Curated by Twin Cities choreographer Kenna-Camara Cottman, this year’s edition of Choreographers’ Evening continues the tradition of providing an annual “crash course” on the local dance scene. In a recent interview with City Pages, Cottman expounds on the decision making process that whittled a long list of auditioned acts down to the program of ten choreographers selected for two shows on Saturday night in the McGuire Theater: “I like abstract and really physical things. Things that are clearly dance, but I’m also into weird stuff that has talking or text or different elements.” Noting a “preponderance of blackness” in this year’s program, Cottman emphasizes the importance of providing a platform to artists of color.
On Sunday afternoon, Cottman will also Hold Court in Theaster Gates’s See, Sit, Sup, Sip, Sing: Holding Court installation as a part of the Walker’s ongoing Radical Presence exhibition. She will lead a conversation with Choreographers’ Evening 2014 artists on contemporary dance and its role as an agent of sociopolitical change.
In advance of Saturday night’s performances, we asked participating artists to share their thoughts on the questions their works pose, the vitality of performance, and the unique qualities of the Twin Cities dance community.
Deja Stowers
Original(Some)Body/Virgo
What questions/issues do you address in your work?
Original(Some)Body/Virgo will address the issue of body image and the unreasonable expectations we put on ourselves as Black full figured women. Our bodies are underrepresented on stage. So how are young Black full figured girls supposed to know what is possible? That their bodies can tell a story to the world? That there is sun and beauty radiating from their skin? This piece is also a Rite of Passage for my own body. Like everyone, I have to learn to love my body and everything it has to offer. This piece is one of the many chapters to helping myself heal and create. I am making myself available to be a reflection.
Why do you use performance as a platform for expression?
I use Dance and “performance” because it gives me the freedom to tell a story in my own language. I feel it is the only way to get an accurate view of what is going on in my mind. It’s liberating.
Slaveship
What questions/issues do you address in your work?
One of the primary issues that I tackle through my work is identity, lack of triumph, and the absolute power of perseverance. When you consider the African American journey as a whole, it is an ever changing story that lives and thrives with the people. So often our voice goes unheard. I have been given an amazing gift to allow the boarder public the chance to experiences that cultural voice through vibrant, organic art in motion. My overall goal is to increase the cultural and historical acknowledgement for the African American Journey. I would like for people to take away from my pieces the absolute reality of our story.
What makes the Twin Cities dance scene unique?
It is artistically diverse and always evolving. It is creative place-making at its best.
Why do you use performance as a platform for expression?
At my very core I am a performing artist. There is an overwhelming need to express my artistic perspective.
Dancing with God
What questions/issues do you address in your work?
This work addresses the dark and complex emotional spaces that we sometimes find ourselves in. Loneliness can be a beautiful gift of relief but it can also be a constricting space with the potential to swallow you whole. It is our freedom and our pain. It can be our space to come to recognize our true selves or run from our true selves. Dancing with God is a glimpse into one woman’s interaction with these ideas.
What makes the Twin Cities dance scene unique?
As a new member of this community I would have to say its vastness, accessibility, and stability are what make it unique. Other than Chicago, NY, and LA, most cities in the US have small communities that either aren’t well funded or don’t have anywhere near as many long-running, stable dance companies and dance centers. From TU Dance to MDT to James Sewell to Zenon, these companies have some of the strongest foundations I’ve ever seen all in one city (The Twins) remaining under the same leadership from their inception. This community is large enough to have its own award ceremony and multiple dance artists to be nominated in each category! I was humbled by the strength and vastness of the dance community at this year’s Sage Awards. All of these things and more make the Twin Cities dance scene very unique to me and very admirable.
Why do you use performance as a platform for expression?
Performing provides me a visceral connection to people. It is not enough for me to simply do a song and dance; I desire to reach people and share my knowledge, wisdom, and life experiences in hopes that someone can look at things a bit differently. Life can certainly become mundane and, these days, overwhelming with shock and sensationalism in ways that render our emotions and interactions with others very one-dimensional. Performance is my way of keeping myself aware and reminding others of the multidimensional nature of humanity.
Canaan Mattson
Significant Nothings
What questions/issues do you address in your work?
My piece originally started off as a story of self-refinement, determining ethics, or finding out a way to better yourself. As the process went on I couldn’t help to know that the topic goes even deeper and it all simply comes down to the act of noticing these good and bad forces that take hold of our thoughts. The piece focuses on different perspectives of this awareness, and how different types of people deal with this refinement.
Why do you use performance as a platform for expression?
Humans have evolved to an oral being that can discern many feelings with the use of language. For me, performance breaks down that barrier of language causing your body to ultimately say what your mouth cannot. This speech is an intense force as it reaches parts of the brain that deal with interpretation and focus. Movement can be just as strong as words in the articulation of feeling.
Is this more ladylike?
What questions/issues do you address in your work?
During the fall semester of my senior year at St. Olaf, I conducted an independent study called “Queer Female Body in Dance” with Professor Heather Klopchin. As a movement study, I responded to Joe Goode’s 29 Effeminate Gestures as a way to explore the social construction of gender and sexuality in performance. The study developed into a piece that provides an illuminating, slightly sarcastic look at femininity through gestural material. The gestures aim to deconstruct our own preconceived notions of what it means to be “ladylike” in performance.
Darrius Strong
Piece by Piece
Why do you use performance as a platform for expression?
At a young age I was unable to find a way to express myself and speak about my feelings, but over time creating work and performing has given me the tools to physically speak my expressions. Everyday, I witness people who are living day-to-day without thoughts of how society is shaping them. Race, gender, and ethnicity have always been a concern. My question is: Why does it remain a problem? Finding something in common with every race, gender, and ethnicity is a segue into making a change toward this problem. Being born in a predominantly black community in the south side of Chicago, then moving to a mostly white community in the suburbs of Minnesota has helped me find my identity as an African American male in this society. It is hard for me to understand why as people we don’t realize the power within societal norms, and the way in which we as humans use this against one another. I feel that we as individuals need to wake up and realize that unity is the greatest power.
Deneane Richburg
Quiet As It’s Kept
What questions/issues do you address in your work?
I am really interested in experiencing substantive connections to my ancestral and cultural history as a means to gain deeper insights into who I am and the present journeys I find myself taking. As a result, my work is centered around experiencing these histories and the narratives that characterize the histories.
Black Solitude/Autonomous Wildness
What questions/issues do you address in your work?
In my aerial/dance work I reflect on how black people can experience themselves in the absence of limitless investigation and the self-consciousness of oppression. To be embodied, and sensually and transcendently so. My whole life, I have seen and psychically responded to black people’s bodies being invisibilized, adored, chewed up, mauled, rubbed, loved, experienced, confused, misrepresented, absorbed, mocked, edified, attacked, desired, politicized, and most essentially commodified in Westernized culture and society. And my whole life I wanted to fly. I explore this journey in Black Solitude/Autonomous Wildness, using corde lisse, aerial rope, an apparatus I choose in part because of the violent and murderous relationship of ropes and black people. The rope is tough and capable and connects earth to limitlessness. I try not to be too philosophical or academic about it, but visceral and free when I work with the rope. I try to be something transcendent and whimsical. I just focus on the alchemy of letting go, into myself in ways untouchable and inconceivable to the constraints of this society for black people. Today is an interesting time to answer this question. Tamir Rice, 12 years old, was murdered this weekend by Cleveland Police and the Michael Brown verdict is hours from being announced. The weight of this moment is fascinating and I am in my heart with it. I think of them and all of the “black bodies swinging” that there have ever been , that need to be known and seen and loved and humanized.
What makes the Twin Cities dance scene unique?
I think people really show love and support. I think it is also experimental and free, in ways that keep me excited and studying. I have gotten to perform in so many amazing pieces and with so many powerful artists. This season alone, I have gotten to co-choreograph with Nicolas Collard an aerial piece for Barebones, performed in a piece by SuperGroup, did a collaboration with photographer and dancer Bill and Kenna Cottman, musician, Lewis Hill III and photographer Kevin Obsatz which we performed on huge screens. I look forward to seeing and learning more of what the dance scene has to offer by way of the performers at CE.
Why do you use performance as a platform for expression?
It assuages my ego, by making me vulnerable and open and bold. It is a beautiful ritual for me. I like to process my life’s journey and offer it to people to ponder with me and also make whatever sense of what I do for their own purposes and pleasure.
Terpsichore Told Us To: 23 Gestures, 11 Poses, 2 Solos and a Duet
What questions/issues do you address in your work?
We [Taja Will and Blake Nellis] are a collaborative team going on ten years old. Much of our work is rooted in exploring the moving relationships of intimacy and risk within our partnership. Our work is dedicated to exploring spontaneity, agency, instinctive choice-making, and instantaneous choreography. We are improvisers.
Why do you use performance as a platform for expression?
Performance is a means to share embodied research, which I believe facilitates a remembering of the human body’s ability, complexity, and magic.
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Choreographers’ Evening 2014, curated by Kenna Camara-Cottman, takes place on Saturday, November 29th, at 7 pm and 9:30 pm in the Walker’s McGuire Theater.
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