Dancing at Blake

Today at James Hubert Blake High School in Silver Spring, we performed Unmoored for dance students from various high schools in the region. The audience's enthusiasm was unmistakable and I was eager to see their faces by the end of the show.

The house lights went up and we sat along the edge of the stage for a talk-back question-and-answer session. There were about four high school dance classes present - of an audience of about 300, no more than twenty were boys. I suppose this is not something that should surprise anyone - when I was in high school, our dance classes were monopolized by girls.

But this time, I got to thinking. Why is something as natural and vital as dancing still somewhat a gender-biased activity? When will our society value the indirect, inconclusive movement characteristic of dance as much as it values the direct, purposeful, goal-oriented movement of sports? We celebrate the triumphs made over the last few decades in providing as many athletic opportunities to girls as we do for boys. But why do we not, as a society, encourage the reverse; encourage our boys to take dance classes and explore movement from a different perspective?

We all have bodies, and we are all responsible to learn as much about them as we do about our minds, our personalities, our unique perspectives. I hope in our lifetimes, we will see this bridge crossed. Because we could always use more bodies on the dance floor.

Limits Beget Intimacy

Despite another whirlwind storm in New York which caught us all off guard, the Unmoored tour is off and running. We officially kicked off the tour with a full weekend in Brooklyn, graciously hosted by families of Berkeley Carroll High School before returning back to College Park.

Then, within a matter of three days, we were off to rehearse at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, a very intimate black-box theatre in DC's beautiful Capitol Hill. At CHAW we experienced an entirely fresh version of Unmoored - the full show performed in our smallest venue yet, no microphones (the audience being no more than several feet away) - and had to renegotiate most of the dances so that we could perform without colliding head-first into each other. But the physical closeness between us, the audience, and each other - the sense of being in the center of it all, face-to-face with humanity - was fitting for a venue in the nation's capital. At CHAW, we had no choice but to get up close and personal, with ourselves, the audience, the reality of what we were sharing.

We may have originally seen the tiny venue as a limit, an obstacle to our full and expansive performance of Unmoored. But the four walls that contained us only brought us closer to each other. There was little we could hide - every breath was audible, every sideways glance clearly in view. Humanity contained in a limited space can be a beautiful sight - a tiny point overflowing with life. It took more patience, care, and sensitivity to make CHAW work. And 'community' was a word that kept flowing through my mind. We are growing into a strong community of performers by virtue of one shared goal. Together, we negotiate our environment. Our success depends solely on how well we work together.

As we sit in the dark of the stage waiting for one dance to transition to the next, I close my eyes and hear New Orleans testimonies I had not heard before. The work continually expands what I previously thought was a thorough understanding of what it means to have lived through the tragedy and beauty that was Katrina.

Blizzards and Hurricanes

It is with some uncertainty that we embark on our semester-long journey of performance, community and humanitarian adventures. After an entire week of blizzards and snow storms that blanketed the DC region, our first shows at Sidwell Friends School as well as a week's worth of rehearsals were cancelled. Waiting patiently for the roads to clear, for someone to dig us out of three feet of snow, I couldn't help but notice some curious similarities between this miniature disaster of ours and one the scale of Hurricane Katrina

Like Katrina, our snowstorm was, first, a natural phenomenon; an unavoidable circumstance. But as soon as the action of the event subsides, the aftermath of such a natural disaster depends upon people, society and community. How efficiently can we work together to clean up the mess? How well can we use the resources we have? Who and what is prioritized? When 'disaster' strikes, we are forced to depend on each other. Although our day-to-day lives as we see them are individual, independent from the lives of others, only when we are left at the mercy of something beyond ourselves can we recognize the value of community.

As the city began to open up the roads, the rest of us went to work with shovels and bags of salt, slowly chipping away at the layers of snow it had taken mother nature mere hours to bestow upon us but would take us days to clear up.

I, personally, met neighbors I didn't know I had. I had to borrow a shovel from the house on the right and park my car in another neighbor's parking space while the driveway was cleared. These disasters have the potential of forging extraordinary communities because we are all somewhat powerless against the forces of nature unless we work together.

Perhaps this is where Hurricane Katrina truly became a tragedy; it revealed the gaping holes within our society. It shamelessly showed who was not willing to put their pride and ego aside to work for a greater good.

Bay Area writer, Rebecca Solnit's recent book, "A Paradise Build in Hell" explores precisely the phenomenon of disaster and the humanity that arises from moments of desperation. She writes, "Disaster, along with moments of social upheaval, is when the shackles of conventional belief and roles fall away and the possibilities open up." As we all were forced to surrender to the piles of snow falling outside, mother nature seemed to be teaching us to turn inwards and reflect; to realize how much we depend on each other and how we can spend our time strengthening rather than ignoring the communities that inherently form. Certainly, we may all be better able to connect to what Katrina really means for our world with this relatively quaint 'natural disaster' of our own.

For more information about Rebecca Solnit and her editorial page at The Nation Magazine:

http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/rebecca_solnit