Many choreographers draw inspiration from their ancestors, nature, and the spiritual world, and Teena Marie Custer explores some examples with help from Sandra Laronde, Christopher K. Morgan, Ananya Chatterjea, Michelle N. Gibson, and others.
Many choreographers draw inspiration from their ancestors, nature, and the spiritual world, and Teena Marie Custer explores some examples with help from Sandra Laronde, Christopher K. Morgan, Ananya Chatterjea, Michelle N. Gibson, and others.
[Music begins]
NORTON OWEN: Welcome to PillowVoices, a production of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival with content from the Pillow Archives. I’m Norton Owen, the Pillow’s Director of Preservation. And I'm happy to introduce Street Dancer and Professor Teena Marie Custer. She will be your host for this episode, focused on how choreographers from various cultural backgrounds create work derived from their ancestors, inspired by nature, or motivated by their spiritual beliefs.
TEENA MARIE CUSTER: At the time of the release of this podcast episode, many cultures are celebrating what some call the “thinning of the veil.” In other words, the time of year that ancient lore has told us that the spirit world and the physical world collide. Festivals and events such as Día de los Muertos in Mexico, the Gaelic festival of Samhain, and Halloween, mark the global consciousness of honoring ancestors that have transitioned to an alternate space and time.
In this episode of PillowVoices I would like to honor how several artists from diverse cultural backgrounds work in conjunction with nature, the cosmos, or their ancestors, to decode spiritual messages in order to create new work. You will hear experiences that are largely about the process of making a new work, but also the practices of meditation or conjuring during the performance.
I would like to open this episode with a blessing from the 2022 site specific work by Michelle N. Gibson, the artist titled, Taking It To The Roots. This offering is given by priestess, Nana Sula Sprit, one of the collaborators on the project of bringing the culture of New Orleans Second Line to the Pillow.
Depending on your own cultural system of beliefs I invite you to take a deep breath with me [takes a deep breath]. And tune in with your God, intuition, ancestors, nature or environment during this blessing. Reflect on how you receive your intuitive messages? What messages are downloading in your conscious or subconscious? And how do they help you heal and create new patterns and new art?
[Sound of bell]
NANA SULA SPRIT: In one perfect love, we come. From the north, southeast and west, we come. We pay homage to all the ancestors that walked on this land. All of your ancestors as well. We pay homage to our own ancestors. We ask that this be a day of beauty, that our ancestors dance together, and that we have one perfect song together. We thank you. We thank our ancestors, and we give praises to all that is. We say, Ache. [Others gathered: Ache], Ache [Others gathered: Ache], Ache-o [Others gathered: Ache-o] [Ends with sound of bell].
TEENA MARIE CUSTER: In 2017, I had the privilege of being part of a Pillow Lab residency with the street and club dance company, Ephrat Asherie Dance. I remember trudging back to our cabin from a long day of rehearsal. All I could hear was my breath. The crunching of the December snow beneath my feet, and I looked up to see the full moon illuminated and greeting me through the landscape of trees. I stopped dead in my tracks to hear her speak.
Never had I felt so connected to all those that came before me on that sacred land. It was as if a portal opened for time to stand still, and I was left feeling a tremendous responsibility to create art that will heal myself, the land, and any audience member that steps onto the grounds. This is a sentiment shared by many artists that have come and gone at the Pillow. And is emphasized through a talk with Michelle N. Gibson toward the end of the episode.
Indigenous artist, Sandra Laronde, Director of Red Sky Dance in Ontario, Canada, is here discussing her inspiration for the spirit-centered work she does with her company. The clip is from a Pillow Talk titled “The Land On Which We Dance,” with fellow indigenous artist Christopher K. Morgan, and moderated by Pillow scholar, Jennifer Edwards.
SANDRA LARONDE: I am most excited I would say because you know I start by naming the place that I'm from. Because so much of where I'm from comes into the work. The vision and being, being this babe, you know, being able to be just in nature and go out and seek a wolf, or go out and say, I'm gonna go find a bear today, and just go out and be in nature, immersed. And, and then through osmosis and time and place, it gets inside of you, and you carry the spirit of the land with you, wherever you go. And that forging of that spirit is in Red Sky’s work to this day in terms of how, like in Temagami, and you see the Milky Way, you see the constellations, you see the incredible magnificence and beauty beyond just a human-centric space. And at Red Sky, I'm very interested in looking at spirit-centrism, not just human-centrism, but all beings, sentient, alive, spirited in the here and now, living and breathing like even these leaves right now are part of our conversation. And so, I'm just really honored to be able to do that through the work through the music, the live music, through the movement and through the storytelling, and bringing my people and my ancestors with me in every single production we do that makes me really proud. When you look up at the night sky a realize that, well, when we look at the night sky, we see Orion we see all you know, the Roman and Greeks, constellations and stars that we’re, we’re taught in high school, public school, in high school, and even university. And so, the night sky in a way has been sort of claimed by Greeks and Romans and somehow still prevails. And it made me think about, well, what about our constellations? What did they look like? You know, if, if the constant if the night sky is a reflection of a people, or vice versa, you know, what is our origin? What is our what's, what's our psyche look like in terms of the constellation? And, so that was a really, really important thing for Trace. And then we had these wonderful astrophysicists, astrobiologists, cultural astronomers. Not just cultural astronomers, they’re astronomers. You know, always, you know, whenever it's indigenous people who are an astronomer, they say it's cultural astronomer. But no. They're an astronomer [audience laughs]. And it's sort of, you know, it also-often signifies something a little bit underneath astronomy as such. But anyway, we had this incredible investigation into the star world and into the cosmos, and then looking at Western science as well, to, to come up with Trace. So, I think what's really exciting is that we get to look at our themes, and the things that excite us in this time and place. And then to touch that memory of things that want to come forward and out, and then be shared. And that's, that's, I don't know what that is. But that's like a very magical place.
TEENA MARIE CUSTER: Though connecting with their place in the universe is a common impetus for artists to gain inspiration, sometimes artists experience messages that are delivered through a meditative state or a dream. From the same Pillow Talk “The Land on Which We Dance,” Christopher K. Morgan and Sandra Laronde share how the connection to ancestry in indigenous cultures can create new dances for healing.
SANDRA LARONDE: Even traditional dance, for example, like the Jingle Dress dance, which came to Anishinaabe, Anishinaabe woman in Lake of the Woods era, in a dream. It came to her in a dream, where she was called a Healing Dress dance at the beginning then became the Jingle Dress dance. And then it went right across indigenous, if you've seen it with the cones, it has that [articulates sound] sound They, so, when that happened that was contemporary. Now it's traditional, but it was contemporary in its time.
CHRISTOPHER K MORGAN: And then we went to Maui, and we just kept encountering the land over and over and over. And we kept in touch with the stones. But the presence of the stones began with the dream that I say at the very end of the performance, which was a real dream that I had in the summer of 2009. Where in my dream all of these people that, that came from behind me, and I couldn't see, started to play stones on my back. And they were big and they were large, and they were heavy but I could still breathe, even though they were there. And that was the pretty much the entirety of the dream. It was place-based. I knew where it was. Well, I didn't know at the time, but I was shown it the next day. That's amazing, isn't it? Anyway, so in this dream, there's all these stones on my back. And so, I asked my aunt, the mother of my cousin John Ka'imikaua, whose Hula traditions in some small way I am connected to, to interpret the dream. And she said, “Oh, that's pretty clear. All the people that you couldn't see are your ancestors, and people you haven't met on your journey yet. And the stones that they're replacing on your back is their knowledge. And it's good that you could keep breathing, because that means you can carry these stones forward. That's your new responsibility.” And so yeah, it was a big wow [Everyone laughs]. And actually, for the next two years, I didn't even do research, I just sat with that. I was like, what am I supposed to do with all those stones? [Everyone laughs] Big responsibility. And then like things, sometimes blessedly do. It started to unfold. But that connection to place was so important and bringing everyone there who was a part of that was so important. Sometimes, you know, we go months and months without doing this particular work. And it's now to the point where we can show up, and the two musicians and I, the projection design team and the lighting designer, we can just do it. It's so deeply connected, because we spent all of that time really thinking about where is this coming from in a really, really deep way. Both the land, the history, the people, my family. And it's created a new sub-family of the six of us that no matter where we go, it's always there. And I think that's something that's really exciting about you know, as more and more clarity around our connection to land is re-invited back into all of our lives, it helps that process become more clear and simple.
TEENA MARIE CUSTER: In 2022, Jacob’s Pillow hosted the Dance Theatre Afro- Latin Immersion program. The director was the very celebrated and accomplished artist, Maria Torres. Torres is a self-described Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Cuban artist from New York City. You will hear footage from the final showing of a two-week school intensive with several participants. As part of the showing itself, a poem written and recited by Neyda Colón Di Maria accompanies the dancing. Then as part of a Q&A session after the showing, Torres and two of the dancers, Nicole Marie Machado and Joelle Santiago, express how the process of honoring the land and their ancestry is woven into the process of creating the work as well as the final performance. Let the rhythms, the sound of water, and the beautiful poem help connect you to your lineage and a larger understanding of time.
[Audio of people clapping and cheering, followed by sound of water and rhythmic clapping]
NEYDA COLÓN DI MARIA: Ritmos. I moved to the rhythms my ancestors passed on to me. Ritmos. Hips up, down, sway feet, digging into the floor. La tierra giving us, more power. Ritmos. Welcome to our home, the one we built on untold lands where the skies tell our stories and spirits dance in the sand. This is our ritmos , this is our story. This is our power. Nuestros ritmos alguna mezcla. The great big family tree where the roots run deep, deep, deep. Where oceans away, where mamá learnt the songs that put us to sleep. Sway, sway, circles, stomp, give, rejoice, ritmos. When our people were ripped from their lands, mamás and out to us. Here es tu espíritu. When the sun sets, and the wind gets cold, spirit will lift you. Here is el agua. Drink it, drift in it, let it carry you. Here is la tierra. Feel it with your bare hands and feet. Let it ground you. Here is al aire. Inhala, exhala . Fill your lungs with peace. And here is aliento. It will carry all of your stories and dreams, from generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation.
MARIA TORRES: We wanted to reuse the metaphors. So, our ancestors, we, they always were able to honor the land that they're on. And so, the five elements were really important earth, water, fire and wind. And then that fifth element is our spirit and our soul. So, the, we wanted to inhabit the space to be able to allow that feeling as you came in through the doors. To be able to really get to, get to experience each of them because they were developing their own characters.
NICOLE MARIE MACHADO: Yeah, I think it was a moment to kind of start with self and, and again, like Maria said, honor our ancestors and really not, I don't want to say act but like, be. Like, go back and that memory because we all have that in ourselves. And then again, while doing that, finding your community, you know, who are the people around you, who's your tribe, who's going to protect you, and then how does that carry on throughout the piece. So…
JOELLE SANTIAGO: For me, to perform it, it was extremely meditative to spend so much time in close to stillness in the, in the earth, in these woods. And I think also when we talk about honoring ancestral practices, to be with the earth, in stillness. To be with the earth in slowness is something that we really get to do. So a kind of meditation also perhaps.
TEENA MARIE CUSTER: Now we go to a Pillow Lab residency of Ananya Dance Theater in 2023. The Minneapolis/St. Paul based company’s artistic work unfolds through Yorchha™, a trademarked unique movement aesthetic of contemporary dance that draws on the Classical Indian dance of Odissi, the martial art Chhau, and Vinyasa Yoga, in order to celebrate a feminine energy and aesthetic.
What you will hear next is a post-show discussion lead by Pillow scholar, Melanie George in which Director Ananya Chatterjea as well as her collaborators discuss the psychic fabric of the work they created together. We will also hear from one of the collaborative artists in this work Alexis Araminta Reneé, where she discusses the process for her contribution to a section about the relationship to salt water and ancestry.
ANANYA CHATTERJEA: People are so, all these artists are so tuned, so tuned into the sort of psychic world of the work that they, they find their way. And then it became clear to me that it was it was time it, it was a timeline that Kea was, the historical, historic timeline that Kea had was condemned hold. So, but it was through the, through the way people develop the work. And you know, Lexi comes in and says, “You might, you have to remember it.” You know, and then Parisha playing around with the ropes. Of course, she's the opener of portals, it makes so much sense. And then, you know, a lot of questions, spirit would ask constant questions. What is the feel of this work? Is it dark? Is it light? Are there, you know, there's animals, of course, but what does it feel like? What's under your feet?
ALEXIS ARAMINTA RENEÉ: So this started with a question that Ananya asked each of us, and that was what was our relationship to saltwater. And I think it was a really beautiful series of conversations that each of us as the dancers and artists in the company had to contribute because we all have such very different relationships with saltwater. So, for example, Kea, you can call out, is from an island, initially from Hawaii. You know, that's a whole different relationship to saltwater than Parisha, who’s from Nepal, which is landlocked. I'm from Baltimore. And my relationship is saltwater really engaged it as the transatlantic slave trade. Water that was polluted, water at the time that we were making the work. People in the city did not have water. And so, we had no access to fresh water as well. And there was a moment in rehearsal that I recall as each of us was sharing stories of how that actually starts to move into the work and into phrases. I remember my sharing a dream, again at the Chesapeake area. If you're familiar with Maryland, we love crabs. And there are also ancestral connections to crab as protection, crab in the way that the enslaved Black folks used to use it. So, I brough that into conversation. And there's actually a section in the dance called “Crab Walk,” that, that starts to move into. And so each person's relationship to salt water, and salt in general and ancestry and archetypes that Ananya assigned to us, start to move into this space, and start to develop into the world, into the movement and sound, the spirit we end up exploring.
TEENA MARIE CUSTER: Growing up as a preacher’s kid in what was called a “spirit filled church,” I was trained from a young age to practice hands on healing, prophecy, and speaking in tongues, which were all tools of divination to connect to God. As I came of age and began studying metaphysical and healing practices from other cultures, as well as finding a spiritual dance home in the club culture of House and other street dance styles, I recognized how as a dance maker I could also create from the place of spirit.
The last artist to inspire us also grew up as a preacher’s kid, but in New Orleans. She actively works with her ancestors to create, empower, and uplift the community through the culture of Second Line. Through a post-show talk with Pillow scholar, Melanie George, as well as a site-specific work titled “Takin’ it to the Roots,” in 2022, here is the incomparable Michelle N. Gibson, the artist.
MICHELLE N. GIBSON: There were three spirits that stayed with me as we were creating. My father, the Reverend, the late Reverend B.A. Gibson, who was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He was also a presiding elder. My son, Nigel, who is 16. His great-great-grandfather was one of the members of young Olympia Benevolent Association, right? Young Men Olympia Benevolent Association, that started in 1882. They call them the “Grand Wizard.” His name was Leonard Gettridge. And during Hurricane Katrina, there was a write up that Times did on Herbert Gettridge. So, you want to know…[Melanie George: There's a PBS documentary as well]. It's a PBS documentary, so you want to know, the voice that you heard was his voice. Before he passed, as I was working with the project, I went home and I sat with him, I sat at his feet. Because we got to learn how to sit at the elders feet, to get the, the knowledge. So, I sat at his feet, and I recorded our conversations. And everything you heard was him saying how he felt going through Katrina. I lost everything I own: my house, the money in the attic. Now, you know, old folks back in the South, we hides money [audience laughs], in the cracks, right? His voice carry with me. And so, he became a spirit guide for me. Also, the third spirit, masculine spirit energy was Baba Obatala. Right? If you understand, if you ever heard about the Yoruba religion, we have laws that guide us, and Obatala is an old grandfather. Old man, old old man. And it's something about Obatala that leads me. So in this work, there are three masculine energies that lead me in spirits. So, the voice you heard was the voice of Herbert Gettridge. And the hat that you saw in the case, was his hat. And so, if I ima put my culture in real time, whatever I have to support that, that takes me to the water. That's what I present in the work. So, his hat was me saying goodbye, like we go to the funeral, right before they close the casket. And you say your last goodbyes. That's what that hat is a representation for me. Ashe [George: Ashe]. The the thing with spirit is that it doesn't matter where we are, it’s going to resonate. This ground, Jacob's Pillow is sacred ground. Very, very sacred ground. Baba Chuck Davis, Tally Beatty, Katherine Dunham. I am the daughter of who they are. And so being present to set that, this work, on this ground, only blesses the space. And that's more works that we need done now. It's not about show-and-tell, and how fluffy the work looks on stage. And we need to be producing works that are, that are conjuring up spirits so that we can start to heal y'all. It's not a show. And so it wouldn't matter, it wouldn't have mattered where I said it, spirit is still gonna resonate, but it resonates special on this, on this land. Ted, Shawn and Ruth St. Denis is sitting on top of that theater right now sitting on top of that, and they saying, “go ahead girl. Go on. Yesss” [audience laughs and applauds].
[Music begins]
NORTON OWEN: That’s it for this episode of PillowVoices. Thank you for joining us today. On behalf of Jacob’s Pillow, we look forward to sharing more dance with you through the films, essays, and podcasts at Dance Interactive dot Jacob’s Pillow dot org. And of course, through live experiences during our festival and throughout the year. Special thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts for helping launch this podcast series. Please subscribe to PillowVoices wherever you get your podcasts, and visit us again soon, either online or on site.