The award-winning company LENORA LEE DANCE celebrates its 15th Anniversary Season with World Premieres of
HE IS KILLED AS A SCAPEGOAT BUT REBORN: Brontez Purnell and Nijinsky’s ‘The Rite of Spring ’ by BRONTEZ PURNELL I had got a call from the beautiful and stun- ning Zari Le’on, (whose work and pres- ence I had admired for a decade plus). She said she had read some of my books and got inspired. In her cool Black girl Cali cadence she said to me, “Do you want to come train with me and do Nijinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”?!” I was like, “Wait, holy shit, GIRL, WHAT?!?!?” I am one to NEVER turn down a challenge…shots fired, it was ON. I had met Le’on some decade before, when she taught a Dunham workshop at Laney College that had COM- PLETELY blown me away. I had started my dance jour- ney AT Laney College, as a Dunham student, and bal- let student. I had learned under Danny Nguyen, Lynette DeFazio, Lynn Coles, and had got a scholarship to dance with Colette Eloi, danced in her contemporary Hai- tian company for about 8 years. But it was around the time that I saw Le’on’s Dunham demo, and the Kather- ine Dunham seminar at Laney, that I was transfixed by the fact of how new it felt. I had only danced with conga drummers. Seeing her connect the tenets of the routine with a single solo electric violin player and two dancers condensed a lot for me aesthetically. I had always thrust my body into dance backed by a pulsating drum beat, at the time made a good part of my money go-go danc- ing in this band Gravy Train!!! And worked the go-go box at the time at too many underground clubs to recall. What I mean to say is, my body had always acclimated to dance being associated with a very loud noise. This felt eloquent.
Visibility In
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I said to Le’on, “Abso-fucking-LOUTELY! But like, you know I’m old and fat now? And haven’t been in a ballet class in 2 years?!” (She said we would work on it). Now let me be clear, I have always been a spooky Witch boy who LOVES a séance, a dedication, and a conjuring. When I was making “Unstoppable Feat: The Dances of ED MOCK” (my documentary about the late Ed Mock) what I realized was that there is this kind spiritual work in trying to recover a language of the past—it’s like studying a personal form of hieroglyphics—the work always feels like some form of spiritual intervention you are putting on yourself. Certainly not for the weak of heart. But also, “The Rite of Spring” wasn’t just any ballet. It was the rally- ing call of what the work of dance would be the rest of last century. Nijinsky humping that nymph’s veil on stage said to the world, “I am about to make a ugly thing, very beauti- ful” OR maybe it said “I’m going to make a beautiful thing, very ugly.” Either way, both statements are important—the key word here: transformation.
Fri & Sat | Feb 2-3, 2024 | 8pm Sun | Feb 4, 2024 | 2pm
IN VISIBILITY focuses on the advocacy to stop the prison to ICE detention pipeline. CONVERGENT WAVES: EP highlights stories of migration in El Paso over the decades and as Title 42 came to an end. CONCEIVED, PRODUCED & DIRECTED by Lenora Lee CHOREOGRAPHY: Lenora Lee with DANCE COLLABORATORS: Victoria Amador, Lynn Huang, SanSan Kwan, Sebastian Le, Gilberto Martínez Martínez, Johnny Huy Nguyen, Catalina O’Connor RECORDED MUSIC: directed by Francis Wong & Tatsu Aoki VOCALS: Helen Palma MEDIA DESIGN: Lenora Lee & Olivia Ting LIGHT DESIGN: Harry Rubeck VOICEOVER: Serafin Andrade, Mario Narciso Ávila Melgar, Jon-Michael Blowe, Maddie Boyd, Sami DiPasquale, Keith Fong, Sarah Lee, Melissa M. López, Lori Navarrete, Salesh Prasad, Mae Yee Quon, Lydia Yee Woo, Anonymous
at Dance Mission Theater 3316 24th Street at Mission San Francisco, CA 94110
TICKETS & INFO www.LenoraLeeDance.com LenoraLeeDance@gmail.com (415) 570-8615
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WINTER 2024 in dance
In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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