Winter 2021 In Dance

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

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

P.12 What’s in a Conversation?

P.23 Preserving, Building , Connecting

P.40 Grassroots to Cyberspace

CONTENTS

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WE LIVE IN A TIME WHERE LOVE COSTS. As an example, I love this country but do I love all the people here? The cost is to feel fully. The cost is to believe that no matter what’s going on in the world there will be grief, goodness, ugliness, rebellion, confu- sion and love. As the lyrics to the song go, “ what

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the world needs now is love sweet love… ” This is some of what I spend my time thinking about - love. Even during a pandemic, especially during a pandemic. The complexities of gaining and losing love guide me to understand that, as the song lyrics go, “ it’s been a long time comin’ but I know, oh-ooo-oh, a change is gon’ come ” Here are my current love-actions as a way to try and adapt to this time. Love means that I’m prepared to let go to move forward I can love not being perfect, and therefore I can let go of judgements I acknowledge my connections to white supremacy, and still love myself I can let go of these words: professional, best, new, winning, losing I share these love-actions not as resolutions, not to motivate. They are only words. I wonder how much I’ll falter at my attempt to put any one of these into action? Oodles. Now to what’s inside this winter issue of In Dance: let me simply state that I love each of the stories, images, ideas, conversations and communities that are featured within. Often I try to figure out a clever way to write about dance. And today I let myself simply love these words about dance. The simplest moments are often the hardest to convey. Is it because they are the closest to our truth? What we value most? Join me in taking a deep breath. Let’s feel the truth in what we love, who we love. I know for certain that love can be risky and yet I believe that it’s our time, dance’s time, to be loved more. Love your dance more. And if you already do then love someone’s else’s dance more. Now it’s time for me to imagine getting ready to go to the disco. I’m putting on my sexy pants with spangles and adjusting my makeup, and mask, and I hear Madonna belt out “ cause love’s gonna lift me up .” Enjoy each loving word crafted for you.

SUBMIT Performances to the Community Calendar Dancers’ Group promotes performance listings in our online performance calendar, and emailed to over 1,700 members . Resources and Opportunities Dancers’ Group sends its members a variety of emails that include recent community notices, artistic opportunities, grant deadlines, local news, and more

DANCERS’ GROUP Artist Administrator Wayne Hazzard Associate Director Katie Taylor Program Assistant Andréa Spearman Administrative Assistant

22/ Preserving, Building, and Connecting Addressing social justice issues through culturally specific dance by Anne Huang and Kerry Lee

4 / IN PRACTICE: Out of Practice Reflections about 2020, dance, and the future by Sima Belmar 8 / I Wonder if My Neighbors Can Hear Me Singing Looking at shelter-in-place from March to December 2020 by Bhumi Patel 12 / What’s in a Conversation? Discussion of collaborative reciprocity

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.

30/ In Community

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

Shellie Jew Bookkeeper Michele Simon Design Sharon Anderson

38/ In Conversation Listen to three sets of dance artists in conversation with one another 40/ Grassroots to Cyberspace The evolution of Dancing Earth by Jade Whaanga

& collective caretaking as dance teaching artists come together by Jochelle Pereña

Cover: Photo by Robbie Sweeny Pictured: Detour Dance presents The Nelken Line , see page 11

16/ Catching Up

—Wayne Hazzard, Artist Administrator

How Dana Lawton Dances shifted The Farallonites in 2020 by Heather Desaulniers

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sometimes inspiring stories about making lemonade out of lemons. I am getting to the point, I promise. I have been living through the pan- demic so far mostly unscathed: roof over head, food in the fridge, self and family healthy and safe, jobs retained and even expanded, access to stable internet. For the slings and arrows of my particular experience, I have my TinyLetter to vent. So if I were one of my students, I’m not sure I’d answer the COVID-19 Common App prompt. gram that didn’t require rings, paral- lel bars, and 40-square-foot sprung floor. Another went grocery shop- ping for the most at-risk members in their community. A third offered free online tutoring in Calculus. These are good stories, important stories, by SIMA BELMAR OUT OF PRACTICE And yet, I’ve given myself a version of it for dance. How has dance been affected by COVID-19? How does one even talk about the year dance had? And what do I even mean by “dance”? Dance as concept? Dance as practice? Dance as community? If it were a mul- tiple choice exam rather than an essay question, I’d choose all of the above. Like an obituary for a famous per- son, I’m writing this before 2020 is dead. It’s early December. The rains have finally come to the Bay Area. My kids and I have been marveling at cloud formations and hunting rain- bows. Biden won the election and there has been dancing in the streets. T**** has yet to concede. Republi- cans are claiming voter fraud where convenient for them to do so. Over 72 million people thought T**** was great or good enough or the best choice, revealing the tentacular reach of ignorance and hatred and fear and capitalism run amok. The pandemic is enjoying a resurgence, ravaging populations across the nation and the world, hitting BIPOC communities hardest. Nearly 300 thousand Amer- icans dead; over 1.5 million glob- ally. Still, people gallivant masklessly O ne of my jobs is college admissions essay coach. The most popular platform for college admissions is called the Common Application. Over 900 colleges and uni- versities use the Common App as their gateway for admission. The Common App requires the usual stuff: personal data, standardized test scores, classes and grades, letters of recommendation, and a personal essay. Students are asked to answer one of seven prompts; they include questions about back- ground, identity, interests, obstacles faced and overcome, beliefs challenged, problems solved, feats accomplished, the sort of things most 17-to-18-year-olds have never spent a moment reflecting on. INPRACTICE In 2020, the Common App added a special, optional COVID-19 essay question (250 words): “Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. If you need it, this space is yours to describe those impacts. Colleges care about the effects on your health and well-being, safety, family circumstances, future plans, and education, including access to reliable technology and quiet study spaces.” When I am advising students on how best to answer this prompt, there’s no time to deconstruct the notion that “colleges,” like “states” and “corporations,” have feelings. Instead I get straight to the point: unless you or someone close to you has gotten sick, or you’ve lost some- one, or a parent has lost a job or a home, or you lack the space and resources necessary for a successful remote learning experience, you don’t have to answer the question. No one wants to hear you whine about having had your internship at a startup, or Mathletes competition, or summer STEM camp canceled. Everything important to everyone has been canceled. But some students really want to answer the question because they have been terrorized by the well- known fact that most if not all other optional supplemental essay questions posed by specific, usually “elite” col- leges, are not actually optional. If you have nothing to say about how you single-handedly saved your local park, or made it into the Olym- pic trials for curling, or invented an app that cures diabetes, why are you applying to Harvard, chump? These students can’t let a prompt remain unanswered; it would be blasphemy. In those cases, I tell my students to write about how they pivoted in the face of shelter-in-place. One student, a competitive gymnast, designed an online training pro-

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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org

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All year we’ve been surrounded by darkness and light. Some of the light is too bright. Some things that seem to have come out of the shad- ows and into the light have always been standing there in plain sight. We need to keep shining a light on white supremacy but it doesn’t deserve the warmth that light

video looped over and over again, straining to hear each other through our masks and over the sound of Sat- urday evening traffic. We talked about the themes of the exhibit: history, memory, ritual, and tradition. Chris told me about her training in the Talawa Technique with Thomas Talawa Prestø, founder and

and have in-person holiday parties. The concept of freedom has been reframed in the most ridiculous ways. Antiblack racism—the foundational ideology of our nation—rages on. No justice for Breonna. In the midst of all this, how did dance fare? Studio closures, staff layoffs, classes canceled, performances can- celed. Dance communities retrauma- tized by another government failure to address a lethal virus. Dancers’ Group has tried to keep the dance community abreast of resources to ensure personal and institutional survival but the bungled federal response to the virus has meant real, permanent loss on an unprece- dented scale. And yet, I’ve never felt more sur- rounded by dance. It seems like the practice of dancing has only grown during COVID. Dance classes and performances got online and out- side in what felt like mere hours into lockdown. Dancers have doubled down on their commitment to move- ment, disseminating dance content on YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, Zoom, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook—name a digital platform and you will find dance there, recorded or streamed

miss dance class in large groups with- out masks. Though I love dancing out- side, as a modern dancer I miss the barefoot part. It’s hard to roll through your tootsies when they’re ensconced in dance sneakers. And I miss the time when I felt okay missing shows because I could only be in one place at a time. Now I feel like if I miss some- thing, I have no excuse. It’s all right there online—no Bay Bridge traffic or BART delay to blame. And is it my imagination, or has there been more dance coverage in The New York Times than ever before? If we were lucky enough to have our health and our wits during this time, the pandemic has been and contin- ues to be an opportunity to reflect on the past as we lay the groundwork for a better future, in dance and beyond. My hope for post-pandemic dance is that we continue to question every- thing so when we go back to stuff, we go back to the stuff we really need. For example: The Bessies decided to forego giving awards to individuals this year and are honoring (and giving cash to) all nominees instead. Heather Robles, managing director and producer of the Bessies said, “It did not seem appro- priate to continue with business as usual.” 1 If we learn nothing else from this year, it should be crystal clear that so much of the usual business was bad business. Let’s continue to question the value of dance awards. At the beginning of the pandemic, I kept a social distancing diary. I had planned to write something every day until the pandemic was over. I stopped at day 100 due to burnout. My first entry (March 14) reveals a mother unable to imagine being stuck at home with kids for a month. Post number two—first positive COVID case at UC Berkeley. Reading through the hundred posts, I see how much I had gained from early quarantine—the space to write freely, the impulse to cook cre- atively, the time to spend happily with family, the clarity to face my racism. And I see how quickly I have lost

those gains—I’m back to academia-in- duced imposter syndrome, boxed mac-n-cheese, wanting to smack my kids, and painful reckoning with the white supremacy lodged in my tissue. Though I continue to work toward an antiracist future through groups like ODC’s Equity Working Group and my own self-study, all the new reci- pes and online Gaga classes and art projects just lost their shine over time. Now, looking back on the past nine months with promising vaccines on the horizon, I fear forgetting—the fires because the air is currently clear, the children in cages because they’re no longer making front page news, the dozens of Black men and women murdered by the police because we’ve said their names. At this very moment it is December 12, night three of Chanukah, the fes- tival of lights. I don’t like to pit light against darkness. There is beauty and richness in darkness. So, to call this past year a dark time and leave it at that feels irresponsible and inaccurate. On this cold, dark evening, after lighting the menorah, I stood with Chris Evans, Ernest Jolly, Yvette Aldama, and a few neighborhood passersby in front of the Idora Park Project Space Gallery on the corner of Shattuck and 56th Street in Oak- land to take in Gathering at a Dis- tance: Ritual and Memory . The exhibit, curated by Jolly, featured mag- nificent costumes from the New Orle- ans African American Carnival and Mardi Gras Masking Indian masking traditions by Cherice Harrison-Nelson and Fahamu Pecou, as well as a design by Dana Kawano. Three dynamic examples hung in the display win- dows, flanking a video collage of foot- age from House/Full of Black Women, Carnival events in Cuba and New Orleans, and the New Orleans-based Roots of Music youth marching band projected on the wall inside the space. Chris and I hadn’t seen each other since just before lockdown so we talked and talked as the 15-minute

ephemerality nor its liveness. It has reminded me that dance doesn’t have a problem. In fact, dance writ large has never been under threat. Dance will survive. Which is not to say individual dancers and dance organizations will. Just as it has exposed deep inequities across the social order, COVID has further amplified the precarity of any life in dance; even in the best of circumstances, we lose dancers to pregnancy, motherhood, impossibly high costs of living, injury, illness, and death. The Bay Area continues to reel and keen over the death of the legendary Kath- leen Hermesdorf as Portland mourns the loss of Mary Oslund. And then there are the dancers we never got a chance to know because of deeply entrenched ableism: the fact that some of the studios many of us long to return to remain inaccessible to wheelchair users speaks to the contin- ued threat of that particular virus. The collective hand-wringing over the future of dance has been mainly about those brands of dance that rely on particular structures and spaces like the studio, the theater, the com- pany. Dance that depends on gathering in groups indoors to train, rehearse,

I’M TERRIFIED OF FORGETTING SO I PRACTICE REMEMBERING, USUALLY IN WRITING, SOMETIMES IN DANCING. I REPEATEDLY WRITE DOWN WHAT I ALREADY KNOW BECAUSE I’M AFRAID TO FORGET HOW TO REMEMBER. AND I DON’T WANT TO REMEMBER ONLY TO FORGET.

brings. Thankfully, warmth is not exclusive to light. Caves are cold and dark, but wombs are dark and warm. When my babies came out of the darkness into the light they made it clear they weren’t happy and that they needed time to adjust. It seems we are all still adjusting. I used to love the heat of the sum- mer sun on my skin when I was a teenager but we had some ozone layer then. Winter, our so-called dark time, brings the best form of light—not too hot, not too bright, just right. The sun warms our faces as the wind chills our bones. Dark and light, warm and cold. Our theaters have been dark. When they open into the light again, I hope we remember the dark and all it helped us see. 1 Peter Libbey, “Bessies to Forgo Individual Awards This Year,” The New York Times , November 19, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/arts/dance/ bessies-to-forgo-individual-awards-this-year.html SIMA BELMAR, Ph.D., is a Lecturer in the Department of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and the ODC Writer in Residence. To keep up with Sima’s writing please subscribe to tinylet- ter.com/simabelmar .

artistic director of Tabanka African & Caribbean Peoples Dance Ensem- ble in Oslo, Norway. She talked about the technique as a decolonizing prac- tice as she undulated her torso and marched softly in place. Chris got me wondering about decolonizing as a practice of inviting our tissue to remember those ideas and experiences the colonizer wants us to forget. It seems to me that fundamental to white supremacy is a persistent pressure to forget. Perhaps the first step to purging white supremacy is remembering it’s there in the first place, always in first place. The white supremacist concept of memory is linear, which means it leaves what it remembers behind—we remember to forget. Though the concept of muscle mem- ory seems to have reached beyond the dance universe, the idea of mem- ory in bone, fascia, and breath remains on the fringe. I’m terrified of forgetting so I prac- tice remembering, usually in writ- ing, sometimes in dancing. I repeat- edly write down what I already know because I’m afraid to forget how to remember. And I don’t want to remember only to forget.

THE COLLECTIVE HAND-WRINGING OVER THE FUTURE OF DANCE HAS BEEN MAINLY ABOUT THOSE BRANDS OF DANCE THAT RELY ON PARTICULAR STRUCTURES AND SPACES LIKE THE STUDIO, THE THEATER, THE COMPANY.

live. And dancers have taken to the streets—in parades and protests, in playground classes and shoreline per- formances. And terrible dance movies continue to be made and consumed on all the streaming services. Dance is everywhere. The pandemic has reminded me that dance’s “problem” is neither its

and perform. Studio dance. Theater dance. Dance companies, theaters, and schools are in trouble. As dancers we know dance is essential. As believers in science we know that had we locked down for real in March we could have been dancing together today. As a (semi-retired?) concert dancer, I miss some things and not others. I

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by BHUMI PATEL

I n March, when we perately in need of a break. I couldn’t have imagined when we received that first Stay at Home order on March 16 that we would be here now. It’s January 2021 as you read this, but I’m writing to you on an early December morning of clear blue skies and crisp air, having just looked at a map that describes 99% of the popu- lation of California in places of wide- spread transmission, the highest tier. We are on the precipice of another sweeping Stay at Home Order, with hospitals nearing capacity. For some of us, this does not affect us - we have not been leaving our houses for nonessen- tial purposes so we will continue to not leave our homes for nonessential pur- poses. For some, this may mean loss: of work or otherwise. For others, this received the Stay at Home Order, I was burnt out. Most days, I was driving in circles around the Bay to keep up with my free- lance gigs, eating peanut butter sandwiches in my car between jobs, and des- could mean something else entirely. A few days into the Stay at Home Order, I started writing. I thought it might be interesting to have a written account of what being at home was like, but it turned into a time cap- sule of sorts with notes from almost everything I’ve done this year: classes and workshops online, zoom happy hours, meetings. The desire to write has come and gone in waves - some days the notes are detailed and copi- ous, others there is only a line or two - but it does give me a picture of how

I’ve spent my time this year. I hope that you’ll go on this journey with me and perhaps even take stock of what you’ve done this year, and feel proud that despite it all, we have kept going. March THE MONTH STARTED with live performances. I remem- ber sitting in a theater. I remember hugging friends afterwards. I remember a friend sharing a piece where paper cascaded from a shredder that was suspended on a ledge above the stage space. And then we were told we had to stay at home. We were told there was a virus that was infecting people all over the globe. Infectious disease researchers told us this was their worst nightmare: a respiratory illness that spreads through vapor particles in the air. I saw a mobilization in the dance community that I didn’t expect. Almost overnight, I could suddenly get on my computer and take classes with Movement Research in New York, with Gaga teachers in Tel Aviv and New York, with legends in our field like Debbie Allen in Los Angeles. I saw our Bay Area dance com- munity pivot swiftly to continue classes and train- ing online. Our dance homes, Shawl-Anderson, ODC, LINES, and many more, created free and accessible at home pre-recorded and live content. My dance educa- tor friends cleared entire rooms in their apartments to take and teach class. And to tell you the truth: I didn’t do any of it. The first days of the pandemic involved paint- ing miniature watercolors on my couch and watch- ing terrible sitcoms. Those days involved two hour walks around my neighborhood looking at chalk art and blooming flowers. They involved 7-minute yoga classes on an app that lifted their paywall because of the pandemic. But I didn’t dance. I couldn’t. April AS MARCH FLUTTERED AWAY INTO APRIL, we thought that we would be back to teaching in person after Spring Break. We thought that we would finish the

school year strong. We thought that our students would still get to participate in their graduation ceremonies. I hadn’t lost any of my work yet. My undergraduate Mod- ern and Jazz class shifted to be online. We took a differ- ent approach to moving. We moved in the space we had available to us, we created tiny dances, we listened to music, took walks, and observed the natural world around us. The young students I taught got to see videos of my dog walking through the frame while I made lots of silly shapes with my body and asked them to do the same. And while I was teaching online, I still didn’t take class. Instead I took embodied singing classes. I participated in a series called “Empty and Full” which pretty accurately described what those early weeks in the pandemic felt like. I belted sounds and syllables and only half heartedly wondered if my neighbors could hear me singing. I wrote that I was starting to feel like I had space in my lungs again, like a tightness of worry was unwinding. May IN HINDSIGHT, I’D LIKE TO CALL MAY: I will begrudgingly and selectively take class online, if I have to. And I’ll like it, dammit. The unwinding led to a return of the desire to move. I took a virtual workshop and started rehearsing again for a performance that was moved to an online platform for June. It was bizarre to work on zoom. I found myself writ- ing about the loss of my back space in an effort to lean toward the movement to see or understand it in ways that are just unknowable through my screen. I had virtual conversations with other movers about hierarchies and values, ambitions and curiosities, pedagogy and the pan- demic. I facilitated a conversation about racial equity in dance. I was starting to feel momentum again. June THE MOST PREVALENT FEELING IN JUNE WAS THIS: flooded. After the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests for racial justice, nearly every presenter, institu- tion, studio, and organization sent out an email notify- ing me that they were going to learn about equity and

I Wonder if My Neighbors Can Hear Me Singing

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be able to make the work I want again, and on and on and on. While I was practicing living in forgiveness, in October a friend said to me, “I don’t know how long it’ll last, but in the last four months, I’ve felt more heard as a Black woman than I have ever before in my life.” I hope that it lasts. I hope that she continues to be heard. November AS I REMEMBER NOVEMBER, this most recent month, what I feel most deeply is what I’ll call an anxi- ety hangover which clouded the month. In March, I couldn’t dance at all. In November, I took a class almost every day. Despite it all, I’ve adapted. December NOW IT IS DECEMBER AND I AM HERE . As we close out the year and I reflect on what this year brought and took away, I am a mess of conflicting impulses. I am grateful for the classes I can take all over the world (with just a little bit of time zone math). I am deeply frustrated and heartbroken to see so much unnecessary suffering and death caused by the immense failures of our political and public health systems. I am comfortable with the routine that my partner, my dog, and I have each morning: yoga, dog walk, breakfast, work. I am stifled because no amount of rearranging furniture will give me the room to be as expansive as I feel in a dance studio. Like many of you, I am filled with worry and relief almost equally, almost simultaneously. And, as the 2020 calendar year ends, I am here, waiting as patiently as I can to feel the weight of a dance partner, the hug of a long-sepa- rated friend, the touch of a dance teacher to guide me toward the movement. BHUMI B PATEL is a queer, desi artist/activist. Her work involves dancing, choreographing, curating, educating, writing, and scholarship as a pursuit for liberation, with the time and space to decolonize the body. She seeks to create movement outside of white models of dance through use of improvisational practices and tapping into kinesthetic processing. Patel’s work has been presented at SAFEhouse Arts, LEVYsalon, Shawl Salon, max10, Studio 200, Molissa Fenley and Friends, Summer Performance Festival, RAWdance’s Concept Series, The San Francisco International Arts Festival, Berkeley Finnish Hall, PUSHfest, Shawl-Anderson’s Queering Dance Festival, and Studio 210 Residency. Bhumi was a 2017-2018 Emerging Arts Professionals Fellow and a 2019 Women of Color in the Arts Fellow. She is a member of Dancing Around Race and Cat Call Choir. She’s been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Life as a Modern Dancer, Contact Quarterly, and In Dance. pateldanceworks.org

I WASN’T SURE WHAT TO EXPECT AND THE NERVES LEADING UP TO PERFORMANCE WERE SO DIFFERENT FROM LIVE PERFORMANCE: instead of worrying about the performers and the costumes, I was worried about my internet connection holding up for the performance duration and pressing the right buttons to screen share.

August AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF AUGUST, I had a virtual per- formance over zoom, partially live and partially pre-re- corded. So many feelings came up in the process of it all and I think it’s led me to more questions about perfor- mance than answers. I was so grateful that friends from so many different times in my life were able to be there (though we live far apart). I was so grateful my family was there in the zoom room, too. I wasn’t sure what to expect and the nerves leading up to performance were so different from live performance: instead of worrying about the performers and the costumes, I was worried about my internet connection holding up for the perfor- mance duration and pressing the right buttons to screen share. After the performances ended, I was in my house and it was quiet. I sat on the couch and ate dinner. I tex- ted the performers in their respective homes. I knew that it would be different, but I also knew that somehow I wanted to recreate the feeling of being in a theater with people. On zoom, you can’t watch the audience watch your work. You can’t sit and have a one-on-one con- versation with someone. You can’t hug the performers and have a toast with them “backstage” before greeting friends and family. The feelings were different. Not bad, just different. September & October IN SEPTEMBER, I WAS TAKING A CLASS OVER ZOOM and the instructor of that class said to us “be with the rigor that you have today.” Later in the month, in a different class, a different teacher said “perhaps the act of sing- ing and moving can be an act of living in forgiveness?” I thought that if I tried to practice living in forgiveness I might forgive myself for all the things that I have wor- ried about this year - that I’m not doing enough, that my work is going to become irrelevant, that I will be forgotten, that if I don’t push myself to get that grant application in my career is doomed, that the decimation of our live performing arts landscape means I’ll never

included unaccountable, non-tangible language about how they’re going to do better. When I reflect on this now I can’t help but wonder: are all those entities still doing the constant, necessary work of anti-racism? Or have they moved on and allowed it to fade away like the news cycle? Have they figured out what the ongo- ing work looks like? To whom are they practicing accountability? In between the flooding, I felt angry. I told anyone who would listen that in 2019 there were 19 days when the killing of a Black person by the police wasn’t reported. Why weren’t they sending me emails that Black lives matter then? Why weren’t they launching granting programs for BIPOC artists then? What good is hiring BIPOC people if your toxic organizational environment remains? When will they understand that decoloniza- tion is not a metaphor? I had hoped that these conversations would go deeper. I had hoped that there would be frank conversations about who is left out, who is being heard, and how to sustain this work. Perhaps there is a reason to still hope, but as I write this, months later, I’m still not sure. July COME JULY, I FELT GRATEFUL to participate in the cre- ation of an event through Women of Color in the Arts for non-Black women of color to come together and assess how we can act in solidarity with our Black colleagues at the institutions where we work as artists, arts administrators, curators, presenters, and a variety of other roles. To be in the company of others who are thinking deeply about the necessary work filled my cup. It fed that momentum. I was also in the pro- cess of generating virtual experiments for a summer residency. I was sort of lost and swimming around in the murky waters of trying to understand my role as an artist during a pandemic. I had finally gotten back into the groove of moving, so to speak, but to create still felt out of place and untethered against the state of the world.

Performers in Detour Dance Presents: The Nelken Line

DETOUR DANCE PRESENTS: THE NELKEN LINE Nourishment looks like many different things. For me, it came in the form of a hilltop regaled with a gorgeously glittery gaggle of drag art- ists, queers, and trans & gender-nonconform- ing folks performing Pina Bausch’s work at sunset—a salve on the dry lips and knuckles and hearts of my chosen family. This film, my reimagining of The Nelken Line wasn’t just an opportunity to add my singular straw of hay to the stack of hundreds that exist in digital archives. It was a reckoning of borrowed move- ment on borrowed land, a time capsule for the moment we are living through, an act of joy. —Eric Garcia, Co-Director Detour Dance

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WHAT’S IN A CONVERSATION? by JOCHELLE PEREÑA

At Luna, we’ve been offering informal community conversations around dance teaching inquiry for over 10 years under various names and formats—Topic Tuesdays, Issues of Practice, Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). Practitioner Exchanges are the most recent iter- ation, and we chose the name to emphasize the back-and-forth nature of a conversation amongst peers. An Exchange is facilitated each month by a Summer Institute alum on a topic of their choice, ranging from Dance and Cultural Relevancy, to Dancers as Leaders, to Agency and Power in Early Childhood, and more. Like all participants, facilita- tors bring questions to the round- table discussion to unpack together, sharing expertise and experience. Since March we’ve been offering 1–3 Exchanges each month via Zoom as a response to requests from our com- munity; the topics, each addressing teaching dance from a distance, are scheduled as new questions emerge. Folks have tuned in from all over the States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Japan. Some pop in just once, many attend regularly. In promoting Exchanges, I’ve high- lighted them as opportunities for alumni to step into leadership roles as facilitators and advocates, and for supportive community-building amongst dance educators. But since Practitioner Exchanges went virtual,

Sam Stone

Kristine Atkins

Kristen Burke

“We had an incredible Practitioner Exchange last night!” I tell my Luna colleagues, “I laughed, I even cried, we danced around, and the conversation just flowed.” I realize as I’m saying this, that I’m not fully describing the depth of the discussion, and that in fact, it sounds a bit trite. But my colleagues are curious, “Great! What did you learn?” I pause, mouth open, stumped. What did I learn? What am I actually learning from all these Exchanges? What’s in a conversation?

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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org

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and I’ve been Zoom-hosting all of them, I’ve noticed that something more sutle, yet perhaps more pro- found is happening. Classroom teacher and Exchange facilitator Kristen Burke said this: “Somehow there’s a container here, I don’t understand how this was cre- ated, but it feels like there’s a con- tainer where … you can just be in the mystery. And something comes out of it, even if I can’t articulate it. So I just feel grateful that there’s, there’s just the draw to keep coming back and be present, even if I don’t know why.” This sounds pretty mag- ical, and a little unbelievable, but it echoes my sentiments that something has shifted inside me after these con- versations, a door has opened, there is movement and real change. It’s not unlike how I feel after a group improvisation, and when I consider this, the magic of these Exchanges becomes easier to articulate. PLAYFUL PROCESSING As in a group improv, an Exchange emphasizes not the products that come out of it—the final dance or the list of best practices or big take- aways—but the process. And real processing of ideas and theories is happening. Unlike many profes- sional development (PD) workshops, Exchanges don’t deliver content. Inquiries are placed on the table like offerings from all the participants, without the anticipation of answer- ing them. Instead, together we tease questions apart, intertwine, ponder and chew on them, try out differ- ent responses from multiple angles, and apply theories we’ve read about to our teaching practice—just like we would capture someone’s move- ment in an improv, try it on in differ- ent ways, develop it, keep it or let it go. Dance teaching artist Sam Stone explained it this way: “It’s really nice to be in a space that is non-per- formative where you’re not try- ing to get in something wise to say,

pretty amazing to be part of that.”We hold space for each other, listening deeply, and out of that holding grows a trust which invites participants in. This trust is enhanced by the fact that all participants are dance educators. We don’t need to justify or explain the value of our artform as we do in so many other circles; we get each other, and feel like we belong, feel like we’re part of something bigger. “I love that I have complete and utter trust in the process,” teaching artist Maura Whele- han explains, “No one needs to arrive in any certain way, just showing up guarantees ... That trust … can really calm me down from ... all the frenetic places ... Just showing up can be vul- nerageous.” Vulnerable + courageous to arrive fully, to share, play, process, reflect, exchange and change. What am I learning from these Exchanges? I’m learning that these are creative spaces—we’re using the same creative muscles we use while dancing to connect, reflect, relate, collaborate, play, and be curious, and the same muscles we need to imagine alternate possibilities and realities different from what we’re currently experiencing. I feel changed after an Exchange: a little looser, a little stretched, a lit- tle lighter. It’s a micro-change, noth- ing flashy, but deep and opening, as if a blockage has shifted and new ideas can flow more freely. I’m learn- ing that we desperately need spaces like this right now, when so much feels obstructed, limited, overwhelm- ing and out of our control, to exhale and release so that we can look at the challenges in another way, or find our- selves again. JOCHELLE PEREÑA I s choreographer, dance teaching artist and Professional Learning Manager at Luna Dance Institute. Her work investigates the in-between liminal spaces, the discovery of the un- familiar within the familiar, and cultivating freedom and power through dance. She is a student in play and imagining new realities, led in daily discoveries by her two children. She hosts Practitioner Ex- changes monthly, and welcomes you to join. Find out more here .

capitalistic cultural norms. We have been trained to look linearly through a lens of progress, so reflecting on past actions and thoughts is “a step back- wards instead of a step forward,” as Sam describes it. But “that feels really different ... that feels nourishing, that feels like get back in, as opposed to what to do, where to go, what to what, what will feed me.”When we reflect, we spiral in, nonlinearly, and go deeper. In going deeper, we see a little more of ourselves reflected back to us, we see something we didn’t see before. It might be a filter or a bias, a habit that no longer serves us, or a practice that feels insignificant but has a big impact. As dancers we embody reflection: when we improvise we often discover something new in our very familiar bodies, and find our- selves again because we’re tuning in and listening deeply. In Practitioner Exchanges, reflection is often revealed with exclamations like, “Oh wow, I really needed to hear myself say that,” or “I had no idea why I was feeling this way. Thank you for letting me talk that out.” Classroom teacher Chris- tine Atkins articulates, “I’ve been to so many [district] PDs that just hurt my heart, just hurt my heart because I was like ‘Really? Can I just get [this info] out of my iMac?’ And so to come to a PD that just, I feel like I’m being devel- oped as an individual … I am getting developed, this is actually real PD … personal development.” COLLABORATIVE RECIPROCITY & COLLECTIVE CARETAKING There is potency in being witnessed in this development, in observing others observe you fumble around, try out an idea, figure something out. Instead of being trapped in a personal echo chamber, our reflective processing becomes more real because others hear it, and our words alter the space, offering a new path into the conversa- tion for someone else. When another practitioner responds, following that

path, we recognize that we have something to offer, we recognize our value. And we recognize the value of each participant in our listening, following, developing their ideas. I see evidence of this appreciation in the stream of Zoom hearts, shout- outs via Chat, smiles and hand ges- tures signifying applause and res- onance. Music and dance teaching artist Mara Beckerman shares, “Each time I come I feel nervous as if any- thing I say will be seen as strange, weird and NOT dance teacher-ish. And then each time I come I get great ideas and discover that what I share is appreciated and even welcomed ... I leave feeling that I have a commu- nity of like-minded people to check in with. I don’t feel so alone!” It’s a col- laborative reciprocity that is also cre- atively generative, building and spi- ralling and deepening into more than the sum of its parts. Christine elabo- rates: “It’s kind of like a good potluck … everybody brings something good. Like everybody brings something on the plate here, ... and it’s good food, and we all get fed, you may not all eat the same thing or taste the same thing. There’s such a richness in the dialogue and the acceptance …. of people diving in, and willingness to share that inevitably you’re going to come away with some nugget or something that’s just going to make the day better, the next couple of weeks teaching better. You know, just some good juju-flip to the spirit of self-care in many ways as an educator, as a dance teacher and as a person.” The collective caretaking of the Exchange conversation parallels how we cooperatively take care of the dance of a group improv. We consider when to enter and exit, when to pause, repeat, expand and enhance, when to solo, when to sup- port. “There’s such an absence of ego here that it’s kind of inspiring,” says Christine, “there’s just no ego in the room, and just straight, just com- passion and love and joy and that’s

There is potency in being witnessed in this development, in observing others observe you fumble around, try out an idea, figure something out. JOCHELLE PEREÑA

where you can fumble through things that you’re going through and have other people ... to see their nodding heads or adding to it, just to fumble together.” The casualness of meeting by Zoom has helped in honoring process over product. Artist educators can tune in from their homes, cozied up with tea or backyard in the sun. They haven’t battled through traffic or struggled to find parking, carrying an expectation of “this better be worth it”. The effort to show up is reduced to a click of a link, and instead they, well, just show up and be present. The conversations can then become connective rather than transactional. With kids, pets, and dinner-making happening in the background, this kind of PD feels more integrated with real life, and more relatable because we see each other and our- selves as humans in our homes, rather than “professionals” in profes- sional settings. The pressure of pre- ciousness and perfectionism is off, and fumbling feels permissible, even encouraged. Recently I read an interview with educators Hannah Beach and Tamara Neufeld Strijack in which they pos- ited that, for children, entertainment is replacing play. “There is nothing wrong with entertainment, but it is not the same thing as play. Entertain- ment is like an in-breath and play is like an out-breath. Many children are breathing in and in and in. Play

is nature’s way of providing children a place to digest and release their emotions …” Adults need play, too, real play that is not goal oriented. For me, Exchanges can act as play- grounds where dance educators work through and digest all the messag- ing we absorb from the media, social media and our inboxes—heavy, crit- ical messaging about our health, the environment, trauma, racism and anti-racism, and more. What do we do with all this messaging, this con- tent that we’ve inhaled? Are we just holding it in? Breath and the ability to breathe becomes, once again, political. As dancers we know we cannot fully move when we hold our breath. Often it is the exhale that drives the next movement, the breath that grounds us in more authentic movement. Are we providing ourselves with spaces to breathe, to exhale? In an effort to remind us of the power of breath, and to tap into our embodied know- ingness, each Exchange begins with a dance party that releases the exhale through laughter and high-charged joyful movement. REFLECTING IN Another quality of Exchanges that feels relevant is their reflective nature. Reflection is multi-dimensional. It’s related to the aforementioned pro- cessing, and, like celebrating pro- cess over product and releasing per- fectionism, it counteracts dominant

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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

(Opposite) Vera Schwegler and Kara Townsend, (left) Olutola Afalayan, Colin McDowell, Robin Nasatir, Kara Townsend and Vera Schwegler; (right) Michael Armstrong

O ne Saturday afternoon last Febru- ary, I sat upstairs in Shawl-Anderson Dance Center’s large studio space watching Dana Lawton Dances (DLD) prepare their upcoming new work, The Farallonites . Created by Artistic Director Dana Lawton, scored by Thomas Edler and inspired by a set of poems by Jennifer Kulbeck, The Farallonites was slated to premiere April 24, 2020 at Fort Mason’s Cowell Theater. When I was invited to observe this particular rehearsal, the mixed discipline collaboration was well on its way. A blend of text, music, light and movement, the evening-length piece told the story of the dedicated lighthouse keepers who lived on the Farallon Islands in the 1800s - an uninhabitable by HEATHER DESAULNIERS

archipelago twenty-seven miles off the coast of San Francisco. What follows are some initial observations I had about the work’s various chapters:

A duet called ‘birds’ finds one dancer balancing on the back of another, like a raven or eagle suspending itself on a cliff before soaring into the air. A variation for the company’s women is grounded in a collective triplet step, countered by upper bodies performing individualized task-based gestures. It has such a beau- tiful duality to it – the common footwork pattern sug- gesting a keen sense of sisterhood while the rest of the body reading of loneliness and isolation. Yet another ensemble sequence takes the form of a square dance. While uproarious in quality, it also has a tenuous

by Heather Desaulniers

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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

Pictured: Olutola Afalayan, Michael Armstrong, Leah Curren, Tom Edler, Garth Grimball, Jennifer Kulbeck, Dana Lawton, Colin McDowell, Robin Nasatir, Vera Schwegler, Jennifer Smith, Kara Townsend

Our actions right now —mask-wearing, staying home, socially distancing — are similarly about caring.

Our actions right now – mask-wearing, staying home, socially distancing – are similarly about caring. Yes, car- ing for ourselves and those in our homes, but equally about caring for others. And it’s hard. We don’t know how long the self-isolating will last. We want to get back to our lives. To hug our friends. To venture outside with- out fear of who or what we may come into contact with. To travel. To see co-workers and colleagues in three dimensions, instead of on a screen. Little did I know, but that February day would be one of the last times I would be in a dance studio in 2020. Just a few weeks later, in mid-March, shelter-in-place would be invoked to help curb the spread of COVID- 19. So many programs and events would be cancelled,

The Farallonites being one of them. Ergo, the feature I was writing about it then would also not make it to an audience. Today, the coronavirus continues to rage on. The Farallonites , along with so many other projects, still awaits its debut. ‘Awaits’ is a key term. The Farallonites is still very much alive, though its journey has indeed been different than originally planned. Just before Thanksgiving, I caught up with Lawton (by phone) to learn more about the work’s trajectory and how she and the DLD family have been weathering a very bizarre 2020. “When it was clear that the April show was a no-go, we had a conversation about what we wanted to do,” she relays, “the dancers were incredibly committed to continuing the rehearsal process,

“In the mid-1800s, the beacon was constructed on the Farallons to protect ships from crashing into the Islands, and so a few families moved there to run the lighthouse. The conditions were so treacherous and inhospitable – supplies would only arrive every six to nine months; when outside, their children had to be tied to boulders for protection against the water, wind and fog – and yet they were willing to navigate such a reality to provide light, saving people they would never meet.” 2

overtone. Would the rigors and responsibility of their chosen life allow such revelry? Probably not. So, is this a dream? A memory? A longing? Each attendee will have to decide for themselves. 1 One can see direct parallels with our current situation. Threads of seclusion. Quarantine. Protection. Remote- ness. And underlying it all is a profound theme: indi- vidual sacrifice for the greater good. Nine months ago, Lawton explained it like this:

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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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