“Meeting the local dance community and seeing the dance texture at a larger level was an honor for me,” recalls Pramila Vasudevan, the curator of Choreographers’ Evening 2018, of the auditions with more than 70 Twin Cities dancemakers. “I really believe we [as artists] carry so much as we walk in the world, and the way we create comes from the things around us. When I chose these works, I carried the same weight.”
The founder of Aniccha Arts, Vasudevan returns as the showcase’s curator after having debuted her own solo piece, The Wet Bug Hush, in the 2010 edition. For the 46th edition of Choreographers’ Evening, she selected eleven works by choreographers taking new risks in dance and performance. “I feel the works make a personal connection and reflect the artists’ deeply embodied search,” Vasudevan says. “And in some works, a kind of transcience and queerness manifests. I’m interested in the idea of ‘not a thing.’ So there isn’t an overarching theme. I feel the artists and audiences should have the freedom and space to find their own through lines across the works. The evening offers a complexity of difference artist voices.”
In anticipation of Saturday’s performances, we asked each artist to discuss their work and thoughts on the local dance landscape—including the tradition of Choreographers’ Evening. Their views give insight into the inventiveness, variety, and emotional valences emblematic of Minnesota dance and performance.
Zoe Cinel
Q.
As a transdisciplinary artist, how does your piece in Choreographers’ Evening build upon your practice?
A.
For about a year, I have used Google Earth VR as a portal for immigrants to connect with their native geography, to explore their own identity, and to share stories. I incorporated this process into my installations. But I am also interested in the performative aspects and the vulnerability of the immigrant’s body: how impactful are the everyday performances that an immigrant acts to blend into a new context? How vulnerable is a body when it is scanned at the border? This work, You Are Here, is a great opportunity to process these questions through performance, costume design—which I have been doing for about a year—video, and VR.
Q.
How do you think Choreographers’ Evening serves artists and the community?
A.
Choreographers’ Evening is a celebration of the local performance scene. As an audience member, I saw great performances in the past two editions. Some of them inspired me to participate in this current edition: I can approach choreography and performance from the standpoint of a director and visual artist. From a personal standpoint, as an artist and an immigrant who is applying to an O-1 visa, being part of programming in an internationally-recognized art institution, such as the Walker Art Center, Choreographer’s Evening is a resource that might help me stay in this country and community in the future.
Chris Garza
Q.
How does your directorial work influence your choreographic creations?
A.
I get frustrated with the form of theater when it defaults to a mode of text delivery and forgets it’s a visual art form as well. There is an internal logic to my work as a choreographer that I borrow from theater. I start with a concept and then use movement to express elements of character and narrative.
Q.
What does your piece explore?
A.
It replicates the desire to connect with each other and uses a language of 8-Bit movement inspired by the video games of my youth to get us through the sometimes awkward, often vulnerable exchange. Initial performers and collaborators were A.P. Looze, Lazer Goese, and myself.
Q.
How do you think Choreographers’ Evening serves artists and the community?
A.
I’ve been coming as an audience member for years, and I’ve always appreciated the array of offerings. I think annual presentations sometimes become a communal ritual. It marks a passage of time and speaks to the immediacy of the moment through the multiple lenses of the artists presenting. The evening becomes both singular and a tradition.
Khary Jackson
Q.
What is your style of dance, and how has it been influenced by your writing and music?
A.
My dance style is popping/animating. My passion for music helps me listen very closely to it and find intimacy with it as a dancer. My writing helps with storytelling and creating an arc that fits with the song.
Q.
What does your piece explore?
A.
A journey through an emotional landscape, in the ways one must for those we love. Both on land and underwater.
Q.
What excites you about Minnesota’s dance and performance communities?
A.
I appreciate how supportive and community-minded artists are here. People build with each other.
Valerie Oliveiro
Q.
What does your piece explore?
A.
It explores togetherness and how we can hold each other. It proposes a version of how we can be with each other and also experiments with agreements, impact and empathy.
Q.
Coming from a photography and lighting design background, how do you see your visual art work connect to or challenge your choreographic work?
A.
I don’t know if “background” is the right word! I think these modes are definitely a huge part of my practice, and at the center of it is a cultivated awareness and relationship with light. With that comes a personal understanding of space, visibility, perspective, and movement that I apply to my choreographic work as well. I do tend to work through or with a “frame” (photography), but I am also aware of how I could impact ways of seeing (lighting design/photography) through the “frame” of the proscenium.
Leslie Parker
Q.
Tell us about the piece you will be presenting for Choreographers’ Evening—in particular, the additional element of music brought in.
A.
I’m reimagining a solo work that was performed at Harlem Stage’s Emoves13 in 2012 and New York Live Arts in 2013. The main inspiration behind the work is a very old (about 90 years) United States history book that belonged to my maternal grandmother. She was self-educated for most of her life. The book is a connection to my maternal mother and great grandmother’s complex history of migrating from the South to the Rondo community in Minnesota. Collaborator DJ Verb (Vincent Patterson), who is also from Rondo community, brings in contemporary black music and reggae to remix this work into a contemporary moment in real time.
Q.
Your choreography and study of dance are derived from forms of African diasporas; how does this piece expand on your ongoing focus?
A.
The choreography is inspired by my studies of the ring shout and the Black church experience. I am moved by the perseverance of my ancestors. Pearl Primus, a pioneer of New York’s Black experimental/avant garde scene, is also an inspiration for this work. I’m thinking about how the history of the ring shout has impacted experimental dance and how in the Carolinas (Geechee culture) and the Black church there is retention, to this day, of spiritual practices stemming from Africans migrating to America with their Indigenous culture that merged with Christianity.
Q.
What excites you about Minnesota’s dance landscape?
A.
I see more dance happening in St. Paul’s Rondo community. I did not have that growing up. Although I grew up dancing in the community with Lou Wiley Highsteppers and Rainbow Children’s Theater, I was always experimenting because I felt that I needed to grow in ways that my environment did not always reflect back to me. While searching (in my early youth) for a space that could facilitate a pathway toward my dreams, I hoped for an experience that affirmed what I felt so that my imagination could be activated. Melba Perry (Dance Theatre of Harlem) moved to the Twin Cities to work with Rainbow Children’s Theatre. She mentored me, leading me to the modern and ballet dance scenes in downtown Minneapolis. Melba Perry, Mama Laurie Carlos, Penumbra Theater, and when Baba Chuck Davis brought DanceAfrica to Minnesota in 1994—they all changed my life. DanceAfrica led me to Patricia Brown and Marvette Knight and more. Now there’s more work being done that reflects the multiplicity and varied nuances of St. Paul and the dance community at large.
Jäc Pau
Q.
Can you tell me about your artistic background and style of dance?
A.
Most of my work recently has been created through burlesque—the art of the tease. It reflects my relationship with my own body and at the same time establishes a relationship from my body to the audience. There’s a fine line to walk while dancing in this style, going back and forth between dancing for the audience and dancing for me alone. This movement, this sensuality, could be happening in an empty room; it just so happens to be in front of people. Burlesque is for me, for you, for us, to remind us our bodies are a gift, our bodies are beautiful, and our bodies are ours to dance with.
Q.
What are you exploring in this piece?
A.
This piece is about experiencing sadness and despair. I wanted to explore a space between showing sadness and sexuality. What does it mean to feel sexy and sad? What does it mean to push sadness through feelings of sensuality? I am also exploring the question, how do I get what I want from the audience? Either through sadness or sensuality, how do I dance for them and feel for me? How do I do both? Lastly, I am using techniques in clown to develop a vulnerable, connected relationship to the audience.
Anat Shinar and Amal Rogers
Q.
What ideas or experiments brought the two of you as artists together?
A.
I wouldn’t say that it was a specific idea or experiment that brought us together, but rather a string of circumstances. I [Anat] had been told by a couple of friends that I needed to meet this new artist in town, Amal, because they knew we would really get along. When we finally did meet, we learned that we were both in the Red Eye’s 2018 cohort for Isolated Acts and that we would both be in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the same time for a residency at Keshet Center for the Arts. In Albuquerque, we became super-fast friends. Then, through Isolated Acts, we discovered that there was a lot of overlap in our ideas, politics, aesthetic preferences, styles, and processes. Collaboration felt natural. So we decided Choreographers’ Evening would be a short and sweet first step in working together.
This piece spun out of conversations about the types of shows we watch when we need to unwind. We found that we both gravitate toward TV shows that depict middle-class white families, who episode to episode seem to only be affected by interpersonal conflicts. They’re shows that you can watch on a loop for years, because their lack of depth asks so little of the viewer. We built the piece using the game “Yes, and” and made the choice not to edit each other’s responses
Q.
What excites you about performance in the Twin Cities?
A.
As someone still new to the Twin Cities, I [Amal] am again and again impressed with the amount of space and support for experimental performance. It’s not hard to find places and people who value fresh and challenging perspectives. I am also excited about ongoing collaborations with Anat!
Al Taw’am
Q.
What are you exploring in this piece?
A.
We believe that women carry and pass on culture in beautiful ways. By continuing to make work that speaks to our existence, we strive to be women who sustain and pass on culture like the powerful black women that have graced the world and specifically our lives; this is also a tribute to them! The movement of this piece is inspired by feeling and our bodies’ initial responses, with little concern for fitting into a genre.
Q.
What excites you about Minnesota’s dance and performance communities?
A.
What excites us about the Minnesota dance and performance community is the example and efforts of urban and hip hop dancers who create opportunities for our art to be developed, expressed, and acknowledged. What also excites us is the variety of movement present in Minnesota that has influenced our desire to expand our artistry and movement vocabulary.
Yuki Tokuda
Q.
Can you tell me about your choreographic interest and style of dance?
A.
My style is classical ballet, and I am interested in making music come alive within the form of classical ballet. I pick the music first and listen to it a lot. The movement comes later after I listen to the music, study the score, and begin to experiment with it and my body. I like the challenge of fitting my ideas in the framework of classical ballet, using the traditional structure to create something new. I feel the discipline of the classical styles is being forgotten and misunderstood a lot now days, and it gives me a chance to reintroduce it to new audiences.
Q.
Tell us about the piece you will be presenting in Choreographers’ Evening.
A.
I made this piece after coming back from my foot injury. I’m grateful that I can dance again.
Q.
How do you think Choreographers’ Evening serves artists and the community?
A.
It is a great opportunity for artists to show their works and make connections. I appreciate the opportunity to perform for people who care about dance.
Chitra Vairavan
Q.
What was the idea that brought your collaborators together for this piece?
A.
Tia-Simone Gardner, Rini Yun Keagy, and I are women artists of color with roots in the Global South, living in Minnesota. Part of our experiences embody a lineage of similar diasporic migrations. This piece, One Removed, provides a space to cross-pollinate our respective disciplines through collaborative experimentation.
Q.
What are you exploring with this piece?
A.
One Removed is an experimental, audiovisual, and performance work that grew out of the concept of displacement—sociohistorical, geographic, and emotional. The movement of a single brown body attempts to metabolize centuries of diasporic displacement and the powerful geological processes of the earth itself. The piece is an aspirational gesture towards finding breath amidst patriarchal and political oppressions.
Q.
What excites you about Minnesota dance and performance, here and now?
A.
What excites me in my personal circle within the Minnesota dance and performance community are the kinds of socially conscious and critical questions we are exploring within our self-organized spaces and how we are continuing to vulnerably build, witness, and hold each other as we work.
Katie Ka Vang
Q.
Tell us about the piece you’ll be presenting for Choreographers’ Evening.
A.
I hope this work provides a space for audiences to interrogate their relationship with pace: how long can I be with something and be mindful with something that may not be my usual pace? Yet I’m here; how can I be with that pace? When I was forced into isolation for 100 days (due to a medical condition), I was faced with many things: the pace I wanted to achieve my goals, the pace I moved, the pace of thinking, the pace of healing, etc. This piece bounces between external and internal—at times I just wanted to go bonkers. The act of being in the body while trying to understand it was something I was exploring.
Q.
Choreographically, how did you go about that for this piece?
A.
I let my body go where it wanted to go, recount some of the movements I couldn’t do, and embody those gestures. It means a lot to me now, as an abled body person, to do all of the movement in this piece. It wasn’t too long ago that I couldn’t do these mundane gestures: bouncing, lying on my stomach, and sitting with knees propped were all movements that would cause my body to fold and spazz. Now, as a side effect of my treatment, my hands and feet will freeze up like a muscle spasm. I try to be mindful of what I’m doing and the pace I do the movements so the muscles don’t spasm.
Q.
Coming from a theater background, how do you see your theater work connecting to or pushing the boundaries of this new piece?
A.
Some of my acting coaches say: be in your body. After going through treatment three times for cancer, I have a new body. We’re getting to know each other. Every piece I work on is an attempt at deepening my understanding of the self. I’ve always been a lover of stories, but writing became stagnant. I’m re-finding my voice. This is a new way for me to explore storytelling without the pressure of having audible text.
Get Walker Reader in your inbox. Sign up to receive first word about our original videos, commissioned essays, curatorial perspectives, and artist interviews.
)
)
)