Jessica He on the Joys of Being a Professional Ballerina
Visualize your favorite hobby—is it drawing, cooking, running? Now, visualize yourself in your element, whether at your desk, in the kitchen or on the trail, and you are totally consumed in your craft, your brain is so focused on the task at hand that external […]
ran-&-rave
How to Deal With Perfectionism
Perfectionism is a common trait among ballroom dancers. It can be helpful in driving you to improve your skills and become the best dancer you can be. However, perfectionism can also be harmful if it leads to excessive self-criticism or perfectionistic standards that are impossible […]
Ballroom dancesWhy Crafting More-Inclusive Immersive Theater Matters
I am a unicorn, so I’ve been told. I can make people feel a certain way, move a certain way and feel validated. I nestle, negotiate and fly in spaces on- and offstage. My role? Making performers, spectators and directorial/producorial teams feel like they belong. […]
ran-&-rave
Why Some Dancers Are Finding an Outlet in Burlesque
If you hear that someone’s a burlesque performer, you might call to mind Gypsy Rose Lee’s journey from vaudeville youngster to snobby stripper in Gypsy, or even the painted ladies of Moulin Rouge! Burlesque, however, is neither. And for the growing number of women who have found their […]
Dance as activismIf you hear that someone’s a burlesque performer, you might call to mind Gypsy Rose Lee’s journey from vaudeville youngster to snobby stripper in Gypsy, or even the painted ladies of Moulin Rouge! Burlesque, however, is neither. And for the growing number of women who have found their way to nightlife performance from a concert-dance background, burlesque can feel pretty close to a feminist utopia—one where women’s bodies and choreographic voices are celebrated.
Yes, stereotypes and tokenism remain an issue. But burlesque performers often find an outlet they never imagined in formal dance studios. “It really fills my cup,” says Marcy Richardson, who marries aerial dance, opera and pole dancing in her nightlife act, and also performs with the burlesque troupe Company XIV. “I get to be my most authentic self and let go of any expectations that people have.”
Burlesque’s history in the U.S. has deeper roots than modern dance or even ballet. It grew out of Victorian music hall, Victorian burlesque and minstrel shows in the second half of the 19th century. Today’s version of burlesque best resembles that of the early 1900s, when vaudeville reigned supreme. The form flourished during prohibition, and, pushed partially underground, the striptease took center stage. A wave of censorship shut down shows in the late ’30s, but burlesque came roaring back in the ’40s and ’50s, thanks to female trailblazers like Lili St. Cyr and Tempest Storm.
An entrepreneurial spirit remains firmly embedded in 21st-century burlesque. Like concert-dance choreographers, burlesquers often wear many hats: dancemaker, costume designer, self-promoter, makeup artist. “Generally, we’re independent artists,” says Jeez Loueez, a New Orleans–based burlesque performer who started out in musical theater. “It’s up to you to seek out the jobs—and get your own rehearsal space, edit your own music and design your own costumes.”
One of the most rewarding differences from a formal dance career is how often you get to perform, says burlesquer Dirty Martini. Burlesque acts translate well to myriad venues with the capacity to pull together a show quickly. “When you’re rehearsing for a contemporary-dance work, it takes, what, six months to get a concert together, and maybe you can perform for one weekend,” says Martini. “In nightlife, there are shows four or five times a week. You can take an idea you have, and in a week it’s onstage.”
The need to constantly market yourself in order to generate an audience and a loyal following feels similarly exhausting to the hustle demanded of independent contemporary choreographers, however. For most of Loueez’s burlesque career, she’s had to get enough butts in seats to turn a profit for herself. “Say there’s a bar that wants to have a burlesque show,” she says. “You might reach out to a producer, who’ll say, ‘Great. It’ll cost me $2,000 to produce this event.’ Now you have to sell tickets and match that cost before getting a cut of the door.” Loueez likes to joke that if she worked at Walgreens, she wouldn’t need to constantly post on social media that everyone should come visit her at a certain time. “I wish I could just go to work without having to shout about it every day on social media.”
Despite burlesque’s hustle culture, the transition into nightlife for most dancers-turned-burlesque-performers feels like taking a big gulp of fresh air. “Before burlesque, I would go to auditions, and I could see that I was a better dancer, but I wasn’t getting the job because I looked a certain way or I wasn’t the right height,” says Michelle L’amour, known colloquially as The Most Naked Woman. While she was dancing for an industrial glam-rock band, the front man, whom she was dating, asked her if she’d like to create a burlesque show as an opening act. L’amour said yes (“even though I had no idea what that was,” she says with a laugh). When she did her first striptease, she knew this was going to be her life. (And that front man is now her husband.)
For Zelia Rose, a burlesque performer who is also a swing in Australia’s production of Hamilton, the absence of needing to look or perform better than someone else is a big draw. “Sure, there’s always going to be competition,” she says, “but there’s never a sense of ‘Oh, I’m comparing myself to this person, the way my body looks.’ There’s more of a celebration of coming together.”
Burlesque offers a particular performance haven for plus-size women, who are weary of concert-dance companies that seem to uniformly hire a highly specific body type: thin. When she graduated from Purchase College—a program she says she entered on weight probation—Martini knew the odds of finding a contemporary-dance gig were small. “I auditioned for everyone, and I knew no one was going to hire me, because I was a size 14 or 16,” she says.
Carving a space for herself and helping to shape the nascent burlesque scene in New York City in the 1990s was thrilling. “It’s exciting for me to present a body that people get excited about,” says Martini, a past winner of burlesque’s version of the Olympics, the Miss Exotic World pageant. “It’s not just men being excited because it’s titillating—the majority are women who are so excited to see a body that’s not reflected in magazines or in television or the movies. They’re like, ‘Oh, thank God! Somebody’s representing the majority of women in the U.S. who are over a size 12.’ “
Of course, stereotyping still exists. “When you look at the ways shows are cast, it might be five thin white girls and a brown girl and a fat girl,” says Jezebel Express, a burlesque dancer who recently began performing out of a specially outfitted school bus. “You still see some idea that people are welcome, but only if they’re achieving at a super-high level.” It’s common for plus-size performers to feel relegated to comedic routines, Express says: “They expect to have to deflect their sexuality.”
Burlesque, like nearly every performance field, still has work to do when it comes to moving beyond tokenism and successfully integrating performers of color. “I get pigeonholed into always being the representation card,” says Rose. “I’ll often be the only POC visible in shows.”
It’s an audience-diversity issue, too, says Loueez. “Producers will ask me, ‘How do I get my audience to be more diverse?’ ” she says. “Well, you booked 10 skinny white ladies! If you’re not seeing yourself reflected onstage, you’re not going to go to those shows.”
Loueez, who 10 years ago founded Jeezy’s Juke Joint, a Black Burly Q Revue, as a way to shine a light on Black burlesque performers, uses her teaching career as a tool for change. “I started teaching because I was tired of seeing appropriation,” she says. “A lot of people were using it for comedic effect: ‘How hilarious is it that I’m white and I’m trying to twerk!’ But if a Black burlesque performer did the same act, it would be too stripper-y or raunchy. I have to remind myself that burlesque is not a sparkly bubble where racism and ableism and classicism don’t exist.”
It is a space, performers argue, that offers a wider range of self-expression than its concert-dance counterpart—and seems more ready to tackle the problematic issues that need fixing. “We live in a culture that created a hierarchy of bodies that serve the patriarchy,” says Express. “But people are slowly hopping off the train, one at a time. And I get to help them off the train—with burlesque.”
The post Why Some Dancers Are Finding an Outlet in Burlesque appeared first on Dance Magazine.
Why Dancers Belong on the Ballot
In the winter of 2014 I was literally running through the streets of New York City to my first-ever meeting with Gale Brewer, the borough president of Manhattan. I was freaking out. I had never met with a politician before; I was running late, and […]
Dance as activism
When Dance Work Dried Up, This Artist Founded a Nonprofit to Serve Her Neighbors Down the Street
Janice Rosario is a used to having a packed schedule. Pre-pandemic, she juggled teaching at The Ailey School in New York City with traveling throughout the U.S. to guest choreograph and teach at various colleges. “Once the pandemic hit, all these festivals and plans and […]
Dance as activismJanice Rosario is a used to having a packed schedule. Pre-pandemic, she juggled teaching at The Ailey School in New York City with traveling throughout the U.S. to guest choreograph and teach at various colleges. “Once the pandemic hit, all these festivals and plans and commissions that I had were postponed or completely canceled,” she says.
When Ailey called off its intensive, Rosario says, “it was the first time that I’d had a summer without work.”
Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter protests were happening in Manhattan’s Union Square, not far from Rosario. She wanted to support the cause, but with ongoing COVID-19 concerns and a newborn daughter, she decided to focus her efforts in a hyper-local way.
Building Bridges
Rosario founded The Good Neighbor Collective, a nonprofit to narrow the wealth gap and inequality in New York City, starting by serving those who live in public housing a block away from her home. As a resident of Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village, a 21,000-strong living community, she got the support of her complex’s CEO and recruited other residents to get involved. “It’s essentially to connect people who are in close proximity to each other but are part of two different worlds. I created a bridge, a way for us to be part of one community.”
Perhaps what’s most interesting about Rosario’s nonprofit is that it’s not dance-based. Instead, she spoke with the New York City Housing Authority to zero in on residents’ needs. “I told them, ‘We want to support you. What can we do?’ ”
A string of initiatives soon followed: Residents donated items for a school-supply drive in the fall and fulfilled 300 winter wishes for holiday gifts. At Thanksgiving, the nonprofit partnered with S’MAC, a mac ‘n’ cheese shop owned by one of her neighbors, and New York City councilmen to raise funds and distribute 750 meals throughout the East Village and Lower East Side.
Boosting Career Skills
Rosario is extremely passionate about The Good Neighbor Collective’s education and empowerment initiatives, including virtual career days, which have connected professionals from Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village with nearly 300 middle- and high-school students.
Earlier this year, Rosario encouraged Beam Living, StuyTown’s property management company, to host a job-shadowing program. “They opened up their doors for low-income college students to spend a week observing and learning from varied professionals there.” Now, many of those students are applying for internships with Beam Living. “It’s another way to give access to students who generally don’t have a network to be part of a company’s hiring pool,” she says. Rosario hopes to expand the job-shadowing program to include companies with employees who live in StuyTown.
During Black History Month, the nonprofit is giving the gift of reading by raising money to purchase books by Black authors from Harlem’s Sister’s Uptown book store. Age-appropriate selections, for infants to adults, will be distributed to residents in nearby public housing units.
The Impact on Her Art
Given the breadth of projects her nonprofit has done, Rosario says, “I keep thinking, How do I bring it back to dance? Whether it’s a dance program that I create post-COVID or I don’t, I feel like, for me, it’s always been important to be a human first before an artist.”
“In the dance community, we’re so entrenched in our own world because we’re so passionate about it,” she says. “But there’s also something about the world outside of dance and letting that fuel our work, so that ultimately we’re able to reach different audiences. Even though I’ve been teaching virtually, I know that this is going to have a deep impact on the way that I create, the way that I communicate and develop as an artist.”
Rosario draws connections between her methods as an artist and her nonprofit work. “The way that I choreograph and teach, community-building has always been at the forefront,” she says. “As dancers, our skills are transferable—there’s so much that we can do.”
The Good Neighbor Collective’s next project will employ the expertise of former HR professionals. Through career-readiness workshops for youth and young adults, they’ll lend help with resumés, cover letters and interview prep.
As the dance world starts to reopen, Rosario plans to continue her nonprofit with additional support from volunteers. Whether she’s in the studio or down the street, she’ll keep building bridges and empowering others.
The post When Dance Work Dried Up, This Artist Founded a Nonprofit to Serve Her Neighbors Down the Street appeared first on Dance Magazine.
At What Point Does Appreciation Become Cultural Appropriation?
Michele Byrd-McPhee’s uncle was a DJ for the local black radio station in Philadelphia, where she was born. As a kid she was always dancing to the latest music, including a new form of powerful poetry laid over pulsing beats that was the beginning of […]
Dance as activismMichele Byrd-McPhee’s uncle was a DJ for the local black radio station in Philadelphia, where she was born. As a kid she was always dancing to the latest music, including a new form of powerful poetry laid over pulsing beats that was the beginning of what we now call hip hop.
Byrd-McPhee became enamored of the form and went on to a career as a hip-hop dancer and choreographer, eventually founding the Ladies of Hip-Hop Festival and directing the New York City chapter of Everybody Dance Now!. Over the decades, she has experienced hip hop’s growth from its roots in the black community into a global phenomenon—a trajectory she views with both pride and caution.
On one hand, the popularity of hip hop has “made a global impact,” says Byrd-McPhee. “It’s provided a voice for so many people around the world.” The downside is “it’s used globally in ways that the people who made the culture don’t benefit from it.”
That includes marketing to sell products, music videos to sell personalities and dance classes to sell an attitude. In these commercial spaces, hip hop is distilled to its energy and aesthetics, stripped of its history and significance in black communities as an art of protest. It’s then sprinkled on everything from Broadway shows to fashion campaigns like an exotic spice.
“People think that all you have to do is have certain postures, wear certain clothes, dance to certain music” to make it hip hop, Byrd-McPhee says, pointing out that simply donning toe shoes and tutus and dancing to Tchaikovsky does not a ballerina make. “It’s that kind of disconnect from the origins of the culture and the people who created it that’s problematic.”
That shallow aesthetic borrowing and disconnect is cultural appropriation. It has a long history in dance, from 19th-century “exotic” ballets like La Bayadère and Le Corsaire, to the tap used in vaudeville, to American modern dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis, who found inspiration in the trendy histories, rituals and aesthetics of cultures like those of India and Egypt.
In popular culture, more recent accusations of cultural appropriation have been aimed at Madonna’s use of voguing in her famous “Vogue” video, Miley Cyrus’ adoption of twerking as a way to rebrand herself, and the New Zealand choreographer Parris Goebel’s use of Jamaican dancehall in Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” video.
Michelle Hefner Hayes performing at the Kennedy Center
Andy White, Courtesy Hefner Hayes
Cultural appropriation is “taking the external trappings of cultural traditions and using them as decorations on your own history without developing mutually supporting relationships in the community that you’re taking from,” says Michelle Heffner Hayes, a professor at the University of Kansas’ Department of Theatre & Dance, who has studied the legacy of cultural appropriation in dance as part of her work.
It’s not a question about “ethnic” dances, Hayes points out, because “every dance form is an ethnic form,” including ballet and modern dance. “The power dynamic matters. It’s very different for someone who is in a position of privilege to borrow from a dance form from a marginalized community.”
Hayes’ interest in these issues stems in part from thinking about her own role as a white, queer American woman who was drawn to practice and write academically about flamenco, African diaspora and Latin popular dances. Throughout her career, she has asked: “How do you enter into a tradition that isn’t a part of your various cultural identities in a respectful way?”
That’s something Nic Gareiss has had to learn as an American from Michigan who works with traditional music and dance from across the North Atlantic, including Ireland and Scotland. “There’s been a history of America taking up space and appropriating cultural forms and enacting cultural imperialism,” he says. In an effort to grapple with that, he moved to Ireland to study at the University of Limerick to learn “not only the movement but also the culture around the movement, and to build relationships with movers in that culture.”
Nic Gareiss in Ireland
Darragh Kane, Courtesy Gareiss
Even if you can’t move abroad, visiting a dance form’s country of origin is something that contemporary bharata-natyam dancer and choreographer Preeti Vasudevan encourages of her students. “Go experience the country first,” she says, and learn from different teachers there. Indian dance, she says, “needs to be put in context so you understand what modern India is about.”
Korie Genius
, who was born in Jamaica, teaches dancehall at a number of studios around New York City, and invites his students to attend local dancehall spaces and parties to gain firsthand exposure to the culture. Equally important, he says, is the continuous recognition of the form’s pioneers and the teachers who have guided you.
“Give a shout-out to the dances you’re doing,” Genius says, “where they come from, where you learned it.” Crediting teachers and trailblazers in social media posts, in program notes and in interviews is an easy and critical way to acknowledge an art form’s lineage and your place in it with gratitude and humility. That recognition, Hayes says, “is a step people skip, and it leads to conflict that people don’t intend.”
Korie Genius teaching class
Grainne Images, Courtesy Genius
But immersion and recognition aren’t always enough. As Byrd-McPhee points out, it’s often the entertainment companies, cultural institutions, private dance studios and the artists with a foot in those doors—still overwhelmingly white—that benefit financially from the appropriation of cultural dances due to existing economic structures.
“We don’t benefit from all the money that people make from it,” she says of hip hop’s mainstream presence. “It’s sad.”
If you receive a job involving a cultural art form that isn’t your own, Byrd-McPhee advises, find ways to use your platform to give opportunities to artists who do come from that culture, perhaps as performers and consultants. “That’s under your control,” she says.
Preeti Vasudevan performing her Stories by Hand
Maria Baranova, Courtesy Vasudevan
Broader awareness also requires recognizing the politics and power dynamics that affect cultures, historically and today. B-girl Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie fell in love with hip hop as a young immigrant to the U.S. from Israel and Italy, and she credits her mentor Richard Santiago with helping to open her eyes to the painful history that spawned that art form.
“You can’t be about these forms that come from the African diaspora and the trauma of slavery and not participate in the fight for equality,” she says.
She also acknowledges that her platform to tour and present her art is one that is not afforded to many in the hip-hop community, and that comes with responsibility. “When you are creating with forms from a culture outside of your own, you do have a responsibility to call out issues,” she says, noting house’s LGBTQ roots and how breaking was born from the African-American and Latin communities.
She not only includes the history of street and club styles in her classes and in postshow Q&As, but also supports the struggles that others in the community face. In this way, she’s consciously working to ensure her art is a gesture of appreciation by redirecting the spotlight toward the elders of her chosen dance form. “It’s part of my responsibility to make people care,” she says.
Ephrat Asherie
Robert Altman, Courtesy Asherie
While engaging with dances from other cultures comes with responsibility, it can lead to profound personal and artistic growth. Vasudevan says she loves introducing non-Indian dancers to her art form and sees benefits to any artist willing to put in the time for thoughtful, respectful dialogue.
“If you’re actually engaging with an artist of another culture and figuring out together the building blocks of each other’s cultural language,” she says, “it should shed light on your own questions, your own self-reflection, so that you can go deeper into what you’ve grown up with and you can come up with something that’s authentically yours.”
The post At What Point Does Appreciation Become Cultural Appropriation? appeared first on Dance Magazine.
Post-Election Dancing Erupts in Streets Throughout the Nation
Dance has long been used as a powerful form of protest. So it’s all the more meaningful when that movement shifts from fighting oppression and injustices to celebrating a victory over them. That’s exactly with happened this weekend as people took to the streets when […]
Dance as activism
The Dance Community Wants You to Get Out the Vote
Without the regular bustle of the fall performance season, much of the dance community has a rare amount of free time on its hands—and it’s being put to good use. Many artists and organizations are redirecting their energy from the rehearsal studio to an extremely […]
Dance as activismWithout the regular bustle of the fall performance season, much of the dance community has a rare amount of free time on its hands—and it’s being put to good use. Many artists and organizations are redirecting their energy from the rehearsal studio to an extremely important cause: urging the community to vote. And, of course, they’re doing it with a signature dance flair.
Here are just a few of the get-out-the-vote efforts and events happening online and across the country. For more arts-related resources about voting, including the deadline to register in your state, check out Dance/USA’s November 2020 Election Toolkit.
Dance the Vote
Dance the Vote, based in St. Louis, Missouri, has commissioned a mix of local and national choreographers to create works intended to inspire participation in the election. The first few episodes, available on YouTube, include groups like Versa-Style Dance Company and Heidi Latsky Dance, with more to come.
DISCO RIOT’s Move American
Leading up to the presidential election, San Diego–based organization DISCO RIOT is presenting Move American, a series of short dance films addressing social-justice, political and human-rights issues. New films will be released each Monday through November 2. One of these is Derion Loman’s “By any means necessary,” a visceral duet with Simon Greenberg that tackles voter suppression against a stark desert background.
Paul Taylor Dance Company
Paul Taylor Dance Company took to Instagram to pose a simple but poignant message: “To have a voice, we must vote!”
Pro Dance League’s Turnout the Vote
Courtesy Pro Dance League
Online dance-class platform Pro Dance League’s election efforts are all about the numbers. Its goal? To register at least 1,000 new voters through its Turnout the Vote campaign.
Dance Lab New York and Supermajority
Choreographic incubator Dance Lab New York has partnered with Supermajority, a women’s activism group, for an October 2 virtual fundraiser called Celebrating Freedom of Expression. The evening will be hosted by Misty Copeland and includes a first look at Jeannette, a brand-new musical based on the life of Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress. For an extra dose of inspiration, the event will feature choreography by Karla Puno Garcia, Karen Sieber and Yusha-Marie Sorzano. Tickets are available for purchase here.
American Ballet Theatre
The dancers of American Ballet Theatre have taken to social media to remind us that voting isn’t just about picking who will lead. It’s about standing up for the issues that are most important to you.
Pacific Northwest Ballet
Whether you’re voting by mail, in person or dropping your ballot at an official box, Pacific Northwest Ballet doesn’t want anyone to forget this final step: the celebratory voting dance. Exercising your right to vote is always cause for celebration.
The post The Dance Community Wants You to Get Out the Vote appeared first on Dance Magazine.
It's Time to Overhaul the Blackface (or Blueface) Puppet in Petrouchka
When Michel Fokine’s ballet Petrouchka premiered in 1911, none of the (largely white) audience members in Paris objected to the big, dumb puppet being portrayed as a Moor in blackface. Stravinsky’s music was stirring, Fokine’s choreography was ground-breaking, and Alexandre Benois’ sets and costumes were […]
Dance as activismWhen Michel Fokine’s ballet Petrouchka premiered in 1911, none of the (largely white) audience members in Paris objected to the big, dumb puppet being portrayed as a Moor in blackface. Stravinsky’s music was stirring, Fokine’s choreography was ground-breaking, and Alexandre Benois’ sets and costumes were transporting. Nijinsky’s portrayal of Petrouchka, the puppet with a human soul, tugged at the heart.
This was during the third season of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and the ballet was a hit. Bronislava Nijinska, sister of Nijinsky, described the impact in her book Bronislava Nijinska, Early Memoirs:
“Petrouchka,
Stravinsky’s musical masterpiece, took Paris by storm. Thunderous applause. Triumph for Stravinsky, for Benois, for Fokine. Triumph for Nijinsky, for Karsavina, and for the ballet ensemble. Triumph of course for Sergei Pavlovitch Diaghilev. An unforgettable performance. The magic, the creative imagination, the artistry. . . . The enraptured public poured behind the wings, into the dressing rooms of the artists, onto the stage.”
No mention of the Moor puppet being offensive. Nor was there any hint of mainstream controversy 31 years later when Petrouchka became the standout ballet of the 1942 season of Ballet Theatre (later ABT), giving a young Jerome Robbins the part of Petrouchka, a deeply meaningful role for him. Nor in 1970 when the Joffrey Ballet took it on. For decades, Petrouchka was a beloved addition to the ballet canon.
But times change and audiences change. White people are now more aware of how odious the practice of blackface was. Blackface minstrelsy was developed specifically to ridicule Black people for the entertainment of white people. We look back at those traditions as cruel and racist. In Petrouchka, the Moor is not only mean and aggressive, but prodigiously stupid. He worships a coconut when he can’t crack it open with his sword.
According to a quick internet search, the first willingness I could find of any critic to call out racism is a review of Petrouchka when ABT revived it in 2005. The New York Times critic John Rockwell wrote this: “Marcelo Gomes made a commanding Moor, with all the racist business about childlike, violent blacks intact.”
Five years later, while I was editor in chief of Dance Magazine, Joseph Carman wrote an opinion piece titled “Exotic or Offensive?” with the subtitle “Ballet’s Outdated Stereotypes Are Overdue for Retirement.” He mentioned ballets like Raymonda, La Bayadère and Petrouchka.
To offer an example of a positive action taken, I added a sidebar on the decision by Oakland Ballet in 1991 to paint the Moor doll’s face a deep blue. I thought that approach, later adopted by San Francisco Ballet, was ingenious. I called it “The Avatar Solution.”
Last semester, as I was teaching dance history at Juilliard, I told my students that Petrouchka was a beautifully tragic ballet that unfortunately has a racist character—the Blackamoor puppet, Petrouchka’s rival. While discussing the problem raised by the Moor being in blackface, I referred to the blueface make-up as a solution. As far as I was concerned, Oakland Ballet and San Francisco Ballet had solved the problem.
But my students would have none of it. They felt such a compromise did not address the underlying racism. They declared, to a person, that they would never go see such a ballet.
Sarasota Ballet learned the hard way how unpopular Petrouchka had become. During its 2015 tribute to the Ballets Russes and Nijinsky, it ran into controversy. Here is Carrie Seidman reporting in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune:
“Even before the curtain opened at the Sarasota Opera House, a firestorm had erupted on social media following the posting of a dress rehearsal photo showing dancer David Tlaiye as The Moor in Michel Fokine’s “Petrushka,” [alternate spelling] in full blackface with outlined white lips.
“Given the timing—riots were ongoing in Baltimore over the death of African American Freddie Gray while he was in police custody—it seemed to many especially insensitive and inflammatory.
“The ballet’s argument, of course, was that this was a period piece, intentionally recreated with as much historical accuracy and detail as possible. But even some in the company’s normally besotted audience, seemed uncomfortable with the choice, with a diminishment of applause and a few random boos as Tlaiye took his bows.”
Concerned about the future of one of my favorite ballets, I decided that, with my class, we would reach out to Isabelle Fokine. She is the granddaughter of Michel Fokine, frequent stager of his ballets, and rights holder to Petrouchka in the United States. After my preliminary email, Isabelle replied, saying she had seen my article about the blueface decision 10 years ago. “I think the position that Oakland Ballet took is right on the mark,” she told me. However, she said she was open to hearing from my students.
As a class, we worked on a letter to Isabelle. One student suggested changing the make-up to some form of whiteface but also inserting a note about the original character into the program. Another student spoke very directly about the offense: “I know I would feel marginalized watching it. For me racism isn’t a thing of the past but a real issue I deal with every day.”
Ultimately Isabelle said she agreed with the students. She also described how her grandfather observed human behavior as research for making the ballet:
“When Fokine created the physical vocabulary of the characters, he modeled them on commuters on the St. Petersburg tram. So the overly confident man [the model for the Moor] sat with his feet pointed out and his knees spread apart, like a second position. The shy withdrawn man [model for Petrouchka] hunched his shoulders forward, toes pointed in and knees together. Fokine wanted to use what we all recognize as universal body language in a ballet to illustrate character.”
So, the blackface makeup wasn’t necessary to the character portrayal. And it wasn’t Fokine’s idea in the first place. Benois, the scene designer who collaborated with Stravinsky on the libretto, had set the ballet in an 1830s pre-Lenten fair. According to his memoirs published in 1960, he had recalled seeing a pair of silly, aggressive blackface puppets in St. Petersburg in the 1800s.
When I reconnected with Isabelle in the summer, now with Black Lives Matter protests in full swing, her thinking had evolved:
“I think we are all in agreement that he [the Moor puppet] is both out of date and inappropriate. This has been the case for a number of years. The “blue face” solution is not sufficient. . . . Since my agenda is to maintain Fokine’s legacy accurately, I have been racking my brain how this character could be changed, while still maintaining the choreography. However I think I have stumbled on the answer through one of my father’s childhood toys (of all things). I would propose to replace him with a ‘Warrior,’ based in appearance on a Cossack doll my father had. That way he could be fierce and lustful, associated with what he does, rather than a particular ethnic group.”
In a later statement Isabelle fleshed it out even more: “The Warrior’s face would be doll-like make-up with an absurdly large moustache. His hat would be an enormous shearling papakha.” To complete the picture, she plans to replace the coconut with a decorated Easter egg. And she’ll replace the pictures of palm trees in the Moor’s room with “horses galloping across the steppes.”
Hats off to Isabelle for figuring out how to uphold Fokine’s legacy. And to my students for pushing the issue. I hope this means that future generations will be able to fully experience the enchantment of Petrouchka.
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Getting its Groove back: Groove Dance Competition and Convention extends the 2020 season
Much of the dance competition circuit has been on hold for months as the U.S. (and the rest of the world) grappled with COVID-19 restrictions. Dancers everywhere are itching to return to the stage, so as each state begins to emerge from lockdown, Groove Dance […]
ran-&-raveMuch of the dance competition circuit has been on hold for months as the U.S. (and the rest of the world) grappled with COVID-19 restrictions. Dancers everywhere are itching to return to the stage, so as each state begins to emerge from lockdown, Groove Dance Competition and Convention is ready to go. From July, make-up events and regional competitions will start to go ahead, with new procedures in place to ensure safety for all.
The extended 2020 season means Groove can continue to offer dancers its usual inspiring, high-energy competition experience, but in line with health and safety guidelines.
Safety precautions at the new events include recommendations for attendees to wear masks and participate in temperature checks, mandatory temperature checks for staff, socially distanced seating, rigorous sanitization procedures, and there will be no scoring deductions for costumes featuring safety elements like face shields or masks. And, as always, Groove’s slick live streams will be available to ensure spectators can watch from home if they prefer.
Throughout July, August and September, these regional competition events, which include free master classes, are now scheduled for cities around the U.S., starting with a Virtual Competition on July 31, open to anyone in the country. In October and November, one-day conventions will hit key cities, offering multiple master classes, scholarship opportunities and more.
In order to keep studios as informed as possible, Groove is sending out updated information at four weeks prior to each event – and again at two weeks prior if needed – outlining any event-specific guidelines mandated by the host state. This might mean rotating studios, dressing room-specific regulations and mandatory temperature checks. In keeping everyone as informed as possible, the Groove team hopes to ensure the events run just as smoothly as they usually do.
Registering your studio for an event is simple; head to www.grooveregistration.com/Register and fill out your details to create an account. A full list of upcoming events can be found here, and each individual event page includes further details such as the host hotel and links to book online. There’s also a full update on all COVID-19 policies available here.
There’s no doubt that dancers will be thrilled to return to doing what they love most, and the Groove team is excited to welcome everyone back.
By Emily Newton-Smith of Dance Informa.
The post Getting its Groove back: Groove Dance Competition and Convention extends the 2020 season appeared first on Dance Informa Magazine.
Dance Companies Are Giving Back by Distributing Meals and Groceries to Their Communities
As dance studios remain empty, some companies have found alternate uses for their buildings. By swapping slippers for aprons, two major dance organizations continue to make an incredible impact on their communities during this difficult time. San Francisco Ballet Hosts a Pop-up Food Pantry San […]
Dance as activismAs dance studios remain empty, some companies have found alternate uses for their buildings. By swapping slippers for aprons, two major dance organizations continue to make an incredible impact on their communities during this difficult time.
San Francisco Ballet Hosts a Pop-up Food Pantry
San Francisco Ballet has partnered with the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank to turn its Chris Hellman Center for Dance into a pop-up food pantry. The idea came about after company member Max Cauthorn, who’d been delivering groceries to some of his high-risk neighbors, asked SFB executive director Kelly Tweeddale how the company could help out on a larger scale.
Since April 13, volunteers, including SFB dancers and staff, have been distributing bags of groceries to community members in need. They intend to continue every Monday, from 9 am to 1 pm Pacific, until San Francisco’s shelter-in-place order is lifted.
A volunteer packs free meals for World Central Kitchen.
Courtesy Mark Morris Dance Group
Mark Morris Dance Group Distributes Meals to Locals
On the East Coast, the Mark Morris Dance Group has partnered with Dance/NYC to become a distribution site for World Central Kitchen. Since April 20, the Brooklyn dance hub has been offering free, pre-packaged meals to local residents and employees. Meals are available for pickup weekdays from 12:30 pm to 2:30 pm Eastern, or until supplies last.
“This is a dire situation,” said Mark Morris in a press release. “I am heartened and grateful that the Mark Morris Dance Center is ready and capable of participating with Chef Andrés and the Word Central Kitchen in making pick-up meals available to anyone who needs them.” Need a lunch? Dancers are welcome.
Even as these dance organizations are financially struggling, they are doing what they can to offer kindness to strangers.
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Barriers & Bias: What It's Like for Immigrant Dance Artists
Hussein Smko premiered Ballade: The Rain Song at the 2017 Battery Dance Festival, on a platform with a view of the Statue of Liberty. There couldn’t have been a better backdrop. The work pairs Smko’s unique fusion of contemporary dance and hip hop with powerful […]
Dance as activismHussein Smko premiered Ballade: The Rain Song at the 2017 Battery Dance Festival, on a platform with a view of the Statue of Liberty. There couldn’t have been a better backdrop. The work pairs Smko’s unique fusion of contemporary dance and hip hop with powerful spoken word read by journalist and Iraqi-American refugee Riyadh Mohammed. With the icon of freedom behind them, their performance drew on their experiences as Muslim immigrants to this country and channeled their resistance to Islamophobia.
“The work might be sensitive,” says Smko, an Iraqi of Arab-Kurdish roots, “but it’s what we witness and what’s going on, and you need to be aware of it.”
In fact, he moved to the U.S. not only to get top-notch training, but also to challenge prejudice through his art. “I could have done something in Kurdistan,” he says, “but it wouldn’t have been as effective. I came here to give a different image from how Muslims are portrayed.”
Smko is one of thousands of dance artists who have come to America from all parts of the world and represent a panoply of races, faiths and cultures. In an era of escalating hate crimes, new laws and increasingly stringent immigration policies, they face unique challenges.
Assumptions About Identity
After first visiting the U.S. on a scholarship, in 2016 Smko got his green card and moved to New York City, where he dances for Battery Dance Company and makes solo pieces and films. For now, his focus is on creating work that foregrounds his experiences with war and immigration and addresses anti-Muslim prejudice. Yet no artist wants to be pigeonholed. “I don’t want for the rest of my life to do just one thing,” he says.
“The assumption is that if somebody is an immigrant, they are a representative of everyone from their country or their culture—or they have to assimilate,” says Alejandra Duque Cifuentes, the executive director of Dance/NYC. In 2018, the nonprofit service organization released two studies on foreign-born dance artists in New York City, and in 2019 produced Advancing Immigrants. Dance. Arts., a survey and analysis on the needs of immigrant dance artists in the New York City area. “What we found is that immigrant dance artists are making dance across all of it: ballet, contemporary, culturally specific forms, fusion work.”
As central as the immigrant experience is to an artist’s identity, many choose not to make it a focus of their choreography. Modern dancer Peiling Kao, for example, emigrated from Taiwan in 2007. Though her work may not overtly address political or cultural issues, her Asian identity is sometimes regarded as “other.” She experienced this during her 2016 participation in Hope Mohr Dance’s Bridge Project: Ten Artists Respond to Locus, in which the dancemakers were inspired by Trisha Brown’s 1975 solo.
Peiling Kao
Marley Aiu, Courtesy Kao
“When Trisha Brown choreographed Locus,” Kao explains, “one of her prompts was to help her to understand more of her movement vocabulary, to understand more of herself as a mover. I thought, Wow, I can use that as a prompt too.” So Kao, who trained in ballet, modern and Chinese dance forms, incorporated elements of classical Chinese movement into her interpretation.
“In the post-show discussion, an audience member asked me if I am trying to empower my Asian identity,” recalls Kao, now 47 and an assistant professor of dance at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. “It made me wonder, Why haven’t you seen me as a Taiwanese until you see me do Asian movement? Is my yellowness erased when I do modern, but when I do a gesture of Chinese dance, somehow my yellowness becomes even more yellow?”
Assumptions about who immigrants are based on their country of origin or their ethnicity can impact performance opportunities, as well. “A presenter might be more reluctant if they don’t already have a huge following,” says Cifuentes. “Or presenters say, ‘We already have the Latino for this season.’ ”
Barriers to Entry
In addition to the costs of training and rehearsal space that all dancers and choreographers contend with, immigrant artists tend to bear daunting financial and social burdens, says Cifuentes. “There are lawyer costs, visa costs, language barriers, social media harassment, and they often don’t know what resources they can access,” she says. “And if they are undocumented, they might face deportation.”
Those anxieties are a constant presence in Gabriel Mata’s life. Mata migrated from Mexico to Southern California at age 5 with his mother and sister, and only learned he was undocumented at 16, when he couldn’t get a job because he had no Social Security number.
“It came as a shock,” he remembers. “I navigated in a limbo state, and dance was a great way to get out of my head.” In solos like Dreaming, which blend spoken word and modern dance, “I share my personal narrative as well as financial insecurities from being an immigrant,” he says. “I also question notions of citizenship.”
Receiving DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) status at 21 afforded Mata work eligibility, a driver’s license and access to higher education, but his residency remains uncertain, even though he is married to an American citizen. His experience directly informs not only the content of his work, but also its format: Solos are portable and inexpensive to create, and that helps Mata save for expenses like the biennial $495 DACA renewal fee.
“I can’t have a five-year plan to develop as an artist,” says Mata, now 28 and enrolled in the MFA program at the University of Maryland, College Park. “How will I be financially? I just don’t know. It’s just living day by day.”
Gabriel Mata
Hillary Goidell
Some immigrant dance artists are also ineligible for certain government and private grants that require U.S. citizenship. Additionally, there may also be insufficient social resources that take into account their unique needs, such as language services and fees associated with immigration.
While Cifuentes cites the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Center for Traditional Music and Dance as notable resources, she says, “by and large, there isn’t intentional support for immigrant dance artists.” Or, as Mata puts it, “As immigrants, we get the scraps of the scraps.”
The Bias Against Minorities
Immigrants who are perceived as people of color experience additional discrimination, says Cifuentes. Over a three-year period, the number of Muslim refugees to the U.S. has been decreased by 91 percent. And over the past two years, the U.S. government has put DACA protections in limbo and instituted “extreme vetting” procedures at the borders, such as the January 2020 questioning by the Customs and Border Protection agents of Iranian-Americans returning from abroad.
Contrast that with Pascal Rioult’s experience. “I was lucky, being a Western European citizen and white. Getting a green card was a really easy process,” says the New York City–based choreographer who emigrated from France in 1981, performed with the Martha Graham Dance Company for 10 years and founded RIOULT Dance NY in 1994. “That is not the case for a lot of other people, and that’s unfair.”
Well aware of his privilege, he is trying to increase equity with a youth program at Rioult Dance Center in Astoria, Queens, an exceptionally diverse neighborhood that is home to people from nearly 100 countries.
“We have kids from all different ethnicities,” he says. “We hope that training them from the bottom up will increase diversity in dance, and that eventually they will start to funnel into the company.”
Pascal Rioult leading a rehearsal
Sofia Negron, Courtesy Rioult
New Ideas Become “American”
Countless influential dance artists were and are immigrants, from George Balanchine and José Limón to Ephrat Asherie and nora chipaumire. “Immigrant dancemakers have been vital to what we know as dance today,” Cifuentes says.
Dance/NYC sees immigrant artists as a boon to American dance, and among its recommendations for fostering inclusion and equity are field-wide education on immigrant-rights issues and implicit bias, bringing more immigrant artists onto funding panels, and encouraging leading organizations to provide mentoring.
Every immigrant dance artist brings with them their unique perspective as an individual and a cultural legacy of their country of origin. Over time, their contributions get absorbed into American dance culture, and it’s easy to forget that they originally brought their ideas and identities from other parts of the world.
As Smko sees it, that’s simply one aspect of dance’s power as an international language. “The idea behind the movement is to touch your mind, regardless of who you are,” says Smko. “It’s made for humans.”
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