A Very Long Week!

Wow, I'm sorry I haven't updated in so long! This week has been intense...I just finished four shows in the past two days, and have had rehearsal until 11pm almost every night before that. So please darlings, do excuse me if my writing has been a little...sparse. I have much to share but really I don't know where to start! So I will start with tonight's show, which is fresh in my mind.

Contradiction Dance had an amazing performance of Objects of Hope: The America Project. It was a part of a benefit concert for a belly-dancer named Adriana, who needs to get knee replacement surgery but came up $5000 short in funds. Two of the dancers in the community organized a benefit concert and raised the money she needed, and sold out all 230 seats!

The program was very mixed, we were one of a few contemporary dance pieces, mixed in with a lot of belly-dancing and ethnic dance groups. The stage was teeny tiny but we gave it our all and did our best in such cramped quarters. I think that the changes we've made this time through really strengthened the message of the work, and the audience was engaged and present and really "getting it" all the way through.

At one point in the last section of the piece the other dancers pour five buckets of topsoil over my head and then wrap me in the American flag...this was the first time we had actually done a run of the piece using soil, and it got in my eyes and ears and mouth and for a while it was hard to see but I just kept going...finished strong and the audience loved it. We made people cry...and got a standing ovation at the end, which was lovely. With a politically motivated piece like this, I always tend to prepare myself for the worst (ie: a really conservative audience getting angry or offended) and hope for the best. In this case, we definitely got the best. Lots of positive feedback afterwards, which is always so great to hear.



I should have a video of the performance at some point, but probably not for a while. If you want to see the first draft version of this piece, click through to Kelly's blog (performed at the DC Improv Festival a while back). This version featured Meghan Bowden, getting drenched with buckets of water (the soil was a substitute, because cleanup was supposedly easier than mopping up water...). I actually think that in this space, the soil was probably more visually effective than using water. But it was hard to tell from the inside of the piece. The next version will have us falling and rolling in red white and blue paint on stage, and then the paint being washed away by splashing buckets of water.

Messy work, but fun...I am excited to finally show the work on a real stage, in a theatre, with lighting and sound technicians and lots of space and the full prop requirements. We will be doing a residency at St Mary's College in December, performing on their stage every night and possibly teaching classes during the day.

I feel like I am all over the place lately, in a good way...our show on Friday was Broadway Jazz at the Ritz Carlton (oh, such funny backstage pictures!) and the two shows this morning were site-specific performances at the Takoma Park Community Center with the Dance Exchange. Next week I will be assisting Peter Dimuro in remounting Gumdrops and Funny Uncles, a Dance Exchange project celebrating families of all kinds. More on all of this to come soon. Believe it or not I am actually getting some of my evenings off this week, so I will have more time to write!

Sometimes I am amazed at the ability of my brain and body to multitask as much as I need them to...

Photos from the DC Improv Festival version of Objects of Hope: The America Project, courtesy of Anthony Hytt.

Contradiction Dance: Objects of Hope: The America Project (First Draft)

So this isn't going to be the most creative post, because it is almost midnight and I have to get up early for company class tomorrow...but I really want to let everyone know that I'm performing with Kelly Mayfield's company Contradiction Dance, at the Martin Luther King library in downtown DC, tomorrow at 6:00pm! And everyone that's reading this who is in the DC area should totally come and see me! Here is the info, cut and pasted from the email because I am lazy.

I will be back soon with a more thoughtful post about the work, and my role in it.

Performances:

Objects of Hope: America - First Draft

Part of the DC Improvisation Festival

Friday, Sept 28th 6 pm

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library

901 G Street NW

Washington, D.C. 20001

http://www.improvfestival.com/performance_schedule.html

FREE!!

Save the Dates:

October 20th, 6pm

Objects of Hope: This Voice

Tribute to Adriana

Tickets? contact: Mitra@NileDanceStudio.com

December 5-8th 8pm, 9th 2pm

Objects of Hope: Planet

Dancing on the Earth

Tickets? Box Office at 240-895-4243 (ext. 4243), or e-mail: boxoffice@smcm.edu

Objects of Hope:

I NEED YOUR HELP!!! Yes, that's right, you... all of you. This project, Objects of Hope, will be a movement, sound, and visual display of our personal objects of hope. We all have them, they are all personal, and they are quite different, sometimes rare, and truly wonderful. However, we barely talk about or celebrate them. Last year was a look back in order to move forward... well, it's time to move forward. Join me.

Please respond to the following questions as you see fit. (pictures/drawings/sound/words/movement/etc.)

1. What are your objects of hope?

2. Why? Is there a particular story for any or all?

3. How do you celebrate/remember your Objects of Hope?

4. Anything else to share?

Many thanks for your time and willingness to share your experiences. Please request anonymity if you desire it. This project will include your stories, those shared by youth in both studio & outreach settings, college students, friends, family, and strangers. Who knows where this path will lead... forward as you like.

About Contradiction Dance:

Contradiction Dance is a place where theatre meets dance meets pop-culture. The company's vision is to make dances that report on, reflect, and question the world in which we live. Nurtured on the belief that artists and audience members communicate in a dialogue through the chosen medium, Contradiction Dance fosters discussion, reflection, and change through live performance and dance education.

Founded in 2006 by Artistic Director, Kelly Mayfield, Contradiction Dance blends several dance forms (modern, hip-hop, tap, and jazz elements) with aspects of storytelling, and theatre. This eclectic mix, fused by the direct purpose of theme, allows the company to create an exchange between art and life for audiences, performers, and collaborators. The company members are not simply dancers, they are artists; each contributes greatly to the process and the final product. Each has invested in their message, the desire to share it, and the study, practice and performance of the craft they bring to Contradiction Dance. For more information or to book a performance, workshop, or master class, please contact: Kelly Mayfield at contradictiondance@mac.com.

Hello LDSS Dance Students!

Tonight I found out that the dance students at Lakes District Elementary School (Burns Lake, BC, Canada) will be using this blog as a resource for their class - every week they'll be trekking up to the computer lab to read updates and watch the videos, and hopefully I'll be able to broaden their view of what constitues dancing, and who is able to dance, and also help them to see that a professional dance company doesn't have to be stick-thin girls with long legs wearing leotards.

I have my mom to thank for this, she runs the dance program at LDSS, my alma mater. I've been working with her class for the last two years in a row. The first year I set an evening of work on them called Blinders. It revolved around the theme of social blindness, about seeing (or choosing not to see) the truth about the world we live in, and making the next choice to stand up for what we believe in. It was a multimedia work that incorporated a lot of students - live musicians, video projections made by the computer/digital arts class, student choreography, all kinds of stuff.

Last year, I brought two friends (two of the three girls that make up our collective, 30Toes) up to Burns Lake to help me set another evening of work - this time, about this history of hair as a social and political statement. We each took a couple of sections and workd with the kids to create a dance based on variations on this theme. Some of the songs were more serious, some were humorous, some were more technical...we were working with kids from all different backgrounds, so we had a lot of variation in the final show.

My section was sourced from the cutting of children's hair in First Nations residential schools earlier in the 20th Century. For those of you who may not be familiar with the history - In the early 1900's, the American government shifted their genocidal policies from extermination to assimilation of Native peoples. Instead of endorsing massacres, forced relocations and the destruction of villages and food supplies to solve "the Indian Problem", they decided to "kill the Indian, not the man". This translated into a systematic descrution of Native Americans' spiritual, cultural and socioeconomic systems, replacing them with White values while keeping them in a perpetual state of poverty and disposession. Almost an entire generation of Native children were ripped from their homes and communities and placed into Catholic residential schools, where they were stripped of everything identifying them as Indian. Their hair was chopped off, they were forbidden from speaking their own language, from engaging in traditional spiritual practices, and often forbiden from seeing their families for months, even years on end.

*As a side note, hair also played a large part in the "Indian Wars" of the 18th and 19th century, as American governments on the local, state and federal levels levied "scalp bounties" on any Indian hunted down and killed - man, woman or child. The Scalps were taken to prove that a kill had been made. Often other body parts were taken as souveniers. Bounties often ran upwards of $100 per adult male scalp (adult males were usually defined as 12 and over, women's and childrens' scalps were less profitable). Many private citizens' organiztions also paid scalp bounties in the attempt to clear the land of any and all Native inhabitants. This happened to some extent in Canada, but was not nearly as systemic.

Burns Lake and the surrounding area has a very large First Nations population, many of whom were in residential schools or are children of parents who grew up in these institutions. There is also a very large part of the community who are descended from the "settlers" that stole the land away from its original inhabitants - the Gitksan and Witsuwit'en peoples who were forced into small reserves, often arbitrarily placed far away from their traditional villages and huntung/fishing territories. I wanted to draw on this past and present power dynamic, engaging the community's collective experience to create a piece that was relevant, poignant and evocative. I wanted to create something that would make people stop and think.

During the process, we used a few of the Toolbox exercises in creating the choreography. I started by researching text - excerpts from interviews with elders from the area who had gone to residential school as children - and asked the students to pick a few words that stood out for them. We then used the Movement Metaphor and Equivalents tools to come up with movements from the chosen words. We used these movements to Build a Phrase (another Dance Exchange tool), then experimented with different combinations of text and movement. (Click on the links for a full description of these tools) Eventually we ended up with a duet and a small group piece. For the group piece, we also made use of some traditional Native songs, and the duet was in silence.

I was so impressed with their creativity and enthusiasm for the project. I wish I could have seen the final production, but by then myself and my friends were back in Vancouver. I heard that it went really well. They had an amazing reaction from the community, just like they did the year before - my mom said that people were still coming up to her, months later, to tell her how much they enjoyed the show.

I'm excited that they'll be following me through my experiences here in DC - hopefully I can inspire them to "reach for their dreams" (as cheesy as that sounds) just like I am continually reaching towards my own.

Photo: The Dance Exchange core company rehearsing Lemkin (a section of Small Dances About Big Ideas, another work about standing up for truth and justice) for the upcoming Charter Oak performance. Photo date: Sept 11th, 2007.

For more perspectives on the politics/sociology of hair, here are some interesting links:

Dangerous Hair
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
Nappy Hair
American Anthropological Association Statement On Race
Nappy Hair: A Marker of Identity and Difference

For more information on Indian Residential Schools and related subjects, here are some links:
The Crucible of American Indian Identity: Native Tradition versus Colonial Imposition in Postconquest North America (Churchill, Ward)
Suppression of Indigenous Sovereignty in 20th Century United States(Churchill, Ward)
Gathering Strength: Canada's Will to Reconcile, Recover and Repair
"The Circle Game": A Review

If you've never read Churchill I recommend his work wholeheartedly, I'm reaing his book "A Little Matter of Genocide" right now and it's...making me very sad, and angry, and frustrated at the history of the supposedly "Civilized" Western nations, and the disinformation/misinformation/Orwelian doublespeak that is perpetuated to this very day.

This project is something I'm interested in revisiting at some point, creating a work that will that will have a longer-term research/generation/development period and will involve more of the community.