Purchase your tickets for the Festival here.
08/11/2019
For a Dance Education Course: A Reading List (UPDATED August 2019)
This topic is one of my great passions --- so much so that I am creating three different reading lists here, based on what course or courses you might offer at your college or university. The lists can be used for: dance for children, teaching dance to middle school and high school students, and a general course on dance education. (Please note that a few blog posts appear in more than one list.) I also list 8 books to consider for courses as well.
Dance Education Course: Dance for Children
Becoming a Teaching Artist: An Infographic and Graphic Organizer
Speaking as a Teaching Artist: 50 Perspectives
Five Questions for Dance Educator Anne Green Gilbert
My Dance Week: Valerie Gutwirth
A Pulse on Dance in LA Unified School District
Picture Books to Use in Children's Dance Classes
25 Playful Props for Preschool and K-5 Dance Classes
Five Ideas as You Begin to Teach Afterschool Classes
Five Ideas as You Begin to Teach Preschool Age Students
Eight Resources and Ideas for Teaching Parent/Child Dance Classes
Dance Classes with Children 1-5 Years Old
Ten Resources for Teaching Artists as We Prepare for the Year Ahead
Dance Education Course: Middle School/High School
Speaking as a Teaching Artist: 50 Perspectives
My Dance Week: Kristin Blatzheim on Teaching Full-Time at a High School
My Dance Week: Falon Baltzell on Teaching Full-Time at a High School
My Dance Week: Teaching Full-Time in a 6th-12th Grade Public School (Sarah Billings Wheeler, NYC)
My Dance Week: Teaching Full-Time in a Public Middle School (Amber Johnson, Florida)
My Dance Week: Teaching Full-Time in a Public Middle School (Jennifer Smith, California)
Artist Profile: Linda Carr of Berkeley High School
Artist Profile: Wendy Jones of Lowell High School
Artist Profile: Angela Demmel of Moreau Catholic High School
Teach dance in a high school? 14 reflection questions as you grow and develop your program
Advocacy/PR/Documentation: Ideas for K-12 Dance Teaching Artists
Jan Erkert's Book, Harnessing the Wind
Teaching Technique to Teens and Adults
Teaching Resource: Dance Studio Life Magazine
A Pulse on Dance in LA Unified School District
A General Dance Education Course
Speaking as a Teaching Artist: 50 Perspectives
Jan Erkert's Book, Harnessing the Wind
Teaching Technique to Teens and Adults
Five Questions for Dance Educator Anne Green Gilbert
Becoming a Teaching Artist: An Infographic and Graphic Organizer
My Dance Week: Jayme Klinger Host
Building a Dance Company: On the Topic of Educational Programming
The Beautiful Relationship of Being an Artist and a Teacher
For Studio Instructors: Weekly Ideas and Reflection Questions for Fall Semester Youth Classes
Book Recommendations for Your Courses
Body, Mind, and Spirit in Action: A Teacher's Guide to Creative Dance by Patricia Reedy
Creative Dance for All Ages by Anne Green Gilbert
Harnessing the Wind: The Art of Teaching Modern Dance by Jan Erkert
The Teaching Artist Sutras by Michael Wiggins
Teaching Artist Handbook by Nick Jaffe, Rebecca Barniskis, and Barbara Hackett Cox
08/03/2019
For a Senior Seminar Course: A Reading List (Updated August 2019)
Black Bodies Sonata - Kayla Farris and Nik Owens. Screen shot image from the film by Deborah Corrales and Kayla Farrish.
From Blog Director Jill Randall:
This is one of my favorite lists to create each year and very close to my heart. These 50 posts hope to inspire and share through various artists' personal stories about their career paths. (Don't worry - they only take 3-5 minutes each to read.) These posts also aim to offer resources that young dancers can research and use right away. Assign about 4 posts a week for the semester.
I also highly encourage you to use A Life in Dance as required reading. Author Rebecca Stenn shares more about the book here. (And, I offer some ideas for reading assignments here.)
Feedback and stories are always welcome - randalldanceprojects@gmail.com.
And let me end with one of my favorite quotes from the blog. From Linda C. Smith's artist profile:
Enjoy the journey. Be patient. Decide why you love to dance and then just DO IT. Don’t question yourself every day. Just get up and work and work and work.
Dance is for everyone but life as a professional performer is not for everyone. There are so many ways to make dance part of your life. Don’t get stuck. Experience dance on many levels. Teach it, perform it, make it, fund it, watch it, write about it…love it.
Jeremy jae Neal. Photo by Benjamin Allen.
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My Dance Week: Banning Bouldin
Eight Examples: "My Dance Week" in New York City
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City Guides - students can read all of them or select a few to read (17 cities are featured)
Advice on Moving to NYC: Four Perspectives
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The Performer's Perspective: What I Feel, What I am Exploring....
Dreaming/Preparing/Dancing: 1 Day until Let Slip the Witches with Bellwether Dance Project
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Speaking as a Teaching Artist: Five Bay Area Artists Share Perspectives
Speaking as a Teaching Artist: Becca Levy, Rebecca Stenn, and Joanna Kotze
Speaking as a Teaching Artist: Onye Ozuzu, Jill Patterson, and Abby Fiat
Becoming a Teaching Artist: 5 Ideas as You Begin to Teach Preschool Age Classes
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Building a Dance Company: The Art of Decision-Making By Sumi Clements
Building a Dance Company: Financial Advice from Six Choreographers
Studio Practice/Studio Time: Jodi Melnick
Building a Dance Company: How Much Does a Dance Project Cost? (With Kristin Damrow)
Questions for Choreographers: Ideas from Dayna Hanson, Heidi Henderson, and Raja Feather Kelly
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12 Stories: Artist Profiles in 2017 of Dancers Ages 28 to 65
Catching Up with Melecio Estrella
Artist Profile: Nicole Vaughan-Diaz (New York, NY)
Artist Profile: Jeremy jae Neal (New York, NY)
Artist Profile: Christine Chen (New York, NY)
Artist Profile: Carley Conder (Tempe, AZ)
Artist Profile: Paloma McGregor (New York, NY)
Artist Profile: Molly Lieber (New York, NY)
Artist Profile: Marc Brew (Glasgow, UK)
Artist Profile: Linda Carr (Berkeley, CA)
Artist Profile: Abby Zbikowski (Champaign, IL)
Artist Profile: Banning Bouldin (Nashville, TN)
Artist Profile: Kathleen Wessel (Atlanta, GA)
Artist Profile: Samsam Yung (New York, NY)
Artist Profile: Tanya Chianese (Oakland, CA)
Artist Profile: Jess Humphrey (San Diego, CA)
Artist Profile: Adriane Fang (Silver Spring, MD)
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Becoming an Arts Administrator: Describing Non-Profits and For-Profits in Most Basic Terms
Becoming an Arts Administrator: Julia Davidson (Minneapolis, MN)
Becoming an Arts Administrator: 5 Questions for Hillary Kooistra of A.I.M
The Arts Administrator’s Alphabet: 88 Pages, 180 Terms and Concepts
07/28/2019
For a Graduate Level Choreography Class: A Reading List (Updated July 2019)
Nia Love. Photo by Ciceley Fullylove.
From Blog Director Jill Randall:
This reading list includes blog posts in four categories: The Choreographic Moment, Studio Practice/Studio Time, Artist Profiles, and Previews/Reviews. Please find below 35 short pieces for your students to read throughout the semester. As your group makes, tinkers, and explores over the course of several months, these essays and artist profiles will share both reflective questions to consider during the choreographic process, as well as career paths and personal stories related to being a dancemaker in the United States right now.
Each post takes only 3-5 minutes to read.
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Plus, if you are seeking books for a graduate level course, I highly recommend:
- A Choreographer's Handbook - Jonathan Burrows
- The Place of Dance: A Somatic Guide to Dancing and Dance Making - Andrea Olsen
- Hiking the Horizontal - Liz Lerman
- A Choreographic Mind - Susan Rethorst
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For an Undergraduate Composition Course: A Reading List (Updated July 2019)
Kate Weare Company. Photo by Keira Heu-Jwyn Chang.
From Blog Director Jill Randall:
Looking back at the 168 artist profiles and monthly features from the past 7 years, I have selected 28 blog posts to use within a college Composition Course. The wide range of viewpoints and career paths can offer a window into working as a choreographer in the United States right now. Students can take away - and immediately experiment with - questions and suggestions from each choreographer. Use one or two blog posts a week as a discussion starter, enlivening a Composition Course with real world applications and considerations about dancemaking.
You can share the links below, or print out each post to include in a course reader. Each post takes 5 minutes to read.
Feedback and stories are always welcome - randalldanceprojects@gmail.com.
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Fifteen Questions for Choreographers and Performers
The Choreographic Moment: Ideas from Douglas Nielsen
The Choreographic Moment: Ideas from Jo Kreiter
Musings on "Unison" (With Cynthia Oliver, Lauren Simpson, Amy Chavasse, and Jo Kreiter)
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My Dance Week: Kayla Farrish (Independent artist based in New York City)
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Dreaming/Preparing/Dancing: 2 Weeks until Impact, with Kristin Damrow & Company
Dreaming/Preparing/Dancing: 5 Days Until Molly Heller's Performance of "very vary" in Berkeley
Dreaming/Preparing/Dancing: Four Days until BIG SALT with The Anata Project
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Artist Profile: Raja Feather Kelly (Brooklyn, NY)
Artist Profile: Kate Weare (Brooklyn, NY)
Artist Profile: Jeanine Durning (New York, NY)
Artist Profile: Susan Marshall (New York, NY)
Artist Profile: Banning Bouldin (Nashville, TN)
Artist Profile: Liz Lerman (Baltimore, MD)
Artist Profile: Reggie Wilson (Brooklyn, NY)
Artist Profile: Amy Chavasse (Ann Arbor, MI)
Artist Profile: Rogelio Lopez (Oakland, CA)
Artist Profile: Tami Stronach (New York, NY)
Artist Profile: Camille A. Brown (New York, NY)
Artist Profile: Donna Uchizono (New York, NY)
Artist Profile: Molly Lieber (New York, NY)
Artist Profile: Becca Levy (Jacksonville, FL)
Artist Profile: Dayna Hanson (Seattle, WA)
Artist Profile: Tanya Chianese (Oakland, CA)
*There are 168 artist profiles on the blog. To read more stories, click here.
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Related posts:
For an Undergraduate Course: 45 Questions and Prompts for Post-Performance Discussions
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07/22/2019
Woodland Creatures, Summer Dance
Molly Heller; photo by Marissa Mooney
Woodland Creatures, Summer Dance
By Garth Grimball
Remember when the “Song of Summer” wasn’t something to be predicted? The title wasn’t competed for, amalgamated from streaming metrics, to create a four-quadrant hit that could sustain the rapid-release-music-output era we now live in. Rather, as Summer faded into Fall, we collectively realized a certain earworm stuck with us for the preceding hottest months of the year, and we would now forever associate that song with that Summer. Think TLC’s “Waterfalls” and the summer of 1994. To my mind Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” of 2011 was our last semi-organic “Song of Summer.” (Though for me, Kelly Rowland’s “Motivation” will always be the soundtrack to hot nights in 2011.) All this is to query, could there be a dance/performance of Summer?
On Saturday, July 18, Shawl-Anderson Dance Center hosted “Heartland: Woodland Creatures,” a pop-up performance installation and dance party, created and facilitated by choreographer Molly Heller and musician Michael Wall. The duo first presented the event in their hometown, Salt Lake City, and brought the original cast--Marissa Mooney, Brian Gerke, and Nick Blaylock--with them, adding the Bay Area’s own Jenny Stulberg to this iteration.
Walking up to the venue it’s apparent the performance concerns physical space above all else. The edifice of Shawl-Anderson Dance Center is the subject with earth tone fabrics billowing out the second story windows; the top halves of dancers gesticulate and collapse within the window frames. Outside the building, on the steps, on the sidewalk, on the street, in the alley across the street, the dancers preen, prance, and prickle clad in Space Age-Victorian-Earth Goddess attire. The whole scenario is psychogeography meets Instagram filters. The choreography queers the physical space inviting viewers to reconsider how we interact with something as rudimentary as a building or a sidewalk. Prompting us to find play in the ordinary. When in reality, the moment becomes an occasion for folks to pull out their phones and capture a “moment.” The tension between affect and commenting on affect continues throughout the installation.
Once inside the building, we assemble in a downstairs studio as Stulberg dances a simple, gestural solo. With a blinkless gaze she moves closer and closer to the audience puncturing the performer-viewer divide. Proximity disabling participation via screen. Michael Wall welcomes us with an original song dedicated to Frank Shawl and Victor Anderson; a melancholy serenade composed of Wall’s baritone voice and accordion. We’re split into three groups, taking advantage of the physical space and its choreographic opportunities. My group witnesses a staircase solo by Mooney, followed by a reprise of the ode to Frank and Victor, before joining the rest of the audience upstairs.
Shuffling over and through each other to form a casual ring around the performance space we audience members mirror the set pieces in the center of the dance floor: islands of moss and flora. Stulberg, perched above us in open attic space, swathed in fabric, poses like one of Michelangelo’s Sibyls. Heller, Mooney, Gerke, and Blaylock huddle in the faux island and explode out in solos of angles and syncopation. Wall leaves the accordion for electronic beats. Pulsing rhythms expand the space. Heads and bodies bob along. The dancers strut back and forth and in circles, sometimes quickening to a trot or gallop, off-kilter enough to never be walking, jogging, or running. The movements are specific, grounded. Each body seems to quake in response to another in frivolity and frenzy. Jessi Barber’s lighting design bathes the space in varying temperatures of glow. Is there a connection to be found with the environment? Uncertain. The dancers, the lighting and the music conjures a vogue ball meets Barbarella meets Miyazaki animated plant-spirit. It is fun. Wall switches from electronic to piano. The dancers calm and meet under Stulberg’s perch to aid in her descent. Just as the melody of Wall’s playing becomes familiar, Stulberg joins in singing Cher’s “Believe.” A perfect song choice for the evening. A corny self-empowerment club banger now steeped in nostalgia, belted at karaoke bars, and so, so easy to dance to. After one verse and chorus from Wall and Stulberg, the Cher recording starts to play, the performers invite us into the space, and we are all dancers.
The installation experience is about 40 minutes in length before transitioning into full-on dance party. This brings me back to the “Song of Summer” comparison. The song of Summer is a pop song. It is a popular song. Rarely a song longer than 3 ½ minutes. It becomes embedded in your psyche. You sing along without realizing it. Does it have much depth or substance? Does it matter? “Heartland: Woodland Creatures” is fizzy and sweaty and relaxed. The performing is brief and feels like a preamble to the dance party. Like a pop song transporting you to summertime revelry, the performance is a conduit to revel. I got to sing loudly; shake, swoon, and sweat my body with dear friends; make fleeting acquaintances that exist only on the dance floor; lean out a crowded door to collectively will a breeze while drowning in the curry smell of the restaurant next door. I got a moment I’ll forever associate with Summer 2019. Molly Heller and Michael Wall have given us a Dance of Summer.
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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06/12/2019
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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06/09/2019
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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06/04/2019
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.
06/02/2019
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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05/29/2019
“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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