Artists Reach Out: Brother(hood) Dance!

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Brother(hood) Dance!
(Orlando Hunter Jr & Ricarrdo Valentine)

Orlando Hunter Jr (left) and Ricarrdo Valentine
(photo: Caroline Yang)

Brother(hood) Dance! is an interdisciplinary duo that seeks to inform its audiences on socio-political and environmental injustices from a global perspective, bringing clarity to the same-gender-loving African-American experience in the 21st Century.  Orlando Hunter Jr and Ricarrdo Valentine have been presented domestically and internationally at FiveMyles, B.A.A.D! (Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance), Danspace Project, New Waves! Dance & Performance Institute (Trinidad & Tobago), Viso Festival 2016 (Mexico), Universidad Veracruzana-EEE (Mexico), Jean Rene Delsolins Institute (Haiti) and more. Brother(hood) Dance! was formed in April 2014 as a duo that researches, creates and performs dances of resistance and liberation.

Ricarrdo Valentine (left) and Orlando Hunter Jr
(photo: Ramy Mam)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

Yes, we are currently working on Ricarrdo’s senior plan project at Marlboro College, which will also be a new work for Brother(hood) Dance! There was supposed to be a gallery showing of his photographs and a live performance of La Abuela Negra en el Armario/The Black grandma in the Closet.  However, the work had to be re-imagined in a photobook and dance film, for now. In addition, Brother(hood) Dance! was supposed to perform Afro/Solo/Man for Gibney's Replay platform in June, and our residency at Bates Dance Festival was cancelled. As of now, we are in the process of re-envisioning and honing in on the details of Brother(hood) Dance! now that Ricarrdo will be an undergrad in May.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

Ricarrdo: Dance has always been with me since I was a young boy gathering my mother and grandmother into the living room for one of my performances. With such enthusiasm for dance, I entered Eliot Feld/Ballet Tech in the 3rd grade, riding the yellow school bus back and forth from Crown Heights to 890 Broadway. This foundation in institutional learning led me to dance with Dancewave Kids Company, Alfred Gallman, Christal Brown, Edisa Weeks, Germaul Barnes, André Zachary, Ni’Ja Whitson and other fly Black artists in the dance field. In April 2014, Orlando and I co-created Brother(hood) Dance!. We’ve been exploring dance, photography, and community building ever since. Now that I will be graduating from undergrad in May, I will be honing in on my photography practice and have developed more photo books and photo series.

Orlando: I remember being taught how to dance in my living room by babysitters, seeing photographs of my parents as (Chicago) steppers, dancing at family reunions, doing dance performances with the Jerry Gamble Boys and Girls Club, dancing with Unlimited & Next Level Drill and Dance team in Fairview Park, and having my own dance group called Sota Souljaz from middle school through my sophomore year of high school. These were all experiences where family and friends encouraged me to follow what I loved to do. In the western sense of studio training, my junior and senior year of high school, I attended Perpich Center of Arts Education and furthered my dance education at the University of Minnesota, where the integration of spirit, dance and social engagement was lit by my guru and one of my dance mothers, Ananya Chatterjea. Today, I am proud to have Brother(hood) Dance! as a reflection of how the people who were a part of those foundational experiences can witness their community investments within my work.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

We are practicing embodying great depths of self-love to facilitate spaces where others may find the same. We are envisioning an integrated space of dance, photography, and agriculture where Black artists and artists of color can develop their creative ideas, as well as have a hands-on-the-land experience so that they can produce grounded and conscious art making.

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

As artists centering Blackness in all we do, our practice allows us to rest, heal, listen, and create a future that lets the next generation be free through arts and agriculture. We care a lot about creating a comfortable space for authentic living and human transformations. Our care is to make sure marginalized folks do not go invisible and forgotten.

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

We created a piece in 2016 called how to survive a plague, and here it is 2020, and it serves as a blueprint of sorts for care-giving with check-ins, healing with herbs, aromatherapy, music, touch, deep and meaningful conversations, and dealing with the hard stuff. These are practices we have embedded within our artistic life to ensure thriving and surviving in an ever-evolving time.

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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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Sharing, surviving: Black men dance at Danspace Project

Damon Green performs at Danspace Project in
Working on Better Versions of Prayers: Volume 1
by Chicago dancemaker J'Sun Howard
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Ricarrdo Valentine, above,
and below with Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr.
of Brother(hood) Dance!
in how to survive a plague
(photos: Ian Douglas)

Demonstrations, marches, sit-ins/die-ins/love-ins, rallies, prayer: are there alternatives to these forms of protest that we can employ to generate positive change? 

For his presentation at Danspace Project, Chicago's J'Sun Howard asks this question and offers a possible answer in a trio for Black queer men entitled Working On Better Versions of Prayers: Version 1. Is Howard's result actually a better version of prayer?  Of protest? That's never clear but, choreographically, this dance is easy on the eyes.

Dancers D. Banks, Damon Green and Will Harris mark off an uncluttered space in which, from the start, we can focus on the lyrical fluidity of their movement--a flowing reach and unfurling, a cursive squiggling and twirling and twining that, while accelerating or embracing flourishes of basketball or hip hop or voguing or West African movement, never loses control or its through line. Howard writes with an aesthetically conservative hand. He is a lover of beauty and of the beauty in these dancers, presenting them subtly, sympathetically and with utopian vision--the world he wants to see.

One moment alone appears disruptive--a dancer's brief, frustrated interaction with part of the decor and his partner's intervention. This second dancer's role presents interesting questions: Is he helping his mate? Or is he restraining him? And then, near Howard's conclusion, comes the mystery figure (Green) emerging with face obscured, head enveloped in a leafy bush strung with Christmas lights--a remarkable, if cryptic, image.

In a “reverential gesture to lost ancestral artistic dreams,” Hunter and Valentine seek to venerate the Black African bodies that were exiled from the urgency of care and shunned by their communities and government [during the HIV/AIDS pandemic].

Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr and Ricarrdo Valentine--the Black gay couple who are Brother(hood) Dance!--now have built how to survive a plague, a popular feature of Danspace’s Platform 2016: Lost & Found, into a work of enhanced, operatic proportions. Their aesthetics call for so much sensory engagement--and, yes, overload--you might expect the generous sights and sounds to be joined by offerings of food and libations. No such luck. But we did get to sample the aromatherapeutic artistry by Nicole Wilkins. I thought I caught a waft of something minty at one point, and then something else, pleasant enough but unidentifiable.

Ultimately, the sexy and ecstatic ritual of how to survive a plague is, I think, an invitation to take what we need by way of self-care. In that context, what works for one, in one moment, might not work for another, and many things will compete for your attention. You will find exuberant dance (with superb technique, always) overlapped with poetry and humor and glorious singing and visuals and kooky-fun costuming and booming voiceovers and, for a precious few, a chance to get up and shake your body. Trickster Eshu and Mother Kali share and dance this Carnaval, neither exactly shy and retiring types. I thank these deities--and more--for the audacity of Hunter and Valentine and look forward to whatever they bring us next.

Vocals: Starr Busby
Costume design: Shane Ballard
Lighting Design: Carol Mullins

Shared Evening: Brother(hood) Dance! & J'Sun Howard continues tonight and tomorrow at Danspace Project with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

SPECIAL NOTE:

Nicole Wilkins recommends arriving hydrated for the best possible experience [of the aromoatherapy]; water will also be available during the show. If you have any questions or concerns please call the Danspace Project office at (212) 674.8112.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr.: Receiving our spiritual nourishment

Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr.

is a choreographer who researches, illustrates and creates

 from an African-American male perspective. 

In his work, he tackles issues resulting from 

a capitalistic imperialist patriarchal white supremacist system.

(photo by Ricarrdo Valentine)

***

Love & Forgiveness: I am really interested in the social function of love and forgiveness. I question a society that calls itself a “Christian nation” yet remains at odds with the practice of that very philosophy. I’ve found that love and forgiveness in this society is derived out of a white heterosexual patriarchal religious structure. In order to receive these vibrations (because we are humans and understand frequencies i.e. feelings, hence the use), according to the dominant socio-religion you have to assimilate to the specific ways in which love and forgiveness is imparted to you. For me the concept of love and forgiveness is found in the humanity of my mother’s and grandmother’s hands. Where do we receive our spiritual nourishment?

Collard greens and Corn bread go together like love and forgiveness an ancient healing practice. Most of us forget the ways in which we’ve fucked up. Our mothers and grandmothers, and this a general statement, are always there fueling us since birth. It’s up to us as growing citizens of our communities to look at these finite yet very embodied experiences of love and forgiveness as tools of resistance. I ingested the magic of my mother and grandmother, becoming realized, knowing that in order for me to pass through this plane of existence I’d need to learn how to love myself and forgive myself and reciprocate that with others. How do we become active in love and forgiveness? Let’s cook more, sharing the warmth of our souls with hungry hearts and stomachs.  

-- Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr.

how to survive a plague

by Brother(hood) Dance! 

(Ricarrdo Valentine and Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr.)

Danspace Project at St.Marks Church

Platform 2016: Lost & Found

Co-curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones and Will Rawls

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Who's falling for dance?

I attended two dance shows yesterday: Fridays@Noon at 92nd Street Y and New York City Center's Fall for Dance. I haven't been to Fridays@Noon in a long while, largely due to time and energy factors, but I'm glad I found my way to this one. Over the years, I have never taken in too many of the extremely popular Fall for Dance shows either, and that's because I've already fallen and I can't get up.

Who's falling for dance? And who's spending lunch break catching some dance on the Upper East Side?

It was a small, mainly "insider" dance audience at 92Y yesterday afternoon for Words and Images: Trebien Pollard, A Future Vision. Pretty much everyone voiced some version of these words: "I wish more people could have seen this program." Well, actually more people can, since 92Y has a recorded livestream, thanks to Paul Galando and his dance and new media fellows from NYU Tisch. So you don't have to take it from me, but curator Pollard and his colleagues Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Aimee Rials and Brother(hood) Dance! (Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr. and Ricarrdo Valentine) killed it.

Pollard's dance artists step up and acknowledge that dance, while maintaining rigorous craft, can make powerful contributions to the current discourse on race, gender, sexuality and justice. I greatly admire Hunter and Valentine's work. In the video and dance excerpt they showed from Black Jones, they continue to set a high bar for exploring facets of Black gay identity and threats to Black life and well-being. They get me with accomplished performance technique as well as with humor and tenderness. Pollard, draped in a long, black gown, approaches his solo, Never Not Broken, like a ritual priest. Inspired by Martin Buber's I and Thou and Claudia Rankine's Citizen, the work makes use of Rankine's text and stark, solemn imagery to establish a space where hard questions can be asked about the cost of living as one's true self in oppressive society.

Mercer and Rials were discoveries for me. The only white and only female artist on the program, Rials is a New York-based Tisch grad raised in Alabama. Her solo, Modif(her), draws from her sense of crossing strict borders whenever she goes home, adjusting her appearance to conform, not out of shame but out of genuine concern for her and her family's safety. Modif(her) crackles with tension, obsessiveness and watchfulness, all sharply contained and restrained in space. Mercer's performance (with "drifter and assistant" Johnny Chatman II) impressed me for the opposite reason: Despite also alluding to societal strictures and dangers, Mercer seemed voracious in his imaginative reach and energy.

For a schedule of upcoming Fridays@Noon events, click here.

The Friday night Fall for Dance show featured France's CCN de la Rochelle/Cie Accrorap (acrobatic hip hop), Australia's Bangarra Dance Theatre and Hong Kong Ballet, all bringing big, crowd-pleasing US premieres. Oh...and among those unfurling ensembles, one more act, a solo: New York's Ayodele Casel, holding down the City Center stage with her assertive and nimble tap style. ("I feel like Ray Barreto on the timbales!") But maybe I should look at this a different way, because no tap dancer ever dances alone. Casel may have appeared to be up there by herself, but she showed up with her tribe--the ancestral women tap dancers, like Jeni Le Gon and Marion Coles, who she honors in While I Have the Floor. Every other act on Friday's program sprawled out in time, maybe too much so. (Dance sampler programs aimed at new audiences should give us samples, not productions almost lengthy enough to serve as their own evening.) But, if I had my wish, it would be for more Casel and a broader sample of her musical powers. It has been a long time since I've seen her dance, and While I Have the Floor, with its outward focus on others and heritage, though admirable, was not satisfying.

Fall for Dance's affordability is a great deal for dance artists and dance fans on a budget. Its omnibus programming enables established dance fans to easily try out companies or genres of dance they've never before considered or to catch up with a production they might have missed. I hope it really does inspire folks to explore and support other shows. For the hardcore dance-goer, though--okay, for me, I will own it--the evening can seem long while devoid of meaningful context for each company's presentation. It feels like both too much and not enough. But here's one sure thing: The folks in the seats throw a lot of love back at that stage.

This Fall for Dance program continues tonight at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here. For information and tickets for programs running October 5-8, click here.

New York City Center
131 W 55th St (between 6th and 7th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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