BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT

Talia Bailes is the founder and director of Ballet and Books, a national nonprofit organization striving to reduce the literacy gap through the hybrid storytelling of dance and reading. Talia founded Ballet and Books in 2017 with a belief that dance can be used as a connector across differences and as a way to build literacy. Here, she shares the impetus for the organization and how she’s seen Ballet and Books make a difference.

All photos courtesy Ballet and Books Instagram.

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Can you first share a little about yourself and your relationship with dance to give a sense of where you’re coming from?

I grew up doing ballet. I started at age three and danced until I was 18. I decided I wanted to explore the world before going to college, so I went to rural Ecuador through a bridge year program. I lived in an Amazonian town in Ecuador with a host family and danced with a traditional Indigenous dance group. We did folkloric dances local to the area. My dance worldview expanded. When I came back, I kept dancing but did more contemporary. I am now pursuing medicine, but I kept dancing through college and have done a lot of research on dance in the Americas.

How did Ballet and Books get started?

The initial idea came after the gap year. While I was in Ecuador, I taught English at a school and worked at a health clinic. I found the kids I was teaching were excellent storytellers but not great readers. When I came back to the US, I was interested in how kids learn to learn, how the environment influences learning. I worked with a pediatrician at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital who looked at when kids fall off track with reading. He was looking at kids’ brains through MRIs and what nerve pathways are connected when kids hear stories or are read to, as well as how primary care can be an avenue to track literacy rates.

Because of these two experiences in Ecuador and with the pediatrician, along with my own dance background, I wondered how these experiences could come together. The goal was never for it to be a giant national nonprofit. I started small in the community I was in as a student at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. But then I started getting interest across the country with people wanting to start their own programs in their own communities bringing together literacy and dance.

How is Ballet and Books organized?

The format of the program is driven by the community partners we work with. We work out of university campuses, so college students basically run their own mini nonprofit. The college students partner with a community organization, like a community center, library, Head Start program etc. to put on a free dance and literacy program once a week. We train the college students, and the college students put on the programming on a semester basis. We have a three-to-five-year-old class, and a six-to-nine-year-old class. The structure of the class is an hour and a half long and is divided into 45 minutes of dance followed by 45 minutes of one-on-one mentorship using our integrated dance literacy curriculum that we’ve worked with different experts on over the years to finesse. The children have the same college student mentor each week during that mentorship component. The reason we work with college students is because we feel we can empower the next generation to make a difference in their communities by teaching them how to engage directly with children.

Can you share more about the curriculum?

The curriculum we developed integrates both dance and literacy. It’s trying to teach literacy through dance. For example, we can clap to poems or clap to syllables. We do jumping, clapping, and stomping to the beats of a songs. We read books and then make up dances to the story. We basically bring in movement when we’re language learning. It helps kids who learn in different ways and gets them excited about reading.

It doesn’t sound like Ballet and Books focuses specifically on ballet.

We call it Ballet and Books, but we’re not limited to ballet. Our classes do start with first position and second position. Ballet is typically an exclusionary artform, and we’re trying to open it up, so children everywhere are welcome in our program.

Can you share the profile of the average child who engages with Ballet and Books?

Our population is traditionally children who do not have access to typical dance programs or literacy engagement opportunities, and that can be for a variety of reasons: socioeconomic, learning abilities, physical abilities, etc. Our program is entirely free. We provide leotards, tights, or dancewear that is appropriate for each child who participates. Our typical child is from the lower income bracket. We know there’s this literacy gap that exists where children in lower income families hear far fewer words than their affluent peers.

How does Ballet and Books recruit families to participate?

Critical to the program is community engagement. The local community partner is doing the recruiting of the children. They know the children and families best. We intentionally partner with community organizations who can help bring in a diverse array of children.

How is it funded?

It’s funded through individual donors, grants, fundraising, and support from universities.

Do you have a favorite anecdote to share about Ballet and Books’ work with children?

A little girl came to us when she was three in the process of getting adopted out of the foster care system. She was so shy and nervous. She came wearing a full princess dress and didn’t want to dance. She would sit in the corner with her parent. Slowly she started sitting by herself. Then she would stand next to us but wouldn’t dance during the class. When it came time for the final performance, her parents were worried she wouldn’t get onstage. It was a huge beautiful stage at Cornell with 800 people in the audience. She ended up getting onstage and performed the whole dance. Her parents sent me an email later that her new family was sitting in the audience crying. They went after and got a dancing Barbie, and the little girl named it Talia after me. I still talk to the mom, and the little girl is still dancing. She’s found her thing. And it was incredible that we were able to offer that opportunity.

Do you have any metrics on how successful Ballet and Books is?

We’re in the middle of doing an evaluation with pediatricians at the University of Michigan, so we don’t have quantitative data. But we have a lot of qualitative data, mostly feedback from parents. For example, one parent had a daughter with selective mutism. The parent told us that she saw her daughter develop over the semester she was involved with Ballet and Books, she came out of her shell and started talking more to people at home and at school. That tells us that the curriculum is age appropriate and working. Beyond that, we have data from mentors showing this program is impactful. Really the best indicator is whether people return. So many of our children return, as well as our mentors. So we think we’re doing something right.

What’s next for you or for Ballet and Books?

We’re always starting new chapters out of universities. We just started a new program out of the University of Michigan’s dance program, so their students get credit for participating. We’re also expanding our board. Finally, we’re working on this research project to show impact. Data should be finalized in the spring 2025.

What’s next for me is graduating from medical school soon. I am interested in becoming a pediatrician. Obviously, I’m interested in community health. I think medicine has a unique opportunity and plays a unique role in the health of the community. And personally, I’ll always be a dancing doc.

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To learn more, visit www.balletandbooks.org.

The post Where Dance and Literacy Meet appeared first on Stance on Dance.

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT

Vicky Holt Takamine is the kumu hula, or master hula teacher, of Pua Aliʻi ʻIlima, and the executive director of PAʻI Foundation, which serves to preserve and perpetuate native Hawaiian arts and cultural traditions for future generations. She reflects on how hula has expanded outside of Hawaiʻi, how hula has evolved, and how her hula practice and native Hawaiian activism go hand in hand.

Note: This interview was first published in Stance on Dance’s fall/winter 2024 print issue. To learn more, visit stanceondance.com/print-publication.

Pua Aliʻi ʻIlima performs in front of the Iolani Palace, Photo courtesy Vicky Holt Takamine

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What was the impetus for founding PAʻI Foundation?

I had been dancing hula for my kumu, Maiki Aiu Lake, since I was 12 and my sister was 10. We both had our ʻūniki graduation ritual in 1975. Two years later in 1977 I started my own hālau (or school), Pua Aliʻi ʻIlima. We participated in several hula festivals: Prince Lot Hula Festival, Merrie Monarch Festival, King Kamehameha Hula Competition.

In 1997, the state legislature introduced a bill that would restrict native Hawaiian gathering rights, which meant that all native Hawaiian practitioners would have to go the Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources, have a list of all the ferns, flowers, fish, shells, etc. they gathered for cultural practices, and have a clear preponderance of evidence that their great-great-grandparents had practiced gathering those materials prior to 1893. I went to the state legislature and testified against the bill because it would restrict our cultural practices. I wanted to understand who was introducing these bills. It ended up being large developers who wanted a clear title to their land. All land in Hawaiʻi is subject to the rights of native Hawaiians to exercise their traditional customary practices. Hula is part of that. Some of our ʻūniki graduation rituals require the presence of natural materials from our forests and oceans. If that’s not present, how do we comply with the requirements of our traditional customary practices? I organized a large gathering of kumu hula and cultural practitioners, and we literally shut down the capitol building by chanting for 24 hours so they couldn’t answer phones or have a vote. After 20 years of being a kumu, I became labeled as a native Hawaiian activist in the news. I was okay with that. I became an advocate for the protection of our native Hawaiian resources and our sacred sites.

Around that same time, the state convention center was built. The state legislature commissioned almost two million dollars’ worth of artwork from people who were not Hawaiian. Not one penny went to a native Hawaiian artist. They said, “Oh, we have some artifacts from the Bishop Museum.” I responded, “So no contemporary native Hawaiian artist was commissioned from two million of my tax dollars?” I concluded that the state didn’t support native Hawaiian artists, so I lobbied the state legislature for two years and petitioned them to help me create an Office of Native Hawaiian Arts and Culture. I got turned down, so I decided to start a nonprofit to fill that void. That was the impetus behind PAʻI Foundation.

Pua Aliʻi ʻIlima performs in front of the Iolani Palace, Photo courtesy Vicky Holt Takamine

PAʻI Foundation is a large organization with many facets. Are there some parts of its programming you’d like to share more about?

When we started in 2001, one of the first things we did was partner with the Bishop Museum – which houses one of the largest collections of archival documents and artifacts pertaining to the history and culture of our people from hundreds of years – to create a Native Hawaiian Arts Festival – MAMo. As part of that event we held a marketplace and art exhibit in the Bishop Museum. It got me thinking: Art is not just what we frame and put on a wall, it’s what we wear, our tattoos, our lei-making, our costuming. I wanted to celebrate that facet, so we started the MAMo Wearable Art Show. We wear our art. Part of the wearable art show evolved from traditional to contemporary fashion design. That started in 2006.

Last year we did our first Māhū Madness where we celebrated our LGBTQ+ community by doing a drag show. Many of my friends in the hula business are māhū, but they don’t get a chance to be māhū in the way they want to be represented. We provided the same venue as our fashion show with the best lighting, sound, technology, and staging. It was an elegant affair for the māhū community, and we sold out.

MAMo Wearable Art show, Photo courtesy Mahina Choy-Ellis

Now I want to change gears to discuss hula. How has appreciation and access to hula changed since you started practicing hula in the 1960s?

Hula has grown and expanded outside of Hawaiʻi. We have hula practitioners all over the world. I see it as an opportunity to educate people about Hawaiian culture, caring for our land, our natural resources, and our sacred sites. I’m fine with hula being practiced beyond Hawaiʻi as long as they provide a platform for us to share. Hula as a hobby is one thing, but for me, hula is resistance. It’s been one of the key cultural practices that has helped us retain our language, our traditional practices, our history, and our genealogy, because it’s all buried in the chants that were composed a long time ago. Hula has been responsible for reclaiming lost traditions. We can dig into our Hawaiian history and pull out the stories to share with the next generation.

Hula is an Indigenous dance form. Do you see it as a good thing that more and more people without Hawaiian heritage are practicing and learning hula, or is something lost when non-Indigenous people have access to an Indigenous form?

I hope they become advocates for the protection of the things I’m passionate about. If you’re taking hula in Albuquerque, or Norway, or Japan, when it comes to the rights of native Hawaiians to exercise our traditional customary practices, I hope you become an advocate in your own community and become part of that mission.

I don’t really teach outside of Hawaiʻi because my fight is here as an activist. The people I teach here are going to be on the front lines with me. Those on the fringes can better educate about our community and why that fight is so important to native Hawaiians. I’m fine with other people doing hula, but I want them to understand they have a responsibility to the native people to be an advocate and a protector.

Pua Aliʻi ʻIlima, Photo courtesy The Merrie Monarch Festival, Photo by Cody Yamaguchi

I understand that there are two types of hula: hula kahiko (ancient hula) and hula ‘auana (hula that evolved from hula kahiko in response to Western influences in the 1800s). I’m curious if you can share more about these distinctions. Do these two categories ever overlap or blur?

I’ve been a judge for Merrie Monarch for many years. Hula kahiko and hula ‘auana are the two main categories. Very simply, hula kahiko is ancient style, not ancient, accompanied by chanting and traditional percussion instruments. You can write hula kahiko today. It’s not going to be ancient, but the style in which you chant and perform is going to be using traditional percussion instruments.

In the 1820s, when the missionaries arrived in Hawaiʻi, they introduced hymns. In really ancient kahiko style, the poetry was written line 1 to line 45, for example, and the dance went from one line to the next, all the way down. When the missionaries introduced hymns, they were written in verse form with two-line or four-line couplets. Hawaiians started to write and compose in that style while still using original percussion instruments. That was the transition from kahiko to ‘auana. Now there were two-line couplets with a melody, as opposed to the ancient style that is pretty much monotone with some ups and downs. Amy Stillman, a musicology professor, calls it hula ku’i style, which is the bridge between ancient and modern.

And then there’s ‘auana music with the introduction of stringed instruments: guitar, ukelele, piano, bass, and singing. The musical accompaniment changes, and naturally the delivery of the movement is different. Whether it’s fast or slow, hula ‘auana is accompanied by stringed and sometimes percussion instruments.

Pua Aliʻi ʻIlima, Photo courtesy The Merrie Monarch Festival, Photo by Cody Yamaguchi

Do you see hula continuing to evolve?

The further you move away from Hawaiʻi, the more it evolves. Kumus like Patrick Makuakāne and Mark Keali’i Ho’omalu in California are influenced by the cultures they are in. They have no problem choreographing hula to Western music. For me, that’s not hula. It has to be Hawaiian language or English about Hawaiʻi. I see it as contemporary dance, not hula. Mark Keali’i Ho’omalu takes Hawaiian words and puts it to a hip hop beat. That has been controversial. When you move away, you’re influenced by the music that surrounds you. Here in Hawaiʻi, I hear Hawaiian music all day. I smell the flowers and see the sunset. All those things influence my movement in my hula. But if I moved away, I would not be in touch with that in the same way, and that would impact my hula.

As a native Hawaiian activist, what are you currently advocating or fighting for?

Over the years we’ve been working on intellectual property rights and the rights of native Hawaiians. Recently, a flower company named their company ʻOkina, which is the glottal stop in the Hawaiian language, and they trademarked it. Another place that created a problem was Aloha Poke, which was sending out cease and desist letters against using the words “aloha” and “poke.” It was a Chicago-based company. Infringements on our cultural practices and our languages are inappropriate. I’m head of a task force that will be taking on these challenges and looking to the state legislature to help instill practices and policies to help protect our language. But these are all federal copyright and trademark laws. When you infringe on my right to practice my language and my culture, that’s a problem. That should be something the United States takes on, so I’m looking at taking this fight to Congress.

Pua Aliʻi ʻIlima, Photo courtesy The Merrie Monarch Festival, Photo by Bruce Omori

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To learn more about PAʻI Foundation, visit www.paifoundation.org.

The post Hula as Resistance appeared first on Stance on Dance.

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT; PHOTOS BY GUSTAVO MONROY

Zazel-Chavah O’Garra is the director of ZCO/Dance Project, a company primarily based in New York City that fosters the integration and inclusion of people with disabilities, both in dance and in society in general. Zazel shares her dance journey and how a brain tumor surgery catalyzed her passion for integrating dancers with disabilities, as well as how her upcoming work aims to look at the experiences of people who are LGBTQ or have a disability from the Caribbean.

Note: This article was first published in Stance on Dance’s fall/winter 2024 print issue. To learn more, visit stanceondance.com/print-publication.

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Can you share with me a little about your dance history – what shaped you as an artist?

I’ve been around the block. I started dancing at eight years old because I had a problem with the way I walked. That was the key moment in my life. My godmother told my mother to have me dance so it would strengthen my legs. She sent me to a dance school where her daughter was going located in Harlem. I was signed up for tap and ballet, and immediately I fell in love with it. I loved being in the classroom and being with the other students. At the end of every year, we had a recital at Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall. That was when I first knew I loved being on the stage. I loved seeing the audience and getting a round of applause. I would be a ham; my smile was huge. I had on a glitzy costume and my whole family was in the audience. I loved all the attention and the applause. I knew I had to be a dancer.

I auditioned for the High School for the Performing Arts, and it was the first time I was exposed to real competition. It was very rigorous, and they put the students through the ringer. I remember seeing all the judges at the front and I was just riddled with fear. But I remember saying to my mother that I would not go to high school if I didn’t get into that school.

I got accepted and immediately I wanted to major in ballet. But because I have a shapely body with hips and a butt (I’m from the Caribbean), in those days if you didn’t have the right body, they wouldn’t pay attention to you. They would call the dancers they liked to be in the front line, and if you didn’t have the right look, they would put you in the back. I hated being in the back line. Of course, I went on a diet and lost 20 lbs., just like everyone else in my class. I tell girls today, “Don’t be stupid enough to feel that you have to do bad things to your body to be on top.”

From there, I studied at Dance Theatre of Harlem, another competitive place where I received great training. I got a scholarship and was in their apprenticeship program. I was obsessed with Ailey, and I got a scholarship to study there. It was a wonderful experience where I learned Horton, Graham, jazz, and ballet. I would have four classes a day. I couldn’t sleep because I was so excited about the next day. It was an amazing experience.

Fast forward, I went on to get accepted to the University of Michigan dance department. That was where I was first exposed to Cunningham technique and more abstract dance. I had a well-rounded experience there. When I graduated, I started to perform, got involved in musical theater, and lived abroad in Europe for several years, expanding my dance career. Although it was challenging and very competitive, it was just wonderful to live in Europe and meet different dancers.

What was the impetus behind ZCO/Dance Project? Why did you start the company?

I started the company number one because dance is my life, but number two because I became disabled 20 years ago when I was diagnosed with a brain tumor that left me partially paralyzed on my right side. I also had delayed speech and cognitive deficits. I knew after I woke up from the 12-hour surgery that my life would be different.

When I went through rehab, which was very difficult, they put all the patients with brain injuries in a room together to do occupation therapy and physical therapy. I was sitting in my wheelchair and raising my good leg up in the air and the others would look at me like, “How do you do that?” I knew I had to keep moving. I would force the occupational therapists to lay me on a mat and to bring my legs up to my head. They said, “We’ve never met anybody like you.” I’ll never forget there was a barre on the wall. I asked them to lift my leg and put it on the barre. It was amazing. I felt like dance was still in my life.

When I left rehab, I joined all sorts of brain tumor organizations, one of which was the Brain Tumor Foundation in New York City. They were hosting an event called Brain Tumor Awareness Day with neurosurgeons, neurologists, speech pathologists, physical therapists, etc. There were more than 500 people at NYU Langone Hospital, and they asked me to dance. I said I can’t dance; I have paralysis on my right side. And they said, “Try it.” I picked out some beautiful music by Regina Carter, a jazz violinist, and they put a chair in the middle of the stage for me to sit in. When that music came on and I saw the audience, I was back to my old self. I lifted my arm, and this feeling came over me; it went into my soul and my spirit. I lit up the room with my smile. I loved it. When I finished, I got a standing ovation. I said to myself, I need to do this, I need to reach other people with disabilities, and let them know that even though you have limited ability, dance comes from your soul. That’s why I started the company.

How would you describe the company’s work to someone unfamiliar with it?

We perform on stages and outdoors, and we perform all sorts of dance – modern, jazz, hip hop, improvisation, African dance with live drummers; I like to expose the dancers to all different genres. I also like to have guest choreographers. We have dancers with and without disabilities. I focus on dancers with physical and mental health disabilities. We don’t leave out anyone. In one of our pieces, we used video because some of the dancers are in different places. I have dancers here in New York, but I’ve also been working with a dancer for some time in California, as well as some dancers in New Jersey and a dancer in Pennsylvania. I teach some classes on Zoom, and then we have rehearsals and master classes in person.

Are there one or two pieces in your company’s repertoire that you’d like to share more about?

Last year, we did a wonderful piece called Invisible Visible by choreographer Chris Heller about disabilities that are both invisible and visible. Each performer told a story about how we have handled an invisible and visible disability. One young lady who has spina bifida shared how she was treated in school. Another dancer who was born with her arm paralyzed shared how she hid her arm from others because it was different. That piece premiered in 2023.

Memory Variations was also choreographed by Chris Heller about a memory that has really affected you. I picked the memory of my father who was a renowned astrologer and a wonderful tarot card reader. He is now deceased, but he left me the tarot card of the hermit. He wanted me to have it to live by. The hermit is about peace and tranquility. I wanted to share that imprint my father had on my life. Other dancers told stories about their mothers or partners. It was a beautiful piece and premiered this year.

Episodes of the Soul was a wonderful piece by Wendy Ann Powell that dealt with mental health and how we emerge from our bodies and deal with what’s going on in our minds. It also premiered this year.

What are you working on next?

I’m originally from a small island in the Caribbean called Montserrat. My island has 5,000 people. On my island, and on other islands in the Caribbean, people don’t know how to deal with a person with a disability. I remember when I flew back to my island after my surgery, they didn’t know how to deal with me. Though my family was very supportive, people said, “Why you walking like that?” They just didn’t know how to deal with it.

The piece I’m doing in the fall is called Look Upon You. It’s about persons with disabilities from various countries that experience discrimination and don’t feel included. I’m also bringing in people in the LGBTQ community from the Caribbean. In the islands, if you’re LGBTQ, you’re looked at with shame.

I’m working with other dancers from the Caribbean. One dancer, Rianna, is an incredibly beautiful dancer. She has spina bifida. In her family growing up, it was very difficult. I spoke with another gentleman who is queer and who has mental health problems because he’s trying to be strong with his identity and be accepted within his family and country as a Caribbean queer individual. Another young lady with cerebral palsy is a powerhouse who likes to read poetry. I like to have spoken word in my shows.

I received the Queens Arts Fund grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and I just booked a theater, so now I’m trying to put the piece together.

How have you seen representation and opportunities for dancers with disabilities evolve over the past decade since you founded ZCO/Dance Project?

It is changing. I’m SAG-AFTRA, and within the union I’m part of the Performers with Disabilities Committee. In meetings, we talk about being included in auditions, or letting Broadway theaters know people with disabilities come to shows. Some buildings are old in New York City. I performed in Queens recently, and it was a beautiful studio and theater. I asked if it was wheelchair accessible, and they said we had to use the freight elevator, and someone had to be down there to let us up. That was a problem. Another time we were performing in Manhattan. The theater had a wheelchair lift but evidently they didn’t test the lift, because it broke. They had to call the fire department, and then one of the firemen had a bad back. One of my dancers had to sit on the steps and work her way down the steps. The theater apologized to us and offered the space for free. The same thing happened in February of this year again. The wheelchair lift was tested, but as we were leaving, it did not work. We had to call the fire department again. I’m always fighting for change. We have a performance on Tuesday at the United Nations. They told me they tested the wheelchair lift, but the problem is they test it with an able-bodied person, not a person in a heavy motorized wheelchair.

The pivotal moment in terms of change was a couple years ago when a dancer in a wheelchair won a Tony award. Now dance and theater are starting to open doors. They are starting to allow persons with disabilities to audition for television shows. Dance/NYC has dance artistry and disability grants. They are making a lot of changes, and I’m really happy about it.

Any other thoughts?

We are artists with disabilities, but we are artists. We want to share our creativity, our ideas, and our movement with all audiences.

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To learn more, visit www.zcodanceproject.com.

The post Opening Doors Through Dance appeared first on Stance on Dance.

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT

Corey Scott-Gilbert is a dance artist currently based in Germany who has performed throughout the US and Europe. He makes work under the adopted identity vAL, whose agenda is to understand the mental state from which creation springs. Corey describes STAGED, a new dance film by vAL, performed by Roderick George and Corey. He shares how STAGED explores gray space and articulates senses of loss, emptiness, and vacancy.

All images are stills from STAGED and are courtesy vAL.

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Can you share a little about your dance history? What shaped you as an artist?

I’m a military child born in Baltimore, Maryland. I attended Baltimore School for the Arts where I had my first serious introduction to dance. My mentors Stephanie Powell and Tony Wilson encouraged me to focus on quality of movement above all no matter which genre of dance I was dipping a toe into. I took this encouragement to The Juilliard School. After graduation I got a job with Lyon Opera Ballet. I was there for two seasons before I got homesick to return to the US. I joined Alonzo King and his mission with LINES Ballet in San Francisco. I collaborated there for three and a half years before getting a bad ankle injury that forced me to ask new questions about my approach to my craft. I joined Cirque du Soleil because I needed daily physical therapy and time to realign my body and my thoughts around this new questioning. I was clearly hungry for something different than anything I had experienced. This curious appetite brought me back to Europe. I have now been working as a freelance artist based in Berlin, Germany for 11 years. During this time, I have been in collaboration with Sasha Waltz, Richard Siegal, Eszter Salamone, Diego Tortelli, Sergiu Matis, and Ligia Lewis. In the past few years this questioning has motivated me to interrogate thoughts through the making of my own work.

You create work under the name vAL. What is vAL?

Dancers are often put into a category that can feel quite limiting. I often felt like I was in a bit of a bubble that didn’t take my interest seriously if they veered too far from my physical intelligence. I wanted to create a slate for myself where this bubble of limitations was null and void. I also wanted to get rid of my own ego to stay true to the task of process and with that decided to adopt a creative identity.

Valerie is my mom’s name, and everyone called her Val. In my head, her nickname represents her very playful spirit. I am Val’s son, so I take her name to be a constant reminder that the work I’m creating is bigger than me and my own proclivities, to allow space to observe myself in the process of doing something different from what I know.

What was the impetus behind your recent dance film STAGED?

I started free writing after an ankle surgery forced me to sit still. I quickly noticed my writings kept steering towards topics of escapism and finding a better place. I fell in deep dialogue about this text with my friend Gus Solomons Jr., and we agreed to do something together with this “elsewhere” text if we got the opportunity, so when I received a digital commission from Baryshnikov Arts, it felt like the perfect opportunity for Gus and me to come together and work. Being 84 years old, Gus had an approach to work that was very different than most. It was important to me that his needs dominate this project, which meant finding a slow pace on film that still challenged the body and the viewer.

This became the basis for STAGED.

Unfortunately the week before our first residency period, Gus had a fall and ended up passing away two months later. That put a big question mark over the entire project. I was not sure how or even if it made sense to continue. I was always clear that I was not interested in making another solo video project, but replacing Gus felt impossible.

Roderick George is one of my dearest friends and our connection is an undeniable one that is reminiscent of my relationship with Gus. Our friendship is timeless. In order to continue, I needed this rare intimacy in the studio, so I shifted the concept and invited Rod to join STAGED. Rod is a very physical performer but I didn’t want to lose some of the ideas that were already at play from approaching the studio with Gus.

The piece spun into an articulation of loss and emptiness that seemed to define an unspoken gray area. We found a beautifully vacant fiction that challenged the image of the American Gothic, the iconic painting by Grant Wood. We imagined what this painting would look like if it had to be reconsidered today. What does an “American Gothic” folk feel like now? Some haunting rhythms and unanswered alarms entered the space with us and the hovering question became, “What happens when a body is only waiting… and waiting?”

Going back a little bit, how did you know Gus Solomons?

I was working with Richard Siegal in Essen, Germany, at this festival called Ruhrtriennale. Richard was invited to make a three-year trilogy work. I played Dante for his version of The Divine Comedy. In Richard’s third year he was looking for a God- like figure for Paradiso. He landed on Gus for this role which brought us altogether in 2017. That was also the summer of his 80^th birthday. We immediately went from mentor to bestie. The bond was immediately familiar and close.

What was the process of creating STAGED?

First off, we embraced detachment. Because Rod and I were dealing with such physically and emotionally weighted material, we needed to find ways to physically and emotionally protect ourselves. We needed to find ways to shield ourselves so we could dive into vulnerabilities without being scathed. We understood that we wanted to construct and reflect provocative images, but we did not need to embody all the horror that those constructions came with.

We began every day with a lot of shaking. We would shake our bodies until utterances and anxieties oozed out into the space. We would root down into the floor and shake until our limbs dangled and a sense of vacancy would swell over our entire bodies. I plucked this shaking practice from qigong, and now start every day this way.

From this emptiness, we would choose how to fill our vessels. We made ourselves containers to be filled. We held and released any image in our body without thought to accurately reflect a dismal and unpleasant reality. It’s not an easy time for an artist to reflect because we’re constantly inviting uneasy topics into the space with us. Taking care of ourselves is vital to keep creating.

There are consequences to inviting questions like “What happens to a body in waiting? What happens to a mind that’s endlessly pending?” into the space with you. With our vacant bodies, we would follow those consequences. Falling became a repetitive gesture. We studied the sound of falling and how lonely it is to hear a fall but not see it. In order to give ourselves relief from the weight of the lingering questions in our space, Rod and I found ourselves in these puppet-like bodies that found grace in bouncing back.

Mutually understanding that in our playing field no one is safe, we allowed ourselves the luxury to construct and deconstruct the staging of our own horrors.

This practice very quickly disrupted power dynamics which unveiled a very pleasurable drama and amusement to a rather dense situation. It is also quite seducing to watch.

How did the project change for you with Gus Solomons passing?

It was a massive change but what is crazy is that at no point did I question the shift too much. What was most important to me was who I was sharing the space with.

The initial plan was that Gus would narrate but also do most of the movement with the shadow of my hands projected as his silent partner.

The version we have made now features two very physical bodies. But after I realized Rod had a willingness to dive deep into intimate and sensitive materials with me, I simply trusted the relationship and allowed what needed to unfold to do so.

Why did you choose to create STAGED as a film and not a live performance? Was there something about the film medium?

I had filmed myself on the beach the summer before my ankle surgery with the plan to work on editing images during my recovery. I got inspired to pair my “elsewhere” writings with the footage from the beach. This work became a three-part transposable film called Drift. This process of choreographing an image on a screen changed my eye. My understanding of choreography shifted altogether. For example, the idea of hearing the body but not seeing the body immediately became a beautiful and haunting possibility with film. A soundscape of active bodies with an empty screen became a beautiful canvas to catapult into.

The initial proposal was to the Princess Grace Foundation. I won the award in 2009 and wrote to them for a special grant to create this duet with Gus. They were very excited, but I didn’t receive the grant. Baryshnikov Arts heard about it through Princess Grace and offered me the funding to make this work.

What do you hope viewers take away?

It’s important to present STAGED as a sort of spark in the dark rather than just dark. I want to reflect our dark days without getting too bleak.

There are two ways you can see this film. It’s dependent on what you’re busy with when you sit down to watch. You can take away deep sadness and loss, or you can take away the wonder of this gray area we reside in. Some things are black and white, but many things are gray, meaning so much feels uncertain. With a relentless frolic, STAGED leans into societal gray areas. This film is in pursuit of the spirit of life in a seemingly vacant place.

Also, there is a hopeless aspect that is pulled out of false starts, empty images, and unanswered alarms. But that hopelessness for me is the most honest reflection of where we are. Now a real conversation can start about where we are headed.

What’s next for you? Do you have an upcoming project of focus you want to share more about after STAGED?

It’s important to be an honest reflection of what’s going on, but there’s no need to add to the despair. I feel like I’m starting to now understand that the work I’m doing is not necessarily mine alone.

I don’t know what it is next, but I know what is not. There are some things in the social climate I’m not interested in dealing with anymore. When I’m asked the question, “What is there to do,” it feels like a lot of digging into further processes that align with what I’ve already been busy with. The questions of escape were so present with STAGED. Now, an escape is a dream. I am working on a solo called INTERMISSION that premieres in Berlin this fall. With this live solo, I will question my newfound inability to dream.

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STAGED is a digital world premiere commissioned by Baryshnikov Arts. STAGED will be available for free beginning November 1st at www.baryshnikovarts.org.

To learn more about vAL and Corey, visit valwashere.com or on Instagram @valwashere and @coreyscottgilbert.

The post Exploring Gray Space appeared first on Stance on Dance.

BY GARTH GRIMBALL; PHOTOS BY STEPHEN TEXEIRA

Andrew Merrell is a dance artist based in the Bay Area whose project-based company Slack Dance will be premiering Flowery Language, dance works of existential ennui, moribund malaise, histrionic hors-d’oeuvres, and bourgeois babes, at Dance Mission Theater in San Francisco from October 4-6. Here, Andrew reflects on how the pandemic shaped their dance-making, the sense of nostalgia in their upcoming work, and the layers of meaning within Flowery Language.

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How did Flowery Language develop into the upcoming performances at Dance Mission Theater?

This is my first full evening show since before the pandemic. There are five pieces and they are separate works and I am weaving them together for an evening, but they are all stand-alone works. Three out of the five had seed origins since before the pandemic. In the process of developing those three works, two others showed up. Going through the pandemic, with that stop, I thought, “Do I let go of these things and venture into new things?” But I didn’t want to let them go. I felt that they were valid experiences that I wanted to put forth.

Since the pandemic forced a different relationship to time, and the amount of time given to developing ideas, has that changed the way you make work at all since there’s been more time to think about the ideas?

Yes and no. I started Slack Dance, making my work and putting it out there, in 2016, and I was getting into a groove, had people I was working with, had momentum. And then the pandemic hit, it all stopped and everyone moved away. It was really hard for me to get back to it. I tried to be like everyone… I made a couple of solos in my door frame, and those kinds of things. But ultimately that’s not what I wanted. I wanted to get back to group numbers with people that I love. That’s why I do this work.

Those ideas have formed and have been informed by the time that has passed. Not to say I’ve been working on these pieces since 2020. It’s been a long time of ruminating on them, but actually getting into a studio and working has only been happening the past year. Time has shifted me and therefore shifted what is coming out of the work.

The evening is called Flowery Language; does that speak to the verbose titles or the work, the movement vocabulary, all possible meanings?

It’s all of the above. The titles play with the idea of flowery language. The movement you could call flowery. The reason I call the company Slack Dance is there’s a sort of lush quality to my movement. But there’s an undercut in the language, too. When we say, “Oh, that person is using flowery language,” often it can have a negative meaning – they’re saying a bunch of words but they’re not actually saying anything. It speaks to artifice and camp, and there’s a lot of that going on in the show too. Which isn’t to say I don’t think my works have meanings. I think they do. Dance to me is everything, like my religion. I can get really dramatic about it. I’ve given my life to it and I love it and at the same time I always find it kind of completely ridiculous. I have this need to do it but that’s where sometimes it ends.

One aspect of the show that excites me is the idea of making period specific dance. “Diane, Tamara, Suzanne and Joyce meet for coffee and get shit done” is set in the 1990s. “Genteel characters who suffer from disillusionment and tragic entanglements” is inspired by Merchant Ivory films based on E.M. Forster novels, which offers several layers of temporality. How are you thinking about representing time periods in dance?

I don’t know if I’m trying to do literal representations, more just taking the ideas of time and space from them and making the work now. The whole show has a certain level of nostalgia to it, looking into my personal past and history and people in my life. “Diane…” is about my mom and her girlfriends who raised me in the 80s and 90s. I did get some vintage 80s dresses for the cast and some of the music will be referential.

Sima Belmar and Randee Paufve are doing a duet called “Newts and Hoptoads,” which is one big dance to the dialogue from the film The Turning Point, the famous fight scene between Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine. And that’s set in the 70s and filled with all the dance references in it.

And the E.M. Forster one is an homage to the Merchant Ivory films. Forster was writing the novels in turn-of-the-century Britain, taking a hard look at British society and imperialism and class structures, and those ideas haven’t really shifted in the Western world.

How do you balance making work purely as a choreographer and as a choreographer-dancer?

That’s been tough because I hate doing that.  With “Genteel characters,” that piece I finished to completion before the pandemic with a different dancer. I got to craft it from the outside and now I am having to put myself in as a dancer. The other piece I’m in is a duet with Rogelio Lopez, and he is my life partner so there is a level of ease to it. Randee and other people I love and trust have come in and given feedback.

There’s a solo that I made on a whim. I gave myself the experiment of using the material created in my dance classes, which has been my only choreographic outlet for the past four years, and I loved a lot of it, so I made a solo out of that material.

So they all have separate entries into the parts that I’m dancing in. To be honest I’m still nervous that I put myself in three pieces in an evening and I don’t know if I have the stamina for it. We’ll see!

How are you feeling two weeks out from the show? What’s it been like making the works with your cast and collaborators?

I’m super excited about it. It’s been a long time coming. It makes me nervous and stressed to do it, and I’m really close to it. I am in love with my dancers. These are people who started Slack Dance with me. There’s only one person in the show who I’ve never worked with before, but they are also part of our community. A lot of them are moms, the majority are, and have had kids in the past five to six years. So their whole dance lives have shifted because of parenthood, and we’re talking about parenthood. They are still phenomenal dancers but don’t have the space and time that they used to. It’s been a selfish joy to bring this ensemble together and I’m feeling incredibly lucky and fortunate to do so.

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To learn more about Andrew’s work, visit www.andrew-merrell-dance.com.

The post Layers of Meaning appeared first on Stance on Dance.

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT; PHOTOS BY ZUI GOMEZ

Travis Burbee is the associate artistic director of EPIC Players, a nonprofit theater company based in New York City that opens the stage to all types of artists and seeks to shine a light on neurodiverse talent. Travis details the extent of EPIC Players programming and how it seeks to make its myriad programs accessible to people with disabilities, as well as how he sees representation and opportunities for actors with disabilities expanding in the greater theater community.

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How did EPIC Players get started?

EPIC was started by Aubrie Therrien, our executive director, in 2016 along with a passionate group of artists. It came out of seeing a need for the work we do, both for an inclusive space for artists with disabilities to gather and also a pathway of accessibility in theater. Theater as a profession is very inaccessible. We’re trying to bridge that gap both by advocating for change in the theater community and by training the actors we work with in an accessible way to strive for professional standards.

How is EPIC Players organized?

There are so many programs, and they are forever expanding. We do two mainstage shows a year. Those are two fully produced pieces of theater – usually a play and a musical. These are professional productions where everyone is paid for their work. We do three cabarets a year. Those are all paid opportunities as well. We have a performance opportunity called the EPIC Underground that is like a stand-up storytelling event, also a paid performance opportunity. We have a whole slew of classes every semester on all kinds of topics like improv, dance, scene study, foundations of auditions, etc. All our classes are free to EPIC members. We also have a program called the EPIC advocate program that pairs a mentor with a player so every player has a mentor they can go to and work with one on one on whatever they need, like working on their resume or an audition or just skill-based work. We also do in-school classes in the New York City area where we’ll go into schools and create original shows with students or work on theater skills. We also have an assistant teaching artist program for actors who have been in our program and are interested in teaching. It’s a training program for them to be paid and grow as a teaching artist. And we also just recently started EPIC Los Angeles that is on the ground running. They just had their first show this summer.

How does EPIC Players find its performers?

They come to us for the most part. We certainly are at events and will meet and connect with people, but a lot of the time its people who have been looking for this kind of thing. Often, it’s an actor who wants to do theater but they can’t find a place that’s accessible or they feel welcome in. They come to us and become passionate about what we’re doing. If someone wants to join EPIC, they reach out to us, and we have auditions once a year.

Do your participants generally have previous acting experience in less accessible theater spaces, or do participants have no theater experience?

It’s all over the board. We certainly have people who come to us who haven’t done any theater at all, ever. We also have a good amount of people who are already professional actors and need some accessibility support and are looking for a community with other actors with disabilities.

Neurodiversity can refer to a huge spectrum. What are some of the ways EPIC Players accommodates and makes theater accessible to such a large spectrum of disability?

Accessibility is a wonderful thing because it’s a constant adventure. It’s not one size fits all. It’s a process of being proactive and striving to make things better. A lot of it is knowing the people we work with and what they specifically need. We have a specific teaching method that is accessible and is based on where the participants are at. We also do things to make our shows and rehearsals accessible.  For example, we have an extended rehearsal process so the rehearsals are more spread out and people’s lives aren’t disrupted when they go into rehearsals for a show. We also have an access coordinator, Jamie Rose Hayes, who is also an ASL interpreter. She is a point person people can go to about access.

We just did Spring Awakening this past spring, and it is a heavy show. We brought on a mental health counselor who was there to work with the actors and be there for them. That ended up being huge. Also, we instituted that if folks were getting overwhelmed in rehearsal, they could just signal they needed a break and take one.

Beyond neurodiversity, what communities within the disability community do you work with, and how do you create access for them?

Most of our actors would identify as having a developmental disability. Autism is a huge identifier. But we’re an inclusive space. We have folks within our company who don’t have a disability. We also have Deaf actors and actors who are low vision, and as they have joined us, it has been exciting to make our programs accessible to them as well.

EPIC Players recently presented a neuro-inclusive July Cabaret: Greatest Summer Bops. What was the process creating this show?

It was so fun. It was our first summer cabaret. We had players audition at the beginning of the summer. From there we generated a set list of songs about summer and cast the show. We started by learning the music and singing together and added some choreography. We also employ people in our company as choreographers and assistant directors. From there we rehearsed with the band, and on the day of the show we did a sound check where we ran most of the show. We typically have Broadway guests come in to perform with us.

Since EPIC Players’ founding in 2016, have you seen representation and opportunities for neurodiverse performers and other performers with disabilities improve beyond organizations like EPIC Players that are specifically geared toward people with disabilities?

I do. It’s slow and there’s so much more that needs to happen, but it feels like we’re moving in the right direction. How to Dance in Ohio was just on Broadway, which was the most inclusive Broadway show ever with authentic representation. We’re seeing way more authentic representation in TV and film as well. There’s a lot more that needs to be done, but I think the general community is more aware than in the past.

In the dance world, we don’t have typecasting the same way as in the theater world. In addition to people with disabilities playing roles of characters with disabilities, are you seeing more opportunities for actors with disabilities to play parts regardless of if the character is scripted as having a disability or not?

I think that’s such a great question. That’s where we need to go. We’re seeing authentic representation. And now we need opportunities for actors with disabilities beyond characters with disabilities. Something we always say when we’re casting shows is “Who said this role wasn’t created for a person with a disability?” That is so much of what we’re trying to do. We want to show the wider community that people with disabilities can do more roles.

What’s next for EPIC Players? Does the company have an upcoming project or focus you’d like to share more about?

We have a whole slew of shows coming up. Our next cabaret is October 26^th and is 90s themed featuring lots of great 90s hits. This December 10^th through 15^th we’re going to be doing A Christmas Carol. We’re going to be creating our own original version. We’re doing Seussical in May. And we have a stand-up storytelling event in the winter called EPIC Underground.

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To learn more, visit www.epicplayersnyc.org.

The post Making the Stage More Accessible appeared first on Stance on Dance.

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT

Thomas Choinacky (they/them & he/him) is a queer interdisciplinary artist who creates avant-garde performance in Philadelphia. Here, they discuss their upcoming piece, Forehand Down the Line, which highlights the agility, absurdity, and queer movement of ball people in tennis. They share their interest in invisible labor, how it relates to queer identity, and how the pandemic reshaped their choreography.

All photos by Thomas Choinacky.

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Can you tell me a little about your dance history – what kinds of performance practices and in what contexts have shaped who you are today?

My dance history is steeped in living and growing up in Philadelphia and the artists in Philly. I originally came from theater and moved into dance after undergrad. Artists like Headlong Dance Theater, Annie Wilson, and Meg Foley have steeped me in contemporary movement practices, primarily improvisation and building movement scores to tell stories that are body-based. My early works were about my body in relation to space and architecture. I built movement scores that, in my own understanding of myself as a queer person in space, used dance to think about my identity.

How would you generally describe your work to someone unfamiliar with it?

I’m studying vulnerability, using movement to expel my demons and tell personal stories that for years felt invaluable or dangerous to share. Human nature often cultivates keeping secrets and I have kept many in my life. Right now, and what speaks to my upcoming piece, is the importance of play and joy within storytelling and the body. I take dramaturgical research as well as autobiographical experiences and secrets, and build movement scores and stories.

Can you tell me about your upcoming performance, Forehand Down the Line, and how the piece came about?

The piece came about from me thinking about both the visibility and invisibility of queer identity. Culturally, it’s something that is completely visible in some ways and also erased by mainstream culture. In that reflection, I was thinking about jobs that are visible and invisible. I am a tennis player, and I was watching professional tennis matches and seeing the ball people on the sidelines, the people who chase down the ball between points. They are completely visible – anyone can see them – but to be good at the job is to be invisible.

I took that as a prompt and was really focused on the limited gesture vocabulary of the ball people as the core to telling their story. What does it mean for them to be the only story? How can they break out of their role of being responsive to others, and how does the movement change when agency is granted? Visually, I am following a strict movement vocabulary. The ball people role is nonhierarchical and collaborative. What happens if they use those tools to get out of the requirements of their labor and break out of their limited gesture vocabulary?

How have you continued to work on this piece since it was postponed due to the pandemic? Did your work process change between now and then?

The piece was two weeks from opening when the pandemic started. It was a long period of me processing this piece that I had worked so hard to make. I also wondered: What’s relevant anymore, especially when the whole world and our understanding of bodies and space is changing? I did lots of writing at that time.

As live performance started to return, I wondered if Forehand Down the Line was worth making anymore. It felt like a ghost story, a show that was made yet was only in my head and I had no product. I realized it felt relevant to tell that story, because having nothing to show felt like another erasure of this piece that was about visibility.

My writing and going back into the studio involved reflecting on what visibility means now for this story.

You mentioned that the show is both much the same and completely different. How so?

It’s the same in that the core of where it begins are these strict seven gestures that the ball people complete. That’s still the heart of the piece. This movement is what would be familiar to someone who knows tennis and also is the core of where the dancers begin the piece. What’s changed is the stretching of the world. Some of that is from the pandemic – I was really depressed for the first two years of the pandemic: What is the point of being an artist if I can’t bring people together? I realized that my point as an artist is exactly that: to bring people together. When I do, what do I want them to experience? I want them to feel joy and pleasure that is personal and social. Using the ball people’s movement that ultimately shifts away from labor and toward a structure that centers themselves in play and joy is an exciting invitation to gather audiences together.

You’ve described the movement of the ball people as queer. How so, and how does your own queer identity inform that understanding?

Most of the team working on this project identifies as queer, nonbinary, and trans. Ultimately it comes to the performers who are visible. We sit down and watch them dance. The piece has specific ball people gestures that are on the bodies of the dancers. As the piece goes on, they are no longer required to be the fastest or most precise. It’s queer – on the fringe, not precise, on a spectrum. To build a visibility that does not necessitate a clear box is delightfully played with in this dance. We’re moving away from what you should expect.

One thing I’m really processing in this show is the idea of agency within the piece. As the creator of the piece, it’s the first piece I’m not performing in. I am the creator but then I hand it off to the performers, and it’s not my body telling a story anymore but the performers’ bodies. It excites me to see the variety of queerness explored through each of their minds and how it gets transformed, changed, muddled, and messy, but still following the score in each’s own way. They are the agents of the story. The movement is ultimately told through their experience. Identity can’t be erased in movement. That’s very exciting to me.

What do you hope audiences take away?

In a simplistic place, I think about the joy of movement and dance. By centering tennis, this sport that often ignores the movement and dance that is quite visible, I’m excited for audiences to have their perspectives changed in some way. This might initiate going to another public event and seeing dance in it – whether it’s a sport or someone walking down the street.

As I mentioned about the value of gathering, there’s something about going into a theater and laughing with other people. There’s value in live performance and the pleasure and joy you can get out of that collective action.

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To learn more, visit thomaschoinacky.com.

The post Revisiting Invisible Labor appeared first on Stance on Dance.

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT

Sydnie L. Mosley is a choreographer and the director of Sydnie L. Mosley Dances, a dance-theater collective based in New York City that works in communities to organize for gender and racial justice through experiential dance performance. Here, Sydnie, shares how her recent work PURPLE: A Ritual in Nine Spells celebrates and builds upon the work of Black feminists, and how all her work centers community building.

Sydnie Moseley, Photo by Travis Coe

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Can you share a little of your dance history – what shaped you as a dancer?

I started dancing in a studio when I was four, like a baby ballet situation. I danced all growing up. My primary dance home as a teenager was with Ava Fields Dance Ministry doing liturgical dance. Classes took place in my local community center. We weren’t affiliated with a specific church, but we were getting dance training in a community space and performing a lot at churches, parades, and street festivals. We gigged all over the DC and Maryland area. I’m originally from Baltimore. Alongside that, I was heavily involved in dance at school. I went to a private all girls prep school with a strong arts program, and I was a leader in the dance spaces. I choreographed a lot, both in middle and high school. I also went to the American Dance Festival for the first time when I was 14 and, prior to that, I had gone to summer dance programs at various colleges and universities.

I went to college and knew I wanted to be a dancer. I had also made the decision to run a company and be a choreographer. When I was a senior in high school, my capstone project was producing my first dance concert. I was clear about that career path going into college. I moved to New York intentionally because it was a hub for dance. I went to Barnard College for undergrad. My goal at that point was to learn everything about the field. I’ve always been a fan of Barnard’s dance program because they use the resources of New York City to enhance students’ understanding of the field. I work-studied in the dance department and interned for Bill T. Jones, Brooklyn Ballet, and Jacob’s Pillow. In addition to choreographing, performing, and writing, I learned to run the lighting board. I did everything from A to Z. I ended up getting my MFA from the University of Iowa directly out of undergrad. The opportunity came up at the end of my senior year in college. I got my MFA really young, so that meant I was entering the field with a lot of clarity because I did the “what is my voice, what is my artistry?” thing in grad school. I came back to New York and hit the ground running. Within six months, I was ready to start my dance company.

PURPLE performers, Photo by Effy Grey

How would you generally describe your choreography to someone unfamiliar with it?

I would say my work is dance theater. It is based in Black feminist performance practices. It is community engaged and community responsive. I’ll use the language of one of my big sisters and mentors, Ebony Noelle Golden shared with me: it is theatrical ceremony. That language of theatrical ceremony is an evolution of the work over the past 15 years, but what remains true across all my work is engagement with audience and what I like to call witness-participants, and an ethos that if you are in the performance space, you are part of the work.

What was the impetus behind your recent work, PURPLE: A Ritual in Nine Spells?

I got the idea several years ago. I was hanging out with a friend of mine who I call my little sister, and we were going to a lot of events around New York City: lectures, talks, performances. All the people we went to see were Black feminists. And the people who came to see the work more often than not were Black women. She and I started to call those events “purple events,” referencing Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. I had this aha moment that the culture I was creating inside my dance company’s work felt very purple. I asked: What would it mean to create a dance work that captured that purple in a bottle and shared it with those who chose to be present?

PURPLE Ensemble, Photo by Travis Coe

What was your choreographic process?

It was multipronged and long. I started working on it in 2017, and we premiered it in 2023. That development process had a lot of artists coming through and a part of it. I started with some movement ideas, which I workshopped over several iterations with my company as well as with educational engagements I did at high schools and universities. Another piece was dramaturgical research. I did a lot of reading of Black feminist texts, both fiction and nonfiction. I mentioned The Color Purple, but I also want to mention Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo by Ntozake Shange, The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara, and Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. The bibliography is long, but I’ll name those four top books that fed ideas I was working on. The choreography was also shaped by the people I was in collaboration with.

PURPLE library, photo by Jules Slutsky

One significant collaborator is Dyane Harvey. She and I were put together by the writer and curator Eva Yaa Asantewaa for a program at Gibney called Solo for Solo in 2019. I had this idea with PURPLE to make a work that was multigenerational. I wanted to create with elders. One of the elders I was interested in working with was Ntozake Shange. I had met her several times before. She is also a Barnard College alum. She gave her archive to Barnard, and I am in close collaboration with the faculty who led that process. Long story short, one of Ntozake’s last public events was at Barnard, and I had the privilege of moderating the Q and A with the audience. A month later, she passed away. At the same time, I’m getting into conversation with Dyane. I asked her what she wanted to work on. She wanted to make a work honoring her friend Ntozake. I said, “No kidding, so do I.” It felt divinely aligned. We started this collaboration where I created a solo on Dyane that brought in Ntozake’s language and solidified this idea of the choreo-poem that she coined and pioneered.

Dyane Harvey Salaam, Photo by Effy Gray

At the same time, I was developing movement with my company members. In 2019, I put it all together in what I like to call a kitchen table version. From there, I started to edit and revise what story wanted to be told in this piece.

In my dreams, I would have tried to premier it in 2020 or 2021, but then the pandemic happened. It allowed us to fundraise significantly in order to produce the work at the level of production and visibility I was desiring. It also allowed us to deepen the dramaturgy. In 2020, I engaged the dancers virtually in the research and the themes in a way I never had before. It was a useful few years of building toward premiering the work in 2023.

PURPLE installation with elders, Photo by Jules Slutsky

Your company has recently performed PURPLE: A Ritual in Nine Spells in Washington, DC. What feedback or audience reactions did you receive?

The premier was last year at Lincoln Center. For our recent tour performance at Dance Place in Washington, DC, it was lovely to see the art do what it was supposed to do. It was lovely to share the art with this particular community. I am from Baltimore, so it was a bit of a homecoming. Several of my collaborators have connections to that region. The audience was warm, excited, and ready to participate. It was very special. My dance teacher from when I was growing up got to see the work. It was the first time she had seen my company perform.

It was also a huge learning curve. I’d never toured a production of this size. It was an opportunity to adapt the work to a different type of space. As I was building it, I had an A, B and C version in mind. At Lincoln Center, we had the audience on three sides. We completely stripped the wings so the whole theater was a black box. Dance Place has risers and is a smaller stage, so we had to reimagine the work for that kind of set up. I’m very interested in what it means for this work to expand and contract.

PURPLE oral history party, photo by Jules Slutsky

Your company works in communities to organize for gender and racial justice through experiential dance performance. How can experiential dance help bring about gender and racial justice?

I believe that the theater and performance spaces are one of the most fertile spaces to have conversation, to move people to action, to raise consciousness, to bring people together, and to build community. All that happens in the performance space of my work. Some of my works are more explicit about the political agenda. My work The Window Sex Project is about people’s experiences with sexual harassment. The community workshops we facilitate as well as the post-show dialogue intended to talk about what advocacy can be done, bystander intervention, etc. That is a piece where the agenda is more explicit.

The Window Sex Project dancers: Autumn Scoggan, Candance Thompson-Zachery, and Kimberly Mhoon, Photo by Ferima Faye

Fast forward to PURPLE. The work is community-building and connection-building. The dramaturgical magic is that by the end of the work, everyone in the theater is dancing. That magic has been carefully scaffolded into the narrative of the work. By the end, there’s an energy, a vibrancy, and a level of connection between people who may not know each other but are sitting next to each other or across the way or with the performers that is palpable. When you have an experience like that, you want to continue to build connections with those people.

What’s next for you? Do you have an upcoming project or focus you’d like to share more about?

I’m going to continue to share this work in different ways as long as people are interested in seeing it. That’s absolutely next. And, I say this confidently: I don’t have any new ideas, and that’s okay. My company is celebrating 14 years, and in that time, we have created three evening-length works and several smaller works. All those works continue to need to be shared. The barrier is resources. I am committed to finding the resources.

Any other thoughts?

The soapbox I’m on these days is how we continue to cultivate resources on a larger societal or governmental scale to support artists. It’s very difficult to do this work under-resourced. I have personally reached a space where I cannot be under-resourced any longer. What are the steps everyone is taking to promote the economic environment to make it possible for us to do our work and live thriving lives while doing it?

Sydnie Mosley at Anti-Street Harassment Rally, Photo courtesy Sydnie Mosley

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To learn more about Sydnie’s work, visit www.sydnielmosley.com.

The post Celebrating PURPLE appeared first on Stance on Dance.

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT

Betti Franceschi is a visual artist, a dance enthusiast, and the author of the recently published book, Ageless Dancers, which depicts in photographs 40 iconic dancers from the disciplines of ballet, modern, contemporary, tap, and musical theater. Here, Betti shares the story that inspired her to do this project, and some advice on aging as an octogenarian.

Ageless Dancers book cover

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Can you share a little about yourself first – how did you come to be interested in combining dance and visual art?

I am since forever a wannabe dancer. My earliest and remaining obsession is with grace. I have a bad stutter. Stuttering is experienced as the want of grace. Ballet is a pure reaching for grace. My early experiences of fluency in real time were horseback riding and ballet. So of course I love dance, particularly ballet.

My mother gave me ballet lessons at eight for my flat feet and stopped them when I fell in love with it. While majoring in art at Indiana University, I managed to study with the first ballet teacher to teach at an American university, and performed in some productions of the I.U. music school. Later when my daughter Antonia was born, she had such perfect feet and body, so later I moved us to New York for the fast-track training she warranted. In the classes of the great Alfredo Corvino, I made friends with Libby Nye, the Limòn dancer who became Antonia’s unofficial dance mother. My real dance education was watching the physical geniuses of the New York dance world in which Antonia grew up. She has gone on to dance with New York City Ballet, and then to dance, teach and choreograph in London and New York.

I have to tell you how I came to use dancers as my models. Yes, I love dance myself. But in my work, I’m broadly interested in physical intelligence, in the thrill of seeing someone consummately articulate, seeing them think. I have tried working with athletes. They are beautiful. But there is a further dimension that dancers inhabit: it’s conceptual. Dancers think in shapes. If we are chasing an idea that interests a dancer, they will summon whatever it takes to put it before me, so I can record it in tangible form. I am an awestruck dancers’ groupie.

Years ago, when I started to make my Signature movement drawings, I saw immediately that a dancer’s sense of the stage transferred intact to a sense of the page. Those drawings were made flat on rehearsal room floors, so the dancer could watch the drawing and collaborate in its progress. Now in these Ageless Dancers photographs, the dancers’ gestures determine their framing rectangles.

My different bodies of work elucidate different aspects of a dancer’s tool kit. The Still Point drawings show the dancer’s center and how it is used. The Signature drawings show the dancer’s expressive inner line. The Ageless Dancers photographs are about that line and the technique that survives diminished athleticism – the artist’s voice triumphant.

Carmen de Lavallade

What was the impetus behind Ageless Dancers?

In 1983, I got to accompany Antonia to the New York City Ballet season in Paris. At the season gala, the audience was as exciting as the performance on stage. The Parisian women in their couture were stunning. That said, they could not hold a candle to the few retired ballet étoiles who were there in signature jackets dating from their prime. Exactly 30 years later, I bolted upright in my bed at three in the morning with the realization that I had to photograph those étoiles. Turned out I did it with mostly American stars, and not in Paris but here in my New York studio. It took four photographers to teach me to use a camera. In the session with the fourth photographer, Ken Pao, we came up with the black clothing and background that free and articulate the Ageless Dancers.

How did you decide whom to include in the book?

I didn’t just go for famous ballet stars. I went for the most interesting movers. But the true story is much more embarrassing than that. What happened was I personally knew Hilary Cartwright and Diana Byer. Hillary developed Gyrotonic and danced with the Royal Ballet years ago. Diana ran the New York Theatre Ballet. They were both around 70 years old. I said, “Will you come and pose for me?” And they both said, “Oh my god, no, I look horrible.” It took me three years of beating them up to get them here. Once I got them here and they realized that I wasn’t going to make them look bad, they eased up and said, “I know who else you want to get, I’ll get them here.” The dancers just brought who they thought I would want to use, and they were right. Nobody knows a good dancer like a good dancer. There were still people I couldn’t get, but overall, we did great. In the book there are 40 dancers, but I photographed 57 total.

Did you have any philosophy on how you approached photographing your subjects?

I do have visual opinions, but I was just going for gorgeous.

Ze’eva Cohen

Did you learn anything over the course of putting together the book?

Yes, but mostly my dance aesthetic was already formed. I just documented the dancers. I couldn’t believe how gorgeous they were. I had 60 senior dancers in and out of my studio, and everyone had a very similar response to me: When people ask, “How do you stay like that?” They all said, “Keep moving.” That’s their mantra. Some do yoga, some do Gyrotonic, Pilates, anything, but they keep going. Suki Schorer is still teaching at the School of American Ballet, and for fun she does serious tango on top of her teaching. Sally Hess does competitive ballroom and she’s gorgeous. I got all these shining examples.

What do you hope readers take away?

I’ll tell you a story that happened recently. This isn’t about dancers. I was walking down the street, and this guy came out of a restaurant and we almost bumped into each other. We started talking, and I said, “Are you from New York?” And he said, “No, I’m from Bloomington, Indiana.” I said, “I went to Indiana University.” It ended up he was a big rockstar. I told him I’m going on 90. He is 72 and we talked about age. I said, “I gotta tell you one thing: don’t let anyone tell you you’re old.” That’s the point. When and if you want to adjourn to a rocking chair, fine, but until then, do what you want. If nothing changes, don’t change it. Keep doing it. I know people expect to diminish. Well, you might, but you might not. Don’t write that script for yourself.

Any other thoughts?

A couple years ago, I had back surgery. The next morning, the nurse came in and said she had to walk me up and down the hall. She said, “How old are you? How come you can walk this easily at your age right after surgery?” I said, “Do you have a computer? Go look at my website and look at the age of my dancers, and that will blow your mind.” She came back and found me and said, “Oh my God, I have to start dancing.” And I said, “Yeah you do.” Dance is so precise; if you’re still working your body, it is going to keep you really mobile.

Edward Villella

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To learn more about the Ageless Dancers project, visit www.bettifranceschi.com/agelessdancers

The post Capturing Agelessness appeared first on Stance on Dance.

Lyndel Quick is a community dance artist, teacher, director, and theatre-maker based in Newton, Victoria, Australia. She is the director of Blink Dance Theatre, a project-based company that creates devised collaborative performance, ensemble theatre, and site-specific work. Here, Lyndel shares how Blink Dance Theatre is a vehicle for her creative practice, from live dance theatre performances, community workshops, text-based works, and dance films.

Lyndel Quick in rehearsal for Assembly Room, Photo by Ferne Millen

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Can you share a little about your dance history? What influenced or shaped you as a performer?

I loved reading as a kid, including old plays I would find at the op shop. My teenage years were spent acting and performing with a local theatre company who were producing experimental and progressive productions in a somewhat small town. I learnt a lot about theatrical risk and about developing audiences. After high school I had no idea what I wanted to do, I just knew that I loved making up dances. So, I decided to move to the big city and audition for a full-time dance course, completing an Associate Diploma in Dance Teaching and Management. I literally talked my way in, as I had no ballet or dance experience prior and got rejected the first time. The following year, I auditioned again, and they asked me what I was going to do if I didn’t get in, again? I said I’d just keep turning up until they let me in, so they did. The course was established by pioneering Australian ballet dancer and educator, Laurel Martyn OBE, who I was fortunate to learn ballet from.

Starting formal dance training late, I followed this up with another four years at Deakin University, Rusden, studying contemporary dance, theatre and education. I loved the freedom and cross disciplinary approach to making art that was encouraged at university and enjoyed performing in various productions and independent projects, before landing in the education sector. Returning to my hometown, I taught senior dance and drama for 15 years. At the same time, I set up my own adult dance studio, The Loft, and started delivering classes to the community, as well as co-founding a youth dance company for four years, which became a wonderful testing ground for new ideas and choreographic play.

About seven years ago now, I finally got to see a work by Pina Bausch. It was revelatory. I laughed, I cried, I was delirious with joy. Finally, here was a performance that made sense to me and closely aligned with the absurd beauty I hope to achieve in my own works.

What was the original impetus behind Blink Dance Theatre?

A dance friend of mine approached me and asked if I would run some informal professional level classes at my studio. We invited a few people along and I facilitated a series of classes and workshops on contemporary technique and task-based improvisation. Since then, I have been fortunate to work with a diverse group of multidisciplinary artists on various projects and have had wonderful community support. For longevity, I think it has been extremely helpful to have my own studio; a challenge for most artists is access to affordable studio space. I created Blink as a vehicle for my creative practice and continue to explore this, from live dance theatre performance, community workshops, text-based works and dance films.

Assembly Room by Blink Dance Theatre, Photo by Ferne Millen

Are there one or two pieces from your repertoire that you’d like to share more about?

Assembly Room was a 20-minute work for 11 women, performed at night in an alleyway, framed by unique heritage buildings superimposed with large scale projections which reflected the city’s industrial, textile and manufacturing history. The dancers’ costumes were a nod to the 19^th century when ‘good women’ weren’t out on the street, and included a hooped skirt that was lit up and looked really effective. The work was part of a larger festival called Geelong After Dark and was well received by audiences. I really enjoyed creating this piece, reclaiming our right to be out at night dancing in the streets, responding to the space and letting it inform the work, honoring the history of my hometown, as well as developing the music and choreography.

In 2019, I began development on a new full-length work, Memory House, which explored the physicality of memory, the body as home, and the Jungian archetype of the house as a metaphor for self. We completed the first development with the cast. However, the next stage required a drastic re-think due to COVID. I made the decision to scale things back significantly and make an eight-minute dance film instead, created with Glass Kingdom Films and presenting partner Geelong Arts Centre. The film was highly successful and we had two local screenings. It was also selected for screening at numerous international film festivals including the European Short Film Festival (Germany), Inshadow Lisbon Screendance Festival (Portugal), Wilddogs International Screendance Festival (Canada), San Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (USA), Inspired Dance Festival (Australia) and Dumbo Film Festival (New York.) It was wonderful to work closely with film director Annika Glac again, who directed me in a dance theatre production when I was a young dance graduate. Also working with composer Josh Mitchell to create the score was a highlight.

Memory House, Photo by Marcus Struzina

How would you generally describe your choreographic process?

I usually start with an idea, text, or piece of music that has me cornered and won’t let go. Something wants to be made, and it’s my job to figure out what and how. I often begin with reading and research, collecting other elements related to the main idea such as images, poetry, patterns, texture, objects, colours etc., things that will help give the idea a moving form. Then I head to the studio to create some movement phrases. If I’m working site specifically, then the history of that space will greatly inform the process. I tend to favor episodic form as a structuring device and works are often made like a series of overlapping images, weaving dance with gesture, story, text, image, and sound. I often set tasks for the performers to explore; they are a key part of the collaborative process, as is the input of the wider creative team. Towards the very end of a process, I will add transitions and order the work.

You have a history in theater. How does your background in acting influence your approach to dance, and vice versa, how does your experience in dance influence your understanding of what theater can be?

I’ve been interested in performance in public spaces for a while now and have created work in empty warehouses, galleries, and parks. I like to learn about the background of each space, including the architecture and how that affects the power balance between audience and performers and notions of intimacy within that space. That said, I also love the quiet tension that sits on a traditional empty stage too. My background in theatre has given me an appreciation for storytelling, an understanding of dramaturgy and language, how to balance a stage and a feel for inherent rhythm and pace. I also love working with ‘untrained bodies’ alongside trained movers too, helping to disrupt preconceived ideas about who has the right to dance.

Memory House, Photo by Marcus Struzina

What’s next? Do you have an upcoming project or focus you’d like to share more about? 

I’ve had 18 months off following serious illness, so right now I’m enjoying the simplicity and sheer joy of being able to move my body again, to be a student and attend classes. I guess you could say that I’m filling back up my cup. I’m also currently exploring a new work called Body Ecology, which follows environmental themes found in my previous works. Spending time in nature has been a big part of my healing journey and I want to explore this further. I recently completed a wonderful course on Embodied Mythology, ritual, and devotional practices, and many of these themes are weaving their way into my creative practice in a beautifully rich and expansive way. Most of my work to this point has been about directing, choreographing, and making work for other performers. I’m excited to start doing more performing myself.

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To learn more, visit blinkdancetheatre.com.au.

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