Life as a Modern Dancer

In Full Sunlight: Jennifer Perfilio Movement Works in “Small Dances”

Styles Alexander, Phoenicia Pettyjohn, and Emily Hansel. Photo by Hillary Goidell.

In Full Sunlight: Jennifer Perfilio Movement Works in “Small Dances”

Saturday, September 3, 2022
2pm
Great Meadow, San Francisco Botanical Garden (Golden Gate Park)

By Jill Randall

Editor's note: Please find here the writing/response to the performance as well as a 13 minute audiofile of the author reading aloud this writing. Select whichever format works for you to experience the reflection.

September is one of the best months to experience San Francisco. It is a time of year with bright sunshine and an invitation to come and experience the city, especially outdoors. I made the trek from the East Bay to check out Jennifer Perfilio Movement Works’ latest outdoor project. It was a trafficky adventure to get there and to park, but once I arrived the stress of the past hour and a half was gone. Joy/sun/dancing begins. 

There are four dancers/collaborators in the big grassy meadow of the San Francisco Botanical Garden (Golden Gate Park) and one musician, Clark Buckner, who is sitting off to the side on a blanket. How to describe some of the first movements and sounds? The four dancers are in the big open space with a few feet between each other. As dance educator Sheila Kogan describes these spots - as “perfect spots” - you spread out “far away from everyone and everything.” Styles Alexander stands and expansively arches to the sun. Samuel Melecio-Zambrano is on their back, holding up their head with their bent arms. Phoenicia Pettyjohn is kneeling and upright, and Emily Hansel offers alternating small shoulder moves while standing. Clark Buckner’s music is electronic - some recorded and made prior to the event while other sounds and recitations will happen in real time. 

I brought a blanket, per Jennifer’s pre-show Instagram message, and I take off my shoes.

The first section is sparse. Four lives in motion - at the same time but in separate places. It accelerates in motion and motivation. I think about public and private moments, our existence, our co-existence. 

I miss a few seconds due to notetaking, and I look up to see that Phoenicia has a chair. It is the symbol of our pandemic time (bound, stationary). She is traveling through space carrying it. After a short amount of time, she places it down and dances next to it. 

My mind goes towards improvisational practices. I am not certain that some of the sections are improvised but I am guessing they might be. With improv practices or co-collaborative phrasemaking with artists in the project, we experience 4 or more different languages (i.e. all of the collaborators plus the choreographer/director). Is my dance mind seeking motif, unison? Why?

Samuel is now dancing near Phoenicia and the chair. Call and response. A section with silence. Emily and Styles are sitting and watching in the meadow space. 

The sun
+ Silence 
+ Attentive eyes

Why art in the meadow? Why public space? Why both planned and unplanned audience members? Just some questions crossing my mind at this moment in the performance. 

There is a break. Emily and Samuel walk stage left and Phoenicia takes the chair away to the right. Samuel is now over by Clark and Jennifer. There is a bicycle,and Samuel turns the bike over, so the wheels are up and in the air. Styles is left alone in the meadow.

I write down the phrase “Full Sunlight.” That’s what I would name this dance. Our lives in full view, complete view.

What is Styles’ sound score? The wind in the trees; two different sirens. The sound score of San Francisco.

Styles is such an incredible mover and improviser. It feels like Styles is recounting a story or memory through their improv score. 

Clark now records Samuel spinning those bicycle wheels. More electronic sounds play. 

Hop
Kneel 
Lunge 
Twist 
Wring
Squat drop + stand back up 

Sinewy

Circling

Go 
Go
Pause

Swatting bugs
And more bugs

(Styles’ moves)

Jennifer had mentioned in the introduction/welcome about “small dances.” I appreciate these short chapters/episodes. 

Far away from me - far like 75 yards in front of me - Phoenicia and Styles make a small duet. Moving without accompaniment again. Contact/touch/connection.

Styles Alexander and Phoenicia Pettyjohn. Photo by Hillary Goidell.

My mind transposes the production for a few moments into other spaces. This is excellent post-modern dancing in front of me. I could be sitting at the Forum at Yerba Buena, CounterPulse, or the Berkeley Art Museum. I am envisioning formal white boxes for a few minutes. Then I come back to today’s dancing space, the Great Meadow/SF Botanical Garden/outdoors/San Francisco.

Emily Hansel now comes out to the main space with a helium tank and blows up a marigold yellow balloon, marigold like her shirt. A teeny tiny moment and thought. 

Again my mind goes to post-modern dance - the easeful and pedestrian vocabulary, sounds/silence, individuality. I ask myself again, “Why outside?” But now I am able to answer the question for myself. Outside for delight. I come back to author Ross Gay and finding delight. Delight of modern dance in this great meadow.

Quietly enjoying    
    Watching
    Taking In
    See-hear-think-feel
Together,
Today
Outside in full sunlight

“The sun shone on me a bit differently today,” Styles shares live with a mic in hand. Yes.

“Every cell alive.”

Styles is reciting a poem. Is it their poem? Jennifer’s? Collaboratively written?

A trio comes together - Emily, Styles, and Samuel. The sound is now vocals manipulated, I assume with a looping machine. I come back to a favorite theme of mine - the juxtaposition of our city life and nature. Samuel takes that balloon and gives it to a child at the opposite end of the meadow.

Next there is a playful section with Emily and Samuel putting on light plastic pants and a vest - Emily and Samuel hold a mic and record the crinkly sound of their new clothes. The duet is lighthearted; I notice this is the first time I have laughed during the performance. 

A dance of small dances
Small moments
Tasks, memories, explorations

These 4 dancers, Jennifer, Clark -
This moment in our lives

I am thinking about the asymmetry of our lives and connecting with the arhythmic nature of our current lives. 

Samuel Melecio-Zambrano and Emily Hansel. Photo by Hillary Goidell.

More rhythmic music, like earlier on in the dance, plays. Then the piece calls us to look stage left. Phoenicia begins a solo - a quiet traveling solo back into the main meadow space. Then for the only time in the event, a recorded tune other than Clark’s is used. The Al Green soul tune “Tired of Being Alone” plays for a few measures. “I’m tired of being alone. Help me girl as soon as you can.” Our anthem for crawling out of the pandemic!

Samuel Melecio-Zambrano. Photo by Hillary Goidell.

Samuel comes closer to the audience on my side of the meadow and takes off their shoes. Another incredible solo moment is explored with spiraling, lunging, expansive and expanding movement. 

I am back to the idea of delight. I am thinking about the planned and unplanned audience. Watching/absorbing/questioning/connecting. Making personal connections.

As Samuel completes their solo and runs off stage left, they break into a smile. Does exertion and endurance take us to a place of ease, joy, presence? 

As the piece nears its end, all of the dancers come back into the meadow space with all of the props (plus a roll of blue painters tape and a spool of ribbon). Chair, bike, bike pump, helium tank, plastic outfits. 

The body shares
The body exposes
Movement becomes dancing
    with purpose
    +intention
    +flow

A blue tape web is made over the overturned chair; strings and mess cover space. Each dancer is doing their own little absurd solo with the props. 

Emily Hansel, Styles Alexander, and Phoenicia Pettyjohn. Photo by Hillary Goidell.

We are living parallel lives. For the third time in the performance, an electronic score offers a cinematic feel. I think of Miranda July’s Me, You, and Everyone We Know. There is a sense of wanting, of solo-ness. At the same time, outside here in the SF Botanical Garden, a wedding party is passing on the path right behind me. (The potential for togetherness; proclaiming togetherness!)

I am thinking about:
Entanglement; connectivity
Nearness; self-space
Just bodies; bodies+items

The dance concludes with a final section of the dancers in close proximity, seeing each other, switching places. 

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Pulling words from Jennifer’s post-performance speech:

…to gather
in public spaces
for free art
in urban landscapes
in community

Thank you to Jennifer Perfilio Movement Works for a beautiful hour together, and thank you to the intended and unintended fellow audience members who collectively watched, felt, absorbed, and connected with art in full view and full sunlight this afternoon. 


Jill Randall is the founder/director of Life as a Modern Dancer and the Artistic Director of Shawl-Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley, CA.

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Related posts:

A Practice of Unknowing, Breaking Away from Structures and Habits: An Interview with San Francisco Dance Artist Jennifer Perfilio

Resources on Site-Specific Dance for College Courses (Updated July 2022)

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New Graphic for Arts Administrators

 

I love a good graphic/visual, and I also love reflection questions. Thanks for checking out my latest 8.5x11. Thank you to my cousin Jenny Lederer for the design help.

Download Arts Administrator Color Wheel

Please also consider checking out:

The Verbs of Arts Administration

The Arts Administrator's Alphabet

 

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FACT/SF’s Summer Dance Festival Dances Through Genre

FACT/SF’s Summer Dance Festival Dances Through Genre

By Garth Grimball

Editor’s Note:

For some dance events, securing a dance writer/reviewer can be a difficult task due to timing and availability. But the questions still can linger: How can artists receive feedback and impressions? How are works of art documented in writing for audiences, artists, and funders? Writer Garth Grimball attended Weekend 2 of the FACT/SF Summer Festival in-person, and offered to view the video of Weekend 1. Given Grimball’s writing throughout the pandemic about many performance formats, including recorded and streamed events, this seemed like a great opportunity to ask Garth to engage in a recording of Weekend 1 as well. 

- Jill Randall

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FACT/SF’s Summer Dance Festival featured six artists over the weekend of July 29-30 at the Joe Goode Annex. Unfortunately no writers from Life As A Modern Dancer were able to attend the festival live, so here I am, six weeks later, writing about recordings of the performances. Which is to say, my responses are to a 2D rendering of a 3D form, and I watched on my laptop from the solitude of my bedroom, not engulfed in the energy of an excited audience. This is an experience of which I am now quite familiar. 

slowdanger. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

slowdanger, based in Pittsburgh, PA, opened the festival with “Resonant Body.” Co-artistic directors Taylor Knight and Anna Thompson, clad in white windowpane-patterned jumpsuits, move behind two microphones stationed on the diagonal from upstage right and downstage left. Their bodies blend and separate like their amplified voices. “Resonant Body” is evocative of Steve Reich’s “Pendulum Music” (1968); Knight and Thompson explore sound and the body with a specificity that expands.

Sharp & Fine. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

Megan and Shannon Kurashige, co-directors of Sharp & Fine, premiered “This Time Tomorrow,” a duet for Eric Garcia and Moscelyne Parkeharrison. The dance opens with the duo speaking back and forth through a tube of packing paper discussing the end of the world. Garcia is dressed in a pink tutu and brandishes the paper tube and a pair of scissors like a fairy wand. “This Time Tomorrow” uses a blend of the mundane and fantastical metaphorically to explore how humans deal with the enormity of things like a pandemic or climate change.

Drama Tops. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

“Boys, Boys, Boys!” from the Seattle-based duo DRAMATOPS makes an effort of effort. Elby Brosch and Shane Donahue enter wearing replicas of Elton John’s famous Dodgers sequined baseball ensemble. After hyping up the crowd they perform lap dances to Ginuwine’s “Pony” that evolve into gymnastic partnering in wrestling singlets. Camp becomes force. Brosch and Donahue lift, drop, cantilever their bodies in endless configurations until they sit facing each other, pounding their torsos together, over and over. Phil Collins’s “In The Air Tonight” plays and the pounding continues until the drum beat hits. Delayed gratification.

Amit Patel & Ishika Seth with Akhil Joondeph. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

“They,” choreographed and performed by Amit Patel & Ishika Seth with Akhil Joondeph, “is inspired by the concept of Ardhanarishvara, the Hindu God represented as half woman-half man.” The trio makes the greatest use of the stage space, creating narrative out of spatial relationships. Blending classical Indian dance gestures with modern dance partnering, “They” moves between harmony and disharmony as Patel, Seth, and Joondeph merge in and out of sculptural tableau.

Chinchin Hsu and Brianna Elyse Torres. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

Chinchin Hsu collaborated with Brianna Elyse Torres on the duet “time eater.” The dance succeeds in sticking to its central contrasts. Torres dances all over the stage. Hsu remains stationary. Torres’s movements shift and vary. Hsu is dedicated to one task. Torres undresses as she moves leaving clothes scattered. Hsu slowly empties a burlap bag of grain hoisted across her shoulders. “time eater” shows how the experience of time depends on context as much as measurement.

FACT/SF. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

FACT/SF closed the evening with “Number 6.” Choreographed by Charles Slender-White and performed by Slender-White, Katherine Neumann, and LizAnne Roman, the trio feels like a precursor to the following weekend’s premiere, “For a.” The dancers prance in wearing shiny amber rompers and black socks. The trio is mostly unison choreography of body halves with gesture accumulation to music by Joel Corry & Jax Jones Feat. Charli XCX. “Number 6” is a brisk 3 minutes 15 seconds. Its breezy quality is undercut by an adherence to Modern Dance Face. A little more face would take this dance a long way.

Attending a dance festival can encourage one to proclaim trends or locate a throughline that may be non-existent. What does seeing these six works tell me about dance, about dance makers? Nothing, writ large. But in these six dances I see a grappling with the question of, How to be? What are the connections a body can make in this time and place? Good questions to ask and keep asking.

Garth Grimball is a dance writer and artist based in Oakland, CA. He is a contributor to SF Examiner and Dance Media. He is the editor of ODC’s Dance Stories.

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Related post:

FACT/SF & DISCO RIOT Dance On Making

Dreaming/Preparing/Dancing: 3 Days until “death pod/kid subjunctive” at CounterPulse

Funsch Dance's kid subjunctive. Photo by Robbie Sweeny. Pictured left to right: Emily Hansel, Shareen DeRyan, zoe huey, and Phoenicia Pettyjohn.

 

Dreaming/Preparing/Dancing: 3 Days until “death pod/kid subjunctive” at CounterPulse

By Jill Randall, with Christy Funsch and Nol Simonse

 

Christy Funsch, Nol Simonse, and Jim Cave premiere new works at CounterPulse in San Francisco, September 8-10. The other day, I got to catch up with longtime colleagues Christy Funsch and Nol Simonse via a virtual dialogue (i.e. email threads and Google Docs). Read further to peek in through the window on the work.

Purchase your tickets for the upcoming performances here.

Funsch Dance. Photo by Robbie Sweeny. Pictured: Phoenicia Pettyjohn, foreground, and zoe huey and Emily Hansel in the background.

Jill Randall (JR): Thank you for sharing your press release and a short video of you two talking about time and your current works. 

Listening to you two in dialogue, I am thinking of a few word pairs that play out thematically and choreographically. These concepts are fun to consider in light of both of your works. Can you each share what comes to mind with these ideas?

Settled/unsettled:

Christy: I was settled but now I am unsettled. I think I feel unsettled because of the version of settled I was in. I think these two states are relative, and I have worked hard to be okay being unsettled. If I consider my work as an ongoing practice, I relieve myself of the pressure to make a perfect piece, or even to make a finished piece. Sometimes I think being settled is a fiction, because there is no such thing as stillness.

Nol: Oh, I would love to feel “settled”! But as a choreographer, I don’t know if that’s possible. “Settled” feels like some version of “finished”- and I don’t know if anything ever really feels finished - I’m trying to be ok in an unsettled, unfinished state, which is the forever present.

Formal/informal:

Christy: The lively interplay of these constructs has been the subtextual content of my work for the past ten years! I’m in love with them both and want to coax them to live together in the worlds of each piece I make. I feel tender towards formalism, because like “settled,” I think it might be a fiction. It’s definitely oppressive. Informal is the child of me dancing on and with the vacuum cleaner; it’s the foundation of how dance has always been my meaning-making. 

Nol: I also feel tender towards formalism. There is something comforting about the curtains, the suspension of disbelief, knowing what to expect and how to experience it - feeling comfortable with the container. Informality is unexpected, and has a tinge of excitement.

Present/future:

Christy: Things are not okay right now. Things might be okay, or at least better. I am not living in the present, sorry California, I am remaking the past when I remember it, and I am conjuring the future as per my desire. In the words of fiction writer Jean Chen Ho: “To live in the subjunctive is a manner of seeing the past not as a fixed story but as one that the present continuously acts upon. The present is what determines the past, not the other way around. I can write it any way I choose, at my own pace. That’s another thing about the subjunctive: There’s always enough time there. All the time you could want, and need.”

Nol: I’m trying hard to be present, and make good choices. Probably not succeeding, though.

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JR: What are 5 words or phrases to describe your latest work?

Nol: Death, friendship, comforting, ritual, dream

Christy: Broken; efforted; anchoring; building; terrifying (this is how I feel about the piece more than the piece)

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JR: When was the choreographic moment for you? Why did you want to make this piece?

Nol: Jim, Eli, and I were talking in a cemetery. The conversation was deep, rich, funny, honest, educational, and real. I thought, “I’m an idiot - I should’ve been recording this.” And then I thought, “I wish I could put this on stage.”

Christy: Each choreographic adventure drops me off where I need to be to start the next one. Kid subjunctive arose from what I refer to as the “residue of unfulfilled desires” that are in the wake of every piece I make–in this case it was last year’s 12-hour EPOCH. EPOCH was so much about “sitting in it–”it” being the present. Kid (referring to playful curiosity) subjunctive (referring to imagined, desire-projected futures) is my attempt at moving towards possible ways of being. Ways of determining what we want and asking for it. Ways of negotiating our projections with the people around us holding us accountable.

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JR: “The performance is now,” Nol shares in your recorded conversation. So much is up for discussion at this time about performance, engagement, audience, collaborators, agency, and decisionmaking. How do each of you define “performance?”

Christy: I have framed my dance-making history as a way to grapple with the question of what is performance and what it can do. The work I am most engaged with as a viewer challenges me to expand my perception. The construct of “performance” is ongoing content in my work. Sometimes oppressively so, in that I pull people along to swim in the complexity of ideas without always fully holding and honoring their desire(s) and personhood(s). I try to name, as early as I can, what I think I am up to in each project, in order to give collaborators an out if their interests do not align. Yes, the creative act and all of the decision-making it requires is an oppressive assertion of “I am.” I try to own the politics and values inherent in all of my choices and ask for assistance with this from my audience. I hungrily invite this! I also ask for receptivity from the viewer. I’m not interested in coddling or fictions or happily-ever-after. That isn’t what I think the function of art, of performance is. For me, and I write this with full ownership of my bias, performance should not numb but expand perception.

Nol: Anything can be a performance really. Watching some birds at Lake Merritt can be a performance. For me, a key ingredient is exploration - as an artist - did you explore something? An idea, a method, a feeling? And do you want to show people that exploration? (Or what you’ve learned, or how you’ve changed.) That’s something I like to see in a performance.

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Jim Cave. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

 

on teaching improvisational practice: dispatch from August 2022

Photo: Kyle Adler

 

on teaching improvisational practice: dispatch from August 2022

By Bhumi B Patel

“Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.”- bell hooks

In June 2022, I taught a series of classes as part of the Shawl-Anderson Dance Center's Forms+Play teaching series that I called “Returning to the Body: A Liberatory Improvisation Class.” Each class had a provocation that shaped how the class unfolded: “Meeting Us,” “How Do We Become?” and “Disappearing Places.” We repeated some things, deepened others, experimented, but more than anything, we shared a container in which we could simply be with one another. I wanted to make an offering to share how I am working through my own practice to cultivate and nourish finding bell hooks’ concept of “homeplace” in the body as a means to be and embody my own values. hooks has written prolifically about how she defines and seeks this as both an idea and a lived reality. 

This concept became central to my movement practice when I found myself looking for the humanity in the process of making movement-based art. I found my way to hooks’ concept (or maybe she found her way to me) and immediately felt something settle inside. hooks writes, homeplace “[is] the one site where one [can] freely confront the issue of humanization, where one [can] resist.” For hooks, “when we renew our concern with homeplace, we can address political issues that affect our daily lives” and each class offering for me is an opportunity to renew and refresh our concern with homeplace. Like hooks, I have drawn on Thich Nhat Hanh’s writing as a guidepost in the darkness of understanding my body and making an internal and external space in which my body can exist as a home. In “How to Love,” Thay reminds us that “if you can accept your body, then you have a chance to see your body as your home. You can rest in your body, settle in, relax, and feel joy and ease.” 

My teaching draws on the many experiences I’ve had in modern dance, post-modern dance, and globally diverse forms of improvisational practice that engage with imagery, sensation, nature, land, and medicine for the body. My teaching also relies upon the idea of “regenerative refusal,” something that I only recently named having found what Maile Arvin writes about in Possessing Polynesians: The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawai`i and Oceania. This refusal comes in response to the ways that whiteness promotes possession and ownership, and Arvin defines it as “actions that seek to restore balance” by divesting “from racialized and gendered hierarchies” as an “ongoing reckoning with settler colonialism.” This sets the tone for regenerative refusals to generate “future-oriented acts aiming to realize a different way of being in and relating to the world.” For me, this often means a regenerative refusal of the structures of power and ownership that exist in development movement forms and existing in lineages that have histories of stealing from Black and Brown communities and then repackaging them as innovative ways of moving. I work to both name my teachers and lineages, and honor the moments when I don’t know where things originated. This also acts as a way to engage with the future possibilities of how we relate to one another, the spaces we occupy, and the world. 

I begin class with curiosity. I offer the prompt for participants to share what they are calling into the space or what their intention is for the day. This feels like a meaningful way to draw in what each person hopes to reap from the class. Often, this informs how I frame practices and what I offer as guidance.

In our first class, “Meeting Us,” I set out with the intention of starting to know each of the individuals in the room. Who are they and where did they come from. I offered prompts for writing and discussing that included “tell us about your family, biological or chosen” and “tell us about the place you grew up.”  In Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics by bell hooks, she emphasizes that homeplace is where we “can regain lost perspective” and “give life new meaning.” She reminds us that “we can make homeplace that space where we return for renewal and self-recovery, where we can heal our wounds and be­come whole” and in this very first class, remembering where we came from can be a site from which we can heal our wounds. From this moment of writing and dialoguing with others in the class, we moved into movement practice. Our first practice went through listening, envisioning the body as home, opening our voices, tapping into small (and big) joys that we were able to find, and letting go. For this class, we ended with a joyful dance party to exit the space and close our practice.

In the next class, “How Do We Become?”, I was interested in creating a space where we could deepen those initial inquiries into home. For folks who returned to the class, we took what we had written and thought about in relationship to family and home to begin thinking about what home means to you so that we might begin to construct what we need to maintain that home within our own bodies. I was interested in offering movement space as a way to return home and embody our values, and as a way to create community. We engaged with movement practice through creating a duet practice with another person in the room whether or not they knew about it. I also offered that one might choose something in space like furniture, an object, or even the light, if they wanted an alternative to connecting person-to-person. This seed of connection planted the opportunity to see one another in our humanity as we improvised and created connection. 

My framework for the final week, “Disappearing Places,” was to think and move through the following question: Can we think of home as a space that is continuously disappearing and reforming? I continued the line of inquiry in identifying where individuals found themselves drawn toward in becoming their own homeplace in the body. As a warm up movement practice, I offered an improvisation that I’ve been relishing in within my own movement journey to become bodies of bodies at many scales. I offered that we could expand and contract the water in our own bodies to become many forms. When I think of disappearing places, I often think of bodies of water, so this felt like an effective way to begin our exploration. In the act of disappearing places, I invited thinking about bodies of water, but also thinking about other spaces that have disappeared: neighborhoods, buildings, or even the felt-sense of disappearing places, like the first time you return to your childhood home and it no longer feels like home. This practice of feeling and sensing the place and allowing it to disappear from us reinforces how hooks views homplace as “fragile and transitional” but something that contributes to “a meaningful community of resistance.”

When I teach, I shift between participating in and observing movement practices by trusting my intuition to witness what the group needs. When I observe, I am better able to hold and shape the container in which we are exploring our vulnerabilities; when I actively participate, I can be inside the practice that we are creating and respond from that position. I often try to have a balance of both of these modes throughout a class as a whole so that I can show up fully as a facilitator and integrate into the space we co-create. It is imperfect and emerging, but I trust in this process.

The experience of teaching these workshops revealed to me how much spaces like this are needed. Spaces where we can develop a sense of self, guided by our own desires, and unpack how we want to show up for freedom-seeking and home-seeking. For me, there is something beautiful and life-giving about coming to movement practice from a place of our own histories and lineages, and the writing and theories of feminist of color thinkers, so that we might enact and embody ideas that might guide us toward a future in which we might all experience and support liberation. 

 

Bhumi B Patel is a queer, desi artist/activist, choreographer, dance writer/scholar, and director of pateldanceworks (she/they). In its purest form, her performance work is a love letter to her ancestors. Patel pursues liberation through dancing, choreographing, curating, educating, and writing/scholarship. Patel aims to support marginalized and oppressed voices through performance and movement education. She earned her MA in American Dance Studies from Florida State University and her MFA in Dance from Mills College. Bhumi is currently a doctoral student at The Ohio State University. She is a member of Dancing Around Race, and engages with curatorial practices for both performances and written publications.She has presented her research at the Dance Studies Association Annual conference and the Popular Culture Association Annual conference as well as having been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Life as a Modern Dancer, Contact Quarterly, and In Dance.

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Related posts:

finding tiny freedoms - By Bhumi B Patel

Somatic Writing Series: Bhumi B Patel, Andrea Olsen, and Elizebeth Randall Rains

Let us eat cake, consensually, that is: A Reflection on TALK.DANCE.CAKE - By Bhumi B Patel

Blog Series: "Why improv?"

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FACT/SF & DISCO RIOT Dance On Making

DISCO RIOT. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

 

FACT/SF & DISCO RIOT Dance On Making

By Garth Grimball

FACT/SF and DISCO RIOT, based in San Diego, presented two works at ODC Theater on August 5-7, closing out FACT/SF’s two week Summer Dance Festival. Bay Area audiences were given the opportunity to see this SoCal company thanks to PORT (Peer Organized Reciprocal Touring), a touring program developed by Charles Slender-White, artistic director of FACT/SF.  

In our third year of pandemic life touring is a bigger risk than ever. Building an audience and staying healthy can feel like trying to force two negative magnets together. Masking was required of the audience for this split bill and the dancers performed unmasked. Whether the requirement was based on touring or not, I’m grateful dancers are traveling to the Bay Area to perform.

DISCO RIOT opened with “Ex Nihilo” (2019) choreographed by artistic director Zaquia Mahler Salinas. The dance is led by and responds to audio recordings of lectures by Alan Watts, edited within an original score by Jonny Tar, that examine origins, nothingness, and interconnectedness.

The quintet is a slow build. The phrasing feels patchwork like material that has been sewn together. Walking is a frequent transition between dancier moments. Salinas, Guillermo Castro, Lauren Christie, Marty Dorado, and Odessa Uno make their way towards the downstage left corner with a gesture evocative of pulling an arrow through a bow. Watts’s voice describes the duality of sensations and two dancers connect as if forming each other. Christie and Uno cradle each other’s heads, swirling on an axis at center stage.

The first half of “Ex Nihilo” feels like a mismatch of performance quality and choreography. The dancers share a committed presence on stage but the movement doesn’t meet that commitment. Until the powerful modern dance diagonal does its work. At the halfway point the dancers come barreling down the stage right diagonal and the choreography sparks. The dance snaps into focus. Salinas and Castro share a duet of inversions, turns, and floorwork that is propulsive and highlights a creative chemistry that enhances the theme of the work.

The costumes were another mismatch. It looks like the assignment was gender neutrality, but the result was a kind of mermaid-core: shimmery opalescence with a green tinge and fabric bunched and ruffled like scales. The look was memorable but how it connected to the dance was opaque.

DISCO RIOT. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

 

FACT/SF premiered “For a,” choreographed and performed by Charles Slender-White, Katherine Neumann, and LizAnne Roman. FACT/SF is entering its 15th season and “For a” is a culmination of sorts; seventeen artists are listed as choreographic contributors from past productions. The work has easter eggs of past repertory, from movement phrases to the buckets of “The Consumption Series” (2010).

“For a” has one of the best openings I’ve seen in recent memory. The theater’s entire lighting grid was lowered to just above the floor. The beams, the hardware, the wires, all visible. Slender-White, Neumann, and Roman enter gliding beneath it all belly down on creeper seats. It was silly and joyful and the audience laughed.

LizAnne Roman of FACT/SF. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

The trio stands and dances in the alleys between the equipment. Wearing black shirts and skirts that mirror the silhouette of theater lighting cages, the trio play in foreground and background, bodies obscured by the theater trappings. 

Once the lighting grid rose back to its regular station, Neumann danced a solo with a floodlight in hand that felt more like a duet between human and object. This is a dance about dancing the way people say a painting is about painting. The surface, the materiality, the limitations are paramount. The objects are the subject. “For a” is about dance the way Cy Twombly’s scribbles are about painting.

Slender-White is a certified teacher of Countertechnique, the release adjacent movement style that has one perpetually rotating on a vertical axis. Inventive gestures are born out of the dancers’ shaping of Countertechnique. The gestures look unique unto themselves, not like abstractions of a familiar wave or pointing. 

There is a lot of unison in “For a” and it was hard to tell when the unison was meant to highlight the differences of a body’s internal axis, or when they just needed more rehearsal. Either way, motifs emerge. Parallel bourrees, arms tracing down the body and out into space, shoulders guiding in and out of turns.

At times I think the most transgressive choice a modern dance choreographer can make in the Bay Area is to choreograph to classical music, without irony. For this reason Slender-White’s choice of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major feels bold. The trio kept up with the demands of the music, though if FACT/SF had Mark Morris money, I think arranging the composition to a slightly shorter length would benefit the dance. “For a” is a welcome tribute to form and dancing.

FACT/SF. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

Garth Grimball is a dance writer and artist based in Oakland, CA. He is a contributor to SF Examiner and Dance Media. He is the editor of ODC’s Dance Stories.

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Related posts:

Wholeness in "Split"

Artist Profile: Charles Slender-White

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10 Years, 1381 Posts, and Much Gratitude

Dearest readers, friends, family, and colleagues,

Today marks the completion of 10 years of this blog! This week has been a sweet moment to reflect on this time and this journey.

Because I could not resist, I indeed went back and counted the number of posts from the past decade. The current count is 1381! I have so much gratitude for every person who took the time to write a piece, to share their viewpoints and paths, and to contribute to this site for voice, dialogue, reflection, and celebration of modern and contemporary dance. Readership varies per month - from a few hundred to over 5000. Thrilled to see as of today there are 204,919 reads/clicks, which averages to 1,707 a month. (I know compared to some big blogs, this is nothing. But within the modern dance realm, how many dance books have had 204,000 people pick up a copy?)

Ten years ago, I was teaching full-time at The Hamlin School in San Francisco. I was still performing, and my kids were just 4 and 6. Thank you to dear friends Rebecca Johnson and Mo Miner for supporting me at that moment in August 2012 when I wanted to start this little project. Thank you to colleague Katie Faulkner for saying yes and writing the first artist profile! Thank you to colleagues Melecio Estrella, Nadia Oka, Doug Gillespie, Rachael Leonard, Mike Barber, Ashley Thorndike-Youssef, Tamara Riewe, and Annie Rosenthal Parr for completing the first 10 artist profiles on LAAMD.

I started the blog because I wanted to share and amplify more stories of dancers over 30 and to offer a full picture of their lives in dance - which included teaching, holding non-dance jobs, managing injuries, exploring multiple interests, and much more. I wanted to read what I myself was not seeing in other dance publications. And at the same time, I aspired to have this content (free, online, fresh...) be used as reading material in undergraduate classes to support the next generation of dancers. The seed/inspiration for this idea came from a pivotal discussion my senior year in college with guest artist Keith Johnson. I held onto that story - and his honesty and open heart - for years. Read more about it here and Keith's artist profile, which was the 100th piece on the site.

So, the artist profiles were the main idea for years - self-interviews with artists about their dance background, career paths, goals, and dreams. But over the years I realized that the blog platform could support other important, often underdiscussed, topics as well. I took joy in seeking out new topics and questions percolating in the field. I started to add new features each year - such as the Arts Administrator's Alphabet, a running list of MFA programs in the U.S., My Dance Week, and One Good Quote. I loved playing with durational projects - offering something once a week or once a month (gratitude project, writers' workshop, Dance+Change, 365 Words...).

Then in recent years, due to a gaping hole in dance performance coverage in the SF Bay Area, I started publishing reviews and reflections of local events. I gathered an incredible roster of writers who also wanted to cover the performances and continue to expand how and why we write about dance. It is really important for me to name and thank these incredible writers: Bhumi B. Patel, Sima Belmar, Garth Grimball, Audrey Johnson, Sarah JG Chenoweth, Molly Rose-Williams, and Todd Courage.

During the pandemic in 2021, I had the wonderful opportunity to have my first intern from Wayne State University, Camryn Eaglin! Camryn and I kept projects going, and hope and curiosity alive, during a very rough pandemic patch. Camryn has since graduated from college and is now a paid writer for the blog too. Check out her most recent interview with Dr. Doug Risner here.

As you will see, during the last 2 years I have not published as many posts as prior years. The reason for this is a big one. I have committed to paying every writer a stipend. I am very proud of this commitment.

Thank you for taking the time to read this little musing today, and I look forward to the years ahead with the project! I would love to quote a few pieces from the blog over the years:

question everything.

speaking of questions, there is a difference between the question "should i dance, be a dancer?" and "how can i dance/be a dancer in this moment?" and "how can i make this happen?"

-Shelley Senter, Artist Profile #57 (2/22/2014)

Shelley Senter

I think the biggest thing I’ve learned and am continuing to learn in my 40s is that the messiness that I refer to above is not something that needs to be formalized or contained. Dance for me has become a much more global and holistic practice that doesn’t always find its container in the body moving according to learned behaviors or historicized forms. It’s a philosophy, it’s a spiritual act, it’s perceptual gymnastics, it’s time traveling, it’s psycho-emotional excavation, it’s social communion. The other thing that I’ve realized and something that is not necessarily a comfort is that once you reach a certain stage, not determined by age always, meaning the more the world opens up to you through this elusive practice called dance, there is no turning back.

-Jeanine Durning, Artist Profile #89 (4/04/2015)

Jeanine Durning. Photo: Ian Douglas.

Improvisation - my life in general at the moment. Every move I make from waking up to falling asleep is a study in improvisation. How I use my desires and goals to get me through the day. All I’ve got is time and not many people, places, or things asking much of me. I feel like a professional juggler standing on one leg juggling one small ball. I'm used to using so much more of me; it's a constant study in figuring out what I can do with my other limbs while I hold on to just one thing.

-Jae Neal, Shelter-in-Place Dance Dictionary (5/14/2020)

Jae Neal. Photo: Aeric Meredith-Goujon.

I will be sending out many thank you notes this week, and here I want to share 3 thank yous in particular to Chris Randall, Sima Belmar, and Valerie Gutwirth. My wonderful husband Chris has lovingly supported this project every week, along with a variety of other ideas, dreams, and aspirations. Sima Belmar, longtime friend and colleague, remains my north star with writing - about integrity, curiosity, and continued growth and learning. And Valerie Gutwirth - another longtime friend and colleague of 20+ years - listens to every new, hair-brained idea and says "yes!" to being a part of many of them, including this blog throughout the past 10 years. Love and gratitude to Chris, Sima, and Val!

Last, I hope that you will continue to be a part of it too! Here are 4 ideas:

• Please bookmark the blog on your computer or "Like" the Facebook Page. Those are the 2 of the easiest ways to stay connected.
• Share the blog with a colleague or student. This means so much to me, and you help continue to expand the conversation.
• I am always looking for writers and pitches for pieces. Write anytime to randalldanceprojects@gmail.com. This can be about an artist, upcoming show, new book, or initiative.
• Last, if you are able, I am seeking 100 readers/fans this month to contribute $20/each. This funding will nurture the writing for the rest of 2022. 100% of these donations will fund writers. Please consider donating today via Venmo (Life as a Modern Dancer, @Jill-Randall-6 ) or Patreon. Many, many thanks! (If you are wondering, the cost of running the blog is about $6000 a year.)

I end here by saying - the Life as a Modern Dancer Blog has brought me so much joy over the past 10 years. Reading fellow dancers' life stories, and having them open their hearts, is just breathtaking. And with the posts I personally created over the years to offer resources, ideas, and guiding questions - it is my pleasure and joy to help others, connect others, and contribute to the dance field.

Thank you for being an integral part of this project!

 

With love and gratitude,

Jill Randall
Berkeley, CA (August 13, 2022)

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Inside an Insightful Mind: An Interview with Dr. Doug Risner

Inside an Insightful Mind: An Interview with Dr. Doug Risner

By Camryn Eaglin

Dr. Doug Risner is an accomplished, well-respected dance educator and scholar. With a focus in dance education, his research and practice is etched in humanizing dance pedagogy. From his extensive research throughout his Masters and Doctoral studies, to publishing his first book “Stigma and Perseverance in the Lives of Boys Who Dance” in 2009, he places a critical lens on traditional dance pedagogies and aims to unearth inhumane teaching practices. He always asks his students two valuable questions: What kind of teacher do you want to become? and, What does it mean to be responsible for someone else’s learning?

When you see someone with such an extensive and successful career, you wonder–how did they get here? Dr. Risner gave me some insight into his personal journey.

The Early Years

For professionals in a field they're passionate about, it’s common for them to trace back to a moment, a feeling, or a person who ignited that initial flame. For Dr. Risner, that was his 1st grade teacher Mrs. Shaffer. She was sure to amplify her students' strengths without emphasizing their "shortcomings." He took inspiration from her and from these moments. Dr. Risner had an interest in teaching, to the point where he would play school with his neighborhood friends, and he of course would act as the teacher. This all left a lasting impact on Dr. Risner. His passion for dancing would blossom soon after, and although his path wasn’t completely linear, the dots would later reconnect.

Camryn Eaglin (CE): At what point in your life did you find a serious interest in dance teaching and education?

Doug Risner (DR): I started taking dance “lessons” when I was in second grade. My mom put me in tap dance classes because I was a chubby 7-year old, and she thought tap dance would help me lose weight. Yet, my very first dance teacher, Phyllis Liles, saw my potential and always supported me in positive ways, never negative or demeaning. She taught me to always do my best, never give up, and to work hard. 

At the same time, I also remember being only one of two boys who took dance lessons, and I wondered why that was. Dancing was physical, challenging, and took lots of practice and fortitude. Why don’t more boys dance? It’s a question I’ve been asking in my research and scholarship for over 20 years, and is the subject of one of my most recent books, Masculinity, Intersectionality & Identity: Why Boys (Don’t) Dance (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022). 

I was also drawn to teaching and studying how to teach because I struggled early in my career with dance teachers who taught from traditional, authoritarian, banking-method dance pedagogies. I wanted to find and develop ways to significantly counteract the negative deficiency model which focuses on what the dance student can’t do. 

CE: How did you get your start in Academia earlier on? 

DR: My early experiences of academia were quite rough. I went to Miami University in Ohio right out of high school as a pre-medicine major. I thought I wanted to be a medical doctor in large part because my father died from cancer when I was only 10 years old. I wanted to give back in some way so that others might not have to go through what I did. But after two years of college, the required pre-med coursework was over my head. So I dropped out. Although I had started dance lessons when I was a young boy, dance was not something males took as a major in the late 1970s. So I worked in department store retail and continued to study dance and perform in musical theater productions for a number of years.

 In 1981, I met a male dancer in a production who was auditioning for Point Park College and asked me if I wanted to audition too. So I did and got accepted. I completed a year there, but tuition was beyond my means to continue, and honestly, I never felt that I fit into the highly competitive conservatory setting. By 1984, I was teaching at the School of Pittsburgh Ballet Theater and had become a father. I was 25 years old with a family to support. I knew that to survive I needed to get my undergraduate degree in dance (BFA, 1988) and move right into a graduate program (MFA, 1991), which I did, both at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). Other than becoming a father, it’s probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

In the Thick of Academia

Dr. Risner knew he wanted to continue his higher education journey. Once he graduated with his MFA, he began what would be a 37-year in higher education dance. His teaching endeavors flourished in college dance departments, and this is where Dr. Risner developed, explored, and crafted his own personal pedagogy and teaching methods, which were heavily influenced by his personal experiences and education. His earliest university teaching experiences focused on technique, choreography, community outreach, and repertory for undergraduate and graduate students.

CE: What did your career look like the first few years after earning your MFA in Dance?

DR: With my MFA in Choreography and Performance completed in 1991, I was appointed Assistant Professor of Dance at Luther College, a small liberal arts college, with an active and vibrant theater and dance department. I had published two academic journal publications based on research I had conducted for my MFA written thesis, “Dancers in the Rehearsal Process: An Interpretive Inquiry.” At the time, MFA grad students at UNCG were required to complete both a written scholarly thesis and original choreography for a shared dance concert with another MFA grad student. I am so fortunate and grateful that scholarly research was such an important, required component of the MFA in Dance at UNCG.

CE: Many creatives express a difficult time choosing their higher education path. How did you later decide on a PhD in Curriculum and Teaching?

DR: There was so much more I wanted to learn about research design and methods. I also had a strong desire to address some of the most troubling challenges and issues confronting dancers, dance educators, and the field of dance education. Although I had been promoted to associate professor with tenure at Luther College, I resigned my position in 1998 and returned to UNCG for a PhD in Curriculum and Teaching. I was 40 years old and back in school, again. And I loved every minute of it. 

CE: You’re currently the Director of the Master of Arts in Theater & Dance Teaching Artistry at Wayne State University in Detroit. How did this program come about, and what do graduate students in the program gain from their studies?

DR: Fast forward a decade, along with my Wayne State theater faculty colleague Mary Elizabeth Anderson–also a teaching artist for many years–we conducted a mixed-method qualitative dominant research study of dance and theater teaching artists (n=172). With so little published literature on dance and theater teaching artists at that time, the three-year study’s findings contributed significantly to the curriculum design and course development for the MA in Teaching Artistry program. The study’s description and findings were published as part of our book, Hybrid Lives of Teaching Artists in Dance & Theater Arts (2014). 

What we learned from working teaching artists shaped nearly all aspects of the program’s design and format. First, it was clear that the MA program needed to be available in a fully online format–the majority of TAs told us they would be unable to relocate or uproot their families. Second, they made clear that continuing their current teaching artist employment while pursuing a master’s degree was a high priority. Third, they wanted options for internships and fieldwork experiences in their area as part of the program. We designed the program to meet each of these needs. In addition, Mary and I were committed to creating a culture of community, collegiality, and collaboration, especially given the challenges some students experience in online courses and programs. 

The Master of Arts in Theater and Dance - Teaching Artistry admitted its first cohort in 2016. Our fourth cohort will begin this Fall 2022, and it’s one of the most diverse and talented so far.

The Exploration & Research 

CE: What goes into your process on deciding what to write about and research in depth, specifically in dance pedagogy?

DR: My process for identifying issues in dance pedagogy has often focused upon dehumane teaching approaches and practices–many of which I experienced as a young dancer. 

As I wrote two decades ago in “Rehearsing Heterosexuality: 'Unspoken' Truths in Dance Education” (Dance Research Journal, 2002):  

“I believe the overarching problem centers on the dehumanizing effects of  traditional dance pedagogies and the ways in which ignoring these issues cultivates further dehumaniza­tion in dance education. Unless we diligently critique the ways in which we were taught, trained, and treated, we frequently manufacture exact pedagogical replicas. Moreover, from a very early age, students are the unwitting beneficiaries of this process. “

Seldom receiving the attention that could adequately prepare dance educators to con­front these critical issues, the profession frequently waits until a crisis develops in our pro­grams or schools. We then stumble, struggle, and fumble through territory we often know little about, for which we have no preparation and, worse, lack the technical skills to be responsive. Twenty years later, we find ourselves in similar situations, exacerbated by COVID-19 and widespread asynchronous learning. 

CE: You’ve written hundreds of  papers, journal articles and chapters. After an extensive writing career, how do you find  new topics you’re passionate about researching and writing?

DR: That’s a great question. Because I’ve been researching, writing and publishing for so long, finding new topics that really interest me is an ongoing, organic process that never stops. I’m thinking about new projects all the time, especially those that excite me– what I have questions about and want to learn more– and what the profession needs to learn, know, and address.

My book projects, often edited volumes, are time consuming and require mentoring and managing numerous contributing authors. Because edited volumes– at least for me– take about three years to produce, I’m also working on a number of journal articles and chapters for other books simultaneously. To remain engaged in each of these ongoing projects means I have to be deeply passionate and committed to the topics I pursue. 

My passion also comes from collaborating with other researchers and scholars whose work I admire and respect. After I published my first book, Stigma and Perseverance in the Lives of Boys Who Dance (2009), I swore I would never write a book by myself again. Collaboration, on the other hand, requires listening, responding and supporting others; all of which provide meaningful opportunities for learning, understanding and questioning. Most of my work over the past decade or so has been collaborative.  

Words of Wisdom

CE: Out of some of your distinguished pieces, which one are you most proud of and hope more dancers and educators would read?

DR: This is a tough one to answer. It’s like asking, “Which of your children are you most proud of?” My next book, Dancing Mind, Minding Dance: Socially Relevant and Personally Resonant Dance Education (Routledge, 2023), is a retrospective volume of 17 articles published from 1992-2022. The book comprises both pivotal works cited frequently by other scholars and articles that are no longer available or difficult to find. It is organized in five sections: 

• Dancing Making Pedagogies; 
• Dance Curriculum and Teaching; 
• Dance Teaching Artists; 
• Dance, Gender and Sexual Identity; and 
•  Social Justice and Humanizing Dance Pedagogy.

The book provides readers a 30-year perspective of my scholarship and research studies. Although I’m unable to say which article I’m most proud of, I know there’s something for everyone in this collection. Dancing Mind, Minding Dance is scheduled for publication in February 2023. 

CE: It’s important for artists to understand there are many aspects of dance to be involved in other than performing. What advice would you give them to help find their niche in the dance field? 

DR: Excellent question, thank you for asking. It’s vital to help dance students understand and embrace that a career in dance doesn’t necessarily mean one career. Careers I have had over my lifetime are one example: I was a professional dancer, technique teacher, choreographer, teaching artist, dance professor, dance department chair, and scholar/researcher. Also research shows that nearly 70% of undergraduate students with degrees in dance earn most of their income from teaching dance. 

I encourage undergraduate dance majors to pursue their interests in dance while also taking courses that prepare them for dance-related careers, as well as courses of interest outside of dance. As you know at Wayne State, I designed and teach the course Introduction to Dance Professions, in which students explore their interests and aptitudes in a variety of careers such as: Dance Arts Administration; Dance Production & Technology; Dance Teaching in P-12 Schools; Private Dance Studios & Commercial Dance; Dance Science & Somatic Education; Dance in Higher Education; Dance Writing, Journalism & Criticism; and Dance in Community & Alternative Settings. Personally, I think it would be unethical not to provide this level of career knowledge and possibilities, or promote students' exploration of interests beyond performance. 

CE: How can young dance scholars confidently conduct research and find their area of expertise in the dance writing field?

DR: Based on my experiences, there are a number of ways young dance scholars can build their research knowledge and self-confidence. A considerable part of confidence that’s necessary to conduct quality research is experience and deep exposure to research design and research methods. Oftentimes this comes through research coursework. Another important part of researcher confidence is learning by example–whether that occurs through a working relationship with a research/faculty mentor, a faculty researcher, or other professional scholar/writer, or reading research-based articles in the discipline. A third component of conducting research is learning by doing, practice –that is, the more you do something, the better you get at it–just by human nature.  

The latter requires curiosity, introspection, and reflection. What is it you want to know/learn more about that others in your field need or deserve to know? In other words, your research needs to be both professionally relevant (to the field) and personally resonant (to you). 

 

Camryn Eaglin is a professional dancer, freelance writer, dance teacher, and creative. Eaglin recently graduated summa cum laude from Wayne State University in Detroit, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Dance with a minor in Broadcast Journalism.

“One. One & One” Equals All - By Garth Grimball

“One. One & One” Equals All

By Garth Grimball

Vertigo Dance Company, based in Israel, concluded this year’s American Dance Festival with a performance of “One. One & One” (2017) at the Reynolds Theater on Duke University campus. The dance opens with a solo. Yarden Oz drips and extends her body while Etai Peri pours peat moss out of a bucket in a line from downstage right to left. Avi Belleli’s soundscore starts with a layering of strings, dogs barking, and, perhaps, explosions. There is an evocation of a wall. A black curtain hangs mid-level on all three sides of the stage, bifurcating the space horizontally. Stone-like benches sit facing each other.

Choreographed by Noa Wetheim (Artistic Director and Co-founder) with Rina Wertheim-Koren (Assistant AD), “One. One & One” features nine dancers whose spines curve, bend, and arch like the slopes of a mountain range. The full cast joins Oz and Peri in overlapping solos and counterpoint. Dancers strut down stage and strike poses. A motif emerges of thwacking hands back and forth between thighs and chest with a force of self-flagellation. 

Each dancer moves like every cell is charged. A body’s internal motion is as evident as the lines and shapes that glide through space. The energy swells and the dancers bring out more buckets creating more lines horizontally across the stage. The lines are broken. The soil is thrown and spread until it covers the stage. Ruth Ben David catapults herself into the new landscape creating dust clouds. She embodies the frenetic mob as she vibrates and rolls.

The relationships shift. Solos become group dances. The men do an abstraction of folk dancing. The cast starts cheering each other with hoops and hollers. They run across the stage and leap into and over arms, reaching higher and higher. The accumulated sweat and soil dampen the neutral toned shirts and pants into second skins to be peeled off.

The movement vocabulary feels deeply influenced by Gaga technique and the Batsheva aesthetic. In addition to soil as set, the style of repetition is reminiscent of Pina Bausch. Belleli’s score leans towards the melodramatic, especially a section featuring electric guitar. The dancers keep the work from feeling derivative. They exude an almost feral presence; ready to erupt at any moment as if they are dancing for the first time.

With the exception of a gendered moment that felt rather retrograde, “One. One & One” becomes a big, sweaty, powerful group dance. The lights go down on a collective, standing together, breathing.

 

Garth Grimball is a dance writer and artist based in Oakland, CA. He is a contributor to SF Examiner and Dance Media. He is the editor of ODC’s Dance Stories.

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"Dance/Reflect:" A New Journal to Use with High School Students

 

"Dance/Reflect:" A New Journal to Use with High School Students

By Jill Randall

 

Over the years, I have created 4 journals to be used in undergraduate and graduate-level technique courses. I have heard of high school dance teachers adapting these journals to use in their classes and studios as well.

This year, I decided to make a teen-focused journal to use in a high school dance program or studio setting. Thank you for adding writing and reflection into your teen program! These small activities can provide powerful opportunities for students to pause, consider, and capture ideas and feelings in words.

Teachers can print out the journal for their students at a local printer, ask the students to print their own copies, or use the PDF version, in which you can type. It is 50 pages in length.

There are 20 prompts in the journal which can be explored in any order. Students can select a prompt each week that resonates for them, or you can assign a particular one each week. 

In addition, there are pages for students to write down assignments, corrections, choreography notes, and more. 

You might set aside 10 minutes each week during class to use the journal or assign it for homework each week. I look forward to hearing your feedback and impressions this fall semester. Thank you!

Download Teen Journal Fillable PDF

Download Teen Journal to Print at a Printshop

Download Teen Journal to Print at a Printshop

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Blog Series: "Why improv?" (with Bhumi B Patel)

Photo: Shinichi Iova-Koga

 finding tiny freedoms

By Bhumi B Patel

I often begin my studio time by pulling a tarot card to guide my improvised practice - the deck depends on the day, but there are three that are in my rotation. Sure, I have prompts, parameters, progressions that I am interested in, but the card often gives me a context or a grounding to think and move through. I’ve returned again and again to a card that I pulled some time during the pandemic, the last line on the back reading: “You are never to blame for what colonization has made you believe is your fault.” The patterns in my body learned through movement practice, learned through code-switching, learned through a desire to belong are unlearned, retraced, grieved when I improvise. 

When I am faced with a question like “Why improv?” it leads me back to fundamental questions like “Why breathing?”. The wondering about why I choose improv instead of other movement patterns and lineages that live in my body always lands at an understanding that there are few things that make me feel as alive as my improvisational practice. Few other practices bring me closer to my own ability to locate liberation.

To improvise is to center the mover (me) as an expert on my own experiences and to embody the pursuits of activism to which I commit my life. To improvise is to shift power. To improvise is to create with, not just for. To improvise is to respond. To improvise, in many ways, is to trace the evolving and changing definitions of decolonization through the body.

Improvisation is, in part, a pursuit for liberation, a mode to tell stories that don’t always fit into the structures created by codified form, and the very reason that my family emigrated to the United States - to cultivate a freer future. Can improvising lead to freer futures? Can improvising allow us to future new freedoms? 

The truth is: I haven’t seen many people who look like me in improvisation spaces in the US: queer, brown, child of immigrants. I know you are out there, dear kin, but I don’t know you yet. I hope that we will meet soon.

The truth is: I am often disoriented with the tides of news and the ways that the world moves too quickly for my sensitive spirit. When I practice improv, I find ways of reorienting. 

The truth is: I have become a person who lacks urgency, not because I don't care, but because I cannot move that fast while acting in alignment with what I believe. The way that I practice improvisation allows for the speed to shift. On some days, I feel like flying. On some days, I move glacially. 

Lately, I am trying to see the improvisation in everything I do. Yes, there is the dancing: when I dance, it is often solo or duet practice where I set a timer and an intention and follow it through. When I work with my company, it is often a small group practice that is based in sensation and feeling. But I feel like I am improvising through everything: conversation, cooking, simply existing in public spaces. And allowing myself the opportunity to not have answers, to slow down and think, to really improvise and listen, that continues to deepen my love of improv.

In the many ways that I have never belonged, I find belonging through improvisation. I find liberation. As I continue to explore the sweet and delicious waters of my improvisational practice, I return to the question over and over again: When the story comes out through your body, is that called research? It is. It must be.

 

Bhumi B Patel is a queer, desi artist/activist, choreographer, dance writer/scholar, and director of pateldanceworks (she/they). In its purest form, her performance work is a love letter to her ancestors. Patel pursues liberation through dancing, choreographing, curating, educating, and writing/scholarship. Patel aims to support marginalized and oppressed voices through performance and movement education. She earned her MA in American Dance Studies from Florida State University and her MFA in Dance from Mills College. Bhumi is currently a doctoral student at The Ohio State University. She is a member of Dancing Around Race, and engages with curatorial practices for both performances and written publications. She has presented her research at the Dance Studies Association Annual Conference and the Popular Culture Association Annual Conference as well as having been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Life as a Modern Dancer, Contact Quarterly, and In Dance. 

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Related posts:

Somatic Writing Series: Bhumi B. Patel, Andrea Olsen, and Elizebeth Randall Rains

Let us eat cake, consensually, that is: A Reflection on TALK.DANCE.CAKE - By Bhumi B. Patel

Blog Series: "Why improv?"

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