descent and most of them have relatives and friends who are in the nursing profession. Panis’ sister-in-law is a working nurse in San Diego and her cousin recently retired from a hos- pital in the Boston area. Dance artist, educator, and end-of- life doula Frances Sedayao shares that her mother “was a brilliant educator” who came to the U.S. from the Philip- pines when she was in her late 40s: The quickest thing for her to make money and support her family was to go back to school and become a CNA [certified nursing assistant]. But with no consideration of the health risks. She suffered from heart and pulmonary disease yet she took on a job caring for others – a circu- lar thing which we also show in the piece – the fine line between being a caregiver and a patient—how del- icate that is. My mother died early at the age of 66. She was a natu- ral caregiver and nurturer, but she didn’t prioritize her own health. Or she did the best she could. I really want to honor her in this project. Another Nursing These Wounds dancer, Dre “Poko” Devis, is a sec- ond-generation movement and visual artist of Boholano and Ilocano descent. She has a Lola, or grandmother, on her mother’s side who went to nursing school in the Philippines: I believe she didn’t really have a choice in that matter…she had dreams to migrate here, because that picture is painted for folks who live there that…America is better…she had five daughters and she worked her butt off… and eventually moved her whole family… If not for nursing, then I wouldn’t be where I am now and I really hold that dear to my heart. This piece is diving deep into that story and it opens the door for us to really feel into the struggles of that work and the
of the pre-colonial dances—like now in my 40s.” The nine dancers in Nursing These Wounds all come with various move- ment and performance training: hip- hop, ballet, modern, contemporary, gymnastics, martial arts, and theatre. “With KULARTS,” says Devis, “I feel like the movement is so unique in that it’s rooted in what our bodies can do, and I feel like Manay really understands that.” DeFranco adds, “She spends time really explaining her vision and what the energy is supposed to feel like.” In this way, Panis does what Bautista describes as, “keeping the embodiment of movement systems and gestures as relevant and significant to the new bodies who perform it.” Bautista also asserts that this is an inherently deco- lonial praxis as opposed to, say, dic- tating particular movements onto the dancers’ bodies without any possibil- ity of negotiation. “Exploring such possibilities in performing Philippine dance,” she explains, “continuously becomes a critical pursuit,” where the practitioner is challenged to decon- struct and recontextualize “tradi- tional” or indigenous symbols—as opposed to simply appropriating
great, great strength one must have to do that kind of care.
So how to translate all of these sto- ries into movement? Jess DeFranco is a dancer and dance teacher who was first introduced to Panis’ work when she saw Man@ng is Deity last year at ODC Theater: “I was blown away. . . .I just kind of fell in love, so when they put out a call for dancers, I sent in my information and now I’m working with the Nursing These Wounds project!” One thing DeFranco loved so much about Man@ng is Deity is Panis’ con- temporary choreographic approach. In “Embodied Indigeneity: Translating Tradition for the Philippine Contem- porary Dance Stage,” Regina Bautista describes the contemporary meth- odologies of several choreographers based in the Philippines. But what she describes also applies to Panis’ work in the U.S.; that it is “a negoti- ation and exploration of the possibil- ities of performing Philippine dance beyond the constraints of tradition and authentic representation.” 6 “Where we do phrases and sections that call upon Filipino folk dance,” DeFranco says, “I was kind of able to
Panis’ Western dance education began when she attended Galileo High School in San Francisco. A friend took her to an afterschool program in North Beach that was led by a former Denishawn dancer, Klarna Pinska. She went on to study with other teachers, including Alonzo King and Ed Mock. Panis also joined the collective move- ment of artists of color in the 1970s and ‘80s, collaborating with artists like: the Asian American Dance Col- lective, Halifu Osumare, June Wata- nabe, and Jill Togawa. Working with the Bagong Diwa Dance Company between 1974 –1982, however, is the work Panis describes as being most “dear to my heart because it was the beginning of my choreographic career.” Inspired by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Bagong Diwa was ethnically diverse in com- position, but its focus was on work in
the Pilipinx American experience. Today, Panis’ work is part of a cur- rent movement among women and queer choreographers of color like Ananya Chatterjea, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Dohee Lee, Amara Tabor Smith and NAKA Dance Theater who approach dance wholistically. Their works draw on their ancestry to make a kind of cultural, socio-political and spiritual sense that decolonizes to heal. In this way, the dance functions as medicine. Another theme Nursing These Wounds explores is the fissure between traditional Pilipinx and West- ern conceptions of well-being. In my role as dramaturg for this piece, I spoke with several nurses who called for the use of ancestral medicine in general, and also particularly to help nurses with burnout. And the burnout is dire.
I wanted to speak with more nurses in the Philippines and other coun- tries, but the time difference combined with the crisis situation of the pan- demic presented a real barrier. I was told by nurses in the Philippines and the U.S. that they were working dou- ble 12 to 16-hour shifts. At the same time, this was not a new phenome- non. Many younger nurses told me stories of their elder relatives work- ing this same amount in order to sup- port their families. Sedayao’s mother is unfortunately not alone in terms of the negative impact of the work on her own health. Dr. Claire Valdera- ma-Wallace, Assistant Professor in the Department of Nursing at California State University East Bay and Chair- person of GABRIELA Oakland, also cites the urgent need “to uproot rac- ism from nursing education,” pointing out that Black, Latinx, and Pilipinx
My mother died early at the age of 66. She was a natural caregiver and nurturer, but she didn’t prioritize her own health. Or she did the best she could. I really want to honor hter in this project.
get back to my roots a little bit and get access to a style of dance that I never had the opportunity to study before.” Sedayao adds that when she was growing up in Fremont, nobody there was teaching pre-colonial Pilipinx dance, “which is what I was interested in. So working with Manay 7 I am able to learn bits and pieces 6 Bautista, Regina. “Embodied Indigeneity: Translating Tradition for the Philippine Contemporary Dance Stage.” 2017. York University. Master of Arts Thesis, 161. 7 In Tagalog: a respectful term of address for a woman older than oneself; like “elder sister.”
them—to create choreography that expresses the particular Pilipinx iden- tities and/or stories being addressed in a given performance. 8 Panis’ impact on the field of dance has been recognized by many entities, including Dance/USA, the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, and the San Francisco Arts Commission which awarded her their inaugural Legacy Artist Grant in 2017.
8 Bautista, 161 .
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