Published by Dancers' Group, In Dance is discourse and dialogue to unify, strengthen, and amplify.
in dance WINTER 2022 DISCOURSE + DIALOGUE TO UNIFY, STRENGTHEN + AMPLIFY
P.40 Dear Professor
P.54 Collaborative Optimism
P.16 A Letter from the Future
CONTENTS
08 / Care. Liberation. Now. By Belinda Ju 16 / Collapsing Time/Unraveling Supremacy: A Letter from the Future by Sarah Crowell 23 / The Grant You Wish You Could Write by Miguel Gutierrez 26 / An invocation of integrity to Brother(hood) By Orlando Zane Hunter Jr & Ricarrdo Valentine 30/ Collective Matters on Dance and Other Body Modifications Written by members of Dancing Around Race 40/ All the Things We Couldn’t Say in Real Time by Danielle Galvez, Ting & Archie Arboleda
46/ An open letter to the lost by Paul Singh 50 / Making public our private: exhaustion, gossip, and unfinished sentences by Rebecca Fitton & Veronica Jiao 54/ Collaborative Optimism: a score for a –ship by iris yirei hu 58/ 10 in 10 by Andréa Spearman 58/ In Conversation Andréa Spearman chats with Olivia Eng 60/ In Community
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WELCOME by BHUMI PATEL, Guest Editor
‘’If not us, who? And if not now, when?’’ I offered this as a provocation for the writers in this issue and I am awestruck by the beauty, grace, humility, thoughtfulness, humor, and care with which each of these writers has approached this appeal. In Summer 2020, during those still-beginning days of the pandemic, I saw an uprising for social justice at a scale I hadn’t experienced in my lifetime. That’s not to say that fights for liberation aren’t ongoing and continuously evolving, just that I haven’t seen that many people mobilize, take to the
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streets, and demand change and justice before. Thinkpieces have suggested that peo- ple had time to be involved in protests and phone banks and letter writing because of the pandemic, but still, I was moved by the galvanized efforts of so many people to talk about race and liberation in the US. As vaccinations became available in the US in 2021, more people began gathering. As social creatures, gathering was needed. But there was a feeling in my gut that I kept returning to over this last year. I wondered how many people had read White Fragility , how many had picked up My Grandmother’s Hands and read one chapter and put it down, how many organizations hired someone to “train” them on how to be anti-racist? How many choreographies were made about interrogating one’s priv- ilege? How many artists, philanthropists, administrators, performers in our field grew tired of doing “the work”? As I wondered where we were going, I kept asking myself: What now? Where now? Who now? Breonna Taylor’s name isn’t trending anymore and her murderers are free, so what are we doing? I set out with the goal of bringing together BIPOC artists in an effort of coalitional community building. We are who we have. The brilliance of this group of writers shows me how brilliantly each of them is enacting the change they want to see in the world. One of my mentors talks about finding the shared genius in the room through collabo- ration and trust and the genius in this room gives me great hope for where our field, and the world we live in, can go. I offered this provocation because we all hold so much power to create change in our communities and I know that we don’t need white artists continuing to make decisions for what BIPOC artists want and need while continuing to hold power. Here, we offer roadmaps, reflections, and vulnerable representations of our depths of desire. Words matter, and yet our words are not enough - I hope you feel invigorated to act, as I do. These writings invoke conversation with me, with each other, and with you, the readers who I hope will ask yourself the question too: If not me, who? If not now, when?
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Cover: Raissa Simpson, photo by Claire Hwang
At the threshold We dance We grieve We activate
With love and gratitude,
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Care. Liberation. Now. Changing Shape , Shaping Change.
N APRIL 2021, right after we’d both been vaccinated, I began to meet weekly with a dancer friend and collaborator. We met, keeping our masks on, in my living room, on my building roof, in the park. It was the first time either of us was making dance with another human in over a year and it was thrilling to simply move our bodies, in the same space and at the same time. Actually, forget about moving—it was profound simply to touch; I could count on one hand the number of people I had touched for a whole year.
by BELINDA JU
We were both drawn to exploring the concept of care. Yes, that ol’ thing. Take care , we sign our emails. We care about you , companies tell me in their ads. Self-care , that luxury we can’t afford. But also no, not that ol’ thing. We were interested in real care: care that is powerful and radical, care that can uproot oppression and topple regimes. In the pandemic, betrayed by those at the top, we did what we always did: we showed up for each other. Amidst catastrophic suf- fering flowered a beauty and depth of our care, community, and sol- darity for each other. And yet, in the spring, as vaccines were open- ing us back up, all that started to crumble with the return of busy and FOMO and neverenoughness . Because that’s what normal translates to in our hyperindividuated, neoliberal society. We wanted to understand care : how could we harness the deep prac- tice we’d exercised at such great cost for a more caring future for the long run, not just in times of crisis. Real care — not marketing slogans and prosaic signoffs. We structured our working sessions as a book club, grounding each session with a chapter from The Care Manifesto by The Care Collec- tive. We invented exercises for ourselves, inspired by what we were reading: what might an infrastructure of care look like? How might we explore neither dependence nor independence but interdepen- dence ? Skipping any easy manifestations of care as either physical ( caring for ) or emotional labor (caring about), how might we embody the notion of feminist Joan Tronto’s caring with, 1 where the care rela- tionship is consistent with democratic commitments to justice, equal- ity, and freedom?
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4. How do we get to the perfect there , when we’re in the broken here ?
Acknowledging our interdependence, inherent worth, and vulnerability — this is hard work that’s entangled in the already hard work of care, whether you’re the giver or receiver. When you’re really in the muck of it, care brings up a lot of feels: anxiety, fear, grief, anger, judg- ment, and more. But this is also the work of freedom, if we allow ourselves to open to the possibilities of liber- ation that care can offer us. In the words of meditation teacher Thich Nhat Hanh: no mud, no lotus. Let us feel the discomfort that care triggers for us, and begin to be in that discomfort so that the tightness might loosen, simply by virtue of our being with , our turning towards . If instead of fighting, we can dance with it: our shame, our fear, our anxiety. We can shift our weight, bend our knees, relax into the natural curve of our spine. Care as a Collective Practice of Freedom Care is not just my practice for my freedom, or your practice for your freedom. It’s our practice for our free- dom, together. What can care free us from? RECONFIGURING FAMILY One answer is the scarcity mindset that rations the provi- sion and receipt of care to the family. In our neoliberalist world, there is no collective responsibility for care; it is relegated to the family — and when they’re not available, outsourced to the market. This is both unreliable and unjust: not everyone has available family or money. How might we extend our commitments of care beyond the traditional family? What would it look like to construct family through choice and consent instead of chance? THE CARE WEB Justice worker Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha describes the “care web,” which applies the principle of mutual aid—a collective coordination to meet each oth- er’s needs 6 —in the spirit of interdependence and com- munity. It is from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. A care web doesn’t mean that everyone has to do every- thing, but it means that everyone can give and every- one can receive: pooling both caring needs and caring resources. In this way, the care web is neither unidirec- tional nor hierarchical, unlike the standard healthcare-me- diated relationship of the binary caregiver and care receiver that is unequal and non-reciprocal. And unlike traditional models of care for, say, disabled people or char- ity recipients, the care web subverts the model that they can only passively receive care. Instead, a person receiving care can also direct or give care. Finally, care webs have no center, paralleling the way in which the normative, institu- tional centers of life have failed its members — say queer and trans communities harmed by their families 7 .
In our movement explorations, our limbs both separated (pushing away) and connected (bringing together). Our points of contact varied from slip ‘n slide to deep pressure, localized to whole body. Rolling together on the ground necessitated full-body intimacy and support of each oth- er’s weight. Being on the ground versus standing each pre- scribed different constraints, but also opened different pos- sibilities. We butted up against power, when either of us would throw out a ‘bid’ that the other did or did not turn towards. We added successively more rules to our score, making it harder for us to maintain continuity of phrase given physical constraints — much like continuing to care amidst less resourcing and burnout. We dissolved any lead/ follow relationship, blurring our boundaries and engaging in a dynamic give and take: sometimes one of us needed more or less, sometimes one of us got to shine more or less; at no point was our relationship ever perfectly equal. Dance movement and social movement. The gesture and the rupture. For me, care is the bridge. And not only does it serve as the bridge between both, it contains the possi- bility and process of both — both the gesture and the rup- ture, the moving towards (ourselves, others, The Other) and away (from oppression, isms). Care is not inherently “nice” 2 — it is political (gendered/racialized/classed) and it is survival (both as caregiver and care-receiver). Care can be conceived as the mending, after the tear. But it can also be the tear itself: etymologically, care comes from the Old English caru , which means “burdens of the mind.” That tear can then become the mending, unstitching what we no longer need and revealing our inherent whole and free self. Care can be our practice of freedom 3 . What do I mean by that? The philosopher Michel Foucault distinguishes between liberation as a momentary act and freedom as an ongoing practice. He wondered what would happen the day after the Grand L. Turns out we’d still need to figure our shit out. “Liberation paves
This essay is about why care is hard, and for that very reason , why care is the practice of freedom. I describe the care web as applied interdependence, and give three exam- ples for scaled-up care neighborhoods that serve as models for societal transformation. Finally, I make the argument for why liberation is accessible to us— right now . This work of care is in the present tense and not some far-off future. It is our work, not someone else’s to figure
out. And it will never be perfect . But it is our practice of freedom.
Care as an Individual Practice of Freedom What can care free us from? Here are three ways that either giving or receiving care can be a practice of freedom. First, each time we ask for care, we’re chipping away at the tentacles of neoliberalism that have ensnared us, often without our knowledge or informed consent. Asking for help strips down the neoliberalist ideal of the self-made man: autonomous, resilient, and self-sufficient. It refuses the cultural value of independence as success, or even the possibility of any true “independence.”We’ve been brain- washed by the notion that we have to do it all alone or else we’re considered weak. Even Henry David Thoreau of Walden is a case study for interdependence: he visited his mother’s home several times a week to eat her food, give her his laundry, and see his friends 4 . Care can also become a practice of freedom by unhooking our worth from our productivity and believing in our inher- ent worth. Under neoliberalism, the individual is only valu- able as a “productive member of society” (read: engaged in waged labor, because value must be measured, and money is our only currency). But that’s just a story someone made up. We are worthy simply by virtue of being alive, full stop.
Two things the care web is not: it’s not charity, and it’s not friendship. Members of a care web relate on equal ground instead of a hierarchical, moralistic, and often con- ditional relationship that characterizes charity. Care webs also don’t require friendship, generally characterized by reciprocity, which is not necessarily possible when people have different needs, capacities, and capabilities. CARING FOR CARE Returning to Thich Nhat Hanh’s no mud, no lotus , how might digging into the challenges of care inform the ways in which care is our practice of freedom? One of the primary ways the care web is hard is the improbability of reciprocity, and the unequal distribution of caring needs and caring resources within that web at any given time. romham pádraig gallacher of the Radical Access Mapping Project writes about this eloquently: 8 If interdependency is in our DNA, what does it mean when we fall out of whack with it? How do we han- dle the realities of our bodies and minds that need what they need when they need it? What does it mean
That’s unconnected to what or how much we can produce, what our minds or bodies can do. Our belief in our inherent worth gives us a sense of enoughness that enables us to both ask for and give care by giving us a greater capacity to con- front our human frailty. Finally, care confronts vulnerability and depen-
This essay is about why care is hard, and for that very reason, why care is the practice of freedom.
the way for new power relationships, which must be con- trolled by practices of freedom.” That work of freedom after the Grand L? It’s also the work we need to do today.
dence, sickness and death. We care for our (and other) bod- ies and minds both because of and in spite of their perpet- ual imperfections, the ways in which they may not behave the way we might want them to, the ways in which we have to relinquish control. Care for our (and other) mortal bod- ies can also be an unsettling memento mori when our soci- ety tries so hard to ignore, deny, and hide death. The fun- damental truth of death is a feature, not bug, of the human condition. Care can allow us to unlearn our shame around having needs and mitigate our fears of frailty and death, accepting all of them as part of the human condition.
This essay is driven by these questions: 1. Why is care so hard?
2. How might we care more? How might we expand our caring imaginaries, our notions of kin, of who “deserves” our care? 3. Does care matter? I mean, is it really going to fix anything?
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when I can’t support you in the ways you’re sup- porting me? Does interdependency mean we do the same for one another at all times, as though there’s even such a thing as “the same” when it comes to this stuff? Is it a gentle ebb and flow? What if my ebb will never match your flow? What if it’s sometimes a torrential downpour and one of us is drowning? What do we do then?” This notion of needing interdependence to just “mag- ically work out”—and expectations for reciprocity and equality—is, I believe, one of the main reasons care webs are hard. Not only do we have fluctuating needs and resources over the course of even a single day, so too will we across the course of our lifetime — if we have chil- dren, when we are sick or recovering, or as we age. And looking across a care web, different people will have dif- ferent needs, capacities, and capabilities. I don’t think our society gives us many models for, or opportunities to practice, engaging with others in ways that aren’t a transaction or equal trade; it’s how we are in so many domains of our life: commerce, employment, friendship. I think about the sticky challenges of shifting from what’s equal to what’s equitable. Likewise, we aren’t well-equipped to handle variability or uncertainty. As when the rigid contracts of our expec- tations defer to the more dynamic fluctuations of our physical and mental health. We want predictability and control. We want always, and if we can’t have that, never is better than sometimes. We guard against disappointment — that someone else might not be able to show up for us when we need them. We guard against guilt — that we might not be able to show up for someone else when we said we would. The trying, the turning towards , the being with — how might we prioritize process over product? Even if, yes, some- times someone might not get what they need. Even if, yes, someone’s heart might be broken. Even if, yes, we might have to confront our own fallibilities. This is, still, the practice of freedom. The practice of creating, still, a more loving, generous, and humane world. I think about choreographer Doris Humphrey, known for her theory of fall and recovery: “Movement is situ- ated on a tended arc between two deaths.” Dance—and life—exists between those two extremes. We are ever only falling away from and returning to equilibrium, but asymptotically, never reaching it. Let us fall, and embrace the fall, together. And with that fall, the fail. Or what we think of as failure, recognizing that our normative logics of success and failure do not serve us. As gender and queer scholar Jack Halberstam writes, “Under certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbe- coming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative,
everything all together, what needs we have, what prob- lems we face.” 13 Iranian woman Shamina said she felt such “social, personal and psychological safety and care” that she would turn down a UN-run apartment. 14 Often described as an “‘alternative family’ aiming to make City Plaza ‘home,’” 15 it serves as a model for what the provi- sion of care — from basic necessities to individual and community development — can look like. Occupy Wall Street, which began September 2011, serves as a model for the democratic caring with , offer- ing a “radical politics of inclusion” exemplified by its nightly General Assembly that used consensus for col- lective decision-making. It was non-hierarchical and enabled a large number of people to participate. It also used a “progressive stack” by prioritizing the voices of women and people of color before white men. Although—and because—the movement was leaderless, its decisionmaking process was “highly structured, tech- nical, and often laborious,” striving to not reproduce society’s violent power relations. 16
— we can step up ourselves. Likewise, we don’t need the government to “take care of us”; we have the capacity for collective governance, to be the government, to care for all of us. Liberation Now So, how might we get there? That beautiful land where we all live in an abundance of care. Where care is the organizing principle instead of profit. Where we have nightly dance parties on the roof. Where we engage directly with our neighbors and fellow citizens so every- one’s needs can be met. That utopia that feels so different from our present real- ity. But in the spirit of queerness, that’s a false binary. Liberation can be available to us right now. I invoke the following as our guides for liberation: Buddhism on awakening, the Dakota on kinship, and anarchism on pre- figuration — moving from individual to family to society. Buddhism teaches that we all have the seeds of awak- ening (also called enlightenment or liberation) within
more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world.” 9 Losing can be generative. Care webs are as much about care as loss. Scholar Sara Ahmed writes that “in queer, feminist, and antirac- ist work, self-care is about the creation of community, fragile communities … assembled out of the experiences of being shattered. We reassemble ourselves through the ordinary, everyday, and often painstaking work of look- ing after ourselves; looking after each other.” 10 Trans and intersex scholar Hil Malatino describes his care web after top surgery as having been “delicately and elab- orately woven for years, periodically (and always only partially) rent apart and repaired, made as much of loss as it is of sustaining linked threads.” 11 Care creates loss, care is created by loss, care is created by that very care too. To continue to nurture our care webs is to see it through loss, to embrace holes and patches, sutures and scar tissue. How might we meet this with com- passion? Alongside all the discourse about queering queer or cripping crip , how might we care for care — our imper- fect selves, our imperfect care webs, our imperfect fellow weavers, our imperfect weaving, our imperfect loom and thread and the space between those threads that are the very reason for their resilience and stretch? Caring for care: this is, again, our practice of freedom. CARE NEIGHBORHOODS How might we scale up our care webs? One that is suf- ficiently resilient to absorb both the downpours and the droughts? One that takes us closer to a vision of uni- versal care where all needs are met? Where the primary role and responsibility of the government is to build and sustain infrastructures of care. Where the government isn’t the state as other, but a true collective governance. Where the value of care is infused across society, and society is many interweaving care webs. I’m inspired by three case studies of residential, self-governed care webs that I call care neighborhoods: City Plaza, Occupy Wall Street, and the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. They serve as models for reimagining our society as one that centers care at every level. City Plaza, an abandoned hotel taken over by a self-governed squat of refugees from 2016 to 2019 in Athens, is an exemplar of both the physical caring for and affective/emotional caring about . Run like a cooper- ative, residents took up “weekly responsibilities based on their individual capacities, from cooking meals to clean- ing, group child care, and basic maintenance.” There were also numerous resident-run amenities like a clinic and library, and programming from English conversa- tion to a nightly women’s dance party on the rooftop terrace. 12 Afghan woman Afaf said, “Solidarity and car- ing are mainly a way of thinking. Here we are discussing
us. We all possess—or rather, are — Buddhanature: the awakened heart/ mind. Unlike Christianity’s doctrine of original sin, Buddhism believes that we are already awakened beings. However, our fundamental goodness is covered up by the three
Indigenious scholar KimTallBear argues that in Dakota culture, “making kin is tomake people into familiars in order to relate.”
The Dakota Access Pipeline protest from 2016 through early 2017 inspires with its capacious conception of kin- ship. For the Dakota, kinship extends to the land, water, and animals on whom they depend. As such, at Stand- ing Rock, the protestors were protecting their relative, Mni Sose (the Missouri River), from threat of an under- ground oil pipeline. The water protectors’ camp also serves as a model for universal care. All were welcome as long as they abided by the camp’s values, including a commitment to protect the water and Mother Earth. “Free food, free education, free health care, free legal aid, a strong sense of community, safety, and security were guaranteed to all.” 17 These three case studies inspire me because they bridge the care web with societal transformation. In each case, people learned skills and capacities such as collective problem-solving and governance, unlearned their con- ditioning, and literally manifested (not just imagined) a new society. They were empowered to take direct action rather than waiting for someone else to fix their prob- lems and usher in the hypothetical liberation. This is, perhaps, what is most compelling to me of all: confronting the ways in which we have been com- plicit in giving up our own power so that we can take it back. Realizing that change doesn’t come from the abstract “other,” someone more knowledgeable or expert, but us. Realizing that we don’t need to be saved
defilements of greed, hatred, and delusion. Becoming awakened is, then, a subtractive process. Through prac- tice, we may come to know and be who we already are. Awakening can be accessed by the most ordinary of activities: breathing. Something as pedestrian as noticing that you’ve been caught in thought is considered a “lower- case a” awakening by waking up to the present moment, gleaning a glimpse into the spaciousness of our Buddhana- ture. Buddhism teaches that liberation is available to us — all the time, because it is what we fundamentally are. Indigenous scholar Kim TallBear argues that in Dakota culture, “making kin is to make people into familiars in order to relate.” She gives the example of Little Crow, a Dakota chief who became an influential leader in large part from kinmaking: he built alliances across many Dakota communities through marriage, birth, and adoption. 18 I am compelled by this concept of kinmaking both because it is a process not an inherited state, and because it invites agency instead of passive acceptance. Don’t know someone? Make them kin so that you can forge a relationship of mutual care and commitment to one another. It seems to sidestep or reverse our usual logic, but that’s the point: we need different thinking if we want to live in a different world. In anarchism, prefiguration is creating the world you wish to live in, now. As one anarchist writes, “We cannot
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44 Gough Street, Suite 201 San Francisco, CA 94103 www.dancersgroup.org
When I dance, I am making and inhabiting a world, however ephemerally, that is not this one—and I am invit- ing you to join it. Where I, and you, get to release from the rules and beliefs of this world, and perhaps even (or rather, therefore) the rules and beliefs that are knotted up within us. Where we get to be and move in a different time, released from the fascism of the clock. And in this different world and different time, we get to be a different nervous system, a different mind, a different body. We can relate differently. We can create something different. When we change shape, we shape change. Dance is an act of prefiguration: creating the world we want, right now. This is our practice of freedom, together. BELINDA JU (she/her) is a coach, writer, dancer, and convener of a meditation community. As a dancer, she has performed, including original work, at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Judson Memorial Church, Dixon Place, and Bates Dance Festival. As a writer, she has shared her writing at readings around New York City, including at Carnegie Hall, and is currently completing her memoir. When not pursuing artistic endeavors, she coaches founders and leaders in tech and runs a meditation community she started in early 2018. You can learn more about her and say hello at belinda.io . 1 Tronto, Joan. Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice (3/13/13 ed.). NYU Press, 2013. Pages 22-23. 2 Pirate Care, a syllabus . https://syllabus.pirate.care . 3 Foucault, Michel. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Edited by Paul Rabinow, Translated by Robert Hurley and others, The New Press, 1994. Pages 283-284. 4 Schulz, Kathryn. “The Moral Judgments of Henry David Thoreau.” The New Yorker , 12 October 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum . 5 Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. C are Work: Dreaming Disability Justice . Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018. Page 32. 6 Spade, Dean. Mutual Aid . Verso Books, 2020. Page 7. 7 Malatino, Hil. Trans Care . University of Minnesota Press, 2020. Page 2. 8 gallacher, romham pádraig. “what happens when we can’t live interdependency all the time?” radi- cal access mapping projec t, 9 November 2015, https://radicalaccessiblecommunities.wordpress. com/2015/11/09/what-happens-when-it-feels-like-we-cant-live-interdependency-all-the-time/ .
wait for ‘everyone’ to choose to live in non-statist, non-capitalist relationships, or we will very likely wait forever. Nor can we force socialism on anyone.… Hence there is no choice for those of us who desire to live dif- ferently but to begin to do so ourselves.” 19 Opposed to any form of coercive authority—and thus refusing to recognize state power, anarchists exercise the “defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free.” 20 Like the Dakota concept of “making kin,” anarchism’s prefiguration feels so obvious that I wonder why I’ve never thought of it before. And the answer I arrive at is that I have internalized the oppression and control. Our primary limitation in ushering forth liberation is, in some ways, simply a lack of imagination. It requires us to uproot the forces of oppression we have unwittingly harbored, so that we may create a new way of being and relating and worlding. Both anarchist theorist Gustav Landauer and philoso- pher Michel Foucault wrote about the humble relation- ship between two people as the front lines for changing large, institutional forces. Landauer writes that the state is the relationship between people, and to destroy the state is to behave differently 21 —specifically, to acknowl- edge the humanity in each person. 22 Foucault writes that power is not an object to be owned, but exists in rela- tionship whenever one person tries to control another. Power is everywhere — and so too, is its counterpart, resistance. 23 Landauer argues that the revolution must be conducted within ourselves and in our relationships. Foucault empowers us to exercise resistance in our everyday relationships, not only in service of dismantling large, institutional forces. I began my research with what felt like an unsolvable paradox: how can we get there when we’re here ? It seems impossible. And yet, it’s not. The there is embedded in the here — we have, indeed, all the ingredients we need to transmute here into there. Like alchemy, there is magic involved. But it’s not the magic of chimera: it’s the magic of activating our imagination for what is possible. It’s the magic of refuting rules that do not serve us and rewriting new ones. It’s the magic of believing we are already free in our glorious humanity and luminous goodness. Changing Shape, Shaping Change To dance is to care. When I dance, I am caring for my body: giving it the permission to move as it would like to move, rest as it would like to rest, touch as it would like to be touched. When I dance, I am caring for my spirit: letting myself feel whatever it is I’m feel- ing, be however it is I already am. When I dance, I am caring not only for myself: I am caring for any fel- low dancers who are with me, caring for anyone who might witness, caring for anyone who doesn’t witness but knows me, caring for anyone who knows whoever knows me.
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9 Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure . Duke University Press, 2011. Page 2. 10 Ahmed, Sara. Living a Feminist Life . Duke University Press, 2017. Page 240. 11 Malatino, Hil. Trans Care . The University of Minnesota Press, 2020. Pages 1-2
12 Baker, Aryn. “Greek Anarchists Are Finding Space for Refugees in Abandoned Hotels.” Time , 3 November 2016, https://time.com/4501017/greek-anarchists-are-finding-space-for-refugees-in- abandoned-hotels/ . 13 Tsavdaroglou, Charalampos, et. al. “Acts for Refugees’ Right to the City and Commoning Practic- es of Care-tizenship in Athens, Mytilene and Thessaloniki.” Social Inclusion , volume 7, issue 4, 2019, pp. 119-130, https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v7i4.2332 . 14 Ibid. 15 The Care Collective. The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence . Verso Books, 2020. Page 39. 16 Maharawal, Manissa McCleave. “Occupy Wall Street and a Radical Politics of Inclusion.” The Sociological Quarterly , volume 54, issue 2, 2013, pp. 177-181, https://doi.org/10.1111/tsq.12021 . 17 Estes, Nick. Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance . Verso Books, 2019. Page 252. 18 TallBear, Kim. “The US-Dakota War and Failed Settler Kinship.” Anthropology News , volume 57, issue 9, September 2016, pp. e92-e95, https://doi.org/10.1111/AN.137 . 19 Day, Richard J.F. Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements . Pluto Press, 2005. Page 126. 20 Graeber, David. “Occupy Wall Street’s anarchist roots.” Al Jazeera , 30 November 2011, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2011/11/30/occupy-wall-streets-anarchist-roots/ . 21 White, Stuart. “Making anarchism respectable? The social philosophy of Col- in Ward.” Journal of Political Ideologies , volume 12, issue 1, 2007, pp. 11-28, https://doi. org/10.1080/13569310601095580 . 22 Kuhn, Gabriel. “The State as a Social Relationship: Gustav Landauer Revived.” Interview by Dov Neumann. PM Press , 25 June 2010, https://blog.pmpress.org/2019/07/13/the-state-as-a-social- relationship-gustav-landauer-revived/ . 23 Foucault, Michel. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth . Edited by Paul Rabinow, Translated by Robert Hurley and others, The New Press, 1994. Page 292.
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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
BY SARAH CROWELL | PHOTO BY KERRY KEHOE
COLLAPSING TU I NMREA/ VELING SUPREMACY: A LETTER FROM THE FUTURE
by SARAH CROWELL
About me I’m a 56-year-old queer, Black biracial woman.
I grew up in a world where art, social justice, and everyday life were seamlessly intertwined. My mother is an African American arts educator, portrait painter and anti-racism activist. My father was a white professor of ethics and social justice movements. When I wasn’t in school, I was taking ballet classes, learning the lyrics to my favorite musical, or painting an abstract work on an easel that my mother had set up for me. I was also creating, directing, and star- ring in neighborhood dance productions (tutus and all). I trained in ballet, modern, and jazz dance in my youth, and then performed for dance companies that resonated with my passion for social justice as a young adult. After dancing with the Perform- ing Arts Ensemble and Impulse Jazz Dance Company in Boston, I moved to San Francisco to perform with the Dance Brigade, a fem- inist dance/theater troupe. I performed and toured with them for 8 years. I also co-directed and performed with a dance/theater com- pany called i am! Productions that created work around multiracial identity through movement and storytelling.
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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
Side note: It took me 15 years of teaching young people to accept the ‘Mom’ label, even though my young students called me Mom all the time. I’m stubborn that way. I used to tell them that ‘Uncle Mom’ might be a more appropriate title, because of my gender fluidity, but ‘Mom’ was what they wanted to call me, so I finally surrendered. After 30 years of teaching, I have many children in my dance/the- ater family. The young woman who writes to me from the future could be the great grandchild of any one of hundreds of my students. She is the combination of the wild, audacious dreams of a whole community, and she comes to me through that dream. The idea for this letter from the future came from an exercise led by Mia Birdsong and Aisha Nyandoro in a session of the New Universal, a collective of women of color leaders from around the country led by Akaya Windwood. When I wrote my first let- ter to myself from a future ancestor, I could feel her very clearly. So much so that I wept the entire time I wrote the letter. Here is my latest version written just for you with all my love.
circles of humans in a tender, open- hearted way, and who knows the power of art and self-inquiry on the path to liberation. I’m my father’s daughter—someone who loved and honored the natural world, believed in the power of community activism, and loved family deeply. I’m a wife of an Indigenous woman, who is most certainly the love of my life. We understand how to laugh and cry together in equal measure. I’m a dog mom – we have two adorable Shiba Inus, Mimi (12) and Mabel (6 months). I am a devotee of an Indian guru who lit up my life over 20 years ago and gave me access to my heart in ways that I could only have dreamed of. About What Motivates My Work “What is the greatest ill in the world?” a student asked her spiri- tual teacher. “Self-hatred” the teacher answered in a somber tone. I heard this conversation 25 years ago and it rang like a bell inside my chest. Immediately, I recognized the inten- tion behind all of my work as a dancer, arts educator, and community leader. It was to embody and inspire
responding to the visions of artists in relationship to community. When I performed with the Dance Brigade, themes of racial, gender, and environmental justice were central”?. When I created my own dance/theater company, we did work that explored the complexity of being biracial in America. When I co-created work at Destiny, every element of the creation and production of the performances moved through a social justice model. The work was collaborative, told sto- ries with social justice themes, edu- cated performers and audiences, chal- lenged and dismantled systems of inequity, and inspired social change. About the Letter This article takes the form of a let- ter. The letter is written to me from a future ancestor – a young woman who lives five generations forward in time. She calls me Great Grandma (I would actually be her Great Great Great Great Great Grandma, but who’s counting?), even though I never had children of my own, because my dance students have always called me Mom. So, I imagine that their chil- dren would call me Grandma.
I worked as a dance teacher, exec- utive director, and artistic director at Destiny Arts Center (destinyarts.org) in Oakland for 30 years, where I essen- tially grew up. At Destiny, I learned the art of teaching, facilitating, commu- nity building, collaborative leadership, culture keeping, nonprofit fundrais- ing and finance, advocacy for youth and the arts, and holding space for artists and artmakers to thrive. I also co-founded the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company at Destiny, a
self-love. It was to create exquisite art and beloved community, never sacrificing one for the other. It was to install the mantra that joy is an act of revolution, not to deny sys- temic injustices, but to remind us who we are at the essence of our beings and to use that understanding to co-create a destiny that honors and uplifts everyone. My work unravels the causes of our collective self-hatred through somatic storytelling and personal narrative, examining racism, misog- yny, heterosexism and all the systems that divide us. My work tells the story of the current time by explor- ing impact rather than giving opin- ions or casting judgment. My work reimagines and recon- structs reality through the lens of self-love. Alicia Garza, co-founder of BLM says, “The task is to try and live our lives in the way that we envi- sion freedom looking like and feel- ing like.” For me, this means working in authentic collaboration with per- formers of all ages and professional artists who believe in social transfor- mation. My work constantly rein- vents itself in order to be relevant by
pre-professional dance/theater troupe for teens, which provides rigorous training in hip hop, modern and aerial dance, theater and scriptwriting, and gives youth a platform to tell compel- ling stories about personal and politi- cal issues. I live in the Destiny neighborhood and have no doubt that I will con- tinue to be part of the Destiny com- munity for the rest of my life. I’m my mother’s daughter - some- one who understands how to hold
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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
THE LETTER
Dear Great Grandma Sarah, I’ve been writing to you in my mind for as long as I can remember. So much so that this letter feels like the continuation of a lifelong conversation. It is truly an honor to spill my mind onto the page in this letter to you. Collapsing time so we can be together across time and space. My name is Sarah. My mother named me after you. She wanted me to know you as if you were right here in my blood. That’s what it feels like. My mother told me that you loved me before I was born. She told me that you dedicated your life to working with young people who loved to dance and tell stories, and who were commit- ted to creating a world where ALL people are free. She told me that you dedicated your life to the idea that I would exist, and that I would love myself without any limits. I exist! I’m 14 years old now. I’m a dancer like you. And I love myself as if I were the sky or the ocean. I love myself like the color of fresh green after a spring rain. I love myself so fully that I see my beauty everywhere. And I revel in the beauty of everyone I see, as if I’m witnessing a glittering rainbow over a field of yellow flowers. I laugh big. I sing loud. And oh, I love to dance. The elders say that people did not love them- selves in this way when you were alive. They say that especially Black and Brown bodies were scorned and vilified. They say that round bodies were seen as ugly compared to slender bodies, and that people became more and more invis- ible in society as they got older. They say that female identified people were seen as less than their male identified counterparts. They say that people who were called queer in your time were considered perverse. I’ve also learned that the
climate crisis was at its peak when you were alive. The books say that humans were willing to sacrifice the health of the planet and all life forms for financial gain and political power. All of this is unfathomable to me. I have cried many times thinking about what was happening when you were alive. I have cried thinking about you having to hold those burdens in your body and in your heart. You taught young dancers of all shapes and sizes and colors and backgrounds, that they were worthy of love, that they were beautiful. You taught them that they could change the world by creating dance and theater pieces about the things that mattered to them and that mattered to their communities. You helped them challenge the status quo in order to envi- sion something different. For me. I am here and I am free to be who I am because of you and so many people who knew that being joyful, in spite of all the oppression that was hap- pening in your time, was an act of revolution. My Mama told me that you were a beauti- ful dancer, that you looked 7 feet tall when you performed because you danced with a gen- erous heart. I have a generous heart too. It’s easy for me to have a generous heart because of the hard work you and people like you did in your lifetime to dismantle systems of oppres- sion from the inside out and the outside in. You helped young people value building community over competition. You helped young people see the value in their stories, their bodies, and their dreams while you pushed them to be disciplined in art and in life. You brought young people and elders together to create magical dance/theater pieces. We know that the connection between
of our dances have intricate choreography that we create together. Other dances are completely spontaneous. When the dances erupt without any planning, we weave through and around each other in mysterious synchro- nicity. Those are my favorite times. Oh my. I have so much to tell you that I could write to you forever. But I have to say good- bye for now. Before I go, I want to ask you for something: Please keep dreaming of a beauti- ful future. Please keep encouraging others to do the same. I know that there were people who did not believe that dreams could come true, so they became cynical and stagnated the evo- lution of humankind. But dreams matter. Your dreams, and the actions that blossom from those dreams, have literally made my world possible. And this is a world worth dreaming into being. I promise.
young ones and elders is sacred, but that was lost during your time. You kept choosing love over fear, even though you must have been afraid a lot. You worked really hard to love your dancer body even when the dance world of your time said it wasn’t thin enough or flexible enough or white enough. And then you shared that love with your community. Thank you. Every part of my being is grateful for who you were and what you did so that I could be who I am. You would be so proud of the seeds that you and so many others like you planted. They have borne the most delicious fruit. The world is a magical place now, my sweet Grandma. The air and water are pristine after genera- tions of working to reverse climate change. I can drink out of any lake or stream and the water is so healthy and so sweet. All our food is organic, as you would have said in your time, but that is just how it is now. We would never even dream of using poison to grow the food that we eat. We have amazing festivals and ceremonies to honor the seasons, the harvest time, the birth of a child, the death of an elder. There are also ceremonies dedicated to love - cosmic love, friendship love, familial love, and romantic love. There is no fear or discrimination in love. We understand that now. Love is love was a powerful mantra of your time. Our mantra is simply everything is love. All bodies are honored as sacred. Bodies of dif- ferent sizes and shades. Bodies of different gen- ders and sexual orientation. Human bodies are seen as vehicles for our souls, so of course we see each one as precious. I’m part of a large group of dancers of all ages and genders who dance at the ceremonies. Some
Yours in love throughout all time, Sarah
SARAH CROWELL is a retired professional dancer who has taught dance, theater and violence prevention for over 30 years. She is the Artistic Director Emeritus at Destiny Arts Center in Oakland, where she served in different capacities from 1990-2020, including Executive Director. She founded and co-directed the award-winning Destiny Arts Youth Perfor- mance Company, which was the subject of two documentary films. Sarah facilitates arts integration, anti-racism and team building professional development sessions with artists and educators, both locally and nationally. She has received many awards, including the Bay Area Dance Week award, the Alam- eda County Arts Leadership award, and the National Guild for Community Arts Education Milestone award. She is a four-time finalist for a Tony Award for Excellence in Theater Education. Sarah performed and toured with Impulse Jazz Dance Compa- ny in Boston and the Dance Brigade in San Francisco. She also co-directed the dance/theater company i am Productions!
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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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