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Flash Dispatch, 10-2:
Color My World
Intersection 2 Confab: Heaven for Artists of Color
By Maura Nguyen Donohue
Copyright 2000 Maura Nguyen Donohue
AMHERST, Massachusetts
-- I have seen Heaven and it looks something like the "Intersection
II" (I-2) conference. An intersection of performance, practice and
ideas took place September 26-29 at New World Theater at the University
of Massachusetts here. This was a true gathering of peers, not a
booking conference or an academic conference full of deadening paper
presentations. Roberta Uno, artistic director of New World Theater,
recalled in her opening speech that the first Intersection conference
two years ago was the conference that theater artists of color always
wanted to go to. She was absolutely right. But, and this is an enthusiastic
addition not a contradiction, what I-2 has done is expand the geography.
I do not consider myself necessarily to be a 'theater artist' but
I felt absolutely at home here. This was a space for peers to speak
about and see work that crosses borders both artistic and geographical.
The dialogue included peer artists from the international arena
and across wider interdisciplinary lines. I, for one, was thrilled
to be standing in the midst of such innovative and inspiring traffic.
New World Theater is
a 21-year-old visionary cultural institution known for highlighting
work by artists of color. In residence at the Fine Arts Center of
the University of Massachusetts, it has successfully redefined the
role of the arts in higher learning. Though its primary focus is
the presentation and production of works by playwrights of color,
it is the model every college and university dance/performance department
should be following as well. It has successfully blurred the lines
between professional and community, art and politics, scholarship
and activism.
More than 50 artists/companies
were brought to I-2 to speak and present their work at the conference.
Activities included keynote addresses, performances, play responses,
illustrated case studies, artist technique workshops, roundtable
discussions, organizational meetings and late night events. The
Five College Dance Department held a pre-conference panel with David
White (Dance Theater Workshop, Laura Faure (Bates Dance Festival),
Laura Colby (Elsie Management), Dorothy Jungels (Everett Dance Theater)
and moderator Bob Antil (Residential Arts Director). It was a required
event for their dance students that offered valuable and varied
insights and exposure to important aspects of the professional dance
world. The New England Foundation for the Arts and the Doris Duke
Charitable Foundation each held presenter meetings. Meanwhile, the
DTW Suitcase Fund Mekong Project held organizational meetings and
the Theater Communications Group held a panel on International Collaborations.
Sekou Sundiata, poet
and writer in residence at the New School for Social Research, gave
an engaging keynote address on "East Coast, West Coast, Worldwide"
that discussed how music can show us about borders, boxes and breaking
down walls. I appreciated his question "Why can't people keep their
differences without antagonism?" Diana Taylor, scholar of Latin
American Theater and chair of Performance Studies at New York University
presented a keynote address on "Staging Social Memory." Though more
static than Sundiata's, it was no less interesting as she focused
on Peru's major theater collective Yuyachkani, which presented one
of the three feature performances for I-2, in an examination of
embodied knowledge.
Yuyachkani's "Antigona,"
adapted by Jose Watanabe, directed by Miguel Rubio and performed
by Teresa Ralli adds a level of political struggle to Sophocles's
play. The work stems from hours worth of testimony from the mothers,
daughters and sisters of the men who have disappeared in Peru. Another
featured performance was "Uttar-Priyadarshi" by Ratan Thiyam's Chorus
Repertory Theater from Manipur. For more information on that check
out Tehreema Mitha's review, Flash Review
2, 9-25: Surprise.
Everett Dance Theater
from 'down the road' in Providence performed "Somewhere in the Dream"
on the second night of the conference. EDT is a New York Dance and
Performance ("Bessie") Award-winning troupe that also maintains
the Carriage House, a performance space and school in Providence.
They are a phenomenal alternative example of how to make work away
from the NYC model. The company is directed by Dorothy Jungels and
her son Aaron, who also performs, designs their interactive sets
and built much of the Carriage House; is managed by her daughter
Therese and also includes daughter Rachael. The work uses bits of
"Giselle," "Othello," "Hamlet" and other classics to look at the
state of education in America. Modern dance, circus arts, gymnastics,
hip-hop, and ballet combine in an examination of race and the "American
Dream" set against the backdrop of a high school graduation. Rolling
chain link fences heighten the kinetic activity on stage and allow
the performers to showcase their athletic talents. The company's
artistic vision is fueled by their work with youth and this clearly
shows in "Somewhere." Five young boys steal the show - a real achievement
amongst the large and vibrant ensemble -- in break-dancing sequences.
One who had hurt himself before the performance danced his way around
stage on crutches, inspired by a Carriage House residency with Bill
"Crutch" Shannon. Sokeo Ros pops and locks his way through his Cambodian
family's story of loss and dislocation. Hip-hop theater is alive
and well in New England. And I mean ALIVE.
Late night, or 9:30 depending
on how you felt that day, events included Split Britches -- demystifying
the Queer, disorienting the Orient and demythologizing Southern
Gothic in "Salad of the Bad Cafe"; Carl Hancock Rux, Helga Davis
and Valerie Winbourne crossing poetry, music, dance and theater
to examine the iconography of the black male in historic and contemporary
society in the overwhelmingly powerful "No Black Male Show"; and
Universes, a spoken word/poetry/hip-hop/funk/vocal music/theater
company from the South Bronx presenting "Slanguage." An interesting
side note as a member of the journalistic community: Universes consists
of Bessie- and Obie-award winning artists and yet it was pointed
out during a case study I was a part of that they couldn't get a
New York Times review until they came down to P.S. 122. Add that
to Paul Ben-Itzak's 9/29 rant about Jack Anderson trying to review
Rennie Harris's hip-hop take on "Romeo and Juliet" and think about
what you can do to change the landscape of performance review and
criticism. (Editor's note: That rant was sent out to the free Dance
Insider e-mail list. For a copy of the rant or to be added to the
list, e-mail .)
Illustrated case studies
included Ananya Chatterjea's dance-theater work "Unable to Remember
Roop Kanwar," inspired by the 1987 story of a 19-year-old, college-educated
woman who committed sati (self-sacrifice by a devoted wife on her
husband's funeral pyre). The work uses classical Indian and modern
dance and spoken text to question the safety of domestic space;
Julie Tolentino-Wood, a senior member of David Rousseve/REALITY,
shared "Mestiza," which layers post-modern movement, endurance,
visual imagery and live video to address cultural and sexual identity,
class and familial relationships, and societal notions of beauty;
Thomas DeFrantz, assistant professor of Theater Arts at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (yup MIT), showed and discussed parts of
"Monk's Mood," an experimental theater work utilizing tap and puppetry
to detail episodes in the life of Thelonius Monk; and I presented
parts of "SKINning the surFACE," which uses the historical episode
of 30,000 abandoned Amerasian children at the end of the war in
Vietnam as a springboard into an exhaustive physical exploration
of the bi-racial body and its personal and political repercussions.
I've briefly skimmed
over only some of what took place over 3.5 days in Western Massachusetts.
There was much more taking place and many more artists sharing thoughts
and hope. New World Theater does not actually have a theater of
its own and, as Roberta Uno put it during the closing of the conference,
they "have been sneaking into other people's houses and throwing
parties" for a couple decades. Regardless, they throw a great conference.
For more information on New World Theater, write Box 31810, U. Mass,
Amherst, MA 01003.
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