Every Goodbye Ain't Gone

I had the great honor of working an Porgy and Bess, Denyce Graves’ last show before retirement. Below is a journal entry from the rehearsal period.

The more intimate moments of the show usually scatter the singers, dancers and actors to the periphery of the Met Opera’s large rehearsal hall.

Denyce is sitting on a bench a bit closer in a wide brimmed hat, appropriate for 1930’s South Carolina and present day  New York.  Beneath it, her attention is narrowed on the director’s conversation with the actors about Bess You is My Woman Now.   

I slide over next to her “on-stage.”

“This is so interesting,” I say.

“I love process.” She smiles.

It makes sense.  She will direct a production of Tremonisha for the Washington National Opera soon.  That she is subdued most of the time in the Met’s large rehearsal hall makes sense, although it is not the pink chucks or the stonewashed jeans embroidered with large sunflowers that threaten her DL effort.  Nor the fact that she is a stunning woman.

It’s the fact that she’s a star.

She redefined Carmen at as time that some of her famous contemporaries resisted portraying the odious jezebel.  Denyce leaned into the sultry demands, sold out Houston Grand Opera and Metropolitan Opera houses.  The Grammy and the Emmy have real estate in one of her homes and there is a painting of her in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. She careered, shonuff.

Denyce is beloved by the current and previous colleagues of this 2019 production of Porgy and Bess. She got the kids too—returning itty bitties heard tale that whatever she bakes on show days shows up in Maria’s shop.

Alfred and Brittany sing the duet with the new considerations.  The musical director and other Met music staffers in the front of the room beam, blush betraying their level of whelm.   The cast catches it, apathetic, understanding that Nat King Cole swelled venues he entered only the back doors of.  But Denyce has an entire foundation to address this kind of status quo as it shows up for artists in her purview.

We have moved on to another section.  Two singers are puzzled about what they are doing in the moment.   They are unsure if it is appropriate to ask questions or just wing it. As stage managers move to reset, Denyce signals to the director.

“I think they just need a little more information,” she says.

Many of us catch this too.  We smile.

She may be retiring from the stage.  But she ain’t really going nowhere.

Thank God.  

I asked if the singers wanted me to help collect and consolidate their video thank you’s into one. Below is my edit.

Ensemble Choristers of Porgy and Bess Honor Denyce Graves

The Amazing Adventures IN Kavalier and Clay

Jerimy Rivera as The Escapist knocking me out.

The pant legs give none as I squat to show the confused dresser in the quick change.

“They gave me the gusset but it’s not quite enough,” I say.  “Granted, I don’t do anything that requires me to stretch.”

Not entirely true.  Embodying a Nazi on the Metropolitan Opera stage in a moment that enlivens the comic book drawings projected behind us requires me to stretch a lot. 

“We will try to give you a little more room,” the dresser promises.

This seems to be the theme.

The swastika is especially vivid against the bright green of the SS Officer costume. But in this first big league production of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (it premiered at Indiana University on talented undergrads last fall), the takedown of three Nazi avatars in 20 seconds of kickass by the eponymous characters’ Jewish paragon__the Escapist__is epic.

Jerimy, who also fights the supersuit and its lack of potty ease, is ecstatic.  I have been an available ear for him since he was a teen, so he is candid with me about this casting.  

“I don’t think they can imagine,” he tells me, “what it feels like for me to play a superhero on stage. It’s a childhood dream come true.”

Of course.

Jerimy, a Puerto Rican artist who is obnoxiously capable of most things beyond his extensive classical and hip hop dance training, often gets passed over for his white counterparts.  He is a real action figure. That he was singled out based on talent and stunt level skill as the clear choice for a Jewish superhero in an institution built on exclusivity is noteworthy.

And I heard there were definitive notes from higher up that Kavalier and Clay needed all the Woosh! Bam! Splat! that the building could muster from its roster.  The meritocracy swung my way as well—the original plan was for there to be three Escapists.  When the creative team revised to one but still wanted a bona fide Marvel-worthy fight, I became the villain, afro notwithstanding.

To be clear the Met has a track record of yielding to greatness when it has to.  They applauded Leontyne for 46 minutes.  And I heard Kathleen at the Met earlier this year.   

Now I get to die a Puccini-level death in a fraction of the time at the hands of a Jewish hero who prevails over Hitler?  Yeah, that works for me.

Because I internally cover Jerimy as well, my Escapist suit is further along in feel and functionality than my SS garb.  

“Can we review this change before the knockout?” I ask him.

“Sure,” he says.

We do.  Then we stand on stage waiting in the tech delay.  We hear our choreographer Mandy and her associate (the real heroes of the production) in the house weighing in.

“Do you think this opera will make it to Saudi Arabia?” Jerimy asks.

It’s a good question.  Amidst the struggle to find space backstage for desks, guns, chalkboards, and a few set pieces in this massive opera, there is talk of the recent multi-million dollar deal with Saudi Arabia that will rescue the Metropolitan Opera from operational budgeting woes.  It will inject enough resources to heal the pandemic gash and keep the Met Opera’s parts tuned.  The questions meander around the building in varied resonances—is the cultural exchange of any real interest or is it just the cost of doing business?  Is the premier over there shifting the dynamic for women enough for ours to feel safe?  Are we past the Khashoggi tragedy or still a little shook?

The eve of our first rehearsal for this opera was the air date for the third season finale of The Gilded Age, where I was able to play a late 19th Century Black aristocrat.   I am a little behind in my binge plan to catch up (we shot in January).  But I have been edified through dramatization about the “new money” spite that birthed this juggernaut nonprofit while working in its Lincoln Center house.  I am reminded how far the Met has come in terms of diversity, even with the tacet (yet clarion) vibe throughout the building that any interest in real inclusion is strategic, not earnest.

I’ve not met enough above-the-line folk to know for sure.  But it sure is ironic that extremely wealthy brown people in the Middle East have extended their capes.

The good news is that if a Puerto Rican man and a black man are entrusted in this opera house to tell a portion of a Holocaust narrative based on our skillset (and perhaps because we know something about the impact of hatred), we can move at least a centimeter toward everybody getting there.

“I’m not sure,” I say. “But the part where we make out in Act II could be problematic over there.”

The male singers and dancers got an intimacy coordinator for this.

“We will sell out here though, for Cardi B alone.”

Jerimy smiles, knowing whom to blame for her involvement.

Aida 30th Anniversary

Some of the cast of Aida, Metropolitan Opera, NYC. That’s my face on the far right.

Dear Nabachwa,

Earlier this year, somewhere during my fifth performance of Aida at the Metropolitan Opera, it dawned on me that it was the 30th anniversary of the first time I ever danced an Aida.  I caught feelings about it, had to ask my colleagues for the microphone for a moment to tell them how much it meant to  dance with them, to fellowship in a process, to feel both their reverence and social preference all at once.    

As gratifying as it felt, it was incomplete.  The performance ended before I figured out the connective tissue is you.  You were there with me in Orange County for my first professional performance of Aida—or any opera for that matter—at 17 years old.   You were there twirling Lula’s choreography with me, dancing the trio on that diagonal like it was the last time we might ever use our legs (per old school training mandates).    

And you’ve been there with me ever since, constantly telling me the truth, hitting life full out every time.  We survived undergrad iin the 90’s, the Laurelton Queens LIRR schedule, This Little Light knee dance, 93 in Redlands, Donald Byrd in general.   I cheer-led you back from that leg break, you recovered to become legendary at DCDC for far more than dance, and then put Schehimezade Productions on a tank for my birthday.    

We took chances. 

Nabachwa Ssensalo, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company

You went full James Bond “M” and jumped me into COVID concierge testing covert op style, two-hour mission deadline and all.

You were one of my first (torturous) clients when I became a licensed insurance broker. 

You annoy me with insights on myself that I did not ask for and desperately need.   

You remind me every time I run to the sun that you hate heat.

That I love you is clear in these words you will suffer every one of on principle, since you are exhausted with people who don’t read the entire email or text.

We adapt on jobs, as equals when I drag you and your rolling eyes to IABD to curate the auditions.  As my supervisor/advisor/headhunter on Production gigs.  As my assistant (which made me useless) choreographing that epic The Parts They Left Out, which we need to reset in Africa.    

You have been my work wife.

You have been my work husband.

We consolidated tears when Jeremiah passed and championed Bernard every opportunity we got.    

Nabachwa and me with other key Lula babies, Tamica Washington and Bernard Brown

You have maintained the thespian part, ready for stage or camera.  Because you are out of your mind and can play all the parts.   So many of us have enjoyed the beauty of your Wakanda even before we knew what that was. You are inspirational, passionate, thorough, brilliant and Black every time you wake up. 

. As I stood in my costume as an ancient Egyptian warrior for my sixth show, it is you that I thanked for being there my entire artist journey, for talking me into not giving it up when I sucked at partnering (Charlton helped here too).  You are a big part of the reason this body still goes.

Nabachwa as Kalidah Queen in The Wiz for Sinclair Community College

Happy 134th birthday, diva.  Thank you for being available to service the deeper world with joy co-signed by the ancestors. And know that I am hardly done annoying you.

Asę -

Jamal

---

The Gilded Age

They call it the martini shot, the last one of the night.  

But this is also the last shot of the season.   

Salli Richardson discusses details with one of her AD ‘s about a large overhead shot of the ballroom to show us dancing continuously, for editing coverage.    

It is close to midnight and we are spent, 20 or so Black dancers representing the Kirkland side of the late 19th Century New England aristocracy of The Gilded Age.  We made it to the Brooke Astor mansion in Sleepy Hollow at 8:15 a.m.   Up until now we have negotiated small waltz moments designed to provide party context for this romance.  Sometimes the men danced our ladies around half the circle and then helped each other over cables and lighting instruments for the off-camera half.   Other times we stood and watch the proposal from different sides.   The standard hurry-up-and-wait of shooting film days prevailed.  Mostly, we annexed in a beautiful gigantic bedroom upstairs when not on set. 

But now our choreographer John Carrafa and his intrepid associate Taeler are busy helping us remember the sequence of waltz patterns we learned.  The dancers have a few minutes while the crane and jib get moved.  We review transitions, speak combinations at each other, scramble to make our brains function.

I have no doubts though.  These are top shelf black professionals in New York.    The casting was deliberate; John explained to us the first day that as the dancers who represented the historically white wealthy had been at this all last season; he did not want their Black counterparts to look less fluent in the local social dance of the time.  It is Herculean to get right the nuances and specificity of the waltz, maintain spacing throughout, look like you’re having a good time and not hit the camera.   

So John sought the highest level of trained black dancers available these shoot days.

These dancers have slain all day.

Yesterday too, when the call time was 3:30 a.m.

And I am sure I am not the only one in hard shoes who loves John’s goals.

I wrap my hand around Gabrielle’s back, wedge my index/thumb valley in hers. 

“You good?”

“Yeah, I will be,” she says, the corset tighter than it was the last time they put her back in it. 

“We’re almost there.”

Djassi DaCosta, Paige Fraser, my partner Gabrielle Sprauve, Tiffany Mellard, Liz Marie Chestang

But she is ready for these final long passes around the ballroom.   Like the rest of us, she is one of the elite professional working black artists as formidable at communicating with the body as Phylicia Rashad and Denee Benton are with words.   She will be fine.  

We will all be fine.

The first AD yells, “Action.”

We get the track instead of the thicket of Black chamber musicians playing earlier.  But we dance.  We dance for a long time.  We have each other—we bonded and it is the way I understand our stockpile of aches and pains.  

But then we feel something else, maybe support from ancient Weckquaesgeck leaders whose land we are dancing on.

We also have the DNA of ring shout makers, all conjured when we circled counterclockwise.

We feel them.

Frederick Douglas, Antoine Dubuclet, Paul Cuffe, ancestors who would be tickled for sure.  Nina Simone, Diahann Carol, Syndey Poitier, Baba Chuck Davis, Nikki Giovanni, Toni Morrison, Garret Morgan, the citizens of Greenwood—

Someone’s calf is seizing.

A hip or two is on fire.  

And at least two of us are being held upright only by prayer and a partner.

But the ancestors are present.  Alvin Ailey, Toussaint Louverture, Octavia Butler, we feel them help us through. 

They push the legs.

They lift our faces.

They hold our bodies.

It is everything that Ryan Coogler and Misha Green and Ava Duvernay get right when they feature the intangibles of Blackness at work.

We finish and I am briefly ecstatic.

I look around at these dancers I adore, grateful that in a time when it is almost impossible for a person of color to feel safe, I got to experience this divine moment.

I hug Gabrielle, glad she is so easy to partner and excited that her real one is swinging in for me in Aida at The Met Opera.   

“I think we did great as gilded rich black folk,” I tell her.

She agrees.

Asę

Even When You're Not Here

Dear Dreya,

So I am on stage in the air in a lyra you sold me doing a solo that you consulted on.  And low key choreographed really.  I am thrilled because I remembered to unbutton and unzip my slacks before this third pass on the ring.

I’m in the air and everything is working out.  My narrative game is tight, to hell with whether the audience have any idea what this solo is about (because I didn’t send Even When You’re Not Here by the print deadline). And now it’s time to use my toes to pull off the pants.  And make it look like a civilian in his bedroom undressing.

But I can’t grab anything.  

The nylon socks grin at me, slide on the slacks when I try to pull the pant leg down.  Even if I drop down to the planned crucifix my options are limited.

And I’m not Shannon Beach (who is also at fault for lending me time on her backyard lyra) or Elena Gatilova, both of whom could simply take the leg behind in a sensible deep arch and grab the sock or pant leg with their hands.  

This would be really pretty, actually…

Anyway, I work at this longer and realize I must go to Plan B before a loss of spin allows that audience to see my struggle.

So I muscle myself back up to sitting, the pull up off all pull ups.

This Plan B is possible because of years of you putting me in the air.  You had zero doubts I would thrive there, even when I told you that black people don’t do cold, water or heights.  You put yourself in my hands and told the motor op to take us 30 feet up.  My current Plan B is sketched from years of rehearsals on new pieces of apparatus that you designed. It’s from that crystal that you designed and had us do a 6 o’clock penche as the lock position on Cher, Colosseum Caesar’s Palace (rude, Dreya, rude).  It’s from learning an aerial duet you made on us in 20 minutes when our boss threw it back in this same Vegas show.

Because back in the day you made me free climb from seated on the floor with my legs extended in front of me.

Dreya Weber in her one-woman show, Hexen

More than once.

The way you stood and shifted on Alicia’s flexed abs and made her sing Just Like a Pill__this kind of love, consistent with my dance training, stays in the body forever. 

The fact that it’s still in yours means that everyone should take you seriously when you ask audiences__from in the air and on the floor__to investigate the word hexen (I believe you and there are receipts).

I manually top of each side of the pant down under my butt.  They slide off more easily. 

The rest of the solo is just management, negotiating the lyra wobbling, hugging my objective narrative arc as best I can, things like this, things we talked about when you picked my music (thank you).  

When it is time to bow, the audience is ecstatic.  My colleague’s daughter and her partner, both beautiful dancers from the ABT yard scheduled for after intermission, said they thought my adjustment was intentional. 

“It’s halfway through the intermission and they are still talking about you,” the stage manager tells me, returning from the house.

But the biggest affirmation comes from a youngster- who is standing in the hallway to the dressing room.

“You ate!” she says.

I am ecstatic, not just that I ate, but that part of the reason is that you still leave no crumbs yourself, Dreya. 

Thank you a million times..

Love,

Jamal

The Nino Files: How DEI Changes the Room (originally posted June 10, 2024)

Group selfie. The “fun” shot vs. the serious one.

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.

Marjani working with Quaba and Moe, at one point support for Joseph..

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.

Opening Night. Where Lileana and J’Nai were involved, all shots were “fun” ones.

“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.

Bennalldra and Courtney watching a section.

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.

Rachel being thrown in the air stage left in Shake the Heavens.

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

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…”

Dallas Black Dance Theatre in The Parts They Left Out, as Eurydice follows Orpheus out of hell.

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 individually.  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 holds 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 afforded Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, who turned down big business funding that might contaminate any deliverables she promised her voters.  These black visionaries 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.

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 professional artist/wordsmith, 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.

“Yes, I’m here at the Winspear now,” I said.

“Oh, I’m surprised,” she said. “I thought they might have canceled with the storm.”

“Didn’t you all have orchestra rehearsal today?”

“Yeah, but that was hours ago,” she said. “It’s crazy out there now. I’m at home, you should be too, really.”

So despite lending me her second bedroom for the occasion—a trend of support that I’ve enjoyed as her Gen X artist hybrid cousin since my SMU days—she apparently doesn’t want me to keep this dance gig. She thinks I should just play hooky because of the weather, like I’m a tenor or something.

Or her, maybe.

I remind her I did not write the book on Black opera divas of the stage that seems to remain the standard academic text on the subject; she did. I am not the first Black violinist to get through the Kansas City Philharmonic doors. That would be Rosalyn. I am bound by the rules for mortals.

With the nerve to sport profound successes with both her pen and strings, my cousin gained the distinction of being a hybrid professional long before millennial lifestyles generated the term.  I have been chasing her lead since my undergrad days because breaking rules about focus and careering is fashion forward, not conservative.

Not that you’ll ever hear it from her. She is Vatican Bank private.  She’s mad that this writing exists at all because Rosalyn never seeks to be the story.

“Oh,” she added, “can you check to find out when the piano dress is happening so that I can come see it?”

I recant: she does want Dallas Opera to keep me after all.  She will be unable to see me dance to Bizet because she’ll busy playing it in the pit. Our last opera experience was different because, as the writer of the libretto and the eponymous source novel Wading Home, she got a pass from playing and saw me dance the tornado.

“Nevermind,” she said before I can obey. “I’ll call myself and find out the schedule.”

I realize I have until whatever-that-day-is to obnoxiously promote her third novel, Sing Her Name, to chorus members before she gets there to hush me.  Refreshingly, her modesty is old-fashioned.

If you happen to catch Pearl Fishers at the Winspear, be sure to bring a copy of one of her three novels to sign.

Just don’t tell her I told you to.

This article was first published in 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…