Spring 2021 In Dance

Published by Dancers' Group, In Dance is discourse and dialogue to unify, strengthen, and amplify.

in dance SPRING 2021 DISCOURSE + DIALOGUE TO UNIFY, STRENGTHEN + AMPLIFY

P.06 Fresh Meat Productions

P.32 Sharing with Strength

P.44 Ad Infinitum Identities

CONTENTS

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I'VE BEEN READING, READING, READING. It’s a lovely part of my job. I get to read grant pro- posals, budgets (numbers tell a story, too), research studies, emails and numerous articles featured in In Dance —finding comfort and inspiration as I read in my spare time. My post-work reading is eclectic and is made up of consuming features in various online publica- tions. Also I love fiction books —like Bryan Washing- ton’s beautiful novel called Memorial . And I’ve been reading lots of NY Times features on artists. Through these pieces I’m being introduced to live-treasures.

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They’ve become my weekly, sometimes daily, inspire-pleasure. Here’s a highlight of those I’ve been learning about. I’ve fallen for the artist Lorraine O’Grady whose newspaper poems from 1977 are stunning visual dances. The artist Roni Horn has led me to appreciate the word “acclimatize”—I want to figure out how to use it in a sentence. And Horn states: “Since I know what I want, but not what it looks like, it takes time to focus it and arrive at some form of clarity.” I needed to hear that “it takes time to focus.” And then there’s the brilliant Kyohei Sakaguchi . “I do what I do in order to keep living.” The matter of factness of Sakaguchi’s statement slays. That they do what they do to live, resonates so deeply during a pandemic. I feel such a kinship within their words. Connecting with artists —even abstractly through interviews—comforts and is simply wondrous. Wondrous words from dance artists is a way to ensure their voices and ideas are documented and visible. Highlighting how they maneuver complex relationships with their community, with their collaborators and especially how they connect with artists that motivate their own work and thinking. Are you ready? Within these pages are the most amazing writings Dancers’ Group has put out. I think this each time we publish, it really is true now and it will be true next time too—wink, wink. The featured writers in the Spring issue address how we acclimatize over time. They boldly speak to long known injustices like colonialism, white supremacy, racism and patriarchy. They speak to adapting and prompt us towards new combinations of insights, through intuition, by taking time to be. We present writing by Yayoi Kambara , Gerald Casel , Marvin K. White , Bhumi Patel , Usha Srivinisan and Priya Das , Aura Fischbeck and Christy Funsch , Hien Hyunh , Rowena Richie , Farah Yasmeen Shaikh , Sima Belmar and Justin Ebrahemi . The themes are deep and personal. As you savor each word I hope you share these Spring articles and join me in asking questions like: How am I feeling? How can I evolve?

6 / IN PRACTICE: Sean Dorsey, Fresh Meat Productions

40/ slow, sticky, sustainable

Dancers’ Group gratefully acknowledges the support of Bernard Osher Foundation, California Arts Council, Fleishhacker Foundation, Grants for the Arts, JB Berland Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Koret Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, Walter & Elise Haas Fund, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation and generous individuals.

The continuous, ongoing, neverending work of liberation by Bhumi Patel

and Trans Joy by Sima Belmar

14 / Burn Scars

44/ Ad Infinitum Identities The work of Pseuda & Kim Ip By Justin Ebrahemi 50/ In Community

DANCERS’ GROUP Artist Administrator Wayne Hazzard Artist Resource Manager Andréa Spearman Administrative Assistant

Examining scarred lands, callused feet and racialized climates by Gerald Casel

18 / It's Hard to Say

Highlights and resources, activities and celebrations for our community— find more on dancersgroup.org

Validating care partners and their loved ones living with dementia. by Rowena Richie with Joyce Calvert

Shellie Jew Bookkeeper Michele Simon Design Sharon Anderson

56/ Ăn gì chua?

22/ Anchor Us

The nourishing love of a mother By Hien Huynh 58/ From Containment to Expansion:

Finding ways to connect through the distance by Aura Fischbeck and Christy Funsch

A Tenderloin Meditation Radical community-centered art making by Minister Marvin K. White

28/ Mosaic America

Cover: NAKA Dance Theater, Acto de Memoria Photo by Scott Tsuchitani

Creating belonging for all who live, work, play, and pray in community by Priya Das and Usha Srinvivasan

62/ Finding a Flow

32/ Soft Power

Through Heartistry Conversations with artists with heart by Farah Yasmeen Shaikh

Be well, —Wayne Hazzard, Artist Administrator

Addressing the discomfort of confronting equity issues by Yayoi Kambara

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INPRACTICE SEAN DORSEY, FRESH MEAT PRODUCTIONS, AND TRANS JOY

by SIMA BELMAR

ribbons attached to it, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t classical ballet.

SB: I too remember having a tambou- rine with ribbons attached to it among other things with ribbons attached to them. I remember being around four and dancing with these wire things with flowers attached to them to the song “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.” SD: I had no other formal dance training until right after I graduated from high school when I did a sum- mer session largely based on the cho- reography of Janet Jackson—it was amazing. And then I started taking classes, mostly modern dance, some jazz, in college [University of Brit- ish Columbia], but community level, drop-in stuff. I remember loving it so, so much, but my career and my heart’s trajectory was on the commu- nity organizing, social justice path. I felt clear that my calling was to be of service and do justice-seeking work. SB: So that’s why you’re able to make work and organize so many events and programs! What was your major? SD: I did a double major in Political Science and Women’s Studies. After that, I started a graduate program in community economic develop- ment, and also started taking classes in the dance department. When I was 25, I started thinking about getting more training. I couldn’t dance often enough! I was taking ballet with this one teacher who one day asked me to stay after class. When she asked me if I’d ever thought about being a pro- fessional dancer, my mind exploded. It was a landscape-altering moment.

KnowShade Vogue

A s he looks back on 20 and queer artists in the Bay Area and across the country, Sean Dorsey, Artis- tic Director of Sean Dorsey Dance (SDD) and founder of Fresh Meat Pro- ductions (FMP), is positively glowing. Founded in 2001, Fresh Meat Pro- ductions is a trans-led-and-serving, history-making organization commit- ted to shining a light on and reflect- ing the light of artists who, despite years of making and pro- ducing performance by trans, gender-nonconform- ing (GNC), two-spirit,

Belmar: Have you always been a dancer?

increased visibility in popular cul- ture, continue to struggle to find their voices amplified, uplifted, and repre- sented in theatrical contexts. To mark the milestone, FMP has launched The Lost Art of Dream- ing Project , a constellation of online events spread out over the course of 2021, a Spring 2022 premiere, and a 10+-city tour through 2024. This year, The Lost Art of Dreaming will feature SDD’s AT-HOME Season (April 16-18) that includes a series of gorgeous site-specific dance films and messages from Dorsey; a second

season of “Stay Fresh At Home,” a free online series of videos dedi- cated to creative wellness; the 20th Anniversary Fresh Meat Festival (June 17-19, online), showcasing an incredible lineup including the work of commissioned artists, Antoine Hunter/Purple Fire Crow, J Mase III, Jahaira & Angelica, Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi, Mark Travis Rivera, and Randy Ford, supported by FMP’s FRESH WORKS! program; and a monthly release of free activ- ities, including Postcards from the Future, which highlights the work

of four commissioned visual artists, and The Dictionary of Joy and Plea- sure, a free, interactive online A-to-Z with contributions by ten commis- sioned artists. There’s even a “Futur- ist Pledge” that folks can download, print, and sign. The Lost Art of Dreaming is a proj- ect with a singular yet expansive mis- sion: “to explore and create expansive futures” for trans, GNC, two-spirit, and queer communities. Dorsey and I had two lengthy conversations about what it looks like to center joy and pleasure in artistic and social practice.

Sean Dorsey: Yes! But I always say that I did not grow up at the ballet barre. I loved dance with every cell in my body. I spent all my time in my leotard, dancing around to records. I was always making up dances. I did have a lot of early training and per- forming in theater and music, mostly piano, choral stuff, youth theater. But most of my dancing was in my liv- ing room. I took a “ballet” class series when I was 5 and remember having an awesome tambourine with long

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Up until that moment I had literally never imagined I could become a pro- fessional dancer: how could I, when I had never seen another person like me in dance? So I took a year off of grad school, entered a two-year stu- dio-based Dance program, and never looked back. The very first piece of choreog- raphy I made at dance school was a duet and it was definitely queer. At that point I hadn’t seen a lot of dance-theater or “talking dance,” but from the beginning I’ve always felt called to bring in elements of story

and text. The local dance community came out to these student recitals, and was very supportive of young students and their burgeoning craft. I don’t remember feeling nervous at all about my work being queer. People were awesome: I was blown away by the incredibly positive response and feed- back from professional dancers to my baby-choreography. They were “interested in my voice” and “were excited to see what I did next.” The day after the show, in morning tech- nique class, the school director pulled me out, sat me down in her office,

and told me sternly that my piece “made people feel very uncomfort- able”—which was not even a little bit true. I had experienced the exact opposite. I don’t know how I had the wherewithal to feel sure of that truth at the time, but I did. She actu- ally withheld my graduation certifi- cate at the end of my program. In that moment, the years of all the awful experiences in gendered bathrooms, gendered costumes, everything came crashing down on me. But at the same time, I realized that this was how I could forge change in the world, this was my calling, and this was how I could be of service. Her words made me realize the power of dance-the- ater work that’s based in the body, in story, and in language. SB: What do you love about dancing? SD: Feeling into my love of danc- ing, there is both the love of velocity and the momentum of movement, the embodiment of energy and emo- tion, but also a real love of the rela- tionship and response to music. But I have also always loved storytelling. Those were not separate things. You know a lot about me if you know that my favorite childhood movies were Fame and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Rocky Horror was so huge for me. Here’s this amazing, sexy, gender-expansive, fierce, totally embodied character in Frankenfurter. SB: Fame came out in 1980, when I was 9 and you were 7. It was not a thing to watch at that age! SD: When I go back and watch it now, I’m like, This is the most depressing movie about trauma and abuse ever! But at the time all that mattered was Leroy, roller skates, and the romantic notion of bottle caps on the bottom of your shoes. That was my dream high school, but I never imagined my own adult life being about dance and performance. I never saw anybody like me in those fields doing those things. So it wasn’t

Toby MacNutt

Javier Stell-Fresquez and Ivy Monteiro

SB: So, if I have my math right, you’re dating your 20th anniversary from 2001, right? What happened then? SD: In June 2001, I performed my first work in the Bay Area for the final Lesbian and Gay Dance Festival at Dance Mission. I had seen Dance Brigade perform in Vancouver a few years before. It was one of the first times I’d seen dance theater that was fiery and political, imbued with text and story; they were just gloriously ripping into colonialism and misog-

like, gosh, I wish someday I could do this. There was literally no brain path- way for that dream because I literally didn’t exist in the world. Trans people of my generation and older—and maybe just a little bit younger—we had to work so hard to find any proof of our existence other than our own selves in the world. For example, my partner, Shawna Virago, a trans woman musician, filmmaker, and director of the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, talks about going to the public library just to find anything, and there being like one weird medical book on transsexuality. There was no internet, no blogs, no Gay Straight Alliances in high school, there was nothing, unless you saw maybe a transsexual on the Donahue show. If I had been lucky enough to know or been connected to ballroom culture and voguing, I would have been like here’s this amazing trans/ GNC leadership, lineage, and ances- try. Here’s this long lineage of Black and Latinx trans women, queers and GNC folks with this amazing dance and performance form and huge cho- sen-family/community network. Flash forward to today, and so much has changed while so much has still not changed: in pop culture we still have cisgender people being cast as trans. Totally unacceptable when there are so many talented trans and nonbi- nary actors. But in dance also, we’ve seen many institutions investing in

works for the stage that portray trans characters as pathological, disturbed characters; and even more institu- tions and companies bringing exactly zero trans bodies, dancers or lead- ership to the stage. And not having dance educators who are trans, non- binary, or GNC. The Bay Area, like the rest of the country, still has to do a lot better.

SB: How did you make your way to the Bay Area?

YOU KNOW A LOT ABOUT ME IF YOU KNOW THAT MY FAVORITE CHILDHOOD MOVIES WERE FAME AND THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW.

SD: I had been dancing in some small companies in British Columbia, and on a visit to San Francisco in 2000, I took classes at ODC with Lizz Roman and Ellie Klopp. With Lizz’s class, I was like, “What is this magic?!” It was my real introduction to upside down, release technique. There was very little of that in Vancouver. It was this room full of all these glorious people, and Lizz was singing and Daniel Berkman was accompanying; it was this mag- ical, mystical experience. And then Lizz asked me to join her company! I danced with her for six amazing amazing years, hanging from rafters, climbing up walls, and dancing on furniture.

yny. I kept presenting work under my name, and then I date my company, Sean Dorsey Dance, from when we had our first full-evening home season, which was 2005. SB: How did you come up with the name Fresh Meat Productions? SD: In 2002, I brought together a group of artists and activists to put on what we thought would be a one- time festival of trans and queer per- formance. We wanted to center trans artists, center BIPOC queer/trans art- istry, and do it gorgeously. At an early planning meeting at a Mission café, we were like, “What do we call this thing?” Jesse Bie said, “Let’s call it

KnowShade Vogue

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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org

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or all-gender bathrooms. I call upon Bay Area dance venues and spaces to use the shutdown period of the pan- demic to fix this—AND PUT NEW SIGNS ON YOUR BATHROOMS, DARNIT! I will mail you the sharpies if you don’t have any. SB: And not everybody sees them- selves in the new equity, “everybody is welcome” statements. SD: Right. When white cisgender non-disabled people say something generic like “everybody is welcome,” it often means “you’re welcome in theory but our facility, staff, and prac- tices might still be harmful or exclud- ing.”Welcoming needs to be a verb , not a passive value. We white people in leadership don’t get to claim to be “anti-racist” or say we care about white supremacy unless we can back it up with daily, concrete, meaningful and accountable action. At FMP, when we have any kind of public event we always list a bunch of information right on our web- site, ticketing page, and social media that we hope is helpful for people to feel that they are thought of ahead of time and welcomed into that space. For example, we will share that the entrance, bathrooms, and seating are wheelchair accessible, the front row seats are all armless for fat or super- fat folks, we only ever use venues with all gender bathrooms, we provide a monitored scent-free seating area, we never require “legal ID” to purchase or pick up tickets. This is to say, I’m specifically thinking of you , I want you to feel like you are welcome, and here are the loving accommodations we’re providing. I’d like to see those statements on a venue’s ticketing page. Z Space is our artistic home for a reason—they’ve always been awe- some. Part of their leadership staff team includes a trans person. After years of temporarily allowing us to make their bathrooms all-gender during our events, they permanently and lovingly made all their bathrooms all gender.

LeahAnn Mitchell

fresh meat,” and there was this col- lective gasp of excitement. So saucy at the time! SB: Jesse is the sauciest! SD: Absolutely! He had already long been bringing BIPOC queer dance-theater to theaters and to the streets across the Bay with his com-

BIPOC, trans, queer, and GNC artists including disabled artists. It was about reclaiming ourselves, our bodies, and our creative expression as powerful, sexy, and worthy of taking up the space that had hitherto been denied to our communities. Elizabeth Gorelik did our first photo shoot at ODC: there were lots of

proud that from the beginning, all our artists and crew were paid well. We’re so proud of really changing that landscape, of breaking down so many barriers for trans and GNC performing artists. I have so much love, gratitude, and awe for our tiny but mighty core staff, Shawna Virago, Eric Garcia, and StormMi- guel Florez, the “Fresh Meat Fam- ily”–and it really is a family. SB: Reflecting on the last twenty years, what has changed about the Bay Area performance landscape in terms of both trans representation and influence? SD: It’s painful to witness the contin- ued refusal of most Bay Area dance leadership and spaces to take any actual action around trans equity. There are a lot of trans supportive “values” but almost no action or pol- icies and procedures put in place. It’s absolutely unacceptable that most of our dance spaces don’t have any trans/non-binary faculty, trans pro- gramming, all-gender changing rooms

IT'S PAINFUL TO WITNESS THE CONTINUED REFUSAL OF MOST BAY AREA DANCE LEADERSHIP AND SPACES TO TAKE ANY ACTUAL ACTION AROUND TRANS EQUITY.

pany STEAMROLLER Dance. This was when we founded Fresh Meat Productions. At that time (2002), there was an amazing groundswell of trans performance and artists, but nobody was programming, presenting, or curating trans and gender-noncon- forming artists. Nobody would touch us. There were queer events, but most were majority white cis non-disabled artists. So we came together—dance peers, trans artist activists, friends—to put on a festival that centered majority

chaps and leather harnesses and tighty whities and wigs. So good! Andrew Wood rented us the theater for super cheap on Tuesday and Wednesday night, and we were sold out, standing room only, packed like sardines. And there was an immediate tor- rent of love, an extraordinary response from the community, that YES there was a clear hunger for this in the Bay. It became clear shortly after that first festival that this needed to be an organization. I’m

Randy Ford

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SO MANY PEOPLE IN SO MANY COMMUNITIES LIVE AMIDST HARM, DAILY OPPRESSION, VIOLENCE, BUT WHAT GETS FORGED OUT OF THAT IS JOY, RESILIENCE, AWESOMENESS, SASS, BEAUTY.

AIDS epidemic, and then 500 hours editing it down to a sound score, all before the movement creation. My current process—I don’t know where it will end up. I look forward to get- ting back into the studio because grand-scale costumes had also been driving our movement creation. Now they’re in storage at Dance Mission, these huge gowns with 6-foot trains. SB: Thinking about Tim Curry’s deli- cious embodiment in Rocky Horror , how do we get people to understand the material sensations and plea- sures of embodiment as processes and practices that exist on a nonthreaten- ing continuum of embodiments? Are we getting closer to that? How can dance artists help audiences develop an awareness that their embodiments are these rich amazing things that are being limited by social norms? SD: As an artist and activist I’ve learned that the crucible, the trans- formation happens through personal, shared, felt experience. It’s a butts in seats thing, getting people in the the- ater, or into the conversation, or into the workshop, or into the online expe- rience. Whether we’re watching a dance film online, or watching dancers on stage, that experience, that witnessing gives us an embodied visceral experi- ence. It involves our breath, our heart, our muscles contracting in empathic reaction. There’s something magical about when the lights go down and your guard is dropped, your heart and mind are open in a different way. The magic and change happen there. Visit freshmeatproductions.org/ programs for information about the 20th anniversary offerings and about FMP’s collaborators on The Lost Art of Dreaming. SIMA BELMAR, Ph.D., is a Lecturer in the Depart- ment of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is ODC Writer in Residence and host of the new podcast Dance Cast. To keep up with Sima’s writing please subscribe to tinyletter.com/simabelmar.

resiliency of trans and gender-non- conforming people and artists. I love trans people and I love trans artists. When I’m in our workshop spaces, our audiences, our community forums, I’m so blissed out. There’s so much creativity and depth and shim- mery, sparkly creativity. That’s what drives us—our beauty and our gifts. So many people in so many commu- nities live amidst harm, daily oppres- sion, violence, but what gets forged out of that is joy, resilience, awesome- ness, sass, beauty. Part of the agoniz- ing frustration, anger, and sadness I feel is so much because all of these cisgender dance leaders and funders are totally missing out on all of this community’s incredible work, innova- tion, and beauty. SB: I called you a trans ambassa- dor, a moniker you accepted and that also frustrated you to some extent because of the way it erased your identity and work as an artist. SD: I’m so proud to be trans and love being an ambassador, but there is a profound level of exhaustion I’ve worked myself into. So much travel- ing and speaking and advocacy, and teaching and touring, prior to the pandemic, I’d totally worked myself into the ground. I will keep advo- cating and fighting for intersectional trans equity, but I also have to stop and find a balance for Sean the artist. When I think back to 20 years ago and how I brought some folks together to put on this “one-time” Fresh Meat Festival, it was about the fact that at that time almost nobody was putting trans artists on stages with high production values, and nobody was paying us for our art. Probably for the next 8-10 years, if I had press interviews as Sean Dorsey and Sean Dorsey Dance, writers would hyper-focus on my trans iden- tity and ask me Trans 101 questions. Nobody was like, “Tell me about your craft.” It was years before I got to talk about that in interviews.

So what feels very important at the 20th anniversary mark, is to remem- ber how 20 years ago almost no one was doing this, and now, every week, I have young nonbinary or trans aspir- ing dancers reaching out to me from all across the country. I came of age having no peers in the dance world and it’s so exciting to witness so many gender expansive folks. It’s also frus- trating that so little has changed, how few trans dance educators we see, we don’t see trans artists being presented, trans folks given residencies, on staff, on boards of directors, in leadership and decision-making power at foun- dations or funding agencies. The val- ues and friendliness are there, but the action is not. Like all the white folks in leadership claiming to have anti-white-supremacist values, with little to no action. SB: Let’s talk about your craft. Your theater, music, and writing background clarifies for me how dance appears in your work, as one communicative piece of a puzzle. In the AT-HOME season videos, which are beautifully made, I noticed a repetition of gesture that had a lot to do with two fingers pulling away from and towards the body. Tell me about those choices. SD: I’m calling this new series of dance films “video postcards.” In them, we’re exploring movement research for our new project The Lost Art Of Dreaming . The idea is that we can be doing movement investigation or play and create tendrils that may end up in the staged work down the road. The Lost Art Of Dreaming is rooted in imagining and creating expansive Futures, so the idea of starting here [Sean moves his hands towards and away from his forehead and chest], and getting to here [Sean gestures

toward the sky], connecting what’s out there, the Future, and what’s in the body. Some of that movement you saw was about that swirling cos- mos, that Future energy, and how we might connect it to our body. Me and my dancers (Nol Simonse, Will Woodward, Raul Torres-Bonilla) have been doing this “cosmic connec- tive tissue” movement research in our Zoom rehearsals 3 days a week since the beginning of the pandemic. SB: When you demonstrate and talk about these core-distal relationships, I can start to think about why one might choreograph exaggerated finger extensions and reaches toward the furthest point away from the body. Dance is a tremendously powerful and successful communicator of force and energy and emotion, but it’s a shitty communicator of ideas. Because I don’t think that’s what it was born to do. And it’s a very Western idea that viewers of dance should know what it means, should understand it, “get it,” and if they don’t know, they’re going to get anxious and pissed and dismiss it. I think it’s important for me to hear from an artist about the movement choices they make. Now I can revisit the films and think about the relation- ship between my material reality and my interiority and how far I can reach as I continue to be stuck in these pan- demic bubbles. SD: In most of the video postcards, there’s no relationship to language or text. This project is really differ- ent for me so far because I generally work with text and writing. The Miss- ing Generation (2018) started with a lot of research, a year and a half and 75 hours of oral history interviews I recorded with survivors of the early

Tinky Younger

It’s also awesome that CounterPulse intentionally planned for and built their new facility with only all-gender bathrooms, and regularly presents/ supports trans/Two-Spirit/NB artists, unlike most other Bay Area dance venues. Shawl Anderson as a home for dance has been supportive of trans/NB artists, including trans fac- ulty, producing their Queering Dance Festival—that’s so huge and amazing. This is something that I’m also proud of: because Sean Dorsey Dance’s Tech Rider requires theaters to convert all lobby and backstage bathrooms to be all-gender during our tours, I have left

behind a swath of permanently-altered all-gender restrooms in theaters across the country, from The Joyce in NYC to The Young Auditorium in highly con- servative Whitewater WI. SB: I love all of your trans love t-shirts , and your current project emphasizes trans joy, pushing back on the sort of spectacle of suffering cis folks may expect from trans artists. SD: The reason I create work and founded FMP is because of the exqui- site joy, wisdom, ebullience, radi- ance, depth of spirit, innovation of craft, and positively extraordinary

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u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n amp l i f y u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n a p l i f y

44 Gough Street, Suite 201 San Francisco, CA 94103 www.dancersgroup.org

BURN SCARS YOU CAN STILL SEE THE BURN SCARS that dot the hills near the campus where I live, which is on the unceded territory of the Awas- was-speaking Uypi tribe and the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. Last year's CZU Lightning Complex fires burned over 86,000 acres in Santa Cruz County and brought ash from counties far away. When the rains came in February, sev- eral areas were evacuated from potential debris flow as a result of the fires' devastation. We've lost power, too, here and there, because the electrical grid has been damaged. Remarkably, you can see much more wildlife than usual – either because they have been displaced due to their natural habi- tats having been destroyed or because of rewilding, a process where animals return to spaces where they hadn't been allowed to roam freely before. As a result of humans stepping back, ecological restoration is underway, and although the air is cleaner now, the weather remains unpredictable. We're coming up on one year since COVID-19 restrictions have been in place. Since I by GERALD CASEL

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W e're coming up on one year since COVID-19 restrictions have been in place. Since I hav- en't been able to dance regularly, my feet have lost their cal- luses. Those layers of skin made tough and thick through wear and tear have protected me from floor burns and splits while allowing me to turn, glide, and brush the floor with- out pain. Losing calluses also means a loss of felt sense, being out of shape, and general tightness. We haven't had our rigorous movement practices and communal exchanges in shared spaces and that lack of human con- tact has also produced sustained emo- tional distress. Callousness can also be used as a metaphor for emotional hardening —protection from constant oppres- sion or harm. As a dance artist of color, I know how to deploy this emotional armor when I need it to survive microaggressions/invalida- tions/assaults—like that time in ballet class when a white woman physically forced me to move because I was blocking her view of herself in the mirror. Violence like this often comes quick, leaving me frozen and burn- ing with anger, but the scars last for a long time. This incident reminded me how "white body supremacy," a term used by somatic abolitionist Resmaa Menakem, allows white peo- ple to take up space and claim own- ership over shared or public spaces. I take care not to be too hardened by these jabs and seek balance when navigating the unpredictable weather of white supremacy. In her book, In the Wake, On Blackness and Being , Christina Sharpe describes the possi- ble metaphors and materiality of "the weather" that creates a climate where anti-Blackness and white supremacy are pervasive. Sharpe writes, "The weather necessitates changeability

and improvisation; it is the atmo- spheric condition of time and place; it produces new ecologies." We can apply this metaphor to challenge the structures of whiteness that create conditions of exclusion by restor- ing a felt sense of safety through an embodied preparedness that can weather white supremacist culture. By doing so, we can alter the atmosphere and generate new ecosystems that minimize harm while acknowledging the harm when it arises. Last summer, instigated by Jill Homan Randall and as part of a series of writing that featured the Dancing Around Race cohort, I wrote a piece called “Regranting as a Per- formance of Benevolent Colonialism.” I have been thinking about how this needs to be revisited, especially now at the year-long mark of COVID-19 and after the many pronouncements of diversity, equity, and inclusion that white-led organizations have pre- sented on websites, social media, and in many online interactions where I have witnessed emotional perfor- mances of solidarity. In addition to having annual seasons, many white dance art- ists with companies or orga- nizations have benefited from receiving large grants only to disperse funds through a festi- val or through a shared evening of dance that promotes emerg- ing artists of color. This is possi- ble, in part, because these white choreographers have lived and worked in the Bay Area for some time but also because they have solid support from funders who also (through general operating support grants) cover the costs of administrative staff, marketing, and development and grant writ- ing support. What if white art- ists who are able to receive these

funds refrain from doing so, so that artists of color can receive the funds directly? What if we got rid of the 'middle man,' or the part that feels the most in need of intervention – this sense that People of Color know all-too- well as imperial benevolence? In other words, changing the narra- tive that says white people will fix your community, save you from being irrelevant, and pre- scribe educational and enrich- ment programs so that they look charitable and have no hidden ulterior motives. U nfortunately, even after the overdue racial reck- oning that inspired so many people to protest in the streets with power- ful calls to action following the mur- ders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, things have not changed much in terms of racial pol- itics and power dynamics in the Bay Area dance ecology. White-led dance organizations resume operations as if nothing has changed – not acknowl- edging how they benefit from their social position through the insti- tutional structures of whiteness. Informed by scholars Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, who remind us that decolonization is not a metaphor, this “evasion” or failure by white people to enact sustained and systemic change gives rise to plati- tudes that are nothing more than performative gestures. Because of historical, legal, and institutional barriers such as redlin- ing, racial quotas, restrictive voting and immigration laws, and other set- tler-colonial logics that are baked into systems that regulate who owns what, generational wealth gaps between white people and their

As we navigate through the unpre- dictable climate of racial inequity and as we imagine a future that values the cultural wealth of BIPOC com- munities, we must weather storms of white supremacy and plant seeds that will grow and transform burn scars into new growth. Refusing colonial structures that reinforce separation, competition, and exploitation, we will find ways to rewild the spaces that have not been available to us. Tend- ing to our bodies and each other, we can learn to heal from generational trauma, and like calluses, we can regenerate tougher skin that will pro- tect us from the elements. My writing and thinking have been influenced by conversations with the Dancing Around Race collec- tive (David Herrera, Yayoi Kambara, Kimani Fowlin, Bhumi B. Patel, and Raissa Simpson). I have also been inspired by the writings of Maile Arvin, Resmaa Menakem, Claudia Rankine, Christina Sharpe, and Edgar Villanueva. GERALD CASEL (he/they) is the artistic direc- tor of GERALDCASELDANCE. His choreographic research complicates and provokes questions surrounding colonialism, collective cultural amne- sia, whiteness and privilege, and the tensions between the invisible/perceived/obvious struc- tures of power. Casel is an Associate Professor of Dance in the Department of Theater Arts and is the Provost of Porter College at UC Santa Cruz. A graduate of The Juilliard School, with an MFA from UW Milwaukee, Casel received a Bessie award for sustained achievement for dancing in the compa- nies of Stephen Petronio, Lar Lubovitch, Stanley Love, among others. His newest work, Not About Race Dance , has been awarded a National Dance Project grant and will be in residence at the Mag- gie Allesee National Center for Choreography and will premiere at CounterPulse with a forthcoming national tour. Dancing Around Race, a commu- nity-engaged participatory practice he founded that examines racial inequity in the Bay Area and beyond, continues to grow. geraldcasel.com

BIPOC counterparts endure. This atmosphere of inequity is true here in San Francisco, where most of the major dance companies, performance spaces, and organizations are owned and run by white people. The system is set up such that BIPOC artists must rely on “renting” from established white artists, which perpetuates white saviorism, white ownership, and Black and brown tenancy. Racialized climates can be seen and felt by artists of color but thanks to the privileges afforded to them by whiteness, white people do not have to acknowledge how they benefit from such systemic forces; it is simply the norm. As an example, many white- led organizations continue to produce well-meaning programs that support (emerging) artists of color as well as mentorship platforms that imply a boost to those artists' careers. Such white savior mentality is complicated by the notion of white ownership, and together, they drive market forces that contribute to racial capitalism by pro- moting a logic of possession. This cre- ates specific turbulence for those of us whose families have never owned any property or who have had to move frequently because of our tenancy sta- tus. It is a struggle to feel a sense of belonging even when these gestures of support from white-led organizations seem benevolent. What would happen if founda- tions gave resources directly to artists of color rather than brokering them through systematic white gatekeep- ing? Would BIPOC artists feel more of a sense of ownership rather than being owned by these organizations who parade their institutional ethos of racial equity and inclusion? On the other hand, what if BIPOC artists refuse these offers and instead collec- tively generate their own systems of support that foster communal care and mutual aid?

RACIALIZEDCLIMATES CANBE SEENAND FELT BY ARTISTSOF COLORBUTTHANKS TOTHE PRIVILEGES AFFORDEDTOTHEMBY WHITENESS, WHITE PEOPLE DONOTHAVE TOACKNOWLEDGE HOWTHEYBENEFIT FROMSUCHSYSTEMIC FORCES; IT ISSIMPLY THENORM.

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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org

u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n amp l i f y u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n a p l i f y

44 Gough Street, Suite 201 San Francisco, CA 94103 www.dancersgroup.org

IT’S HARD TO SAY

DANCING AROUND THE FEAR OF ART, LONELINESS AND DEMENTIA

of her shirt. I copied her, leaving the stem poking out. It looked like the beak of a yellow bird. I started whistling. Jane copied me. We gently danced our banana birds. We whistled and bal- anced our bananas on our heads, hands and feet. We listened to them like tele- phones. We smoked them like cigars. Then Jane asked Joyce if they had any more bananas. I only had the one so I grabbed a gourd. Jane retrieved a second banana. She placed her bananas in her imaginary holster. Mine went into my waistband. Joyce said, “Ready...Set…” (Jane wiggled her fingers), “Fire!” Jane’s draw was so fast I got caught with my hands in my pants. We erupted in peals of laughter. THIS IS THE STORY of a pool. An ephemeral pool. A pool that Joyce swims / floats / occasionally splashes around in with others / occasionally submerges in alone.

Joyce is a mother, grandmother, retired court reporter and creative writer. I have asked her to help me write a handbook on how to support dementia caregivers. She comes from a family of strong women, but when it comes to caregiving she chafes when people say, “Oh, you’re so strong, you’re so brave. It must be SO hard.” “What is SO hard, tell me?” she writes in the handbook. “And what would you expect? ‘You’re so brave, you’re so strong’ – would you expect a caregiver to be anything else?” Many of us have been treading water since the pandemic started. Joyce has been caregiving 24/7 with very little respite. I imagine a constant caregiver hiss, a drone drowning out everything else. “The pool” metaphor surfaced during the wintertime. “It’s hard to come out of caregiving, out of the pool,” Joyce writes. “Come see

me inside the pool, swim with me and keep the loneliness at bay.” Dementia caregivers are especially susceptible to Caregiver Burden, a medical term used to describe a state of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion. “It’s like existing in another substance,” Joyce writes. “Grief touches every place, every cell, like water, it changes you. Joy can emerge from grief. Rowena comes and jumps in the pool with us.” I MET JOYCE AND JANE in February 2020 when I was looking for partic- ipants for a creative research project I’m piloting. Over the past five years my For You performance collective collaborators, Erika Chong Shuch and Ryan Tacata, and I have developed a person-centered performance prac- tice. Our goals are to bring strangers together and to make performances as gifts. We wanted to see if this practice

By Rowena Richie with Joyce Calvert

THIS IS THE STORY OF A DANCING BANANA. Try saying it out loud: “Dancing banana.” On the first syllable of “dancing” and the second syllable of “banana” your mouth turns up into a smile. This is the story of two dancing bananas. I have a new friend. Her name is Jane. She is a remarkable visual artist, a retired high school art teacher, a mama of two kitties—Grace and Frankie, a wearer of many hats (literally and figuratively), and a lover of the moon, hummingbirds and butterflies. Jane is also a person living with Alzheimer’s Disease. Jane and I were dancing over Zoom recently when she asked her wife, “Do we have any bananas?” Her wife, Joyce, nodded at the fruit basket. Jane sauntered over and retrieved one. I grabbed a banana, too. Jane tucked hers into the front

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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org

u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n amp l i f y u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n a p l i f y

44 Gough Street, Suite 201 San Francisco, CA 94103 www.dancersgroup.org

BUT THERE’S ANOTHER OBSTACLE making it hard to prove. A societal hurdle that is making me question whether this is a viable model: People’s resistance to art. Resistance not only from the scientific commu- nity which can be dismissive of even the most rigorous arts-based research but from folks we’d like to recruit. In general people don’t line up when you say, “I have an art project, would you like to partici- pate?” They back away. Anne Basting is one of the most seasoned practitioners in the cre- ative care arena. She is a MacArthur “genius” Fellow, an author, professor, and the founder of TimeSlips, a storytelling-based participatory program designed for the dementia population. The TimeSlips motto is: “Forget memory, try imagination!” Anne has dedicated her career to bringing opportunities for “meaning making” to people all the way to the end of life. Last month I attended a webinar Anne gave where she addressed both the Arts vs. Science tension and the problem with saying the word “art.” “Our systems have a residue from the institutionalization of medicine and the institutionalization of arts as separate entities from the 1800s. We are slowly getting to a place where I think we can now start refusing that separation. For people who work in the health system, you should con- stantly be asking yourself, ‘Are there opportunities for meaning making here?’ And in cultural settings, ‘Are we attentive to accessibility for people from all different ranges of health and abilities?’” Anne envisions art as water to pour meaning-making opportunities into the cultural and health systems. But she, too, has been deserted when she invites people to participate in art projects. In one instance, she invited older people living alone to partici- pate in an art project that involved responding to creative prompts. The response: crickets. “What we decided

I AM AN ATLANTIC FELLOW for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI), a program at UCSF and Trinity College, Dublin, dedicated to improving brain health and reducing the scale and impact of dementia worldwide. Through the fellowship I was awarded a grant by GBHI, the Alzheimer’s Association and the Alzheimer’s Society (UK) to pilot For You’s personalized creative engagement practice. One of the aims of the pilot is “To validate care part- ners and their loved ones living with dementia. Oftentimes we think of performance as an opportunity to see. What happens if it’s an opportu- nity for audiences—our participating care partners and their loved ones— to be seen?” Is there a tool that measures how it feels to be seen? One of my favorite GBHI fac- ulty members, Dr. Virginia Sturm, Associate Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at UCSF, developed a study called “Awe Walks.” In the study, older adults who took weekly 15-minute “awe walks”--focusing their energy and attention outward instead of inward--reported increased positive emotions and less distress in their daily lives. This shift was reflected in “selfies” participants took on their walks, in which an increas- ing focus on their surroundings rather than themselves was paralleled by measurably broader smiles by the end of the study. They could see the mea- surable change in the number of pix- els the smiles occupied. Science requires proof. I’m having difficulty proving our claim that per- sonalized creative engagement vali- dates the experience and worth of care partners and their loved ones. For one thing, I’m struggling to come up with an assessment tool that is both sensi- tive enough to measure the amount of “validation” that Jane experiences, and flexible enough to work with her capacity for assessments. A tool that wouldn’t require her to come up with answers that are “Hard to say.”

“validating.” It goes both ways: Jane and Joyce affirm and reflect—vali- date—me. It is a healing experience for all of us. One that motivates me to keep chipping away to create the world I want to grow old in, a world where I can play fully at the limits of what I can possibly do. A world where, if I have dementia or my loved one has dementia, people don’t disap- pear because they don’t know what to say or how to see us. Instead, they flock to us because what we’re doing in response to dementia is flourishing. “The greatest joy of caregiving comes when someone else embraces my loved one.” Joyce writes. “It is such a pleasure and liberation to wit- ness that.” A couple days ago I received a text from Joyce. She and Jane have both had their vaccinations and they went out to break- fast with friends for the first time in a year. Joyce wrote: “We all witnessed Jane soak in all the social contact and come quite alive and present. Every- one made sure to enjoy being with her, letting her hold their hands and wave at birds. It was fuckin cool!” Through the text message I could hear Joyce’s voice rise above the care- giver drone. Like a diver suddenly emerging from the depths of a pool. ROWENA RICHIE has been a dance theater- maker and performer in San Francisco for 25 years. She’s a member of For You, a performance collective, along with Erika Chong Shuch and Ryan Tacata. She’s also an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health and an Encore.org Gen2Gen Innovation Fellow. Learn more about For You at foryou.productions . Learn more about GBHI at gbhi.org. JANE and JOYCE have been together for 20 years. They were married in 2015 after returning to their San Francisco home from 10 years living in a small village north of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jane is retired from teaching art at San Mateo High School. Joyce retired early from freelance court reporting and is Jane’s primary care partner.

you. And we love you!” Erika’s cousins—Ted and Merrill, Willa and Corey—kicked things off by caroling, “Joyce to the world / this is a song / for Joyce / rejoice / and sing! / Let every heart / prepare her room / the wonder of her love / the wonder of her love / the wonder, wonder of her love…” THIS IS A STOR Y that repeats itself. The other day Jane asked, “Do you know me?” I told her I did. “How long have you known me?” I told her I met her about a year ago. “How do you know me?” she asked. “As a

to do was not reference art at all,” Anne explained, “because the bag- gage and resistance to creativity and art-making was so tremendous that we decided to just say our invitation to participate was, ‘I have a question of the day, would you like to hear it?’” Then she got an overwhelming response. There’s a part of me that subscribes to this code-switching tactic—call- ing our pilot an “intervention” when we’re talking to researchers, an “art project” when we’re talking to artists, “deep hanging out” when we’re try- ing to recruit participants. But part of me worries: how are we ever going to substantiate art if we can’t say it?

HOWDOWE UNPACK THE BAGGAGE THAT HAS LED PEOPLE TO DOUBT THEIR CREATIVE CAPACITY FOR SO LONG?

of personalized creative engagement could make a difference in the lives of dementia caregivers and their care recipients, people who are often iso- lated and stigmatized. “Welcome to ‘ Joyce to the World —A Winter Solstice Variety Show,’” I announced to a handful of guests on Zoom. It was Monday December 21st during the Saturn-Jupiter Great Conjunction of 2020. The pandemic was surging so we abandoned our flash mob performance fantasy and instead presented a scrappy Zoom- based potpourri of performative gifts for Joyce: “butterflies” (Erika) danc- ing out from under bedsheets, an art lecture from Ryan’s bathtub, an ani- mal spirit card reading from a sha- manistic cat (my friend Temple). I opened the show with a dedica- tion: “As a devoted partner, mother, grandmother and friend; as a cosmic being full of grace; as a human com- panion to Grace and Frankie; and as a full time dementia caregiver full of love without condition...” A sob lodged in my throat. All of the unex- pressed tears that had accumulated over months of witnessing Joyce were swimming to the surface. “...This is a gift to say: We see you. We hear

fellow artist,” I said. “I think we can learn from each other about how art can support dementia,” I told her, “because I think it really, really helps.” “Can I ask you a question?” Jane said. “How long have you known me?” I told her about a year. “How do you know me?” she asked. I told her that I was a fellow artist learning how to help people with dementia. “Oh, dimm..dimm...that word,” she said, struggling to say “dementia.” “Can I ask you a question?” I said. “What is something nice we can do for Joyce?” She thought about it for a moment and then replied, “It’s hard to say.” I responded by hug- ging myself and then extending my arms out to her. She opened her arms, raised and lowered them, like wings. (Birds and birdwatching are some of Jane’s favorite things). The barrier of language was removed; there was no sense of right or wrong answers; we were just moving together. Art Ther- apist and Experiential Researcher Dr. Erin Partridge has said working with people with dementia in this way— in a creative, non-judgmental, non goal-oriented way—communicates, “You are worthy of having commu- nity. I see you.”

Won’t it always be hard to say? How do we unpack the baggage that has led people to doubt their creative capacity for so long? SOMETIMES WHEN THE PARTS of the brain that block inhibition shut down, the impetus for unfiltered creativity and novelty comes online—the bag- gage is discarded. Every time I meet with Jane I find beauty and wonder, whether she’s constructing sculptures out of avocado sandwiches, party hats out of cat toys, or banana dances. Her creative self-expression is incredibly articulate. And I end up expressing myself, too, in ways I never have before. My role in the pilot is to offer what Anne describes as “radical affirmation and demonstration of that affirmation of choices.” Anne calls this “proof of listening.” I call it

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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org

u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n amp l i f y u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n a p l i f y

44 Gough Street, Suite 201 San Francisco, CA 94103 www.dancersgroup.org

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