Thursday, September 24, 2009

Preparing for Si Se Puede

As we prepare for our 12th season, I am reflecting on the multi-facets of thematic material upon which our seasons are based. Loose themes that reflect the year, an image, a play on words...metaphors and common language, like "playing the dozens" an African American version of what became known as "your mama" jokes....I look forward to exploring the audio files of famous black comedians upon which my sense of humor was shaped (alongside Monty Python!)...more on that in later blogs.


HUELGA/STRIKE.
I started a section of Si Se Puede last week in my endless pursuit of the tarantella....my first siting of ballet on television as a child, was of Balanchines' famous one with Patricia McBride and Edward Villella....it indeliby captured my imagination and changed the course of my life (I remembered individual steps when I later got to see that piece performed live at Kennedy Center by NYCB some 30 years later). I began taking ballet lessons, as my mother saw my attention held by Dance in America back in the day, and after five boys she found an English lady who taught ballet to black students (as well as white), and gave me the opportunity she never had in Houston...so I have been wanting to do one justice as a dancemaker (and tambourine player---I danced a tarantella, as a child in RAD exams with a tambourine I still have)....so in a sense I am making it now---but about injustice! An earlier failed foray with this music is now to be redeemed...it occurred to me that the italian? legend of tarantellas was that you danced the poison of a tarantula spider bite out of your system...wouldn't migrant workers have encountered spider bites too, working among the vegetation? All the more so, they would be needing the release of dance and song, even after a hard day's sweaty work. So I will use this music now to portray the many huelgas (strikes) and nonviolent protest methods by which Chavez formed unions, forced better working conditions, improved farm implements, banned pesticides, and increased wages. Exploring images of the mounting dissatisfaction, organizing the labor movement and that collective feeling of empowerment...how to multiply the few bodies I have? (mirrors, images, shadows, film?). It is exciting to me to capturing with movement the growing foment of being exploited and realization that we are always more powerful united---whether we are standing, marching, sitting, boycotting or fasting. The music captures the "we're not going to take it" attitude, the righteous indignation of honest, hardworking agricultural workers the world over.

MISA/MASS
Another new section of Si Se Puede is to include yet another new incarnation (in a real spiritual sense, every work is an incarnation)...."Misa Criolla" was introduced to me by my husband long ago, but it didn't really speak to me until Cantare Houston asked me to do a collaborative piece in a church with them to it.("Some music has its time, honey" I responded when my husband balked at why I'd hadn't used if before now, at his behest). Now I contemplate how I might incorporate this mass sung and composed in Spanish by Ariel Ramirez into "Si Se Puede" ... intersecting the story of Cesar and his accomplishments on behalf of migrant workers with my (and his)Catholic upbringing and those images.... Going into a Catholic supply store was oddly interesting---to find candles among all the other things like vestments, communion hosts brought back lots of memories…..However, back to the choreography---already the Kyrie is done---with candles---and will serve as a processional marking the 50,000 people who mourned Cesar’s death in 1993.

In preparation for tomorrow's rehearsal, tonight I listen to the Sanctus, and Genesis and Gospel images come to my mind….of the Triumphal Entry, of leaves and robes laid out for the Messiah in the roadside, mixing with images of working in fields(you shall now toil in the garden), hiding (like Adam and Eve from HOLINESS) in bushes, taking a siesta in the shade(resting in the Savior), as farm workers might all over the world.

The Credo offers me yet another forum for my Nicene and Apostles Creeds movement vocabulary/imagery....I made the Nicene Creed for a nun friend teaching the trinity at a Catholic girls school and have performed it with translations in French, Chinese and Spanish (next German!) This solo, based on the Nicene Creed, I just performed publicly with SODC last season. I usually only perform in churches (as I did at a Lutheran Church in Tomball last Sunday) and yet, there is another(The Apostles Creed), which is a more participatory version I always envision a whole congregation doing (and did with my church one Sunday with Rich Mullins Creed)! And now in Spanish, with Mr. Ramirez's score as old as me---it will be fascinating to see what I can pull if off with 6 dancers...if not seven....I may have to be in this one myself! or not.

More to come on other sections as they evolve….

Monday, February 2, 2009

Seen and Unseen

"SEEN AND UNSEEN" is a programmatic theme for dances that will intertwine several layers of meaning, exploring the visible and the invisible. The Black History portion of the show will have a several works with focus on the life of Frederick Douglass, loosely based on excerpts from the "Narrative on the Life of Frederick Douglass" with assorted musical references from classical renditions of folk tunes, to hollering work calls. This work will be told as story in sections sensitively choreographed to highlight to children what slavery was like for a child, as well Douglass' thoughts on education as the first step toward freedom. There will be also be new work rifting off of Ralph Ellison's Invisible man, entitled, Invisible No More, in celebration of the recent inauguration of President Obama. Among reprisals is my 1998 version of "all that you have is your soul" featuring the music of Tracy Chapman; and "Sabbathday" a work using the music of The Shakers, whose inventive legacy and movement oriented worship welcomed people of all races.
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Photography above credited to Amitava Sarkar from "Dogan"