BODY AND SOUL: Thomas Ford: For love of Black queer identity

Thomas Ford (photo: Angelo Soriano)

A person with brown skin wears a gray cap and a gray sleeveless shirt tucked into black athletic pants. His torso bends to the side, and ears hang over his shoulder in the same direction. The fingers of his right hand gently reach to the camera, while his knees bend and legs spread in a wide position.

In today's episode of Body and Soul podcast, dance artist and writer Thomas Ford reflects on his research into the violent colonial history at the root of homophobia in Black families and community.

Listen to Ford's talk here.

Thomas Ford is a dance artist, writer and scholar whose research examines the mechanisms of identity and culture through an exploration of embodiment, choreography, and Black, queer, critical and performance studies. https://www.thomasfordnyc.com/

Harry Belafonte: Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, 2014

https://youtu.be/Yfj6Ja86lCs

My Curatorial Highlights of 2020

 

 CURATORIAL HIGHLIGHTS 2020

I call on all Black creatives to preserve and tell our own stories.

We must center, treasure and tell our own stories, or others will tell them their own way for their own uses--or refuse to tell them at all.

The comprehensive story of Calendar Year 2020 is a difficult one, and there are different ways I could tell it. This day, though, I wish to acknowledge and celebrate things achieved before and, then, in spite of the pandemic. Things accomplished before and, then, in response to the rise of this year’s anti-racism uprising. Things created in joy and, then, in sorrow, in an effort to keep at least some movement happening at a time of stasis and loss and to build circles of mutual support.


GIBNEY CURATION

Below is just a sample of notable events I curated for the Gibney organization during 2020:

Black Dance Artists on Masculinity, panel moderated by J. Bouey and featuring Du’Bois A’Keen, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Orlando Hunter, Jr. and Ricarrdo Valentine

Soundz at the Back of My Head, premiered by Thomas F. DeFrantz/Slippage, Bessie Award nominee (Quran Karriem) for Outstanding Sound Design/Musical Composition

Afro/Solo/Man, premiered by Brother(hood) Dance! (Orlando Hunter, Jr. and Ricarrdo Valentine), Bessie Award nominee for Outstanding Production and for Outstanding Visual Design (video)

Digital: Unidentified Fly Object (U.F.O) by Tendayi Kuumba with Greg Purnell

Long Tables: Latina/x in Dance and Performance (Alicia Diaz, Mariana Valencia, Yanira Castro, Larissa Velez-Jackson, Beatrice Capote) and Does Dance Matter to America?
(Danni Gee, Brinda Guha, Joya Powell, Ayodele Casel, Maura Nguyen Donohue, Aynsley Vandenbroucke)

Art + Action Artist Talks: Solo for Solo Artists, moderated by myself and featuring Marion Spencer, Darrin Wright, Zui Gomez, Wendell Gray III and Paul Hamilton. Spirituality of the Body, moderated by Charmaine Warren and featuring Laurel Atwell, Shamar Wayne Watt, Ogemdi Ude, and iele paloumpis

Sorry I Missed Your Show: presentations by Tess Dworman, 2020 Bessie Award nominee for Breakout Choreographer; LaJuné MacMillian; Michelle Boulé; Jennifer Nugent; Stefanie Batten Bland

Living Gallery: word-based performances by Linda La Beija; Nia Witherspoon; Melanie Greene; Kayhan Irani; Oceana James

Some of the many artists I met with during this year for consultations or discussions about developing work have included Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Leyya Tawil, zavé martohardjono, Kayla Farrish, Dohee Lee, mayfield brooks, Audre Wirtanen, Colleen Thomas, Olaiya Olayemi, Ahn Vo, Kazu Kumagai and Lisa LaTouche.


CURATING DANCING QUEERLY FESTIVAL

I was delighted to be recommended to the producers of Boston’s annual Dancing Queerly Festival to guest curate a digital evening of video works from New York-based LGBTQ artists. I selected J. Bouey, Ni’Ja Whitson, Maria Bauman-Morales, zavé martohardjono and Brother(hood) Dance! for this well-received program.

In years past, I have also enjoyed curating events for Danspace Project, La MaMa and 92Y Harkness. I'm still eager for independent curatorial or dramaturgical projects--specifically Black- or BIPOC-centered ones. Reach out!

CREATING BLACK DIASPORA

This summer, I started organizing Black Diaspora, my pilot program designed for rising Black artists from a variety of cultural backgrounds and dance/performance techniques and traditions. I invited artists to apply following recommendations from more experienced Black artists in New York's community, and a cohort of eighteen was formed. Since September, sponsored by Gibney, they have met by Zoom to hold conversations on topics of their own choosing. Some of these informal community conversations have been joined by invited artists such as Ayodele Casel, J. Bouey, Jerron Herman, Kayla Hamilton, Ni'Ja Whitson, Raja Feather Kelly and Rokafella and Kwikstep and more are coming in 2021. Participation is free. Recently, I was offered additional funding to curate a series of workshops for the Black Diaspora cohort. These will run from February through June of 2021, facilitated by Cynthia Oliver, Gilbert T. Small II, Paloma McGregor, Nicole Stanton and Bebe Miller. I have invited this first cohort to return for a second fiscal year (September 2021 through June 2022). It is my intention to develop Black Diaspora into a full-featured residency program over the next few years.


LAUNCHING IMAGINING: A GIBNEY JOURNAL

Along with its newly-redesigned website, Gibney now has a bi-monthly online journal--Imagining: A Gibney Journal--which I have edited along with outgoing Curatorial and Editorial Coordinator Dani Cole. (Monica Nyenkan has now joined Gibney in the CEC role and has begun assisting me with Imagining.) Some of the writers engaged in our September and November 2020 issues were Ogemdi Ude, George Emilio Sanchez, Maura Nguyen Donohue, Conrhonda E. Baker and Aynsley Vandenbroucke. We are situated at the intersection of the arts and social justice and seek to make space for underrepresented voices.

CREATING/CURATING THE EVA YAA ASANTEWAA BLACK ARTS LEADERSHIP AWARD (EYABALA)

I have awarded the EYABALA space grant at Gibney--funded through a generous contribution from board member Andrew A. Davis--to nia love, Jerron Herman, David Thomson, and Jordan Demetrius Lloyd. These artists will receive 50 hours of free rehearsal space when studios in both of Gibney’s centers can safely reopen. (UPDATE: Due to an unforeseen scheduling conflict, Jerron Herman had to withdraw from this program. André Zachery has been given this award in his place. And, last but not least, the hours have been increased for all awardees from 50 to a whopping 100!)


ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES

In November, I convened a new independent group Black Curators in Dance and Performance, two-dozen strong, with a focus on mutual support, creative collaboration and advocacy. We have set January 22 for our third meeting.

The independent Artists and Advocates of Color Collective (AACCollective), which I proposed as a haven and support for BIPOC artists affiliated in any way with Gibney, finally began to take off this year, growing in membership and activity.

I have also had the honor of serving on the 2020 Bessie Awards Steering Committee for a short spell this year and joined some amazing community leaders on the advisory Dance/NYC Symposium Committee in preparation for the upcoming symposium (March 17-19, 2021).


Most of our journeys have been disrupted this year, and I have had to put aside or alter many things planned for this year and the next. But I’m happy to say 2020 still offered good opportunities to stay in motion and strive to make a difference.

Wishing you and yours all the best in 2021!

Eva

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve, at Gibney, as Senior Director of Artist Development and Curation and Editorial Director. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Open Letter from Dance Artist/Educator Dwana A. Smallwood

 

 

Dear Bed Stuy:

The Arts in NYC are dying...

My name is Dwana Adiaha Smallwood. I was a premier dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from 1995 - 2007. I’ve been on the cover of Dance Magazine three times. I’ve been featured in Essence Magazine and I have been photographed by Annie Leibowitz for Vogue Magazine.  I was also featured and danced on The Oprah Show.

I took everything I learned over my many years as a professional and created a dance program in South Africa at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls. The program was designed for girls who needed validation and opportunities to harness the power within, so they too could exceed the expectations many have of black girls around the world. With dance, I was able to create a sacred space for them; that same space that saved me from the noise of the world to help me reach my goals. 

I yearned to continue that work and to create a space for the community that saved me but almost swallowed me whole.  For Bedford-Stuyvesant (still one of the most underserved communities in Brooklyn),  I wanted so desperately to be the answer to the prayer I often heard: “I wish I had a place to grow and to feel like I can be anything, do anything.” 

So in 2013, I founded and opened the Dwana Smallwood Performing Arts Center in Bed Stuy Brooklyn, a state of the art facility which is a place for artistic exchange that serves to empower and mold elite dancers and artists to develop, grow and compete on the world’s stage. Today I am writing to let you know that due to the COVID - 19 pandemic, in about four months, we will have to shut our doors…. 

I worked hard to create the space politicians said they needed, parents said they wanted, and children said they had to have. I could only imagine how many more of my community members would have had better options had they had a center like mine, to help guide them and keep them safe and provide validation to their lives. It wasn't easy to build. I almost closed before we opened. Each year since, I’ve struggled to keep the doors open and continued to offer opportunities to children and the community to thrive, but COVID-19 has hit us hard like so many other small arts institutions, and what I so dreaded, may actually be a reality. All that I have worked for may not survive. 

I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and have lived here my entire life. When I think about my upbringing, I think I had a childhood no different than anyone else in Bed Stuy. I had a single struggling mother mostly -- we were fatherless mostly -- and I was Black always. 

Somehow, through struggle, prayers, tears, hard work, the Creator, and the collective work of the community I was able to live my dream and travel the world. To most elite athletes, we would consider this to be a huge accomplishment; to make it out of millions dancing and training and auditioning to become one of only two elite dancers chosen that year. I was that girl; that black, bald, skinny, struggling girl who had made it past the expectations placed on all little dark-skinned black girls by the world. 

The Dwana Smallwood Performing Arts Center has been closed since March.  Due to NYC’s guidelines, we have not been allowed to open our doors even to rent out space. We will close for good if we don’t raise money NOW. I always wondered how something that means so much to so many and requires so little from each of us, will be allowed to die.

It would be among the greatest failures of our community if we close.

The arts have always been the answer when the healing of a nation is needed.  If and/or when this pandemic is over, the arts will be needed more than ever to replenish, refresh and rejuvenate our communities, our children, and their families.

The intention of this letter is not to ask for money (although that would be helpful and graciously accepted).  I’m asking that you help me to sound the alarm.  I have reached out to media outlets, government officials and others that I had hoped could help and some have, but in the world of fast news cycles, this message has been lost; not just for my organization but for many others like mine.

Please pass this onto ANYONE you know or think can help get this message out to the media (social, news, arts, entertainment...whatever). Any help you can offer will be appreciated.

The collective healing of our nation is going to need the ARTS. Dance is My Oxygen!

 

 
Sincerely,

Dwana A. Smallwood
Dwana Smallwood Performing Arts Center, Inc.
dwanasmallwoodpac.org
(718) 443 - 9800

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve, at Gibney, as Senior Director of Artist Development and Curation and Editorial Director. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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LA's BlakTinx choreographers featured in video series

The June 2020 BlakTinx Dance Festival: Dancing on the Edge
was presented online by Bootleg Theater.

At some early (now forgotten) point during the confusion of the past few months of our troubled planet, a thought surfaced. Unbidden and, from that moment on, completely unexplored, it was composed of three simple words:

I miss choreography.

I thought it and...yeah...left it right there.

I think I realized how unpopular it might be in the "new normal" of EXCITEMENT!!! over EVERYTHING THAT DANCE CAN BE!!! now that it can't be what it once was, which--as we all know--was terrible. Absolutely terrible.

I'm not even going to try to argue what about dance might not have been so terrible. Because now that the fact of its terribleness is up in our faces, we can finally do something about it, right? No more procrastination.

All I can tell you is that, of the tons of content emerging online since the pandemic first divided us from one another, I have consumed a lot of virtual theater and music, many thoughtful conversations and informative panels and...a smattering of dance. Of that dance, what I've most enjoyed--although not completely--happened to be recordings of full productions of works from prior months and years. I am still waiting for up-to-the-minute made-for-Zooms to knock me out of my desk chair.

I still love you all, but these virtual solos-in-place; these housebound duets danced safely with your significant other, these whimsical improvs, these trippings of the light fantastic around your backyard are giving me an ache for something I'm apparently not supposed to continue to yearn for because there were, I'm hearing, all these problems with it.

So, come on, Eva. Get happy.

I thought about this I miss choreography thought again when I was watching the YouTube video series Dancing on the Edge, the 2020 edition of Bootleg Theater's BlakTinx Dance Festival that presents work by Los Angeles-based Black and Latinx choreographers, all alumni of the festival from years past. I had accepted Bootleg's request to view and review the four-part series out of curiosity about a dance community largely unfamiliar to me, a New Yorker, and because the brief new and archival works were all by Black and Latinx artists, twenty-five strong, responding to this double-whammy of social distancing and social uprising.

These compilations--a resilient adaptation to the extreme realities of our times--turned out not to be the best way to get to know these artists, the legacies that shaped them, their histories in the field, the contexts in which they regularly work and the meaning they may hold within their respective communities. I'm also wondering if enough time has passed for any artist to deeply process all that has happened since coronavirus began its deadly spread and since George Floyd's death awakened a passionate movement. Have they had time to dive and return with something not obvious but truly incisive and unique to them?

With all that in mind, and after having watched Dancing on the Edge  without sufficient background, I'm not going to review these works--which is to say, I'm not going to white-supremacist this thing.

Catch my drift?

I'll give you the BlakTinx Theater Festivals channel links for your own exploration:

Program 1: https://youtu.be/Le-9yWLPz2o

Program 2: https://youtu.be/CkRS_eIDSzw

Program 3: https://youtu.be/lSJfVjtJWcA

Program 4: https://youtu.be/fdNjj_3BnQE

And let me just point out some items that most captured my imagination. Someday, I might make it out west to learn more--that is, if we're ever safely back to seeing dance in the flesh.

From Program 1:

Add Water & Stir (excerpt from a 2017 performance)
Brigette Dunn-Korpela
B.Dunn Movement/Dance & Theatre Company
www.bdunnmovement.com

Ghostly 1950s white housewives swan around ghostly domiciles and stir bowls of mysterious ingredients, literally sidelined by Dunn-Korpela's bustling troupe. While the white-folks imagery quickly gets relegated to a small oval in one corner of the screen, dancers of color churn through and own the space in a physically-demanding piece that references the deaths of Emmett Till, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner.

Como los Pájaros
Andrea Ordaz
A.Ordaz Dance
http://www.andreaordaz.com/

Super-short, lyrical video featuring the body of a dancer in a flowery blouse and wind-blown hair sliding over a dark grey sky with bright, scattered clouds. In program notes, Ordaz sites Puerto Rican poet Willie Perdomo's The Crazy Bunch:

How to describe that sound when the birds flutter like a deck
         of cards being shuffled? Where to find your uplift &
         hallelujah, hosanna & hero, campana & chorus?

Although severely restricted by narrowed space and limited time, Ordaz manages to convey a flight of freedom.

From Program 2:

Baile de Cuarentena
Briseyda Zárate
https://briseydazarateflamenco.wordpress.com
https://instagram.com/briseydazarate

One of a few festival entries centered in the art of flamenco, Baile de Cuarentena (quarantine dance) approaches pandemic apocalypse with a mask but no filters. Also, no costuming and no heavy footwork that might disturb Zárate's downstairs neighbors. You can feel the energy of frustration along with determination to keep flamenco--and hope--alive.

Time up the River
Alan Pérez
film: Christopher Lopez
@alan.lperez

Shelter-in-place can be unsafe for LGBTQ+ folx forced to share space with homophobic/transphobic families. Choreographer Pérez took that reality as the premise for this duet with Robert Gomez dancing in a tight spot of liminal domestic space with some mirrors for self-reflection and a bit of light from the outside world.

From Program 4:

What the Hell is Going On
Rubí Danielle Morales 
Videography: Crystal Morales 
IG: rubi_so_oh
FB: https://m.facebook.com/rubi.morales.37?ref=bookmarks

Hemmed in by the stark angles of a kitchen space, Morales responds with similar starkness and angularity of movement in this disturbing solo before a restless, intrusive camera.


Dancing on the Edge choreographers:

Anthony Aceves
Bernard Brown
Sofia Carreras
Joshua Estrada-Romero
Regina Ferguson
Kassy Francis
Michelle Funderburk
Primera Generación
Nancy Rivera Gomez
Vannia Ibargüen
Irishia Hubbard
Brigette Dunn-Korpela
Keilah Glover-Lomotey
Amber Morales
Rubi Morales
Andrea Ordaz
Yarrow Perea
Alan Perez
Dorcas Román
Eluza Santos
Stacey Strickland
Maura Townsend
Shantel Ureña
Sadie Yarrington
Briseyda Zárate

For more information about LA's Bootleg Theater, click here.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve, at Gibney, as Senior Director of Artist Development and Curation and Editorial Director. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Inconvenient Black bodies

Inconvenient Black bodies

by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Our blood runs red through inconvenient bodies

that mattered when we were profitable chattel

sold, bought, traded like cattle.

We mattered when raped, forced to birth property.

We mattered when building the white man’s nation

from his soil to the skies.

We mattered when our blood ran red in southeast asia,

when it was our blood--not the white man’s,

back in his comfortable home.

We mattered when our brains, our creativity built industries.

We mattered when our own money built white wealth.

We mattered when our ballots built white power.

We build it still, which is how we manage to matter.

But we are inconvenient people,

troublesome bodies, bodies in the way of progress.

Mouths to feed.

Mouths crying, mouths questioning.

Mouths telling secrets.

We are

bodies taking up space,

holding down space desired by others.

Holding stories never meant to be heard.

Resisting names we did not and

do not choose.

Resisting definition by others.

Resisting obscurity.

Resisting obstruction.

So, we are

bodies in handcuffs.

in prisons, in the crosshairs,

at the crossroads,

under the knee

that snuffs out breath as we

make one last cry to ancestors:

gather us, please; please receive

our inconvenient spirits.

derek chauvin confidently pressed his knee

against george floyd's black neck

for nearly nine minutes, each second

precisely measured out with deadly power,

a procedure well-practiced, one might say,

meticulous in its execution,

effective in its dispatch

of one more Black

and inconvenient body.


(c)2020, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve, at Gibney, as Senior Director of Artist Development and Curation and Editorial Director. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Reviving shange's "photograph" at Theatre 80 St. Marks

Above: Imana Breaux plays dancer Michael in a photograph/lovers in motion.
Below: Michael bursts into the mysterious life of photographer Sean,
portrayed by Adrain Washington.
(photos: Jonathan Slaff)

a photograph/lovers in motion
The Negro Ensemble Company
Theatre 80 St. Marks
February 5-19

The late ntozake shange's a photograph/lovers in motion--staged by The Public Theater in 1977--now reappears at nearby Theater 80 St. Marks, adapted and directed by shange's writer sister ifa bayeza in a Negro Ensemble Company production. A luminous revival of shange's better-known for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf (1976) recently concluded its critically-acclaimed return to The Public, renewing interest in the life and oeuvre of the influential Black feminist playwright. Fans of for colored girls--and we are legion--should be wowed by a photograph's lead actress, Imana Breaux. Her vivacious turn as the dancer Michael, a free-spirited little powerhouse, rips open the show, and Breaux owns most of her scenes like a cross between Beyoncé, whom she resembles, and shange herself.

Although there's a wealth of dancerly-ness (from Breaux) and some actual dancing by other players, I wouldn't call a photograph a choreopoem in the captivating way that for colored girls is. But shange was not only a fierce writer but an exuberant dancer, and she's all over Breaux's performance with her multicolored fringes, her red suede boots, her fiery Mohawk, her hobo bag and her jazzy speech rhythms. Would that this gifted actress could have prevailed and not been subsumed by the strangely-shaped story and direction.

Michael--something brisk and cool about this male-identified, archangelic name given to shange's sexy sprite--takes up with photographer/Vietnam vet Sean (Adrain Washington) whose aspirational bravado, it turns out, fails to track with his actual professional accomplishments. Although Michael quickly falls for this strapping guy, and he for her, things seem more than a little off when Sean's photographic preoccupations and history of womanizing come to light. Three other characters complicate matters further over an unnecessarily drawn-out evening: a two-hour first act, an intermission and a second act that, although it is only about a half-hour, also seems endless and graceless. for colored girls... did not prepare me for this. I would not have expected shange to write a straight-out soap opera, let alone one filled with artificial characters who fail to inspire our concern and care. Along with Breaux, there is one performer I'd be eager to see again. Marc Deliz (as Sean's long-suffering gay friend Earl) gives an fully embodied, grounded, nuanced, quietly shining performance before events overtake his efforts as well.

I'm mindful that, for all the well-deserved love shange received when she gave us for colored girls..., she also caught hell from some folks who took her uncompromising Black feminism as a slam against Black men. Nonsense, of course. But a photograph, with its depiction of Sean (among other stereotyped characters) could be ready evidence for the haters.

Historic Theatre 80 St. Marks is tiny, and its humble intimacy can be a strength for the right show--bringing an audience close to performers in a "we're all in this together" atmosphere. That's a great opportunity that a photograph/lovers in motion is simply not able to seize.

Cast: Imana Breaux; Adrain Washington; Marc Deliz; Nya Bowman (Nevada); Mystie Galloway (Claire)

Music: David Murray
Set: Chris Cumberbatch
Lighting: Melody A. Beal
Costumes: Katherine Roberson
Choreography: Leslie Dockery

a photograph/lovers in motion continues through February 29. For information and tickets, click here.

Theatre 80 St. Marks
80 St. Marks Place (between 1st and 2nd Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Can I get a witness? Viewing mayfield brooks at JACK

Performance artist mayfield brooks
(photo: Amar Puri)

Letters to Marsha with Viewing Hours (a diptych)
by mayfield brooks
JACK
January 30-February 1

In the tiny storage room, where the pungent aroma of earth and rose petals prickles your nostrils, I stand in a single line of people skirting the edge of a funereal bier covered in colorful decaying foliage. I see a bare foot sticking out from this cover, even as I hear mayfield brooks' voice on a looping recording (calling for "a witness") and tamp down a feeling of being trapped. I notice a thin, dry stalk, its end lightly poking the sole of brooks' foot, and I wonder if brooks feels it, is irritated by it. I wonder if I shouldn't pluck it away. But I dutifully stand, like everybody else, listening, looking in this solemn enclosure. Finally, I carefully--so as to not startle brooks or draw anyone else's attention--reach for the stalk and pull it off brooks' flesh.

In small groups, the audience will cycle through that opening viewing room then gradually assemble in a larger but still intimate space nicely set up to encourage comfort and seating choice. This feels more like a funeral parlor than a performance space. Merging two of brooks' works, Letters to Marsha with Viewing Hours (a diptych) is every bit as much a memorial service, a participatory ritual, a raucous channeling and a party with festive cakes (by Susannah Simpson) as it is a performance.

Attend and you will have ample time to gaze or move around the space and commune with the dead (brooks' and yours). Inspired primarily by the late Black gay activist and Stonewall veteran Marsha P. Johnson, this evening introduces us to brooks' ongoing practice of writing heartfelt letters to this role model and would-be mentor and gently suggests we take up a similar practice with our own ancestors of blood or mind.

Will you also see strong, compelling performance in this space? Oh, yes. brooks' collaborating team--a water bearer, a tea maker, a florist, a guide and various viewing hours caretakers--establishes and eases us into the fluidity of the space, but brooks rules the space and gives a master class in commitment, responsiveness, fervent aliveness.

The evening, nearly two hours of sensory richness, is well worth the sometimes frustrating task of navigating subway travel to, from and around Brooklyn. (As of last night, the "C" in C train stands for "cusswords.") Maybe just give yourself at least 15 minutes more than you think you might need to get there, then don't fret because the opening of the piece is experienced in shifts. Relax with some tea in the lobby.

Technical Director/Creative Consultant: Niko Tsocanos

Curated by Stacy Grossfield as part of her IMAGES // LANDSCAPES series and JACK's Reparations365 series.

Letters to Marsha with Viewing Hours (a diptych) continues with 8pm performances tonight and tomorrow. For information and ticketing, click here.

JACK
18 Putnam Avenue, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
C to Clinton-Washington or Shuttle to Franklin Avenue

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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The Joyce's American Dance Platform: UBW and DCDC

Chanon Judson of Urban Bush Women
(photo: Gennia Cui)

American Dance Platform: Urban Bush Women and Dayton Contemporary Dance Company
The Joyce Theater
January 7 and 12

If it's true what they say about how viewers' mirror neurons respond when audiences look at dancers moving, and you attended The Joyce on Tuesday night for American Dance Platform, your mirror neurons likely got a serious workout. Evidence for that, from me, is how exhausted I felt the next morning as if even every toe nail and eyelash I possess were worked to max from watching Urban Bush Women (UBW) and Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC), two troupes of extraordinary physical daring and power. More evidence came from the way the opening night audience responded in the moment. I'm not talking about the expected, and justified, standing Os and rousing cheers; I mean those very Black mmmhmmms, the audible sighs, the cries, the groans and other unrestrained vocalizing that greeted DCDC dancers killing it during Abby Zbikowski's Indestructible (2018) with apparently zero fear of bodily wear-and-tear. If, in a sense, we all danced along with UBW and DCDC as we witnessed them, I await my Bessie nomination.

With the very recent departure of Du'Bois A'Keen, UBW is back to being an all-woman company. My favorite on the evening's bill (to be repeated this coming Sunday) was UBW's Women's Resistance, an excerpt from les écailles de la mémoire (Scales of Memory) with choreographic direction from founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Germaine Acogny with additional choreography from eight former and current UBW members. It takes a village. And, indeed, looks like a village...of disciplined women warriors demonstrating their earth-sprung, spring-loaded battle-readiness within a sonic environment where shredding mechanical rhythms suggest both how formidable these women are and how menacing are the forces they are up against. UBW paired this ensemble with Zollar's 1989 I Don't Know, But I Been Told, If You Keep On Dancin' You Never Grow Old, which now includes segments from visible (2011), made by nora chipaumire and Marguerite Hemmings. And, yes, there is a definite connection and throughline--similar resourcefulness, ingenuity and high skill even in the midst of play that some might unwisely consider trivial.

UBW performers: Courtney J. Cook, Melissa Cobblah Gutierrez (Understudy), Jasmine Hearn, Chanon Judson (Co-Artistic Director), Love Muwwakkil, Samantha Spies (Co-Artistic Director), Elaisa van der Kust, Makaila Ware

Taking on Indestructible, Ohio's venerable DCDC--founded in 1968 by Jeraldyne Blunden and now directed by her daughter, Debbie Blunden-Diggs--was right in tune with the night's audacious mood. The main difference is, with Abby Z high-impact, daredevil choreography, neither you nor the dancers get a chance to chill. So, again, those mirror neurons.... Add occasional blasts from the electronic, industrial hip hop band Death Grips. The evening wrapped up with DCDC's excerpt from Donald Byrd's The Geography of the Cotton Field (2014) which paints, with an elegant hand, a canvas at once sweepingly abstract and epically specific.

DCDC performers: Devin Baker, Qarrianne Blayr (Associate Artistic Director), Breanna Dorsey, Alexandria Flewellen, Michael Green, Steve Lamblin, Robert Pulido, Elizabeth Ramsey, Nile Alicia Ruff, Nabachwa Ssensalo (Actress), Quentin Apollovaughn Sledge, Matthew J. Talley, Countess V. Winfrey

One show remains--this Sunday at 7:30pm--but tickets are sold out.

The Joyce Theater

175 Eighth Avenue at West 19th Street, Manhattan

(directions)

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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From sea to shining sea with Kayla Farrish

A still from The New Frontier
(photo: Alexander Diaz)

The New Frontier (my dear America) Pt. 1
Kayla Farrish/Decent Structures Arts
Danspace Project

I admire the energy burst and largeness and hearty ambition of Kayla Farrish and her premiere at Danspace Project--The New Frontier (my dear America) Pt. 1. The title hints at what will come: "Here I am, a Black woman, a Black woman dance artist, and I'm going to wrap my mind around what it means to take over this venerable performance space for essentially two hours (even with a 15-minute intermission between two "acts," rare for a Danspace Project show), and I'm bringing in my talented folx to grab up and slice through this space like human buzzsaws. I'm going to show you that anything can happen here in this American space. And, by the way, this is only Pt. 1."

Even before the piece starts, it starts. I took my seat and saw dancers scattered and drifting around as a recording of Sinatra singing "My Way," his anthem to a lifetime of self-assertion. Some decidedly non-official US flags rested on the floor. The intermission is populated by an "intermission entertainment" (a fine solo performed by Dorchel Haqq to the Sammy Davis, Jr. recording of "Mr. Bojangles") and, later, dancers, with homey informality, going about the work of arranging props, set and lights for Act 2.

Resembling less the legendary American melting pot than a full washing machine on spin, The New Frontier includes a soundscape that, along with Frank and Sammy, might touch down now in dreamy Debussy realms or terrains of Nina Simone or hip hop. And a film--set to premiere as its own entity in 2020--fills in gaps between live dancers with looming images of other performers on a beach. That's a smart way to tame the intimidating volume of St. Mark's Church.

Containing multitudes, The New Frontier is, itself, a quilt stitched from two earlier Farrish projects--With grit From, Grace in Act 1; Black Bodies Sonata in Act 2--her film, and the writings of James Baldwin, Audre Lorde and others.

If expanse and dynamic variety are a large part of what makes America (more properly called the United States) America, they are also what makes this interdisciplinary piece off-balance, hard to figure out and, ultimately, less effective as a work of dance theater than it might have been. As a viewer, I sought meaning and coherence and had to settle for individual bits and pieces that drew me in--like a fantastic second-act duet, by turns wheeling, churning, swooning and sensitive, between Farrish and Kar'mel Small performed near a fan-blown stretch of fabric that evokes everything from a silky bed to a rushing stream. Compelling narratives suggest themselves here--nothing terribly obvious, just enough to make us take notice and care. While I enjoyed the skills and gusto of the dancers throughout the evening, I would have liked to care as much about all of The New Frontier as I did about this duet.

Farrish's vocal projection in her spoken parts would benefit from coaching, especially to overcome the challenges of St. Mark's Church and occasional competition from other sound. It was discouraging to miss so much of the delivery of her opening monologue (written by Nik Owens) and other texts throughout the evening. Even so, the implied correlation, here, between the seductions of the American Dream and the seductions of social media feels undercooked and awkward. It felt both necessary and unnecessary to try to tune it in, both sad and a relief to let go and tune it out.

Live performers: Kayla Farrish, Dorchel Haqq, Emilee Harney, Kar’mel Small, Mikaila Ware

Film collaborators and crew: Alexander Diaz, Kayla Farrish, Dominica Greene, Kerime Konur, Rebecca Margolick

Lighting: Carol Mullins
Costume collaboration and design: Athena Kokoronis

The New Frontier (my dear America) Pt. 1 concludes its run this evening, Saturday, with an 8pm performance. For information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (and Second Avenue), Manhattan

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Melanie George reflects on (re)Source, new performance from Maria Bauman-Morales

Maria Bauman-Morales performs (re)Source.
(photo: Kearra Amaya Gopee)

I celebrate the abundance of this essay by guest writer Melanie George on (re)Source, a new immersive dance work by Maria Bauman-Morales co-commissioned by BAAD! and The Chocolate Factory. The solo premieres at BAAD! in its BLAKTINX 2019 series on September 25 and runs nightly through September 28. For more information, click here.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Getting By, Getting Through, Getting Over, and Making it:

Reflections on Maria Bauman-Morales’ (re)Source

by Melanie George

(re)Source is a work of blood and bone, of muscle and memory. It only lives in Maria Bauman-Morales, and will likely only ever be performed by her. In part, because it is an improvisational work, but also because the specificity within the thematic content – America, race, family, identity – can only be assembled by way of her understanding of her origin story and place in the world. She is tethered, literally and figuratively, as she navigates and negotiates her relationship to space, memory, and family lore. Her body is an interpreter of stories, individual and collective, detailed through the supple facility of her movement, and open curiosity of her gaze. I hesitate to use words like earnest and confrontational, as, too often, we associate them with the absence of complexity and nuance, but to deal with race in America is be smothered in complex nuances. The willingness to do so openly (but not fearlessly because our history with race is overflowing with the consequences of fear) is to be vulnerable and critical, for performer and audience. I find the work to be one of meaning-making, not statement-making. In her multi-hyphenate identity – as a queer, woman of color, artist, educator, anti-racism facilitator, womanist, wife, daughter, citizen – her sociopolitical values are realized and transparent so as to not to be proclamations. Lived truth and embodied identity speak volumes.   

As I attempted to locate (re)Source in contemporary art making practices, Maria pointed me toward the work of Amara Tabor-Smith, and her theory of Conjure Art. In Conjure Art, there are no boundaries between the spiritual and artistic practice. In fact, they serve as reciprocal conduits within the process of art-making. In defining the practice, Tabor-Smith explains, “Conjure artists believe in the forces of nature such as ancestor spirits, gods and/or deities found in indigenous cultures and recognize these energies as the guiding forces in their art practice.” Through the improvisational score that comprises much of (re)Source, we experience conjuring in real time. On multiple occasions in rehearsal, Maria noted that her deceased father had joined her during runs of the piece. This is not metaphor or allusion. In crafting (re)Source Maria makes room for her elders and ancestors to dance with her and through her, to receive impulses that guide choice-making during the performance. I was particularly struck by adaptation of Doug Varone’s “room reading” exercise to prepare to rehearse. As her line of inquiry is steeped in exploring non-proscenium spaces, she is negotiating her relationship to the stage and inquiring about the role of agency on uneven terrain. Her practice is guided by relationships to people, to environment, to identity. So, of course, there is a need to engage with all of these things before diving into the dance. 

For those inclined to over-academise the art-making process (I, too, can be guilty of this), the identification of Conjure Art is fundamental to receiving (re)Source as it is intended, rather than applying erroneous models to interpret it. Please note my identification of the academy. This is purposeful because of its predisposition to valuing Western-normative art-making models, and its function as a gatekeeper in our field. What does it mean to accept this work on its own terms? What is our role and responsibility in engaging with this dance? First, we must allow the artist to define the landscape of the work. In (re)Source, Africanist elements are centered, as is the importance of storytelling. This must be the terra firma from which we start our journey with the piece.  Maria is highly conversant in several dance languages. Chiefly, she values the weight, rhythm, dynamism, and spirituality that we recognize as essential to an Africanist movement lexicon. Her training in capoeira informs her movement vocabulary and is instrumental in her strength and use of space.  Additionally, she employs elements of movement abstraction that we associate with the choreographic tools of post-modernism. In her work, I see the intersection of multiples ways of knowing and claiming contemporary dance. Within one movement there may be a composite of physical textures, alternately competing and co-existing. In centering the names and stories of her ancestors - purposely keeping black folks present and visible in the work -  she is also centering her art-making practice. All are resources toward the making of the work. All are valid and do not require defense.

(re) Source is not a sentimental work. Maria may be conjuring her ancestors, but she is doing so in the age of Trump, Brett Kavanaugh, and the rising tally of Black trans women’s deaths this year. There is little time for sentiment when you’re gathering your tools for survival. She sees (re)Source and her family history as “a microcosm for race relations” in this country. Within that history are black and white relatives, and white relatives that owned enslaved black people. Maria reckons with the weight of that knowledge through movement and text, and aligns it with the jarring shift in our political climate since the ascent of Donald Trump as a political figure. There is great responsibility in telling personal truths about one’s family. Maria endeavors to make the labor visible, but in doing so she does not wallow in the impact of that labor. Instead, her role, part oracle and part griot, is to synthesize the contrasting content into a locking archive. The set, which functions as installation, immersive theatrical design, and interactive playground for the performer, is both obstacle and portal. A series of interwoven strings and chairs resembling a human sized cat’s cradle, the bonds can be tenuous, supportive, pliable, or binding. Alternately highlighting positive and negative space, they function as a metaphor for taking up space, holding space, and moving through it. The seating arrangement interlocks so that perspectives are varied, but no one sits alone. Interdependence is also a theme of the work. Though it is a solo performance, through conjuring and the seating arrangement, Maria is never, truly dancing alone. (re)Source invests in telling truths about race. By design, the audience is implicated in her navigation of this content.

“Resources are tools. I want to make transparent that 

‘I am because we are’. 

I have resources because people have gone through worse.”

• Maria Bauman-Morales

Though I am writing about (re)Source, I feel it is important to note Maria is developing this new piece concurrently with another evening-length work, Desire: A Sankofa Dream. The processes for the productions are not related. Solo vs. Group. Fantastical vs. Non-linear Improvisation. Personal history vs. imagined biography. Though they are wholly individual works, the continuum between the two productions encapsulates a core underpinning in Maria’s artistic identity: Interconnectedness and the continuum between the intrapersonal and interpersonal. It feels significant that she is working on these dances concurrently. The duality of honoring the individual and the group is an Africanist element that is a resource for how she makes meaning in the world. This speaks to a larger, overarching theme in her work: Life as practice, and an embodied investment in the survival and thriving of black and brown folks. The processes used in the making of her art are enacted in comparable ways in all areas of her life, notably through her work with Urban Bush Women’s BOLD program (Builders, Organizers and Leaders through Dance) and as a facilitator of Anti-Racism training with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. The various roles Maria plays an artist-activist are not discreet from each other, they are in dialogue, as she is openly and actively in dialogue with us.

Melanie George is an educator, choreographer, and scholar. She is the founder of Jazz Is… Dance Project, and the Audience Educator and Dramaturg at Lumberyard Center for Film and Performing Arts. She is honored to be the Dramaturg for (re)Source.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Days of Black Future Past: Black Rock Coalition at The Met

Above: Sandra St. Victor
Below: Shelley Nicole
Black Rock Coalition: The History of Our Future
Metropolitan Museum of Art
photos: Paula Lobo

"Black music has been the taproot of every significant movement in rock music. Sadly, the vast majority of Black artists in rock have been erased from the historical narrative or relegated to footnotes."

--Darrell M. McNeill

When you imagine venues to host one of the badbadbadass-iest rock concerts of all times, do you think of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art?

Mmmhmmm.

Well, think again, because you missed Black Rock Coalition: The History of Our Future, a MetLiveArts show designed to demonstrate that Black people not only did rock first but they did it best, do it now and have no intention of stopping. Under Darrell M. McNeill's creative and musical direction, the famed Black Rock Coalition Orchestra and featured guests rocked that house last night with a steady roll. All walls and pedestals should be checked for damage.

Named for BRC Orchestra's 1991 album, the two-hour show started off with the pumping Sly Stone hit "Dance to the Music." That funk functioned here like it did when it was new back in 1967--a sure-fire commercial success for David Geffen's CBS Records and, in 2019, an icebreaker like no other. Though the predominantly white Met Museum audience needed the initial permission to dance to the music, as the evening sped along, folks required little prompting to get up on their feet.

The stage of the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium was packed, side to side and front to back, with instruments and artists including a revolving cast of standout featured performers--among them, Nona Hendryx, Toshi Reagon, Stew, Carl Hancock Rux, Living Colour's Vernon Reid and Corey Glover and, led by a commanding Sandra St. Victor, The Family Stand reunited. Yoruba chants and drumming, spoken word, jazz vocals, traditional work songs, gospel tunes, rock and roll and straight-up rock presented a stream of Black genius, all telling a story of determination, improvisation, spiritual depth and lust for life in the face of a long, long stretch of rough times under white supremacy. Times are still rough; the music persists and continues to do its work.

"So what is rock and roll?" Hancock Rux asked, "We begin with juke joints, and women loving women...." He went on to say it's rooted in "trying to find our way home."

Each performance--like vocalist Everett Bradley's unquestionable authority on both "Dance to the Music" and Louis Jordan's "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie"--felt like a sturdy home and one connected, at the foundation, to every other home. Places of rest and reflection, generous nourishment, everyday miracles and jubilation. Hendryx, above all others, took all my heart with witchy renditions of the jazz classic "Afro Blue" and, later, an unexpectedly expanded and capacious "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." She enters a song at unusual angles, spies just the right, clear path, then guides you through as intensity builds. Reagon quietly took up and met the challenges of Curtis Mayfield's bleak "When Seasons Change" with agility of voice and soul. Stew, with David Barnes on harmonica, updated Bo Diddley's "I'm A Man," making a statement on toxic masculinity from the White House to the church house, from FOX News to NPR. And it was just pure fun to watch Glover rock out again to "Cult of Personality," the show's closer.

An historic one-night only event. So, if you didn't catch it, bummer! But if you love rock, you can still check out Play It Loud: The Instruments of Rock & Roll, at the Met through October 1. Plan your Met visit here.

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Featured Artists:

Nona Hendryx
Fantastic Negrito
Vernon Reid, Corey Glover (Living Colour)
Toshi Reagon
Stew (The Negro Problem)
The Family Stand
"Captain" Kirk Douglas (The Roots, Hundred Watt Heart)
Carl Hancock Rux
Ronny Drayton

Black Rock Coalition Orchestra:

Darrell M. McNeill (bass)
LaFrae Sci (drums)
Howie Robbins (keyboards)
Elenna Canlas (keyboards)
Marcus Machado (guitar)
Marvin Sewell (guitar)
Gordon "Nappy G" Clay (percussion)
V. Jeffrey Smith (saxophone, flute)
Don Byron (clarinet, saxophone)
Bruce Harris (trumpet)
JS Williams (trombone)
Sophia Ramos (vocals)
Shelley Nicole (vocals)
Bruce Mack (vocals)
Everett Bradley (vocals, percussion)
Kelsey Warren (vocals)
David Barnes (harmonica)
Mikal Amin (vocals)

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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The Bessies: honors to Joan Myers Brown and Louis Mofsie

Joan Myers Brown

The NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies, New York City’s premier dance awards honoring outstanding creative work in the field, has announced the recipients of two special awards to be given out at its 35th annual ceremony on October 14.

2019 Bessie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Dance:

Joan Myers Brown, Founder and Artistic Director of the Philadelphia Dance Company (PHILADANCO), in recognition of decades of choreographic influence on and support of the work of Black American dance artists.

Louis Mofsie

2019 Bessie Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance:

Louis Mofsie, Director of Thunderbird American Indian Dancers, whose work has kept Native American dance forms alive for generations of young people.

Join the celebration at Skirball Center for the Performing Arts on Monday, October 14 (7:30pm). Get information and tickets here.

See the full list of nominees and previously-announced awards here.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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