baccalaureate nursing students cur- rently have the highest attrition rates in California. 9 I spoke with nurses who quit the profession because of racist bullying. I spoke with nurses who quit because of corporate greed. One such person is Bryan Philip Cruz, an emergency room nurse who quit after he contracted a severe case of COVID-19 after being supplied with one mask to use per week. At the same time, Cruz also said, “I wouldn’t trade my experience.” What was clear and consistent across all the conversations I had with Pili- pinx nurses was a deep sense of rec- ognition, love and respect for nursing and for each other. “It’s an honorable profession,” says Mylene Cahambing, the public health nurse quoted at the beginning of this piece: “I’m honored to be in this profession, but where is our healing space?” Ritchel Gazo, a pediatric nurse at Kaiser who is also the Executive Director of Parangal Dance Company says, “We put up a really good image in front of everybody that we’re okay, but in all honesty we aren’t. I think it comes down to really doing a lot of self-care during this pandemic and just being honest with yourself and giving yourself that moment to let that pressure cooker out, release some of that hurt, that grief and anything you’re processing.” Dancing is part of how Gazo stays balanced. 10 Sedayao noted that playing the part of a nurse in Nursing These Wounds is “funny” in the sense that she is finally performing her parents’ expectation, but in her own way that departs from the intergenerational expectations that were dictated by the colonial capital- ist global economy. “I’m looking up to the heavens saying, ‘Ok, I can be a nurse for you.’ And it’s just so nice to work with someone who tells stories of my people in a way that is really thoughtful and genuine. . . . That in 9 “Nurses in the Diaspora.” KULARTS panel dis- cussion. 21 Mar. 2021. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=8F-Lueqc6zA . 10 Ibid.
itself is such a gift and an inspira- tion to me, and it makes me feel like home. I’m learning something about my family and I’m speaking and mov- ing with people that have that innate understanding of the struggle and the joys of being Filipino.” KULARTS presents the World Premiere of Nursing These Wounds Directed and Choreographed by Alleluia Panis Oct 21-30 at Brava Theater Center Cabaret, San Francisco Tickets available at https://bit.ly/ ntwbrava
JOYCE LU is a performing artist, director, and educator based in Los Angeles. She is a former member of Body Weather Laboratory LA and has performed with Oguri and Roxanne Steinberg at many venues including The Guggenheim and Getty museums. She current- ly practices and performs Balinese dance with Burat Wangi led by Nanik Wenten and I Nyoman Wenten. Joyce participated in a Tribu Tur with KULARTS in 2002 and contribut- ed an article about KULARTS to the anthology California Dreaming: Movement and Place in the Asian American Imaginary (2020). Joyce received her MFA in Asian Performance from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from UC Berkeley. She is currently an Associate Professor in Theatre and Dance and Asian American Studies at Pomona College.
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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