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(left -right ) Vaishali Ramachandran, Pooja Sohoni, Anjana Dasu, Chaitanya Gotur / photo by Santhosh Selvara
NAKA DANCE THEATER IN THE TIME OF COVID-19
by SIMA BELMAR
O n our way out of Margaret Jen- kins’ CHIME event on December 8, 2019, José Navarrete invited me to have a conversation about NAKA’s social justice work, including LAIR (Live Arts in Resistance), a series of performance showcases, artist residen- cies, and community town halls in partnership with EastSide Arts Alliance in East Oakland. By the time we found a date that worked for the three of us, COVID-19 had hit. I’ve been watching José and his artistic part- ner Debby Kajiyama dance together since before they officially founded NAKA Dance Theater in 2001. Their 20-year collaboration has been rooted in formal exploration, cultural
sent me the transcript of interviews they con- ducted with two of the women of MUA who are performers in Y Basta Ya! (Enough!) , a proj- ect slated to premiere in 2021. I have woven excerpts of the interviews with Adriana Embriz and Monica Gonzalez to include their perspec- tives on our discussion. Sima: What do you think is the most import- ant thing In Dance readers should know about what NAKA is doing these days? Right now is a weird time to answer that question but maybe— Debby: It’s such a weird time to answer that question. The project we’re working on now is with Mujeres Unidas Y Activas, a Latina organi-
engagement, and social justice, and has spawned works that put the political and the aesthetic into critical conversation. Debby, José, and I had our Zoom con- versation on March 20 when the Bay Area had been under official lockdown for less than a week. Much of our discussion cen- tered around their work with Mujeres Uni- das Y Activas (MUA), an organization dedi- cated to supporting and empowering Latina immigrants. Toward the end of our talk, both Debby and José expressed concern about speaking too much for the women. José asked, “How can we talk about the work and decentralize ourselves?” So two months after our initial conversation, Debby and José
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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