Artists Reach Out: Ananya Chatterjea

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

Ananya Chatterjea

Ananya Chatterjea
(photo courtesy of Ananya Dance Theatre;
by Laichee Yang)

Ananya Chatterjea in Mohona (2013)
(photo courtesy of Ananya Dance Theatre,
by Paul Virtucio)

Ananya Chatterjea’s work as choreographer, dancer, and thinker brings together Contemporary Dance, social justice choreography, and a philosophy of #occupydance. She is artistic director of Ananya Dance Theatre, a Twin Cities-based professional dance company of women and femme artists of color, and co-founder of the Shawngrām Institute for Performance and Social Justice. Her “people-powered dances of transformation” proceed through concert performances and participatory performances in non-traditional spaces where audiences become co-creators of movement explorations.

Ananya received a 2011 Guggenheim Choreography Fellowship, 2012 McKnight Choreography Fellowship, 2015 Sage Outstanding Dance Educator Award, 2016 Joyce Foundation Award, 2018 Urban Bush Women Choreographic Fellowship, and a 2019 Dance/USA Artist Fellowship. Her work has been recognized for its delivery of “political theater” with seldom-matched “level of commitment and charisma” (City Pages, 9/18/19). Chatterjea is currently creating Dastak, a dance-theater work exploring borders, boundaries, home and belonging, with the support of an NPN Creation Fund, NDP Production Award, and a two-part MANCC Residency.

Ananya Chatterjea in Trikone,opening performance at Ocean Dance Festival,
Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh
(photo: ©Asif Muhammed Musaddeque, 2019)

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

I was creating a new work about borders, home, and belonging, an ambitious, interdisciplinary project. The creative process, where we were joined by the fabulous Sharon Bridgforth (dramaturg) and guest artist Spirit McIntyre, was roaring along. This rich collaborative time was abruptly halted by the virus. The premiere was originally scheduled for September 2020, and we had a great touring circuit set up. All of that now hangs at the mercy of this virus’ wrath.

There are other projects, one in collaboration with the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts for instance, that I was looking forward to (April-May). Now, I have no idea what will happen to these. We have been able to keep our artists on salary as was scheduled from April, but if the work does not premiere in September, I do not know what we will do. Also, my work thrives on energetic connection with the audience, and builds in engagement with audiences, so the idea of sharing the work via live streaming is difficult.

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

My mother, who grew up through the anti-colonial struggles in India and could not fulfill her dream to learn dance, introduced me to the art. As I grew up, I fell in love with dance, and had the opportunity to study with some amazing gurus. Yet, all around me were the women’s movement, movements demanding caste/class justice, and political street theater critiquing state violences. They pulled me away from my training in classical and folk dance forms and pushed me into an investigation of what social justice choreography might be.

Reflecting on my practice today, I can say that my commitment to social justice taught me choreographic finesse and pushed me to create a feminist, contemporary dance vocabulary from my training in Odissi, Mayurbhanj Chhau, and Vinyasa yoga. Today, my practice is moved by the brilliant ways in which Black and brown women and femmes forge liberation and joy.

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

At this time, more than ever, I am practicing dance as lifeforce and as articulation of spirit. I am trying to prepare my body externally (through different kinds of physical training) and internally (through spiritual work) to be strong and in community, so dance can resist the new waves of capitalist co-optation that are following this pandemic.

I am acknowledging that the ensemble practice of rhythmic cycles cannot be adequately supported by Zoom transmissions: the time lag disappoints our hearts repeatedly. So when we prepare to build this devastated field back up again, what will we make sure to attend to?

I am paying attention to how the pandemic has intensified existing injustices. I am witnessing images of energetic engagement--nurses standing still in the midst of angry protesters in Colorado, of a 12-year-old girl walking 150 km to get home only to die of exhaustion in Chhattisgarh--and reflecting deeply on transformation. I am asking myself, how will I dance differently now?

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

I care about dance for life’s sake, for the crossing of power and poetry, and to share rhythm, space, and vision, with my comrades. I am even more convinced that dancing that works through energetic connections, fine rhythmic intersections, and communications from the tips of our fingers and our eyes, will always be failed by neat rectangular boxes of visuality.

So, if there are limited or no occasions to share dancing with live audiences until 2022, how can I ready myself for that moment? What stories, what dark recesses and failures, what journeys towards light, can we uphold with utmost care at that time? Living through this pandemic and re-understanding the privileges of water, soap, Internet, space, is helping me chisel my choreographic craft and consider carefully the labor of carving and nurturing space of dancing stories that will be urgent at that re-convening.

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

There is dancing that flows through huge amounts of space. There is dancing that roots down and works details in groundedness. Might there be equity in taking up just the amount of space that is necessary to articulate an idea? Might there be lessons of generosity and equity in refusing to participate in the games of social media popularity?

The stillness and attention to detail we practice now will deepen our resilience for the time when we, dancers, will become part of the “essential workers” team and are needed to sprout hope and advocate for justice in our communities.

The work that I was creating has already taken on several more dimensions through this time. I can only do them justice if I remain quiet right now, listening and expanding my capacity to dance them simultaneously and intersectionally.

Briefly share one self-care tip that has special meaning to you now.

Gratitude is a practice.

There are lessons in the abundance of sunlight.

If I shift the focus of footwork practice to engaging the pelvic floor deeply, then I chisel one skill AND protect my knees instead of not practicing footwork due to an unsuitable floor.

******

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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Chicago's Deeply Rooted brings "INDUMBA" to BAM Fisher

Dominique Atwood and Joshua L. Ishmon
of Chicago's Deeply Rooted Dance Theater in INDUMBA,
a work by South African choreographer Fana Tshabalala
(photo: Ken Carl)

How fortunate to be introduced to South African dancemaker Fana Tshabalala through his mighty ensemble piece, INDUMBA ("healing hut"), a 2017 work performed for the first time in New York by Kevin Iega Jeff's Deeply Rooted Dance Theater. The Chicago-based troupe completes its too-short run of this stunning piece this afternoon at BAM Fisher.

The hut in question here--evoking sites of African traditional cleansing and healing--takes shape through a semicircle of stools for dancers on the perimeter of a misty space illuminated by hazy shafts of light. Constructed of beautiful, golden wood, the stools are spare and look less than sturdy. Inside that simple boundary, dancers rise to propel themselves through angular, anguished gyrations and convulsions. These obsessive movements suggest horrors born of social conflict. At the same time, they suggest a ritual of pressure to rid body, mind and soul of these lingering toxicities.

Nicholas Aphane's driving music reaches inside any helpless viewer, evoking the violent, relentless churning of massive machinery. We first hear a vague, intermittent hum like a muted signal or something powering up. We don't anticipate its coming textures and caustic power. External, inhumane forces that have become internalized must, like demons, be exorcised. The "hut" itself--heartless but purposeful--nearly pulverizes damaged beings to render them safer for themselves and for their community.

Some of the drama involves two men--are they antagonists? brothers? actually one person wracked by warring forces within himself?--who clutch, grapple, twist and coil around each other as if they were made of the same skin. One shoves away and isolates himself only to later find himself in the other's grip once again. Likewise, a suffering woman turns from her brutal attacker only to find her "savior" treating her with equal brutality.

Tshabalala's research into the experiences of war-scarred Mozambique, as well as his observations of how apartheid's legacy impacts today's South Africa, informed the creation of Indumba. The work resonates for us, as well, in an America newly haunted by its nightmarish past and roiled by present-day hatreds and violence. If Inbumba is a dance, as described in DRDT's program, offering hope of "resilience and reconciliation," there's clearly nothing easy along that path. And its final image suggests not so much the soothing of terrible pain as its honest, open-throated expression.

Performed by Dominique Atwood, Pierre Clark, Shanna Cruzat, Joshua L. Ishmon, Rebekah Kuczma, Marlayna Locklear, William Robertson and Anthony Williams

Costumes: Alex Gordon
Lighting design: Sarah Lackner

INDUMBA concludes with a 3pm performance today with a post-show discussion moderated by Baraka Sele. For information and tickets, click here.

BAM Fisher
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 89

Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 89, Dies; Lifted Brazilian Film
by Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times, April 27, 2018

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Sam Hamill, 74

Sam Hamill, Poet, Publisher and War Protester, Dies at 74
by Daniel E. Slotnik, The New York Times, April 26, 2018

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Must see, last chance: Hadar Ahuvia at 14th Street Y

Above and below,
Mor Mendel (at left) and Hadar Ahuvia
(photos: Jakub Wittchen)

Maybe this has happened to you. You're watching a show and, before long, you're saying to yourself, Damn! Everybody needs to see this! That might occur after the show ends, but when it comes not too far into the hour or so, and that feeling just keeps building and building and building, well....

So, here we have "Everything you have is yours?" It's a fascinating, powerful evening by Hadar Ahuvia and her collaborators and co-performers Mor Mendel and lily bo shapiro, ending its too-short run tonight at 14th Street Y. The question in the title, Ahuvia says, was posed to her by an Israeli security official when she had her passport renewed. In her mind, the question takes a provocative twist.

It inspired Ahuvia to examine her Jewish and Israeli identity in a way particular to her role as a dance artist. She looked at how Israeli settlers of European Ashkenazi heritage (her background) appropriated native North African and Middle Eastern folk dances to solidify their sense of a strong, unified culture in a new homeland, and how, in turn, these numerous "Israeli" dances have been appropriated, watered down and YouTubed by conservative Christian Zionists of the US for their own purposes. If all of that sounds way complicated, didactic, and potentially inflammatory for concert dance, hang on a minute. Ahuvia and her friends do want you to think about all that, but they've got quite a few theatrical tricks to woo you.

The dances--which the three live performers and various on-video instructors demonstrate--have magnetic vivacity and charm. (Some of you, like me, might remember learning a few of these in grade school, back in the day.) But the entire production--created and attended to with meticulous care by Ahuvia's team--appeals not only to the mind but to every sense. Personal histories, cultural history; music; speaking and singing voices; projected photo and video imagery; dance movement, of course; little proffered treats of mint tea and fragrant tangerines; plus the invitation, at the close, to learn some steps and chat with the artists. Everything warmly invites us in--as living bodies-- and helps us stay present with Ahuvia's ideas.

This is a smart, witty, political and ultimately moving work filled with unexpected delights like shapiro's pitch-perfect segment of BBC-style voiceover narration and an alluring passage in which jeans-clad Ahuvia and Mendel overlap an impressionistically-blurred archival film clip of a women's ensemble--begowned, synchronized--performing the same dreamy sequence. The visual design by Gil Sperling (projections) and Kryssy Wright (lighting) obscures, breaks down and transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary, arguing for the undeniable power of the body in motion and our human, irresistible pull to celebratory dance that might or might not have originated with our own people.

Sound design: Avi Amon
Dramaturgy: lily bo shapiro
Dramaturgical support: Stacy Grossfield and Rowen Magee

"Everything you have is yours?"--a presentation of LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture--concludes its run with a performance tonight at 8pm followed by a post-show conversation with Franny Silverman of Kolot Chayeinu. For information and tickets, click here.

To read Hadar Ahuvia's guest essay about this work, "The Dances Are For Us" (InfiniteBody, January 10, 2017), click here.

14th Street Y
344 East 14th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Claribel Alegría, 93

Claribel Alegría, 93, Poet for Central America’s Voiceless, Dies
by Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times, February 6, 2018

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Meet your doom--maybe--with Split Britches at La MaMa

Above: Lois Weaver
Below: Peggy Shaw
Split Britches brings Unexploded Ordnances (UXO)
to La MaMa for its US premiere.
(photo: Matt Delbridge)

Unexploded Ordnances (UXO), a US premiere from famed lesbian theater duo Split Britches (Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw), takes inspiration from Stanley Kubrick's political satire Dr. Strangelove (1964). It works from a similar wackadoodle take on the threat of nuclear disaster within reach of itchy Twitter--I mean, trigger--fingers. A top-flight general (Shaw) is stationed by a desk and computer monitor where he keeps track of time and apparently takes calls from gal pals. Weaver, referred to by Shaw as "Madame Mr. President Sir," initially slumbers at a far curve of circled "Situation Room" tables. They communicate via landline phones, although sometimes the phone rings, it's not Weaver, and Shaw breaks into randy old pop songs.

The situation at La MaMa, then, is less tense than Shaw's tracking of the countdown clock might suggest. Yes, the show itself must finish by the end of sixty minutes, but Billy Ward and the Dominoes's "60 Minute Man" is one of those randy songs, and there seems to be plenty of time for studly Shaw to bop out to that. Yes, something must be done about the impending doom we're trying to track on confusing overhead monitors, but there's lots of time to field a council of elders from among the oldest of us in attendance. And, no, although lined up with other greyheads, I failed to make the cut.

Directed by Weaver and written by the pair with Hannah Maxwell, the show contains clever text aligned like precision-cut puzzle pieces (best delivered by saucy Shaw) and room for whatever unpredictables the elders might bring to the table. (One woman seemed obsessed with the mysterious whereabouts of one Tiffany Ariana Trump, offspring of Marla Maples and POS...oops, I mean, POTUS. Now that I think about it, Tiff does seem to have been out of the public eye for a suspiciously long time...hmmm.)

Unexploded Ordnances (UXO) is more chuckle-provoking and captivating than Kubrick--well, of course! it's lesbian!--with the additional benefit of encouraging the audience to determine not only how the play will go but also, you gotta hope, how the rest of our lives will go. Folks came up with some really good stuff!

Part of The Public Theater's now-closed Under the Radar Festival, and originally scheduled to end last weekend, Unexplode Ordnances (UXO) fortunately continues tonight, Saturday, at 8pm and Sunday at 4pm. For information and tickets, click here.

La MaMa -- Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East 4th Street (between Bowery and Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Hadar Ahuvia: The Dances Are for Us

Dance artist Hadar Ahuvia (left) with Mor Mendel
(photos, above and below: Cory Antiel)

Guest writer Hadar Ahuvia writes about the inspiration for her new hour-long dance work, Everything you have is yours? 

"This was the question an Israeli security official asked Ahuvia when she went to renew her passport. The question resonated with her as she considers her relationship to her Israeli heritage. Everything you have is yours? explores the construction of Israeli identity through the performance of Israeli folk dance--with attention to gestures appropriated from Palestinian and Arab Jewish traditions. Ahuvia’s investigation also explores the double-appropriation of Israeli dance by American Christian Zionists in their own pursuit of 'authenticity.'”

Hadar Ahuvia
(photo: Corey Antiel)

The Dances Are for Us

by guest writer Hadar Ahuvia

“Everything you have is yours?” he asks. “Kol ma she’yesh lach, hoo shelah?”

I empty my pockets—wallet, iphone, change—and pass my bag through the scanner. I say yes.

I was at the Israeli embassy to renew my Israeli passport. I needed it to return to the Holy Land—that sacred and pockmarked land--one my homes.

I would visit family, yes, but also join a delegation of Jews doing solidarity work with Palestinians in the West Bank.

In Hebrew, the irony of the familiar questions hit more forcefully.
Hebrew is my mother tongue, but waning usage does something naive and sometimes fruitful to my comprehension.

I know he’s asking “Did you take something, knowingly or unknowingly that might not be yours?’” I hear: Everything you have, that is for you, is yours?

There is an Israeli kids song:

“My land of Israel is beautiful and blooming.
Who built and planted it? We all did!
So we have a country, and we have a street, we have a song in the land of Israel.”

But grammatically it holds the meaning:

There is for us a country, the street is for us, the land is for us, this song is for us.

I add: the dances are for us.

And I did grow up believing it was for us, for me. The fruits at the market were for me to pick up smell and taste. The security was for me. The roads were for me to travel with my uncle, the archeological park was for us. So the gate and closure hours didn’t matter. The Roman ruins were for us, as we hopped the fence to walk down 2,000- year-old streets with disregard to the Palestinian villages that have survived in this frequently-hostile land for hundreds of years. The Romans are the ones who kicked us out anyway. That my students in the US have little connection to these enslaved and expelled Israelites of 2000 years ago still surprises me. It’s a testament to the diasporic focus of our Jewish pedagogy, and to the resilience of my Zionist upbringing.

I am the granddaughter of Eastern European settlers who founded Kibbutz Beit Hashita, where my parents and siblings grew up, a place we call home. It is also where the Palestinian village of Shatta used to be. We spent holidays on the kibbutz, where pageants of song and dance originating in the 1930s still took shape in the agricultural fields and the dining hall.  When we moved to Florida and then Hawaii, we continued celebrating and gathering with these particular Socialist Zionist symbols and Israeli folk dance choreographies.

Increasingly our home began to mimic the Arab essence that is claimed as fundamentally Israeli. Hummus, tahini, olive oil zaatar, pita, baklava. And beside the Palestinian shepherd salad, the syncopated dabke and Yemenite steps, Turkish and Druz inspired melodies of early Hebrew songs and their synchronous dances. These kept us marinating in a Mediterranean Israeli identity, our distinction from the American Ashkenazi diaspora encroaching on us-- ameripoop-- treacherously symbolized by applesauce on latkes.

We had the political freedom to enter and leave Israel and the US as we liked, though not the economic ability.  And because even this produced a profound longing, I could later easily empathize with the indefinite and ongoing exile of Palestinians.

On Israel’s Independence Day--May 15, 1948--Israeli folk dances seemed to “spontaneously” break out, thanks to the organizing of the Israeli Folk Dance movement and support from pre-state political organizations.  At Biet Hashita, the dancers had to overcome my grandfather’s faction, who refused to celebrate a partitioned Israel, who they thought of as “a stillborn child.”

Today, there are more than 8000 Israeli “folk” dances (most often not called “folk” any longer, but simply Israeli). They have been choreographed and disseminated continuously since the 1930s, mainly in white Jewish spaces. I danced them in Israeli elementary school and with family at far flung “outposts”--the Altamonte Springs JCCs and the Ala Wai Golf Course Center in Honolulu.

The Israeli folk dance movement was the enterprise of modern dancers, contemporaries of my grandparents, Jewish women of European descent, also known as Ashkenazi, who sought to become “Oriental” and native to their new surroundings. To embody Zionist/Israeli identity in Palestine, they appropriated steps from Arab Palestinians and Druze they observed in the valley where my family settled, and Yemenite Jews at relocation camps to which they were brought. The “new Hebrew dances” they made were used in the socialization of later Jewish migrations--Jews coming primarily from Muslim countries. They are known today as Mizrahim, literally meaning “Easterners,” treated as inferior by the Ashkenazi establishment. Today, the dances are choreographed mostly by Mizrahi men to Mizrahi pop songs--pejoratively called by some “songs of the central bus station.” The Mizrahim have been allowed to ascend within this social sphere, completing the self-orientalizing maneuver of the Israeli physicality. The dances still contain the vestiges of translated steps, steps that don’t just metaphorically mirror the appropriation of land but operate to justify the claim to land, to create and celebrate a national identity rooted in the spaces we depopulated and conquered.

One deadly claim of 18th- and 19th-Century European anti-Semitism was that European Jews had no culture of their own, no connection to land. No blood on soil. No authentic folk. And this soullessness, true of homosexuals and gypsies too, justified their extermination.  The chants at Charlottesville share a lineage with this race theory.

They would concur--nothing you have is yours.

European Zionist internalized these ideas and imagined that the recreation of ancient Israelite polity would solve the conundrum.

But here we are still posing the question--Everything you have is yours?--while grasping for the sense of security, ownership and belonging we coveted, that we obtained, and continue to violently maintain with the choreography of bodies, bombs, and borders.

So yes, this is all mine; it is on my person.

Each time I remake this dance--and I do each time we perform--I understand a little more clearly what our next steps might be. To ask what decolonizing the dances could be not just as a metaphor, but alongside the fight for Mizrahim and Palestinians to have the space for their steps to survive and thrive.

Hadar Ahuvia
(photo courtesy of the artist)

BIO:

Hadar Ahuvia is a performer and choreographer who makes work grounded in physical research and political consciousness. Raised in the US and Israel, she trained at the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance and received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has been presented at Judson, Dixon Place, CPR, BkSD, Danspace DraftWork, Movement Research Fall Festival, AUNTS, Catch, Roulette, NYLA and Eastport Art Center, and SPACE Gallery, Maine. Ahuvia has worked with Sara Rudner, Jill Sigman, Donna Uchizono, Molly Poerstel, Anna Sperber, Jon Kinzel, Stuart Shugg, Tatyana Tenenbaum, and Kathy Westwater. She is currently performing Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group. Ahuvia was 2012 DTW/NYLA Fresh Tracks Artist, a 2015 Movement Research AIR, a LABA Fellow at the 14th St. Y, and a 2016 Grace Paley Organizing Fellow at Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, and the recipient of 2017-18 CUNY Dance Initiative Residency.

*****

See Everything you have is yours?, presented by LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture at 14th Street Y, Thursday, February 8 through Saturday, February 10, all at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

14th Street Y
344 East 14th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Debra Chasnoff, 60

Debra Chasnoff, Whose Films Redefined Gay Families, Dies at 60
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, November 14, 2017

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Katie Lee, 98

Katie Lee, Folk Singer Who Fought to Protect a Canyon, Dies at 98
by Richard Sandomir, The New York Times, November 10, 2017

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"Confusing times" call for clarity: Discuss!

Judy Hussie-Taylor
Exective Director and Chief Curator
Danspace Project
(photo: Michael Kirby)

In these confusing times, why and how do performing arts presenters and curators decide what work to present in their season? What is the interplay of determining factors – sociopolitical climate, curatorial vision, audience trends, diversity, the bottom line?

--publicity text for "Commissioning and Presenting in Confusing Times," an Open Spectrum Community Dialogue presented by New York Live Arts and co-curated with Brian Tate of The Tate Group

"For some reason, I kept calling this panel Presenting in A Crisis," said moderator Judy Hussie-Taylor, introducing Commissioning and Presenting in Confusing Times, hosted by New York Live Arts last week. Her alternate title made more sense, really, since most of us in the arts are not at all confused. We're clearheaded enough to be damned angry.

That sense of specific, political outrage seemed elusive at this gathering of five of New York's most powerful curators and presenters--Lili Chopra (French Institute Alliance Française), Tim Griffin (The Kitchen), Kamilah Forbes (Apollo Theater), Jay Wegman (NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts) and Hussie-Taylor herself, an innovator who has made space for award-winning "Platform" programming at historic Danspace Project.

Referring to our current American moment as "a crisis, the turning point in a disease," Hussie-Taylor suggested that her panelists might tackle four questions:

• What needs to be explored?
• What or who needs to be honored?
• What or who needs to be challenged?
• What needs to be jettisoned?

Relatively new to their positions, Forbes and Wegman are both clearly still researching, experimenting and seeking their best path at institutions with, respectively, formidable cultural legacy (the Apollo) and conventional, somewhat muddled programming (NYU Skirball). Wegman--formerly, and famously, artistic director of Abrons Arts Center--was forthcoming about challenges he faces in replacing stodgy Skirball fare with something actually attractive to NYU students. To do so, he has let go of familiar acts that, as he put it, tend to do little but recycle their material. The 2016 election re-energized his focus, inspiring him to produce more adventurous events such as an appearance by author Ta-Nehisi Coates and the U.S. premiere of a controversial Palestinian play, The Siege.

All the panelists expressed, to one degree or another, dedication to supporting artists and putting artists' needs and concerns at the center of operations--with all the practical complications that can entail. Forbes argued that the job of the institution is to be the locus of transformation and a vehicle for creating the "21st Century canon." But, for the most part, I must say I walked away still questioning how this might be achieved, not just at the Apollo, but elsewhere in what is arguably the arts capital and most progressive city of our nation.

Even in New York's dance and performance community, we are still looking at citadels of power in need of the knowledge, skill, insight and visionary courage of more women and more people of color. The expertise and talent, which I witness regularly, are out here in abundance....and not in the least in a state of confusion. 

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Africa is contemporary: Tarpaga's night at Harlem Stage

Scene from Declassified Memory Fragment at Harlem Stage Gatehouse
(photos above and below: Marc Millman)

Director/choreographer Olivier Tarpaga (foreground)
performs in Declassified Memory Fragment

Only one night to see Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project at Harlem Stage Gatehouse? How is that acceptable?

If Olivier Tarpaga's Declassified Memory Fragment (2015) had a longer run, he and his all-male cast of notable dancers and musicians would be such an edifying, exhilarating treat for New York's contemporary dance fans--and everyone else. Tarpaga--whose company is based in both Burkino Faso and Philadephia--seems tired of being labeled "contemporary" as if dance made in and exported from Africa in recent years needed a special designation distinct from the folkloric, tribal work with which we, in the States, are much more familiar.

In a post-show Q&A with choreographer and filmmaker Gabri Christa, Tarpaga declared, "It's important to to know: Africa is contemporary." In other words, Get with it, New York! We're here! With Nora Chipaumire, Faustin Linyekula, Dorothée Munyaneza and the Senegalese Mother of It All, Germaine Acogny, gracing our stages and museums in recent weeks, we're getting a right schooling in this subject this season. As Christa noted, so much of this art is "based in African tradition but also free of it."

The hour-long Declassified Memory Fragment, presented in partnership between Harlem Stage and 651 Arts, has a real-world political context--intrigue and upheaval in Burkino Faso, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe--that Tarpaga began to relate during the Q&A. It's a knotty history, and I suspect I was not the only one finding it tricky to focus on and follow. But suffice to say, for now, the dance takes off from the idea that power grabs and secrecy destabilize both democracies and human relationships. Tarpaga's stagecraft does the better job of illustrating the latter--personal rifts and reconnections--through dazzling vocalization and prop work and, in particular, unusually intimate, symbolic duets. What two competitors sharing and tangling a single slim suit jacket can do and signify is amazing.

Mystery and laughable absurdity dance cheek to cheek in this work. A third dancing partner--beauty--is in the warm, twangy, bluesy music and the poetry of the work's visual graces. It's worth noting, too, that in its design and its masterful execution by dancers Ousséni Dabaré, Aziz Dermé, Jérôme Kaboré and Adonis Nébié, Declassified Memory Fragment broadens any notion of what it means to be masculine, to be African and masculine, and to dance as an African man. And it does so in a matter-of-fact way that we can't help but see, absorb and, if we will, admire.

Music: Olivier Tarpaga in collaboration with musicians Flatié Dembelé, Boubacar Djiga and Daouda Guindo

Declassified Memory Fragment has closed. For information on future events at Harlem Stage Gatehouse, click here.

Harlem Stage Gatehouse
150 Convent Avenue, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Women and trauma: Munyaneza's "Unwanted" comes to New York

Above: Holland Andrews (left) and Dorothée Munyaneza
perform the New York premiere of Unwanted
at Baryshnikov Arts Center.
Below: Munyaneza
(photos: Maria Baranova)

When women rise to speak difficult truths, we are told to sit down and shut up. When Black women rise to speak difficult truths, we are told to sit down and shut up. When Black African women....

Now here comes Dorothée Munyaneza (Compagnie Kadidi) who, as a child, escaped conflict-torn Rwanda, speaking of what men do to women and girls in war, same as it ever was. This woman will not comply. She will tell terrible stories told and entrusted to her by Tutsi women survivors and their children. In Unwanted, she joins American singer Holland Andrews, raising lacerating banshee voices against genocide and rape, raising angelic voices to embrace all in need of comforting.

The two figures emerged like shamans from the grim darkness of the theater at Baryshnikov Arts Center where Unwanted had its New York premiere over, sadly, just two evenings. Audience members had reached BAC, walking streets with views of the imposing towers of a newly glittery midtown West. Taking the elevator up to BAC's third floor and entering the theater felt like being sealed deep in a cave with healers intent on confronting you with everything you try best not to see. And sounds--Andrews' looping electronic artistry--came to you from all directions and temporal dimensions.

Many observers, it seems, are surprised to find the multi-talented Munyaneza so grounded and assured in her physical presence, so sophisticated in her aesthetic vision. Unwanted is only her second work of choreography; she was the talk of last year's Under the Radar festival for her first, Samedi Détente. But she is clearly an artist who knows her mission, mind and powers. There's more to come from this one, and in singer-musician Andrews--who cites Aretha Franklin, Björk and Diamanda Galás among her dearest influences--she has a fierce partner of equal authority and efficacy.

Choreography, in this case, covers all the ways the body reacts and responds in an environment of impossibility and possibility. Munyaneza's head and torso sharply recoiling from the words she has just hurled into a microphone as if receiving an answering blow. Or her body flattening itself against the portrait of a woman affixed to a tall slab of corrugated tin, like the metal sheeting of a humble roof. Or her fingers feverishly clawing that same painted image into shards of paper waste, needing to destroy every patch, every trace, before she can rest. Or the performers' bodies mobilizing their entire force, lashing phallic clubs against the ground or rhythmically, violently pounding them into vessels. It is, yes, also the breath traveling from its home in the chest to receiving air, carrying histories of violation, humiliation, refusal and isolation. Channeling stories of women who tell themselves they are alive and look around, each day, for something to laugh about. It is in the story of that laughter which, surrounded by unquestionable sadness, still declares "I am here. I stand my ground."

Music: Holland Andrews, Alain Mahé, Dorothée Munyaneza
Visual design: Bruce Clarke
Set design: Vincent Gadras
Lighting Design: Christian Dubet
Costume Design: Stéphanie Coudert

Unwanted is closed. For information on other Baryshnikov Arts Center fall season events, click here.

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Native feminist troupe Spiderwoman is 40! Party!!!

Spiderwoman Theater's Gloria Miguel (Kuna/Rappahannock)
with daughter Monique Mojica
(photo: Nicky Paraiso)

Spiderwoman's Muriel Miguel (Kuna/Rappahannock) at left
with Oneida-Oswegan songwriter Lacey Hill
who performed at the celebration.
(photo: Star Black)

LU! LU! LU! LU! 

An Evening Celebrating Spiderwoman Theater’s 40 Years

On Tuesday evening, La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre hosted a warm, down-to-earth gathering of family, friends, colleagues and fans of Spiderwoman Theater in tribute to the renowned troupe's 40-year milestone. Founded by three intrepid sisters of Kuna and Rappahannock lineage--Gloria Miguel, Muriel Miguel and the late Lisa Mayo--Spiderwoman is fundamental to the development of New York's avantgarde and feminist theater movements. With forthright, woke politics of resistance and bawdy, boisterous humor, the Spiderwomen have long been revered role models for generations of artists on the downtown scene like Taylor Mac, Peggy Shaw, Lois Weaver, Alessandra Belloni and Carmelita Tropicana who participated in the celebration and benefit.

The fun evening was capped by a dance party presided over by First Nations electronic group A Tribe Called Red.

Musicians Ian Campeau, Tim 2oolman and Bear Witness of
A Tribe Called Red working the after-party
(photo: Star Black)

SiverCloud Singers
(photo: Star Black)

On screen, Spiderwoman's Lisa Mayo (1924-2013)
remembered at La MaMa
(photo: Star Black)

Laura Ortman of the all-Native Coast Orchestra
and Brooklyn's Stars and Fleas
(photo: Star Black)

Above: choreographer Elizabeth Streb
with Carey Lovelace (Loose Change Productions),
co-producer of the Spiderwoman benefit
Below: Zach Morris and Tom Pearson, co-artistic directors of
award-winning Third Rail Projects theater troupe
(photos: Star Black)

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Janusz Glowacki, 78

Janusz Glowacki, Polish Playwright of Terror and Dark Humor, Dies at 78
by Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times, August 22, 2017

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Dick Gregory, 84

Dick Gregory, 84, Dies; Found Humor in the Civil Rights Struggle
by Clyde Haberman, The New York Times, August 19, 2017

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Heathcote Williams, 75

Heathcote Williams, Radical British Poet Who Helped Form Anarchist Nation, Dies at 75
by William Grimes, The New York Times, July 5, 2017

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Magdalena Abakanowicz, 86

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Sculptor of Brooding Forms, Dies at 86
by William Grimes, The New York Times, April 21, 2017

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Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 83

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Poet Who Stirred a Generation of Soviets, Dies at 83
by Raymond H. Anderson, The New York Times, April 1, 2017

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Act now! Brittany Williams launches challenge to arts leaders

OPEN CALL AND RESPONSE

TO ART AND CULTURAL-ART ORGANIZATIONS

TO STEP UP AND PUSH BACK

by Brittany Williams (choreographer/dancer; movement organizer)

The urgency for artists, art organizations, art-cultural organizations, gatekeepers, and funders to come together to collectively activate, strategically plan, and organize is greater now more than ever. Arts, culture, and creativity, for the next four years, will play a vital role in the creation of self-sufficient governing infrastructures for black and brown communities that can boldly push back against President Trump.

The start of January marked a new year and a new beginning like no other. President Trump’s inauguration has kicked off Trump’s first 100 days mandate. Trump's mandates burst open a dark wound of state-sanctioned violence, creating a new era that digs up the dark ancestry of the birth of the American nation built on white privilege and terrorism against people of color. It is a wary time for Muslim, LGBTQI, and black and brown communities as well as women, immigrants and First Nation indigenous people. This new era of white male militant-patriotic, racist, hegemonic fascism is blended up and embedded in nearly every single person recruited to join Trump's cabinet, and it has many citizens in fear and scared for their very lives.

However, I would like to encourage us in the art field to take some time to reflect and then actively get involved in constructive action. The need for artists, cultural leaders and art and cultural organizations to deeply invest in a racial and economic justice model is critical because all communities including white America will depend upon it. White people and white cultural institutions and leaders, it's time that you get your hands dirty in the struggle. It is time to put aside fragility and dive into fugitivity. It's time to put your whiteness on the line and organize your people. We need maroonage. The requirement for white fugitivity and maroonage is self-examination and a full investment in black liberation.

Definitions:

Maroonage historically refers to those independent societies formed by African slaves who escaped from the plantations during slavery. Many of these communities rose to become independent city and state republics that had to be recognized by white colonial powers. Many partnered with indigenous Native American nations. There were dozens of successful Maroon settlements all over the New World throughout the 300 years of chattel slavery. In modern terms, maroonage refers to the creation of sovereign self-sustaining institutions independent of the state and the dominant powers that be. These institutions by necessity have a special relationship to the 'Indigenous' and the concept of the 'Local' whilst having a global sense of context and work. The idea of being disconnected and sovereign from the dominant culture is important as it leads to decisions of self- sustainability, integrity of vision, and larger ideas of communities of like minds.

White fugitivity refers to the conscious physical, mental, social or institutional abandonment of the dominant culture by a member of that same culture.

Maroonage and fugitivity as a commitment requires that cultural leaders, arts organizations, funders, gatekeepers internally invest in temporal reform with incremental steps to dismantle their own internalized white supremacy structures, hierarchies within their organizations to ensure racial equity, economic sustainability for black and brown people. In short – white artists, cultural and art organizations and funders have long benefited from black bodies, arts, creativity and communities and if you are really about change it is time that you pay in full your debt for the use of our property, bodies and brilliance. We need reparations in form of dismantling your own racist practices, sharing of wealth, and or funding organizations, allies in cultural leaders who have done this work for years, and also we need you not to be the leaders when making decisions for us (black and brown artists and communities).

This call is for you to do more than create space for us to heal, to do more than give us space to talk to other artists about the issues we are facing. This is a call to change and most importantly disrupt the power dynamics. This call is for cultural leaders, art-organizations, funders, and gatekeepers to do more!

Here are my following questions:

•    Do you, as people who hold power in the arts, have a clear analysis of what is at stake going forward?

•   What are your goals in ensuring the safety of the people made most vulnerable by the Trump election?

•    What are you willing to give up, share, and restructure within your organization that will make a positive impact in the lives of black and brown people, immigrants, Muslims, women (black and brown women), LGBTQI people--today, not tomorrow or next week?

We need this type of commitment to these communities and artists of color and immigrants.

REFORMING CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS AND DISMANTLING THE CULTURAL SYSTEMS AND COMPONENTS THAT UPHOLD, SUPPORT, AND ENGAGE IN WHITE SYSTEMIC STRUCTURES THAT BENEFIT WHITE MEN AND WOMEN:

When we look at the boards and staff compositions of most cultural organizations, the majority are white men and women.

The local Arts Agencies 2016 Report on Staff:

Staff and volunteer demographics at the average LAA2:

•    83 percent of staff are non-Hispanic white,

•    6 percent are black/African-American,

•    4 percent Hispanic and other races constitute 7 percent.

Board:

•    Ninety-five percent of LAAs have a board of directors, commission, or another type of oversight group.

•    Of those, less than one in three have written diversity policies for their boards.

•    29 percent of LAAs have a written diversity policy for their board of directors.

•    46 percent consider diversity in their board operations but have no written policy.

•    25 percent do not take diversity into consideration when recruiting members.

Staff and board members are vital because they are the people making collective decisions. They are the gatekeepers. We need to hold them accountable for their expertise and how they are building relationships and challenging donors and foundations when it comes to how we collectively build power- and disturb power as well. They are hired to be "the experts." However, coming from a racial justice lens, I would like to challenge this "expertise," because I deeply believe if we want to make a collective change, we need people with power and resources who are most impacted by the targeted circumstances. We do not need white people's dreams of "reciprocity" or "benevolence" to be the "giving mechanism" married to a perception about black and brown people which label their communities and limits them to these labels. Labels such as “disenfranchised,” “poor,” “youth at risk,” “crime prevention targets,” “no culture,” and “illiterate.” Ya, feel me?

HOW CAN WE CHANGE THIS NARRATIVE?

How can we change this practice and these ways of culturing within the art field? Simple. Put those that are closest to the problem in the position to conjure solutions! They are the experts. In need of power and resources. This is an open challenge to all art institutions.

MOVING FORWARD I WOULD LIKE TO RAISE THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

•    How can we use this call and response to create a coalition of art and cultural organizations, funders, and gatekeepers to look at their own internalized/external system practices and make a commitment to change their practices and ways of culture to create leadership roles for more than one black and brown person in their organization?

•    How do organizations, funders, and gatekeepers collectively build collective power with black and brown people to create agency and access to authority roles and resources?

•    How can art and cultural organizations, funders, and gatekeepers create accountability structures--to the community and to each other-- to reform and or dismantle white supremacy within their organization?

SUGGESTION: SET A PLAN IN ACTION OVER Trumps Next 100 days with short-term goals and incremental markers for the next four years and 10+ years.

•    What can you do right now to re-imagine and implement racial equity and sensibilities that in turn liberates resources needed for and by artists and communities that will become most vulnerable under the Trump administration?

•    How can cultural organizations and funders find an equitable solution to address the needs of black, brown, LGBTQ, Muslim artists facing white supremacy hegemony, racism, xenophobia, and the haunting history of America?

•    What role do we all play in this change?

The Bessie Awards call for organizations to restate their mission and values publicly to the Trump administration was a great effort, but this is not the time to state your claim or disassociate from racism and hegemony. Patrons, this is the time to do some introspection and fix it! We do not need a public statement; we need short term, long-term plans/platforms to ensure safety! We you to stay in the frying pan! We need radical risk-taking, fierce gatherings, and collaborations to rehabilitate, protect, and empower communities. We need real spaces of marronage.

This is epecially timely, since the next report out will find art organizations more racist now than 10 years ago.

Please do take my words to heart because, at this point, I have everything to lose--including my chains, friends, loved one, job and community.

And if you made it to the end of this article and you are really about dismantling and standing as an ally for black liberation from a creative racial justice lens, please fill one of the forms below.

Black and brown individual or organization (Please note: you do not have to be located in New York city or the US to sign on) interested in signing on to the document, fill out this document:

https://goo.gl/forms/z7vwoQgsod6VYZjE2

Gatekeepers, funders, arts organizations, cultural leaders interested in shifting your power dynamic within your organization, please fill out this document:

https://goo.gl/forms/cDAeMuhI29t7PvXk1

Warm regards and with love,

Brittany Williams

Founder |Executive Director | Dancing for Justice

Founder |Obika Dance Projects

Core Supporting Team: 

Rubadiri Victor (Trinidad & Tobago)

Michelle Murray (Miami FL)

Preach R Sun  (Detroit)