Ideas Through Movement
How Austin Choreographers Are Dancing Politics and Philosophy
By Robert Faires, Fri., March 3, 2000
Confronted with issues of existence, the thorny matters of why we are here and how we are to live in this world, we think. We turn inward, cast the matters in words, and then ponder them, using the tools of reason to resolve these issues for ourselves. That's our good old Western European tradition at work. We are the children of Socrates and Plato, the civilization of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. We think our way through matters of politics and philosophy. What else are we to do -- dance our way through them? Why not? In the Austin dance community, a number of choreographers routinely investigate philosophical, political, and social questions through their dances. In fact, you can see several of them doing just that this weekend. In Dance Repertory Theatre's Race Matters: Representations of Whiteness, four UT Department of Theatre & Dance faculty members -- Jeffery Bullock, Lyn Elam, Yacov Sharir, and Holly Williams -- along with student choreographer Joel Valentin-Martinez and guest artists Darla Johnson, Andrew Long, and the Johnson/Long Dance Company, use movement to explore the ways in which we perpetuate racial separation and prejudice. In KINESIS Dance Theatre Project's Genero y Politica, choreographer Toni Bravo, in collaboration with composer Javier Chaparro, employ dance to examine social action, specifically where gender is concerned, in some of the politically repressive regimes of 20th-century Latin America. In STILLPOINT Dance's Shadowing Profound Doubt, choreographer Lisa Fehrman, in collaboration with composer Jane Kaufman, take gesture and motion as a vehicle for probing the mysteries of mortality, how death shadows us in life and affects our understanding of our own existence.
These are weighty topics, the stuff of scholarly analyses, of op-ed pages, and if we came across them in some academic journal or forum on current events, we wouldn't blink an eye. Those are arenas where such subjects can be thought through in words, with reason. But to encounter them in a dance studio or on a stage for choreography can still catch us up short; some part of us simply isn't accustomed to addressing philosophical and political concerns beyond the contemplative medium of language.
That will change if these choreographers and their peers have their way. For them, the larger issues of existence are too tightly intertwined with their identities as human beings to be separated from their creative expression. "Art and politics are engraved in the same space in my heart," says Toni Bravo. "I happened to grow up in a culture that doesn't separate art from life. In elementary school, we learned about math, geometry, and language through singing, dancing, and drawing. We learned about science, geography, and history through drawing, sculpture, and poetry. At home, we saw the arts as the means to spend quality time together. And we considered art as the expression of our people's concerns and joy. My family was [also] very much a political group. Politics was in our conversation at the table most every night. I made my choice of artistic expression around the same time that I began to formulate my political views, at 15 years of age. I learned about the injustices of the world through the work of young artists just when I had decided to take professional dance lessons." Ever since, politics and art have remained fully integrated in the choreographer's life.
The same is true of Darla Johnson, who not only can't imagine separating politics from art, but feels part of her duty as an artist is to respond to the political and social currents. "I live in this culture," she says, "and there is no way to ignore everything that is going on around me. An artist is the conduit, the mirror that allows all of us an opportunity to see where we are as a people: how we're living, how we treat each other, what our values are as a culture. When you have 50 women competing on TV to marry a man they have never met because he's a millionaire, well, I feel it's important to present an alternative, a chance for people to look deeper into themselves."
Art is the primary tool that Lisa Fehrman has adopted for that purpose: to explore the core of her being and discover more about who she is. "Dance is the medium I choose to try to understand my own existence," notes Fehrman. "I question the beat of my heart, the loss of a dear friend, why everything is so hard and so easy at the same time. How do I learn to just be? Where do I find the stillness? The ideas floating by, settling in, and pushing through my brain waves are the initial impetus for the work. But the ultimate satisfaction is seeing the ideas through movement."
Seeing ideas through movement -- that's the goal for these choreographers, the thing they want for themselves and for their audiences. "When it really works," says Fehrman, the dance "speaks to the viewer on another level, intuitively or emotionally, and one may not find adequate words to describe the experience."
That's where these artists are headed, but getting there involves a kind of translation for which there are no hard-and-fast rules, no codebooks or glossaries. "That's the challenge," says Jeffery Bullock, "the work you go into the studio to do. With a work called Representations of Whiteness, I had to define whiteness for myself. What did that mean? What were my prejudices and notions of what whiteness meant for me, to me? Then it was a matter of playing with movement in the studio. What kind of movement demonstrates this?"
Bullock's approach is shared by Fehrman: "I ask, 'What does this movement mean to me? Does it have specific meaning or is it a general quality I want?' For instance, in one of the sections of Shadowing Profound Doubt, the movement describes passion in life. The movement I chose was big, lush, and languid, and I had the dancers approach it with total presence and vitality. Unlike words, it gives the overall quality of the ideas which need to be fleshed out."
Because their creative process draws heavily on the choreographers' personal sense of meaning, the movements they use in their "translations" are frequently pulled from within their own bodies. "I come from a personal/feeling place," says Darla Johnson, and she drew on that in co-choreographing Wait of Change, the Johnson/Long company's contribution to Race Matters: Representations of Whiteness. "I feel that in the white American culture, there's a lot of denial about racism; we don't really have to deal directly with it if we don't want to. So one section of the piece is called the "Denial Dance." It's how I feel in my body about struggling with my own denial, my own lack of feeling -- numbing myself, if you will."
And yet, despite the distinctly individual and intimate nature of these movements, the choreographers want them to communicate to a larger audience, or at least stimulate them. "I am interested in the intersection of the mind, the gut, and the heart," says Andrew Long. "I want audiences to laugh, inhale violently, think, exhale, remember, shout, believe, disagree, and smile. I want them to leave the theatre relaxed and energized. I want them to dialogue that night, the next day, the next week, the next year."
"I want the audience leaving a little transformed," hopes Lisa Fehrman, "contemplating their previous understanding. The role of the audience is extremely important and not solely for the communication between artist and audience. I believe the audience is also necessary for the artist to continue defining her work. When an artist sees herself through the eyes of her audience, the artist gains insight into her work. When the audience actively participates with the artist, it brings them into the artistic world. It is one of the reasons I write extensive program notes and send out letters about the work that we are creating. I want to make the work clear and accessible to my audience. Drawing them in with and engaging them in the ideas creates an additional component and, I believe, a necessary element of our creative work. That is the part missing when the audience is passive and when the artist is unable to bridge that gap. Art can lead to social change, but not in a vacuum."
And do these artists dancing politics hope their work will lead to social change? Toni Bravo does. "I believe, or maybe hope, that awareness leads to action. It did in my family and it does, usually, in the way my dance students progress. I let my audiences know that my dancers and I are involved in teaching the magic of dance to underserved populations. I hope in this way to impress in their minds that we are capable of expression and of action, so that maybe they'll take it as example. In our mission statement, we wrote that we are 'dedicated to promoting social responsibility.' In my mind, artists should give back to the community that supports them. I don't play social worker, I just give all that I was given to as many students, dancers, and instructors interested as possible."
Darla Johnson is less optimistic about the impact of her work, but her outlook is colored by the same sense of responsibility Bravo mentions. "If I can provoke an audience member to feel something, to have some kind of emotional or kinesthetic response, then I've done my work," she says. "I don't pretend to have the answers. As individuals in the culture, we all have responsibility to do the work that inspires justice and change. I hope that people go out and find their own way to make a difference. Going through the process of making this work with Andrew, Keith [Antar Mason], the rest of our company, and the students is our way of affecting the issue."
Jeffery Bullock is even less sanguine about the potential for his work to effect change. "I think it's gonna take more than a dance," he says. "There have been a lot of dances. It's gonna take more than this piece. I don't know. I'm not going to be pretentious enough to say it's gonna change people. We all go to dances for different things. They have to make that decision themselves. I'm putting it out there. They take from it what they need."
Still, even though he is pessimistic about the transformative power of his work, Bullock isn't about to give up on this kind of dance. "This is the kind of work I want to do," he says. "I'm interested in form and shape and abstract movement, but I'm also interested in creating work that explores issues of race and identity. For me, those areas are the most interesting. Because we don't talk about them, I want to talk about them, to bring those shadow things to life."
Bullock is not alone. In discussing these issues, his colleagues express the same drive, the enduring commitment to dance through the issues of politics and philosophy that confront them. It is bound up in their connection to their own selves, to the people around them, to life as they understand it. As Andrew Long puts it in describing his participation in Race Matters, "I am taking direct responsibility to activate my community. I am being vulnerable and conscious as best I can."
In a way, these artists can't not create dances that address the larger issues of human existence. It circles back to their sense of art and politics, philosophy and art, being intertwined, inseparable, one. The words of Lisa Fehrman express it most succinctly and with poignance: "Shadowing Profound Doubt started as a philosophical inquiry over 20 years ago. Struggling to make sense of my existence, the story drifted around in my mind until I felt able to approach the work with some clarity and insight. Then the stark, bitter reality of the fragility of life shook my intellectual sensibilities with the tragic death of Tamara Barrington, one of my dancers and my dear friend. Life reflected in art, art affected by life. It is all the same thing."
Genero y Politica, featuring dances by Toni Bravo, will be performed Mar 3-4, Fri & Sat, 8pm, at the Texas School for the Deaf, South campus, 1102 S. Congress. Call 346-6288.
Shadowing Profound Doubt, featuring dances by Lisa Fehrman, will be performed Mar 3-5, Fri & Sat, 8pm, Sun, 2pm, at the State Theater, 719 Congress. Call 472-5143.
Race Matters: Representations of Whiteness, featuring dances by Johnson/Long Dance Company, Jeffery Bullock, Lyn Elam, Yacov Sharir, and Holly Williams, will be performed Mar 3-10, Fri & Sat, 8pm, Sun, 2pm, at the B. Iden Payne Theatre on the UT campus. Call 471-1444.