Reflection: Dancing Around Race Public Gathering
By Bhumi B. Patel
On February 28, 2019, dozens gathered at a gallery space in San Francisco’s Mission District to participate in the final of three public gatherings for the Dancing Around Race Residency. Lead Artist Gerald Casel was joined by scholar Thomas DeFrantz and the cohort of co-interrogators that have been working with Casel for the last year: Sammay Dizon, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Raissa Simpson, David Herrera, and Yayoi Kambara. Dancing Around Race is a program of Hope Mohr Dance’s Bridge Project.
The room sizzled with an appropriately uncomfortable air -- the majority of folks in attendance were white, and for most white folks, the discussion about race creates a deep anxiety and uncertainty. I felt a kind of stubborn rage that wouldn’t settle. To me, it is an indirect ask for the oppressed and marginalized to create comfort for those in power through their uncompensated labor.
That isn’t the labor I showed up to do.
Can this be me-centered if I’m the one that experienced it?
Who am I?
I’m a daughter of immigrants, a queer femme, a dancer, a choreographer, an educator. I bring that lens into every space, and I bring it with me even more so into spaces that are meant for discussions around race and equity. So, rather than trying to explain every facet of the discussions that took place that evening, I will share with you what I came away with.
White curation and white ownership are bedrocks in the very foundation of the Bay Area dance landscape. How do I know this?
Pause. Name 5 well-established organizations that present dance AND were founded and/or are currently led by people of color.
That’s sort of a semantical exercise though, isn’t it? Because even if you can name 5, you had to think about it, and all of the major organizations that immediately come to mind are run and have been run by white folks who haven’t yet shown that they’re willing to give up some of that power.
More importantly is that we are still thinking in the same model that hasn’t been working. We are never going to fit equity into an oppressive system; you can’t fit a square peg into a round hole. Handing leadership to a POC isn’t the solution. Reimagining the institutional structure is the only way out of the this oppressive hole. To reimagine the institutional structure, we have to reimagine ourselves. We have to look at the contradictions and impossibilities of being ourselves. And we have to do this without the expectation that POCs are going to understand both everything about whiteness and everything about our own cultures.
I am a first generation South Asian/Indian who has spent a great deal of time assimilating to some hodge podge of white culture. Even more because I so badly want to fit in. To blend in so that I won’t be seen as different, so that I won’t have to wear the “loud, angry brown person” hat in rehearsal when I call out microaggressions, so that I will get hired.
But what I’ve discovered is that as a queer South Asian woman, my cultural landscape is complicated and often I am not afforded control of my own narrative. Many POCs are not afforded control of our own narratives. Our telling of personal violence often gets buried by white supremacy in the service of its racist and imperialist agenda. This is because the cultural logics that help maintain structural racism are stronger than our individual stories. What has become evident to me is that my narrative cannot pierce through the white logics of orientalism which continues to find ways to position brown folks as less developed than the Western world. When we cry, or yell, or speak directly about the harm that is being caused we are not speaking “nicely” and we are not making our hurt “palatable." White folks, you must find your inner stamina for these conversations.
We must continue to mobilize in solidarity with other oppressed peoples and address prejudice within our own. And I intentionally say “we” as a non-black POC who constantly works to combat rampant anti-blackness in our communities. Surely we are all still trying to figure out the best strategies to do this work and to still remain safe and secure. Surely we are going to fuck up. Surely it’s some of the hardest work that we can do because our validation often relies on approval from the very people who may deny us. But this type of work feels important nonetheless to so many of us. And there is power and politics in that feeling.
I’m left with questions that may or may not have answers.
Where is the anti-racist work happening in the Bay Area?
Where do I direct well meaning white folks for support in doing the anti-racist work?
Can’t y’all find each other?
What do I do when I watch the white folks that I trust reveal themselves as racist?
Who am I addressing when I make art?
What are the repercussions of not code switching for institutions?
Are choreographers/art-makers allowed to call their companies diverse if all the bodies move and are colonized by the same western forms of training?
I will continue to work through these questions. I will continue to ask the folks I surround myself with to ask these questions as well. I will continue to do the labor that I am able to, and turn it over to other folks when I am too tired to continue doing the labor.
I leave you with this: If no one sees your anti-racist work, will you continue to do it?
Bhumi B. Patel creates queer, feminist movement art that holds the focus of creating movement at the intersection of embodied philosophy and dynamic sensation taking precedence over stagnant form. To move through the world as a queer artist of colour, the pursuit of collective safety is both an act of labor and of necessity. Making art is her way of coping with the world at the moment.
Thank you for your work, Bhumi!
For fellow white artists, educators, and advocates who are looking for resources in the bay area:
White Educators for Racial Justice Workshops:https://www.eventbrite.com/e/white-educators-for-racial-justice-workshop-tickets-52057521448
White Advocates for Racial Equity with the National Guild for Community Arts Education: https://www.nationalguild.org/networks/ware-network
Let's work on creating a space for white choreographers and dance artists in the bay area to do the work together.
Posted by: Heather Stockton | 03/08/2019 at 11:35 AM