Congressional Black Caucus Flash Duet

The idea was crazy AF.  But I figured with Mellon deciding to pull out of funding arts effective next year, a beloved black dance company (and alma mater) firing all of their dancers for organizing, and my absolutely phenomenal, loved-by-all colleague Michaela DePrince dying at 29 suddenly, maybe crazy AF was in order.   Maybe it was time to flex my own executive director prowess.

Resume be damned.

So I called Jenelle Figgins to mourn, and she reminded me that she is DC-based and happy to embark on crazy with me.  I rehearsed her in a Donald Byrd ballet I managed years ago at Dance Theatre of Harlem.  Then we danced together at Wideman-Davis Dance Theater on a grant in Montgomery.   And she’s a Figgins - every one of those sisters is top shelf.   That she was game made sense.

Left to right: Jenelle Figgins and me, Marjani Forté-Saunders choreographing on some of the dancers, others in rehearsal last year and a bunch of us at a gala last Spring.

What made this crazy is that the entire performance would be produced that night.

I asked Jenelle to give business casual.  She showed up in light slacks and a cocktail reception blouse, open-toed shoes.  Wardrobe done.

I had her walk through the bar so that someone could notice her there without me.  Black folks tend to pay attention to when new energy shows up in a space.  Dramaturgy sorted.

Then she met me downstairs on the third floor of conference room levels below so that we could talk through the rest of it.  Choreography and rehearsal direction done.

We grab each other’s hands and bow head to head to ask God for all the things.  Mid-prayer we feel some other people in the hallway making their way, likely trying not to disturb.

I open my eyes after the Áśě.

Tyrese is standing there, dapper, surrounded by a cadre of put-together, upscale men. 

“We just didn’t want to interrupt you,” he says.

Jenelle can’t wait, stands back tall on her leg and throws the other into a long front bevel, Dorothy Dandridge channeled.

“Do you want to meet me, sir?” she says.

We all fall out laughing, Jenelle too.

Anyway, these black men are moved by the moment, the prayer, the acknowledgment, the surrender to ancestors.  And it means the world at this moment that they said as much.

I tell them we are about to do a surprise performance for the CBC bar patrons in a sec to raise money.   I say less about this in the moment because I have ways to get to him later and don’t want to contaminate the occasion and the feeling he and his people have in it.  This is a strategic executive director decision. I’ll ask my executive secretary (also me) to sort this out later.    

I consolidate her purse and valuables in my backpack a la company or stage manager. Then we do the stunt:

She looks at me, I see her.   I buy her a drink.

She moves to the concourse portion of the bar.

I follow.   We stand far from each other.

I invite her to come over.  She does. 

We slow dance. We talk trash.

This improv develops.  I pick her up overhead.

I sit down  - she says quite a bit.

I sit her down – I solo.

We dance together again and plan to go up the stairs, but there were people taking pictures there, so this part of the plan had to change.  But at the end, after Jenelle says she needs a drink first, I address the audience directly.

 “Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Jenelle Figgins!”

 I introduce myself to the bar as well. 

 At this point, a table of folks invite us over to have drinks, alerting me that they are interested in the arts—or at the very least what they just saw.

 And they listened to us talk about the 40 black and brown dancers on the Opus Dance Theatre  NY roster that we want to employ for a few cultural ambassadorship projects, and that we need about $200k to fund.

 This was a successful stunt.  I mean, I still have to find money to cover what I paid her and reimbursed for parking when I was stage managing.  But it’s okay.  I’ve now added executive director to the list that includes wardrobe advisor, dramaturg, choreographer, rehearsal director, stage manager, dancer, artistic director.

And executive director, of course.

 It’s the reason I tell corporate folks all the time that if they want to hire people versed in covering all the bases, you have to find someone who has worked for several poor black grassroots nonprofits.   We can design on a dime; imagine how much change you’ll get back when there’s actually a full C?

 Hopefully, everyone I know is about to find out.   

Errors

In tennis, they’re called forced errors. These are mistakes that come out of the opponent’s solid playing, for instance when the shot was so strategic in placement that there is no way to return it without making an error.

It’s also a way to describe the paradox facing black grassroots organizations who strive to “succeed” in a capitalistic, white supremacist society:  growth of any financial kind cannot happen without utilizing structures that leave no room for ancestors.   “Yay, now we have money so we can...”  turns into “Well, we have to implement  this mandate to prevent employees from…” Like tax advantages, checks and balances favor the business vs the individual.  None of it help us to Umoja or Ujima, and capitalism teaches us the dangers of prioritizing principle over bureaucracy.

Black Americans have experienced white capitalistic conformity for years on a personal level.  Straighten your hair to make it neater for that suit Black woman, because corporate doesn’t do kinky hair.  Be sure to show teeth when you smile Black man, because that body looks threatening.    Speak the King’s English only, because no one in business will respect less (unless you’re a wealthy white male).  Respectability politics played out on our physical selves when Black people try to climb—these are clear.

It’s harder to see in grass roots non-profit organizations mid-climb because the compulsion to protect the growing business means all kinds of traps.  The twice-as-good-half-as-far paradigm is on max, especially since donor support is oxygen:

Do not color outside of the lines.

 Suffer zero scandals.

 Be flawless on record.

 Be sure all of your employees are flawless on record.

 Appear and behave better than the stereotypes we have painted about your people behind circumstances America created for you even though you built it.

That last one is the juggernaut.  Because none of capitalistic corporate America is concerned about whether the basis of “better” is wrapped around forced errors from serves like redlining, or drugs injected into communities with Black folks and no infrastructure.  Having nothing to lose in a survival imperative forces errors.  And white supremacy offers the same lack of second chances for Black organizations that it offers Black individuals.

So they beef it up, these Black companies.  And once they reach the milestones that capitalism sets—almost always dollar-based benchmarks—it becomes time to adopt policies to help employees not rock the boat.  There are protocols, hierarchies in place and systems to keep it all copasetic.  They may also prevent an employee from being able to ask a simple question, or get some information without filling out paperwork that hold harmless the company (or the supervisor).  Management contains no scaffold to share business insight the way it would from someone’s auntie in the village when sausage ingredients are queried about.   Instead the cold, formal non-answer can come as a pin-drop email, sent in hopes that nobody will make a fuss or dent the stemware. 

This is the place where the ancestors disappear, where community is trounced by hierarchy.

Rather than a council of elders it’s a folder of lawyer-penned missives.  Instead of circling up to invite ancestors into the space, it’s updating the company handbook to reinforce accountability. Instead of hiring the dancer with grasp in her body and Wakanda in her back, we go with the less Nigerian-looking one who is “stunning” by Western standards.

Because companies like Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dance Theatre of Harlem and Dallas Black Dance Theatre could only thrive if they complied, clear that non-corporate values might disengage donors with purses and presenters with contracts.  At the times they founded legacies, Alvin Ailey, Arthur Mitchell and Ann Williams did not have the luxury of Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, who turned down big business funding that might contaminate any deliverables she promised her voters.  They had to take whatever they could get and worry about coin conditionals and handshake promises down the line.

There is a deeper dive here about the abuses dancers have suffered physically (and I mean from dance steps alone) in an effort for Black companies to prove their worth, our worth.   It is another blog altogether that includes scars, traumas and hilarious anecdotes.  The thing to know is that right or wrong, it was a response to a supremacist system that forced all the errors.

After all, Serena stopped wearing beads while whupping tail and they still called her coon before GOAT.

The way to move forward is to get in the rooms and have these dialogues.  It is why I go to IABD every year, to fellowship with Black dance artists about where we are now and how to reconcile these world views. And to be clear, Dallas Black Dance Theater is one of the founding members of IABD.  But charity begins at home, and I have faith that they’ll figure it out.

The good news is that grace, not force, is the more Africanist value of the two.

The Nino Files: How DEI Changes the Room

Marjani smiles and gathers the 28 dancers into a circle to start the day.  She invites our accompanist, Brian, and Linda and Michael who run the dance department at The Met to join.  We share our names, preferred pronouns and whatever made us grateful this morning.

She offers ways that she would like us to engage the process of creating the movement material for El Nino, starting with that it is a process.  She has done her homework, but wants to use a series of gestures as the entry point into the exploration of what this work could be on our bodies.  Be you, be dope.  We were hired not only for the amount of discipline in our bodies, but also for our ability to make choices that might inform the work.

Life happens.  Some of us have kids (Marjani’s is eight) or older parents or extraordinary circumstances to deal with. 

“I just ask that you please handle these moments out of the room,” she says to us, “so that we can be truly present in it for this process.”  

Down the line, when we are on stage with a chorus and principals trying to tech the show, there will be space for dissonance.  She asks that we lean into our internal community – much easier at this point with no enemies – to cover this space with our ensemblehood.

Be dope.

Be present.

Be an ensemble.

The room agrees, instantly enrolled.

Beyond the collective gratitude we feel knowing we will share office with persons of color, we understand that she means to consider us.  We have worked for enough choreographers to appreciate her gift.

This is also not a complete surprise. 

Marjani teaches us a few movements.  Anointed Eye. Sacred Cup. King of Kings.  One of the thick wooden bracelets on her left arm toasts the other, creates a rhythm.

“You’re clacking,” Winston says.  He is her associate choreographer.

“Oh no, is that distracting you?”

The few of us who speak on it think she looks too good with the rust sleeveless romper and rooted, deliberate jewelry pieces that I am sure are meaningful.

Winston concedes.

The day moves gorgeously.  Even as I sat on the NY board of SAG-AFTRA for years, chair its Dancers committee and sit on several artist advocacy boards, I am as deflated as everyone else when the AGMA breaks occur – always on the cusp of a great artistic find we arrived to together.

During the break, I notice that people are in good spirits. Open. Disappointed about the intrusion.  It is clear that Marjani has successful enrolled us in the safety of the space. 

Most of us come from concert dance. We trained in ballet, Horton, Graham, Limon, and/or a few other techniques.  So we understand that Marjani and two of the dancers in the room are alums of Urban Bush Women, a company whose artistic culture is founded on the prevalence of the Africanist aesthetic in movement.   We get that Marjani is an exponent of this tradition.  

We are relieved.

****

To get lots of things done at once in dance rehearsals, we often divide the studio space.  A group of us are in the downstage left quadrant of the studio figuring out how to throw Joy Marie cheerleader high in the space.

We work out placing Jeremy and David as launchers so that Joy Marie can climb into their hands and jump/be thrown from them.

“Maybe someone can help with the mount,” Winston suggests.

I volunteer.

I assist Joy Marie for the mount and then clear immediately for the launch. 

Instead of going into the air, Joy Marie ended up on the floor. 

Laughing, we chalk this up to a fluke. 

We try again and Joy Marie flies in the air.

“Okay, okay, how much force were you giving on a scale of 1 to 10?” Winston asks Jerimy.

“Maybe a 4.”

Winston turns to David. “And you?”

“About the same.”

This is scary news, only because these two are built like Marvel heroes and have corresponding heft.

“Let’s take that up to a 7 or 8,” Winston says. “Y’all okay in the back?”

There is chatter back there as the ensemble is busy ensembling, working out placement.

“You ready?” I ask Joy Marie.

There is a nod and Joy Marie is in place.

In the second launch, Joy Marie flies like Simone Biles.  It is miraculous. Their pelvis and hips fold over the chest on the catch. 

We triage a bit.

“She probably has to think of going straight up and not back,” I say to Winston.  “I mean if any of us set straight up for a standing back tuck it will still move back a little. This is a lot of force.”

Winston agrees.

“Yeah, Joy Marie you can do less of trying to get to them. You just have to go up.”

We try again. Joy Marie flies again.  She sports the exhilaration of someone whose random Tik Tok went viral.

We do this a few more times, checking in each time.  Winston and I troubleshoot.

“I think even if she folds, it won’t be until the end,” I say.  “She can stay long the whole time because her torso is well-put together in the air.”

With Christopher Nolan movie stealth, Dymon appears through the dissolve of dancers dispersing for the break.

“Joy Marie’s pronouns are they/them,” she says.

She exits as expertly as she appeared.

Realizing I have likely mis-gendered all three of the dancers in the room who identified themselves as non-binary at some point or another, I go to Joy Marie right away.

“Listen, I absolutely intend to get these pronouns right and I am not in resistance,” I tell them.  “It will continue to take me a while to get it right because I’m old enough that the mechanics are ingrained.”

“I wish you could have a conversation with my parents.”

We laugh about this.

I explain that people over the age of 40 were taught pronouns in such a way that they were non-negotiable.  White supremacy dictates amplified this, our baby boomer parents determined to make sure that we spoke “the King’s English” extraordinarily so that we would have a future.  Using “they” in any other context than to indicate more than one was anathema; slashes were available for when we are unsure who he/she is coming later with his/her contribution.

We agree that we have much to talk about later, not the least of which is our on-going plan with Nia to learn John Adams’ complicated patterns for a few choice El Nino selections.  So that off stage we can lip sync for our lives.

****

The three Iconic Mary’s are busy shaping their phrases, several of us gather for On the Day of the Great Slaughter choreography to come together on timing, and others are reviewing Shake the Heavens.  Marjani interrupts.

“Hey everyone continue to work, but I just wanted to be transparent in sharing that right now I’m a little anxious because we’re going to share this in the bigger room with the rest of the team shortly.  So if you feel something odd with my energy please don’t take it on.   You all are working beautifully.”

I could feel the cascade of tacet Ase’s in the room. 

I have been dancing for over 30 years and I can’t remember a choreographer ever announcing their vulnerability specifically to protect the artists in the space.

I am hers forever.

I will buy more tiger balm and triage my body to do whatever she is working on.

I am not alone.

****

Lileana leans into the mic.

“Let’s give it up for these countertenors everyone!” 

She is committed to all of the actions that come with those words. Her thick blonde braids unleash full 90’s vibes when they fly to the side.

The room goes with her, applauds as if this is Wild ‘n Out, the dancers her acolytes.

She has earned herself these moments.  She begins every rehearsal with a gathered circle and leads us in a demi sun salutation—deep breathing as a group with a stretch that ends with our hands pressed against each other at heart center.  

Lileana leaves none of her charisma behind ever.  Debbie Allen radiant, she has occasionally shown up in the boat scene with us, learned a step or two that we were doing, and served a dramatic rendition of Ne Me Quitte Pas a capella on our way into a break.  

None of this is part of the job description.  But it is so necessary for a room working on a piece that includes the slaughter of migrant children. We need this relief.

And Lileana is as authentic as they come.

When the chorus joins for the second portion of rehearsal, she invites them to breathe with her and embrace the warmth she creates in the space.

It is an odd moment to witness, only because the predominance of Anglo singers pops like the orange of caution cones in a space with four black principals and 28 dancers of color in the room.

There were rumblings about the displacement of the choristers for the recent spate of operas – Fire Shut Up in My Bones, Champion and Malcolm X - that grabbed black and brown vocalists from outside.  I understand Met choristers put their foot down when the plan was similar for El Nino, but the trade off is John Adams musical challenges that require too much concentration for emotions to get involved.

But the singers join Lileana’s room nevertheless, surrender to the energy.

Also, the countertenors are tremendous.

We run through Shake the Heavens, one of the moments where puppeteers, choristers and dancers are all on stage.   It is a large party of folk to shake heaven, but the singers are intrepid enough to shake it themselves. 

“Let’s give it up for this chorus, people!”

Some smile, some appear bemused, others look appreciative but exhausted.   I see one sitting behind the set piece that is the mountains later.  She shakes her head.

“We’re not kids,” she says.  “We’re professionals. We do this for a living.  And this is the Met Opera.”

I hear it as a trigger right away.  That she is a black, classically trained singer means she has worked against racism and the more insidious angry black woman strike whose usage is too esoteric to prove, no matter how felt.  And the fact that nobody is interested in her promises that she’s not evil is an adversity few on the planet know about.  Given this fight for human regard, it makes sense that she is too exhausted to make the exception when there is a Puerto Rican woman who has never been in the room to hear her (and her colleagues’) virtuosity.

Also, these singers are employees.  I do not know a workplace—no matter how amazing—where people in it don’t gripe about some aspect of their work in it.

I smile at her, nod with understanding.

“You all do sound glorious,” I say.   She also may take for granted what a privilege it is to hear this level of art up close and personal, and that because black and brown dancers are (historically) so seldom invited we appreciate it even more.  It dawns on me that the real patron offering for that highest tier level of gift is the opportunity to sit in one of these rehearsals and hear the chorus with no orchestral competition.

The next time they sing, I sit on the floor behind the chorister.  As she promised per her work description, she sounds sublime.

****

We are rehearsing Memoriam de Tlatelolco, the aria following the slaughter of the children.   

“Since this is such a difficult scene and would love for the room to really hold space for it,” Lileana says. “I know how hard it is to perform it and I know how hard it is to be inside of it.”

Everyone seems to drop into the gravity of this, joins the dancers who are on the floor proxying for the kids.  We feel the post-catharsis as a weighted blanket.  Julia, the soprano playing Mary of the land, makes her way from upstage, considers her path.

“Is it okay for me to touch them?” she asks.

“Yes,” Lileana says.  Then, “All of the dancers on the floor playing children, raise your hands.”

We do.

“Now raise your hand if you’re okay with being touched.”

We all do.

Julia makes her way down and picks up my head and torso.  Since this will be a child, I help a little. 

“Nadie,” she says, marking the lyric.  “No one.  Nadie.  Is it okay for me to put him down,” she says. “I don’t want it to feel dismissive.”

“It won’t read that way.”  Lileana is clear with us that the kids are not really here.  “The audience will consider how they’ve dismissed what’s actually going on in the world.”

Julia moves forward, puts me down with care and works her way through. 

“And dancers know that soon we’ll have an espresso movement to free up your bodies since you’ve been on the cold floor all this time.”

I am as impressed at the way the entire front of the room supports Marjani taking care of us. We are accustomed to choreographers who remember nothing about their dance career except the hazing part—their predecessors knew no other ways past mediocrity.   Since non-dance folks in the front of the room know less, they often stand down.  

It helps that Michael and Linda, the two Met dance directors in the front of the room, align with Marjani.

Julia pushes through the mechanics of the scene. As promised, Marjani gives us the espresso movement break.

We start from the top.  When Julia gets to me, she sings

Nadie. Al dia siguiente, nadie.

No one. The next day, no none.

Somehow she pulls my chest open so that some of the D-flat can pour into it as she cradles me.  I experience a resonance in my body that helps me know she has more ideas on what this moment can be.  She gets the immeasurable loss that migration means for those brave enough to leave a place and start anew.   And she gets how to communicate that pain.

Newly made ancestors, we rise from our slain positions and give Mary support. 

We circle her, as she considers whether it is appropriate to turn around herself and take in the spiritual help since it is clear that the world kept moving on despite the murder of these children.

The scene ends with a tableau, our hands on Mary, our gaze forward to embrace her future and challenge the audience.

It is quiet and deep enough that there is no escape from this conviction. 

We are all invited to check ourselves.

*****

Is it a thirty minute break and we have just finished running In the Day of the Great Slaughter.  It is the one moment in the opera that gives the off-stage principals an opportunity to see dance occupy and hold down the space of the stage in such a complete way.   The choristers have already confessed how happy they are about the distraction we create for them in dance moments—they see them all. 

But seeing it is not enough. 

Julia and J’Nai, want to learn steps.   Dymon and Shaq, two of our dancers, start teaching them a few movement tropes, steps we repeat in succession and with slight variation, a choreographic nod to Adams’ musical values in the piece.  

Movement is a huge celebratory value for folks in brown and black diasporas.  So none of us of us in the room with membership to one surprised.  In seconds, Lileana and most of the dancers in the room are in the space dancing these steps with a level of joy that has nothing to do with the context.

This is a break after all.

But we assume that the last thing J’Nai wants to do during hers is the jumping step that charges downstage with all the rage of parents who have lost children.  

We are wrong!

“Come thru J’Nai!” cheers Babou, whose dark skin is so pretty rows of cosmetics products can only apologize for their limitations.

J’Nai has invested in the step completely, dress be damned, boots engaged.

Our cheer trickles around the room like confetti.

****

The kids have entered the room, their faces bright and casual amidst the anxious efforts to make sure they are sorted.  They understand this is play. 

Lileana takes the time to introduce the The Young People’s Chorus of NYC in a huge circle, lifting puppeteers and the intimacy coordinator that will engage them a lot for this process.  The kids are professional, game, ready.

As difficult as it is to watch them get slain by the puppeteers (who have already had a separate rehearsal to deal with this narrative), the kids are marvelous at following directions. 

This takes less time than we imagined, and the room moves on to the memorial scene.

“If you would like to me start marking and not singing full out, let me know,” Julia says.

 “Also, what’s the safe word?” Christina, one of our stage managers, asks.

“Banana!” the kids shout.

“Bananas are welcome at all times!”  Julia says to the kids

The kids sail through this portion of the section and it is Marjani’s turn to help the transform from slain children to ancestral spirits.

“We’re picking our bodies up off of the floor like a crepe or a pancake,” she says. “We want to do this so that the middle of the pancake comes up first. Let the head be one of the last things.”

The kids do it better than we did.  The years of technical training and discipline are not there to get in the way of the human part of the task, a thing dancers sometimes have to work at.  

During the teaching of the choreographer, Jasmine, a stellar artist and empath, has gone to her knees so that the kids can better see the gestures on her body.

Before their scheduled rehearsal time is over, the kids have learned their business in the scene.  The adults are suddenly relieved that we are on our gig.

Or we’re checking to make sure we are.

****

When Lileana has finished moving migrants around the stage on the journey, a feat in a rather two-dimensional set space, and both baby Jesus have conjured the miracle of water, the children are left on their own.  They stand up and begin singing.  We did not see it coming.

Senora de los vientos

Garza de la llanura

Among the dancers in the room are a rock-climbing teacher, an ex-gymnast, a doola, a novel cover designer, an author.  We’ve got native America, Haiti, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and black America represented.   And as diverse a room as it is, all of us maintain our ensemblehood as we watch and listen to these kids.

Cuando te meces

Canta tu cintura

Our hearts climb onto our eyelids and audition lashes to slide down.

We are sure that this will be the audience as well.

-          Jamal Story

Happy Mother's Day

                                                                                                                   5/12/2024

Dear Mom,

Thank you for not being perfect. 

I needed to understand how to love someone as much as we love our mothers – as much as I love you - while actually allowing space for them to be persons first. You taught me this early, although for many years I thought it was an explanation about you dating. My zoom lens was too close; it was actually about being a full human whose life force has to come first.

What made your motherhood the brightest was that you took care of the most basic animal kingdom mandate—you provided for the need.  If it was affection to soften my Vulcan tendencies, you gave me the aunties. If it was firm male guidance with authority, there is dad. Howard is still a head scratcher, but the DNA is great inside of his clan, for when I needed family everywhere.  If I needed an advocate you were ready.

For the most part.  Of course this has shifted, mainly because you did not secure the oxygen mask meant for you before tending to others.

And you can’t breathe.  Because it’s unmanageable.

You have patches of pride here and there, appearing like pockets on your favorite cargo shorts, and it always felt to me growing up that each patch is a hurdle you cleared.  You get yourself out of jams. It’s a thing, as deliberate and expert as the way you made mix-tapes with no space between tracks (and in an analog world no less).   The pride is there, discrete, around you.

I worry that your self-esteem has faltered enough to cancel the balance. 

I want you today on Mother’s Day to stretch at least the patch of pride that is about me.  Stretch it for yourself though so that it covers more space.  It is an achievement you have no choice but confidence about because there are receipts throughout my entire amazing life that reflect you.  You did great work mothering.  You provided for the need.

The only error you made is in assuming I no longer need you.

Because of course I will always need my mother, just like you need yours right now.  God provides for the need some other way of course, but the initial one is still there, present.

Lean in, Mom.  Celebrate Grandy. Need her. Miss her.  And then seek glimpses of her instead of finding them. Hold on to the parts of her that you feel you failed to find in your character and try them on now.  That’s only a feeling after all, she would say, and you have very little left to lose.

She would be right.

You continue to grow me.

You have worn me out.  Your whimsy is non-negotiable. You have fought me. You have put everything on the line like it’s the epic finale and then forgotten the whole season.  You have crusaded for life-changing absurdities to have whatever status quo you seek in the right now. But this is who you are. And you never vowed to be anyone else. 

I am better for it. 

And I support you.  You are my mother.  But you are also a beautiful human with a lot of vibration yet in that heart of yours, triple bypass notwithstanding.  I want you to thrive.

Happy Mother’s Day.

I love you and I am always happy to say I am your son –

                                                                                                                                  Jamal

P.S. Mom please do not hassle those hospital staffers about beer. You don’t need any and it is a big, obnoxious ask of a medical professional.

Contemporary

Note:  the teacher of this class is a beautiful, wonderful artist of color whom I now support, not because I know him but because he is doing good work and I am an advocate for dancers/artists.  The intention of this post is to deal with me and the perspective of my generation, not to shade him.

I took an advanced contemporary class today.

Now, understand that since I’m not sure what that is—and if you can define it, please help me in my email or inbox or in the comments below—I did a series of cursory plies facing the barre and two tendus in every direction.  By the time I was done, I noticed that everyone was sitting on the floor.

I sat too.   The millennial, more gorgeous than even the word itself before we applied it to the generation, sort of appeared on the floor and thanked us all for coming.  He said it was so good to be here and meant it.   I was still skeptical.  He could have been too-good-to-be-believed, like Nicole Kidman in Nine Perfect Strangers.  He told the newcomers that we generally start off really chill.  Then he instructed us to go ahead and pick a foot to start massaging and digging into, “giving it some love. And then move up to the ankle, work your way to the thigh…”

Wait, did this class start out with a therapeutic self-pamper? Clearly, he didn’t get punished during his training for feeling good.  Wasn’t that almost grounds for termination back in the day?  The reigning idea was that if it didn’t hurt a little by the end of your dance day, you weren’t doing it right.  In fact, you were probably marking so you needed to do it again. Feel good? Donald is still mad at the expression “Get your life!”

And DCDC would have banished you from the building for such sacrilege.

“Now start to just move the thighs with your hands and shake them off the bone. Get the tension out, start to connect to the skeleton...”

No, no, no, I need tension. I need to stand up and organize the tension out of the legs. I need to push this way or that into the floor and figure out how to move from one to leg to the other maybe. Or do a crunch or something to tell my center to help me so that I can stand up.

“Now just send that away,” he said. And I promise you what he did next was turn his hands in toward each other over his thigh and brush the energy away from his body.  A la Cleo Parker Robinson.  In fact, this fine ass youngster may be a younger version of her. Or maybe Malik’s great great grandchild traveling back in time to experiment with our bodies.  Just maybe.

“Let’s take our hands behind us and slump in the shoulders. Just relax and feel your head let go…”

Slump? Relax? What are these words he’s using? I’m so confused about this hedonism.  Either he really does want me to feel good, or he’s an evil Xerxes kind of dude young enough to stay constantly warm (sort of like Shay) and who wants to slay me by making me have to figure it out when we stand up (definitely like Shay).

I squiggled over to downstage right. And I writhed back to center upstage and then I Madonna’ed my way back over to left middle. Now, while I’m writhing and such, it dawns on me that this young man in the draped black looking like the 24th Century’s version of gorgeous proletariat in those Dune looking comfy garbs is truly positive. He’s blending the out with the in, doing all the new age DeepakIyanlan values that cultivates positivity all the way around.  Jamal, silly, it’s the dancing and the warm up that also align with feeling positive and good. It’s not supposed to hurt and send you to suffering—none of it is.  So the pathway to dancing steps has to be a joyous and beautiful and therapeutic and spa-ready as the actual steps.

Stop it. Stop it all of you, with your questions about how I’m supposed to stand up and be on my legs and lengthen lines and dance through them but at least go through them as we’re “moving freely.”

“Now explore the vertical space with your hips. Find the on the second level. Take your time to get there. Remember to be honest. This is for you.”

Honest.  He wanted us to commit without faking it or performing. This was an experience, a seminar, workshop.  Not a class in the traditional sense.  Let go of tradition.

We made our way up to standing this way. To be fair, there was much organization of what body parts to think about or “wake up” to be able to stand. 

But then the first step of the phrase was a grande plie in (let’s call it) fircond position with the right arch forced and the upper body dipped over to the front left outside of the knees. 

I know, I know.  Sabotage.

After later watching all four groups dance the combo, the teacher asked us to be mindful of when we used accents, paying attention to whether they helped or inhibited us.  

So he wants us to not stop moving.

We did it again.

He said glowing things and this:  “Think that it’s not going to be so big. I want you to still cover space, but I also want you to think a bit more internal.”

So he wants us to mark?

And friends, this is when I had the “Aha!” moment.  Shape and line and dynamic are not values of this generation inside of “contemporary” dance.  Dancers in this time period want to feel good period. All the time.   He isn’t even worried about what he’ll feel like in ten years because by then folks will be especially uninterested in whatever pain is necessary to create a line.

I did it y’all.  I indulged.  I felt good. And I know none of y’all want to see it on me ever.  I was gloriously unspecific, Donald. I refuse to respect that sculpting, Dwight. I marked it, Lula.  Let me qualify “marked” for those of you who side-eyed that last detail; what I mean is that I didn’t energize anything really. I didn’t intend anything. I just was.

It was rather splendid.   Granted, my sacrum would be in my stomach if I had not done some plies and tendus in advance. But I finally understand.  And my entire left glute was only slightly sore the next day.  And the right one too.

I will need to take a ballet class first next time.

Or only.

How Martha Gets Her Life

Even the invitation was in the tradition of old school dance connectivity. A friend who knows I’m in an out of town texted on a crapshoot alerting me of the extra ticket. I threw myself together and met her at the Joyce.

“We’re in the front row, by the way. I apologize,” she told me as we walked in.

“I’ve never sat that close so it will be a new experience. I’m open.”

And I was. I’m fine with seeing the sweat and the work. Understand that Erin’s constant proximity to black dance vis-a-vis Earl Mosley, her ability to take her pointe shoes off and actually throw her weight down and kill the house step, and her innate side-eye of supremacy before 2020 puts her on that list of folks I would see pretty much anything with. I’ve always had a theory that when the original people (all dark) split up, and the ones who moved north became white as an adaptation, and a few of the ones who trickled back down to get sun slain managed to hold on to some of the very very very powerful black DNA that just wouldn’t let whiteness win. Erin is descendant of one of those. She has two kids and runs a dance school doesn’t have a wrinkle anywhere.

I digress. The point is, we Erin and I sat there and watched the angels get diverted and the dancers were good. The men were big and buff and solid in the brown pants, the way Martha intended, and the women worked those torsos in the dresses. But of course it was the sister in the corps who was giving you the extraness, the ancestral rhythm inside the spiral, the slave pain in the contraction, the kakilambe jubilance in the high releases. She was doing the most and I LIVED. Natasha Diamond Walker and Lloyd Knight did their thing too, but in that way that established principals who have diverted and mazed and clytemnestraed for years. I’ll get to their slaying in a second.

Of course, in contrast to Leslie Andrea Williams, the young lady who was letting not a single black person down with this performance, there was a very red hunky guy who hasn’t quite figured it out. He needs to turn around the back, and then turn around the back some more so that those arms can find the source.

Then there was a brilliant solo that was made as a response to the women in the Spanish Civil War who were doing all the work but being ignored, and of course no video record of it exists. So they put this together from pictures. I can’t think of anything more modern dance willful than the commitment to such a project. I dig it. And the solo was beautiful.

Then they did a new work that was lovely. I would say more but I can’t wait to get to Appalachian Spring, where Natasha was the Pioneer Woman and Lloyd was the fire and brimstone Preacher. Janet Eilber did a great job setting up in the preshow a context: young couple, frontier, hopes and dreams, fire and brimstone values vs. passion, etc. etc. etc. But what Natasha and Lloyd did in spades was give us all the shade that could be gleaned from this story.

First off, before we get there, understand once again that I was in the front row. So I saw er’thang. The general shade is the shade Martha had for these four corps dancers. I could see that Noguchi set and understand the slope of that seating that those weren’t seats. Those ladies were perched in permanent contraction and booty flexion barely leaning against the house for fear that knocking it over means Suspiria level torture from the ghost of Graham. Then there was the fucking hat. Your remember this, right? Where the Preacher takes off his wide brimmed hat and sits it on top of the cupped fingertips of the four women in a square who have to essentially not breathe lest they ruin the tableau? Why Martha, why? Why that level of stress where the ladies are basically performing as pieces of furniture?

Meanwhile, Lloyd gave us a full duckwalk. Now, I’m sure the step that Martha set on Merce was a crawl of some sort along the metatarsals through parallel plie with some kind of augmenting change of the back and maybe cupped hands coming in. But when Lloyd but dropped his black behind in that squat, the next thing HE did was a duck walk. And I got my entire life.

Because what is a duck walk other than what happened when black hits this kind of step?

I told Erin not to let me be in the front row no more.

Then there was the X-Men mutant level shade that Natasha gave. She wanted to be clear with the way too happy, naively optimistic bride that this might not work out for them. A bear might come and end it all. The Chickasaw might come and take you out in your sleep. Or go at it with another tribe and get you in the crossfire. There are no hospitals nearby and you ain’t go no friends. So it may not end well.

Natasha did things like look the groom up and down as if trying to decide his fitness. She expressed worry. She sighed heavy. At one point she sat on that Noguchi sculpture passing for a chair and gazed out like she was on her rocking chair in Arkansas saying, “Lord these white folks not gone make it.” And she was already irritated about the heaviness of that wool dress - she confirmed this for me after the show - especially during the leg up in seconde attitude tableau (again, Martha, why). I wanted my younger students to be there to see an example of how to put it all in the work. It’s possible, sometimes even fulfilling.

I was getting my constant life! And let’s give the woman in Martha’s dress her props; she gave us mercurial , naive, optimistic flower in SPADES, so Natasha and Lloyd had good shit to work with. The dancer (I lost my program so I can’t tell you who it was) might have been just good and committed to the character and with acting chop enough to let Natasha and Lloyd lead, or she’s another Erin, in this case clued in to the nuances of this story when told with a few black leads. Either way, she was a perfect crash pad for the shade.

Then Lloyd, in his last solo, gave me full Donald McKayle, which is appropriate because that’s a black man who informed a Graham thing or two. So come through with all this DNA in the edge-of-palm contraction torso stirs. He pointed to the right as if to condemn them to white privilege ignorance hell, but in the name of Jesus. Life, family. Life is what I was getting.

The thing to take away from all of this is that Graham is alive and well in spades. I’m not sure how long Natasha and Lloyd and this young lady Leslie are there to give us the pigment, but know that they are blessing the children. One spiral and contraction at a time.