Fall 2021 In Dance

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

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

P.12 Dancing Archivists

P.48 Jazz: Digging Deeper

P.38 My Roots of Movement

CONTENTS

38/ My Roots of Movement by Bianca Mendoza 42/ Beyond Aesthetics Bachata, Politics, Praxis By Chiara Giovanni 47/ In Conversation Andréa Spearman chats with Latanya D. Tigner and Colette Eloi 48/ Jazz: Digging Deeper By Ashley Gayle 52/ Where Do We Go from Here? By Alyssa Manansala 60/ In Community Highlights and resources,

12 / Dancing Archivists: A Conversation By Hallie Chametzky and Sarah Nguyen 20/ We Write Ourselves as We Move by Thobile Jane Maphanga 26/ Tracing Roots by Ishika Seth 29/ 10 in 10 10 Questions in 10 Minutes with Andréa Spearman 30/ Dancing Happens in Strip Malls Too by Julia Davidson 34/ The Women in White by Emma Garber

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.

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WELCOME By Sima Belmar, Guest Editor

WHEREVER YOU ARE IN THE WORLD, if you are a dancer who wants to write about dance or you know a dancer who does, please message me. I have an op- portunity for you/them. I tweeted this request on July 10, when hot (flash) mom summer seemed to be on. But the hope, calm, and excitement were short-lived. Variants. Inequitable global vaccine distribution. Afghanistan. Bezos in space. Texas. Nevertheless, dozens of dancers from around the world responded to my call, each with a story to tell. As the pandemic inches toward one thousand and one nights and beyond, stories have the power to get us through to morning. The people of Boccaccio’s Decameron , fleeing a 14th century plague, have moved beyond the pages of college literature syllabi into our contemporary imagination. Stories, especially true stories, seem to settle us when the ground won’t stop shaking. Whenever I respond to a story with an “Oh, yeah? Me too!” or “Wow! I had no idea,” I feel less alone. The stories in this issue represent voices from and perspectives on the dance world often left out of the historical record. When one writer worried that her story wouldn’t be of interest to anyone, I said, “Do you think the largely white, largely cis- male, largely straight voices that dominate the archives ever worried whether their stories would be of interest to anyone?” The active silencing of stories naturalizes the idea that only some voices matter. And the ways we in the West have long privi- leged the written word as a locus of knowing over bodily wisdom has made it all the more urgent that we tell our dancing stories. Sarah Nguyen and Hallie Chametzky engage in a feisty, transcontinental dialogue over archival practices in dance and the concept of the body as archive. On oppo- site sides of the world, unbeknownst to each other, Bianca Mendoza and Thobile Jane Maphanga reflect on their circuitous dance journeys through the Western canon to the indigenous dances of their cultural backgrounds, while Ishika Seth mines her dance training to uncover an ever-evolving definition of Indian Contem- porary Dance. Chiara Giovanni addresses the challenges dance presenters face as they seek to align their political commitments with their programming practices through the example of Dominican bachata. Emma Garber and Ashley Gayle turn their ballet and jazz backgrounds over in their hands to examine the ways their respective dance forms are habitually historicized. Julia Davidson argues that the oft-maligned Strip Mall Dance Studio is a space of real dancing. And Alyssa Manan- sala charts the extraordinary journey of Alleluia Panis and Kularts, thinking through questions of indigeneity and diaspora in the context of Filipinx art-making. Together, these essays convey frustration, anger, wistfulness, confusion—the stories they tell are unsettling and unsettled. And yet, underneath (or alongside, or mixed within) is a boundless love for dance. So as we continue to traverse tremu- lous ground, I hope you’ll find some solace, if not stability, in dance.

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MANTRAM A New woRk iN kAthAk by ChARlotTe MoRAgA | MusiC by AlAM khAN

P R e M i e R i N g Oct 15–17, 2021, ODC Theater, SF

chitreshdasinstitute.org odc.dance/Mantram

Mantram explores resonance, connection and disconnection through movement, music, and percussive scenery, custom designed for kathak dancers by Moraga and Lighting/Scenic Designer Matthew Antaky.

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From Diversity to Belonging through intercultural arts

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RO C O

D E A R

fall 21 Productions “Peter” and “OnStage”at Marin Center

Residencies for Northern California Time-Based Artists

theater | performance ■ dance | movement music | sound art | instrument invention collaboration | interdisciplinary work Applications for 2022 Residencies OCTOBER 29, 2021 (11:59 PM) DRESHERENSEMBLE.ORG/DEAR/ RSVP FOR ONE OF OUR INFO SESSIONS TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE DEAR PROGRAM AND TO TOUR THE STUDIO DRESHERENSEMBLE.ORG/DEAR- INFO-SESSION-RSVP/

TUESDAY OCTOBER 5, 2021 ■ 7 PM THURSDAY OCTOBER 7, 2021 ■ 7 PM

DEAR awards 4 to 6 residencies annually to individual artists or to groups of artists collaborating on a single project. Each Residency Provides

Full-time access ( 24/7 ) of 1 to 4 weeks to rehearsal studio (40’ x 42” sprung dance floor with Marley floor covering with 20’ ceilings and two 9-foot concert grand pianos) and fabrication shop. Residency weeks may be contiguous or spread out over a period of months. Access to state of the art equipment (sound, lighting, projection, and recording) A production stipend (currently up to $1500) Technical, financial, marketing, and managerial consultations Fiscal sponsorship (if needed) Performance opportunities (50% of Box Office)

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AUGUST 23- JANUARY 23,2022 PERFORMANCES JANUARY 22-23 Register at rocodance.com

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Dancing Archivists: A Conversation By Hallie Chametzky and Sarah Nguyen HALLIE CHAMETZKY AND SARAH NGUYEN are archivist dance-makers who met at the Mark Morris Dance Group Archives, where Sarah was working and Hallie was visit- ing, in the fall of 2019. Since then, they have worked together at Dance/USA where Hallie is the Archiving Specialist and Sarah is a 2020/2021 Archiving & Preser- vation Fellow working with AXIS Dance Company. Their shared interest in how legacy, memory, materiality, and the sharing of information inform them as movement artists brings them together in this forum. What follows is a series of musings on how their relationship to making and thinking about dance and performance is intertwined with their professional archiving practices.

Hallie Chametzky

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Who are we? Why are we talking about dance & archives? Hallie Chametzky: While studying dance and choreography in college, I was selected for a Fellowship in the dance collections at the Library of Congress. That was my crash course training in archives — processing and making available materials from the Martha Graham Legacy Project. It blew my mind that I was able to get up close and personal with materials that belonged to modern dance icons and had hardly been handled since the early-to-mid-twentieth century. I worked a lot with papers related to the New Dance Group, who I consider my dancestors because of their radical, socialist, egalitarian approach to con- cert dance. I kept applying to dance archives gigs, which are fairly few and far between, and I’m now really lucky to work for Dance/USA, where I offer archives education, resources, and ser- vices to living, working artists, espe- cially those who have been historically marginalized in the dance world and the archival record. I wanted to talk about dance mak- ing and archiving work with you, Sarah, because I haven’t met many archivists who also have an ongo-

science researcher and dancer, I’m inter- ested in how lived experiences turned memories can trans- late to artful move- ment. I started to explore this idea when I started my Masters in Library and Information Sci- ence program and processed and digi- tized records for the Mark Morris Dance Group Archives. I grew up in studio competition dance so I never really consid- ered myself a dance

in one space. It’s not a new concept or method, but the nuances that differen- tiate information and memory on the physical body versus on visual or text documentation is often overlooked. After years of research and practice in information organization and dance, I look at what it means to create dance as my body ages and then share these creations for public access. Four different influences come to mind with this question: First, there’s Tonia Sutherland’s archival research, which looks at how archives and memory can be pre- served through non-print mediums. Sutherland focuses on dance and stories passing through generations of Pacific Islander and Black commu- nities. In particular, her work explores Dunham Technique vocabulary as a means to decolonize archival praxis 1 , the impact of digital records on Black bodies 2 , and Black communities’ use of digital social media as a means to create performative, autonomous, and liberatory spaces. 3 Her perspectives on the violence that existing archives have had on oppressed bodies reso- nate with me as I navigate through misrepresentation and undocumenta- tion of my ancestors. Then there’s the choreographic workshop that David Roussève,

from each other. Instead, lived experi- ences are interwoven throughout the past, present, and future of individu- als’ memories, movement creations, and daily life. This places value in the often forgotten care and maintenance needed to address traumas and nar- ratives stored within archives, espe- cially when we look at sustainability of born-digital records, such as those created by artists and hosted/pub- lished on third-party proprietary plat- forms owned by Big Tech companies. HC: I feel that there is real truth to the idea that we are repositories for knowledge that we can pursue through movement, ritual, and embodiment. In a totally different (and maybe more concrete) vein, I’m torn about other ways that I’m seeing “archive” used in the performance world. On the one hand, I’m delighted that more artists are considering their bodies and move- ments as part of a lineage. I’m all for expanded notions of the archive, espe- cially because “the archive” has been controlled for far too long by institu- tional, colonial forces. On the other hand, there are also artists who claim to be “archiving” their work by curating selections of pieces and processes on social media or YouTube. Without being too

director of David Roussève/REAL- ITY, taught in preparation for his New York premiere of Halfway to Dawn , 4 where we learned about Roussève’s process incorporating archival documents of the politically active jazz artist, Billy Strayhorn, into movement and onto the stage. It was the first time I experienced intentional archival references in a class/rehearsal space and saw how dancers can re- interpret a choreographer’s intellec- tual embodiment of archival records. I was inspired by the dancers’ abil- ity to uplift marginalized souls and voices and weave in the “past, pres- ent, and fantasy,” as they created rela- tionships with each other, the music, and quotes from Strayhorn’s diary entries on stage. Third, I think of Kathy Carbone’s research on activating archival mate- rials. She re-imagines archival docu- ments to commemorate the lives of the original creators and subjects of the archive, 5 a way to better under- stand, represent, and re-describe the intentions of a record outside of the colonial perspective that has been tra- ditional to archival practices. Last, there’s the concept of “jazz time,” 6 which posits that music, dance, and lived experiences are never compartmentalized or segregated

critical, I cringe a bit at the self- proclaimed artist-archivists who think that videoing and sharing their work is by default an archival pro- cess. Social media websites claim a level of copyright ownership over the posts shared on them. They are fully within their right to use posts shared by users however they wish, includ- ing removing them from the site completely. What kind of archive has so little control over its materials? An archive that isn’t concerned with who is granted ownership of the materials or whether they disappear without notice would be a sloppy archive indeed. Considering the eth- ics of the platform by which you share information is an essential part of responsible archiving, but it’s not very sexy. It’s easier to think of “the archive” as simply any collection of interesting stuff. There’s a difference between con- ceptual ideas of the “body archive” and this sloppy internet archive I’m complaining about. But both seem to come from the same place of increased interest among dance artists in participating in and cre- ating lineage and history. If art- ists wanted to, say, establish a dig- ital guerilla archive where they can share and preserve work outside of a

artist; it felt too formulaic, commer- cial. But when I interned at Luna Dance Institute library, I was intro- duced to critical inquiry and creative movement, which broadened my understanding of the mutable bound- aries of dance. Now that I’ve been a Dance/USA Archiving Fellow for AXIS Dance Company’s archives for two years, I’ve come to accept myself as both a researcher and creator of movement and information. Seeing

“If my artist brain and my archivist brain were a venn diagram, there would be a big overlap in the middle, but also some space on the sides” —HALLIE

your work, Hallie, Songs for Women, Songs for Men , I’m

ing movement practice, and I’m curi- ous about the ways you see those two worlds colliding. If my artist brain and my archivist brain were a venn diagram, there would be a big overlap in the middle, but also some space on the sides. I also saw your piece 30 x 3 virgin remy: $200 OBO r ecently, and I could see how memory, history, and the body are intertwining for you. Sarah Nguyen: I’m excited you saw my piece, Hallie! It was the first time I presented a work that’s directly about my ancestors, so it felt vulner- able yet healing. As an information

fascinated to learn more about your experience integrating archives into your dance practice. What is your relationship with the concept of the “body as archive” or the more general increased interest in “the archive” by move- ment artists? SN: For me, the term “archive(s)” in relation to body and movement art- ists is an exploratory fifth dimension intersecting information, memory, and the tangible physical body

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“Inspired by Jeff Fridman’s research on oral histories and ‘time consciousness and embedded communications,’ I recorded an oral history with my mother about her life as a six-year-old in rural Viet Nam during 1972-1974.” —SARAH

all have the ability to feel grounded in legacy and history. We must insist upon new, anti-colonial models for equitable archiving so that the legacies of Black people, Indigenous people, and other people who have historically been excluded from archival record and practice can connect with legacy mate- rials in the ways white people have long had access to. Still, I believe that none of us are owed a comprehensive, uncomplicated picture of any person or event from the past. Our ancestors were just as complex and multilayered as we are, and our encounters with archives cannot ever give us access to their full personhood, even as they can offer profound connection to legacy and history. I am arguing for privacy for the dead, even as I work in a field

delights in the fundamental incom- pleteness of both live performance and the archival record. I don’t believe I’m entitled to an experience of live performance which leaves me with clarity. Live dance is created in the gap between the audi- ence and the performer(s). Similarly, the archival record is composed of more gaps and silences than pieces of knowledge and information. Our contemporary bodies encountering an archive are not owed total under- standing. The intimacy generated by encountering archival materials is entirely one-sided; the contemporary party voyeuristically projects meaning and significance onto materials that have been curated by the whims and preferences of time. It’s crucial that we

is taken directly from the title of a dance by Sophie Maslow whose archi- val papers I processed at the Library of Congress. Maslow’s dances dealt a lot with Jewishness, as do mine, and I liked the idea of following the Jewish tradition of naming after the dead. The piece uses archival Hebrew and Yiddish music, and also fea- tures archival recording of my grand- mother, the late poet Anne Halley, reading her poems. I made this piece in an academic context and received quite a bit of feedback from my teachers and peers that was critical of how diffi- cult it was to understand portions of the poems because of the quality of the archival audio. I was frustrated and baffled by this as someone who

The same is true for me in making a dance. No one movement exists as a discrete action. The arc of the piece has to make sense to me before I can get hung up on specific gestures or phrases. And before I can shape the structure of the piece, I have to do my deep research and learning, which often includes study of history, texts, and the archive. So it’s a big cycle. Songs for Women, Songs for Men came out of my thoughts on sacred and secular gendered ritual acts, and how ritual can be both a tool of lib- eration and oppression. The title

understanding the archive is the same in that one has to get this broad, over- arching feel for the narrative of the materials before getting too involved with details. I enjoy going on a detec- tive hunt to identify a mysterious face in a blurry photograph, but with- out understanding the full scope of the materials and building the con- tainers and categories that contex- tualize them, it can be self-defeating to get bogged down in those minute details. No one object in the archive is distinct; context and interrelation- ships are key to our understanding.

traditional institutional context, I would be their number one fan. It’s all about caring for the materials, which involves an entirely different sort of labor than curating a social media page. How does your archival practice show up in your dance making and vice versa? HC: I tend to be a structural cho- reographer; the form or arc of a dance comes to me before the details of the movement. I find that so much of building, maintaining, and

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dance theater events that often feature archival audio, images, and research sources. Her work seeks to interrogate societal ideas of historical and contemporary womanhood and embraces Jewish themes and the activism and leftist politics which are central to her Jewishness. Hallie is currently a Fellow at the Performance Project at University Settlement. Her recent work has been shown by transvisions, Undiscovered Countries, The Craft, and 7Midnights Physical Research. In addition to her dance practice, Hallie’s poems have been pub- lished by Gigantic Sequins, Indolent Books, and Z Publishing House, and her writings on dance have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Contact Quarterly, Dance Magazine, and Dancegeist Magazine. She has held roles in dance archiving at the Library of Congress, Jacob’s Pillow, and Dance/USA. SARAH NGUYEN (she/they) is an information researcher and movement practitioner, investigat- ing the ephemerality of dance, the processes and ethics of preservation and representation, misin- formation crises among diasporic communities, and privacy of sensitive data. In collaborations with experimental video and audio artists, they use archival records, oral histories, and analog and digital technologies to reimagine memories of trau- ma. Previously, Sarah contributed to programs that advocate for openness and preservation of at-risk media: CUNY City Tech Open Education Resourc- es, Preserve This Podcast, software reproducibility with NYU Bobst, and the Mark Morris Dance Group Archives. Her recent works have been presented at The Craft, 92Y Mobile Dance Film Festival, the Northwest Film Forum’s Local Sightings Film Festi- val, and various technology conferences. Currently, Sarah is a PhD student at the University of Wash- ington Information School, and Archives Fellow for Dance/USA and AXIS Dance Company. 1 Sutherland, Tonia. 2019. “Reading Gesture: Katherine Dunham, the Dunham Technique, and the Vocabulary of Dance as Decolonizing Ar- chival Praxis.” Archival Science 19(2): 167–83. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-019-09308-w 2 Sutherland, Tonia. 2017. “Making a Killing: On Race, Ritual, and (Re)Membering in Digital Cul- ture.” Preservation, Digital Technology & Cul- ture 46(1): 32–40. https://www.degruyter.com/ document/doi/10.1515/pdtc-2017-0025/html 3 Sutherland, Tonia. 2019. “Social Media and the Black Travel Community: From Autonomous Space to Liberated Space.” http://scholarspace. manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/59657 4 https://www.bam.org/dance/2018/halfway-to- dawn 5 Carbone, Kathy Michelle. 2017. “Artists and Re- cords: Moving History and Memory.” Archives and Records 38(1): 100–118. https://doi.org/10. 1080/23257962.2016.1260446 6 The concept of “jazz time” was brought up during a series of classes with Nia-Amina Amor, movement artist and educator (https:// velocitydancecenter.org/artists/nia-amina-minor/), during the Seattle Festival of Dance + Improvisation 2021 summer series. Their workshop series was titled “The Move: Experiments from Inside the Groove” where we explored the history of Black social dance, jazz, and rhythm through movement of our bodies.

which offers access to their materials— another gray area which I hope to acti- vate in my creative work. SN: Ugh, your piece and description is so beautiful, Hallie. It reminds me of the idea that there is no such thing as a neutral archivist or archives and each viewer brings in their own biases and relationships that shape the nar- rative. In contrast, my recent work is more about creating archives for the stories that have been traditionally invisibilized by institutional archives, so my intentions are to center the underserved voices even if they don’t follow “archival best practices.” In September 2020, a few personal life events happened in the midst of the pandemic and heightened social inequalities: I graduated from a Mas- ters in Library and Information Sci- ence program, I moved from New York City back to the West Coast, and I started an Information Science PhD program (first generation in my fam- ily). Also, I’d been growing out my long, pin straight, thick, black, vir- gin (no chemicals) and remy (cut and tied in its natural direction) hair for a decade and it was time to cut it. In light of these moments, I conjured an experimental dance film in preparation to shave my hair and start fresh. This is the contemporary history that moti- vated the dance film you saw in March 2020, 30 x 3 virgin remy: $200 OBO . Inspired by Jeff Friedman’s research on oral histories and “time conscious- ness and embodied communication,” I recorded an oral history with my mother about her life as a six-year-old in rural Viet Nam during 1972-1974. Her memories navigate her auntie’s long hair, how it symbolized luxury and malevolence, even though her auntie was the only family member who accepted her parents’ forbidden mixed Teochew and Vietnamese mar- riage. After my mother’s father was imprisoned by the Communist party and her mother was banned from bringing her mixed heritage children into her parents’ home, my mother’s

auntie generously took my mother and her siblings in to live and work on her farm. In collaboration with musician and video artist, Ramin Rahni, we cre- ated movement and music following the story’s disjointed narration that is common to many immigrants’ sto- rytelling of past traumas. After more than 45 years, this was the first time my mother was comfortable recalling and sharing these fragmented memo- ries, similar to the complex and multi- layer identities you mentioned, Hallie. To accompany the oral history, we browsed Library of Congress cat- alogs, Internet Archive, and other homegrown online libraries to pull inspiration from Viet Nam specific musical instruments, dance, apparel, and imagery. It was disappointing to find the majority centered images from a U.S. soldier’s perspective, exoticization of Vietnamese villagers, or tropical tourism. Luckily, I had access to old family albums. I digitized and incorporated these paper ephemera into the dance film. Similar to what you said, Hal- lie, there’s much labor and context involved in building an archive; I had to do the tedious labor to situ- ate the context of my mother’s bud- ding archive and set up a stable 3-2-1 backup plan — the foundational backup strategy that any person con- cerned with preservation should fol- low. In short, 3-2-1 means creating three copies of the object to be pre- served, saving each copy in three dif- ferent locations, saving one copy for daily access, and the other two for longer term storage. Existing archives do not represent my Vietnamese American experience, so I create dance using archival mate- rials as a means to regenerate mem- ories as a reimagined creative space, moving through and with trauma without letting the sorrow overpower potential joys and justices in life. HALLIE CHAMETZKY (she/her) is a performer, choreographer, writer, and archivist grateful- ly residing in East Harlem, New York City. Her choreographic work unites movement and text in

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u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n amp l i f y u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n a p l i f y I we write ourselves as we move 44 Gough Street, Suite 201 San Francisco, CA 94103 www.dancersgroup.org | rs r . r I WAS BORN , in the early 1980s in the coastal city of Durban, South Africa, to a nurse and a lawyer. My parents named me after their mothers: Bathobile Angeline Maphanga and Jane Mgijima. I grew up in the township of Clermont, which sits approximately 20km west of Durban in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Clermont was one of the first areas where Black South Africans could buy and own small properties during apartheid. My grandmother Bathobile had bought a couple of properties to ensure that her kids would always have a roof over their heads, and the house we lived in together she willed to me, her first and only grandchild, at the time of her death. I write from the comfort of this home now, almost 40 years later. by THOBILE JANE MAPHANGA

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Back and forth, I have moved between learning and unlearning

SEEKING VOICE I boarding, who didn’t want to allow me a pass out to per- form at the Elizabeth Sned- don Theatre when my dance teacher had arranged for us to be part of a show that featured studios from around the city. I think that was the first time I had ever fought for what I really wanted, and won. St Mary’s offered a wide range of extramu- ral activities from music, ballet, and Spanish dancing to squash, gymnas- tics, and diving. Modern dance was the only thing I did religiously—I never missed a class in nine years. Winning my first significant fight for my freedom to express myself through dance gave me the power to stand up for what I wanted and unleashed my voice. At the university currently known as Rhodes, I discovered physical the- atre and contemporary dance. I loved how it encouraged individuality and, at first, I was surprised that people remember in high school fighting with the head of without dance backgrounds were allowed to participate. I was soon asked to train and perform with the resident dance company, The First Physical Theatre Company, becom- ing one of the youngest student per- formers to be allowed in the com- pany back then. We learned and used various techniques like Horton, Gra- ham, and Laban. I never really won- dered about what other dance forms existed outside the western canon I had been exposed to. It’s only more recently that I remember once, whilst

less than 10km from my home. Upon being dropped off for the first time at nine years old, my then wid- owed mother looked me straight in the eyes and commanded me to speak English and read as much as I could, before hugging me good- bye that summer afternoon. She had to put me into the boarding pro- gram because the only way she could afford the fees was if she took on extra work. Working night shifts at the hospital and moonlighting as an occupational nurse at various plants and factories during weekdays, I only saw my mother during holidays or mandatory half terms for the next ten years. She only got a full night’s rest every second week and on week- ends for the duration of those ten years. Understanding her determi- nation to give me the best education she couldn’t afford, I was determined not to let her sacrifices go to waste. I was the only Black girl in my class and the youngest Black kid in boarding when I started at St. Mary’s. It was a rule that no ver- nacular languages were to be spo- ken on school grounds. I made friends with the youngest boarder, a white girl from Zululand, whose parents would sometimes take me home with them on the weekends. I learned to ride bikes and horses on their rose and sugar cane farm. She introduced me to modern dance, which would become a place of solace for me, the dance studio one of the only places where I felt fully comfortable, where I didn’t have to think, I could just do, and my body did, with ease.

still at school, my aunt asking if I wanted to learn the dances that izin- tombi zakwaZulu (young Zulu maid- ens) learned. To her face, I politely declined; I was a St. Mary’s girl after all. Privately I scoffed, thinking, what would I do with that? Hav- ing had limited to no contact for so many years with any of my indig- enous cultures, I didn’t understand the value or opportunity I was being offered. Recently, in my return to academic study at the University of KwaZulu -Natal, and in the process of trying to decolonize my mind through acknowl- edging, questioning, and unlearning my perspective on life and education, I have begun to consider both my dance and verbal language lineages. In a similar way that English is my go-to language through conditioning, although it is neither my mother’s nor my father’s tongue, modern/ contemporary dance are my go-to vocabularies. It’s a lot easier to identify the verbal disparity, but I find myself struggling to determine my true dance language. I express myself in certain ways based on the rules and limita- tions of each language. As Frantz Fanon (1952) writes, “To speak means to be in a posi- tion to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to sup- port the weight of a civilisation” (Fanon, 1952: 17-18).

SOUNDS OF MY YOUTH A lthough I’m an only child, my home was always full. Aun- ties, cousins, and family friends who had come seeking shelter from less favourable inland parts of South Africa, or to work or study in Durban, often stayed with us as they found their feet. As a result there were many tongues spoken in our home. My mother was from Kimber- ley in the Northern Cape, approxi- mately 800 km west of Durban. The Northern Cape is where the original languages of the ta, Khoi and San people were spoken in their various dialects, eventually mixed with the languages of the migrating Nguni

father spoke five languages. I remember as a small child my parents would fight in Afrikaans, the language of the oppressive apart- heid government, which they had been forced to learn in school. They assumed I wouldn’t understand them because Natal, the last outpost of the English, was not an Afrikaans-speak- ing province. But by the time I was enrolled in St. Mary’s Dioce- san School for Girls (DSG) in 1991, I could express myself in isiZulu, Setswana, Afrikaans, and English, and understood isiXhosa, Sepedi, and Sesotho. St. Mary’s DSG was a world that Black people had had no access to until the 1990s. It was, and remains, a pristine, all girls private school with boarding facilities in the hills of Kloof,

tribes and with those of the Dutch and then English Settlers. Many of these languages and their dialects, which were not preserved nor made official South African languages, have been forgotten and lost. South Africa is an incredibly diverse country; each area has its own dis- tinctive culture, language, and way of being. My mother, who was born to a Zambian father and Xhosa mother, had grown up in an area where Sepedi, Setswana, and Afrikaans were, and still are, the predominant languages. My father, born in Natal to a Zulu woman, father unknown, spoke isiZulu and some English, but moved to live with his aunt in Kim- berley when his mother married a Sesotho man. By the time he returned to Durban as a married man, my

Having attended a private boarding school where I was forced to express

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myself only in English and was exposed to western concert dance forms for ten years, I grew a heightened appreciation for a culture that was not mine. In what was once a desperate attempt to sound as proper as possible and escape the bur- den of being an uneducated Black, so as to gain access to opportunities that people who looked like me couldn’t, I failed to hold on to my own home languages in support of another’s civilization. In acknowledging this conditioning and its effect on how I express myself, I consider my learned languages and my lost languages in my most recent dance film, Sihamba Sizibhala (loosely translated from isiZulu as “we write ourselves as we go/move” ). THE NEGOTIATIONS A s I struggle to recon- cile my learned lan- guages (English and Modern dance) and my lost languages (isi- Zulu, seTswana, and personal move- ment style), I sometimes sound/look foolish and inarticulate when I resort to my lost languages, and affected in my learned languages. I’ve been called “coconut” or a “clever Black” as I try to balance on an ever sharp knife edge. This teetering became one of the main narrative threads of the choreography for my film. I used improvisational techniques to create and then dismember dance phrases that use steps evident in mod- ern and contemporary dance, such as pliés, lunges, and grand battement. The phrases repeat and grow as the film progresses, colliding with phys- ical theatre elements, gestural lan- guage, and pedestrian movement. The phrases are captured from different angles and at varying speeds. The sec- tions are overlapped to create concur- rent lines of narrative that layer jour- ney and disruption. My editing process parallels the choreographic process. Rather than

in G Minor BWV 1001” (performed by Refiloe Olifant, a violinist from the Free State, close to Kimberley); “Step Truth” a pulsating song composed by Durban-based artist Njabulile Nzuza (who performs under the name Oud- skul Omello); and “Omoya” (“those of spirit” in isiZulu), a soothing, acoustic song by Thobekile Mbandla (whose stage name is Ntomb’Yelanga, “daughter of the sun” in isiZulu). This selection reflects the multisonic soundscape of my journey. The film, as the title suggests, reflects the idea of journeying and writing self. The long journey between desert-like Kimberley and tropical Durban, poverty and pos- sibility, is one I have done many times. Back and forth, I have moved between learning and unlearning. OFFERING T he process of making this film has allowed me to think deeply about how I view my own personal history and begin to resolve my own demons. By excavating my own story as prac- tice and research, I consider what it means to connect history-making in the present to what our future selves might refer to and build on, know- ing what we know. I hope in creating this work I have created a space for others to begin to consider how they might be writing, speaking, or danc- ing themselves into history in the now moment. THOBILE JANE MAPHANGA is a Durban based dance practitioner, creative collaborator, and emerging writer whose current preoccupa- tion is with Black female narratives and how Black women are writing themselves into history in the now. Through her research, which is theory and practice led, she explores where and how Black women use their voices and where these voices can be found. Through self-study she journeys to find her authentic voice and learn her true self through processes of questioning and unlearning. Her research methods include, but are not limited to, sitting in wait, listening, and improvisation.

using editing tools to make my film “sound proper,” I chose to amplify the tension between perfection and real- ity, to reveal the cracks in a way that starts to blur what is a mistake, what is improvised, and what is rehearsed. This act of revealing my shaky bits is risky on three counts—as a dancer, woman, and Black, I am held to impossible standards. In revealing my flaws, I empower myself by owning my imperfections. The edit follows the movement of the mistakes I make while dancing. The film is set mainly in two loca- tions. First, I move along the dusty pathway of an open field with win- tery dried grasses, never making it onto the tarred road at the end. My movement vocabulary is linear and repetitive here, a series of multiple attempts at the same choreography that I purposefully rehearsed bare- foot, on stable ground, and then performed in boots on uneven ter- rain. My balance is shot at first, but the more times I run the phrases the better it gets. As I tire, my sweat becomes visible. I repeat the phrase at varying speeds, allowing the camera to keep rolling a little after I falter, capturing my reactions. Sometimes I laugh, sometimes I swear, sometimes I keep going. My costume in this space is an old turquoise bridesmaid’s dress that belonged to an aunty of mine, found in an old suitcase that also fea- tures in the film. Other props include a well thumbed Oxford dictionary, a history book titled The European World 1870-1961, and my old South African passports. The second location is an opening in a cool, green bamboo forest. Here, my movements became limited and shaky on the unstable, decaying ground. The choreography plays on two polari- ties, erratic and quiet. There are no props in this location; the costume is two identically patterned kaftans that belonged to my mother, one black, the other white. The sound score moves between Bach’s “Unaccompanied Solo Sonata

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my training and knowledge of mod- ern and contemporary dance forms. In India, I had completed my Bach- elor’s in English Literature, and came to SJSU for a second Bachelor’s in Dance. At SJSU, I studied Modern, Jazz, and Ballet. My years at SJSU were extremely challenging because almost everyone had grown up taking classes in these forms, whereas I hadn’t taken my first Jazz class until the age of seventeen. I was often dis- couraged by the gap between me and my peers when it came to technique but when it came to choreography,

its roots and looking at it in relation to other Indian Contemporary artists. When I was a child, I held a piece of dance history in my hands—my grandmother’s diary from her time at the Uday Shankar Dance Cen- ter in Almora, a town in the state of Uttarakhand, India. My grand- mother attended “The Center” as she called it in 1945. I grew up lis- tening to her stories about Shankar, looking through photographs of her in various costumes and of Shankar in rehearsal with his dance troupe. I vividly remember her talking about a piece based on machinery; in my imagination the work consisted of bodies forming enormous struc- tures and moving parts in physically impossible ways. Uday Shankar pioneered an idiom of movement in the 1930s that he called Creative Dance. It was devised from different dance forms includ- ing Indian classical and folk dance forms, like Bharatnatyam, Katha- kali, and Manipuri, and Western forms like ballet and expressionist dance. Shankar was the brother of the famous sitar virtuoso Ravi Shan- kar, who danced in his brother’s dance troupe for a few years before he began his study of music. Inspired by painting, sculpture, music, poetry, photography, and theater, Uday brought together various aesthetic sensibilities from the East and the West, collaborating with artists, including the ballerina Anna Pav- lova. Despite or perhaps because of the fact that Uday was not formally trained in any particular dance form, he is widely recognized as the father of Indian Contemporary Dance. My own dance training mirrors the eclecticism of Shankar’s choreo- graphic practice. It began during my childhood in India where I spent time practicing yoga with my grandmother, learning dances for weddings and cultural events, and dabbling in different classi- cal and folk dance forms, including Bharatanatyam, Odissi, and Bihu.

When I approached Nair about it, he said I would have to learn Chhau. So I started training in Mayur- bhanj Chhau with his guru, Guru J.J. Sai Babu at the Natya Ballet Centre in New Delhi, where I also began to study Kathak with Guru Geetanjali Lal. Unlike Chhau, Kathak has a very upright posture with intricate wrist movements, fast rhythmic footwork as well as chakkars where one turns on the heel of the foot. I did get to assist in the creation of an all-women work soon after. In the meantime, I applied to study in the US to deepen

My formal dance training began with Jazz with Ashley Lobo at The Dance- worx in New Delhi, during my col- lege years. I was drawn to the staccato movements, leg extensions, pop music, and discipline required of the form. After four years of Jazz training, I went to study Indian Contempo- rary Dance with Santosh Nair who had been a part of Narendra Shar- ma’s modern Indian dance com- pany. Sharma himself had origi- nally been part of Shankar’s dance troupe. Nair’s background was in Kathakali and Mayurbhanj Chauu, a dance form that incorporates ele- ments of martial arts and move- ments inspired by nature and daily life. For instance, there are move- ments informed by the parting of hair, applying a tika to the forehead, and washing dishes, as well as the movements of water and the walk of a stork. It is a powerful dance form: the basic posture is a deep plié-like position called chauk. With Nair, I had to find a sort of fluidity in my torso and a more grounded posture that was in contrast to my Jazz training. His choreography drew heavily on Mayurbhanj Chhau, consisting of asymmetrical postures, held balances, and quick floor work, and demanding a certain athleticism. His choreography developed organ- ically through improvisation and movement tasks assigned to the danc- ers, and explored abstract themes as well as Hindu mythological stories. I hoped to perform with Nair’s company, but the gender gap seemed an obstacle. The company was male-dominated, and the men, who were deeply trained in Mayurbhanj Chhau, had a better grasp of Nair’s style and were thereby given featured roles. As a woman, my roles were limited; I recall handing the men their swords while they performed a dynamic Chhau segment in one par- ticular work. I craved an all-women work with the sort of dynamic chore- ography Nair choreographed for the men. I also wanted more stage time.

BY ISHIKA SETH TRACING roots drew me to it. After teaching, perform- ing, and choreographing with the com- A Perspective on Indian Contemporary Dance

I CAME TO THE US from India in 2003 to attain my BA in Dance from San Jose State University. Hoping to pursue a career in dance in the US, I approached Mona Khan Company, a Bollywood Dance company, upon grad- uation for teaching opportunities. I had never studied Bollywood Dance but the familiarity of the music and the culture

pany for several years, I went on to become the Assistant Artistic Director and continued in that position for over a decade. Now, as I restart my journey as an independent artist, I am trying to articulate what my style of Indian Con- temporary Dance looks like by tracing

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10 QUESTIONS in 10 MINUTES

I was in my element. Learning how to craft choreographic works, how to manipulate time, space, and energy, was life-changing. To this day, I draw from the notes from my choreogra- phy classes with Fred Mathews. As an Indian immigrant with both formal and informal training in diverse dance forms, I have devel- oped an Indian Contemporary cho- reographic practice that references various dance styles based on the con- cept of the work. Sometimes I make a conscious choice to dissect form, adding petit allegro footwork from

Even though many artists are drawn to Indian Contemporary because it allows room for individual expres- sion, those coming from classical dance backgrounds often face deri- sion. There is this underlying anx- iety about the dilution of Classical dance forms when they step into the contemporary space. Some believe that the purity of the Classical form has to be preserved while others are less concerned with preservation and more interested in artistic evolution. Traditionalists often become cultural gatekeepers who don’t want to see these dance forms diluted or used in settings that they deem inappropriate. Indian Contemporary is an idiom that acknowledges but is not bound by tradition. My style is born of a col- lision of tradition and innovation, one that reflects my reality as an immi- grant, Indian woman. It provides a way of creating that enables me to be true to who I am. I believe that a dance form is not more sacrosanct than the artists who embody it. Indian Contemporary helps me to acknowl- edge my childhood learning while articulating the importance of formal training. The body memories of these different forms enable me to create in a richer way than if I were to chase the elusive purity of a single form. It is also an act of resistance to value cultural and folk dance forms rather than seeing them as less than Indian Classical and Euro-centric dance forms. Indian Contemporary dance is a living, breathing, ever-changing, and evolving form, so my idea of it keeps evolving as well. Ultimately, I choose my own voice, messy with overlap- ping textures, a disarray of roots but with endless possibilities to explore. ISHIKA SETH (she/her) is a South Asian chore- ographer, dancer, dance educator, immigrant, storyteller & mom based in the Bay Area. She was the Assistant Artistic Director of the Mona Khan Company from 2011-21. Since 2007, Ishika has presented her work at various venues in & around the Bay Area and also self-produced shows at NOHSpace & CounterPULSE in collaboration with other artists .

interested in abstraction and more in excavating stories from my life, expe- riences, culture, and engaging with social and political issues. For dancers who practice South Asian Classical Dance forms, just stretching the boundaries of a partic- ular form can push it into the realm of contemporary. But to an audi- ence only vaguely familiar with, say, Bharatanatyam, it may still resemble Bharatanatyam; they may not see the nuanced changes, the deliberate bend- ing of form, the subtle breaking from tradition. The practitioner, however,

WITH ANDRÉA SPEARMAN

TRADITIONALISTS OFTEN BECOME cultural gatekeepers who don’t want to see these dance forms diluted or used in settings that they deem inappropriate.

Prior to Covid, I had often thought of producing a “(wo)man on the street”-style series where I would chat up dancers and dance sup- porters outside of classes, perfor- mances, auditions, studios, etc. Since last year that idea has shifted and manifested itself into a 10 minute Zoom interview where we gave absolutely no heads up about potential questions to the interviewees. Ha! They only knew they’d be asked about their dance background and cur- rent artistry. And I did ask them to show us their favorite dance move. Enjoy! Quick insights with the local Bay Area Dance Community

Alyssa Mitchel

ballet to Kathak hand gestures, for example. But mostly, the release and flow of contemporary, hand gestures of Kathak, the expressiveness and lyri- cism of Bollywood, narrative structure of Indian Classical dance, contrac- tions and swings from modern dance, vocabulary from Mayurbhanj Chhau, and most recently, elements of waack- ing emerge together on their own. In addition to drawing from the multiple techniques I’ve studied, my version of Indian Contemporary Dance relies heavily on storytelling. Storytelling is an intrinsic part of South Asian culture, and for me, it is the act of storytelling rather than the traditional stories themselves that influence the form. Initially, after graduating from SJSU, my works were more abstract and modern. But a decade of dancing with Mona Khan Company added a lyrical element to my choreography. Even in Bolly- wood, the lyrical interpretation orig- inates from Classical dance forms where the mudras (hand gestures) are deeply meaningful and can be very specific, like depicting a tree, or a bow and arrow. Now, most of my works evoke a theme or idea, and I am less

may identify as an Indian Contem- porary artist because they are delib- erately dissecting the form or using traditional movement to explore con- temporary themes. For example, Nava Dance Theater uses Bharatanatyam to explore contemporary themes such as the MeToo movement. Even though the movement draws from Nava artis- tic director Nadhi Thakkek’s training in Bharatanatyam, training her danc- ers share, the themes are contempo- rary. New York-based artist Amita Batra defines herself as a storytelling artist who draws inspiration from the ideologies and techniques of various dance styles, most prominently mod- ern, contemporary, and kathak. And Amit Patel, a Bay Area artist, blends Indian and Western dance forms to break gender stereotypes and explore his identity as a first-generation Amer- ican and Queer Desi. Further, the diversity of South Asian classical and folk dance forms further complicates any effort to define an Indian Contem- porary aesthetic. An Indian Contem- porary dancer with an Odissi back- ground looks different from someone with Kathak training, or another who primarily practices Garba.

Jessica Recinos

Sawako Gannon

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