We relied on each other and we knew it. We weren’t fooling ourselves into the myth of self sufficiency, we were aware that we were all being raised by the entire community. We were less aware that we were indeli- bly forming each other’s personalities, value-systems, and sense of identity 5 . We were transforming and had no doubt that we were doing it together. Adolescence is cyclically relevant right now. If being a teen is the time when we are supposed to break our previous ways of seeing our reality in order to make room for a newly cen- tered adulthood, we are in a collective adolescence at the moment. An inher- ent part of puberty is that discomfort is necessary for growth. That’s a les- son from adolescence I am holding on to in order to survive transformation 6 . Discomfort is necessary for growth but it passes, it always passes. Like adolescence, this is a massive moment of awkwardly moving through and towards 7 , the exhilaration 8 and the doom 9 and the overcompensation 10 , the behaving as if we’ve already made it to the other side as a way of coping with the chaos of transformation 11 . Honestly, I am not sure how long adolescence on a collective scale 12 really lasts but I atm trying to lean 5 It was something about how we were all so radically different. Have you ever played that card-matching game called “Set”? The gist is that you look at a grid of nine cards on the table, all with different colors, shapes, and shadings and you need to find sets of three. Without getting too deep into it, on one end of the Set spectrum is 3 cards that are very alike (all red for example) and the other end of the spectrum is three cards that share absolutely no quality. We were a set like that, a group that clicked perfectly together because we were all fully different. 6 Actually can I say thrive? Let’s say thrive through transformation. 7 Awkward is okay and there is a future we are moving towards even if we cannot see it clearly. 8 The energy of this time is charged, we will not always be over- whelmed, we may later look back and long for this electricity. 9 “No matter how bad things get, they are always changing” - T.L. Simmons, Long Lost Oakland. 10 Performance is a big part of figuring all of this out, if you are faking it someone else is too. What are you performing and why? 11 We used to think the cashiers at the liquor stores in the Dimond probably really thought that L was 22 and that we all definitely needed to go to the East Coast for college because we were big city people destined for all the glamor and adulthood that the other coast had in store for us. The ideas we have for a more just future are here with us now but they don’t yet exist, some of them will come, some of them will transform, we will transform alongside. 12 You’re thinking what I’m thinking, right? This pandemic, this social and political upheaval, this climate crisis, this war, this Octavia-E.-Butler-tru- ly-was-a-seer apocalyptic reality has to be transformation, right? There is something on the other side. This is what being on the way feels like, right?
Dance community as a place where we meet with our bodies, speaking in expansion and contraction, in energy and force, softness and articulation. Screaming on the sidelines during practice to give the team energy or pressing your thumb into a strang- er’s psoas because we are learning to release tension together. Laying our bodies down together or letting our bodies be alone. Learning to ask “what does my body need in this moment” over and over and over again and knowing that the answer will be differ- ent over and over and over again. Something about how people who find themselves in dance space meet each other relationally, physically, empathetically. I guess what I’m trying to say is that if home is just that, a sense of belong- ing, then dance helped me learn to belong in my own body. What I am trying to say is: thank you to the teach- ers who brought me that gift, offered that to me as I was growing into myself, the ones who affirmed my voice and my grounding in my body. Thank you Pope Flyne. Thank you Day1s 15. Thank you Zafra Miriam. Thank you Dawn James. Thank you Capital Funk. Thank you Oakland even though you’ve changed. Thank you body even though I’ve changed. HANNAH MELEOAKAIAO AYASSE (she/they) is born and based in Huichin, Ohlone Land also called Oakland, CA. She is a dance artist, adminis- trator, curator, and educator whose work explores deep listening and improvisational practice within interpersonal and environmental relationships. Grounded in community building and creating, Hannah serves as CounterPulse’s Program Director, co-curates the Performance Primers and teaches Creative Movement to children aged 3-7 at Shawl Anderson Dance Center. Hannah has presented her own work at Joe Goode Annex, San Francisco Center for the Book, SAFEhouse Arts, Albany Bulb, and various DIY spaces throughout the Bay Area. Hannah holds a BA in Dance and Psychology from The George Washington University and has con- tinued her dance training and performance with various dance companies throughout the Bay Area and Germany.
Dance community throughout the years.
Dance community was the kids everyone wanted to be in high school. Dance community was the pre-show announcement not to scream the dancers’ names during the perfor- mance because it was distracting and then everyone doing it anyway 14. Dance community was the famil- iarity of home through the Hip Hop team in college. A respite from the courses that counted as college credit and brought a realization that dance could also be cerebral. A reminder that my first entry point to dance was music, was a drum, a mirror for the heartbeat. Dance community was discover- ing and living into my queerness as a young adult. Looking around and seeing that the people who could imagine taking on the choreogra- phy of their own time, their own life, were the peers that kept dancing or started dancing after unmooring from the institution of school. Then even within the widening world of dance and art-making on our own terms, the people who reflected my own experience were all queer. Dance community as a foil for whatever it needs to be at the time. 14 Ms. James getting on the mic from the tech booth between dances saying “I repeat, kindly do not holler at the dancers during the per- formance or we will need to bring the lights up.” But she knew, we all knew, when you are moved you’ve got to holler. When you’re 16 sitting down in a dark room watching your best friend jump and fly, your voice is all you have to bring your body closer. My friends in the audience were still children enough to participate and almost adult enough to be afraid to be seen in the light.
into it while it’s here. I am trying to remember a changing body and I am trying to remember belonging. I am reminding myself that I know how to change and I know how to belong because I was taught how to change and how to belong. I think maybe this is part of why I am still dancing. Dance taught me these lessons through physical practice and social reliability. I could talk forever about improvisa- tion and the ephemeral nature of per- formance and outline all the ways that
dance teaches the body to shift. A cho- reographer I once trained with used to say “Once it’s polished, it’s died.” 13 He knew that the goal was not to reach anything certain. He knew that the practice and performance of live, body- based art relied on the aliveness of change. He used improvisational scores and small shifts and changes in the plan as a way to keep the performers alert, awake, and engaged on stage. Dancers understand the near impossibility of
doing any one thing in exactly the same way every time because sometimes we try. We understand that striving for and achieving perfection do not have to go hand in hand. We practice listening to what arises and following impulses and presence presence presence. That’s the physical stuff. Then, there is the social. Then, there is the reliable formula of finding the dance class, finding the dance team, find- ing the dance floor when I wanted to find community.
13 Hannes Langolf
15 Y, J, L, J, M
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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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
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