Happy Mother’s Day!
Cool, but Soul?
It’s so different writing about something that’s just cool. Not super excited about it not super on fire about it – just cool. The Soul Project was cool but I will say that it made me feel my old soul. Especially when I arrived to see my parents and other elders in the dance community struggle with the format of standing and moving around and sitting on the floor. It pleased me greatly that David Zambrano reminded us to help each other view the solo dances. In the end, most of the moments I loved had to do with the soul music that ruled the evening’s playlist. So it was a cool night after all.
Dancer wise, the two dudes, Evivaldo Ernesto and Horacio Macuacua
, resonated with me – as I’m sure they resonated with everybody, but I wonder what the reasons really are? For me, these men interpreted the music, the spirit and the meaning and the groove, in a a way that made me feel like the weight of the soul ancestors was being touched or explored in a familial, respectful type way. For instance I loved the white fro and the trembling piece to the DreamGirls ballad. I actually kind of hate that song and I started to walk away but I’m glad I saw it. The physicallized vocal histrionics and the trembling movements were making me laugh so hard and then it was the moments of stillness that killed it*. Mr. Macuacua provided me with my “steps” as I say, and I loved that the format allowed me to just go ahead and dance with him at certain points.
Let me go ahead and talk about the format. Because I always have to wonder, what do artists want and how much do they want when the invite us onto the stage. Because I feel like Minne should become known as the town to interact. Like ‘Don’t come to Minne if you don’t want people to dance with you when you invite them onstage.’ We are starting to loosen up and get that vibe, so I did appreciate all the people bopping their heads and dancing. If I had a boo there I would have been slow dancing for sure. I felt like the performers wanted it and Nina Fajdiga even jammed with me for a second during the group jam. They looked me in the eyes when they were walking around too. I felt like they wanted a lot of interaction and we could have given them more. I also liked the format but I thought it would have been nice to: 1. have drinks onstage, 2. let the elders sit down**, 3. play some cuts after and let us dance more – or we could have just done that during the show, right? Another point is that you invite cipher logic into the environment when you invite people on the stage. This means I get to talk, walk away, like it or not, and I get to jam the whole time if I want (as my friend Nancy was doing). Cipher logic is not the same as sitting in the theater seats logic but I don’t know if the Soul Project peeps realized that some of us think like that.
Lastly I will say that it was just cool because of a lot of the dancing, although it was highly physical and mostly interesting, was lacking in the connection to the music that I was feeling. I mean, there were only like 2 or 3 songs that I didn’t know played on the sound set that evening and I can feel some of those lyrics like I wrote ‘em meself!!! There were some moments when I was ready to walk away. When you play cuts like thatimage you have to perform the hell out of them. I’m not saying you have to dance every beat but there is a certain energy that has to interpret those stories. Especially if we are going to do solos in close quarters. When I asked Mr. Zambrano afterward he said that he grew up listening to that music but the dancers had to be introduced to it. I know they were trying to make it but something was missing. It’s sad to say that some of them lacked soul – I wonder if that is what it is.
*the good kind of ‘killed it’
**they did provide gallery chairs
Let the Trivia Begin!
What are the nations flags shown here?
Who is the regal historical figure in the photo and what is his relationship to this nations history and our state?
Buy your ticket online for AFRICAN NIGHTS!
Stay Black : thoughts on red, black & GREEN: a blues
…operate not as an urban planner or as an architect but operate based on my beliefs… belief is BLACK
I have to admit that I don’t think about “the question,” meaning the green question, at all really. I mean, I recycle, I use reusable bags at the store, I turn off the water when I brush my teeth, I even have a composter in my yard. But I never really think about the environment, sustainable living, fresh food and all that stuff in the context of Black people, and in the context of my art. So Marc Bamuthi Joseph really brought a new topic to my eye, to my mind, and that was tight! Because he put it in the context of BLACK PEOPLE (well that’s how I interpreted it). Growing up in MN I realize that I’m actually pretty close to the earth, growing gardens and community gardens and all that shit. But red, black & GREEN: a blues made me remember that boyfriend I had in college from Mississippi. When he took me home for xmas I found out that people still live in those shotgun houses and there is a Black side of town and a white side of town, and I don’t think we ate any veg that wasn’t out of a can or cooked to grey death.
…His skin was the brown of soil you want to sow…
Traci Tolmaire. I loved her voice from the top of the stairs. She was sitting at the top of the tallest part of the environment and she was speaking and singing and then she began moving and I really fell in love then! I loved her movement style – grounded, sexy, powerful and totally in control. There was no abandon but I didn’t miss it. Her eyes sparkled with intent. She inhabited these people: the bougie project manager, the busybody community woman, the old ex-wino turned installment artist. I guess I feel sad that I didn’t get to see as much of her, Traci – but she was there and present in her movement. The footworkin’ section, the Lindy hop section, the Dindada section, the anguish of a mother with a lost child – her movement was too tight! That moment when she went to comfort and was thrown off two times before her comfort was accepted – damn!
I WAS SO HAPPY that we got to walk on the stage and be inside the set, but I didn’t really see the beauty in the shotgun houses until I took my seat and viewed it from a distance. It wasn’t a set to me, it was an environment. I think that Theaster Gates intended for us to get all up in that environment and we were too scared and Minnesota to really go there. That’s why I’m going again on Saturday night and best believe its ON! I saw a kid with a watermelon rind in his hand walking around. Yes. I didn’t believe that we were supposed to stand still and quiet and just watch – I KNEW we were supposed to walk around and see people, greet people, join in the songs and rhythms and just get all over it. I’m proud that I clapped, sang, danced and stomped, hugged my homies and kept on changing spots. Even though my 13-year old is going to be mortified, when I go again I am going to:
- eat some watermelon and lemon
- sit in the chair and mess with the dominoes
- stand in weird places and look straight up or peek around corners
- try to engage Bamuthi in some capoeira or contact improv type thang
- ask if I can play the cajon and then play it if MC Soulati says yes
- this time I WILL BE THE LAST PERSON TO LEAVE THE ENVIRONMENT (homegirl was trying to be the last one so I let her have it)
…the church that you smell in his voice is grief…
Theaster Gates‘ voice had so many tears inside it. He took me straight to church and to the jook joint after. He’s the type of performer who manages to make eye contact with me several times when he’s performing and I feel like he’s really seeing me, talking to me, singing to me. What a beautiful lament.
Beats and rhythms are the way I process life, making MC Soulati‘s contributions to the piece super important to me. He manifested this idea that I have that everything has an accompanying rhythm. Bamming bones, fingers on the light pole, the subversion of the cajon that looks like an innocent box – those things represent the rhythm that “they” tried to take away from us, proving it’s power! Stomps, claps and snaps — the church clap –praise break — djembe solo, tama waye! Soulati was the heartbeat of the piece, essential. Like how if you watch Boyz In The Hood with good sound, you can hear the bass of a booming system somewhere in every scene, sometimes buried way underneath but still essential, still kickin’. Stay.
…if you’re gonna be in this garden you can’t just be pretty; you have to put out…
Bamuthi moves like a man, not a dancer, and that’s a good thing to me. Gestures have so much meaning. He’s fusing all of our traditions – West African, Haitian, Black American. There’s a solidness to his footfalls, not stomping or heavy, but dependable. This is what we mean by grounded. There’s a fluidity of torso, not that he’s tworking or popping, but I feel the oceans and rivers in there. These things are also powerful and dependable. Everything is really clear and clean, and though I see the work required, he doesn’t look like its that taxing. Especially when he speaks and moves or busts a major phrase and then starts talking immediately after. Breath control, breath control, breath control styleeeee! My favorite favorite, after the capoeira-like way that he cut through the crowd when we were all on stage, was when he was at the window and I could only see his upper body. Like looking at a pic that stops at the waist, you know the legs are still there even though you can’t see them. He did one particular twist of his hips, just beneath the threshold of the windowsill. Aw man, that was so tight!
…she spits out a seed, looks at me, and asks “the question”
…Panther Blue Seeds, can’t just be pretty, strange fruit,Dindada, church that you smell, spits out a seed, Mekhi, Tupac, china straight, stay. Black panthers, still here, dangling earpiece, “cray,” shaking left hand extended, hella, belief is BLACK, my skin is brown, nobody knows, won’t let me breathe, yeaaaah, well…
I need a different degree so I can be in the African Diaspora Dance Research Group
April 13 and 14 African Diaspora Dance Research Group
events: Public Roundtable, Saturday April 14, 10-12noon
The launch of a new national research group focused on Afrikan Diaspora dance practices. Confirmed participants at this initial day and a half event include Nadine George-Graves (UC San Diego), Jasmine Johnson (UC Berkeley), Raquel Monroe (Columbia College Chicago), Carl Paris (Drexel University), John Perpener (Independent Researcher), Will Rawls (Independent Researcher), Andrea Woods (Duke University), and co-convenors Takiyah Nur Amin (UNC Charlotte) and Thomas F. DeFrantz (Duke University).
Stuart Pimsler Whomp Whomp.
the dance about “the other”
it’s important that you read the title of this post not as “whoop whoop!”, but that descending scale of notes that signify a serious denouement. You know the sound when you lose a life in Mario Bros. “whomp, whomp.”
so for the dance about “the other,” the ladies wear dresses, the men pass around a hat and an older white guy translates everything.
the problem I have with it is not with the movement (standard modern dance), not with the cast (multi-everything). My problem is with the storyteller, the explorer, the colonizer, the interpreter.
It’s a dance about how the older white gent feels about “the other.” He wants us to believe that he understands, that he feels, that he knows, that he can explain. He complains of feeling invisible, of feeling that no one is listening to him.
In my mind I scream “Really?” So you can identify with Bigger Thomas, and dude from Raisin in the Sun, and Kid Cudi? You know what it’s like to step out on these streets as a black man? To walk in the Cowles center as a black man?
And why am I fixated on the Black? Because I feel like that’s the only “other” that really got fleshed out in the work, and because this older white gent “feels like he has a Black man trapped inside of him.”
Oh white man, what won’t you say? Don’t you realize that the younger mixed gentleman does have a Black man and a white man inside of him. You don’t have to colonize his story to bring it to light. Let him tell it.
An older white gentleman speaks his truth – I can’t say it’s a novel idea with a lot of risk involved.
Even the older white woman seemed miffed “I’m also a director of this company”
With a company like SPDT, I was excited to hear and see some of the stories of the company members come to light. This is not a new company, fresh out of the box, needing to show the dance community its perspective. SPDT aesthetic and the perspective of Stuart Pimsler are pretty well established. The interesting risk in letting company members real personalities and stories come to the surface for examination was what I wanted to see and hear.
I felt like i was looking at Stuart Pimsler’s version of people, not the real people themselves.
And to pick apart the movement a little more, where was the risk? Where was the exploration? Where was the dialogue? I heard the words and I saw the movement, but I wanted that deeper layer where the movement begins to speak. It can be interesting to see the movement saying different realities than the words that a dance theater artist may speak.
Red rubber balls turn into a playground ball used for dodgeball, used to slam the living crap out of some poor other kid or a red medicine ball or the kind they use in rhythmic gymnastics…
OK maybe I’m being harsh but these are my real responses to the work. If it is an exploration, and the beginning of a conversation, well them I’m open to the challenge. Maybe what I saw is not what I think I saw.
I get the feeling that someone wants to be congratulated for taking a risk, but I’m not seeing it. Im seeing every history book ever written by who gets to tell the story, who translates.
PS why have a foreign language if you are just going to translate everything IMMEDIATELY after it is said? I don’t speak German but isn’t that the point????
The Cypher is fed by RISK
I love the scared feeling I get in the pit of my stomach when I know I’m going to dance with someone I think is so tight. On the way to Marjani Forte’s class, I had worked myself up into a frenzy of fear thinking to myself “I don’t dance like that!” I had read the description of the class and I honestly had no idea how she was going to do what was described.
“Come and unveil the secrets of your movement language. Push the complexity and layers of your movement choices. Speak loud and clear!”
So I arrived and was greeted and hugged and welcomed to the space. Ms. Forte remembered me, ha! Aw yeah!
We entered the dance zone I and I don’t even remember how she got me going. I do remember her demonstrations, her fluid torso, her upright spine and natural short cut. She definitely passes that “Can you still dance when your hair is short?” test that I have for people. Her energy let me know that the way I teach is ok, that there’s more people out there just as hype, and loving that they living the dream and unapologetic and all that.
But the class was never about her virtuosity or even her at all.
Let me say first that I am a lover of the circle. It’s my favorite part of class. When I am teaching traditional West African, I insist upon the circle at the end of class. I encourage everyone to “go in,” and I understand the rules. I’m usually the first one in when I go to another person’s class and I always try to go twice. I remember going to a Dundunba in Chicago where I finally got to dance to my heart’s content. I went in again and again and again. Everytime they switched the rhythm I went in, and I went in everytime one of my friends did a step I liked. I know the workings of the West African circle…
Marjani Forte has me on that NEW shit, that CYPHER. Well it’s new to me – and I realize now that we probably got the most simple of tasks and the most basic of structures possible inside of her method. It makes me excited to think about the possibilities and permutations of what can occurr in the Cypher.
“Remember the task!”
I am also pretty familiar with the hip hop cipher and it’s confrontational tones. I’m also pretty sick and tired of the showboating, limp hand claps and haterism that goes on there.
“Say something else!”
Ms. Forte brought me to a new place of working in tandem. Every single thing that she did tugged at the strings that make me dance. For instance: we had to have two people in the Cypher, and you could jump in when you saw someone doing some movement that you wanted to get a piece of. I LOVE DOING THAT! When someone does a step, as in “ooh that’s a step!” I always want to join them or just go in and do the same step for the joy of me witnessing it, then doing it my dam self.
Another one of my dance-puppet strings – eye contact. To tap someone out we had to make physical AND eye contact. My whole teaching life is spent yelling different ways to get people to LOOK UP and DANCE with the people who are with you, who are right next to you. I’m getting energy from my colleagues as we dane together and look at each other dancing together. Me and Jewel and Kehinde had us some good ole’ moments in that Cypher, and I saw! I saw you go to the floor sister! And the look in your eyes when you did it is what makes me dance.
“Find moment of stillness. Remember the task. Now THAT’S the task!”
Okay I made some decisions too. I decided sometimes that I wanted to dance with that person, so I went in. I decided that I wanted to dance to MerSaidies that I understood about the drumming and that the yelling is just how I get down in order to lift you up. I wanted to dance a big pillow or a cloud around her so that she would know I see that she’s here to learn. I wanted to dance a shield around Jewel and pads under her feet to keep her coming to move and dance her pain away (whooaaaa, whoaaaaa). I went in to vibe with Roxane and to dance next to her so that anytime I dance next to her it’s enough, even if it’s just one afternoon. Me n’ Alanna shared some vibrations that day, almost like we were dancing our little gab session that we had over butternut squash ravioli (me) and ginger beer (her); and I KNOW we be vibrating at the same frequency – it’s just not that often.
I felt my dundunba coming back through me, I felt my capoeira coming back through me, I felt my soul train line coming back through me — but it was a cooler manifestation because it was all those things PLUS what “modern dance” can bring to the table. Hells yeah imma roll the floor, jump in the air and GESTURE! Hells yeah im going in WITH you, I’m tapping you out so I can be in there with my homie, so I can be in there with this dude who is challenging me -well not posing a challenge but challenging my movement choices. And how the heckins are we dealing with these beats dropping? The Roots, Nina Simone, was that Muddy Waters? Beastie Boys and some other shit i don’t know about but I felt it drop!
Lawd’a mercy the ring shout!
Let me take this time to acknowledge who you are in this Cypher with me, because I can’t do it anywhere else.
Marjani Fortè is a Los Angeles, CA native and Harlem resident. She was a 5-year member of Urban Bush Women Dance Co., and has worked with Earl Mosely, Garth Fagan, Blondell Cummings, Camille A. Brown, and Nia Love’s BSD|dance. She is now co-founder of the collective LOVE|FORTÉ A COLLECTIVE- a research/process, performance, and teaching geared collective with a commitment to social and politically conscious art making, that connects the human experience through time. Fortè has taught master classes and workshops across the U.S. and beyond- including Germany, England, Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela. www.loveforte.org
North High Dance Director????? yes! :)
Greetings!
I met with a group of students last Friday and we have decided to try to create a project-based dance group.
Our first project is creating a performance piece to be premiered at “Dance, Jump and Jive: The History of African Music” which will take place March 9 and 10 in the North High Auditorium.
Here are the proposed dates and times of rehearsal. We would LOVE to have access to the NHS Dance Studio for these rehearsals. Let me know what will and will not work and we will find alternative spaces for the dates and times that don’t work.
I’m hoping that we can have another meeting during advisory this Friday, for me to have a face to face with more students and get contact information, pass out after-school permission forms, nuts and bolts, etc.
I am in text communication with the students who attended the meeting last Friday. They all indicated that text messaging is the best way to communicate with them.
North High Dance – Rehearsal dates and times
Thu Feb 16 3:00pm – 4:30pm North High Dance – North High
Fri Feb 17 12:30pm – 1:00pm North High Dance (Advisory Meeting)
3:00pm – 4:30pm North High Dance
Mon Feb 20 2:00pm – 4:00pm North High Dance
Thu Feb 23 3:00pm – 4:30pm North High Dance
6:00pm – 9:00pm Dance jump and jive rehearsal @ Oak Park
Fri Feb 24 3:00pm – 4:30pm North High Dance
Sat Feb 25 11:30am – 1:30pm North High Dance
Tue Feb 28 3:00pm – 4:30pm North High Dance
Thu Mar 1 3:00pm – 4:30pm North High Dance – North High
Mon Mar 5 4:30pm – 6:00pm North High Dance
Tue Mar 6 3:00pm – 4:30pm North High Dance
Wed Mar 7 6:00pm – 9:00pm Final run of dance jump and jive – North high
Thu Mar 8 3:00pm – 4:30pm North High Dance – North High
Fri Mar 9 4:30pm – 6:00pm North High Dance
Fri Mar 9 7:00pm – 9:00pm Dance Jump and Jive:History of African Music – North High
Sat Mar 10 7:00pm – 9:00pm Dance Jump and Jive:History of African Music – North High
PEACE!
“Ms. Kenna”
Kenna-Camara Cottman – North High Dance Director?????? 
yes!
Here we are…Mon Coeur, ma soeur…Blessings
I see her enter in the liturgical costume, headwrap, crowned. The next one in African attire, then next one a sassy lindy hopper, kangol, guyabera.
I see that Doundounba, that Makru, Oshun and Oya.
I see the shout, the praise dance, the shoulders shake and tremble. I see the feet barely touching the ground.
I see the circle, the cypher, the dancing ground, the sista circle, the healing circle, the showoff in the middle.
I see the dark dark blue, the indigo, the stained palms and feet, the inked finger or thumb.
I see the movements I memorized, so subtle on their bodies. I know the work it takes but I don’t see it. I see butter on a hot knife.
I see the lift and hold, I feel the weight. I don’t feel the weight. I see the movements I memorized, so instantly recognizable. I see the smile and the eyes glimmer and glisten — contact. I see the mirror, the match strike, the trail of golden embers.
I see the upturned palms, the flat feet floating, the dip and sway of a moonwalk. I see the twist of the hip and knee, the hands speaking. I see two ends of a rope pulled taut, the joint connecting left and right, and I see it again.
I hear the song I’ve memorized, the standard. I see the request and its being granted, I see the conversation that’s about to come. I see her come down.
I see the wide-legged stance, the 5-jump, the nyari gorong. I see them standing all in a line before they explode. Come on come on, is what I say, quietly. But I want to shout!
I hear the song, the standard. I see the fight and the conversation. I feel the tension of knowing before you can do something about it. I see the youngblood, he thinks he knows whats up. I see the Goddess come straight at him. My Goddess, she is unafraid.
I see the movements start to really speak. I see the resolution. I see the words, or rather I feel the meaning.
There are no words. There are never any more words for this. These are all the words. There are no words.