Christian Warner hosts this episode focused on the human body’s capacity to navigate collective grief, moving toward not only healing, but self-actualization. Warner is a Black interdisciplinary performer, choreographer, and director. He shares his own experiences as well as excerpts from conversations with dance artists Dormeshia, Camille A. Brown, Ronald K. Brown, and their collaborators.
Christian Warner hosts this episode focused on the human body’s capacity to navigate collective grief, moving toward not only healing, but self-actualization. Warner is a Black interdisciplinary performer, choreographer, and director. He shares his own experiences as well as excerpts from conversations with dance artists Dormeshia, Camille A. Brown, Ronald K. Brown, and their collaborators.
https://www.christianawarner.com/
[Music begins, composed by J.S. Bach, performed by Jess Meeker]
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 it's my pleasure to introduce Christian Warner, a multidisciplinary performer, choreographer, and director based in New York City. In this episode, Warner reflects on the human body's capacity to navigate collective grief, drawing upon conversations at the Pillow with dance artists including Camille A. Brown, Dormeshia, Ronald K. Brown and some of their collaborators.
CHRISTIAN WARNER: The year 2020 continues to reverberate in the shared cultural landscape of the United States that begs me to ask the question: how might I remain engaged and of use while honoring the grief in my body that often feels incapacitating? As an interdisciplinary artist whose work often engages themes in history, Blackness, queer identity, and fantasy through a contemporary lens, I choose to accept the responsibility of participating in work that seeks to extend itself beyond the spectacle of virtuosity and into the interconnectivity of polarizing identities navigating our shared circumstances of the present moment. In this episode of PillowVoices, we’ll center on conversations between artists including the cast of And Still You Must Swing, choreographer Ronald K. Brown and musician Jason Moran, and Tony-award nominated dancer and choreographer Camille A. Brown. Each artist shares insights on their creative practice and creation in times where their bodies were also navigating collective grief stoked by traumatic events of violence; and, how they navigated their way to productivity.
[Music begins]
CHRISTIAN WARNER: “There’s balance involved. There’s movement involved. And still you must swing.”This quotation by tap dancer Jimmy Slyde was the inspiration for tap artist Dormeshia in her creation And Still You Must Swing which premiered at Jacob’s Pillow in 2016. Gia Kourlas of the New York Times described Dormeshia as “a tap dancer of exceptional elegance” and it’s evident “her reason to dance extends way beyond footwork.” In addition to her collaboratorsJason Samuels Smith and Derick K. Grant, Camille A. Brown joins the trio in performance, adding to the interdisciplinary dynamics at play. The work is created with and supported by a trio of jazz musicians: drummer-arranger Allison Miller, pianist Carmen Staaf, stand-up and electric bass, Alex Hernandez, and additionally African djembe drummer, Gabriel Roxbury.
The jazz trio opens the work with an easy swing featuring solos by each of the musicians. It isn’t long before the tempo rises to introduce the tapping trio Dormeshia, Jason, and Derick. Their steps are quick and precise, playfully articulating polyrhythms suggested within the music. The joy is radiant and the groove infectious as they interchange between solos and group phrases. Gabriel enters, crossing the space with his djembe to join the band and a white cloth is revealed at the center of the stage, ushering in Camille Brown. She moves in perfect synchronicity to the drum before coming forward and giving reverence to the cloth on the ground. A ritual.
She’s soon joined by Jason and Derick who each have a moment to hold and honor the cloth before the trio launches into movement together. While Camille is not in tap shoes, she doesn't miss a beat. She pulls from physicalities present in the history of the African diaspora, articulating the rhythms coming from the djembe and the tap shoes. Dormeshia returns to the space and launches into a dynamic solo. However, a deep tonal shift ignites as she becomes visibly overtaken by emotion before speaking out about a “killing in the streets.” Her grief tethers the unparalleled virtuosity displayed to a greater purpose in response to a tragedy that occurred just a day prior. The day before the premiere on July 7th, 2016, Philando Castille was murdered by a policeman in Minneapolis, Minnesota, one of the many widely broadcasted murders of a Black person soon to be circulated throughout the news and social media.
In recent years, the relationship between social media and art practice have been at the forefront of many conversations across dance. Since the COVID19 pandemic, streaming services and utilizing tools such as Zoom provided greater access to impactful art that might not have been as far reaching prior to the pandemic. While this access provided a greater visibility to many beautiful artistic expressions across various mediums, it also provided a larger platform to gruesome violence on a local and global perspective; the constant influx of information leaving many with deeply rooted grief not only within our personal bodies but our collective understanding towards one another.
Let’s listen to a segment of the post show talk of And Still You Must Swing to gain insight on how these artists responded in real time to the grief present in their bodies. The talk was moderated by Suzanne Carbonneau. The clip opens with the voice of Jason Samuels Smith.
JASON SAMUELS SMITH: I was just saying I think it's hard to not be affected by everyday events. You know, I think we're all affected by the things that we're seeing on our news feed and on the news and seeing on news the, the covers of newspapers, and there's so much negative energy right now. It's tough not to be affected by it. You know, these, these are our extended family members, our cousins, our uncles, our brothers, our fathers. So I think you know being in, in touch with, with dance and music, it puts you in a special position to be in touch with all of your ancestors, past and current. So when your, when your family is going through something tough, you feel that pain, and it's just hard not to be affected. So I think we all share that.
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: Did you want to say something, Derek? Add something?
DERICK K. GRANT: I can try. I get a little emotional. Yeah, maybe not. I don't know if I can do it.
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: Dormeshia…
DORMESHIA: Yes.
DERICK K. GRANT: She got a mic.
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: Oh you have a mic? Do you want to, do we…I asked the question about, clearly, it's a very emotional performance, and the outside world came in here to your performance tonight, and I was just asking if you would like to talk about the way that happened and how you feel, that performance, that dance, can bring us somewhere that we can acknowledge what's going on?
DORMESHIA: Well, I think honest moments like what happened tonight (Carbonneau: Mm-hmm), it's this, what we do here. I don't know about other forms, but in tap dance, we have a certain, a lot of freedom to express. And it's, if you are really in tune with yourself and with what's going on, then it's very hard to leave that at the door when the form allows you that freedom. So for me, it was, since I've been up here, I haven't really looked at my phone. I've been hearing little things around campus. I'm like, oh, you know, and I feel it. But today, all of a sudden, my phone decided to work (laughs). Why? You know? Well, so things like this could happen. It's very therapeutic for me. It is. it allows me to, I don't want to say, share, but express or, or tell how I feel about what's going on in the, in the world and how it affects me. Um, so, yeah.
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: Did you want to add anything, Camille?
CAMILLE A. BROWN: Thank you. I actually have been doing the complete opposite. I've been watching the news all day, and before, I had every intention to do The Buzzard Lope, which is a ritual that the enslaved Africans did during slavery, where they put a cloth in the center and they danced around it, and it was to honor the ancestors that had been discarded as slaves. And I thought about that. And it's not an accident that that was something that I wanted to do for this show. And it's not an accident that tap, that rhythm, allows us the freedom to heal, to protest, and that confusion, that exhaustion, that continues to live in, that perseverance, all of that living in one body, but then shared with these bodies.
CHRISTIAN WARNER: Four years following the premiere at Jacob’s Pillow, scholar-in-residence Melanie George facilitated a conversation with the cast over Zoom. They had an opportunity to revisit the events surrounding the premiere while making some comparisons to what they were navigating in 2020. We’ll first hear Melanie’s question, followed by reflections from Jason and Dormeshia, and a final thought from Melanie.
MELANIE GEORGE: You talked about July 7, so I feel like that's a natural segue to go into the fact that this performance occurred the day after Philando Castile was murdered, and there's a lot of emotion in, in this performance. I was watching it on video, and I felt, I felt the emotion, even though we're, you know, four years removed from that particular performance. And so I know that there's a couple different ways we can go with what I'm trying to bring up here. But one, I want you to talk about the performance that night. But two, I think let's talk about it in the context of where we are right now, in 2020 and being in the midst ofuprising, that met a pandemic. And in, in many ways, we're exactly where we have always been. But there seems to also be this potential for change, or at least, I want to believe there's this potential for change. And so anyone who wants to speak to that about the performance in 2016 in relationship to where we are now, I would love to hear your thoughts.
JASON SAMUELS SMITH: I was just gonna say that it's, you know, in the moment, it felt very traumatic. It felt like, you know, something about that time felt, it felt different than as it does now, again. And I don't, you know I know the trauma of us now seeing, you know, Black men and women and children being, you know, brutalized on social media. It's like it's now becoming normal. But then it was still, you know, it, it had like this really stinging effect. And, and the fact that the work was so…it just represented life, Black life, Black creativity, the possibilities of, of what we could do if we, if we just could have life, if we could live and survive. And it just that the power that was crazy, and then the fact that, you know, Dormeshia and Derek, you know, both had really, you know, really intense moments during the performance where, I mean, I felt like emotionally, it was just hard to hold back during the whole show.
DORMESHIA: I actually could not help myself. It, you know, it was not, it was slowly unexpected. I mean, I, I, you know, the number that comes before “Rhythm Migration,” before my solo, when I, you know, my first, you know, I guess emotional sort of, you know, breakdown, I don't know, I already feel a certain kind of energy coming off of that number, “Rhythm Migration.” And it was something about that whole the circling around, the energy that was conjured up in them, in the number before it, with everything that was already going on. I'm watching, you know, from the wings. I don't know if that, you know, in the in that, in that space, it was kind of small in the wings, so I'm kind of tucked in a little corner, and I'm looking at them from the side, and I was already not okay in the wings, you know, just looking at them, Derek, Camille, Jason, my nephew, on the drums, on the, and, you know, on the back. And I just thought, like, this is, this is why I do what I do. And this is, I was so grateful to be here with these people and doing this thing and in this time. But there's this other thing that's going on that hurts, you know. And I thought like if, if, if any of that is happening to my people, that is, you know, to anybody directly that I know how it will affect me. I know it affects me from the distance. But if these, if it happens to anybody in my that I'm close to, I, I couldn't fathom that. I started to kind of go there, you know, and realize that these are not people on social media. They have families. They're attached to other people. And here and here I go again, but because we're still in it, we're still in it, you know. So that that. I tried to do my best for breathing and trying to go out there and just do the best, you know, show we gotta do, doing a show, you know, um, but again, walking around and just the reality of what was going on, I couldn't, um, I couldn't shake it. And I thought, “Well, why should I have to,” you know, this is, um. Um, it's, it's art. Yes, there is a show, and yes, it's about a particular thing, but right now it's about this particular thing, which is still about us, you know? Yeah, I felt, I was overcome with the emotion, and just allowed myself to go ahead and release it. And I had to, you know, not be apologetic about it, because it was very real. I thought there was a moment where I was going, I need to apologize like, you know, the people have paid to see a show. I need to say, you know, I'm sorry. This is, let me just give me a second. But no, because this is very real, you know. So no, I cannot apologize because this is very real. This hurts and it's scary, you know, um, so that's, that's where it was for me, and it still feels like that. now, I mean, you know. Now what I don't, what I didn't feel, then what I do, what I didn't feel, then, is when I walk down the street (George: Hmm), it feels different now (George: Hmm). than I felt then (George: Hmm). I feel like I could walk and, and be okay. Now it's a little different.
MELANIE GEORGE: Yes, agree.
DORMESHIA: It's a little different. And, yeah, it was a big it was like, the beginning of us seeing that stuff. Jason, right? Like, you know, we see it in history. It's been a part of our history, but now it's part of our history. It's, it’s closer to us. So I think it hit, you know, it affected us differently, I think. Seeing it and hearing it and knowing that it happened, but now being, it being part of your life, you know, is I think it affects a little different.
MELANIE GEORGE: Yeah. There was something, I hope this doesn't come across strange, but there was something really beautiful about both of those moments for you and Derek for me watching it. I mean, it's the sort of agony of trauma, right? We're watching some of that, but also the beauty of humanity. And I think that, I think it's really important that people who were in the room to see that performance saw that too, um not, not only because of where we are at in the world, but also for what their perceptions might be of this dance form and who it comes from and what it represents, and that you, you can't have the rhythm without the Blues, right?
CHRISTIAN WARNER: With a world on pause and grappling with sudden isolationism spurred by the COVID19 pandemic, Zoom quickly became a tool utilized to reconcile with the various scenes of racial violence we were plagued with in the U.S. media. In fact, the FBI’s annual compilation of bias-motivated incidents reported 2,871 incidents against Black citizens in 2020 alone - of course, three of the most highly profiled being Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd.
[Music interlude]
As a citizen of Saint Paul, Minnesota at the time, I can recall a feeling of emptiness with not much to distract from the bombardment of Black bodies seemingly martyred for sport. Similarly to what Dormeshia articulated about feeling the lucidity of the moment in time, these anxieties were given more weight as I watched the National Guard fill my street and the smell of fire in the air following the murder of George Floyd.
Where my living room dances initially provided me moments of solace, my body soon beckoned for stillness to consider how I’d keep my mind, spirit, and frankly my body alive. Because what was the difference between Ahmaud taking a run and me taking a walk through my neighborhood?
In 2022, scholar-in-residence Suzanne Carbonneau moderated a discussion between choreographer Ronald K. Brown and composer Jason Moran on similar themes of creating in times of violence. Ron speaks about how the violence of the moment integrated into the work but not without acknowledging first the toll it took on the company which required stillness before creating anything. Jason contributes to the conversation, explaining how it affected the way in which he creates music.
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: So you had begun work on this before Covid I understand. Is that right?
RONALD K. BROWN: Yes.
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: Yes. So then, then we're all living in a very different world (Brown: Mm-hmm) and difficult time, and there's upheaval and fear and violence going on in addition. How did this work its way into the what, what you had already been making?
RONALD K. BROWN: So the young people taught me how to rehearse on Zoom (audience laughter), and so we were rehearsing on Zoom. I think that last piece they learned, most of it on Zoom. I was like, “What?” And then when we got to our first Bubble residency in Cascade, New York Lumber Yard, they got on the floor for the first time, and they were doing upside down. I was like, “What?” But it was in their bodies, from, from the living room to this to the studio. It was incredible. And so I think when, when the police started killing people, we said, “Okay, let's take a break in rehearsal, in person.” Let's just…our spirits can handle this. We could dance about this once we get some kind of resolution, and then stop killing people, like it's okay. So we took a break, but they were just kept talking about it. And so then it kept, kept coming into the world because it's so let's make this an offering for all of the involuntary martyrs. Breonna Taylor, that wouldn't be a part of Black Lives Matter, that wasn’t our plan. But all of a sudden, how do we celebrate and honor her life? And so we said we could make this piece as an offering to all of the involuntary martyrs. And so that's why I started making the Elephant Circles. Let's make a prayer circle of compassion and protection for all the people that are killed for no reason but for hate, right?
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: Um…
[audience claps]
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: Um Jason, did, did you, Do you feel like the time changed the music you were working on also?
JASON MORAN: Um of course. Like dissonance is not an esthetic anymore, you know? It's like actual life, right? We leave here and then we go back into an unknown. My blood pressure rises when I go into town and the police are just sitting there and so, and that's normal. That's the normal every day. And so it's not, I wouldn't part of me, and I'm from Texas, and it's an awful state. I left. But part of my pessimism about life, and I want to be honest, is because I've seen enough ugly to know that people just do that right? It's actually why I became an artist, so I could be around people who were looking for another solution for it, you know, or another way to at least actuate the kind of confusion that we live in on a daily basis, like it's normal. And the musicians I know who have fought through, and the ones I've studied with and the ones I've never met, have fought through something much more difficult, I think, in developing a language of abstraction on an instrument without words, right? So when you were talking about the thing above, the images above, I also thought of them as super titles, right? Like a way that when we go to an opera, we always see what's happening above, or when we watch subtitles on a television, right? But how do images also become a super title for movement or for music? And I have long struggled with, where does the music lie in the struggle, you know? Or where does it lie in the joy you know? Where does it lie in the celebration of someone's afterlife? And have often been asked to bring music to those situations. And that's not fun. It's not why I went to Conservatory, you know what I mean? But then I understand why the music is functional. So the times for me, I play music because I know that I get to bring it again fresh the next night, and that it can be new, right? And that the company can dance it anew again. So I look forward to that, and I, and I want the world to change so that the music sounds different.
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: Jason was talking about the stillness and the work, and I'm so used to thinking of you as working with such propulsion and, and bigness and frrr and the stillness is feels so thoughtful and healing that we're seeing here too. Um could you tell us a little bit about your choices, about, about foregrounding stillness here?
RONALD K. BROWN: So I, you know, when I, I started this company, the first concert was 37 years ago (audience claps and cheers). So when I found the title Evidence, and it's actually from a Thelonious Monk piece that I did a solo to. But I thought I want to have a company that represents our families, our teachers and our community, is that when people saw Evidence, they would see a reflection of themselves. They would see Evidence, yeah, and so it's important for you to see, you see these are talented dances, but I don't want to just show you they could dance what we study all this stuff, but for what reason to share something with you, and so I want you to see them as people. So that's why stop moving. Stand still. They could see the man and woman that you are, right? And then it's so beautiful talking to them, talking to how we are the most high and all of our ancestors. And then Randall Riley said, “oh, so we're like a living altar.” I said, “Indeed, we're a living altar.” And so I need them to be still so you can see the living altar. You see the movement, but sometimes the movement so much you get impressed, and so you don't really get to connect with them, because you see them as something else; a dancer that is something else, not a real person. So, I want you to see real people. So, we have to stop so you can see that (audience claps).
CHRISTIAN WARNER: To rearticulate what Ron quoted from former company member and a dear friend of mine Randall Riley, the potential to exist as “a living altar” is a beautiful sentiment. To not only be evidence of the strength of those that came before but using those seeds planted to be the fruit that pushes the needle forward for generations to come; to be able to pass the baton not from my anguish but from the capacity to live boldly in the fullness of life.
As a 2022 Art Omi resident dance artist, I had the opportunity to visit Jacob’s Pillow for the first time. While there, I witnessed the work of experimental performance artist Emily Johnson and the legendary Grandfather of the House of Ninja, Archie Burnett. These performances both acknowledged history, Johnson’s in the history of the territories in which Jacob’s Pillow resides, uplifting its human and as she describes “more than human inhabitants;” Burnett shared his personal history coming up in the New York City club and vogue scene in the 1980s and 90s.
I was certainly impacted by their audacious storytelling. In 2023, I conceived an evening-length work in collaboration with Owen/Cox Dance Group and musical artists the Black Creatures entitled What Came With Spring that utilized many themes in Blackness to meditate on the question: what must I do in each moment to remind my Black body that it is indeed free within a system that never intended for it to be? Through a lens of contemporized minstrelsy and hip hop to further the conversation of Kansas City’s lucrative history in minstrelsy and vaudeville, we traversed our grief and pain, but centered our joy, love, and spirit of rejuvenation handed down to us by our shared and personal lineages.
A week prior to the premiere, I was wrongly arrested and charged with a DUI by Kansas City police whom several months later were found to have fabricated the events of the incident. Six months later, my record was expunged providing me great relief; however, muscle memory is very real. It took time for my body to understand the feeling of safety again. This experience bolstered my opinion of what I believe to be a critical element of warfare from the state against its Black and Brown citizens, whether through tangible means or repetitive media: seeing our Black bodies as disposable. With the support of Rise Arts, we’ve created a documentary about What Came With Spring and the surrounding events to combat that narrative. With our work, we aim to contribute to the conversation about Black folks that recognize who they are beyond the construct of violence and grief. We no longer accept those terms and will continue to live unabashedly free, holding the country accountable to the promise of life and liberty.
In 2024, Camille A. Brown returned to Jacob’s Pillow to present one of her latest creations I AM; the title inspired by an episode from the HBO hit sci-fi series Lovecraft Country. Let’s listen first to resident scholar Melanie George’s pre-show Talk, followed by a conversation between Melanie, Camille, and rehearsal director Mora-Amina Parker discussing how Camille utilizes Afrofuturistic ideas inspired by Lovecraft Country to center a world in which Black life and joy are the primary focus.
MELANIE GEORGE: On the Camille A. Brown website, alongside the credits and description of Ink, is a quote from Question Bridge: Black Males, a video installation by Hank Willis Thomas and Chris Johnson, in collaboration with Bayeté Ross Smith and Kamal Sinclair. Quote, “I see Black people as superheroes because we keep rising.” End quote. This text is the point of departure for I AM the second piece on tonight's program. What would it look like for Black people, Black women, to live in a state of joy, absent of intersectional oppression, life endangerment and the need for resilience? What is the world where Black joy is centered instead of Black pain? How would we be, think, feel, dance? This is the point of inquiry and investigation in existence for Camille A. Brown's newest work, I AM, a world premiere in our Ted Shawn Theater this week. Capital I, capital A, capital M, AM a bold declarative statement, I am free, I am empowered, I am love, I am Black, I am Joy. The work is inspired by an Afrofuturistic episode of the 2020 HBO television series Lovecraft Country. A term coined by cultural critic Mark Derry in the 1990s Afrofuturism can be described as the intersection of the African diaspora, past, present and future, with science, technology and cosmology. Afrofuturist art unseats dominant narratives that present Blackness as viable content for exploration only through its proximity to whiteness. If you're not familiar with the term Afrofuturism, I assure you, you have encountered it in the music of Sun Ra and George Clinton and Outkast and Janelle Monae and the visual art of Jean Michel Basquiat and the highest grossing film of 2018 Black Panther, in the writings of patron saint Octavia Butler. Executive produced by Jordan Peele and developed by Misha Green as a continuation of a novel by Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country functions primarily as horror or as a New York Times headline described it nightmare on Jim Crow Street. Set in the 1950s most of the episodes employ the genre of horror fiction to peel back the layers of nonfiction racialized violence against Black people in our own nation's history, like many of the works associated with the Jordan Peele cannon. However, in Episode Seven, also titled “I Am,” the program leaps from the past into Afrofuturistic imaginings in which the character of Hippolyta Freeman, a Black housewife with deep knowledge of astronomy, is transported, transported from circumstance to self-actualization. In the episodes leading up to “I Am,” we witness deferred dreams and possibilities snuffed out by the realities and dangers of being Black in America, In “I Am” the character steps into the power of her name, Hippolyta Freeman. Hippolyta, Greek which translates into she who unleashes the horses and the free of Freemen, which historically denotes Black people from the lineage of free slaves. But in this instance, redefines what it means to be free, not emancipated, not emancipated, which requires a previous state of bondage. No, here we are talking about true freedom. In the episode Hippolyta is repeatedly called upon herself, called upon to name herself and choose her circumstances from which she is then transported to the chorus line of Josephine Baker's revue in Paris, seemingly in the 1920s but with the wisdom and experiences of her 1950s southern life, such as the knowingness of Afrofuturist narratives after sharing a cigarette and reveling in the allure of Paris nightlife, encapsulating what Baker And Charlie Parker and Miles Davis and James Baldwin described as their existence in France, Hippolyta says, quote, “being here has only shined the light on that old dead feeling. Now that I'm tasting it freedom like I've never known before. I see what I was robbed of back then. All those years, I thought I had everything I ever wanted, only to come here and discover that all I ever was, was the exact kind of negro woman white folks wanted me to be. I feel like they found a smart way to lynch me without me noticing the noose.” End quote.
[Music begins]
CAMILLE A. BROWN:I was thinking about space and how Black women hold space, and then thinking more broadly, how we can hold the block, how we can hold the building, and how we can hold the whole street, how we can hold a whole city, how we can hold the whole USA, how we can hold the world (audience cheers and claps), how we can go beyond the world. And so I started thinking. And at the same time, during the shutdown, Lovecraft Country was on, and I, I'm all in it, I listened to the podcast. I mean, I'm like, goulin, find out what happened. And it got to that episode, and I was just like, “that is a Black woman's story.”
MELANIE GEORGE: So we're talking about episode seven of the series, which is also titled, “I Am.”
CAMILLE A. BROWN: Yes. And I thought, Wow, all things are possible. And, you know, I love when art inspires art. And I just wanted to be in a space of joy. You know, there's so many challenges. People see your triumphs, but they don't necessarily see your hardships. And I just wanted to be in a space of joy that I created, that had people that were all wanting joy and speaking from their truth and being their individual selves. And I was trying to think of a title, and I knew the title of “I A,” The episode was called “I Am,” and I was thinking, I should call it “I Am.” And then I was talking to a friend, and a friend asked me what the name of the piece was, and I said, “I Am.” She was like, and “You are what?” (George and Brown laugh). And I was like, “oh, no, I can't do that. I can't, I can't name it that.” And then I was talking to another friend, and was like, “Well, that's why you should name it that. You know, that's the whole point of you claiming, claiming who you are.” And I was just thinking, and what has come up for me, you have to name yourself in order to continue walking this world and facing these challenges. If I, if I am going to continue walking this world, I have to name myself, because if I allow others to name myself, then what am I doing? Well, whose, whose value is right, whose value is above? And so, so that's what we are claiming I AM. And then you can finish it. I am truth (George: Yes). I am love. I am Joy. Hippolyta in the episode, says “I am the discoverer” (George: Yes). So hopefully it encourages everyone to, to name themselves. And it's a work in progress. You know, it's not the end, it sometimes it's the beginning. Sometimes it's in the middle of and we're just trying. This is how I express joy, and we're all expressing our joy. So I feel like this is for us, all of, all of us, her, you know, that's, that's what I'm doing. You know, I'm, I’m, I’m making, I'm making space so we can live in our truth. That's, that's, that's what I'm doing (audience claps).
MORA-AMINA PARKER: And to your point about optimism, I'm just sharing my own personal experience. I have one of two choices, as a Black woman. I can either have that hope and project that hope forward, or I can die. And that could mean spiritually, it could mean physically, it could mean mentally. There's some people in this world who don't have a choice but to have hope. For others, it might be a luxury, but for me, it's not (Brown: Yeah)
[audience claps]
CHRISTIAN WARNER: As a member of Black Dance Change Makers, I feel empowered to have joined a collective of Black dancers who dream and work towards building a community that moves with curiosity, and centers personhood and collective care. We work to honor the legacies of those who have come before us and blaze a safe and inclusive path for those who will contribute to changing the world after us through leadership, education, and service.
We’ve commemorated Black August by reading abolitionist Mariame Kaba’s We Do This Til’ We Free Us in which I’d like to uplift some of her words: “Hope doesn’t preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion that makes total sense. Hope isn’t an emotion, you know? Hope is not optimism. Hope is a discipline…we have to practice it every single day.” As a movement practitioner with a firm belief that our bodies possess a natural intelligence to distill through trauma response and transmute pain into effective action, my daily practice is first tethered to a willingness to pause…to breathe deeply and consider the weight of the present moment alone and then in conversation with my communities.
Where is the grief held in my body, mind, and spirit? What is our shared responsibility in the relay race that is collective healing? Utilizing somatic tools such as shaking the body to calm the nervous system, or embodying physical practices left by the ancestors in The Buzzard Lope or a Ring Shout, releasing the voice into wordless songs to cry out. Knowing when to run and when to rest. I take inspiration from the artists we’ve listened to in this episode to integrate these grief practices into form as a living witness to the times in and out of the performance space. To uplift the name of Sonya Massey and others who have been violently taken. To bear witness to genocides occurring across the globe.
The discipline of hope requires bravery in the body to constantly press forward into uncertain futures. In the words of one of my mentors Sidra Bell, “these meditations through active engagement contribute to legitimizing dance as a legible form of understanding” as it always has. With the evidence of our efforts being our words, our reflections, our dances and our songs - I remain eager to dream and craft new holistic futures with the movers and shakers of contemporary times.
[Music begins, composed and performed by Jess Meeker]
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 DanceInteractive.jacobspillow.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 soon, either online or onsite.