Uplifting Black choreographers: Gesel Mason

Gesel Mason
(photo: Enoch Chan)

Whoops!

Showing up 45 minutes into a concert because I, somehow, had the wrong curtain time just feels awful. More awful is when it's a historic, keenly-anticipated program like Gesel Mason's No Boundaries: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers.

I missed nearly everything in the first half of the show--works by Bebe Miller, Kyle Abraham and Donald McKayle. <<sound of critic kicking self--hard and repeatedly>> I managed to slip in at a break to catch Rennie Harris's You Are Why! (2014) and watch Mason dance the hell out of it alongside Lisa Engleken and Mahayla Rose. The second half featured works by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (Bent, 2004), David Roussève (Jumping the Broom, 2005) and a piece by Mason (No Less Black, 2000) with her poetry and MK Abadoo's solo performance. This program has been fifteen years in development and represents both a tribute to a diverse range of Black choreographers and an ongoing gift to dance's future.

Happily, the entire program--a presentation of Gesel Mason Performance Projects, co-presented by 651 ARTS and RestorationART at Brooklyn's Billie Holiday Theatre--will be accessible through the digital archive Mason plans to establish to preserve the legacy of Black artistry in dance. The documentation, just like the concert, will include personable video interviews of the choreographers, revealing the context for understanding how these artists saw and felt about their works when first created and how they view them now.

But try to get to the Billie Holiday tonight-- the show's final evening--for so many, many reasons. Among them is Jumping the Broom with its chilling imagery, prescient warning and the heartbreak of Mason's performance. In the short amount of time he allows himself, Roussève not only conjures vivid scenes in our imagination, he taps our empathy and our sense of foreboding. It is dance as an act of conscience, responsibility and courageous love.

Of course, I cannot speak of Mason's dancing in all of the program's pieces, but I do know she should rank high on your list of artists who jump into the fire of a work with the nimbleness and rigor to survive its flames. She's all up in the Zollar solo (an edgy, dissonant portrait of the extreme state of mind in addiction) and the Harris trio (with its unrelenting movement multiplicities upon complexities upon multiplicities). It's almost unbelievable that she would--and could--program demanding works like these two on the same bill as the Roussève piece. She says, now, that she will never do this again--herself, personally, though the works could be danced by others--and that much is believable.

But, for now--at least this evening--you've got a chance to see a great one at the height of her powers. Go!

For information and tickets to tonight's show (7pm), click here.

The Billie Holiday Theatre
At Restoration Plaza, 1368 Fulton Street, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Gesel Mason: Body and Soul podcast

Dancer-choreographer Gesel Mason--of the DC-area based Mason/Rhynes Productions and Gesel Mason Performance Projects--discusses her wide-ranging work on behalf of diverse artists and audiences, as well as her celebrated project--"No Boundaries"--featuring historic and contemporary dance by Black choreographers such as Donald McKayle, Bebe Miller, David Roussève and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar.

Program notes--http://infinitebody.blogspot.com. Guest info at http://www.mason-rhynes.org and http://www.gmasonprojects.com. (c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

MP3 File

Program Notes: Upcoming on "Body and Soul"

Gesel Mason--award-winning dancer and choreographer based in the DC metropolitan area--brings passion for community, communication and justice to all of her provocative work on behalf of the arts, particularly artists of color. On the eve of the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States, we spent an hour in a wide-ranging discussion of issues affecting dance artists and audiences as well as exploring how she is helping to honor and preserve the work of generations of Black choreographers--from Donald McKayle to David Roussève--through her No Boundaries project.

Links: Gesel Mason Performance Projects and Mason/Rhynes Productions

Gesel Mason is Co-founder and Artistic Director for Mason/Rhynes Productions and Gesel Mason Performance Projects. Ms. Mason has performed with Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, toured Germany with the Repertory Dance Theatre of Utah, and was a member of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange from 1996-2000, where she continues to perform as a guest artist. Ms. Mason’s solo project, NO BOUNDARIES: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers, includes the work of Donald McKayle, Bebe Miller, David Rousséve, Reggie Wilson, Andrea Woods, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. The project received a National Dance Project Tour Only Grant for 2008/09 season and two Metro DC Dance Awards in 2007 for Outstanding Individual Performance and Outstanding Overall Production – Small Venue. She has also worked with Alison Chase, Sardono Kusumo, Jacek Luminski, Victoria Marks, Susan Marshall, Peter Pucci, Doug Varone, and Ralph Lemon in the final installment of his Geography Trilogy: “Come home Charley Patton”.

As an educator she has taught all ages and abilities and has been invited as artist in residence at schools and universities across the country including Texas Women’s University, University of Utah, Columbia College, University of Maryland, University of Maryland at Baltimore County, and Virginia Commonwealth University. Ms. Mason received a Maryland State Arts Council Award in 2001, 2004 and 2005, an Arts Council of Montgomery County Artist Fellowship in 1999 and 2005, was selected Emerging Choreographer by the Bates Dance Festival in 2000, and received 2007 Millennium Stage Local Dance Commissioning Project from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Dallas Black Dance Theater, Eisenhower Dance Ensemble and Sandra Organ Dance Company have commissioned Ms. Mason’s award winning choreography, among others, and her work has been presented at Joyce SoHo, the Fort Wayne Performing Arts Center, Diverse Works in Houston, 651 Arts in Brooklyn, Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts in College Park, MD, as part of the International Contemporary Dance Conference and Performance Festival in Bytom, Poland, DanceAfrica, and the International Association of Blacks in Dance. For more information visit gmasonprojects.com.

Black and Boundless: Gesel Mason and Faustin Linyekula

As a young dance student, fan and developing writer, I straddled the dividing line between firmly-defined, traditional modern dance (Graham, Ailey, etc.) and experimental postmodern dance. I remember how confusing and even upsetting it used to be for some audiences and critics to see Black dance artists color outside the box and explore uncharted territory.

DC-based dancer-choreographer Gesel Mason forthrightly addresses that moment in time and its lingering issues with her video-and-dance presentation, No Boundaries: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers, presented through tonight at Joyce SoHo.

Mason's program features works by provocative choreographers from different generations--Donald McKayle, Reggie Wilson, Bebe Miller, David Rousseve and young Samantha Speis--and includes her own solo, No Less Black (2000). Interspersing video clips of these artists and others talking with Mason about their work provides both helpful context and charm. Wilson cheekily reveals what he likes about being a choreographer--"organizing and telling people what to do." Later, when asked pointblank for a definition of Black dance, Wilson drops his head and laughs. Miller--like Andrea E. Woods, who appears in the video but does not have a work in the show-- expresses a lack of interest in people's assumptions about how she, as a Black woman, should make dance. Jawole Willa Jo Zollar considers the work of Miller and of the early Bill T. Jones (with his partner, the late Arnie Zane) and detects the influence of Black culture where other observers might be prone to see only avantgarde edginess. McKayle notes that no one is ever asked to define what, if anything, white dance is.

The evening's highlight is Mason's harrowing and heartbreaking performance in Rousseve's Jumping the Broom (2005). This solo overlaps the stories of a lynching victim clad in her wedding gown and a proud, hopeful lesbian couple turned away at the last moment from City Hall.

Mason's project, running for just two evenings, deserves to be seen again and before sold-out audiences. First of all, it's rare in New York to see work by several keenly innovative Black choreographers showcased on a single program. Let's have more of this. Second, Mason's bright skill, enthusiasm and sense of fun serve her aims well. (How to Watch a Modern Dance Concert or What in the Hell Are They Doing on Stage is the name of one piece she has performed in Washington, DC for last year's version of No Boundaries.) She's clearly an artist on a mission but one who does not wear out her welcome.

Congolese dancer-choreographer Faustin Linyekula of Les Studios Kabako--who debuted Festival of Lies at BRICK Arts/Media/Bklyn this week--also concludes his run tonight. This is another show that deserves a return engagement. Using the format of a late-night ndombolo party--with a cabaret set-up featuring food and drink for purchase and hot, irresistible music by the band Asiko--Linyekula and his performers mix cool, impeccable design, cool but increasingly engaged performance, storytelling, projected text from political speeches, installation-style props and somewhat-edgy audience participation for an evening of mostly oblique and sometimes direct critique of lying politicians. Yes, the text--projected off to the side on the wall above the band where it's quite easy to ignore--comes from the mouths of Linyekula's countrymen but, given who's been ruling Washington lately, Americans can certainly relate.

The show runs way over two hours, including cast and audience dancing together at the end. Some of it feels excessive, less than necessary. But the music--swift as river rapids and as unrelenting--rocks steady, and the movement of the Damballah-pliant dancers--Linyekula, Papy Ebotani and Djodjo Kazadi--amid continuously-rearranged flourescent light bulbs is almost always fascinating. And Linyekula brings a message that Gesel Mason would surely endorse--that a people must ignore how they are defined by others and take back the power to define themselves. Let's dance!

(c) Eva Yaa Asantewaa, 2007