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SB: Like Clementine! She’s a character in a children’s book series, who is always getting in trouble for not paying attention at school. But she always asserts, “But I was paying attention!”—just not to the lesson, rather, to the sky outside or a classmate’s pigtails. Tell me a bit about what you were paying atten- tion to while performing in the work? CE: In the gallery we were excavating. Here, in this artificial, theatrical space, it was about reconstructing. I became a different person in here. I felt my fierceness and my authority. I wasn’t just excavating and listening and hav- ing things channel through my body. I was full with that and I had something to say. It was very different. I felt my own rage in here. CE: The archetype I was embodying was about in-between-ness and invisibility and the deep feminine. To stand up and be seen and heard unapologetically was a powerful experience in front of an audience. It was me and not me. I felt like I became an ancestor spirit that was saying, You need to hear me. I was Dorcas, a biblical character, a seam- stress, who had a group of widows who were her disciples, I think. In the story she dies and St. Peter raises her from the dead. I read that story as this transition from matriarchal to patriarchal religions and that being risen from the dead was not a good thing but rather an appropriating thing, where she becomes a symbol of the power of patriarchal, monothe- istic religion—a violence. SB: Fierce is how I felt your presence here. Though the interview drops off here, Chris and I continued talking over rice cakes and hummus in her living room that had been the theater space, that had been the ritual space, that continues to be a space that welcomes ghosts to help heal us all. 1. “ […] a story passed down to David from his great uncle about a family relative named Jim Coble. Sometime around 1910 in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma Jim Coble killed 10 white people in the town’s general store. Eluding the inevitable pWosse that ended for so many in lynching, Coble and his family escaped to Mexico where David still has relatives” (reconstructionstudy.net). SIMA BELMAR, Ph.D., is a Lecturer in the Depart- ment of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail , San Francisco Bay Guardian , The Oakland Tribune , Dance Magazine , TDR , Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices , Perfor- mance Matters , Contemporary Theatre Review , and The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies . Her writing on living in Naples can be found at under- theneapolitanson.blogspot.com. To keep up with Sima’s writing please subscribe to tinyletter.com/ simabelmar.
I’ve been trying to practice listening in making this project. Not just listening to people—listening to place, the non-material world, the past, things we may not see or that do not fit into our rational understand- ing of a thing to be listened to. So in order to make this piece I had to keep trusting and keep listening. This didn’t come from inside me. This came from somewhere else and I lis- tened. That allowed me to see and hear and create things that I couldn’t have done with- out that. I have this image of you writing and you doing that sort of meditation and that sort of listening and seeing what comes and trusting that. SB: Ok. I want to be fiercely honest. I feel bereft because I wasn’t really present enough for your show. [ Tears. ] It was really shitty timing for me. I wasn’t even supposed to be here. I was supposed to be in New York but I had to cancel the trip. It was such a low point and then I missed the gallery sec- tion and I’m angry at myself for that. I feel like I let you down. Like I betrayed some- thing. Like I was supposed to show up in a certain way and I didn’t. So I was already having trouble connecting to the perfor- mance because of my own shit, which, truth be told, happens at almost every perfor- mance until I have a chance to arrive, settle in, await the moment that pulls me into feel- ing, into an experience. While I wait, I watch the dancing, the technique, the patterns. I get into design thinking. I start to ask ques- tions about the work and make connections. I begin to think about how I’d write about what I’m witnessing.When I entered this space, I thought, Why aren’t we in a circle? (I was making assumptions about rituals “…listen and let the unknown come into your body through your pores, through your ears, without you trying to capture it in words.” —CHRIS EVANS needing to transpire in circles.) Then you invited audience members onto the stage. I loved watching them watch us as we listened to the unbearable litany of numbers, dollar amounts and ages from the auction block. It went on for a long time and the air became thick with grief and rage, but also with more minor affects like discomfort and irritation. Then, the minute you began playing the cello, I felt physically moved by its sound and by where you go facially while you’re playing. I felt like I was being rolled around viscerally. That was when I stopped resisting the work and ceased to feel like I’d fucked it up by the time I got there. You mentioned water earlier. I felt the per- formance to be a container rather than the water itself, a vessel for the flow of grief and rage. I felt like I was being held by the per- formance for my own nonsense, which may have nothing to do with what was motivat- ing this work. I think I’m telling you that I wanted to rise to what you made because of how I know you. [ Full crying now. ] I felt a certain responsibility to the work. CE: When you said that you felt like you were in a container and you were having all of these feelings—that’s ritual. It’s not per- formance. That was my goal. I want people to feel and I want it to be a place of heal- ing. I think that’s my work in this world, to help all of us heal in different ways. You had a whole journey and I think that’s amazing. You’re saying you weren’t present but you really were.
Flyaway Productions ($22,000) for MEET US
Dancers’ Group Announces Spring 2019 CA$H Awards CA$H are bi-annual awards supporting Bay Area dance artists and organizations. $42,000 in grants are being awarded to seven individual artists and seven dance orga- nizations in support of artistic projects—each grant award is $3,000. CA$H supports artists from diverse cultural backgrounds and creative practices. Projects supported this round feature Hula, Bharatanatyam, performance ritual, Persian, contemporary, Cuban folkloric, and dance works focused on the experi- ences of artists of color. The CA$H program, which has been supporting dance- makers for the past 19 years, is funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Grants for the Arts.
Rainin Foundation Awards Arts Grants Grants will support arts
QUICKLY WITH YOUR MERCY: Part 2 of The Decarceration Trilogy (MERCY), the second piece in a trilogy of perfor- mances exploring the effects of prison on American citizens. Fresh Meat Productions ($21,000 ) for The Lost Art of Dreaming, Sean Dorsey Dance’s new full-length work, which investigates what is possible when trans, gender non-conforming, and queer and optimistically about their futures, at a time when threats to these communities have escalated. Fua Dia Congo ($20,000) for Lufuki: The Origins of Funk, a new site-specific dance creation rooted in a dialogue in dance between traditional Congolese movement, Afro Urban dance styles, and Hip Hop. Jess Curtis/Gravity Inc. ($22,000) for (in)Visible, a new experimental perfor- mance piece grounded in research of the intersections of movement, culture, sensory difference, and physical diver- sity in live performance. Demons, an immersive multi- media bharatanatyam dance production which explores increasing income disparities within the local South Asian community. The Dance Brigade ($30,000) for Comhar, a festi- val featuring unique collabora- tions between artists, healers, scientists, and community. krfoundation.org communities are encour- aged to think expansively Nava Dance Theatre ($15,000) for Tea with
organizations in San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley and col- laborations designed to help artists thrive. AXIS Dance Company ($21,000) for Alice, which explores the intersections between people with dis- abilities and the homeless community through the story of Alice in Wonderland. Dance, an immersive perfor- mance on the USS Potomac which seeks to deconstruct the white male body’s expression of power and challenge its role in American democracy. Counterpulse ($21,000) for Weaving Many Spirits: Two-Spirit Native American Artist Commissioning, a performance festival seeking to decolonize gender through Indigenous performance. choreography by Leyya Mona Tawil in collaboration with art- ists will be featured as part of the Arab.AMP festival, which focuses on experimental live art from the Arab diaspora, celebrates the plurality of Arab voices, and challenges identity legibility. Eastside Arts Alliance ($30,000) for LIVE ARTS IN RESISTANCE (LAIR), a program that fosters risk-taking, rigor and radical critique on the role of political activism, cultural work and art in society. Eye Zen Presents ($30,000) for OUT of Site: SOMA, a new site-responsive, immersive LGBTQ+ walking tour. OUT of Site: SOMA will focus on San Francisco’s South of Mar- ket (SOMA) neighborhood, celebrating its new status as the first LGBTQ+ and Leather Cultural District. Constance Hockaday ($30,000) for Old Man, Dance Elixir ($25,000) for Noise & Nation, a new
The 14 Spring 2019 Dance grantees are:
Individual Artists Susana Arenas Surabhi Bharadwaj Cherie Hill Irene Hsi
randy reyes Liv Schaffer Keisha Turner
Organizations ¡FLACC! Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers Halau o Keikiali’i inkBoat Lenora Lee Dance NAKA Dance Theater Sense Object Shahrzad Dance Academy dancersgroup.org/cash
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in dance JUL/AUG 2019
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