Today's post shares perspectives from 6 members of the Dancing Around Race cohort in the San Francisco Bay Area. Please find each artist's bio at the end of the piece.
Sammay Dizon. Photo by Scott Tsuchitani.
If we know better, we do better
By Bhumi B. Patel
The Dancing Around Race conversation during Joe Goode Annex’s virtual GUSH Festival feels like it was another lifetime ago. And this moment has sparked an urgency in the white dance community that I don’t think I’ve experienced firsthand before. Since that conversation, I’ve felt inundated with the feelings of what I should be “doing” right now and instead of doing, I am observing and dreaming and making. I am resting. Certainly, there is work to be done, but when I look around me, at white institutions peddling solidarity statements, at bookstores with an 8-week back order of White Fragility, at the exhaustion of my fellow BIPOC artists, I know that we deserve the space to rest and dream (which is 10x for our Black colleagues and communities). I think I share a sentiment with many that we are missing sharing space in theatres and dance studios, that we long to sit in the audience or be on stage, that we fear just how long it will take for live performance to return, but what I think we are afforded in this moment is the opportunity to change the trajectory of a system built and fostered by structures of white supremacy. If we must rebuild, we must at the very least, rebuild with antiracism at the core. We must center BIPOC, queer, trans, and disabled voices in our foundation. We must teach the histories of forms that were stolen. We must stop saying that “ballet is the foundation of all dance.” We must uplift our Black colleagues. We must re-create our institutions where marginalized folks aren’t just surviving, but instead make systems for us to thrive. If we don’t, it is to our field’s own detriment when the time comes for us to return.
Welcome to the Party, But This Party Isn’t About You
By David Herrera
I recently participated in an open online forum of Bay Area choreographers and dancers. The questions posed were, “What does it mean to you to make work that is antiracist? How does antiracism inform your creative practice and/or themes of your work?”
The majority of participants in the meeting were of white ancestry, or at the least white passing. Because of that, I felt a sense of urgency to re-address the question, “Do you think you are doing, or have done, antiracist work prior to this current movement?”
As some of the attendees answered, they acknowledged that they were not actively employing antiracist practices in their organizations or creative practices. For several, it had not even crossed their minds. It was mentioned that some white choreographers did purposely seek to “diversify” their cast, though not the content of the work those “diverse” bodies and existences were going to be a part of. I must add here that I am not claiming to be free of biases; I don’t have all the answers, and I have made mistakes. After all, antiracism is an on-going endeavor, not allowed to become complacent or to stop. I recognize that some dance folks are just beginning their journey into antiracism; but for most BIPOC artists, this is our lived daily experience.
After several white peers shared these admissions, I was left with an odd corporeal sensation.
This feeling…this emotion is so foreign to me that I have yet to name it to this day. It gushed through my veins, and confounded my mind. My stomach churned. My armpits began to sweat. My eyes found themselves confused, but remained focused on the squares inhabited by those attending. My body was on high alert. What was it?.....I know! I have never been in a space, particularly a predominant white dance space, in which I have heard white dance peers, some well-established and known, admit this out loud. To say I was gobsmacked would be an understatement. In fact, I don’t know many BIPOC dance makers who have EVER experienced this.
This feeling also gave me hope. Hope for a future that BIPOC artists are claiming and demanding. I welcome and embrace this sensation. I look forward to the transformation of the dance world, in which white experiences are not centered or passed off as the norm. I look forward to transformative actions in predominantly white-led (but really all) institutions and organizations, gatekeepers no more! I look forward to transformation in white choreographers and dancers, who have worked within a system that favors them and patronizes BIPOC artists. I look forward to the on-going transformation of the self, expunging old and adopted colonial power structures, aesthetics, and beliefs. I look forward to coalition-building, where coalition and equity is the heart of the dance world. This transformation is due to all of us, but specifically to BIPOC artists, LGBT/Queer artists, Deaf Artists and Persons with Disabilities, who will no longer accept being pitted against one another or be content with placating words or financial crumbs. This is the call to action, welcome to the party, notice is being taken, your participation is required!
Rest Budgets and Other Forms of Repair
By Gerald Casel
Since our last Dancing Around Race gathering, I’ve been thinking about a few things related to the question, “What do we do now?” Almost everyone has made statements of solidarity, participated in protests, and tarted reading anti-racist articles and books. These are good steps to take but we need to do more, on a systemic level, to create the change that is desired and will benefit everyone in the dance ecology, especially Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.
Rest Budgets
White supremacy culture shows up in unexpected forms. When thinking about ways to dismantle it, we should also examine financial models, particularly in budgetary line items that are qualitatively felt but not seen. BIPOC artists perform invisible labor that their white counterparts don’t have to. This includes managing microaggressions, educating people about systemic racism, and advocating for their safety in the real world and harassment online. I propose that we allow for rest budgets for Artists of Color who need this time to restore their energies. This is one way to acknowledge and help subsidize the work that they must do in order to survive; in other words, this should account for the resilience they have demonstrated time and again. I am talking about investing time and money so that People of Color can rest.
Curation That Repairs Tokenism
What would happen if rather than one presenter deciding on a performance season, a curatorial council made up of a majority BIPOC artists presided on what should be produced? Additionally, what if a majority of curatorial space is regularly reserved for Artists of Color? This changes the dominant curation logic that produces performances that are popular, accessible, and profitable. Reallocating performance opportunities that usually go toward a majority of white artists to Artists of Color recalibrates the system in terms of access and representation and addresses the misguided and unacknowledged practice of tokenism. It gestures toward a desire to repair the harm that has been done to Artists of Color due to systemic racial inequities. Imagine if Artists of Color didn’t have to ask, “Maybe I will be the one they pick this year?”
Regranting as a Performance of Benevolent Colonialism
In addition to having annual seasons, many white dance artists with companies or organizations have benefited from receiving large grants only to disperse funds through a festival or through a shared evening of dance that promotes emerging artists of color. This is possible, in part, because these white choreographers have lived and worked in the Bay Area for some time but also because they have solid support from funders who also (through general operating support grants) cover the costs of administrative staff, marketing, and development and grant writing support. What if white artists who are able to receive these funds refrain from doing so, so that artists of color can receive the funds directly? What if we got rid of the "middle man," or the part that feels the most in need of intervention – this sense that People of Color know all-too-well – as imperial benevolence? In other words, changing the narrative that says white people will fix your community, save you from being irrelevant, and prescribe educational and enrichment programs so that they look benevolent and charitable without hidden ulterior motives.
now and not any later (because you are already late)
By Sammay Dizon
True transformation requires that trauma be upheaved and harms be addressed and taken responsibility for. It is a process of accountability that requires daily practice and a continual renewal of commitment. It is clear that there are some white allies and accomplices who are ready for the work; it is just as clear that the majority is not. Where do we find radical hope in these moments of outrage? Where do we find radical love when we are constantly pitted against one another? When will white people stop merely sympathizing with People of Color and actually put their efforts toward the redistribution of inherited power and unearned wealth?
It is exhausting to live in a brown femme body and have to see ancestral trauma at play every single day. Brown and Black folks have had to live in the collective skin of discomfort for all of our lives; so to let the momentum of this tsunami wash over us without enacting real tangible change would be a waste of an omen from our guides in the unseen.
Radical hope lives in the knowing that we are not yet there but are certainly on our way. It resides in the recesses of my soul that speaks to me in the night, in my dreams. It is the flame that continues to flicker even when I am asleep — the ancestral guidance that we move from because we know who we come from and who we are co-creating a future for. We know our stories even if we don’t know our mother tongues; they live within every strand of our DNA.
We know the delusion of white supremacy is a survival mechanism that has depended on the breaking of our spirits for centuries — so don’t try to spoon feed me with any notion of Diversity or Inclusion.
We are here for Reparations.
Black Dance Matters
By Raissa Simpson
When I taught as a grad student at UC Davis, I cited historical references for my beginning students to learn the origins of modern dance technique. For example, I mentioned how Steve Paxton drew upon his past training in Aikido to form Contact Improvisation. During the contractions and polyrhythms portion of class, I wasn’t ready for the incredible amount of backlash I received for sharing that many modern and classical choreographers used Africanist principles in their practices. The most egregious part of my statement, as noted on my teacher review, was how I mentioned that George Balanchine used African rhythms to create some of his ballets. Was this an innocent misunderstanding or a true revelation of the lack of knowledge in terms of the cultural contributions made to American dance?
For Black, Indigenous, People of Color, we’re so used to being in white spaces and having our culture and dances recapitulated back to us. Our bodies are marked and fetishized to the point of no longer existing in an American dance history we helped to create. White supremacy is being able to profit off of the BIPOC contributions to the dance field, only to exclude them or make their work invisible based on their culture, socio-economic status, skin color and body type. The difficult part about white supremacy is how it makes dance become so general and universal.
For white dance practitioners, ask yourself the following questions: When you teach contractions do you mention Graham technique but not Katherine Dunham’s anthropological research? Have you been teaching hip hop, breaking or house dance but glossed over its socio-political past, and current struggle to form legitimacy as a dance technique? Is your practice based in the African diaspora while you simultaneously lament how your privilege affords you access to opportunities and presenters but never mention what you’re doing to help elevate the communities of color you appropriate from? Are you obsessed with pointing out how Michael Jackson and Beyonce were inspired by Bob Fosse, but fail to recognize jazz dance was created by Black people?
For the BIPOC town hall, there’s a lot to be discussed. We have our voices and ancestral lineage to share. You are not a vessel, a body or a prop to be used. This is a platform to share your story. We hear you. Your life matters.
Summer Dreams
By Yayoi Kambara
This summer I’m distance learning through New Bridges, a summer intensive from Glide Memorial's Center for Social Justice. I’m changing, and I’d like to think it's my imagination decolonizing itself.
New Bridges is based in theory by Ricky Sherover-Marcuse’s working guidelines. A tenet of this work is that we are all born with curiosity, zest, and brilliance. No human being is born with racist attitudes or beliefs.
But then something happens. We breathe in air and an environment filled with ideas of what is good, beautiful, and true, and we lose our ability to trust ourselves and our imaginations.
My own learned gatekeeping has kept me running on shame instead of allowing my imagination to just be free. The gatekeeper asks: “What do I need to do to prove I’m a choreographer? How many shows do I produce? Or is it having a website? Grants? How many shows do I have to perform to secure my position as a dancer? Am I getting too old to be a dancer? Do I need to be bringing in a lot of commissions to make me ‘legit’? Should I be creating a 501(c)3?” I've felt the pressure to do the thing versus simply being because I've been too worried about surviving and belonging to our dance field.
This pause because of COVID-19, when all projects and jobs are postponed or canceled, has been my time to dream. Dreaming of futures based on feelings vs doing. Instead of rushing from gig to rehearsal to the studio, I’m focusing on teaching on my 6x8 area rug through Zoom, allowing all of my feelings to rush through, and letting myself dance them without judgment. I’m no longer solving abstract movement problems, using creative problem-solving tasks, or even worrying about what kind of dance I should be teaching. Maybe I’ll go back to these techniques, but I’ve loved letting my body have all the feelings and sweating.
I want to keep these feelings and know that I can bring them safely into the studio, the stage, to foundations, curators and presenters. I want the gatekeeping of the outside world to melt away as I sweat away from my own. I want to see all dance colleagues, especially those who identify as BIPOC, to self-actualize and have our field witness and support us.
None of us are at fault for breathing in the air of oppression but we are in charge of passing on as little of the hurt we have personally endured.
"won't you celebrate with me" by Lucille Clifton
won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
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Bhumi B. Patel is a queer, desi artist/activist who creates intersectionally feminist performances from a trauma informed, social justice-oriented perspective. Patel uses dance as a pursuit for liberation and decolonization. She creates movement outside of white models of dance but wants you to know that some of her best friends are white. www.bhumibpatel.co
David Herrera is a Latinx choreographer and Artistic Director/Choreographer for David Herrera Performance Company (DHPCo., est. 2007) in San Francisco with a mission to highlight the experiences of the Latinx diaspora in the United States. David recently launched Latinxtensions, a 12-month culturally centered dance mentorship & networking program which advises emerging Latinx dance artists in developing their professional artistic practice. In summer 2020, David hosts the first intersectional Bay Area Latinx dance caucus. David advocates equity practice in the dance field, demanding the inclusion of Latinx/BIPOC/LBGTQ as performers, choreographers, audience, curators, scholars, policy makers, committee/board members, teachers, and students. David is currently a member of the Izzies Award Committee (Bay Area, CA); 2019-2020 Hope Mohr Dance Community Engagement Resident; and member of Dancing Around Race, a community program dedicated to the discussion and implementation of cultural equity in the dance arts in San Francisco. He also serves as advisor for the Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers. www.dhperformance.org
Gerald Casel is a dance artist, performance maker, cultural activator, and educator. As a queer, immigrant, artist of color, he is proud to be a first-generation college graduate. He serves as the Provost of Porter College and is an Associate Professor of Dance at UC Santa Cruz. Casel is the artistic director of GERALDCASELDANCE. His choreographic research and social practice converge to complicate and provoke questions surrounding colonialism, collective cultural amnesia, whiteness and privilege, and the tensions between the invisible/perceived/obvious structures of power. He and his collaborators imagine alternative futures beyond the one that is being determined by our current economy and social structures of inequity. A graduate of The Juilliard School with an MFA from UW-Milwaukee, Casel received a Bessie award for dancing in the companies of Michael Clark, Stephen Petronio, Zvi Gotheiner, and Stanley Love. Dancing Around Race, a community engagement process that interrogates racial inequity in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, continues to grow under his leadership. Casel’s Not About Race Dance has been awarded a National Dance Project grant, which will be in residence at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography and will premiere at CounterPulse in 2021 with a forthcoming tour. www.geraldcasel.com
Sammay Dizon (aka SAMMAY: she/they/siya) is the daughter of Yolanda Peñaflor Dizon; granddaughter of Salvacion Orencillo Peñaflor and Carolina Agdeppa Dizon. She is a healer, interdisciplinary artist, cultural producer, and performance maker of Bikol, Kapampangan, and Ilokano descent who celebrates "urban-indigenous futurism’"as a pathway to collectively realize the potentialities through the intersection of our indigenous traditions and urban contemporary landscapes. Born and raised in LA County/Tongva Territory and a settler in San Francisco/Yelamu, she invokes ancestral healing and ritual within the intersection of performance art, dance theatre, music, and multimedia; their role as kinetic storyteller and healer is ancient medicine from their maternal lineage. SAMMAY is the Founding Artistic Director of URBAN x INDIGENOUS, Founding Member of I Moving Lab, and Core Member of Embodiment Project. She is a three-time recipient of the "Presented by APICC" Artist Award; YBCA Public Imagination Fellow 2018; and first-ever Featured Artist for United States of Asian America Festival 2018. SAMMAY holds a B.A. in Media Studies and Sociology with minors in Dance & Performance Studies and Global Poverty & Practice from UC Berkeley. To follow their journey through the diaspora: www.sammaydizon.com.
Raissa Simpson is an African American/Pilipinx choreographer and director of the San Francisco-based PUSH Dance Company. Her multidisciplinary work has been commissioned and presented by over 50 venues including Joyce SoHo, Aspen Fringe Festival, Dance St. Louis, Ferst Center, Evolve Dance Festival, Los Angeles Women’s Theater Festival and Black Choreographers Festival. She has held residencies at Dance Initiative Carbondale, Bayview Opera House, Sacramento State University, Margaret Jenkins’ CHIME, CounterPulse and the African American Art & Culture Complex. Her works have been honored with awards from the Magrit Mondavi Award, Choreoproject, San Francisco Arts Commission, Zellerbach Family Foundation, San Francisco Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Wattis Foundation, Grants for the Arts, and AATAIN. Simpson had an extensive performance career in San Francisco with Robert Moses' Kin and Joanna Haigood’s Zaccho Dance Theatre. She received her BFA from SUNY Purchase. www.pushdance.org
Yayoi Kambara has been a Bay Area artist since 2000 and currently dances for Krissy Keefer’s Dance Brigade. Kambara was a fellow in the 4th Cohort of APAP (Association of Performing Arts Professionals) Leadership Fellows Program and currently leads a year-long Community Engagement Residency for Hope Mohr Dance's Bridge Project "Aesthetic Shift," an exchange between dance educators, social justice activists, and choreographers dedicated to interrogate and analyze the overlap between equity values, creative practices, and organizations. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation selected her project IKKAI means once: a transplanted pilgrimage as one of the Hewlett 50 commissions. This project is commissioned by the Japanese American Citizens League of San Jose and will premier in 2023 in San Jose and San Francisco. www.kambaraplus.org
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Related posts:
Reflection: Dancing Around Race Public Gathering - by Bhumi B. Patel
Artist Profile: Raissa Simpson
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