Love Stutter

Searching for Creative Partners

2018-06-13T13:29:00.000-04:00

Leadership Team (L to R): Allegra Romita, Artistic Visioning Partner. A. Nia Austin-Edwards, Strategic Visioning Partner. Sydnie L. Mosley, Founding Artistic & Executive Director.

For the past year, I have been witnessing the fruits of SLMDances' Strategic Planning labors. Our implementation game has been STRONG. *insert biceps emoji* I couldn't be more proud or excited of how far we've come. Still, with the implementation of strategic changes has come other changes that I couldn't have quite predicted.

Many of the dancers who helped shape SLMDances in its prime have moved on to their next level of badassness and sorcery. I mean these bawse women are pursuing MBAs figuring out new models of dance company business, PhDs researching labor of Black women in the concert dance field, developing new somatic practices, in seminary school studying African diasporic spirituality, becoming curators, producing festivals and concerts of their own, touring with other artists, and more. As I wished them well and sent them on their way it didn't occur to me that we were in a time capsule brought together by a series of unique circumstances to form a magical creative partnership.

2014-2015 Company (L ro R): Allegra Romita, Sydnie L. Mosley, Nehemoyia Young, Kimberly Mhoon, Rachel Russel, Candace Thompson, Kayla Hamilton. (Not Pictured: Autumn Scoggan, Katherine Bergstrom) photo credit: FFVisual 2014

As we've held auditions for new dancers - two times in the past year already, and we're gearing up for another - we've struggled to find the words to describe and capture the magic of the role that artists play in this company. Are they just dancers? Are they dancers and teachers? Do we ask them to submit an administrative resume? We're offering a lot of professional development, but we also ask people to read books and essays -- is it more of a fellowship? Do we ask people to pay us to be here? How did previous dancers know to bring ideas, questions and research into the studio?

From these questions, what rises to the top for us as most important is that we are organizers who are committed to using dance performance and education as a means toward liberation for Black women and girls. In that process, we understand the utmost importance of leadership development of and collaboration with artists - particularly women, particularly women of color, particularly Black women. We are asking a lot from artists, but we also invest a lot in people because we need a strong collective to move this work forward.

As such, we know that we are more than a dance company and we needed to name the role artists take on accordingly. After lots of word play and simmering for some months we landed on Creative Partner, an all encompassing job title that embraces the artists' role as dancer – teacher – organizer – badasses who believe in our core values: Dreaming, Activism, Authenticity, Individuality, Community, and Learning.

2017-2018 Company (L to R): Jessica Lee, Sydnie L. Mosley, Allegra Romita, A. Nia Austin-Edwards, Maia Bedford, Stephenni Miller-Allen. (Not pictured: Rochelle Wilbun) photo credit: ShocPhoto 2017

Participation in SLMDances’ work as a Creative Partner asks artists to show up and engage in the decision-making in each aspect of SLMDances’ work. Our Creative Partners are resourceful and creative collaborators bringing ideas and research into the dance-making process. They are teaching artists and community facilitators in our education programs that address topics such as gender and economic equity. Lastly and maybe most importantly, they are administrators and organizers working as agents of change, often producing events with community partners.

Creative Partners are compensated for their time in each aspect of this work as SLMDances believes in investing in whole people. This intentionally crafted approach expands the traditional role of the performer in dance studio rehearsals, and creates space for them to self-actualize lives of their choosing. Through our unique organizational design, these women acquire tools and resources that ripple toward their own organizing work outside of SLMDances that often addresses further intersections of people of color’s experiences. (See: Candace Thompson's Dance Caribbean Collective and Kayla Hamilton's Nearly Sighted.)

There are some logistics that need to be considered. One of my long time goals has been to move our regular class and rehearsal schedule to day time work hours because as we all know, dancing is work. That means this role is only right for someone on the road to figuring out their freelance / consulting / part-time work hustle. (If you haven't, but are willing, we can help with that! Sign up for our evening Professional Development workshop on June 26.)

More than anything, I am looking to work with people who are ready and willing to show up with their whole selves. People for whom this dancing thing, specifically dancing to affect change for the liberation of Black women, is of utmost importance. People who want to do this work in community. People for whom their dancing is the means to their personal liberation and are looking for a home base to tie all of that work together.

Won't you be our Creative Partner?

---

The upcoming SLMDances audition is a part of our summer intensive Professional Development for the People! taking place June 26-29 at Brooklyn Studios for Dance, 210 Lafayette Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11238. Please contact allegra@slmdances.com for any questions about the workshops or audition process.

She's Gotta Have It

2017-11-25T22:42:00.000-05:00

Spoiler Alert: Read at your own risk, or after you've watched all 10 episodes.

via GIPHY

‎⁦‪#ShesGottaHaveIt‬⁩. Starting Thanksgiving 2017, we have the pleasure and joy of meeting Nola Darling, again. Her character and the characterization of a place we know and love - Fort Greene, Brooklyn - are brilliantly updated for 2016 - 2017. It seems like Spike Lee has been taking notes on the content created by some of our faves which surely were influenced by his iconic works in the first place. In this series, Insecure's insecurity meets Atlanta's magical realism in Brooklyn with Spike Lee's glasses on. I also hear-tell it was an all women’s writing room. Thank you Eisa Davis, Cinqué Lee, Joie Lee, Lynn Nottage and all else who were there.

With She's Gotta Have It, I’m looking at my world in the mirror. I find myself desiring to only talk to my Black New York City artist friends about this. I’m looking at dancer peers on screen, and the art work of fellow anti-street harassment art maker Tatyana Fazlalizadeh. I'm witnessing Pat Hall teaching at Mark Morris Dance Center with friends Rosamond King among regular class takers, knowing that downstairs at the same time my heart Candace Thompson is teaching Soca. I'm unwittingly re-enacting scenes by just living my life.

Kiss. "I love you." "I love you more." Walks down brownstone stairs. "Call me when you get home." "Thanks mom!"

I mean, this series came out the gate strong. Stop Telling Women To Smile because I’m a sex positive polyamourous pansexual who prays to Oshun and pays respects to the ancestors by laying red roses on their graves and confides in my black woman therapist because Lawd Knows I have to take care of my mental and emotional health living this artist hustle life and while I’m at it here listen to this track cuz whatchu know ‘bout dat youngin’ and look at how beautiful my hood still is even tho the white folk have come wit dey ol’ conquering asses - STRONG.

A post shared by Spike Lee (@officialspikelee) on Nov 20, 2017 at 9:40am PST

We also get the treat of Spike’s signature camera angles: Nola sitting and rotating around herself at length, knowing looks at the camera, full face talking to the viewer, and the dolly shot. The work is self-referential and self-reverential. And if that’s not what your into, remember that Spike Lee does not deal in subtlety. He never has, and it looks like he never will. That’s an intentional choice y'all. Spike’s specialty is beating you over the head with the plight of Black people. I mean look at all the SHOTS FIRED against:

The Academy Awards,
gentrifying white people,
wannabedown white people,
Black folks who play white people’s game for access to money-notoriety-power,
art critics (ahem Alastair Macauley, or whoever that dude is in the NYT art or film sections),
Agent Orange aka 45 aka DT,
NYPD, and to my dismay,
vulnerable Black women.

Yes. Despite a tenacious attempt at a feminist perspective throughout, the harshest treatment in the series was given to the most vulnerable, marginalized Black female character and I can't let it slide. Especially when the men are treated with nuance and care, notwithstanding their glaring flaws and Nola’s rightful and righteous dismissal of them all.

Sister Shemekka on the other hand is a Black single mother trying to make ends meet by any means necessary. The violent treatment of Shemekka’s backside is shoved into our face; so violent in fact, I had to mute the television at her screams and peek through fingers for the scenes' conclusions. We do not get an unpacked understanding of what brought her there aside from the booty-centered sideshow that appears on every television screen and jealously of how much more money the Hot & Trot dancers are making. Is that motive enough for such extreme alterations of her body? How is it that we get to understand the backstories leading to the various conceits of each of Nola's lovers, but not the detailed backstory of Nola's best friend? How is it that Shemekka is not as enlightened as Nola's middle school student Reggie who knows that Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda is a role that isn't for every one, but rather a ploy for financial success in our capitalist hell-hole of a society? And even more urgent, why are we witnessing the gruesome explosion of Shemekka's ass? That shit ain't funny.

A post shared by She's Gotta Have It (@shesgottahave) on Nov 12, 2017 at 11:31am PST

Sure, She's Gotta Have It isn't about Shemekka specifically. It's about Nola Darling, but Shemekka's character isn't a prop. She along with Clorinda, Opal, and Raqueletta Moss are multiple facets of Brooklyn's finest; archetypes depicting a range of contemporary young Black Brooklyn womanhood -- in much the same way the women casts of Living Single and Girlfriends operate in their worlds. These women's stories are intertwined and their liberation is interconnected. Seriously, how can I be free if my sister is not free?

If Shemekka's character including her body and story can not be treated with care, can we truly buy into Nola Darling's liberation by series end? Especially when Nola's artistic and personal journey are catalyzed by what she calls the "free Black woman's form" - quite literally, a portrait of Shemekka.

As much as I adore Lee's craftsmanship in re-imaging the groundbreaking 1986 film into this series with a number of smart choices in casting, writing, photography, sound score, plot development and more (there is really so much YES!), the Shemekka storyline undercuts a great deal of that work. How can She's Gotta Have It uplift Nola Darling for sitting in her power and navigating her freedom and at the same time violently shame Shemekka and women who may think just like her?

All we want is to be free.

A post shared by She's Gotta Have It (@shesgottahave) on Nov 3, 2017 at 2:17pm PDT

we won.

2017-10-11T13:00:00.001-04:00

photo credit: Risa Shoup

I took a "nothing for nobody" day yesterday because after Monday night, time for rest, reflection, processing, and settling was necessary. I spent much of my time writing (and writing and writing) prayers of gratitude and acknowledgement. I am extraordinarily proud to be awarded the Bessie for Outstanding Performer as a part of the ensemble cast of *the skeleton architecture, or the future of our worlds* brilliantly curated and convened by Eva Yaa Asantewaa (also awarded for her Outstanding Service To The Field Of Dance).

As I reflect on all this and think about who I am grateful for that has made it possible for me to be present now doing this dancing *and* recognized for it, there is one name that is supreme: Ava Fields.

I mean, this award is for Outstanding Perfomer in an Improvisational Performance amongst a Multi Generational Community of Black Women and gender non conforming people that took place in a Church.

This was my entire dancing childhood.

I remember every class, rehearsal, performance, and moment in between with Aunt Ava. Those early years when she told me You can't do that dance because you haven't been through anything yet.

Those moments when she would thrust me onto stage with 30 seconds notice. I was the soloist. Time to improvise.

Our shopping trips to the thrift store for costumes.

The scrappiness of putting on a show with and for your community.

The day after my grandfather passed, I showed up at dance class and she said, I didn't expect to see you here but makes sense. I was 16 and heartbroken. She made space for me to dance it out.

The importance of waiting and listening for vision, as she shared her stories of walking the dog at 3am and becoming clear on the next big work.

The moment she proclaimed that "The Potter's House" was my dance. Something had shifted in my dancing. I was changed. Mature.

She showed me what it truly means to be a T E A C H I N G A R T I S T.

How to meet people where they are - the community center, the street, the church - and open their hearts with movement.

Auntie Ava, you taught me how to do things with dance.

photo credit: AK47 Division

And so this recognition is for her, and for all the dance teacher Mamas and Aunties who raised us, who set us on our path, and made space for us to fly.

May this recognition, this visibility, this witnessing not only write the names of the cast of skeleton architecture into dance herstory, but write the legacies that we come from and the legacies we are building.

SLMDances at The Bessies.
From L to R: Kayla Hamilton (Outstanding Performer recipient, skeleton architecture), Courtney Keene (SLMDances Board Chair), Nia Austin-Edwards (Strategic Visioning Partner), Sydnie L. Mosley, Candace Thompson (former Associate Artistic Director, Board Member), Stephenni Miller-Allen (Apprentice), Jessica Lee (Company Member).

The e

nsemble of the skeleton architecture, or the future of our worlds is one of four awardees for Outstanding Performer. The cast includes Maria Bauman, Sidra Bell, Davalois Fearon, Marjani Forté-Saunders, Melanie Greene, Kayla Hamilton, Jasmine Hearn, Marguerite Hemmings, Nia Love, Paloma McGregor, Sydnie L. Mosley, Rakiya Orange, Grace Osborne, Leslie Parker, Angie Pittman, Samantha Speis, Charmaine Warren, Marýa Wethers, Ni’Ja Whitson, and others*

Curated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa for Danspace Project’s Platform 2016: Lost and Found

For a history-in-the-making performance that dismantled improvisational dance norms to create a robust, disruptive, and dynamic world. For a cast of individuals who used a full range of movement styles to take the audience from Dakar to Kingston, the Bronx to Bushwick, in a fluid dance of connection.

*Edisa Weeks and Tara Aisha Willis were also in the cast but are ineligible as they serve on the Bessie Selection Committee

Read more about The Bessies.

The Haunt-Mourning-F*ck

2016-11-16T11:03:00.000-05:00

October 23, 2016/Morning

Last night the energy was bubbling high. We were just happy to be in a tiny room together. "Marya's cute y'all!" Charmaine hollered out. All eyes on her as she shimmied in her midriff.

We walked out. Single file line. And as we arranged ourselves on the altar listening to the words that beckoned our presence and our power I noticed the overwhelming number of white faces staring back at us. Waiting patiently to see what our next move would be. This is first time I have ever done THIS work - church dancing - in white space.

Getting chills watching these incredible people file in and fill the sanctuary ❤️

A video posted by Danspace Project (@danspaceproject) on Oct 22, 2016 at 5:33pm PDT

I chose my prompt: the haunt.

My first thought: let me look back at all the faces gazing at me. Y'all ain't gon' haunt me before I haunt you. That shit was funny... Because I'm a friendly ghost. I was giving acknowledgement and smiles and waves and was relieved when I could blow kisses to my family who were amongst them. Some of those white faces were actively seeking my acknowledgement and some of those white faces actively avoided catching my eyes. I thought, y'all are fucking privileged to witness us do this work. I almost said it out loud but then I noticed Marguerite and Maria struggling. I ran to Marguerite and placed my hand in hers and I was home again. Forget who is watching... I am here. Present with my self. Present with my sisters, mamas, aunties. And we gon' dance, or not. Sing, or not. Pray, cry, shout, laugh. Laugh. Stomp, clap, leap, roll. Carry the baby. Be a baby. Rest. Play. You're it.

I received so many hugs last night. Real fucking hugs. And it healed me because when was the last time I was just held for hours on end?

We had 2 hours.

When was the last time (was it ever?) that there was permission in performance space (besides the permission I give myself when I convene my own space) to just be and do and make and feel. Where performance space is life space and life space is performance space and we are all convened together in sanctuary. In a sanctuary.

I think Paloma was the last person to convene that space with Dancing While Black and that healed me too. Because whether I realize it or not, these white institutions that I've grown up in and love and respect have still just by the fact of their whiteness assaulted my humanity without knowing or caring and the work that they don't know they have to do to undo that is overwhelming to think about.

And yet I danced in these parallel spaces. The church dancing was always black. And if I never heard one word from the preacher I knew God because I danced. The school dancing taught me tendus, anatomy and alignment, more tools for movement invention - improvised or otherwise. The school dancing and reading and studying also highlighted names who I clung to in my dreams: Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, Octavia Butler, Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Dianne McIntyre, Gwendolyn Brooks... I wanted to be them. I wanted to be what they had conjured in their dreams.

I am thankful for my foundation because my Daddy always told me it was so important to know who you are and whose you are - and because that knowledge sits in my gut, my heart, my pores - when it was time for me to start doing this work, those parallel paths intersected in ways I didn't know I should have imagined.

November 10, 2016/Mourning

Good Afternoon Beautiful Ones,

I am writing to you all, folks who are actively a part of the SLMDances community right now, or who I've talked with or checked in with in the past few days, or who I need to check on.

I have been reeling since the wee hours of Tuesday night/morning. Little sleep. Unable to get out of bed after I have made myself lie down. Is this a nightmare? Fits of crying. Cussing. Screaming. Cussing. Doing little to no work. For all my militancy, activism, and movement making over the years, I have never in my life been as angry and impassioned as I am right now about the state of race and gender in this country.

I say this because I know you are probably feeling it too. Seriously, what in the entire fuck?

So first things first, how are you? You can hit me up and let me know, but mostly just tell some body how you are really feeling right now. The only way to get through these feelings is to feel them and we can't do that alone.

Number 2. Despite our collective mourning, the silver lining is that amongst our community especially, we already know what to do because we've been doing the work. Now is the time more than ever, to be grounded in who we be and how we do.

A photo posted by Sydnie Mosley (@sydmosley) on Sep 21, 2016 at 6:02am PDT

November 16, 2016/Morning
I noticed the overwhelming number of white faces staring back at us. Waiting patiently to see what our next move would be.

I'm angry this morning because y'all haunting me -- white people, white ladies especially. Do you know that you are white? Do you know that conceptualizing of yourself in racialized terms is fucking necessary so you can accept your responsibility to change things?

Some of those white faces were actively seeking my acknowledgement and some of those white faces actively avoided catching my eyes.

I don't care that you are scared to talk to your families at Thanksgiving. I don't care that you are shocked and surprised that most of your folks voted for white supremacy above all else. Tell your feelings to your fellow white folks. I don't care that you think wearing a safety pin is supposed to make me feel better. It doesn't. Do better. I got my folks. Do you have yours?

I thought, y'all are fucking privileged to witness us do this work.

How many times have we told you that we are hurting? How many times have we told you that Black Lives Matter? How many times have we said there is no such thing as "post-racial" and the election of President Obama alone is not going to change things? How many times have we told you that we need you to amplify our voices? How many times have we showed you our brilliance and magic and yet you still deny our leadership? You don't believe us when we tell you. Do you believe us now?

Because whether I realize it or not these white institutions that I've grown up in and love and respect have still just by the fact of their whiteness assaulted my humanity without knowing or caring and the work that they don't know they have to do to undo that is overwhelming to think about.

sipping Lemonade, savoring pound CAKE

2016-07-04T16:18:00.001-04:00

Today/July 4, 2016.
It’s taken me 15 months to get this post out, and today of all the days – the 4th of July – is when I finally feel free enough to finish this writing. Today, when the United States of America celebrates its independence with a day off, too much food and drink, and sparkling lights exploding overhead. On this day, I find myself lounging on my parents’ new porch, gazing at the trees, and inhaling more fresh air in the past 24 hours than I have since who-can-remember-when.

We moved here three weeks ago. Packed up 28 years of life on Woodbrook Avenue, stuffed it in a Budget moving truck, and dropped it off at a new house, only 10 minutes from the old one. We’ve always known this neighborhood and this street, North Avenue, but it’s still new in so many ways. That day was a historic one. The last of the Mosley’s moved away from Woodbrook Avenue where our family has lived for 66 years. Yes, you read that right.

When we arrived to the new house, Grammy greeted us with moving day-vittles and a pound cake. Damn, that cake was good. Maybe the best one she ever baked? Will she bring one when she comes by later?

Daddy put four whole seasoned chickens on the grill. He’s lining up sausages and hot dogs to go on next. I’m wondering, maybe we should make some lemonade for later?

April 25, 2016.
Exactly one year ago today, in the waning evening April sun, I picked up the phone and called my mother.

"Mommy, why is our neighborhood on fire?"

We were on Facetime on a Monday evening. She and I both alternated looking at each other's faces, and then back at the television screen’s live broadcast of a burning CVS on the corner of North and Pennsylvania Avenues, 6 blocks south of our longtime family home.

"I don't know," she said.

The nausea that began in the pit of my stomach that day has not gone away yet, even a year later. Maybe it subsides, but total disappearance? Not yet.

April 25, 2015.
It is traumatizing to turn on the television to cable news and see your neighborhood falling a part before your eyes. To see the streets you grew up on filled with police barricades, the local pharmacy in smoke, burnt out cars, and people running rampant in the streets without purpose. Or was there? To see looters running from stores with arms full of stuff: clothes, shoes, weaves, diapers, household supplies. It is surreal and traumatizing.

But worse is the commentary from reporters on the ground, mostly white and with no connection to my city and my neighborhood. Butchering the names of the streets as if they cannot read. It's Pennsylvania Avenue, not "Penns-y." If you need to shorten it there are legible signs that say Penn-North. Read. You don't get the pleasure of creating nicknames, because you don't know my city. Then there is the language they used -- consistently describing the scene as a "war zone" even before National Guard touched down. They finally get somebody on camera who is explaining that this is "reactionary not revolutionary," that it is the result of decades of structural inequity; that this is what you get. Still the reporter keeps asking, but why would they do this to their own neighborhood?

As my sister says, They make a different kinda nigga in Baltimore.

And then there's facebook. Status messages in solidarity from people who know nothing about my city. Who understand this on an intellectual level, and maybe even on a visceral level because we do know these stories. No matter where we are in this country. It is plain why this is happening, if you bother to open your eyes. And as much as I appreciate the solidarity, and their good sense talking, it feels like no. No. I don't need or want your commentary because this is personal. Intimate. This is for Baltimore to take care of.

The conversations I want to have are with my fellow Baltimoreans. I think about how when I watched The Wire, I realized that I don't know poor, working class white people. I know Black people at all economic levels and middle class to wealthy white folks. But my city is segregated. I want to talk with the well-meaning white folks in my life who don't understand the power and privilege attached to their whiteness even though they may come from a poor working class background.

Then there are the status messages from some of my own people about how "embarrassed" they are by this mess. Particularly how these "thugs" are acting, when we all know thug is just another word for nigger. Embarrassed. What we should be embarrassed by is a Mayor who can't seem to articulate any understanding of structural racism or her part in this chaos, as her every word and move is broadcast to the nation. Instead she just perpetuates the problem in her language and actions. Condoning what the thugs are doing with inaction. Letting them burn it to the ground. It works perfectly for the plot of gentrification. I'm sure my own parents are motivated now more than ever to leave a neighborhood our family has lived in for more than sixty years. Sixty years on the same block. God, what would Henrietta say? What would Henrietta do?

"Daddy, what happened after the riots of '68? Did you go out? Did Grandma and Granddad lead any organizing efforts?"

April 25, 2016.

Primary elections for mayor are tomorrow. Mayor Rawlings-Blake is out of the running, and Sheila Dixon has the nerve to be campaigning again with these commercials on tv. *eyes roll* I asked Daddy if there were black mayors before Kurt Schmoke?

“There was Clarence Du Burns… [laughter] So your grandmother had a community meeting [at her house] and he came and spoke. I believe he was the Mayor then, I'm not positive. And when it was over, his people were trying to usher him out the door, and he turned around, ‘Where the cake?’ That was your grandmother's pound cake."

Question: Who was Clarence Du Burns? Answer: The first Black mayor of Baltimore. From @slimbobwe: "So your grandmother had a community meeting [at her house] and he came and spoke. I believe he was the Mayor then, I'm not positive. And when it was over, his people were trying to usher him out the door, and he turned around, "Where the cake?" That was your grandmother's pound cake." | We are thinking about tracing memory, family legacy, and the power that ooey-gooey goodness called CAKE has to bring communities of all sorts together. | This is just one of the dance works we'll be sharing this SAT 4/30, NOON @ Upton Triangle Park between Pennsylvania + Fremont Avenues. FREE + OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. | #slmdancesinbaltimore #dance #baltimore #slmdances #noboundariescoalition #myblockmyhood #cake #slmdcake

A video posted by SLMDances (@slmdances) on Apr 25, 2016 at 10:39pm PDT

April 20, 2015
I often joke - though I’m dead serious - that I am a Community Service Professional; I have made a career of volunteerism. I am passionate about the work that I do. I feel that I am called to do it. And what work is that? Making space, uplifting, centering, and loving on women, Black women, Black people. It is both my political and spiritual charge and I enact it through works of movement-based art.

It is also all-consuming, ongoing and exhausting.

So, when someone contacts me begging me to go to the latest rally or march it's hard for me to say yes. It's hard for me to do extra.

Don't get me wrong. Sometimes extra is necessary, but extra is not really in my self-care plan. I’m at capacity today, so I’ll just say her name: Rekia Boyd.

April 25, 2015.
I do love my city. You can be sure of that. I don't visit often, but not for lack of want. I live a non-stop work life. Space for travel anywhere is few and far between. The reason I Ieft was to pursue a career in dance. The same opportunities to do such a thing just don't exist in Baltimore as they do in New York City.

But I live in Harlem for a reason. Not because it's different, but because it is so much the same. I love my ‘hood. I'm attached to its history. That American history. My family history.

February 8, 2016.
Honestly, it’s been a minute since I’ve had a major gush-fest over my favorite pop star, but damn, Beyonce’ has done it again. This time she’s created a black woman artist-organizer’s anthem. I’m living in formation. I’m living for Formation.

April 24, 2016.
If you think Lemonade is just about a woman scorned you missed the point. If you only listened to the music to form your analysis of this project and didn’t watch the film first, you missed the point. This work is a love letter to Black women and I am gushing. I am feeling myself.

Like Beyonce, I feel like looking in the mirror.

I hop up out the bed and get my swag on
I look in the mirror, say, What’s up?
What’s up, what’s up, what’s up

And then I’m going to Baltimore tomorrow, and bringing my dancers and I just realized that it’s the anniversary of the Uprisings, then I come back to the top of the track –

Hold up, they don't love you like I love you
Slow down, they don't love you like I love you
Back up, they don't love you like I love you

Step down, they don't love you like I love you

July 4, 2016.
I once saw a black man sitting on the bench on the subway platform at 125th street between the 4/5 and 6 trains. He was wearing a black hoodie, jeans, and sneakers and his head was zipped up in the hoodie covering most of his face while he was moving around. It was one of those real life moments that could very well be performance art if we invited an intentional audience. I don’t know if he was crazy, or just being silly, but I dubbed his performance Lamentations in the Hood (word to Martha Graham).

I was struck by how bound he was in his hoodie, and yet, still so free. The kind of free that makes passersby uncomfortable and walk briskly. The kind of free that threatens the state. The States. The kind of free I was used to seeing on Woodbrook Avenue, Fulton Avenue, 132nd Street, Madison Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, North Avenue – but not this North Avenue...

Where I'm sitting on this porch with my thoughts, thinking about making some lemonade, hoping somebody made pound cake. I'm thinking about what makes me feel free. What else do I hold in my tool belt to get me to free? How do I hold all I have been given and remix it to open up more for the little cousins running around in this grass so that one day they know their independence too?

Shining, Shaping + Standard Making: Candace Thompson Crafts Dance Caribbean COLLECTIVE

2016-06-09T18:03:00.000-04:00

photo credit: Jamerlyn Brown

Before "shine theory" was in our lexicon, there has always been a general ethos amongst the women in my squad of, "When you shine, I shine." These are women in my world with whom I am absolutely in love. People with whom I trust my life and reflect back to me the best parts of who I am and who I want to be. Candace Thompson is high on that list of people. We met the first day I walked into Christal Brown's INSPIRIT rehearsal over 6 years ago. Christal partnered Candace and I for a duet. I think it's safe to say we've been dancing that duet ever since.

Seriously, I have never known someone more driven, committed and goes-hard-in-the-paint no-matter-what than Candace. She is brilliant, and there is not enough I can do to lift her up, but today, I am trying.

In honor of the New Traditions Festival: Dance Your Caribbean, that she is producing this weekend June 11 + 12 with the Dance Caribbean Collective, I thought I would give the world a window into our ongoing conversation to see what happens when dance-making, dance extravaganza-producing, sister-friends get on the phone and talk through the work.

This interview took place on June 2. It has been edited for clarity and brevity.

MAGIC MAKING

Sydnie L. Mosley: Well, I want to start by saying, I am so proud of you.

Candace Thompson: Aww. Yay!

SLM: Yes, because in a very short time period - a year and a half - you have not only committed to developing your own choreographic voice, but also to create a platform to uplift that voice within the New York City dance community, and then, make space for other people to do that as well… which is a REALLY BIG DEAL!

CT: [laughter] Well, thank you for acknowledging that. You don’t always get to step back and think about it because you are so busy doing [the work].

SLM: How does that make you feel?!

CT: It makes me feel good. I feel like I started working on my choreography and then it was, “Oh maybe we can do a collective!” because at the end of the day, dance at the basic level is supposed to fun. It is supposed to be something you do with other people. You know?

SLM: Right.

photo credit: Andre' Zachery

CT: It didn’t make sense for me to start working on my own choreography and feel like I was the only one doing the kind of work I was doing. I could become the lone, “Oh, the girl who does the Caribbean thing,” but… I don’t wanna be there by myself.

SLM: Well, you’re not there by yourself.

CT: I know, but you know what I mean.

SLM: I do know what you mean. I’ve been thinking about how we’ve been partners in the magic making to produce SLMDances’ work for a few years now, and now you’re in the role of chief magic maker.

CT: [giggles] CMM!

SLM: Yes! CMM! That’s what I decided you are: CHIEF. MAGIC. MAKER. What do you think has been the most stressful or most difficult part of being CMM?

CT: I guess because I have been so deep in the contemporary modern dance community, and in the last few years stepping into cultural ambassadorship through [Caribbean] dance, and now trying to bridge the two worlds in a platform which is sort of a hybrid of the two… it’s like holding people to the same standards to help create what we are doing in the most robust way possible…

SLM: In terms of the artists?

CT: Yea, I think the artists and people in and around the organization; in terms of community building, in terms of curating, in terms of mentorship. Sometimes, I feel like I’m the only one committed to being thorough or the only one committed to digging deeper. I mean you know me well, and you know that I can make things up in my head, so maybe that’s not true. Maybe people are totally on board and I just don’t realize, but sometimes I feel like I’m the standard keeper and it’s a hard job. Me dealing with the artists, me interacting with all the people should be fun - and then if I have to turn around and keep people focused it takes the joy out of it.

I guess the other stressful part is having to create all of the systems and design how we do things administratively, in terms of marketing and presenting ourselves to the world, in terms of how we are internally supporting our artists and bringing more people into the Dance Caribbean Collective family. Designing literally how everything works while trying to be one of the artists that benefits from the platform as well.

Facing Home: Love and Redemption

SLM: Going back to what you were saying in terms of being the “standard keeper,” what are these standards and how did you arrive at them?

CT: The standards are… in terms of Caribbean content, knowing your content matter, doing the research. The standards are your performance craft -- the use of whatever form you are using - in its fullest, widest, highest potential. The standards are making work that can connect to a Caribbean audience because that’s what we’re interested in, and creating work that can be broken down, and defended, and explained, and that’s thorough. It’s this bridging “high art” and “low art” and [these standards] are the things that separate the two. It’s your ability to carefully construct a piece that tells a story, or gives a feeling, or quotes a culture, or uses tradition in a sensible and responsible way. In creating a platform that elevates our culture, elevates our traditions onto a public stage, it’s giving [our culture and traditions] the respect that it deserves because it has been delved into inside and out. Do you know what I mean?

SLM: I do! If anybody knows, it’s me.

ARTISTIC MENTORSHIP

SLM: What are you the most excited about for the New Traditions Festival?

CT: Just seeing the pieces side by side.

SLM: Why?

CT: It goes back to why I started the Collective in the first place. I knew that there were so many people of Caribbean background who were making their own work, using parts of their culture, parts of themselves, parts of their stories in their work, but not enough of us knew about each other. Seeing the different aspects, people’s different takes on things and different countries perspectives is exciting. To me, it represents what my Brooklyn experience is. In terms of movement vocabulary, people are using different genres of dance, so seeing those side by side. And then also, seeing those [dances] side by side with Chris Walker and Kevin Ormsby’s piece [who] really are established artists. [Chris and Kevin] have been doing this sort of investigation almost their entire lives, both of them. So it’s seeing us who are now digging in, researching and figuring out what we want to be making dances about and how we are going to do that, and seeing people who have been doing this [for a long time] and have figured some things out already.

Chris Walker

Kevin Ormsby

You know, Chris was here over the weekend. He was asking how the process has been and offering [advice] from his experiences. And in that quick exchange, between Dance Africa and the workshop sooooo many things that were mulling around in my brain made more sense.

SLM: I mean, it feels like the [show is the] manifestation of community building, the manifestation of mentorship, the manifestation of being affirmed.

CT: Yes! All of those things.

SLM: What were some of the things that he said that really hit home?

The @dancecaribbeancollective family at Dance Africa. Class at 6:30! Cyah wait! #dccnewtraditions #dancecaribbeancollective #danceyourcaribbean

A photo posted by Candace Thompson (@candancefit) on May 29, 2016 at 3:05pm PDT

CT: Well… he knew that the showcase happened and was asking about it. I was telling him some of my realizations and/or concerns, and this idea of me still figuring out the kind of work I want to present for this platform. And he just started spitting out questions!

[in Chris’ voice]: ‘Well you know, you have to question people. If they are trying to present certain things to a Caribbean audience, what is the question they are asking? And then, how are they answering it through the dance? Through the performance? And then furthermore, there is so much iconography in Caribbean culture and in Caribbean dance traditions that those things also have to be present so people can grab it. So people can see it.’

And I was like, ‘Yes! Iconography! That’s the word! Oh!’ But then I [thought], ‘Oh that gets into a touchy area,’ and he says, ‘No! There’s no personal feelings about this, it’s the work.’

SLM: I mean, but that’s true in any contemporary modern dance making process. It’s not about your personal feelings. It is about the work. Even more so when the work is explicitly pulling on a cultural perspective and isn’t following in the “mainstream” “neutral” “very white” way of dance making. That’s the thing I have always been rigorous about as well -- being real clear about crafting the aesthetic, alongside whatever the content is that I’m trying to shape and bring across.

Jessica St. Vil and dancers rehearse their work for the New Traditions Festival 2016: Dance Your Caribbean!
photo credit: Katherine Bergstrom

CT: Yeah… For instance, in your work, so much of it is based on the personal stories of the people in it. But that gets touchy too because you’re dealing with people’s identity which a lot of Caribbean work is. So, that’s where I get nervous about how much of my feelings I want to share because you know you are in touchy territory.

SLM: Why? What do you mean?

CT: I mean, giving critique on that kind of work. It gets tricky because you know that you’re critiquing something that people see as part of themselves.

SLM: Yes. But also, you’re making a dance. You know what I mean? And part of being a dance maker is being vulnerable to open yourself up to critique, no matter what the dance is about. That’s being an artist.

COMMUNITY

SLM: What are the best ways that you have felt supported through this work?

CT: Well one is people volunteering their time. Two is people who served as sounding boards with me trying to think through all these things. I realized that it has been an aim of mine to have these meetings where we can hash out these things together... I realized that space is so important to me.

Because we are in New York, showing up is one of the hardest things for people to do, myself included. But, the fact that I knew that I had to meet the committee would make me more accountable because I knew people were looking to me for directions and information. People showing up is one of the ways I have been most supported.

And also, people who are more experienced, who are older, who have been doing this work or similar work affirming [Dance Caribbean Collective] or offering advice has been poignant. At the end of the day I’m not doing this for myself, so an endorsement from people in and around the community lets me know I’m on track... Administrative support -- people who have edited documents, looked over grants, sent email, social media. That kind of support has been essential. People being mouth pieces for me... The people who have been like ‘This is Dance Caribbean Collective. This is Candace. This is what she’s doing.’ That’s been helpful because I’m still trying to find my legs in doing that in a way that doesn’t make me feel gross inside.

From left to right: Brittany Williams, Safi Harriott, Jessica St. Vil, Maxine Montilus, Shola Roberts, Candace Thompson

SLM: That’s so funny because I actually feel like you are very good at meeting and greeting the people. I remember specifically when you were doing a lot of the work with LaShaun [Prescott]. You would go on these gigs with the other dancers, and you made sure people were in line. They had their t-shirt and their elevator pitch. I always felt like you were so on top of that.

CT: Really? (in disbelief)

SLM: [laughter]

What are the ways you want support to get through these next two weeks?

CT: People to talk about the show. Just making it more visible, and actively getting people to buy tickets. I feel like we’ve done as much as we can do, so now it’s in the hands of the public -- the average person sitting in front of their computer that sees the event, or runs across the postcard somewhere to tell a friend, ‘Hey! Let’s go to the show together.’

And then, time and space to focus, which means that I can’t do anything extraneous until June 13.

CELEBRATION + SUCCESS

SLM: How are you going to celebrate your success?

CT: Ha! I don’t know. I haven’t thought about that.

SLM: Well you know I’ve thought about it.

CT: We have a reception the closing night. I guess that would be the celebration?

SLM: Uh uh. Nope. That’s the beginning of the celebration. What do you wanna do to celebrate your success?

CT: Okay. People seeing the show is me celebrating. People being happy after the show is me celebrating.

SLM: I don’t know if I accept that answer. [laughter]

CT: Seriously, I don’t know if I need to do a thing after that. I’m good. People are happy. They came to the show. Go home and sleep... Prosecco! I’ll have prosecco. [giggles]

SLM: These are all moderate answers. But do you know why I keep asking you this?

CT: Why?

SLM: BECAUSE THIS IS A BIG DEAL! [more giggles] Seriously, that’s why I started out by saying that I was proud of you. I don’t even know how you are doing this. I feel like the death, and I am only doing half as much as you are doing.

Is there anything else you want to say? For the people to know?

Alicia Dellimore, Candace Thompson, Shola K. Roberts
New Traditions 2015. photo credit: Alisun Dellimore

CT: I wanna say that if and when Dance Caribbean Collective/New Traditions Festival becomes a hit, becomes successful, becomes well known, I don’t want to be the only one that people say “Oh, good job!” I want to bring folks with me. This is not Candace’s shot to be famous or important. If people are looking on from the outside and are like ‘Oh my goodness, this is such a great thing!’, pick up the phone and call me if you want to be a part of the greatness, of this thing we are making. It’s not meant to be my project. That being said, anybody who wants to be a part of it has to live up to the standards.

I want people to be involved.

SLM: People who have equally high expectations.

[laughter]

CT: Correct.

---

Dance Caribbean Collective’s New Traditions Festival 2016: Dance Your Caribbean! performances will be held Saturday, June 11 at 7:30pm and Sunday, June 12 at 6:00pm (complete program information below) at Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center, 29 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201. Tickets are $25 for General Admission, $18 for Students and Seniors. A two-day pass to both performances is available for $42; a Premium two-day passes (which include reception invitations) are $50. Visit dancecaribbeancollective.org for more information.

Program A: SATURDAY, JUNE 11 | 7:30pm – Jessica St.Vil/Kanu Dance Theater, Safi Harriott, Shola Roberts & Company, and “Facing Home: Love & Redemption” (Chris Walker & Kevin Ormsby).

Program B: SUNDAY, JUNE 12 | 6pm – Maxine Montilus, Candace Thompson/ContempoCaribe, and “Facing Home: Love & Redemption” (Chris Walker & Kevin Ormsby).

See flashback of #newtraditions2015 by @projectvisceral. Can't wait for you to see what we have in store this year! 2016 artists SATURDAY : @sholabear @kanudancetheater safi harriott 2016 artists SUNDAY: candace thompson maxine montilus Featured artists both nights: @cookufur @kevinaormsby #newtraditions2016 #3daysaway #tixgoing #doyouhaveyours #linkinbio #caribbeandance #caribbeanamericanheritagemonth #cahm #caribbeancommunity #caribbeanculture #candancefitsays #danceyourcaribbean #dancecaribbeancollective 2015 artists: @b__capote @davalois_fearon @sholabear @ase_dance @aliciadellimore + maxine montilus

A video posted by Candace Thompson (@candancefit) on Jun 8, 2016 at 6:17am PDT

On MHP and Accountability

2016-03-15T17:35:00.002-04:00

In case you've been living under a rock and not paying attention to Black girl nerd news, Melissa Harris Perry is no longer on weekend cable news with her MSNBC show, the Melissa Harris Perry Show. After a four year tenure galvanizing diverse audiences and representing diverse voices in mainstream media with segments on every thing from politics to pop culture, activism and other current events, Harris-Perry left MSNBC with a no-fucks-given bang. (I'll leave it up to you to catch up on the details here, here, and here.)

Well today, my favorite podcast hosts Heben and Tracy published an in-depth interview with MHP. Apparently, she reached out over the weekend specifically to spill the tea with them. (Shout out to Black women with platform and power sharing that space with the next generation.)

This interview is a MUST LISTEN. At about 37 minutes in, MHP's dialogue with Heben and Tracy resonated with me so deeply that it brought me to tears. As she breaks down her inflammatory language in the email that went out to her staff, the one that first alerted the public all was not okay in #nerdland, she says:

When I’m talking about being a mammy, that’s a very specific thing that I am talking about. To me what a mammy is – what historically a mammy is conceived to be – the mammy is the worker in the household who cares more about her master’s family than about her own. She is the one who leaves her family behind in order to make sure that his family is dealt with; that his wife and kids and household are clean and in perfect order. That all things are right there, and is not worried about her own. What I understood Andy Lacks and Phil Griffin and leadership at MSNBC to be asking me to do was to appear on air, in my time slot, and therefore confuse Nerdland watchers so that they thought that we still had a show. Even though I could no longer bring them the content, which we have seen in the response to our cancellation, they were telling me was important. I don’t think I am what people thought was so important. I think, you know, most local anchors are pretty brown girls. What I understand people to be saying was important about MHP show was what we were doing. And what I was being told to do was leave my family behind, to leave MHP show, to leave Nerdland, and to appear on air to make Andy Lacks’ house look in order. That I was not willing to do, and I’m still not willing to do it. (emphasis mine)

What MHP is talking about here is accountability; accountability as a black woman who has been invited to sit at the proverbial table. She understands who her communities are and is unwilling to sacrifice creating space for and amplifying the voices of those who are not represented in white mainstream media. She knows that she is not the center, but rather the conduit through which so much more is made possible. This is what responsible gate-keeping looks like. This moment cemented MHP to me as a contemporary patron saint for all those people of color who become the token in a white institution; for those of us who are offered a seat at the table and the semblance of some power. She is a patron saint because she isn't afraid to turn the table over, to walk away, to figure out another way.

She is also talking about black women's labor and being unwilling to sacrifice herself at the hands and expense of the master. What she is describing here -- her refusal to play mammy -- is revolutionary. I hear the undertones of Audre Lorde between her words.

As I listened to this moment, I think my tears came from identifying with being the token so many times in my life. Those tears were also from identifying with being offered a seat at tables while living particularly at the intersection of being a black woman, artist and advocate. I try my best to remain accountable, check in, amplify the voices of, offer opportunity to, create space for my families -- and many times that is a difficult thing. I feel blessed to witness a shining example of accountability when the stakes are high, and very public.

If it ever came down to it, may I be able to do the same.

#NerdlandForever

Dancing The African Diaspora: Embodying the AfroFuture

2016-03-14T00:00:00.000-04:00

The Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD) is an egalitarian community of scholars and artists committed to exploring, promoting, and engaging African diaspora dance as a resource and method of aesthetic identity. CADD’s second Dancing the African Diaspora Conference conference aims to re-ignite the discourse on defining Black Dance on a global scale by bringing together scholars, practitioners, educators, and other stakeholders for three days of intellectual and artistic inspiration.

SLMDances was blessed this year to be able to attend the conference in its second iteration this year to present our own workshop "Discovering Our Future Bodies: Movement Making for the Liberation of Black Women." Take a look at the following storify that includes tweets and snippets from our experience at the conference.

SPENT (a BodyBusiness epilogue)

2016-03-03T12:25:00.000-05:00

May 2016 will mark the 6th year since the first time I publicly presented ensemble dance work in NYC. I was just a year out of grad school, many pounds lighter and babysitting for a rotation of 5-6 families to make ends meet each month.

Since then, SLMDances has been flying by the seat of our pants: taking opportunities as they have rolled in and forging other opportunities when we were clear no one was going to hand us anything. With prayer, we have met our minimal financial obligations each month. I have been grateful in that time for gracious gifts from individual donors, small financial and in kind support from family when possible, the gift of rehearsal space from my alma mater, as well as some of the greatest dancers in the world. These women are my joy. Still, we have been operating on a shoe string budget with most every dime of my personal freelance work going to support SLMDances. I have believed, and still do, that I must invest in myself first to make it work.

Through the course of those six years I have encountered a number of remarks along the lines of: How do you do it?! You're still going! When do you sleep?

The truth is: Not as much as I like, nor as well as I would like.

Since I started this work I have been operating from a deficit, but what I lacked in funds I made up in sheer will and can do spirit. I have been so diligent and committed because making art while building and advocating for my communities is living in my purpose. I have been clear on that since I was a child; the dream is the truth.

Still, I am exhausted. As a fellow dancer I am working with recently remarked, she is "so tired, but you're not allowed to be tired."

Our culture and our arts economy does not function from a place of preventative care. In this business, if you don't have your own personal start up (trust/wealthy parents/wealthy spouse/angel donor) fund you are fighting the ultimate uphill battle. You can't garner resources and support for your artistic work without producing work and so, you get used to operating from that deficit. Long gone are the days of many grants that support an artist's living expenses. How radical would it be to resource an artist based on what they could do? To see what they could create under the best of circumstances, not the worst?

In a recent post over on NonProfit With Balls, blogger Vu Le writes:

Because of Budget Testing and other factors, organizations that are led by communities of color, women, people with disabilities, rural communities, LGBTQ communities, are stuck in a downward spiral, a Catch-22, the Capacity Paradox, where they are too small to get significant funding, so they remain small and can’t get significant funding.

He goes on to say,

What’s detrimental to organizations’ long-term success is being forced to constantly Frankenstein funds together because no funder wants to pay more than 10% of an org’s budget. If funders are willing to fund 50% or 75% of an organization’s budget, especially in its early years, when its budget is relatively small, it allows it to spend less time fundraising and focus more time on building a strong program and infrastructure, which will increase its chances to survive and do its work. Funders’ concerns for organizations’ long-term success is ironically one of the biggest barriers toward organizations’ achieving long-term success.

His analysis feels like the story of my life. I am literally doing too many things to have the capacity to focus on building a strong fiscal infrastructure, but I feel like I have to do all the things to warrant and demonstrate that I deserve to earn the money, as well as be awarded grants and donor gifts. What increases the sting is that I am committed to this work for the long trajectory of my career, but the base resources of my immediate supporting communities and the politics of whose work is deemed worthy enough to support into the longterm is too often a picture of our country's systemic inequities.

Making dance in New York City should not have to be a game of survival of fittest, with the fittest being literally only those of us who have figured out how to get on the right side of the wealth gap. With all the trending conversations on equity and diversity in the arts, if we actually want to make demonstrated change as a field we must examine not only who we fund, but how we fund. (Le makes some excellent suggestions for this as well.)

Further, we can't be afraid to fund artists themselves, particularly the breed of artist in my generation -- the artrepreneur -- in a way that honors not only their artistic endeavors, but also their business savvy.

Of course, what doesn't help the situation is the inevitable question that comes at the conclusion of every artist's project, or even in casual conversation when you introduce yourself as an artist (and even I am guilty of asking it): What's next?

What's next? As if we hadn't just poured everything that we have physically, spiritually, emotionally and financially into the art that just occurred. What's next? As if you as an audience member, fellow artist, critic, educator or other person in this dance economy are disconnected from the possibility of what actually can be next.

Since the close of BodyBusiness in November, I have been having a terribly difficult time re-entering myself into the #artisthustle #artistgrind. Probably, because I was burnt out before we started producing the work. Most definitely, because I am now way below zero on the burn out scale.

So, what's next? I am sitting down. I am going to sleep. I am allowed to be tired. I am worth more than what I produce, and what I produce is worth way more than what I currently bring home in resources and benefits for my life and my family.

Starting in May of this year, SLMDances will be restructuring and will de-prioritize performance and producing new work as its main activities. We will take the next year, at least, to strategize and build fiscally sound infrastructure. We will be putting together funds for general operating support. We will be building out earned income streams which includes developing our education and community engagement programming, as well as planning future performances.

This work will be a team and community effort. We have been in contact with dancers who have been a part of the SLMDances journey at various points since 2010, and the response has been thrilling to see how this community wants to be involved in the shaping of its own future.

This work includes you as well. I am so thankful for your excitement around both my personal story and the company's story thus far. As I endeavor to invest better in my own self care, and the long term sustainability of the company, I offer better questions to ask around excitement for our future. Instead of What's next?, what about, How can I help? What support do you need? How can we work together toward our mutual and individual goals?

I would be remiss not to mention that this work is made possible in part by support from The Field Leadership Fund and the CUNY Dance Initiative, which will provide administrative support and rehearsal space, respectively. These were opportunities I believe garnered through building a "net that works" over the course the past six years and it is important for me to be transparent about that.

Lastly, I invite you to attend as many of SLMDances' upcoming performances as possible in the next two months, starting with my solo performance this Friday, March 4 with Dancing While Black, and ending in April with a special SLMDances' Homecoming to perform in Baltimore (details to come). Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date.

Continue to check back here as I hope to blog more often in order to continue transparency about our journey -- although if it becomes too much, I give myself permission to not.

I wish you light on your own self-care and self-investment journeys.

With so much gratitude.

Reflections on the 2016 Dancing the African Diaspora Conference

2016-02-29T21:03:00.003-05:00

The Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD) is an egalitarian community of scholars and artists committed to exploring, promoting, and engaging African diaspora dance as a resource and method of aesthetic identity. CADD’s second Dancing the African Diaspora Conference conference aims to re-ignite the discourse on defining Black Dance on a global scale by bringing together scholars, practitioners, educators, and other stakeholders for three days of intellectual and artistic inspiration.

Dancing While Black invited myself and Candace Thompson to share reflections from this conference experience. Here are my reflections from the gathering.

---

I didn’t know it while I was preparing over the last several weeks for Dancing the African Diaspora: Embodying the Afrofuture, but attending this weekend’s conference was attending the church revival. The text: our stories, artistic work and scholarly research. The congregation: scholars/artists/educators/students and anyone else invested in the field from the U.S. and beyond. As closing speaker Dr. Nadine George-Graves remarked, “Diaspora Dance is an institution, and we are building it.”

Her talk, a lecture-demonstration with Dancing While Black fellows Orlando Hunter and Ricarrdo Valentine, coupled with a shorter talk by Dr. Mark Anthony Neal were the sermons. Baba Chuck Davis led us through an offering and encouraged us to pass the peace.

I use the reference of church to describe the conference not for hyperbole, but rather to convey the holistic experience that it was for me — someone who has spent the entirety of her academic and artistic careers invested in the myriad of spaces between black and/or dance and/or woman and/or church and/or community organizing/activism in the diaspora. This was not your average academic conference. There was space for all these investigations and more; space for affirmation, critique, questioning, connecting, theorizing, planning, dancing, laughing, crying… and I needed all of it. As I overheard Dr. Takiyah Nur Amin, one of the lead conference organizers say to some student attendees,

“Soak up whatever you need while you are here this weekend, and take it back home with you.”

Read more on the Angela's Pulse Blog.

#BBHMM: Understanding the artist's body as business

2016-02-22T00:00:00.000-05:00

Recently, I have been working in a beautiful partnership with two of my favorite people: A. Nia Austin-Edwards, founder of Purpose Productions, and Kendra Ross, founder of STooPS Bedstuy. Alec Duffy who operates the Brooklyn performance space JACK, opened his doors to us and with BodyBusiness still on our hearts and minds we crafted a workshop to address the practicalities of negotiating compensation between artists and organizations.

Here you'll find a recap of that event through a compilation of live tweets. Take a look and stay tuned because there is a lot more #BBHMM to come.

Dancing While Black Fellowship Roundtable

2016-02-15T12:01:00.006-05:00

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of participating in a public dialogue with the current Dancing While Black Fellowship cohort about who we are, where are blackness lives, and how it shows up in our dancing. Revisit the highlights of our conversation here, captured via twitter.

BodyBusiness is Here.

2015-11-10T00:00:00.000-05:00

we are the ones we have been waiting for

June Jordan

How can dancers be paid a living wage for meaningful work? How can we transform places of lack in our lives into places of abundance? These are questions that I consider every day as I dare to forge a thriving artistic life here in New York City - as a black woman, without a partner, without family wealth, and without major institutional support. Despite those places of lack, I have long been guided by the words of Zora Neale Hurston who asserts that, “The dream is the truth.” I believe that we CAN manifest our dreams of richly valued artistic work, but we must open our eyes and consider the social and political constructs that shape the world we are navigating. We must learn to recognize our privileges, and begin to build bridges across our differences.

The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond tells us in their principles:

We recognize that the growth of a movement for social transformation requires networking – “building a net that works.” Networking means building principled relationships based on humane values. These relationships, in turn, allow us to create alliances across issues and ideologies that otherwise tend to divide us. As the movement develops strong networks, people are less likely to fall through.

This is exactly the work of Sydnie L. Mosley Dances (SLMDances), and tonight’s experiential performance, BodyBusiness. The priority of SLMDances’ work is centering the experiences of women and black folk and everyone at the intersections in two key ways: (1) naming our core values - dreaming, activism, authenticity, individuality, community, and learning - and always working with them in mind, and (2) building with allies who share those values and investing in long term partnerships that will manifest our dreams. This imperative to dance our narratives, and use our performances as sites for organizing is a strategic tactic to both survive and thrive, because too often we are invisible, marginalized and living on the fringes.

In a recent conversation with my dear sister-friend A. Nia Austin Edwards, founder of PURPOSE Productions, she asked:

What happens if we pause for a moment and really reflect? What happens when we realize that we are already magical? We might as well be magically strategic to increase our impact even further... [We have to get] off the survival treadmill and ask how [we] might thrive? ...That's what liberation looks like to me. THRIVING.

At this point in my personal and professional life, I am most interested in THRIVING -- here in this city that I love, with all of you who have been a part of the Sydnie L. Mosley Dances journey thus far, and with those of you who are just joining us this week. You are the people whom I feel accountable to. I also feel accountable to and supported by the strength and resilience of my family history and culture. It is because of that legacy that I have the audacity to believe that my gift and my purpose is to bring people together to affect change through dance, and I can do that, together with you.

We have all we need amongst us. We just need the space to connect and build. It is my greatest joy and pleasure to work with this team of artists, organizers, institutional partners and you to create that space. I am particularly grateful to Jen Abrams, co-founder of OurGoods, who has shared with us OurGoods’ framework and language for bartering within the creative community. BodyBusiness is for us, by us. It is my sincerest ambition that you are able to get what you need from the BodyBusiness space this weekend to begin to move from surviving to thriving. I know SLMDances is not the first to come to this conversation, nor will we be the last, but I hope the way we engage with this conversation leaves you fired up and ready for action. Make a new acquaintance this evening, and deepen your existing relationships. Let us “build a net that works” to propel us into thriving personal and professional futures.

Moving Forward Together in Love and Light!

---

We look forward to seeing you this weekend at BodyBusiness! Purchase your tickets HERE. Childcare options available HERE. NO ONE WILL BE TURNED AWAY FOR LACK OF FUNDS - this is very important to us. Email me if you need a free/pay what you can option HERE. If you are unable to attend, it would mean so much if you could make a tax-deductible donation in the cost of a ticket - $15, $25, $50 or more - directly to the company to ensure the success of our production, HERE.

The Dance Enthusiast: Maria Bauman and Andre M. Zachery Embody Present and Future

2015-10-11T10:46:00.000-04:00

photo: David B. Smith

Curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, the DraftWork series hosts informal Saturday afternoon performances that offer choreographers an opportunity to show their work in various stages of development. Performances are followed by discussion and a reception during which artists and audiences share perspectives about the works-in-progress.

This weekend at Danspace Project’s DraftWork, choreographers Maria Bauman and Andre M. Zachery will show new works in progress. Although they are working in disparate modes – Bauman in a solo improvisational practice and Zachery working collaboratively at the intersection of movement and technology - each choreographer’s artistic investigation focuses on self-actualization. They, each in their own way, are honing a present movement practice to shift their futures.

Dancer and choreographer Maria Bauman will present two works: Grace is High and Low, a solo paired with music by Roberta Flack, and The Well, a work in progress which includes original vocal music and body percussion by Philadephia-based artist, Bethlehem. Bauman, known best for her work with Urban Bush Women and her own company MBDance, is now pursuing her Master of Fine Arts at Temple University. I had an opportunity to speak at length with Bauman about Grace is High and Low, an iterative, structured improvisation that she is thrilled to bring to the DraftWork program this weekend.

Read the full story on The Dance Enthusiast.

Do you HAVE what you NEED?

2015-10-05T21:36:00.000-04:00

I had an amazing conversation the other night --

I was talking with a friend about the premise of our new work BodyBusiness. I shared how the work commences with a marketplace, and her eyes lit up.

"The marketplace is a crossroads," she began. "A meeting place." That made me smile. It made me think about walking down 125th street on a warm day, where vendors line the street from Morningside to Madison Ave. There, you hear the sounds of old school R&B and folks are selling everything from t-shirts and tie-dye, wax print fabrics and thrift clothing items to old albums, shea butter and oils, craft jewelry and more. There is the drumming circle on the plaza in front of the state building. And how many times while walking the street do I run into my neighbors, friends and colleagues? The best is when I see my students, particularly the babies, who can't fathom Ms. Sydnie as a person on the street. To them, I'm just the crazy dancing lady in their school. It's in those moments that I feel most connected to my neighborhood and the many communities I belong to within that neighborhood.

I hadn't thought of the word crossroads to characterize the marketplace, but that feeling is exactly what I am trying to capture in our performance space. Thinking of the marketplace in terms of pathways and meetings, connections and exchanges makes sense of every section where the dancers are walking, finding their way in, around and through one another. It gives intention for every moment that they meet, and what they can build together when they meet again.

photo credit: Whitney Browne Photography

I can't remember when or how I got this idea about the marketplace, but I know that as soon as it occurred, I was committed to it. I wanted to create a space so that no matter who you are, when you leave this performance, you leave with something you need (though if you are a dance artist working in NYC, this is especially for you). I wanted to create a space that brought together all the resources that I have worked hard to seek out in the past 6 years: (1) as an artist who wanted to build her own creative enterprise and (2) as an artist who had (has?) little-to-no personal financial resources and no family wealth to rely on in order to live. I even wanted to create space that encourages us to more consciously spend -- when we spend our money on things that we want, let's invest in people and businesses whose values we share, and whose successful entrepreneurship makes space for us to be successful with our own.

The marketplace is a space and means for livelihood. It is the place that you can offer what you have to give - what you've been growing and making and collecting and organizing. I'm so happy to be collaborating with Ladies Love Project who locate the marketplace in a cultural context for black and brown women. For them the marketplace "introduces a model for all women to pay homage to market life around the globe as a staple of community building, and of starting your own independent business."

photo credit: Whitney Browne Photography

Shifting focus to starting an independent business - or recognizing that as a freelance artist, you are your own business - is the biggest aim of the work. The BodyBusiness marketplace, this crossroads where we meet and offer what we have so others can get what they need is a space where we are empowered. Stating and offering what we have is a statement of our value that doesn't need to be proven. There is so much abundance among us, and so much of building our collective wealth is recognizing that. This dance is a practice in standing in our power.

I can't wait for the magic of each night of the marketplace to occur. I am literally giddy every time we confirm a new vendor. If you have something to offer in this space that would enrich and sustain the lives of artists in NYC, please let me know! And if you need something dancers, I hope you find it at BodyBusiness.

Getting to the pointe.

2015-09-18T10:29:00.000-04:00

In this post co-written by SLMDances Apprentice Kailey McCrudden and myself, we reflect on recent questions we're asking in our rehearsal process for our upcoming production of BodyBusiness.
--
Sometimes words are complicated.

Enroll your child in ballet! They will learn proper technique, and how to express themselves through movement!

What is proper? Does this insinuate that there are techniques which are universally improper as well?

And what kind of technique are we talking about? You immediately pictured a prima ballerina didn't you...

How to express themselves through movement... Because there is obviously a right way to do so. Unless your child is naturally moving from a turned out position with held arms and high leg extensions, they are doing it wrong.

But hey, maybe we're just overthinking things...

In SLMDances' most recent rehearsals we have been unpacking the complicated relationship of ballet to our own bodies, minds, and souls.

Feelings of insecurity. Poor body image. Being the only black person in a "white" space. Pressure to be "correct." Being neglected. Glorification of pain. Being forced. Being corrected.

Physical trauma.

We've extended the conversation into the larger dance community asking dancers,

What is your relationship to ballet?

What social constructs and systems are we buying into when we uphold ballet as the standard?

What's at stake for those whose bodies and gender expressions don't fit that standard?

Sophia Fatouros offered, "Ballet is being perpetuated as a restrictive form, where children must conform to impossible and idealistic standards of form, and where girls in particular are being programmed to take orders without questioning authority."

Jessica Abejar questions, "Who is allowed to be considered a good dancer and why?... Sometimes when I see children with a lot of potential, I think 'Okay we've got to get this kid to class,' but lately I've been stopping to think, why?"

Leah King reflects, "I recently read Misty Copeland's memoir... and remembered that I was never obsessed with ballet (she was). I just love to dance. It was so liberating when I left that white, mean, exclusive world and got to actually find myself."

With ballet at the top of our (concert) dance hierarchy, our approach to dance is tied to a very specific time period, race + class of people and their world view - the court of King Louis XIV in France. It is a form that embodies many of the oppressive systems we seek to dismantle. It is a financially valued mold that many of us were never built to fit.

Where does that leave the rest of us who dare to make a career of being movement artists? How is our livelihood impacted when the movement work we create devalues ballet aesthetics, or values it as just one amongst a broad tapestry of other forms?

Feeling Value

2015-09-15T09:41:00.000-04:00

In this post written by SLMDances’ 2015 summer intern Nadia Mbonde, she reflects on her experience working with the company from May through September of this year. Nadia is a junior at Barnard College majoring in Africana Studies.
---

I was instantly drawn to Sydnie L. Mosley Dances (SLMDances) when I met Sydnie, a Barnard alumna, at the Africana Studies Major open house at Barnard College. I was declaring my major in Africana Studies and Dance and I looked to Sydnie, who had the same major, for guidance. Unsure of how my academic interests would inform my future career, I decided to explore the connection between the arts and business. Arts administration was a new field for me and the unknown sparked my curiosity. So, I eagerly pursued an arts administration internship with SLMDances.

When I joined the company, SLMDances was preparing for the November premiere of Body Business, an interactive production that re-envisions the economic practices of the dance world. It was the perfect opportunity to learn about the business behind dance. While I worked behind the scenes managing the bookkeeping, archives, partners, and marketing, company members in rehearsals addressed issues of how dancers can get paid for meaningful work.

My internship at SLMDances taught me to think in new ways about art-making and community building. Contrary to the romanticized image of the starving artist, Body Business demonstrates how artists can live in abundance and create work in a way that allows them to thrive. I saw this during rehearsals when Jen Abrams from Our Goods came to talk to the dancers about how they can invite the audience into resource sharing. In this process, individuals identify their haves and needs and barter with one another to fill areas of lack with the vast amount of resources shared amongst people in the room. This taught me that there are other measures of value besides money and that we can transform areas of poverty in our lives into places of abundance through interdependent community.

Nadia pictured with SLMDances company members and Kemi Ilesanmi,
Executive Director of The Laundromat Project, after our June 2015
performance at Exponential Finance.

My experience at SLMDances was shaped by my professional curiosities as well as my personal needs. I struggled with illness and a break-up and SLMDances played a role in my healing. Through observing and interacting with the dancers, I learned valuable lessons in sisterhood, friendship, and self-love. Although my stay was brief, everyone made me feel like a valued member of the company. I was blown away by the company culture which encourages community, mentorship, and wellness in both the dancers’ professional and personal lives. I was allowed the space to talk about my struggles during professional development meetings and in response I received advice, words of encouragement, and support from the company members.

I would definitely recommend this internship to anyone who wants to learn how to be a better artist, administrator, and most of all, a better human being. The dancers at SLMDances bring their whole selves to the studio - their quirks, joys, and burdens - and leave stronger, healthier and happier people. My internship gave me the opportunity to do the same.

What is my body worth?

2015-09-10T11:33:00.002-04:00

In this post written by SLMDances’ 2015 summer intern Wassa Bagayoko, she reflects on her experience working with the company in the midst of the current #BlackLivesMatter movement. Wassa is a junior at The Chapin School in Manhattan.

---

As a young woman -- and a young woman of color at that -- the life I lead is cut with a double edged sword of oppression. One side is being a woman. An ageless handicap, being a woman has entailed setbacks on a spectrum of second hand citizenship, to inherit blame in the conversation of sexual harassment. The struggle of being African American tells a story in itself; the role of African American and Black people (along with other groups) has been in roles of subordination. Living a life where these two things influence how other perceive me, I often make parallels between the two to help friends on one side or the other better understand my life. One parallel I use the most is between people of color when discussing police brutality and women on the topic of street harassment; the focal point of the talk being the preemptive actions one must take to avoid assault in an already corrupt system.

This summer, when laying down the groundwork for The Window Sex Project tour, I was very aware of street harassment and how it impacted me. How I responded and how others around me responded, if at all. One time when walking down the street, an old man called out out to me, and my friend apologized to me. I felt angry, then disgusting, and I wasn’t one hundred percent sure as to why. I’d done nothing wrong. One of my favorite things about The Window Sex Project is its validation of the individual experience; anti-street harassment groups often focus on prevention, which in itself is commendable, but validation of one’s emotions is also an important part to the process. In that moment, I didn’t need an apology, just someone to tell me that what I felt was okay, that I had a right to my feelings. Sometimes, with big civil rights movements like the Feminism and #BlackLivesMatter movement, I feel that the individual experience is lost in the vastness of the issues. Stories, experiences, and the ability to move someone with these tools come from it, and I really found that to be at the forefront of my mind this summer. Why was TWSP tour even happening? A part of it, the most important to me, is exposure and conversations. Conversations. The right ones are such an integral part of solutions and I think TWSP tour emphasises that. It’s definitely taught me to try and evoke that in conversations.

I was lucky enough towards the end of the summer to sit in on a rehearsal for the upcoming Body Business show. There’s this one part of the performance that has to do with worth. Since I spent a majority of this summer working with street harassment, I initially interpreted this aspect as individual worth being the shape of one's body. As I continued to think about it however, I realized that our worth is often set by so many aspects of our bodies; the size and shape, the color of our skin, the clothes we wear. It was with this experience that I realized that the overarching problem with civil rights issues is that individual worth is comprised of one aspect of a person. For some people, my worth in in the color of my skin, for others it’s how I look. This can be found in any civil rights struggle; people being simplified to one aspect of themselves. Like anyone who has been apart of a civil rights movement, I just want to be seen as human, just as complex and imperfect as any other. The steps necessary in making that desire a reality are present in the Body Business show and The Window Sex Project. Understanding that my self-worth is defined by myself and myself only has helped me to walk around with a new look on my life and my surroundings. I'm grateful for this lesson, and I’m grateful for the experience that came along with it. It is, without a doubt, something that will be with me for a long time.

Every Summer Has A Story

2015-08-13T18:21:00.000-04:00

In this post written by SLMDances’ 2015 summer intern Nadia Mbonde, we invite you to get acquainted with the women who comprise the 2015-2016 company.

---

This summer I have had the privilege of getting to know the SLMDances company members. They are an inspirational group of women who have taught me a lot about sisterhood and self-love. Following their individual journeys as artists helps me envision how I can turn my dreams into reality. I am amazed at the different types of activities that they've done while they've been off for the month of July!

Italy Welton went home to Greenwood, South Carolina and brought the first dance workshop to the Little River Missionary Baptist Association Summer Camp. During her four-day workshop entitled “Dreams to Greatness,” Italy taught both youth and adults from the community various African dance styles. Her work was featured in the local newspaper, Index-Journal.
For more see: http://www.indexjournal.com/lifestyles/accent/Dancer-pays-it-forward-with-workshop#frmComment

Katherine Bergstorm joined Dance/NYC’s Junior Committee this summer. She also interviewed Kelly Pollock, Executive Director of Center of Creative Arts (COCA) in St. Louis, MO. Check out the interview “Ailey’s Legacy, at Home in St. Louis” on her blog Points of Contact for exciting details on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Antonio and Kirven Douthit-Boyd joining the COCA faculty this August: http://ptofcontact.com/2015/07/24/aileys-legacy-at-home-in-st-louis/.

Kayla Hamilton has been working on a solo project called “Nearly Sighted” through which she tells the story of self-identified black female choreographers in the United States. This summer she has been working on a solo by Francine E. Ott. For more information check out her blog: www.sightbuzz.wordpress.com

Candace Thompson was interviewed by Eva Yaa Asantewaa about her work as Executive Director of Dance Caribbean COLLECTIVE. Candace also presented a new duet with Nehemoyia Young called Colliding Scopes/Circles of Inquiry as part of the “Dapline! Five on the Black Hand Side” series at University Settlement on July 31. For more see: http://infinitebody.blogspot.com/2015/07/candace-thompson-caribbean-dance.html

Allegra Romita presented on Functional Awareness: Anatomy in Action for Dancers at the International Conference on Teaching Somatics-Based Dance. She is also preparing to present at National Dance Education Organization (NDED) and International Association for Dance Medicine & Science (IADMS) for this Fall. For more see: http://functionalawareness.org/

Ava Louise Untermyer was offered a position in Pennsylvania as a Lead Preschool Teacher and Coordinator of the Dance Department at the Doylestown YMCA.

Kimberly Mhoon has been moving, swaying and stirring things up in the summer sun at the Harlem Arts Festival and NYC's SummerStage. Check out her facebook page to see more:https://www.facebook.com/kimberly.mhoon.3

Julie Goldberg has been working on a piece called Death Both Theory which will be premiering on August 15th at the chashama 461 Gallery in Harlem (461 West 126th Street). The performance will take place during a visual arts show at a chashama residency called "The Quarters Project." For further details see: https://www.chashama.org/event/the_quarters_project

Kailey McCrudden has spent the summer performing in NYC and Philadelphia. Catch her piece gray area about the performance of gender on August 26th at Triskelion Arts Summer Shake-Up! For more information check out: http://www.triskelionarts.org

Autumn Scoggan has been enthralled in her graduate school courses - Teaching Methods, Childhood and Adolescence Development, and Teaching Students with Special Needs in Inclusive Classrooms. She has also been applying for full time dance teacher positions in public schools.

Nehemoyia Young danced with Candace Thompson in the duet Colliding Scopes/Circles of Inquiry as part of the “Dapline! Five on the Black Hand Side” series at University Settlement on July 31.

Rachel Russell just began her graduate studies at New York University, pursuing her Master’s Degree in Performance Studies. For more see: http://performance.tisch.nyu.edu/object/ps_masters.html

Kiki Williams embarked on a 100 day improv challenge improvising a new dance routine every day. Kiki dedicated the month of July to self-care by practicing yoga and meditation, taking hiking trips and spending time at the beach. See Kiki improvise here: https://instagram.com/kwilliams0916/

Joy (thoughts after Professional Development)

2015-08-06T01:25:00.002-04:00

I never intentionally set out to build a company of women, but after 11 years of women's education I suppose it was in my DNA. The more dances I have made over the years, the more I have needed to make those dances woman. Dancing our narratives has become an imperative, a tactic to both survive and thrive.

As this imperative develops, it is my intention to invest in the women of SLMDances. Some months ago, I came across the phrase: "deep sisterhood as a tool for social change." It resonated, deeply. This is how we function as a company - we invest in one another, we honor and celebrate each other's brilliance - and it brings me the greatest joy.

Sisterhood reveals itself in a myriad of ways: Two or more dancers sit after rehearsal to chant and meditate together. "Happy Birthday!" Trading recipes. A small plant is a gift for encouragement. We are trading body work services. Helping one another organize our home and personal lives. "Hey, just texting to see how you're doing?" "Hey girl, there's a job a think you'd be great for." We are borrowing books from her bookshelf. "If I cook you dinner, will you comb my hair?"

Each of these interactions is a small miracle. That space between women is magic. It's Purple, just like Auntie Alice wrote to us so many years ago. That's where there is God. Spirit. True Love.

Every time we share our dances we invite people into this. During the making of The Window Sex Project, we developed a series of phrases, "I see you. I support you. I lift you up." What started as a choreographic text has evolved into a mantra, an affirmation that we live. It is because we recognize each other, that we trust one other to move through the unknown. We are free to take risks because we know our sisters are there to catch us.

We are probably not the only ones doing this... I hope we aren't, but...

I am naming it. I am acknowledging it.

More to Say: Reflections on the 2015 Dance/NYC Symposium (part 4)

2015-02-26T20:09:00.000-05:00

More to Say: Reflections on the 2015 Dance/NYC Symposium (part 1)
More to Say: Reflections on the 2015 Dance/NYC Symposium (part 2)
More to Say: Reflections on the 2015 Dance/NYC Symposium (part 3)

This morning I had a conversation about managing expectations. While I did not by any means expect the Symposium sessions to be the pinnacle of conversations on race in the dance community - mostly because that is just not how it works - I did have expectations for deeper and more engaged dialogue around what is working; a more proactive learning session amongst peers in the field. I had hoped too high.

To say that the sessions were not productive would be a lie. People connected and are talking. I am writing. Action plans are indeed in the works, but I refuse to say "yay, we did it!" just because we held the space.

In one of my conversations in preparation for the Symposium, Paloma McGregor offered the phrase "come and apprentice," while referring to institutions who want to delve into this work on race but are not trained in doing so. Over the past few years, I have observed and participated with so many dance folk who are trained in doing this work and from whom I have learned so much, that I must say to my folks at Dance/NYC, "Come and apprentice!"

As I have read and discussed critiques of Sunday's events, I keep thinking back to The Gathering, organized by Camille Brown during APAP in January. I was enamored with the inaugural session in 2014, but the 2015 iteration proved to be an even more powerful example of modeling the change we wish to see in our dance field. Its format offered a useful framework for what the Symposium attempted to do.

Onye Ozuzu, Chair of Columbia College Chicago's Dance Center, facilitated the event using her work the "technology of the circle" (which I first encountered last year at the Dancing Diaspora conference). With it, we who were participating re-imagined that same Gibney theater space and built community within it. Whereas the Symposium space was divisive, The Gathering space was connected and fluid.

Dance/NYC Symposium, "Making Change: Artist Voices." photo courtesy Dance/NYC

The Gathering.

It started simply by greeting -- every one in the space introduced themselves and had an exchange with three different persons in the room with whom they were not acquainted. Over the course of the following two or more hours, Ozuzu guided us through building a score of dialogue and movement, and even time outs to process what was happening with that dialogue and movement, regarding whatever we felt we needed to express in that moment on support for Black women dance artists.

Onye Ozuzu, center, facilitating the circle.

What was so incredibly affirming and productive about the space was that it was full of permission. It was open for us to move and do what we needed to in order to take care of bodies -- even if that meant laying on the floor, sitting, standing, going to get water or food. There was equity in the space - every person had opportunity to become the center of the circle, and the story of the college student was just as important and worth while as the story of the "stars" in the room. There was equity in terms of ways to express oneself, whether you wanted to talk or dance your story, whether you wanted a lead or supporting role. There was room to listen for understanding, to challenge and question, to teach and lead, to be vulnerable and cry, to care for and hug. Watch the livestream here.

I keep thinking back to that event because I thought it was such an excellent case where the form and content - the choreography, if you will - of dealing with race in our dance community and building toward justice compelled participants to do just that right there in the space. Together, we built a functional learning community that made space for wherever each person was in knowledge, body and feeling.

I know both audience members and panelists at the Symposium wanted to talk practical solutions, but what became quickly apparent was that we could not get to those practical solutions and peer learning because we had not organized the space for it; thus the conversation could only go but so far. Eva Yaa Asantewaa writes,

Off in the far distance, sheets of paper covered the theater's wall of mirrors, but few people accepted the many invitations to take markers and share their evolving thoughts and feelings. It seemed a little awkward to get up from your seat and cross in front of the panel to reach the paper.

The act of going to the wall to write needed to be built into the score of the program, instead of an addendum.

In the panel previous to the one I sat on, Carlton Turner said that not all artists have to create work explicitly about social justice issues, but they can work in a way that perpetuates justice. I want Dance/NYC and Dance/USA staff, boards and committees to make it their business to offer support to dance happenings such as The Gathering by showing up, listening, and learning in order to apprentice ways of working that perpetuate justice.

This is something I am thinking of constantly in my own work -- Am I working in a way that perpetuates justice? Am I working in a way that builds with and mutually serves the people with whom I work, particularly my fellow dancers and collaborators? When we work together, do they have a sense of their own power? Am I helping them develop their leadership skills? Am I really listening? Like, really listening? When is it appropriate for me to take up space, and when is it appropriate for me to make room for others? Is the mode in which we are making the work, supporting the message we want to communicate?

I offer these questions, if you are not already thinking about them, because I think they are crucial to addressing racism not only in the dance field, but as it cuts in all aspects of our lives.

This week I have learned to be more realistic about my expectations in relationship to whom I am working with on issues of race. Even more, I am learning what my boundaries are in terms of my labor and energy. I want to keep this conversation going, but for right now I need to ask -- Who got next?

More to Say: Reflections on the 2015 Dance/NYC Symposium (part 3)

2015-02-26T02:06:00.000-05:00

More to Say: Reflections on the 2015 Dance/NYC Symposium (part 1)
More to Say: Reflections on the 2015 Dance/NYC Symposium (part 2)

The reason I spent the first two parts of this series framing and then publishing my remarks from Sunday is simple -- I labored to produce those remarks and be prepared for that conversation, and unfortunately those efforts were not honored in the space.

As a Junior Committee member, I (gladly) volunteer a number of hours each month toward the work of Dance/NYC; however, over the past few years because we have been interrogating race + equity on the committee, I along with other members of color have what Brittney Cooper named in her recent article for Salon, "'the black or people of color tax' — the extra, and often unacknowledged labor, time and resources we give to institutions, that our white colleagues don’t have to do and for which we are uncompensated."

Let me be clear if it is not already, this work is deeply personal, and I want to do it.

So when I am asked to speak on a panel about "race + dance," I seriously do my homework. Not that I wouldn’t usually do this, but for weeks it has been an extra priority for me to attend and participate in all of the various panels, discussions, gatherings and events around the city that consider the intersections of race/diversity/equity and dance/arts/cultural work. Additionally, I have held multiple conversations with trusted friends and mentors on how to approach my participation on the panel, my remarks, and what organizing was possible in the actual space.

We came up with more ideas than I was able to put into action though -- my capacity to volunteer more hours organizing waned. I had babies to teach and choreography to create, rehearse and perform.

I ended up spending most (read: all) of the Symposium day in a quiet corner putting together my thoughts around the question posed: What is already being done to realize a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable sector? But as the day went on with my eyes glued to my laptop screen, I found myself more and more frustrated. My compensation for participating on the panel was admittance to the Symposium, but I was not actually able to take part in the multitude of sessions and the ample opportunities for networking because I spent the time preparing.

It has already been said, but I'll say it again -- the way in which the Race and Dance series of panels were formatted and facilitated did not best serve the aims. Even though I was on the conference call and email threads to prepare for the panels, I did not feel empowered to seriously interrogate the entire format of the program, but looking back - I wish I had. But then again, that probably means I would have volunteered myself into more organizing hours, which we have already established I did not have. So you see my problem. Again, back to the eloquent Professor Cooper, "Are these not also the wages of race at play?"

In Cooper's article which explains why she will not unpack Patricia Arquette's #epicfail at the Oscars on Sunday, she writes:

Asking black women and other women of color always to explain, show and prove to white people what is so wrong about what they have said or done, when we have no guarantees that they will change, shift or grow, is unacceptable.

This thought applied to the case of the Symposium means asking the persons of color participating in the Race and Dance series of panels who are more steeped in facilitating these conversations to question and/or re-organize what has already been set up. This is particularly taxing especially because we were not originally a part of building out the series of sessions.

Unfortunately, the method in which the conversations on race and dance were organized and facilitated did not reflect the changes that we wish to see in our field, but they should have. As Eva Yaa Asantewaa describes in her review of the event on InfiniteBody, "the Gibney theater proved to be fatally formal with the audience seated in rising rows opposite panelists lined up behind a long table." I felt that formal distance, from the audience and from the three panelists opposite the moderator, even though we shared a table.

Our dance institutions are full of these divisions: ballet vs. contemporary, performer vs. audience, lack vs. abundance. But if we truly want to address racial equity we have to do more than have a conversation in the same manner that perpetuates the very systems we are attempting to critique. We need to re-imagine how these convenings come to be and who is involved in building them. We need to re-imagine the use of space and our relationship to one another in the space. And we need to be mindful of what we ask of people, be mindful of where they are and re-imagine the best ways to honor each person's efforts to be present and willing to work.

More to Say: Reflections on the 2015 Dance/NYC Symposium (part 4)

More to Say: Reflections on the 2015 Dance/NYC Symposium (part 2)

2015-02-25T23:17:00.000-05:00

More to Say: Reflections on the 2015 Dance/NYC Symposium (part 1)

These are the remarks I intended to share this past Sunday as a part of the Power, Privilege, & Perception: Voices on Race and Dance series of panels. I sat on the final panel, Making Change: Artist Voices alongside Alice Sheppard, Independent Dancer and Choreographer, Virginia Johnson, Artistic Director, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Richard Toda, Artistic Coordinator of Educational Outreach, American Ballet Theatre, Eduardo Vilaro, Artistic Director, Ballet Hispanico, and moderated by Carlton Turner, Executive Director, Alternate ROOTS.

Framed by this prompt --
What is already being done to realize a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable sector? Hear from a panel of Dance/USA members and Dance/NYC committee leaders and partners already doing work in the field. How can you institute change within your organization and how can we work together to advance a more equitable art form.

I prepared the following --

Good Afternoon. My name is Sydnie Mosley. As a member of the New York City dance community I wear many hats, but this afternoon I am speaking from two places: as Vice Chair of the Dance NYC Junior Committee (or JCOMM as we affectionately call it) and also, as an emerging artist in the field, with my company Sydnie L. Mosley Dances celebrating its fifth year of dancing in New York City in 2015. As an artist, it has been my prerogative to center the stories of black women and organize for gender and racial equity through my art making process. This prerogative has developed parallel to my four-year tenure on JCOMM.

Last year, at the Dance/NYC Symposium I stood with my fellow committee members and led a session called, “Diversity! We Did It/We Didn’t.” In that session we walked participants through our process for starting to build a more multi-cultural organization.

@dancenycjcomm Diversity #wedidit #wedidnt

A photo posted by Dance/NYC Junior Committee (@dancenycjcomm) on Feb 23, 2014 at 10:19am PST

In the moment of that presentation, I had not been prepared for how emotionally open telling the JCOMM story would leave me. I felt raw when we were finished, because in truth - as much as it was a group story - it has also been my personal story. Telling the JCOMM story required me to discuss my tokenism: often being the smart articulate black girl in spaces where rarely anyone looks like me. Although I had not been prepared in that moment, our transparency – my transparency especially - was real and necessary to encourage honest dialogue about race as it applies to institutions and practices in the dance field.

So in the spirit of that productive transparency, I offer you two ideas from both the work of the Junior Committee and myself as an individual artist to realize more equity in our functioning: 1. TAKE NOTE 2. DO YOUR HOMEWORK/APPRENTICE

1. TAKE NOTE

JCOMM’s deep dive into understanding equity within our committee was prompted by our 2010 census data of dance workers between the ages 21-35, which showed that the average dance worker was a 28 year old, white woman who identified most closely with ballet and modern dance forms and lived in Brooklyn. That census provided an entry point for the larger committee to take notice of what I knew about JCOMM from the first day I walked in the room: that the committee was only connected to and serving the needs of that particular demographic.

As a response, I encourage every one in the space right now to do what we did -- Take note of who is in the room and who is not. Who is afforded the opportunity to be in this space and hold this conversation? And who is not?

2. DO YOUR HOMEWORK/APPRENTICE
We identified our application process as an entry point to change what we discovered. After drafting language and consulting with trusted mentors for revisions, we added application questions that asked for experience and ideas around multicultural organization building. We explicitly asked for people of color to apply, and I volunteered to actively recruit persons of color – knowing & understanding that changing the make up of the committee was only one layer of addressing diversity and equity.

As a result, we are in our second year of bringing folks onto the committee who are not only of diverse racial backgrounds, but also who are already committed to and in the process of learning to organize for equity. We are a committee of individuals doing our homework, learning about our privileges and systematic inequities, and bringing those discoveries to the table. And we are brokering long term partnerships with organizations like the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond to continue to deepen and unpack our understanding of race. The JCOMM culture has changed from one where I felt like my voice was not valued as one of few persons of color in the room, to a culture where we are committed to having difficult conversations about race and do so in all of our regular convenings.

I deeply respect my colleagues on the Junior Committee who are continuing to push and do this work. One of our former members, Erica Frankel always describes JCOMM as a “Learning Community.” I would further that currently, we are a learning community who are consistently working to understand our privileges and be better at recognizing them. Who see ourselves as cultural organizers. Who keep our ears to the ground and bring to the table the work our communities across the 21-30 age bracket to which we are accountable deem necessary.

We know that we are not experts in this work and we do not claim to be. But we are open. And we are seeking to learn more. We are apprenticing.
--
I was at a conversation last weekend at BAX’s Artist Services Day facilitated by Dancing While Black, an artist-led initiative that supports the diverse work of Black dance artists, and in my small break out group one of the participants talked about this idea of “Who got next?” Meaning who is going to organize and facilitate the next conversation, opening it up to more folks who are not already thinking deeply and acting in this work.

I encourage you to connect with one another in the room today. Meet some one new, debrief and digest what you’ve taken in, and maybe you will build together and organize what’s next. There are a number of persons in the room already for whom organizing for equity is paramount in their art making practice, as it is mine.

At Camille Brown’s “The Gathering,” a space created during APAP week to dive into inequities for black women dance artists, Paloma McGregor offered that this sort of community building is not tangential to her art making, but rather it creates the container that facilitates the creation of her work. I fully feel that in my art making practice. It is why showing up (and bringing members of my dance company along as a “field trip”) to as many conversations and convenings and lectures and panels and performances that address race in dance has become a regular part of my artistic practice. It is why I keep diving deeper into working as an organizer through my art. And it is certainly why being an instigator on the Junior Committee has been so important to me over the past four years.

More to Say: Reflections on the 2015 Dance/NYC Symposium (part 3)

More to Say: Reflections on the 2015 Dance/NYC Symposium (part 1)

2015-02-25T23:12:00.001-05:00

I am going to be transparent.

I had been nervous for some time about participating in the Power, Privilege, & Perception: Voices on Race and Dance session at this past Sunday's Dance/NYC Symposium. The invitation itself felt like the latest iteration of putting Sydnie, token black girl on the Dance/NYC Junior Committee, up front, even if that was not the intention of the Dance/NYC staff and session curators. When I brought my participation on the panel to the table of my JCOMM peers, I told them just that. They, in turn, acknowledged my feelings. We talked about my leadership in JCOMM's various diversity initiatives over the past few years. We discussed how this panel was an opportunity not just for me to represent the committee, but also myself as an artist and the work I do around race and gender equity within my practice.

That series of conversations is why I accepted the invitation. The fact that my peers continued to check in and offer support over the several weeks leading up to the symposium is also why I accepted the invitation. Four years ago when I began my relationship with Dance/NYC, I could not have had that kind of frank conversation with my JCOMM peers. At that time, I did not feel my voice was valued at that table, although I was heavily recruited to be in that space of power, access, and privilege; in a space that purported to represent the needs of the broader dance community ages 21-30, and yet the majority of those actually in the room most closely identified with Clare.

We still have a long way to go, but in 2015, I sit as a leader on a committee of individuals who are questioning and instigating and organizing both within and outside the committee sphere. Folks who are working deeply on issues of equity outside the committee are bringing that learning to the JCOMM table, and likewise, those who do not have as much experience are bringing the learning from JCOMM to their individual practices and places of employment throughout the field. Our committee openly discusses our precarious position of gatekeeping. We are deepening our individual understandings of racism. We challenge each other, support each other and learn from each other in this work.

I was disappointed that I was not able to more fully share that story with the Symposium audience. So, over the next few posts I will instead share that story here, as well as other thoughts specifically regarding my panel, and this conversation on "race and dance"- at large.

More to Say: Reflections on the 2015 Dance/NYC Symposium (part 2)

The One Art Project

2015-02-04T00:00:00.000-05:00

What is art?
How is it so universal, and yet interpreted so differently by different artists around the world?
Why is it so important to cultures all around the world?
Who are artists and why do they create?

Who better than artists themselves to answer these fundamental questions?

The One Art Project explores the meaning of art through a collection of video portraits of artists from around the world. -Damel Dieng, theoneartproject.com

I am honored to be one of the first artists featured in artist photographer and film maker Damel Dieng's ambitious project: The One Art Project. A talented artist himself, Damel has been an integral part of the SLMDances family as our logo designer and visual brand consultant. Now, he is deepening our understanding of art by profiling a day in the life of up to 100 artists of different mediums, backgrounds and locations in the world. Please take a look at the portrait of myself and artists Rosemary Feit Covey and Mejah Mbuya. Share and join in the community as Damel opens the portal to a multifaceted portrait of art and artists.