of these trends—of diversity, of inclusion—it’s important the work is being done, that people are willing to be uncomfortable, but when we’re brought into historically white spaces to do this work, we are met with a lot of ambivalence and confusion. We don’t want a seat at the table. We want to build new tables.”

During the interview, Whitaker struggled with feeling like she’s “biting the hand that feeds me” when she spoke critically of the people and institutions that have supported her work. Another example is the documentary short film, Have No Fear, which was directed and produced by Beata Calinska, Sarah Jacobson, and Tracie Williams, three white women: “The neighborhoods in Brooklyn have been so gentrified, and these white women, my neighbors, needed an artist for their film. So I thought, let me try. We had this very interesting experience. Many filmmakers of color have done films on Àse, but this film went all over the world, winning awards. Then, one evening in 2015, I’m at Brooklyn Bridge Park playing with my kids, when I see there’s an outdoor film festival. They screened Have No Fear before Footloose. I still hadn’t seen it and I’m the subject! And it makes it look like I’m a single mother! I have a husband and he’s a great dad.”

Whitaker expresses gratitude without ambivalence when she talks about her teachers in San Francisco and Oakland— Albirda Rose, Alicia Pearce, Malonga Casquelourd, Susie Whipp, Wendy Diamond, and Reginald Ray Savage. At one point she got “Dunham-ed out” and began studying with Blanche Brown, who took her into Group Petit La Croix. Later, Whitaker got involved in the Hip Hop scene, and joined a chapter of Universal Zulu Nation: “Studying Hip Hop was everything. In San Francisco, it was different from the East Bay. We were more scrappy than Oakland folks. The Oakland folks brought the drum into my life. It was the medicine I needed to be more calm, less angry. If you grow up in SF, even if you’re not from the hood, which I was not, there’s still a certain amount of street life trauma. Around 1993 we stopped dancing at parties because of all the shootings. I was going to funeral homes in the midst of going to SF State. I’m still alive. A lot of my friends aren’t.” Whitaker moved to New York at 24, right when she was “becoming a person”: “I am the baby of many people and I was a bit of a joker/shit-talker, so I had to leave the Bay to show people I was serious.”

Have K(NO!)w Fear: A Bluessical is an evening-length work divided into three sections. Section I is designed for the traditional proscenium arch: “You can sit there, entertained up in the palace watching people work down in the field.” Section II is a screening of Have No Fear. Intermission is designed to function as a transition between worlds. In the lobby, the performers will greet audience members and pass out hymnals. As we move from theater to the liminal space of the lobby, and the hymnals pass from hand to hand, we re-enter the theater as religious space, spiritual space, ritual space.

Whitaker: “It’s challenging for me to work in this space and take the risk to create immersive theater tools, and prompt people to move around. And it’s been interesting to be in a space that tells you what to do. It’s like our position in the US. The fabric of nation is what it is—do we have to do what it says? What kind of changes are we really making? Are we just reorganizing what’s already there? I’m excited because it’s a beautiful theater and I want people to watch me, I want to be a superstar. But I have to also be able to be uncomfortable in this process. If I don’t take a risk, who will?”

Whitaker’s talk is full of questions like these, questions that lead to more questions. I don’t think she would position her dance theater work as answers per se, but rather as actualizations of questions in real time, positioned as a mode of listening to ancestors. She views the work as an “emergent strategy” (Adrienne Maree Brown), hoping it will “put people in the shift to move in a new direction. It falls on me to explain a million times but I don’t know where somebody doesn’t benefit off the suffering of another? I want to go there, will you take me?”

[1] PDFs of The New York Times Magazine August 18, 2019 special edition, “The 1619 Project,” and accompanying reading guides are available through the Pulitzer Center.
[2] For more on the violence of the neutral in somatics and contemporary dance, see Rebecca Chaleff’s “Activating Whiteness: Racializing the Ordinary in US American Postmodern Dance” (2018) and Isabelle Ginot’s “From Shusterman’s Somaesthetics to a Radical Epistemology of Somatics” (2010). For an excellent (and growing) list of resources around anti-racism, whiteness, and dance, go to http://danceandwhiteness.coventry.ac.uk/resources/.
[3] On walking the razor’s edge of visibility as privilege and curse, see Brenda Dixon Gottschild’s The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool (2003). On “[s]lowing down to be quiet” as a “bourgeois response born of white privilege,” and so much more, see Thomas F. DeFrantz, “I Am Black (you have to be willing to not know).
[4] When “The High Low” podcasters Pandora Sykes and Dolly Alderton asked her what they could do as white people to help end racism, Eddo-Lodge said, “I don’t know where you hold influence in your life. I don’t know your friends. I don’t know the extent of your jobs. I don’t know where you can assess where the institutional racism is really taking hold in your sector and what you as individuals can attempt to do to change that. And so I’m in no position to tell you how you in both of your lives can attempt to try and change the problem. […] Only you can diagnose that.” She then quotes Lilla Watson, Aboriginal activist from Queensland, Australia: “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
[5] To be schooled on the phenomenon of shedding “white women’s tears,” see Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (2018). And to be schooled on Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, see Lauren Michele Jackson’s “What’s Missing from ‘White Fragility’” in Slate, 9/4/19.

This article appeared in the October 2019 issue of In Dance.

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