ERIKA CHONG SHUCH | INTERVIEWED BY ROWENA RICHIE PHOTO BY HECTOR ZAVALA
W hen I was a kid, I had a dollhouse. I didn’t want dolls because I knew that there were REAL little people (that happened to be invisible), and that dolls would scare them away. I put food out for the little people on mini dollhouse plates. Every morning, I noticed that the mounds of food were smaller. This was for certain. [These days,] I need to start leaving food out for my little people; to feed the dark night where my funny little monsters can live without the pressure of defend- ing their existence. Frida Kahlo said in an interview once: ‘They thought I was a surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.’ What would it be like (and
FUNNY LITTLE MONSTERS AND BEING SAFE ENOUGH TO BE DANGEROUS
I’m not saying Kahlo’s life was like this) to have no filtration system between the things we imagine, and the work we create? ROWENA: I recently reread your SPEAK piece from 15 years ago and it read as so current. Can you summarize what you were trying to say? ERIKA: Yeah, I can summarize what I was trying to say because I still feel the same way! I was trying to say I get scared that I can talk a talk but not walk a walk. Because so much of our livelihood as freelance artists is connected to how we talk or write about our work, there is the potential that words twist the raw intent of our work into something else. I feel the potential for that disconnect. ROWENA: Where does that fear originate? ERIKA: We all develop our own rubrics for how to mea- sure our successes and failures. My internal compass
EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve collaborated with choreographer and director Erika Chong Shuch on and off since 2001. Erika, Ryan Tacata and I have a social practice and performance group called For You. Through ‘deep hanging out’ we’ve gotten to know specific people, and then enrolled them as audi- ence-participants in tailored performative responses. Wheth- er performing in Erika’s choreographic work, or collaborating
alongside her with For You, I feel challenged and inspired to channel my wildness. I call it “taking a strangeness pill.” I recently revisited an In Dance SPEAK piece that Erika wrote in 2008. I discovered that her version of a “strangeness pill” is “funny little monsters.” I invited Erika to reflect on how her creative process and funny little monsters have changed since then. Here are a couple excerpts from her SPEAK essay:
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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