Life as a Modern Dancer

Decisions, Decisions in BIG SALT

Emily Hansel, Mallory Markham, Katie Meyers, and Jessie Egbert. Photo by Summer Wilson.

Decisions, Decisions in BIG SALT

By Garth Grimball

“The doing is what seems hard. The having seems marvelous. But one doesn’t have a child, one does it.” So writes Sheila Heti in her autofiction novel Motherhood, dissecting the ambivalence and paralysis of choosing between motherhood and art; between giving oneself wholly to creation in two separate, unique forms. The Anata Project’s BIG SALT is doing -- it is a verb -- full action, full body. Premiering at Joe Goode Annex over two weekends, artistic director, Claudia Anata Hubiak, describes the work as “the clash between love and ambition in motherhood.” A mother herself, Hubiak drew inspiration from her own conflicts in valuing creative determination with birthing her second son.

A sense of division permeates the space before BIG SALT begins. The audience is split into two sections facing each other across the length of the theater. The dance floor is delineated by white lines into four quadrants. Choosing a side to sit feels less like finding a pleasing vantage point than staking a claim in an unknown conflict.

Five dancers -- Kaitlyn Ebert, Jessica Egbert, Emily Hansel, Mallory Markham, and Katie Meyers -- start the dance dressed in varying silhouettes of billowy white, standing in a line, swinging their arms back and forth. The arm swinging is a recurring visual motif, and collectively performed it feels like if a shrug could imagine itself to be more active: still listless and noncommittal but only just. The dancers lunge into competitive track and field starting positions and sprint across the space crossing one another and intersecting the imagined boundaries of the stage design. As they start and stop and change direction, the sprint devolves from a race against equal competitors to a rush of checkpoints in an endless to-do list.

The dancers slow and abandon the sprinter’s lunge for crouching into the floor. Four bodies are continually pulled down with lowered gazes by single down-stretched arms. Like tree trunks burrowing into soil to spread roots, the once swinging arms are now weighted and move with measured determination. Egbert contrasts the solemn ritual with a wild, frenetic solo. She is rootless and moves like the space is happening to her body. Every change in direction is outside of her control.

BIG SALT develops with detailed craft and smart editing. Visual metaphors and relationships morph and eclipse. Dancers lean, fall, grasp, and throw each other, exploring when support is a burden and when feeling someone else’s force is the remedy for being weightless. The arm-swinging returns around the halfway point. This time the dancers line up across center stage creating a barrier between the split audience. The unison swings break down and the bodies switch facings at uneven intervals. Newton’s Cradle comes to life, the motion begets motion, and the motion is the rhythm of waffling between two impulses. Not all thematic choreographic moments read so smartly. One dancer runs into a wall, another is pulled in different directions, and each feel like an easy pun. The literal undercuts the energetic build up in the movement.

The dancers perform with masterful technique and the awareness of a true ensemble. Hubiak harnesses the collective technical training of her dancers (Gaga, ballet, release) into a physical language punctuated by leg extensions, weighted centers, and crisp gestures. There is a frenzied section of dizzying and difficult partnering that breaks the spell of dancers’ focus. Every lift and lower is executed without hesitation, but there is the sense that when BIG SALT was constructed there was “the partnering section,” and the intention in the dancing feels different than the rest of the dance. The choreography is not lacking. Perhaps more time is required to build partnering trust that translates from the studio to the stage.

BIG SALT is true to its motive from beginning to end. And what an end Hubiak delivers. She avoids the explicit for the specific. There’s no dancer pantomime of infant care or hand-wringing at the struggle to create. The dancers fly and roll through the space in fast variations to glom en masse, repeatedly. Referencing the rooting from the beginning of the dance, four dancers are planted in space, arms floating above their heads, fingers twitching in search of stillness. Katie Meyers glides softly through this forest of decisions made. Doing is freedom from indecision but not from the repercussions of past choices. Ambition like parenthood is cumulative. Successes and failures build to form never-ending opportunities to succeed and fail. The Anata Project’s BIG SALT is a success.

 

Garth Grimball is a writer and dance artist based in Oakland, California. He is the co-director of Wax Poet(s), company member of Dana Lawton Dances, and performs regularly with Oakland Ballet.

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One Good Quote: BIG SALT with The Anata Project

Photo: Summer Wilson

In Fall 2017, Life as a Modern Dancer launched a new concept for post-performance discussion and writing. The goals are multi-fold:

• What are new ways to invite post-performance writing (since so few publications now print dance reviews, and there are fewer and fewer dance critics in the United States)?
• How can choreographers hear and read more from audience members about their impressions and experiences of dance events?
• Can we offer new mechanisms for choreographers to gather language about their work, to further their work and to promote their work? 

The premise is simple. If you experienced The Anata Project's production of BIG SALT at the Joe Goode Annex (May 30-31 and June 1, 7, and 8), please take a few minutes to leave a comment. Write down images, impressions, appreciations, and questions from the performance. These can be words, phrases, or a few sentences. 

We thank you for your time, support, and thoughtfulness. Here's to more dialogue, more reflection, and more writing on the dance performance experience. As choreographer Mariah Steele noted, we are "democratizing dance criticism."

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Peiling Kao Dances: One Body, Five Dances, Six Perspectives

Peiling Kao in Hope Mohr’s “Stay With Me." Photo by Marley Aiu.

Peiling Kao Dances

One Body, Five Dances, Six Perspectives

May 25, 2019

Dance Mission Theater

Peiling Kao's program note: “One Body, Five Dances, Six Perspectives is the first phase in my research on the postcolonial body in postmodern dance.”

Pithy program note. And dense. A program note that says, “I’m not gonna be ignored, Dan.”

I couldn’t ignore it if I tried because, you know, a PhD in performance studies cannot ignore the words “postcolonial” and “postmodern.” Nor the word “research.”

So while I make sure not to ignore the program note so my bunny doesn’t get boiled, I am also avoiding writing this as I write it because Jill asked me for a review and I don’t write reviews anymore.

But this is Jill we’re talking about. And this is Life as a Modern Dancer blog, best dance blog in the blogosphere. And this is Peiling Kao, one of the greatest dancers in the Western tradition I’ve ever seen.

[Skids to a screeching halt.]

I’ve been listening to a lot of John O’Donohue lately, the late Irish Catholic poet mystic. He says “the Catholic tradition,” “the Christian tradition,” “the Celtic tradition,” a lot and I know he knows that every tradition holds history and multiplicity and yet there’s that “the” all the time. So “the Western tradition” can mean a lot of things but I use it here (and then slam on the brakes) because Peiling is from Taiwan and trained in Chinese and Taiwanese dance along with Euro-American ballet, modern, and postmodern dance, so I guess we have “the Eastern tradition” too. But since there’s no one tradition in any cardinal direction, all I can say is Peiling’s the genuine article blasting through the definitiveness of the definite article.

To review: This is a review that fact checks the reviewer’s experience with the artist. If I’d had more time, I’d have talked with the five choreographers as well. But, alas, deadlines.

So—“the postcolonial body.” What does that mean beyond, perhaps, the body that comes into being after colonialism? In a pinch, I recommend turning to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) to define terms such as “postcolonial” because there’s not always time to snuggle up with Foucault, Said, and Spivak when writing 1000 words about a dance performance, even one that uses the term “postcolonial” in its program note.

And then—“postmodern dance.” Please refer to the Sally Banes/Susan Manning debate about this term that circulated in the academic journal TDR in the late 80s.[1] You will not find a definitive definition of postmodern in the dance context there, but you might enjoy the duke-it-out dance between dance scholars.

In conversation with my compANNion at the performance, I tried to explain my understanding of “the postcolonial body in postmodern dance” in the context of Kao’s performance. I made a lot of sense and sounded very smart. I said things like, “As a person from Taiwan, Kao is a (post)colonial subject because Taiwan has been colonized multiple times—by the Dutch, the Chinese, the Japanese—and is currently a contested state: PRC? ROC?”

[Lying through my teeth.]

I actually muttered something about Taiwan and then did some research on its history after speaking with Kao. I did say to my friend that Kao is trained in multiple dance traditions and several dancers of color are asking whether dance techniques that emerged in Europe and among European Americans in the US are particularly colonial in their impact on their bodies. I might have waxed on about how postcolonial theory contends that to know something in an epistemology grounded in imperialism is to have power over it and drily mused that Kao is clearly questioning postmodern dance’s discursive claims to a certain neutrality. Note how “post” doesn’t operate in the same way here: postmodern dance, especially of the Fenley, “analytic” (Banes) variety, loves concepts of purity, universality, and neutrality, whereas postcolonial theory claims there can be no neutral, every discourse comes from a position and has an agenda. Is Kao making a decolonizing move?

[Fucking grad school.]

I had to talk to Peiling because what does my body know about the postcolonial body? My body might know something about postmodern dance but as a white woman, I haven’t had to spend a moment thinking about whether my body has been colonized by it.

Over the phone after the show, Kao back in Honolulu, Kao told me that she has been thinking a lot about a question Gerald Casel has asked about whether a dancer’s body can be colonized by choreographic intention. “There are different ways to examine whether or not choreography is a colonizing force,” she said. “I don’t think of dance training and technique as colonizing forces necessarily—it’s a process of learning. We have to deal with power, as Gerald and I discussed post-show. If the commission comes from me, can we say I’ve been colonized? During the process, I felt like I was giving the power to those choreographers. I bow myself down, you tell me what I need to do and I will do my best, I’ll try again and again. In a collaborative process, a choreographer might see me as an equal power in the process—I’m giving you power and you’re also giving the power back to me.”

Shit! I forgot to mention that the concert was a solo show of five dances commissioned by Kao from five female choreographers: Betsy Fisher, Ming-Shen Ku, Molissa Fenley, Hope Mohr, and Christy Funsch. The postcolonial body in postmodern dance became a frame for the concert that Kao hung around the evening with resistance: “Presenting a solo show my intention can very easily be a showcase, just to see five dance pieces. Why does it have to be connected to an academic concept as a selling point?” I could hear her blush when I said she is a selling point all by herself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but what was Kao doing on stage? What did the dances look like?

Molissa Fenley’s “Artifact” appeared to operate as the navel center or origin story for the evening, though the two dances that preceded it, Betsy Fisher’s “Synapse” and Ming-Shen Ku’s “Liminal Turnings,” seemed to point towards an earlier era in modern dance when…

[Zzzzzzzz.]

Sorry, I dozed off because I’m so tired of making sense and being fair and giving enough information. If this were a real review and you, reader, had a chance to decide whether or not see this performance, if it had more than a two-night run, this is all you need to know: Kao’s dancing is flawless. There was neither a stumble nor a stutter. Every line was clear, every landing quiet, every balance rooted to the earth. In every piece but Fenley’s, Kao seemed to breeze through; even in Mohr’s at times Charles Atlas-strength-based choreography, Kao didn’t seem to break a sweat. In Fenley’s piece, she begins to glisten. The Cunninghamesque choreography is unforgiving—there’s no momentum to rely on, no music, no swirling costume. But this doesn’t make it neutral. Its geometries are geographies, space-times of another era. A white female—Fenley, Rainer, Brown—investigation of movement. And Kao dances in full mastery.

Mastery. The postcolonial question returns.

About midway through the evening, after having seen Kao run in circles several times I thought, “I could watch her run on a treadmill and be content.” Happily, Funsch provided a section in her work “California” that looked like treadmill running. In a square of light, Kao runs in profile. Her running is occasionally punctuated by missteps, jagged hiccups that looked almost like digital glitches. Moments of “California” were bathed in orange light and Kao, in her bear-hugging-the-state-of-California t-shirt, looked like a teenager. When she started talking about Asian American culture and the withering death of a bonsai tree, I wanted Funsch to have more time with Kao so a more fleshed-out version could make less tenuous the connections between California, Asianness/Asian-Americanness, and postmodern dance.

So, Yeats: “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” Despite the zillion times this line has been quoted in the context of dance writing, I’d never read the whole poem. Did you know this line is the last line of the EIGHT STANZA poem, Among School Children? And that the poem has next to nothing to do with dance? Bear with me as I offer a quick and dirty analysis of the last stanza:

Labour is blossoming or dancing where

The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,

Nor beauty born out of its own despair,

Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.

O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,

Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Yeats doesn’t appear to be talking about dancing labor in the Marxist sense (though tables dance in Marx, labor, it seems, does not) nor in the postcolonial or technical sense. Here, to be dancing is to be whole. If the labor discussed in this poem were the labor of dancing, then the dancer would not question the dance. There is no way the dancing labor of the dancer would glisten because to glisten is to betray the labor that it seems we shouldn’t see because all we would see is soul. If the dancer is hurting or even just visibly taxing her body she is not in fact, according to Yeats, it seems, dancing.

And yet, back to O’Donohue: “Your body is, in essence, a crowd of different members who work in harmony to make your belonging in the world possible.” Kao’s dancing labor and dancing knowledge do not make a seamless whole. Kao is a dancing crowd and she belongs. When you can, go see her dance; sit back, and just (g)listen.

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[1] Manning responded to Banes’ Terpsichore in Sneakers with “Modernist Dogma and Post-modern rhetoric.” Then TDR published Banes’ response to Manning and Manning’s response to Banes’ response and called the dialogue “Terpsichore in Combat Boots.”

 

Sima Belmar, Ph.D., is a Lecturer in the Department of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Oakland Tribune, Dance Magazine, TDR, Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, Performance Matters, Contemporary Theatre Review, and The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies. Her writing on living in Naples can be found at undertheneapolitanson.blogspot.com. To keep up with Sima’s writing please subscribe to tinyletter.com/simabelmar.

Lili Weckler | Unhinge rocks the Earth with mixed results

Photo: Cheshire Isaacs

Lili Weckler | Unhinge rocks the Earth with mixed results

By Garth Grimball

Minimalism is a privilege. This is the creed of maximalist artist and Macarthur “genius” Taylor Mac, whose genre-blurring, activism-cum-cabaret acts use spectacle as a means to communicate urgency. Minimalism allows time to process and reflect. Maximalism demands action.

SiStars Strange & The Shatterer of Worlds by Lili Weckler | Unhinge, presented as part of the San Francisco International Arts Festival 2019 season, is a maximalist show created with minimal resources. A choreographic rock opera, the libretto details the story of Lovechild (Weckler), who must reunite her parents Earth (Scott McPheeters) and Death (Alisha Ragon) to stop the Shatterer (Jennifer Meller) over the course of eleven loose scenes. Rounding out the cast is Jane Selna as Sistar Strange and Cory Vangelder and Hannah Ayasse as Forces of the Shattered World.

If “choreographic rock opera” summons visions of sequins, glitter, gold lamé, tutus, and Ziggy Stardust-inspired make-up, this show delivers. The strongest unifying element in this production is the design aesthetic. Performed in the Fort Mason Chapel, the sparkle of the costumes glimmer and wink with the stained glass creating a sacred/profane tableau. Unfortunately, the sum is not equal to the parts. The choreography, the rock, and the opera are present but rarely combine in united force.

The musical score, directed by Meller, is stellar. The songs and their orchestration are dynamic with impressive harmonies, choral rounds, guitar shredding, and subtle atmospheric movements that generate plot momentum. The entire cast impresses, meeting the demands and nuances of the music. However, performances falter in embodying the music to serve the narrative. The performers move back and forth between the sound stage area and the designated dancing area as the scenes demand. This spatial fluidity isn’t in itself distracting, but without a clear sense of when performers are commenting on the action like a Greek chorus, or, being the center of the action, the motivations vary in distinction. A standout is Meller as The Shatterer belting the song “White Lace,” as three cast members step-touch behind her costumed in skeleton painted sandwich boards. Meller struts and tip-toes in her platform boots, seducing Death, and her vocal and physical qualities synthesize to become a specific character. If only that specificity was directed in each performer. McPheeters as Earth is serving a modern dance version of John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig character; mean mugging and condescension that drips off high cheekbones. While Ragon seems to be performing Death not as a character but as a neutral conductor for Symbolism. She doesn’t react so much as move as a blank canvas for costumes and props to adhere to as plot points. If this is a directorial choice, it is not clear.

Photo: Cheshire Isaacs

Similarly uneven is the choreography. No character has movement indicative of a persona. There are unison group sections, contact improv weight sharing, gesture phrases, pointe work, social dances, and an extended sequence with a large swath of electric red fabric. Again, it’s difficult to tell when choices were made, or, dramaturgy gave way to can-do groupthink in the spirit of playing it fast and loose. Which is a shame as there is some bewitching choreography. Selna swirls in the fabric, and the prop becomes an extension of her viney form. Ayasse lights through the space in a solo during the finale that feels like an EKG blast. In her fast and authoritative movement, she engages with her cast mates and sparks the only moment of dramatic tension in this shaggy production.

In addition to “choreographic rock opera,” SiStars Strange & The Shatterer of Worlds describes itself as “punk” and “queer.” The most non-normative quality in this show has nothing to do with gender or boundaries or performance theories. This show is earnest. Earnest feels radical and unbound. Earnest melts away irony to reveal heart. Weckler is open and genuine in her art-making, and she invites her collaborators and the audience to be the same. The success of the art in reckoning with “environmental, political, and social unraveling” is questionable. But sounding the alarm with guileless energy and a rallying guitar riff is heartening. There’s nothing minimal to it.

Photo: Cheshire Isaacs

Garth Grimball is a writer and dance artist based in Oakland, California. He is the co-director of Wax Poet(s), company member of Dana Lawton Dances, and performs regularly with Oakland Ballet.

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“Lipstick Lumberjacks, Losers and Leapfrogs” offers a tantalizing foray into a queer imagination

“Lipstick Lumberjacks, Losers and Leapfrogs” offers a tantalizing foray into a queer imagination

By Molly Rose-Williams

It is rare for me that going to a show feels like going to a party. Shaunna Vella and Andrew Merrell’s newest work, “Lipstick Lumberjacks, Losers, and Leapfrogs,” was one of those shows. Their brand of party wasn’t like the kind I go to in real life that happen in kitchens over small talk and chips with music that aspires for everything to be just a touch more exciting - this was a queered-up, punked-out deep dive into the aspirational realm of imaginative potential. In the show’s patch-worked world of “theatrical pas de deux” (the show was a collection of old and new duets from the pair’s many years of collaboration), traditional delineations around identity and connection were examined, rejected, and revisioned.  

In describing my experience of the show to others, I have found that queer theory offers a useful framework for greater precision here; if “queerness” can be understood as a willingness to see taboos broken down, or a realm in which binaries are no longer relevant, then “Lipstick Lumberjacks, Losers and Leapfrogs” for me felt like a physical investigation of the act of “queering.” The works ran the gamut, from a manifesto on the radical potential of platonic intimacy urging us to “use emotionality as a radical tactic against a society which teaches you that emotions are a sign of weakness;” to an absurd and stunningly precise romance between a pair in striped shirts, berets, and glue-on mustaches; there was a joyful surrender to the physical release of punk rock, a depiction of modern queer love with dialogue so stereotypical and hilarious it was difficult to hear over the laughter, a tortured case of unfulfilled desire, and many more equally absurd, tender, and incise visions. Throughout, I saw a playful, but insistent line of questioning: What range of experience can we make room for? What forms of expression can we honor? How vast, inclusive, and beautiful can this shared life be?

Between the duets, vignette-like transitions threaded the pieces together like a roller coaster ride through a set of colorful dreamscapes. In one, a row of Care Bears formed a massage train. In another, performers melted off the stage to soften into tender improvisational duets, each taking a turn to simply witness their partner move with gorgeously attentive attunement. Yet another saw the curtains open to reveal a tableau of performers, each sucking a lollipop. The scene pulsed with a fresh and satisfyingly characitured eroticism, both a joke and a husky murmur, hinting at a deep sense of very real desire.

The show beckoned forth the odd, the tender, the desirous, and the downright hilarious with open arms. It invited us all to join in with the humor, and with even more explicit invitations. In one transition about halfway through the show, Vella informed us from the stage that “now is a good time to move if you need to.” (To give some context, on the sunny Sunday afternoon that I was there, the audience packed Oakland’s Humanist Hall to the gills, lining the floors and walls thanks to Vella and Merrell’s NOTA policy.) From the beginning, Vella and Merrell invited us to take care of ourselves and one another in the packed space, letting us know that we should feel free to move around at any time. In this sense, they queered even the experience of seeing a show, throwing out the traditional model of audience as passive observer and inviting us to be participants in the show.

Though the tone of the show was often light and humorous, I got the sense that beneath these explorations lay a visceral imperative. Ironically, this sense came through to me most clearly not in the stunning dancing of the performers (they were stunning), but in a more subtle tone of disillusionment with dance itself that many of the choreographic choices conveyed. There was a thread of irony and containment running through much of the movement - most clearly observed in a relative absence of traditional virtuosity despite an inarguably virtuosic cast and supremely physically-articulate directors. This spoke to me of a lack of faith in the power of modern dance movement (the show’s primary physical language) to get to the heart of a matter so important.

There were moments in the show that I felt were well-served by the more muted movement vocabulary and post-modern eschewal of physical exaggeration. In “Rob and Diane,” a duet choreographed by Merrell with performers Juliana Monin and Jared Wiltse, the more physically-conservative approach to movement supported the piece’s portrayal of what I read to be a traditional Christian couple whose confinement to gender and relationship norms had snuffed their spark and lease on life. “Back Alley Fantasy,” also choreographed by Merrell with dancers Sarah Chenoweth and Chinchin Hsu, unfolded with its own brand of virtuosity - a stunningly precise yet understated back-and-forth which lent dynamic breath to the absurdist fantasy of this glue-on mustache romance. But as the show went on, my experience became a paired passage through gleeful abandon in the gloriously absurd and imaginative theatrics, and a growing hunger for a physical language to match both the dexterity of the dancers and the rigor of the imaginative spirit that shone through the visions unfolding before me.

The most notable exception to this for me came in “Dear Starlight,” choreographed by Vella with performers Kara Davis and Nol Simonse. The piece began as an accumulation with variation to gentle music, both Davis and Simonse cutting tortured paths perpendicular to one another. Their bounded movement read to me as a process of reckoning or sense-making. Suddenly, the track switched to a punk rock tune, and with the shift in music came a diametric change in physicality as well. They put on lipstick and let loose with a gleeful, boundless, flailing celebration. Underpinning their wild abandon was a physical intelligence from years of highly technical dance training. The result was at once absurd and exaltingly contagious.

I became curious about the discrepancy in physical range I saw manifest in the dancing, and the range I saw both directors and cast to be capable of in glimpses throughout the show (and in previous contexts) - to absolutely tear up the floor and/or battement like nobody’s business. It didn’t feel so much like a lack of faith in all physicality, as a disillusionment with the formalities of modern dance technique. I connected this potential explanation to the show’s shortest piece, a dance film called “Robots Go To The Spa.”

The film showed clips of Vella and Merrell rehearsing in the studio over multiple years. Overlaying their gesture phrases and physical explorations was an audio dialogue between two robots (though the content of the robot’s discussion was entirely inane, the discussion itself was bizarre and unaccountably fascinating). Scrolling subtitles described Vella and Merrell’s process of interrogating their own whiteness in relation to their dance practices. The video was, I felt, elegantly done. Short, concise, and clear, it expressed an impressively nuanced menu of thought in a relatively short amount of time: a conviction that interrogating their whiteness in relation to dance is imperative in dismantling white supremacy; an acknowledgement that although the process of exploring whiteness is critical, doing it within a public performance setting may take up undue space; and a suggestion that dance, and modern dance in particular, is arguably a poor primary mode of communication in conversations on race and whiteness because 1) it is comparatively abstract and indirect, and 2) it is heavily-defined by its origins and continued practice in communities that for the most part center and celebrate whiteness. “That took about 3 minutes,” the subtitles read. And the film ended.

Do the conventions of modern dance need to be left behind in order to locate a potentially transformational space within the form? “1/27/11,” the final piece of the show performed by Merrell and Vella themselves, offered a cryptic response to my question. The piece featured classic modern dance choreography to the sound of “Slide” by Missy Elliott. The song is an anthem for women who defy the patriarchal narrative that they are helpless or incomplete without men, but more broadly, sounds like liberation made audible. Merrell and Vella rocked out to the song in campy 90’s gear with a buy-in that suggested to me this song held real personal significance for them both.

In light of the video earlier in the show and ongoing conversations in the dance community around appropriation and whiteness, I found myself reflecting on the contrast between the Missy Elliott song playing overhead and the relatively bounded modern dance choreography of two white-identifying performers. The piece seemed self-conscious as well as genuinely-felt; ironic and not, as if they were embracing the modern dance vocabulary that was such a deep part of their physical histories, as well as seeking freedom from the constraints that it placed on their physical imagination. More, the piece felt like a fitting culmination to a near hour and a half of investigation into the radical potential of the broadest sense of queerness and boundary-blurring.

The only point of tension for me here, was a feeling that in seeking liberation from the physical chains of modern dance and the existential chains of a binary-loving culture, they were drawing on the explosive energy of Missy Elliott’s anthem - an energy whose roots were in hip-hop, a culture founded on the ongoing fight for liberation of black and brown people. Does that make it appropriative? If so, does that matter? To me, this circled back to the even larger question so succinctly framed in “Robots Go To The Spa” - in the work of dismantling white supremacy and racism, what is best taken on personally, and what needs to take place in community? For me, this final piece was a beautiful, thought-provoking testament to the larger truth at the heart of “Lipstick Lumberjacks, Losers and Leapfrogs,” in the case of things that really matter, binaries rarely serve us well.

Throughout the show, the absurd, the extreme, and the absolutely mundane intertwined to create a joyful experience. In the embrace of the unorthodox and the queer, Vella, Merrell, and the entire cast managed to touch upon the absolutely human. Scholar-activist Cathy J. Cohen writes: “If there is any truly radical potential to be found in the idea of queerness and the practice of queer politics, it would seem to be located in its ability to create a space in opposition to dominant norms, a space where transformational political work can begin.” “Lipstick Lumberjacks, Losers and Leapfrogs” offered a headlong plunge into the radical potential of the imagination. I believe that in doing so, Vella, Merrell, and the entire cast engaged in exactly what Cohen describes - creating a space where transformation could begin or, indeed, was already underway.

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Cathy J. Cohen in “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?”. GLQ, May 1997 [p. 438]

 

Molly Rose-Williams is a Bay Area artist and writer. mollyrosewilliams.com

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Dreaming/Preparing/Dancing: 3 Days until BIG SALT with The Anata Project

For the next few days, we are excited to share several previews leading up to opening night for BIG SALT with The Anata Project. Performances run May 30 and 31 and June 1, 7, and 8 at the Joe Goode Annex in San Francisco (401 Alabama Street). 

Purchase your tickets here, and also check out the video preview on Vimeo.

Emily Hansel, Mallory Markham, Katie Meyers, and Jessie Egbert. Photo by Summer Wilson.

Today we hear from 3 of the dancers in the project. We asked:

What do you love about this project, BIG SALT? Please describe a little bit about working with Claudia - whether this is your first project with her, or you have worked together on several projects. And, risk and vulnerability with the work….

From Jessie Egbert: 

BIG SALT is an incredibly fulfilling culmination of research, exploration, and development over the last year and a half. What I love about this work is that it encompasses the experiences that all 6 of us have had in that time: the good, the bad, the challenging, the rewarding. This is my third home season working with Claudia, and one of things that I admire most about working with her is that she creates a space for us to be openly honest about our experience within the work. We get to live inside it, rather than simply putting movement onto our bodies. I am excited to share this work with an audience and continue to push the boundaries of comfort inside the choreography.

From Emily Hansel: 

The past couple years of working with Claudia have been so fruitful for me. She is constantly pushing me to do things that I would never try on my own. At the same time, I know she is interested in my suggestions, which are often very different from her initial instincts. Performing Claudia's choreography is always an exciting, sensual experience. Whether we are in the studio or onstage, I feel alive, spontaneous, and receptive when I dance what we've created together. The process for BIG SALT has been especially lengthy and thorough, since we were participating in CHIME for all of 2018. I am ready to get onstage and share this work with everyone!

From Katie Meyers:

What do you love about this project, BIG SALT?

I love the amount of time we've had to create BIG SALT. The space has allowed me to dig and find so much richness from the inside first, outside second. Researching volatility has encouraged me, discouraged me, challenged me, opened me, and I am as sore as I am grateful.

Please describe a little bit about working with Claudia - whether this is your first project with her, or you have worked together on several projects.

This was my first season with Claudia, and the whole experience was an honor. Being involved with Margaret Jenkins' CHIME was unforgettable - receiving consistent feedback from Margy herself, having a weekend workshop with her & Kate Weare, and getting regular sneak peaks of Amy Foley & James Graham's work - surreal. This was also my first experience working with the same group of dancers for as long as we did! The trust and the dynamic of this consistency was very special, and I will always hold that part of this experience close to my heart. But my favorite piece of working with Claudia was the meditation. Meditation has been something I've wanted to incorporate into my life for years; it wasn't until I started practicing it with The Anata Project weekly that I actually began to incorporate it into my daily life. Over this past year working on BIG SALT, I've gained formal technique, improvisational tools & partnering skills, but there's nothing quite like watching the transformation of yourself after your first year fiercely committed to meditation. I will never be the same. 

Risk and vulnerability with the work….

Claudia encouraged risk and vulnerability throughout. These are also values I appreciate and do my best to bring to my personal life. Every time I dance in this piece I feel exposed in a new way. 

Your excitement to bring it in front of an audience….

Uncontainable. COME. 

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A Modern Dancer's Guide to....Pittsburgh, PA

Shana Simmons Dance. Photo by Mark Simpson.

A Modern Dancer’s Guide....to Pittsburgh, PA

By Shana Simmons

Pittsburgh is a growing city both in population and the arts scene. One strength to the Pittsburgh dance scene is that there is no singular “quality” to the dance styles. From athletic companies to those rooted in cultural diversity, a splattering of voices brings to the foray individuality and expression from within. New choreographers tend to stay here to generate their own voice, and the city is able to provide opportunity for development of the older ones. There is no one movement style nor one teacher that overpowers the influence in the community, which causes Pittsburgh to be a vibrant scene, never knowing what is going to be on stage next!

Pittsburgh is a geographically segregated city due to the three rivers, which has influence over the dance community. There are opportunities, artists, choreographers and companies hosting class, performances and auditions, but there is not one centrally located building or organization to connect them all. This has been the way of the Pittsburgh dance scene for decades now, but efforts to unify under umbrella organizations are happening. Pittsburgh Dance Week is a week in April dedicated to bring awareness to a variety of modern dance companies in the city and surrounding areas. Artsburgh, hosted by the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, is another website location for all of the artistic events happening in the city and the Dance Calendar Pgh is one location for a listing of classes. Don’t look towards one building, though, in an effort to find your way. With a little digging, the online resources are aiming to help navigate new dancers!

How to begin:

When moving to Pittsburgh, there are a couple of major organizations that have been here to support the arts for years. Dancers should immediately look into Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, the largest and most dominant company in Pittsburgh. Open and professional modern (mostly ballet) classes can start connecting you to dancers and choreographers in the community. Check out the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, Office of Public Art, and Heinz Endowments websites for grant opportunities. The Kelly-Strayhorn Theater offers rotating residency opportunities as well as an occasional professional technique class from visiting guest artists. Keep up to date with the Dance Calendar Pittsburgh for all of the local dance events and classes. PearlArts Studios is also a great resource for rotating company classes dedicated to offering artists discounted rental rates for space and informal performance opportunities. It’s also home to Staycee Pearl Dance Project, who can offer a variety of performance and teaching opportunities.**

There are also organizations dedicated to bringing in outside companies to influence the region. The Pittsburgh Dance Council is dedicated to bringing in the highest caliber of outside artists. They are connected to the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and host master classes from time to time with these visiting dance companies.

Up and coming is a website dedicated to connecting the dance community in Pittsburgh which will be a one-stop shop for new dance and new music. Stay tuned for updates on this website, hopefully up and running by the end of 2019. You can inquire through Shana Simmons Dance for more information.

Where to train:

The best way to find class is to know the dance companies in the community. Unfortunately, you have to search and subscribe to all of the individual email lists to keep up to date, BUT there is the Dance Calendar Pittsburgh, which ALWAYS has a list of upcoming classes. It is the most consolidated effort to find the class opportunities, performances, and happenings in Pittsburgh. The calendar is driven by JAMpress Management and asks each organization or individual to submit their own happenings. This provides a community calendar overseen by Jessica Marino of JAMpress. (Get to know her.)

Training, and continual training, are some of the biggest challenges to connect the dance community of Pittsburgh: not having one dedicated space to training young artists in a variety of forms and techniques. This puts the responsibility on the dancer to get to know what is around Pittsburgh, your specific area, and signing up for all of the email lists!

The main go-to’s (sorry if some are missed):

-Pittsburgh Ballet Theater offers a variety of professional and open classes ranging from ballet (heavy on the ballet offerings) to modern and jazz open classes

-PearlArts Studios** offers rotating company class most days of the week

-Attack Theatre (a staple of the dance community for 24yrs+) offers company class in 3-6 week segments at different times of the year

-Shana Simmons Dance offers professional technique, though operates out of rotating spaces

-Dance studios (such as Mosaic Dance & Movement, Studio 101, The Legacy Arts Project) offer adult open classes and sometimes this is the best way to get into your body and get connected to the teachers in the community

-The Space Upstairs is your go-to for more improvisational classes and workshops with a very casual warehouse space

-slowdanger offers open class and workshops for improvisational and authentic movement

-Courdance rotates professional technique classes

Where to rehearse:

Depending on the size of what you want to rehearse, there are a lot of studios offering smaller spaces for reasonable rates. (You can also always inquire into the massive amounts of yoga studios if they could offer an exchange or discounted artist rate if they are willing to rent their space out!) Pittsburgh Ballet Theater and Point Park University are going to be your largest studios and most expensive spaces, but host beautiful backdrops which are perfect if you want to make a dance reel, promotional video, etc. Other more expensive routes, but centrally located downtown, would be: Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council and August Wilson Center. PearlArts Studios**, The Kelly-Strayhorn Theater (who runs the Dance Alloy space in East Liberty), and The Space Upstairs are usually willing to offer artist discounts for rental spaces. Studio 101, Mosaic Dance Movement, Wilkins School Community Center, Pittsburgh Musical Theater, The Union Project, DancExplosion Arts Center, and Millenium offer rental for smaller events and rehearsal space as well.

A lot of the local dance choreographers and companies utilize the surrounding areas of Pittsburgh to find discounted (and sometimes free) space through local studios in exchange for teaching, cleaning, etc. There are a TON of small dance studios spread out in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, but just realize if you go this route, your dancers need to have access to a car.

How dancers get performing gigs:

Like most cities, you HAVE to network, show up for class, and make connections in order for the local choreographers and companies to take an interest in you. Pittsburgh can be clique-y, so the more you are friendly, write an email of interest, show up for class, show your support by going to fundraisers and performances, the more you will look invested to the local artists. Companies will host auditions for different projects they are pulling together, but a LOT of the Pittsburgh scene stems from seeing you, liking the way you dance, getting to know you during a coffee sometime, and them asking you to come and rehearse as a trial run.

The more established (i.e. salaried) companies host auditions, but not annually, so be on the look out for their posts and calls. Here is a listing of current companies to check out for opportunities: Attack Theater, Bodiography, Bombyx, Corningworks, Courdance, Exhalations Dance Theater, Firewall Dance Theater, Geeks Dance, MURRdance, slowdanger, Shana Simmons Dance, Staycee Pearl Dance Project, Texture Contemporary Ballet, The Blanket, The DANA Movement Ensemble, and The Pillow Projects.

Pittsburgh is also abounding with independent artists and choreographers. These people are great to connect with to see if they have any upcoming projects: Brady Sanders, Gia Cacalano, Jamie Erin Murphy, Jil Stifel, Joy-Marie Thompson, Kaylin Horgan, Laura Stokes, Lindsay Fisher Viatori, Maree ReMalia, and Moriah Ella Mason.

Opportunities for emerging choreographers:

Emerging choreographers have a limited amount of available opportunities, but hopefully that is changing. The New Moves Festival has offerings open to anyone wanting to apply to show shorter works and works in progress through the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater. They also have multiple residency opportunities throughout the year. PearlArts Studios** offers their Charrette series, an informal opportunity to receive feedback from a panel for your works in progress. The New Hazlett Theater offers their CSA Series, dedicated to local art, and through an application process, they usually choose one or two dance oriented performances to support. Kaitlin Flynn Goodwin, through Studio 101, recently gathered a variety of artists at different stages in their training for the NACHMO presentation in January 2019. The Three Rivers Arts Festival is hard to get into, but usually offers a dance/performing arts application process. Pittsburgh Fringe Festival is also in its 6th year and open to all kinds of performing arts. The Space Upstairs offers residency and performance opportunities to showcase your improvisational talents and experimental works. Texture Contemporary Ballet also provides a small program called “Dance Shorts,” where you can apply and showcase your newer works on a multi-generational platform.

Festivals:

There are not many festivals in Pittsburgh and even less that are dedicated to dance: The Three Rivers Arts Festival, The Pittsburgh Fringe Festival, New Moves Festival, pearlPRESENTS Dance Festival, NACHMO presentation, and Pittsburgh Dance Week. Be on the look out, though; we’ve had more efforts here in the past year with opportunities to present than ever before! Rumors have it there are others interested in larger presentations in festival format coming soon.

Venues where out of town artists perform, and organizations which present them:

The Pittsburgh Dance Council is the most prominent dance presenter in Pittsburgh, dedicated to bringing outside artists to the ‘burgh, and Randall Miller is doing an amazing job of this. They have continued to build momentum since Miller has taken over, and shows tend to be sold out more so than not. Performances can be at any of the most prominent downtown theaters in the Cultural District: The Byham Theater, The August Wilson Center, The Benedum, and Heinz Hall. They also have added a discounted ticket rate starting at $10 for some of the best dance companies in the world. Cheers to that!

The Cultural Trust, of which the Dance Council is a part of, is the other major presenter in Pittsburgh, bringing in multiple theater, music theater, music and dance to the city. For a wide variety of cultural companies that tend to be more avant-garde and unique, The Kelly-Strayhorn Theater in East Liberty is where you should subscribe to.

Opportunities to teach dance, the amount of work in the area, and ages and settings for teaching:

One plus to Pittsburgh is that teaching ABOUNDS. There are always studio opportunities to join for a year, substitute teaching opportunities for every level of dancer, and in-school educational programs that are always seeking movement educators. You can apply to the major universities to see if any substitute list or adjunct faculty position is available, or inquire into most of the dance companies in Pittsburgh, as educational outreach is paramount to most companies’ missions and success. Pittsburgh Ballet Theater and the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater offer community division classes as well, which occasionally doesn’t hurt to inquire whether their positions are filled or not.

The best thing you can do to find teaching positions is join the Facebook group called Pittsburgh Area Substitute Teachers. Students of Point Park University and recent transplants usually post their short bio and headshots, offering their teaching services so local studios can contact them. Talk to your fellow dancers and inquire as to whether they know of any vacancies in their studios.

Local colleges and universities with undergraduate and graduate programs:

Pittsburgh boasts one of the top ten dance schools in the country: Point Park University. Their intense training and focus on performance and technique has elevated the college into consistently being amongst the top 5 in most dance program lists. The Conservatory offers Undergraduate programs for both BA and BFA tracks. About an hour and a half outside the city, Slippery Rock University also has an up and coming dance program. Offering both BA and BFA programs, their excellent teachers offer a variety of techniques and opportunities for more creative development. LaRoche College and Seton Hill University also have smaller dance departments offering both major and minor degrees. Dance minor opportunities: University of Pittsburgh. You can also earn an MAM in Arts Management at Carnegie Mellon University.

Final thoughts:

Pittsburgh is an up and coming city. It has been attracting a lot of recent graduates who aim to make a place for themselves here, which is building up the dance scene with fresh opportunities and informal feedback sessions. There have been a few successful dance companies that have figured out how to maneuver the city’s “sports” mentality for decades, and hopefully that mentality is shifting with the new and younger artists in the area. Pittsburgh’s dance scene was founded with the help of a few individuals that wanted to make their home here back in the 1970’s. That blossomed into what is now Pittsburgh Ballet Theater and Point Park University as well as the long-standing dance companies boasting 20+ years of experience. With more time and dedicated artists, the opportunities to build something for yourself are here, and we as a community are waiting for you!

**At the time this article was written, PearlArts Studios is aiming to relocate by the end of 2019. The actual space is unknown at this time, but check back to their website for more information**

Shana Simmons Dance. Photo by Mark Simpson.

Shana Simmons (BA Dance, Point Park University, 2003, MA Choreography, LABAN, London, 2009) lived in New York City for four and a half years and performed with choreographers such as Noemie Lafrance "Agora," Alexandra Beller, Tomé Cousin, bigGRITS dance co, Debra Wanner/Amy Larimer, Amanda Drozer, and was a member of white road dance media. She performed and choreographed with multiple companies and choreographers in London and has performed her own works in New York City, Belgium, London, Chicago and Pittsburgh. Shana Simmons Dance was founded in 2009, received non-profit status in 2017, and has produced a variety of works in Pittsburgh since 2012: Relative Positions (2012), PASSENGER (2014), Objective I (2015), and The Missing Peace (2018). SSD has received support from the Heinz Small Arts Initiative, the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater and the National Aviary for such projects.

Shana Simmons Dance currently collaborates with Carnegie Museum of Art facilitating movement for seniors during their Alzheimer's programming while touring the museum. Simmons was a nominee for the Carol R Brown Award in 2016, has received Pittsburgh's Best Dance listings (2015, 2018), and independently teaches in the community and within Point Park University.​

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Dreaming/Preparing/Dancing: Four Days until BIG SALT with The Anata Project

For the next few days, we are excited to share several previews leading up to opening night for BIG SALT with The Anata Project. Performances run May 30 and 31 and June 1, 7, and 8 at the Joe Goode Annex in San Francisco (401 Alabama Street). 

Purchase your tickets here, and also check out the video preview on Vimeo.

Emily Hansel. Photo by Summer Wilson.

Today we hear from Artistic Director Claudia Hubiak.

Questions and Questioning

Questions I am asking myself these days about the project, the process, and making art in the Bay Area: I was lucky enough during the past year to work with Margaret Jenkins through the CHIME mentorship program. This was incredible in regards to my process. I can just keep making endlessly, so I start to wonder...When to stop? This is by far the longest I have worked on a piece. I wonder how long is too long? When do we start becoming our own worst editing enemy? 

I wonder how my experience as a woman making art while raising kids matters? How can my story - told in an abstract piece of art - how can it allow women to feel seen and know their experience is valued?

I wonder how the current lack of diversity in my present cast affects the climate in the Bay today? How can I grow as an artistic director by addressing these questions in rehearsals and opening up room for discussion? 

5 words or phrases to describe BIG SALT:

Blood, sweat and tears. Volatility. Tenderness. Control. Mundane. 

On Transformation

Idea to exhibition….

About how a piece, a project……and the dancers….shape and change you, your ideas, your process….

My work is always shaped by the dancers. I am not interested in creating work that is placed on a body, but rather something that comes from reaction. The dancers are given a lot of space and time to react to ideas, prompts and scored ideas to infuse the work with personal and honest experience. In this way the work does not start under control. This makes it exciting and fresh. Over time I am able to find some control through crafting and honing the work. The final product ideally will hold all of these elements, both detail and abandon. 

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Dance as Event: An Interview with Lauren Simpson about DANCE EXHIBIT

Photo: Robbie Sweeny

Dance as Event: An Interview with Lauren Simpson about DANCE EXHIBIT

By Jill Randall

Last week I got to sit down with choreographer Lauren Simpson about her 5-night run of DANCE EXHIBIT at the Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco from May 9-18, 2019. Read Lauren’s full artist profile on Life as a Modern Dancer here.

What are 5 words or phrases to describe DANCE EXHIBIT?

Objects

Agency

Labor

Seen/unseen

Women

What is the role of beauty? Is beauty of relevance to this work?

I think about beauty in the context of this space --- as in a visual arts, white cube space. The ways choreographers tend to understand  and make beauty is between bodies. A black box lends itself to this. The focus is around action between people in the center of the theater space. Here I am in a white box meant for art work to live on walls, plinths, and surfaces. So for me when I an working in dance in the white cube, it became no surprise the beauty seemed to arise from the bodies in relationship to the walls, edges, and surfaces as much as they relate to each other.

Can you talk more about the site-specific nature of the project?

Primarily, I have not been thinking of this work as a site-specific work. It has a thematic thread connected to ideas not inherent to the space (labor, women, the role of objects and materials in our lives), and they are themes I’ve explored in theaters and elsewhere. Nonetheless there were things to consider which a site-specific choreographer would also need to --- natural lights (there are skylights and large glass doors), physical features of the space (most prominently, 12 huge I-beams bisecting the center of the performance space), and flow of the audience.

Please share a little about each dancer. What do you love and appreciate about each collaborator?

Lydia Clinton: I love her professionalism and heart. She brings both with equal force.

Marlie Couto: I am very grateful for her confidence in herself and in me.

Arletta Anderson: I love her clarity of being. It goes beyond her as a dancer.

Cauveri Madabushi Suresh: I love that Cauveri  is freshly out of academia and still in an intellectual headspace of theory and questioning and scholarship.

Virginia Broyles: I love her humor and levity. She is fast --- fast to learn, fast to make.

Dance as event. Talk me through the night.

The show begins with the option to purchase drinks and snacks from the adjacent restaurant, Besharam. You can carry these treats around with you as you view art we commissioned from Dana Hemenway and Brion Nuda Rosch. There’s a soft start around 7:45pm which includes a sound installation and the dancers reorganizing the space. 8pm marks the start of the performance. At 8:40pm the post-show speaker begins. There are many points of entry to the event, from food to visual art to dance to talks.

On vulnerability, risk taking, and the audience:

Something distinctive to this show is the speaker series.I have asked five people from the arts community to offer talks from various lenses. Since I am not entirely sure how the talks will unfold, it’s quite an improvisational part of the evening for me. It feels somewhat risky in that these lenses can really shape the way the audience thinks and feels about the work. I asked them to follow a three part format: Tell us who you are and what is your research/area of interest. Two, how is that topic present in or related to DANCE EXHIBIT? Three, they are free to ask the artists and audience questions connected to their topic.

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DANCE EXHIBIT with Lauren Simpson Dance

Minnesota Street Project

1275 Minnesota Street in the Dogpatch neighborhood of SF

Please arrive at 7:30pm

 

Show dates and post-show speaker schedule:

Thursday, May 9 Marie Tollon, Writer in Residence, ODC Theater

Topic: Lingering between the inanimate and animate: What are the ways dance and visual arts cross pollinate?

 

Friday, May 10 Sarah Hotchkiss, Artist and Visual arts editor, KQED

Topic: The performativity of things

 

Thursday, May 16 Karl Evangelista, Composer

Topic: Abstraction and Activism - An Improviser's View Into the Politics of Art

 

Friday, May 17 Claudia LaRocco, Writer and Editor, SFMOMA Open Space

Topic: There is a way in which the translator must love failure

 

Saturday, May 18 Gerald Casel, Choreographer

Topic:  Race and Abstraction

 

Ticket link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dance-exhibit-tickets-56688790699

More about the show: https://www.laurensimpsondance.com/upcoming-performances

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One Good Quote: Lipstick Lumberjacks, Losers, and Leapfrogs (Vella & Merrell)

In Fall 2017, Life as a Modern Dancer launched a new concept for post-performance discussion and writing. The goals are multi-fold:

• What are new ways to invite post-performance writing (since so few publications now print dance reviews, and there are fewer and fewer dance critics in the United States)?
• How can choreographers hear and read more from audience members about their impressions and experiences of dance events?
• Can we offer new mechanisms for choreographers to gather language about their work, to further their work and to promote their work? 

The premise is simple. If you experienced Vella and Merrell's Lipstick Lumberjacks, Losers, and Leapfrogs at Humanist Hall in Oakland May 11-12, 2019, please take a few minutes to leave a comment. Write down images, impressions, appreciations, and questions from the performance. These can be words, phrases, or a few sentences. 

We thank you for your time, support, and thoughtfulness. Here's to more dialogue, more reflection, and more writing on the dance performance experience. As choreographer Mariah Steele noted, we are "democratizing dance criticism."

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One Good Quote: Dance Exhibit with Lauren Simpson Dance

Photo: Robbie Sweeny

In Fall 2017, Life as a Modern Dancer launched a new concept for post-performance discussion and writing. The goals are multi-fold:

• What are new ways to invite post-performance writing (since so few publications now print dance reviews, and there are fewer and fewer dance critics in the United States)?
• How can choreographers hear and read more from audience members about their impressions and experiences of dance events?
• Can we offer new mechanisms for choreographers to gather language about their work, to further their work and to promote their work? 

The premise is simple. If you experienced Lauren Simpson Dance's Dance Exhibit at Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco May 9-18, 2019, please take a few minutes to leave a comment. Write down images, impressions, appreciations, and questions from the performance. These can be words, phrases, or a few sentences. 

We thank you for your time, support, and thoughtfulness. Here's to more dialogue, more reflection, and more writing on the dance performance experience. As choreographer Mariah Steele noted, we are "democratizing dance criticism."

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