Six months ago when Auntie Grace, artistic director of the National Dance Company of Ghana, asked me to teach a class for the company, I was slightly taken aback. At that point there was still a false boarder between my body and the international spaces through which I was moving.
But to move, to travel, to interact, and to create, has increasingly become a primarily physical experience. Similarly, having completed nine months of this year-long movement, I am ever opening to the chillingly physical nature of the transformations and understandings that this project has presented to my body. And this body, the basic yet elusive medium that both interprets and performs information and symbols, has dissolved and been re-built continually throughout my research.
The twenty or so joints of my spine, sweat into arches and new contractions in a dance studio in Burkina Faso, continue to elastically accept my travel to Brazil. Over the past three months I have taken company class with Dance Brazil, performed on a public stage as part of Salvador´s celebration of international dance day, and helped teach a movement class to a group of children in a poor area outside of Salvador. I have take ballet class taught to some of Salvador´s best dancers at a studio funded by a choreographer who somewhat adopts dancers, and I feel challenged to continually exist within this project, within Brazil, as first a participant and learner, a more direct route to fruitful collaboration.
The process of completing a Watson Fellowship is one of building precise visions and blueprints for action - black and white sketches that only experience and collaboration can color in. It is only action and time that invite these prints into the shadings of cultural truths and economic limits.
The past month has been especially broadening, with two weeks spent in Sao Paulo, one week spent in Rio attending the the global Laban conference, and then traveling back north to Salvador three days ago.
The experiences of putting the soars and sounds of entering and leaving studios, taking bus rides through Sao Paulo and walking through rainy twilight to brightly lit dance spaces, has tweaked and broadened even the most realistic expectations of these once far-off places.
Ivaldo Bertazzo, a choreographer notable for his massive collaborations with large numbers of children from the outskirts of Sao Paulo maintains one of the fanciest, chique dance studios I have ever seen. It is classy. Upon entrance the mostly upper-middle class clients of his pampering studio have to place their thumb upon a finger-print reading machine which then allows them to enter the studio. In a lean climate of artistic production he has carved out a sustainable and successful presence in the Sao Paulo and global arts scene.
It is difficult to dance, more difficult to fuse grace with a plan and perform a poignant piece of art, and in someways equally difficult to maintain a sustainable dance company. When I started this trip I had eyes pointed towards the exterior of dance companies, activities and programs that a stable company might maintain out of any extra resources they might manage to squeeze out of the ecology of art.
Re-focused, the dance company itself emerges as an initial and primary community building force. In Brazil, and more precisely in the poorer and more Afro-Brazilian city of Salvador, once a dancer joins a company, often the choreographer develops into a parental, or at least cultural guide and protector. In the case of Dance Brazil where I spent two weeks watching and taking classes with the company before they left for a U.S. tour, classes in singing are taught so that when the company is not active, the dancers will be more likely to find other work.
Mestre Jelon Vieira, the artistic director of the company, maintains a community arts center which he supports Capoeira training for kids who are at risk for drug abuse. It is a ways outside of Salvador and also seems to be a breeding ground for potential dancers. While I was there the center was dark, Jelon and the company were working tireless hours preparing for a tour. But you could sense in the way the dancers acted with Jelon, in the way he embraced each one as they would enter the studio, that the nature of building human ties and empowering relationships is something fundamental to the physical nature of creating and maintaining dances.
These moments of love, of support and acceptance, were somehow still perceptible in the back of my mind amidst the mayhem of teaching a movement class to two groups of children at a theater center outside of Salvador. A women and actress from a Capoeira group which I train with maintains a space on the third floor of her house where she holds classes for kids from her neighborhood. My roommate and I offered to teach a movement class and it was the first time that I broke the glass wall between analyst of community dance programs and teacher of dance.
As the second class came to an end, two evangelical preachers took to the street side and started broadcasting thunderous brands of Jesus pride. The amped screams of faith made finishing the dance class especially challenging, but it seemed fitting and the kids didn´t seem to mind to much. In their sweaty smiles and creations they were proud and open.
The jungle of dance is a humbling and ceaselessly human ecology. By human I refer to the realities of weight, of the stickiness of skin squeaking over floor, of the trust and dedication of studying movement.
It is in this ecology that I exist and my body is transforming. On the roads of Brazil, through dingy hotels and weeks of continual travel, my project, its dancers and its activists, continues to take care of me. It breathes and I respond in rhythm.
It is now clear that I would be in a much stronger position to collaborate with Auntie Grace of Ghana. Her mandate is something I would now view with respect and action. The transformations that have gone on in my body and mind are still unclear to me. They have not yet found their words, and it is unclear if they call for expression through music, sketches, writings, or movement. But things feel comfortably strange and new like childhood, and this magic sung ´Brazil´ calls on another night.
5.15.2008
2.03.2008
Update for Found Time
Not unlike the give and take of a Capoiera roda, these quarterly updates are a source of dialogue. Out of my maiden days in Ghana emerged the first quarterly round up of thoughts, and the Watson fellowship´s response left poignant seeds of advice which came into full fruit throughout my time in West Africa.
The main title of my project, Moving Beyond the Stage, references an intentional gaze towards efforts related to dance that exist beyond the proscenium, in that exterior and well-lit space of life through which most of Western culture refers to as daytime, a time and space in our own culture which is more accustomed to the movements of walking and waiting than it is to samba or high-life.
I formerly understood this gaze to be one searching for a function of dance that existed not beyond, but around the definitive performance which informs much of dance training and viewing in the U.S. I was entangled in the notion that dance for too many of its fans was something to sit back and watch, not something that one might ever do. But dance is above all a process of acceptance and release, and both of these are accessed through gazing, as well as moving.
Strapped by notions of otherness, or elevated by notions of other-worldly feats, dance opens doors to those mysterious and awesome caverns of the imagination. But this moment of transmission is one free from the contingencies of architecture or setting--like the eye contact between me and a French speaking Burkinabe, this moment is one that explodes beyond the limitations of culturally determined variables.
What emerged from the verbal pas de deux exchanged with the Watson Foundation in November was an emphasis on the elevating power of big-league performance. Those all star displays of the rewards of training that keep dance within the public eye fuel thousands to lace up a dance shoe, or jokingly try and crunk at a club. But this timeless and beautiful relationship, that between the appreciated and the imitated, is one that crosses beyond the boundaries of different cultures or aesthetics. And the power of cool, the force of a perfect dip or a flawless heel rubbing against the dirt of a street in Burkina Faso, is one force among many responsible for moving dance beyond the stage.
Africa moves. In daylight, by bus stops, while waiting for its hard earned meal, Africa is public and beyond the proscenium. Yet growing out of the performative synopses that paint street life in Africa are resilient organizations and festivals which bring the point of transmission to an institutional and somewhat sustainable level. It is impossible for me to qualify whether my colloborations in Africa with dance companies or street dancing was more illuminating about the nature of dance, both have colored gorgeous realizations.
After my second week in Ghana there was a dance festival in a large park in the center of Accra. Efua Sutherland Children's Park housed the 2007 Yosokoi dance festival. The image of hundreds of dancers warming up to the various drum ensembles set the tone for an affirming yet culturally unkempt display of Ghanaian dance.
If able, sponsorship for the arts is an indispensable component for a responsible society. Conversations with some of the dance groups described the Yoskoi Dance Festival as one of the years most well attended and supportive dance event. The 15 groups in attendance were numerous local outifts from extremely poor neighborhoods who form competitive troups for the event. Including one group from an orphanage and one from a house for the disabled, the competition opened its doors to many. The event is entirely funded by a Japanese corporation, Yosokoi, which produces canned mackerel in tomato paste.
The corporate presence is far from subtle. All participating dance groups, or which there were about 14, all including anywhere from 20 to 150 dancers, had to wear a Japanese styled coat. Moreover, in the middle of many of the dances, the Ghanaian drummers would have to stop to let the required one Japanese song kick in. The 15 groups in attendance ranged from an all-children's dance group from the Osu children's home, to the forty or fifty person strong Lions of Africa Cultural Troupe.
The majority of the groups were large, strong, and comprised of dancers roughly in the 20 year old range. The top three winners of the competition were of this genre, but this classification did not make up the entire demographic. Three times during the performance individuals with wheel chairs made it onto the grassy stage. Either from the rasta acrobats or from the Ashanti New Generation Group & Achimota Secondary School, there was an clear acknowledgment and support for the disabled community of Accra. This was a tremendous source of making contacts withing the dance community in Accra, and I attended rehearsals and classes of several companies I met while at the festival. The economy is lean in Ghana, and community dance programs exist when people dance. This is a theme I will explore in depth over the next six months.
Among the map of things I learned in Africa, one of the most monumental lessons was the possible difficulties of administrative collaboration, I did have some trouble getting in with The National Dance Company of Ghana, funded entirely by the National Government, which was founded by Kwame Nkrumah in 1963. Looking back I wish I could have had a more collaborative relationship with this company, but my time in Burkina Faso was much more successful.
The day after I arrived in Ougadougou I met with a French woman who works as an administrator for the dance company Salia ni Seydou, the travelled and accomplished duo hosting the 12-day workshop I had come to Burkina Faso for. We discussed what roles I might play in the workshop, determining how I might get to understand both aspects of the event, administration and choreography. As I had to concede I was not on a journey funded for broadening my own choreography, Sarah and I worked it out that the first week I would observe the sessions for the administrators, taking dance classes when time permitted. The second week I would spend more time with the choreography workshop. The special guest of the workshop was Carolyn Carlson, an American born choreographer who now lives in Paris, running the Ateliers de Paris; Carolyn Carlson. I left the meeting with Sarah very eager for the workshop to begin and surprised at how my French might actually be functional during my time here.
Attending the workshop were members from a diverse array of countries: Burkina Faso, Senegal, Cote D'ivoire, Congo, Belgium, France, Morocco, and Benin. The choreographers from Cote D'ivoire were especially hungry for the exchange of ideas about to take place.
Over lunch with one of them, he claimed that there was no contemporary dance in his country and that this was an invaluable chance for him to expand his conceptions of movement and expression. Indeed, the most stunning moments of the workshop were those of revealing new possibilities, navigating the mysterious territory of improvisational acts and previously unknown realities. Watching living artists fiercely dedicated to pushing their boundaries offered new routes and possibilities was a constant confirmation of the necessity of questioning, of looking beneath surfaces and assumptions and into the possibilities of art.
Also poignant in its spreading of sustainable dance in West Africa was the portion of the workshop focused on administration. The administrators from 15 companies learned the basics of running a budget, writing a contract, establishing a company with a pyramid structure of artistic director, general management, and technicians. The classes were taught by French citizens who work with Salia ny Seydou in France, and the efficacy with which the classes were organized rivaled anything one might see in New York.
Salia ni Seydou are cultural emissaries. Founded by Ougadougou natives Salia Sanou and Seydou Boro, in 1995 the duo formed a close relationship with French choreographer Mathilde Monnier and have since worked tirelessly to spread their found knowledge of the dance world to aspiring choreographers in the dusty and often desperate realities of West Africa. Attending the workshop proved to be a humbling experience which captured and galvanized all of the reasons I though I should be pursuing this journey.
I am writing from Brazil where I have been the past week. I just left a four hour session with the dance company Dance Brazil. Dance Brazil´s artistic director Jelon Veira, a Brazilian that splits his years between Salvador and Manhattan, is in town until March and has opened all doors to me. Today I helped resolve a technical problem with their speakers, and preceded to film the rehearsal for the assistant artistic director. Although it was in the voyeuristic stage of interaction, I know that over the next month strong relationships will form with the company, and through Jelon, the rest of Brazil.
I am enrolled in a language school and have picked up a decent amount of Portuguese during my first week here. The language is instrumental to my time in Belo Horizonte, Sao Paulo, and Rio, and I am digging deep into dictionaries and conjugation charts every night. At no other point during my journey have I felt such a time crunch. I have five months here, if my visa extension goes through six, and I foresee many collaborations throughout the country. Carnaval starts tonight, and loud police sirens and screams color the auburn air.
The main title of my project, Moving Beyond the Stage, references an intentional gaze towards efforts related to dance that exist beyond the proscenium, in that exterior and well-lit space of life through which most of Western culture refers to as daytime, a time and space in our own culture which is more accustomed to the movements of walking and waiting than it is to samba or high-life.
I formerly understood this gaze to be one searching for a function of dance that existed not beyond, but around the definitive performance which informs much of dance training and viewing in the U.S. I was entangled in the notion that dance for too many of its fans was something to sit back and watch, not something that one might ever do. But dance is above all a process of acceptance and release, and both of these are accessed through gazing, as well as moving.
Strapped by notions of otherness, or elevated by notions of other-worldly feats, dance opens doors to those mysterious and awesome caverns of the imagination. But this moment of transmission is one free from the contingencies of architecture or setting--like the eye contact between me and a French speaking Burkinabe, this moment is one that explodes beyond the limitations of culturally determined variables.
What emerged from the verbal pas de deux exchanged with the Watson Foundation in November was an emphasis on the elevating power of big-league performance. Those all star displays of the rewards of training that keep dance within the public eye fuel thousands to lace up a dance shoe, or jokingly try and crunk at a club. But this timeless and beautiful relationship, that between the appreciated and the imitated, is one that crosses beyond the boundaries of different cultures or aesthetics. And the power of cool, the force of a perfect dip or a flawless heel rubbing against the dirt of a street in Burkina Faso, is one force among many responsible for moving dance beyond the stage.
Africa moves. In daylight, by bus stops, while waiting for its hard earned meal, Africa is public and beyond the proscenium. Yet growing out of the performative synopses that paint street life in Africa are resilient organizations and festivals which bring the point of transmission to an institutional and somewhat sustainable level. It is impossible for me to qualify whether my colloborations in Africa with dance companies or street dancing was more illuminating about the nature of dance, both have colored gorgeous realizations.
After my second week in Ghana there was a dance festival in a large park in the center of Accra. Efua Sutherland Children's Park housed the 2007 Yosokoi dance festival. The image of hundreds of dancers warming up to the various drum ensembles set the tone for an affirming yet culturally unkempt display of Ghanaian dance.
If able, sponsorship for the arts is an indispensable component for a responsible society. Conversations with some of the dance groups described the Yoskoi Dance Festival as one of the years most well attended and supportive dance event. The 15 groups in attendance were numerous local outifts from extremely poor neighborhoods who form competitive troups for the event. Including one group from an orphanage and one from a house for the disabled, the competition opened its doors to many. The event is entirely funded by a Japanese corporation, Yosokoi, which produces canned mackerel in tomato paste.
The corporate presence is far from subtle. All participating dance groups, or which there were about 14, all including anywhere from 20 to 150 dancers, had to wear a Japanese styled coat. Moreover, in the middle of many of the dances, the Ghanaian drummers would have to stop to let the required one Japanese song kick in. The 15 groups in attendance ranged from an all-children's dance group from the Osu children's home, to the forty or fifty person strong Lions of Africa Cultural Troupe.
The majority of the groups were large, strong, and comprised of dancers roughly in the 20 year old range. The top three winners of the competition were of this genre, but this classification did not make up the entire demographic. Three times during the performance individuals with wheel chairs made it onto the grassy stage. Either from the rasta acrobats or from the Ashanti New Generation Group & Achimota Secondary School, there was an clear acknowledgment and support for the disabled community of Accra. This was a tremendous source of making contacts withing the dance community in Accra, and I attended rehearsals and classes of several companies I met while at the festival. The economy is lean in Ghana, and community dance programs exist when people dance. This is a theme I will explore in depth over the next six months.
Among the map of things I learned in Africa, one of the most monumental lessons was the possible difficulties of administrative collaboration, I did have some trouble getting in with The National Dance Company of Ghana, funded entirely by the National Government, which was founded by Kwame Nkrumah in 1963. Looking back I wish I could have had a more collaborative relationship with this company, but my time in Burkina Faso was much more successful.
The day after I arrived in Ougadougou I met with a French woman who works as an administrator for the dance company Salia ni Seydou, the travelled and accomplished duo hosting the 12-day workshop I had come to Burkina Faso for. We discussed what roles I might play in the workshop, determining how I might get to understand both aspects of the event, administration and choreography. As I had to concede I was not on a journey funded for broadening my own choreography, Sarah and I worked it out that the first week I would observe the sessions for the administrators, taking dance classes when time permitted. The second week I would spend more time with the choreography workshop. The special guest of the workshop was Carolyn Carlson, an American born choreographer who now lives in Paris, running the Ateliers de Paris; Carolyn Carlson. I left the meeting with Sarah very eager for the workshop to begin and surprised at how my French might actually be functional during my time here.
Attending the workshop were members from a diverse array of countries: Burkina Faso, Senegal, Cote D'ivoire, Congo, Belgium, France, Morocco, and Benin. The choreographers from Cote D'ivoire were especially hungry for the exchange of ideas about to take place.
Over lunch with one of them, he claimed that there was no contemporary dance in his country and that this was an invaluable chance for him to expand his conceptions of movement and expression. Indeed, the most stunning moments of the workshop were those of revealing new possibilities, navigating the mysterious territory of improvisational acts and previously unknown realities. Watching living artists fiercely dedicated to pushing their boundaries offered new routes and possibilities was a constant confirmation of the necessity of questioning, of looking beneath surfaces and assumptions and into the possibilities of art.
Also poignant in its spreading of sustainable dance in West Africa was the portion of the workshop focused on administration. The administrators from 15 companies learned the basics of running a budget, writing a contract, establishing a company with a pyramid structure of artistic director, general management, and technicians. The classes were taught by French citizens who work with Salia ny Seydou in France, and the efficacy with which the classes were organized rivaled anything one might see in New York.
Salia ni Seydou are cultural emissaries. Founded by Ougadougou natives Salia Sanou and Seydou Boro, in 1995 the duo formed a close relationship with French choreographer Mathilde Monnier and have since worked tirelessly to spread their found knowledge of the dance world to aspiring choreographers in the dusty and often desperate realities of West Africa. Attending the workshop proved to be a humbling experience which captured and galvanized all of the reasons I though I should be pursuing this journey.
I am writing from Brazil where I have been the past week. I just left a four hour session with the dance company Dance Brazil. Dance Brazil´s artistic director Jelon Veira, a Brazilian that splits his years between Salvador and Manhattan, is in town until March and has opened all doors to me. Today I helped resolve a technical problem with their speakers, and preceded to film the rehearsal for the assistant artistic director. Although it was in the voyeuristic stage of interaction, I know that over the next month strong relationships will form with the company, and through Jelon, the rest of Brazil.
I am enrolled in a language school and have picked up a decent amount of Portuguese during my first week here. The language is instrumental to my time in Belo Horizonte, Sao Paulo, and Rio, and I am digging deep into dictionaries and conjugation charts every night. At no other point during my journey have I felt such a time crunch. I have five months here, if my visa extension goes through six, and I foresee many collaborations throughout the country. Carnaval starts tonight, and loud police sirens and screams color the auburn air.
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