Vernacular Dance

Should dance competitions add a new category - vernacular dance - to strip away judging centered around White aesthetics?

First of all, thank you Black Dance Teachers Association for including me in this discussion and asking my thoughts. It’s such a complicated question, mainly because what we get into right away is this issue of nomenclature - what do we call things. Years ago, I watched “contemporary” become a catch-all phrase to include anything that fall outside of the realm of ballet, hip hop, jazz or any indigenous or culturally specific forms (i.e., hula, West African, etc.). What it did, effectively, is diminish all of the techniques that have been studied, trained in and articulated through regularly performed masterpieces in the canon of repertory dance in America.

Said another way, nobody cares that what the 12-year-old in the convention competition is doing in her solo at the moment is a bad contraction followed by a bad spiral, both of which are specified in Graham technique, can be learned and are not respected.

And if none of the other judges on the panel—nor the choreographer of that solo, nor the teacher rehearsing the dancer in it—is qualified to judge the technical merit of a contraction or spiral, it makes no sense to comment on it as a judge. This neck of the dance woods has decided that bad or otherwise, what the dancer is doing is “contemporary” and thus legit.

Similarly, “vernacular” as a term defines the dialect or way ordinary people speak in a specific area or region. If we use this logic, we have to make a lot of assumptions about what ordinary people we’re talking about. In this case, is it black people in America? Is it hip hop practitioners?

If so, has anybody canvassed this community to find out what they agree are the values of hip hop that should be present in work to call it such? Are they in agreement on this so that we can decide the standards and judge merit based on some kind of template? Obviously this has gone on in ballet in spades, as there are five internationally recognized schools of ballet that we can use as reference points for the values we need to see when this same 12-year-old I’m judging gets on a pointe shoe (and she likely will) an hour after this contemporary solo. (Don’t get me started on the racial disparities here - it’s a whole other blog.)

Because people are not having this conversation on this level with any serious, beyond-the-dollar import about dance inside of most places where kids are judged doing it, I worry that we could potentially be more exclusive than inclusive. Hula, Irish Step and West African dance would all be considered vernacular dance by these standards. Isn’t there then a responsibility to make sure that these forms can be appropriately judged by someone with the information/authority to judge it?

I get that I’m not being completely fair here; the area of dance we’re dealing with, the convention/competition circuit, is built with machinery that doesn’t have space to gatekeep nuances. This is actually my bigger problem: it should. We’re doing kids across the country a disservice if we’re teaching them culturally specific movement while offering no reference points, no research and no deeper investment in the values thereof sourced through accredited gurus. It doesn’t matter that only 10% of them will dance beyond high school. If we put them in little league, they’re gonna learn all about that baseball. We won’t let them travel dribbling a basketball just because they’re kids. Why should there be less integrity in dance?

This is the place to start. It’s less about adding a category, more about managing and respecting the ones we have. Then perhaps it will be easier to clarify what is necessary to prevent black forms - especially hip hop - from being regularly disrespected and poorly appropriated all across the country.

A Piece of War while making Another Little Piece of War

I had a lot of objectives to cover. I had a lot of young ladies to move around the stage, an in-shape physical therapist who could move well and act with purpose as a father figure, a studio owner who wanted her kids to show personality for a change but underscored by at least one piece of music that could make it feel like concert dance, a concept on warring parties that I hadn’t quite gotten enough of with the last ballet I made called A Little Piece of War. So the first thing to do was surrender to Another Little Piece of War, which meant that Beyonce’s “Move” needed to be the soundtrack for the power struggle.

But everyone was having a hard time with this part, story be damned. I realized how far I had dropped into my concert dance roots; the quiet tenets of studio dance training and convention categories could not have been further from my mind.

At any rate, there was a bit of dissent that I should have seen coming, given the degree to which I had taken everyone off book. The video is my response with context for why this (or any) Beyonce track needs to be regarded differently.

My Private Ataraxia

ataraxia: a state of freedom from emotional disturbance or anxiety, especially as a condition of soul-fulfilling attainment.

Me with Jenelle Figgins exploring black love from a time. Photo by our colleague Petra Morgan.

“What happens if you think of opening up and laying back across her?” Thaddeus says.

I push myself up to give Jenelle space to adjust and then collapse across her thigh. It feels incredibly vulnerable, my organs and chakras opened up, my neck exposed to more than her. The safety of the space makes it delicious.

“Yes, like that. And can you kind of pull yourself up Jamal, to sitting?”

I do and though less exposed, I’m even more at peace.

This safety is about not just the physical space, a chunk of third floor of an old building near the downtown Montgomery fountain. It is also about the artistic safety co-directors Tanya and Thaddeus are trying to create as they reconsider daily what dance company life and process can be. They have curated every aspect of this, down to the collective energy of the four people in the room dancing with them.

The safety is necessary. Disenchanted with the erasure of black people from entire plantation tours - “They were talking about the drapes and the stairs and not the people who built the house and worked in it,” Tanya recalled - the couple created an interactive, multimedia production that centers black presence, joy, anguish and strength in different rooms of an antebellum mansion (or other site) so that audience members can experience the “monument” while contemplating it as a black space.

Since it is one.

There is a dinner and talkback involved to air all this out after seeing the work, whose title Migratuse Ataraxia describes the habitual pattern of moving over there (migrating) to a space of calmness, peace of mind, emotional tranquility.

The Mellon Foundation Monuments Project Grant, which put Wideman Davis Dance operations squarely in Montgomery this second of three six-week phases, means cozying up with all that juju from painful Civil Right Movement midwifery and hundreds of years of slaves disembarking only five blocks from the studio.

Thaddeus Davis sculpting a supported promenade with Michael McManus and Petra Morgan

On a break, I pull out a journal Tanya gave me, a document that will be part of the aggregate archive for this project. I jot down a few ideas on the throwback Marvin Gaye tracks that Thaddeus is auditioning. I watch the other two dancers negotiate Tanya’s exploration of recognized social dance structures and how they can be amplified (and ignored) to fetch even more swag possibilities for Michael and Petra, both former students and alums of the University of South Carolina Columbia where Thaddeus and Tanya teach. A few integrated steps come from the local line dance we learned off Tik Tok and got verified later at a skating rink one night. These two youngest of us are fun to watch.

Shortly after, I am on my knees negotiating Jenelle’s body from upright to down a level. She helps, years of acute, proficient discipline in her body and several ballet company contracts in her past. I have worked with her, her twin and their older sister, all champions. So I rejoice in the familiarity assisting this current stunt.

“Did I sell it?” I ask.

“Wait, maybe I can help sell it too, hold on,” Jenelle says.

“That’s the next picture?” Thaddeus asks.

He is referencing one of the 50 mostly candid Jim Peppler mid and late century photographs of black people in Montgomery and neighboring communities like Newtown. Nik, co-author of the grant and our director of research and communication, gave us each ten shots to enliven; now Thaddeus had us working the ones with two folks in them.

“The two ladies.”

“Yeah, I think there’s something else that can happen better there.”

I am open to anybody’s suggestion. Having danced with Thaddeus and Tanya in New York companies around Y2K, I am familiar with the unhealthiest conventions of concert dance that they are willing to undo or revise in an effort to get to better work.

I am here for it.

Tanya Wideman tweaking this moment for Jenelle and me.

They get that artists are professionals and need to be properly considered: Every morning I open my eyes to 11-ft ceilings of an apartment in a renovated, early 20th-century Kress department store building preserved enough that I can see which entrance was for coloreds. From my wrap-around boardwalk balcony, I could throw flowers at the bronze Rosa Parks on the corner. My friends/bosses may be unfinished in their pursuit of what model companies should employ, but their refusal to forsake their dancer identities even as artistic directors makes these married folk difficult to resist.

Their only mistake was perhaps extending me such a long community engagement leash. I have permission to talk to anyone who will listen about why I’m here and suffer my fully QT Gayle Kinging. A few just don’t know any better, buying my question marks about their city and offering me business cards (poor things). A lawyer has already been emailed. The shift one team at the Waffle House (I guarantee whatever you think I should have had instead isn’t here) don’t realize they will be coming to see legs and hips go for it at a library.

And I haven't even started with this Italian restaurant.

“Do you all need to do it again?” Thad asks.

I look at Jenelle, defer.

It’s whatever works for them. I am so full, I only have surrender.

Jim Peppler Southern Courier Photograph Collection

Alabama Department of Archives and History

Wideman Davis Dance will have a FREE showing In Montgomery

December 10

6:00 p.m. Reception / 6:30 Showing

Juliette Hampton Morgan Memorial Library

245 High Street

2nd Floor

Leonora Files: Phillip Miner

The Leonora Files sprung from a realization that I was writing so many obituaries for beautiful people like her, who deserved all the flowers. It was the fourth death of a young artist in a short period, and a clarion motivation for me to honor folks while they are here.

Taken by our beloved Ingrid when swung by after church.

“Jon’s church is honoring him for All Saints Day and so I’ll be going to that service in the morning,” Dad tells me on the drive home to Jacksonville.  “Now, of course you’re welcome and I would love to have you there, but it’s totally up to you.”

A trap.  I know this means I had to go.  Outs granted by parents, especially baby boomers, should never be trusted. (Feel free with Amens in the comments if you know.)  Nevermind that Jon’s passing in March made Dad a widower after 35 years of partnership, and that my entire reason for visiting was to check in.  

To be clear, I did not dread putting on the suit as much as dealing with the slow, Episcopal, 9:30-ness of it all.  Jon liked to sit right in the front row house right where he could get a view of the keyboardists hands regardless of which instrument they played.  This means that I have to rely on Dad for cues to stand and sit, since they are not indicated in the 18-page program.

After the second bell choir selection, which gave Gregorian realness, I long for a heavyset, black raspy soprano with grits in her tone, or a towel-wielding preacher with collard greens in his as he sweats out sermon. Please Lord, deliver me a church fan with a local mortuary advertisement on one side.  I will even suffer the inconvenience of promises that my same-gender-loving behavior long ago Zelle’ed me to hell if it meant I could have black church bells and whistles.

Instead of the bell choir.  A heathen needs so much more to survive a church service before 11. 

After the unison reading of scripture, while I aim to persevere, Dad’s chest rises and falls a bit more than before.  I rush an arm around his back.  But then I worry that save the other two black folks there, the congregants might think I was some young dude hanging over Jon’s widower, counting breaths to the end and plotting beneficiary shifts.  Not that I care, but since this is Dad’s neck of the woods, I needed to defer.

I revise my comforting.  Then I pray to whatever saint is etched in the stained glass over there that Dad does not need me similarly until after we get out of there.

But when Dad needs the bathroom, I am on my own with the program, looking around for help. I almost miss an entire standing cue because I don’t catch that the two other people in my pew are only seated for lack of other options.

These Zelles I earn fair and square.  

I remembered that at the funeral of my dear friend Lettrice’s mother days ago, a sagacious aunt advised that whenever our loved ones go down, the best thing to do is be where they are in vibration so that they know where they need to come back to.  This has become my default every time I’ve seen Lettrice or Dad since.  Although he’s doing very well for sure, I plan to share my concerns about what these folks must think.  Always ahead, he beats me to it when he returns to the pew.

I chuckle hearty in it.

 And Dad’s inclination to rescue in grief has had few intermissions.

He made a few meals.

He gave me several insights.

He drove into Gainesville and managed to hold his breath long enough to see me come down safely from those silks.

He worked the room at the post-show reception hosted by the college that hired the company I danced for last Friday.

He cast pearls before the black president of that college as well as the director of the dance program there in separate brief conversations, enough that they each sought his email address from me after.

He advised me on consulting rates.

He advised before breakfast at the hotel that if he was “otherwise occupied when you come down, don’t come over here cock-blocking.”

He challenged me to resist unforced errors endemic to practices in financial services, arguing me down to the bureaucratic nuances.

He shared other nuances about him and my mother and their college friends (all “village” for me), down to the other campuses that black students came from to party with them.  Dad is an elephant. (The shot below will give some sense of that debauchery.)

He took me with him on trips to the local DNC office to grab candidate signs and plant them around various voting sites, educating me on the specifics of the Duval County electorate and the  disproportionate numbers (he knows them) of black voter turnout vis-à-vis registration in the state.  Again, elephant.

And this was all within the five days I was with him in Florida.

He has lost none of his understanding about how to live fully and presently.

“Now we could go to the Waffle House, they always got good breakfast,” he says after we run by a voting site to see Ingrid, also Jacksonville family, as she passes out petitions.  “Oh no, they’re closed.”

“A relief.”

“What, are you too good for Waffle House?”

“Dad, they don’t always clean the booths there and I only packed one good suit. The other one is at home so if I can’t afford to mess this one up.”

He laughs.  “I know that’s right.”

A shot from college days, when he and Mom were a hot item.

Coffee

It is important to know that my cousin’s housekeeper makes mysteriously the best cup of regular coffee I’ve ever had.  It deserves it’s own blog.  Because Nespresso thanked me with a machine or two (also blog-worthy on its own), I am sorted in NY. But Inez gives them a run for their money.  

Anyway, she is off on Saturdays and I neglect to make myself a cup before going to pick up Mia.

I am parked in front of her friend’s house at 10:30.    Uncharacteristically, MIA conforms to her acronym. She answers none of my phone calls, texts, nothing. Around then, a man pulls up in the driveway making me glad I didn’t presume to park in it.  He notices my (cousin’s) car and does not see me in it waving through the tinted windows. He cannot feel my longing for the coffee he has in that to-go cup.  I feel better about all my irrational concerns – terrorists had not taken over the house, she was not somewhere else stranded, there was no earthquake oddly affecting only this zip code.   

Still by 10:45 I am anxious. 

The man I waved to opens the door and smiled with whom I assume is his wife.  Warm greetings all around.

“Hi, I’m here to get Mia,” I say.

Me with Mia last summer, just before she shed the "baby off her face. Note the coffee.

A fat mercurial dog interrupts the conversation, making himself known.  Before I get too smitten the man snatches the mic back.

“Hi! Let me take you around and show you,” he says.

If he is Armenian (I wasn’t far off by the way), this kind of moment makes sense.  Perhaps he and his wife had been mid conversation about something, and he caught my vibe quickly enough to deem me outside perspective.  The hospitality of people from this part of the world is consistently the bulk of my experience with them.   I follow without hesitation.

“Where you are parked is a bottleneck,” he says, indicating the small island between the single land and the side of the car.  “You want to move up a bit more in the future.”

Now here is why coffee is critical:  had I finished a cup, I might have processed that he did not know I’d picked Mia up here before and might have to do it again.

We wade between two large protective palm plants to get to his side gate.  With the intimacy of an indigenous storyteller, he begins.

“There was a break-in at the house next to me.  They used this pathway and my backyard.”

My channel surf is over.  

He shows the cameras that caught the violation.  He wants to heighten the existing gate, plate it with alternating wood slats that obscure view and an inlayed section atop what exists already.  Basking in this kind of random fold-in that is refreshingly un-American (and exemplary of what should be standard humanity), I provide my amens of support.

“I’m thinking it should be stained instead of painted.”

“Well yes, that works well with the existing façade.”

His invitation for me to verify that 72-inches made sense based on the math makes clear what coffee might have hours ago had I made a cup, however inferior.  Now it is time to point it out.

“So I’m not that kind of contractor,” I say.

“You’ll be doing the work yourself?”

“You don’t want that. I’m just here to pick up Mia.”

He turns away and looks down to give up. 

“Why did you let me go on so long?” he implores.

“Because I was thoroughly intrigued and didn’t know you didn’t hear me earlier when I mentioned it. Wait, did I mention it at the door? Oh no, now I’m not sure.”

We bend over laughing.  His wife sees the whole thing and stares at us when we cackle back into the house.  Unsure which of us is most ridiculous, we apologize buckets and introduce ourselves to each other.  (To be fair, he has not yet finished his Starbucks beverage.)

His wife promises that the girls are still asleep.

“Would you like a cup of coffee in the meantime?” she says.

“Please.  God!”

It takes Mia long enough that I get to tour the beautiful home and better experience the realization of all that aspiration in his and his wife’s soul. There is art everywhere.  Yes, stained black on the gate indeed because it makes better sense with the Rothensteins and Warhols in the monochromatic sitting room in the back.  Yes, alternating panels because they are warm like the stunning hard clay sculpture (probably a game) surely dug up from an ancient Middle Eastern site.  Of course, a specific inset to complete the additional foot of height to reflect the Asgardian vertical space inside the house.

I can only articulate all of this in retrospect because by now, an hour later, I have had a cup of coffee (Mia came down before the one offered there could be made).

I’m now invested.  I will follow his parking advice and be back with or without Mia.  To see how far my accidentally solicited help went.

And to get that cup of coffee.  Because they understand.  

They believe in it too.

Old-Fashioned? Don't You Believe It

She says she’s old-fashioned. I disagree.

The traditional values may be there, with the country vibe of her Kansas City roots and the steadfastness of the Baby Boom. But my cousin Rosalyn Story, a violinist with the Fort Worth Symphony and Dallas Opera, a novelist and my inspiration to become a dancer, is hardly old-fashioned.

At Rosalyn’s home, my pants courtesy of our cousin Vicky Mara Story.

She disappears into her driver’s seat when she’s in it, so severe is that full Shaft-ish lean. She attacks tennis balls as if she’s seeded at Wimbledon. The elegant, wide fedoras she wears usually coordinate with long cardigans flowing down to her violin case for ultimate swag.

She may bristle at an F bomb (except on Netflix), and she scorns horror. But since there’s no graphic violence in hypnosis, she’s not above it as a submission tactic. After starting with compliments on your backpack or scarf upon meeting you, Rosalyn will extract your deepest work traumas only minutes later, so stealthy an investigator is she.

Even her version of “old-fashioned” concern is dipped in swag. When a tornado got really bad at 7-ish one Tuesday evening, Rosalyn called me from her sofa asking if the upcoming Dallas Opera production of Pearl Fishers was rehearsing that night…

For the rest of this story, please visit The Dallas Morning News Op Ed.

En Vain Pour Eviter

Delivered by mezzo soprano legend Jessye Norman, it is the moment where Carmen realizes her ending is near but will struggle to live fully anyway. Kind of the like a lot of artists at various stages of this pandemic. En Vain Pour Eviter. #Bizet

A Solo Revisited

Years ago, I performed a version of this solo as a structured improv directed by the inimitable Francesca Harper, whom I had the pleasure of dancing with on several occasions over the years on and off Broadway. It was originally a part of her show “Obamania,” and it brought together her (and my) support for his re-election with her honor for her father, who was a veteran. It morphed over that first year depending on the performance spaces, some of which were very very small.

When I performed it at the International Association of Blacks in Dance Conference and Festival in Los Angeles in 2011, the solo cured so-to-speak, becoming more set as the movement punctuating Obamas words could hardly be separated from them thereafter. So I danced the solo sparingly.

When I agreed to dance it this time, ten years from that fateful IABD occasion (also on youtube), I forgot to look at it first. Unsure what made me think this was a good idea at forty-something, I rehearsed it in the run-throughs for the Luminario Gala where I was being honored for my contribution to the company. I was inspired by Daniel Ulbricht - yes Daniel, this is your fault - because I had watched him over the years step on to the Dance Against Cancer Gala stage in a full suit, say words with partner-in-crime Erin Fogarty, dash backstage, throw that svelte body into a costume and then dazzle everybody with pyrotechnical absurdity.

All before coming back in a suit later to say more words.

He made it look so easy. And since I was only going to be dancing for two minutes, I could handle this, right?

I had a mild cocktail, a full dinner and half a dessert thirty minutes before hopping back stage. I had thirteen minutes to do a scarce warm-up. And I remember laughing at myself as I tried to squeeze my abs over the dinner, cursing Daniel with every tendu. How dare he camouflage the difficulty of this choice with smiles and upright post-performance walking in a dress shoe!

The blessing is that I am still alive and that I landed on my feet every time I jumped from them. Thank God.

Thank you Luminario, Francesca and David Sukonick for shooting it. Okay fine, Daniel too.

Thanksgiving

for breath this morning

and all while I dreamt

for the dreams I don’t remember

for use of all ten toes and both heels

for compliant muscles

for the goodness in the worry of my loved ones

for God’s patience with me on lessons I should have learned

for ancestors

for peeps whose church began at home first thing

with prayer lists I am on

for color

for Beloved, Biles

and Thunberg’s miles

and Arbery conviction files

for days the sun finds the skin on my face

for the sun

for my face

for unknowns I know -

the accident I did not get in when my gut took me another route

the accident I did not have when my stomach turned and flipped about

the mugger I did not meet walking to the subway

the injury I did not sustain from slipping at the bodega

the tow that did not happen to my rental (and should have)

the overdose I was never tempted to have

the career addictions I dodged

the tour that worked me in LA so that I could miss buildings falling in NY

for the career

for the beautiful people in it

for every artist whose art was close enough to bathe in

for family

that my mother lives (to ache my head)

that my dad the Miner mines the things I've said

for Aunt Travis remembering all eight decades

and giving us shards of love from each one

for Storys far and wide

for -

friends for fun, for shoulder, tea and kettle

and enemies - they evidence my mettle

for dancers twirling fibrous thighs around to share sacred rites

and children hurling joyous vibes into the air in tongues I cannot bite

because -

with COVID surge

and racist urge

where fog and Youngkinism merge

Honduras in a civil war

while cons like Ye and Tucker soar

while savings dive

with gas at five

bad brothering

and othering

both Parties never partying -

the juju of the dancing and the children is sacred

for hope

since crippled ice still sleeps under the earth

and Reddit stockers stoke the market girth

that consciousness of terms is lit with fists

this give of thanks is just a partial list

for humility that every day is Thanksgiving

and every smile an Amen

I am

Thankful.

Luminario Ballet

Excited to be honored with Renae Williams in this Gala on Sunday 11/21! The dinner is sold out, but there are still $35 tickets available. Click HERE to get yours.

Mom performed a master class on how to handle surgery without grace or ease

Like most Gen Xers, I was raised in the era of Just Say No, of “This is your brain on drugs — any questions?” following an egg cracked in a skillet. Any tiny bit of substance would take us directly to jail, hell or Skid Row. My friends and I complied, saying no, convinced we could never face our parents should we be caught with so much as a joint.

So there is something odd and wonderful about seeing my mother, who abstained every bit as much as she insisted I did, as high as the Space Needle….

CLICK HERE for the rest of this article on the Dallas Morning News page.

Honoring Leonora Stapleton

October 2019, Leeds UK

I think I gave her a paltry three days notice that I would be in Leeds for 36 hours and would love to see her.   Leonora made time to fetch me from the farmer’s market on my day off and take me on a tour of the area before landing us at lunch. Understand that as was the case with everything else she did – superlative dancing only one - Leonora did not half step.  To tell you where the bathroom is means to walk you there herself with joy, all while excusing you for not being able to find it because the original design of the building was counterintuitive, you see. I knew few people this thorough in their kindness.  So a tour of this section of Leeds was a full history lesson.

During our catch-up, which included several laughs about our concert dance traumas, she noticed my hair out and listened to my cornrow maintenance touring dramas.

“I’ll braid it. I can braid it.”

“Wait, you can do that?”

She just laughed.

Of course she could.   I’m not sure why I hesitated.  She could do anything.  In fact, Leonora Stapleton was one of the fiercest creatures I’d ever seen on the stage.  Years before I auditioned for Donald Byrd/the Group, I saw a studio showing at APAP, a huge booking conference where artistic directors auditioned their companies.  Mostly these were in-studio showings with no lights or special effects—just dancing happening a few feet away. 

I watched this sinewy, dark woman with sprinter musculature and a line that will make you give up fly intensely through a duet that I didn’t know was possible for two bodies to achieve.  Between excerpts, while Donald spoke, she would go “backstage,” which in this case was a curtain slid in front of the studio mirror wall, and cough and hack.  

Clips of Leonora in Donald Byrd work

She was a superhero of some sort, I decided.  Sure, dancers push through illness all the time, but not to succeed nevertheless at these steps for five minutes straight. She could probably grind asphalt with her arches.   So, of course she could braid my hair.

But should she?

“Oh I can’t ask you to do that love,” I told her.  “Don’t you live a while away?”

“It’s no problem. I’ll come back later this evening.”

This is the kind of kindness she wielded.

I didn’t resist, probably because I knew she would put all kinds of energy – the discipline of finish, black girl magic, well wishes, laughter, love of art, love—into each braid.   There is an articulation of these things that took place in spades for her on and off the marley, every ounce of it laced with positivity and hope. 

When I finally to auditioned for Donald Byrd, someone advised me to talk to her about what it was like dancing there.   After I got past the fact that this superhero was willing to take my call, I interviewed her about how dancers manage the work. 

“Well, some of us cross train…” 

She said it with all the help of those bathroom directions, followed by details about her regimen that I did not quite hear.

“Cross train?” I asked, stuck.  “In order to make it through, you all train beyond the rehearsals?”   

This was frightening in every way. Where was there energy to train more after doing all of this in rehearsal? Train across what?  But somehow, Leonora made it so cursory, achievable, maybe even a bit practical.

Six months later, when I was having a particularly rough time in the company—Donald had fired and re-hired us newbies all in the same weekend (the fun black dance story we were laughing about in the picture above)—Leonora came in to cover her old track in Jazz Train.   I remember feeling particularly morose one day about my future in dance here in New York.

She caught me in the funk and touched my back.

“You’re going to be fine,” she said.  “It will work out.”

It was such a simple affirmation, but it mattered so much in the moment. Because as Chris, one of her Lion King family members, said to me recently, when she sees you on the street and her eyes light up, she means it.  Every time.  What a blessing.

If there is a heaven, there are few people who will need no negotiation with whatever life recap bouncer is waiting at its door.  Leonora is one of them, and probably has solid luxury real estate on the other side.   But since she loved even those of us with problematic receipts, she will likely be right there to vouch for us.

Beaming.

Bias

Note: This is one of several throwback journals I wrote last year and did not publish.

9/30/20

It’s coolish. Brooklyn is giving day-after-the-rain dazzle.  I am on my e-scooter, linen hooded kaftan skirting atop linen pants such that my fashionista co-workers from Motown the Musical might have sighed with relief.  I approach the intersection near the police station.  It’s always congested because gentrification has “improved” Classon by subtracting a car lane and adding a bike lane that doesn’t really fit.

But this is not the reason for the congestion. Blocking the bike lane is a cop car from which a perpetrator is being escorted out.  Before I can get a good look, I have backed back my scooter to increase the social distance.   The light is still red as the resistant, handcuffed 6’1, 215 dude – probably Latin X, maybe Blatino - is pulled from the car.  When one of the officers applies care in placing the fallen baseball cap back on his head, he relaxes, complies.

It is only at this point that I take a look at the other officers on their way and realize they are all Latin X as well.

I have several thoughts as I scoot across the green light. I process my initial impulse to protect myself because I imagined all the possibilities of threat the perpetrator could levy depending on his mental health, inebriation, or general rage about being brought in on perhaps a marijuana charge that will help him to become another slave to the prison industrial complex.  And I trusted none the scarcely trained, generally underpaid police officers to contain the situation – a skepticism older for me than the black lives matter movement and dating back to Rodney King.  In fact, I looked not once at the actual officers until they rocked benevolence with that baseball cap. 

Seconds later and because God is good, Mora Amina is yelling my name from catty corner at the intersection.  Not only am I happy to see this fellow dancer/thinker/artist/scholar/choreographer/blacklife, she had seen the entire scene and me in it from a different vantage point.  Mask compliance, along with an uncharacteristically thoughtful fit-out, made it impossible for Mora Amina to make me out from afar.  But she saw it all, my retreat, the scrutiny, the energy around that police car. She saw that it was a Yankees cap and had experienced a similar series of thoughts and post-introspection, only in her case it was augmented by a thought experiment she was in the middle of. It involved noting ways she visually identified/categorized random folks she saw. In sort of a bias training way, she was consciously tracking what would be her subconscious mind:

There’s a white woman with a dog, probably a Karen. 

He’s in leggings and it’s cold, a fitness fad junky.  

This negro is walking slow, the joint must be good.

This sort of thing.

Sounded like a great tool for engagement of self-awareness.  In an effort to better calibrate my subconscious programming and how it is jarred by the renewed 2020 lens of (always high) stakes in situations like this one on the corner, I decided to give this exercise a try.

A Must Read!!

I am next in a Dollar Store standing in line, gracefully acquiescing to every judgment I make about the place. Cheap Family Dollar that feels skeletal in structure, building be damned, feeling trapped in the 70’s or 80’s with employees wearing outfits just dusty enough to reflect the amount of actual dust in the staff-only areas of the store.

“Let me find this $5 coupon and call you back,” says the woman in front of me on the phone with no basket and few items.

“Did you put the onion ring on the burger this time?” shouts one clerk behind a register to the clerk facing her from the other side of the check-out aisle.

Why we gotta be so hood?

A Hasidic Jew walks in, shirt revealing all dirt stains since there was no jacket.  Hat, but no jacket. 

Wow, he’d come in here? I’d think he’d never want to be at a store this far from kosher.

Then I realize that the only reason I am there is that this modest store is the only place I can find post-its around here, nevermind the price or gentrification level.

This Hasid might have a similar need.

Then I clock myself for judging the place down to evade-worthy even by Third World standards. The man with curls and a dirty shirt may not have the same kinds of issues with it, might even find it more comfortably conservative…

Wait, isn’t the stereotype that Jewish people are financially conservative?

Realizing that it has taken me too many beats to get to the obvious helipad, I then congratulate myself for having not internalized the bigger insult as a thought default.

I mean I am looking for a trophy.

A woman behind me in line holds her few items and a coupon toward me.

“Do you know if these are on sale?”

She assumes I know. I shop with coupons on a regular basis, or work here, or show up regularly for my sundries.  Of course.   I can’t even get to the door of “irritated” before I see myself, start laughing.  

Let’s not get this twisted. Any failures of me or Mora Amina to check our internal bias on this day or any other do not subjugate, disenfranchise or brutalize entire groups of people. We (POC’s) are not at the top of the power structure on this yard and don’t—can’t—practice supremacy as a way of life.  But in terms of my general understanding and walk through life, the mechanics, nurturing and transmission of bias that Dr. Eberhardt discusses in her book Biased were laid bare for me on this day.  The scene on the corner told me that trauma notwithstanding, I’m alert; the moment in the dollar store told me that I have deprogramming yet to do.

“No,” I say to the woman at the store. “I have no idea, I’m sorry.”

The Jewish man has made it to the line, a few Sharpies and stationery items unavailable at most bodegas in his hands.

Thank you Mora Amina and the Universe. And Dr. Eberhardt.

In fact, let me go pull out that book again…

Juneteenth 2020 - City Hall, NYC

My name is Jamal Story and I am a proud member of the Next Generation Leadership Committee for the International Association of Blacks in Dance.  I stand here on behalf of Tiffany Rea-Fisher, artistic director of Elisa Monte Dance as well as one of the architects of this moment.  As she was unable to be here in form, she is here in spirit and in these words:

“My name is Tiffany Rea-Fisher, daughter of Karen, daughter of Dorothy, daughter of Sarah, daughter of Edmona Little, my great, great, grandmother born on a plantation in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1800s. I share this with you to remind us of the footsteps that came before us in this civil rights legacy. 

As a choreographer, it is my job to tell OUR stories through movement. What I have found in my choreographic journey so far is that our story is not one only of grief, suffering, and pain as it so easily could be, but also one of hope, joy, resilience, and courage. 

I believe artists are the keepers of the culture, but I believe Black People Are That Culture. I invite you all to imagine a world where our Black bodies and well-being are valued and loved the way THIS world loves Black Culture. That reality feels far away when police are still taking Black people from this earth with impunity but I think with THIS movement we have the best chance in our lifetimes to initiate a reckoning. To get us one step closer to this idea becoming a reality in America. And then we'll take the next step and then the next.

I assume that our ancestors' reactions on this very day in 1865, when they learned of their newfound freedom, ranged from jubilation to rage and everything in between; and I assume the emotions of all of you here today mirror that spectrum: ranging from jubilation to rage as well.

Have your feelings!  Feel your feelings! Our feelings are what make us HUMAN and in the end that is what today stands for, the recognition and treatment of Black people as equal Human beings.  The one place I would implore you to avoid is FEAR.  Fear is our enemy.  Fear has perpetuated stereotypes of black people as "other,” fear has dragged us down and held us back.  Fear has replaced chains of slavery with lack of opportunity and school to prison pipelines.  Look around and feel the joy of everyone around you.  Share that joy that is central to the Human Experience.  For with Joy, Hope and Resolve we can make this country and this world a better place for all our people!”

Tiffany is right of course; our entire experience as black people has been a ballet of jubilation and rage.  It is why the magnifying of Juneteenth is our most nourishing choreography.

Ralph Ellison, one of the most formidable literary giants of last century and writer of the novel Juneteenth said, “The history of the American Negro is the most intimate part of American history.” The full-throated embrace of Juneteenth as an annual celebration is an embrace of that intimacy. It underscores the permanence of black contribution to an America for which we are muscle and fascia.  

In fact by 1979, the year June was designated Black Music Month, this country had already bombed us in Tulsa, hosed us down in Birmingham and front-lined us in Vietnam—all after horns of emancipation, and long before "appropriation" became a hashtag.  Juneteenth gives us the moment to celebrate our own music and honor the connection of black artistry from jitterbug to wobble, from a cappella Negro spiritual to Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up.” Hymns were sung while maps to freedom got cornrowed into slave hair, now protests rhythms are chanted until actual freedom gets braided into America's system.

The fight against white supremacy is not just about justice. It is, as Tiffany says, about the full value of black lives.  The march for Juneteenth is about celebrating those lives. 

It is about the harmony in our spirits.

It is about the steel in our push.

It is about the warmth in our ingenuity.

It is about us seeing the sunlight in our freedom and the soil in our joy.

It is about celebration, art, remembrance, dance, music, and honor to our ancestors for beginning to hold the seed of freedom in their fingers.

We will carry this seed with the courage and art in our arms.

Ashe.

Mykal Ashlee

Pre-show at the T-Mobile Center for the Billboard Music Awards, 2017.

“No, no,” Mykal says with mafia seriousness, “this face needs the full thirty minutes right before the show. Can we move up this tendu fifteen minutes?”

“You know Sumayah likes to put her beat on before warm-up,” I say.

“True. It’s fine, we have our needs.” 

As the sentence completes, his lips close firmly on it. The cheekbones scoot further up the rake of his face to find the light.  His eyes squint with certainty that he sees a silvery river in Wakanda.

“Really?” I say. “All that?”

He breaks into a full-out cackle, aware that we are in fact in a narrow hallway of  dressing room space amidst road cases we will use as barres in a second, all while other Cher staff with pre-show activities negotiate our legs and arms as they pass.

Mykal’s are longer than mine and Sumayah’s and he uses them fully in the space, helping to escort us to whatever vistas of art and inspiration we need to prepare these bodies for the show.  Even as I give the barre, he commits his full discipline of years of concert dance training and professional stage experiences to make this hallway a sanctuary.

Every show day. At 7:00 p.m. Consistently.

To be clear, he exaggerates none about his make-up.  At his station is a gorgeous block with an assortment of fine brushes that I am sure professional make-up artists do not have in their kits. The caboodle with his actual make-up is more manicured than any others in the dressing room.

Somewhere between Zamundan rockstar and Met Opera deity, sometimes craving a turn up and other time a sunrise vinyasa, Mykal embraced his range. “I’m a lot,” he said more than once over years at our Vegas residency and on tour. He reminded me during one of our excursions to Bed Bath and Beyond how prosaic I can be, while he deliberated over plates and mugs as if they were rings at Tiffany.

“Don’t you have enough plates at home, diva?” I asked.

“But look at these…”

“But then, how do you plan to get those home?”

“Shipping, of course.” As if I had asked how babies are made.

“You know they have Bed Bath and Beyond in all the states.”

At which point he clutched pearls and midriff with his bone structure alone at the basicness of the suggestion.

Five minutes later we were swapping full reviews of salacious websites.   

Seldom cursory, always sensory, he felt things—in the air, on his nose, through his spirit, around the soul—with depth, often leaving me to look around in the moment, trying to find these sources.   He wanted his loved ones to feel them to, especially if there was light and joy in them.

I never had to guess where he was. He spoke his truth as easily as he excused himself to pee. Lines got drawn quickly, and he practiced no fear in clarifying these boundaries. I watched and enjoyed this (probably more than I should have), but I knew how hard he fought for every ounce of career in his journey.

He was a good listener. One day we sat over tea as I related my struggle with maintaining all this hair that our boss asked for me to keep.  Since he was new to this gig, I gave Mykal some background on how much our legendary boss loved hair, and he was nothing but generous with understanding about the challenges involved with headpieces and bowlers with black hair.  Even very particular Noah, his dog, was sympathetic. Sure, I had tortured Cher one time back in ’14 during a grueling hurry-up-and-wait tech, joking that I was planning to get a weave.  She’d gotten excited until I told her I was just kidding.  No, no, instead I would just find ways to manage this black hair on stage.  

Mykal entertained this, my extended anecdotes, my inflated hardship. He gave conciliatory Amens, clinked my mug, cheerleading the job I had done so far.

Then he showed up to the first rehearsal of the next leg with a full, glorious weave. 

It had the nerve to be versatile, augmenting his oval face and extend lines with circles and swoops at the top. It surely weighed five pounds. A mane.  Our boss came to the stage and saw nothing else.

“My God, it’s beautiful!” she swooned.  

Mykal thanked her.  With a brief, quick port de bras, he snatched the string so that the tresses cascaded from his crown where they sat a second before.  He swung his head far more than necessary to remove it from his way during their conversation about how it was done, who did it, where…

(Side note: he would be very happy about the sentence above.)

The minute they were caught up, Cher’s face, a combination of victory, admonishment and plea, zeroed in on me just long enough for me to catch it.  

“I hate you,” I told Mykal.

“I know!” he said, eyes bright and teeth shining.

We laughed about this for at least two days.

Me: “What picture are we taking?”

Him: “This one.”

Me: Hahahahaha!

That he is in heaven is an understatement—there is a full twirl happening, replete with Kakilambes, Swan Lakes, Errands into the Maze and bootylicious drops. Perhaps all at once.  Probably with Jeremiah.  He may be mid-argument with Peter about the design of his chateau, but he is there no doubt, cheekbones high enough to make God blush.

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How Unearthing Tony Britts' Videos Sounds Alarms

It is the break between second and third periods. I am swinging around the monkey bars, working on a straddle cut regrasp. My legs start at 12 o’clock and circle wide away from each other to meet at 6:30. An eighth grader with more muscle and swag than God normally allows at this stage of puberty leads his posse toward me.

“How you so flexible?” he says.

“Gymnastics,” I say.

“Fag.”

They laugh, satisfied with their higher station even as I hang six feet above them. I carry on. I have only a few more tries at this before the bell rings. And at age 12, with physical abilities that exceed theirs, I am immune to the epithet. 

They are not my first time…

[To read more, click HERE]

Newsworthy

I have been to Manhattan only once since I was tested (negative) for COVID-19.

It was to pick up a prescription at a pharmacy across the street from my doctor’s office, which sits a block over from Times Square and only spitting distance from the touristy stretch of 42nd Street.  Armed with a mask and gloves that our roommate had left in a bag with other post apocalyptics, I was impressed that the New Yorkers I encountered respected social distance with adamance.  The few people on our almost empty train car positioned themselves as far away from each other as possible.

But somewhere along the ride it dawned on me that this is typical behavior even with no viral catastrophe.  New Yorkers, who understand we live on top of each other, have learned how to disconnect in transit to conserve energy for the workday.  Seeking social distance is habitual.  With so many folks (mercifully) at home, this was easier.   

In fact, my goal is not to minimize the gravitational pull of this disease or undermine CDC appeals that we stay home. But going out was not dramatic. Even my bank run here in Brooklyn, to get quarters for laundry in my building, meant waiting in a discrete cue drawn in cursive around the lobby by people who did not need to be prodded into responsible COVID-19 civility.

As someone fortunate enough not to need a hospital currently—and I say this with not an ounce of wry hyperbole—I have no idea what is going on in them beyond what is being reported.  I am watching and reading just like everyone else in the country. When loved ones, colleagues, friends and family member began calling to check on me, I assumed it was par for the course. One particular text alerted me that my location specifically is the source of great worry.

This is when I put it together:  without a real snapshot of a lived experience in coronavirus-stricken NYC, folks imagine The Walking Dead, where fat-encased, life-threatening microscopic proteins replace zombies in actively chasing us down streets so overrun with rude, incompliant miscreants that the sensible few of us can’t escape.

I am as aware of news outlets appearing on lists of businesses imperiled by the novel coronavirus as I am journalistic tendencies to sensationalize crises even in the best of circumstances (my communications degree helps).  So there is a measure of sensitivity I have when I shake my head at headlines like the one beneath Cuomo on my screen the other day: “NY GOV: 253 PEOPLE HAVE DIED IN THE STATE SINCE YESTERDAY.”  The ticker scroller further down read that NY has the most confirmed cases of the virus in the world.

There were no qualifiers at all.

For example, the fine print does not account for the fact that testing, which is not available as readily in other states nor broadly practicable without substantial medical manpower (and perhaps government support), is a function of how many cases of the virus are confirmed. Since our medical facilities are overwhelmed and desperate for ventilator and staff support, every bit of news underlining the problem helps. But death toll comparisons between New York and other places made without per capita qualifications become alarming.  And I have yet to see the information put in the context that with 19.4 million inhabitants, we are the fourth largest state in population.

Combine this with images of refrigerated trucks to store the bodies and you get panic.

It’s not just New York of course.   The Washington Post published Fauci’s expectation that the U.S. will lose anywhere from 100,000 to 240,000 lives to the novel coronavirus even with mitigating efforts. This will devastate, no doubt.   For perspective, however, there are 330 million people in America; losing half of 1% of the population would mean the deaths of 1,650,000 people, almost seven times what Fauci predicts.  If we get through this viral attack losing less than a seventh of one half a percent, we should be very thankful.

The 1918 Spanish Flu killed 675,000 Americans, which was 2% of this country’s population at the time, for comparison.

And if we take death toll comparisons outside of viral plagues, it may be worth considering that 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered over 100 days in Rwanda. In 1994, this was 84% of the Tutsi population.

Qualifiers, context, perspective—all of it helps.  And often, too little of it is present. The composition of the televised news about New York outside of and including these examples is clarifying. No wonder everyone thinks I’m one grocery store trip from pneumonia, hence this blog.  I just want to assuage worry about the New York that is clearly not making it to the news, the New York I currently live in.

A lot of us are fine, I among them.

I promise.  

More than I Can Chew

As I sat in the beautifully upholstered chair sipping complimentary tea, the monitor in front of me showed what the elite dentist’s state-of-the-art, camera-laden prodder thingy was seeing in my mouth.  She was way too pleasant as she made small comments to her associate in dental shorthand that was pretty easy to follow. I translated.

Some surface erosion.

Holes there.

Looseness of these two teeth.

Gum deterioration.  Pocketing.

The cushy office and the tea did not help stave off the promise of oral doom. Nor did the beautiful brown complexion of my dentist, which I had seen to with a thorough canvas of two recommended internet sites (www.findablackdoctor.com was one).  This office was amenable, honoring the discounts provided by my non-insurance—coverage under a provider able to charge a smaller monthly by calling themselves a “share” plan vs insurance—despite that the office was out of network.  And the cleaning was thorough.

So was her evaluation.

“There are three ways people lose teeth,” she explained. “A traumatic bite, gingivitis or gum disease, and tooth decay. You have varying stages of all three.”

I was flabbergasted. I considered myself a wonderful oral self-hygienist, particularly since I had contended with braces as a child. No, I did not floss every day, but I did most days.  Granted, I had not been to see my childhood dentist in Carson, CA in two years. And the discontinuation of Mentadent was devastating (I’m still not over it).  But my teeth cleanings were always shorter than normal and required very little scrape work.

Yet here we were.  And there was more.

“Part of the recession of the gums is most likely the pulling of muscles from your cross bite.”

“I’m aware of this and the bite, as it has never been right,” I said. “I’m not sure if it’s congenital, but when I was getting braces at 12, my orthodontist tried to convince us that my smile would be perfect if I got jaw surgery to put my mandible where it belongs. We didn’t have $10K so it was a no-go. But I manage it well.”

“What do you do,” she asked, her associate leaning in.

“Feldenkrais has been helpful to relax the muscles of the mandible at night so that I don’t hold on to tension.”

“Felden…?”

Because I knew the epic treatment recommendation was coming, I was now excited that I could explain to her an option for mouth maintenance that she knew nothing about. Breaking down the neurokinetic benefit of Feldenkrais techniques demonstrated that I am body aware, learned and thorough; she should underestimate none of it along her path to treatment suggestions.

“So you’ve had some discomfort here and there and you’ve been managing it,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Good.  A traumatic bite can, over time, still lead to tooth decay.  There is a process for this that involves moving the teeth inside of the gums to fix this and promote tooth health.”

“It’s an involved process,” the associate added.  “It’s also very expensive, about the cost of a car.”

My jaw would have to remain traumatized.

“Let’s move on.”

“You have some pocketing here and there and for this we recommend a deep clean,” the venerable dentist said. “For this one, we use anesthesia and get it all done at one time.”

“How much?”

“Up to two grand.”

I nodded, attempting with my thigh to pull my wallet closer to my body, as if this were possible.

“The last thing is the teeth,” she said. “The fillings you have are not designed to last more than three years, and as a result, we see areas of deterioration where particles have seeped in and decayed your teeth. Now, we recommend porcelain because it’s durable and lasts forever and it will prevent us from having to do them again in a few years.  Remember that every time you replace a crown you end up losing a little more tooth.”

“How much?”

“Normally $1,850 but we’ll do them for $1,500 to honor your discount.”

Not too bad.  I started doing math, figuring out how much of this I should spend sooner than later.

“Fifteen altogether?”

“Per tooth.”

I’m sure my teeth started twerking around in my mouth in protest. I did some quick math.  “Between the eight teeth at $1,500 each and the deep clean, I’m still at over $10,000. That’s still the cost of a car.”

“Oh, when I said that, I meant a Mercedes or a BMW.”

Where is my jacket? And the elevator? I mean, seriously, it was looking bleak.  Even a $15,000 price tag for oral health was absurd to fathom, although these women made an incredible case for why I should consider it.

“Would it make sense to get better dental insurance and then try to apply it to these procedures?”

“It won’t matter too much,” the associate said.  “Dental insurance typically has minimum coverage and high deductibles.” 

She told no lies. A bit of Google research revealed that dental insurance is more like AAA than it is a car warranty.   The low maximum has been $1,000 for the last fifty years with no concern for inflation. The benefit helps little if it’s time to do a root canal or three, for example.   And the goal of dental insurance is at most to prevent you from needing the root canal. Add to this a longer life expectancy, which pressures adult teeth to stand up longer than what was necessary 200 years ago, and the prevalence of sugar and now you have a setup for failure, pain and tooth-fairy-free loss.

I thanked them for the Friday effort, paid the $350 it cost (after the discount) and ran from the office.

I permitted myself a moment of self-pity.  For the audience, dance is a visual art. This means what I look like matters__my body, my face, my teeth.  Three solid minutes were spent walking around midtown wallowing in the career-dystopic eventuality that I struggle around New York trying to get a job despite my Dickensian mouth, pauper rotted and porridge ready because I could not find 15 grand…

But nobody has time for all that. By the time I reached the train, I had regrouped and sent my uncle, a retired dentist, an email asking for a second opinion.   The response to my attached x-rays was quick.

“There is nothing wrong with these x-rays! Send me the periochart.”

Only there was no periodontal examination results to send.  After a run-around with the dentist, she sweetly explained that to save her patients the discomfort of prodding below the gum line, she typically conducts the exam and the deep cleaning in the same Novocain-induced session.  This meant that I would not know how many quadrants of my mouth would need help, and nor how big the price tag, until after awaking from the commitment.

I could see my uncle’s rolls his eyes in his email response to this explanation.  My cousin Kim vetoed all of this too, insisting that I bring my ass to her brother-in-law’s office.  

On this next Vegas leg of shows, I stole away to Los Angeles and made a same-day appointment to see Dr. Spears.    Convivial and familiar, he listened to my account of woes and tipped me back to look. 

“I have good news and bad news.”

“Give me the bad news first.”

“I think they were trying to take you for a ride,” he said.  “The good news is that your teeth are fine and there’s nothing I can do for you today.  I’d add a water pick to your regimen, but if you’re using the plastic retainers as you said, you’ll be fine.”

He advocated for the other preventative stuff too:  rinsing with warm salt water once or twice a day is good for the gums, swishing a teaspoon of coconut oil around for twenty minutes once in a while and flossing daily are key.   

Do I think I was being taken for a ride in NY?  Meh.  I think they were probably very reasonable for the demographic they serve, which does not include people in my artist tax bracket. How else could they pay for the camera/prodder thingy?

Am I thrilled about my new Pasadena, CA dentist, Dr. Jason Spears?  Yes.  I need to send the NY dentist a Thank You card.  Because what my cousin and in-law neglected to warn is that Dr. Spears has charming freckles sitting on a face that his underbite hardly disturbs, and glassy maybe-hazel/maybe-green eyes that overrule any objections a patient might have to opening their mouth—no penis or pun intended.

No really, get thine head from the gudder!

(And inbox me if you need your teeth cleaned and can’t find Dr. Spears’ information. 😉)

Harriet

I have some reservations about going to see Harriet.

Mind you, I love her story. I have danced more than one ballet about her, the first of which involved me chained at the ankles and wrists struggling to cross the stage in a dancebelt during the auction. I cried every time. But even at 17, I could see the value in the extremeness of this measure to help contextualize Tubman’s story, to give it a world.

The big criticism I’ve heard of the movie is that it sanitizes slavery, Windexes the horror of it by neglecting to represent the day-to-day brutality of it plainly. Perhaps the effort—and I’m making assumptions toward the benefit of the doubt here—was to create a movie that people outside of the Amen corner might be able to stomach a bit better so that the history of a miraculous black paragon might have more reach. Of course, this is a noble cause.

That said, we are also in the era of revisionist history. Only a handful of years ago, the state of Texas was in the process of proactively removing slavery from history texts,

re-imagining it as some kind of indentured servitude with good experiences for some of the plantation employees. The next year, 12 Years a Slave won the Oscar for Best Picture, canceling any notions that the institutionalized violation of human rights with chattel slavery might be removed from America’s historical legacy.

Nice try though, Texas.  

https://qz.com/1273998/for-10-years-students-from-texas-have-been-using-a-history-textbook-that-says-not-all-slaves-were-unhappy/

But even as recently as last year, students in a Texas high school were given an assignment to identify pros and cons of being a slave, this based on a text that contextualizes slavery as complicated and nuanced, and—get ready for it—balanced.   In 2015, a McGraw-Hill textbook noted that millions of “workers” were brought over to man plantations.  Despite that it sat next to a map showing immigration trends in America, it was dismissed as a copy editing error.

Maybe Texas, which contains 1/10th of the nations high school students, is motivated by politics. Maybe this is just good old fashioned white guilt assuagement.  Either way, I bristle at the idea of any presentation of slavery that lacks the (violent) authenticity it deserves.   Because thoughts that human value increases in proportion to ones genetic proximity to whiteness are pervasive even outside of a state trying to legislate them. And with unpunished cop shootings of unarmed black folks happening neck and neck with black voter suppression efforts, it is clear that America is still struggling to see black folks as human.  I’m as uninterested in a return to covert racism and tidy respectability politics as I am in the progression of loud white supremacy agendas.

Every reminder helps.

In fact, I think in AHS Coven, Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe) had it right with racist Delphine LaLaurie (Kathy Bates): watch ALL of Roots in one sitting, until you get this.

So I’m worried that I will be angry if Harriet does the opposite, if it stays on trend with Nutribullet approaches to storytelling. I’m worried I will throw my popcorn at the screen and yell at undeserving youngsters in the theater that it was much worse than this, my assumptions about them more copious than ones I’m daring to make by writing this pre-viewing blog.

I have no answers here, and I doubt seeing Harriet, which I plan to at some point, will provide any. But the question is clear for me if I’m right about the premise:  Does the danger of diminishing the ugliness of our history, American history, in an effort to bring people to it outweigh or balance the benefit of these stories being told?

I’m open to answers…

FOLLOW-UP - Harriet Part 2

I finally saw Harriet.

My cousin Rosalyn, a career violinist who moonlights as a published author and is also a baby boomer, warned me that it’s a great movie for young people unfamiliar with the life and legacy of Harriet Tubman.   

She is right.  For that reason, Harriet is a great candidate for required viewing in junior high schools all across America.

However, if you happen to have grown up as a black Generation X’er whose family heads made sure you understood Harriet Tubman, Benjamin Banneker, George Washington Carver and Frederick Douglass in the other 11 months as well, Harriet comes across as a mild, made-for-TV movie.   It is cursory at best.  It sets us up to understand, for example, how she succeeded at freeing slaves solo before her inauguration as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, but gives us not even a montage on how sophisticated this pipeline was, and how drastically it helped her.

Several friends argued my last blog, insisting that we did not need to see violence at the level of 12 Years a Slave to understand the world of chattel slavery in America.  They are not wrong. But there is some ideal space between that depiction and Harriet and we’ve seen it most recently with Underground, the WGN series produced by John Legend and canceled after two seasons.  Mostly fictive but extremely realistic, the narrative gives us a palatable and responsible look at the stakes - for all parties involved - of escaping slavery.

What isn’t lost on me is that the public framing of Harriet as a superhero movie of sorts implies a de facto villain – slaveowners, Southern economic prosperity, white Dixie xenophobic hatred.   I hardly disagree with casting the slot with any of the above, but what raises the eyebrow is that this “superhero” context, even in 2020 hashtag culture ready with optimized Google search, did not seem to take us as far as the discussion of the villain involved and the implications today.  We stopped at Erivo’s performance, the Oscars, her history-making double nomination in both actor and songwriter categories.   Is it that yeah, yeah, everyone already understands slavery is evil and the perpetrators were villainous?  Or is it that the movie wasn’t substantive enough to warrant the bigger conversations, that it was too light to deserve all the arguments over family pot roast and passed potatoes?

If the latter is true, it is also where my general issue with Harriet still sits.  After all, Lupita was hardly the only conversation had behind 12 Years a Slave.

Christ, these paintings...

On the day off, I decide to wander through Brussels, too fatigued to plan anything or prioritize tourist pursuits.  I happen upon a museum in walking distance.  The rain, along with my love for galleries and 17th and 18th Century paintings, is incentive to detour in.

I eventually make it to the paintings upstairs and run across a terrifying capture:  Prometheus, having been strewn across and chained to some rocks, is being attacked by a vulture. Prometheus’ face is expectedly grotesque.  I stare at this for at least five minutes, so breathtaking and realistic is it.

There are other moments borrowed from Greek mythology. Apollo chasing Daphne, Pan trying to rape Syrinx—both feature harsh stories too, but they captivate me less.  I cannot figure out why until I study Jordane’s Pan et Syrinx a bit more.

Then it hits it me.

No matter how perfect the stroke, and accurate the lighting and detail, Syrinx’s face is lovely.  Here she is, all chaste and virtuous, being attacked by a horny hooved satyr who wants to do it her, and all we get from her face is ovular perfection, innocent eyes, supple lips, no expression. 

Same thing with Apollo and Daphne.  She’s not even looking where she’s going as she flees. And even if we go with the idea that she’s glancing back in panic to see how close he is on her tail, her face should still show signs of stress, fright, fear, something.  Instead, Daphne gives you parted lips, naturally blushed cheeks, and a hint of worry as it would look on a Botoxed face centuries later.

It is astonishing.  No matter how hard these artists worked to give us the detail, angst and completeness of a story in what might be months or even years with a canvas, they refused to show us women looking as real as they would in their circumstances.  No, they had to be fetching.

Fuckable.

Desirable.

No matter what.

If there was ever some bigger 17th Century artistic indication of how present The Handmaid’s Tale was back then, I will fold my arms until I see it. Because this clairty on the misogynistic role of women as objects becomes plain to me. Also clear was that I stared too long at the women; when I make it back to Prometheus, he now appears more deranged with anguish.

Around the Northeast side of the gallery is a staggering painting of Heliodorus being driven from the temple where he was trying to steal its sacred treasure.  There is a horse rearing a hoof over his throat, a rider aiming a forked weapon, a messenger with fist raised, and another with jagged tree branches for flogging. They are strategically placed around all sides of the subject, except in the place where you’re sitting watching it.  Straight from the Bible, Heliodorus’s face looks as if the fright decayed it in advance.  

Now, were this a woman in the same rendering, she would look like Scarlet Johansson.

Apollon a la Poursuite de Daphne by Carlo Maratta

Pan et Syrinx by Jacques Jordane

Seriously, if you recast the Biblical thief as Debbie (who did Dallas), the Biblical protectors of the realm would would be armed only with their penises. They would have to be, because what other reason in this time period would artists want to make her the center of the painting? Unless she’s Mary Mother of Jesus?

Prometheus by Theodor Rombout

No wonder women have been pissed for so long.

And I’m sure this status quo of art is not news.  Surely, papers and books have been written on this trend in various centuries of oil on canvas. In fact, my good friend from college who has an art history degree and a Degas could probably tell me the pieces of this that I am missing, pieces that I am too art history ignorant to write about.

But the overwhelming sensibility was restated over and over again in every museum I visited.

By the time I reach Birmingham’s museum and gallery, I thought my mind has been blown enough.  Leave it to the sleepy UK city to thwart my low expectations and gag me hardcore.  There is an exhibit on gender and the objectification of women through the ages:

In the ‘Male Gaze,’ a woman is visually positioned as an “object” of heterosexual male desire. Her feelings, thoughts, and her own sexual drives are less important than her being “framed” by male desire.  The imagined male is notionally a heterosexual white man considered the intended audience for many films and other visual media. If things are absent from media it is often because it is seen as being unappealing to this intended audience…

 You mean they have this together already in Birmingham? And this is hardly the meat and potatoes of the exhibit; it’s just the status quo panel for anybody who missed the memo.  It’s nothing a lot of us don’t know, but I’ve often had to argue this white patriarchy point before I can get into the bigger discussion about, well about virtually anything in entertainment really. But this relatively small city with a population of just over a million has it on a placard with no citations or footnotes.

Then I go through a series of rooms separated by periods of art, one for 19th-20th centuries, the next for 18th-17th and so on.  When I get to the 16th, I see a painting of a naked man with a sort of perfect wound, his pose a bit supermodel-esque. His face looks caught in the middle of a casual sentence about how he had been stabbed right here in the stomach at the market because he bumped into someone with tea. Or maybe spilled some tea that someone found too shady to share.  But whatever, it’s just a minor gouge.

I think to myself, imagine if the subject were Jesus. Wouldn’t that be hilarious.

Christ as the Man of Sorrows by Jan Van Hemessen

I look at the description next to the painting and find out that alas, it is Jesus. And he is showing wounds from the crucifixion:

His direct gaze challenges the on-looker to respond to his suffering...

Surprised to say it, but I have not been properly flabbergasted in a long time. It takes as many syllables as that word to describe the full feeling I felt as I read and understood that Jan Sanders van Hemessen envisioned Jesus sharing pain in the same way that supermodels and snatched drag queens of today exaggerate their lack of waistline by pulling the elbow as far forward as possible while the hand squeezes the ribcage. I know this is not actually what Hemessen’s Jesus is trying to mean. But still, I wonder if the artist was ahead of his time, if perhaps he had found the flex capacitor and the Delorean and worked out the jump [if you are too young to know that reference, please pretend for now that you do].

Of course, in this 21st Century time, there is no way that the heteronormative man—white or otherwise—described in the objectification exhibit in the other room would ever pose like this outside of a comedic moment, or a denigrating one designed to make fun of a woman or drag queen.  The effort it takes to show the wound in this way is also extraordinary if the body is suffering from it. It brings to mind RuPaul’s astute pearl, also featured in the one of these museums I visited this tour, that “We’re all born naked and the rest is drag.” The men of Hemessen’s era wore tights, expensive jewelry and ruffles.  They also wore helmets, chain mail and pauldrons as well. Yet even with the chauvinism that left women reduced to ethereal sex toys, men were not restricted from displaying their softness, or sporting those huge collars called ruffs.

Back then, men had the privilege of being both tender and aggressive, pretty and ferocious. At what point did we swap out the privilege of these dichotomies for some restrictive, 300 warrior version of masculinity? How is it that patriarchy became so simple, asinine and boring?

If women decide one day to just start pummeling men in a general rage against this kind of silly chauvinism, I’ll get it.

And if Jesus returns via runway, I will not be surprised.