Leigh Donlan reports from Z Space:
Amara Tabor-Smith and Jose Navarrete at the West Wave Dance Festival (Photo: Robbie Sweeny)
There was something different happening in the San Francisco dance world on Monday night, October 21st. It was getting real. WE HAVE THIS was the third night of performances in the West Wave Dance Festival. Curated by Jesse Hewit, five pairs of selected dance artists were asked to investigate their one-on-one collaborative relationships to see if working together could provide sustainability on personal, socio-economic and cultural levels. The results were some of the most honest and courageous performances I’ve seen. It almost doesn’t feel right to review pieces like these. They are better experienced live.
The first collaboration started in the lobby of Z Space while guests were finishing their drinks. A beat box started blasting music mixed with excerpts from Malcolm X speeches. Surrounded by tall people, I missed most of Amara Tabor-Smith’s dancing, but I was lucky that José Navarrete set the beat box down near me. He grabbed some powdered chalk and tossed it into the air as if initiating ritual and began drawing a mural on the floor with his hands. He then led our procession into the theatre, boom box on shoulder, as we passed hoodies that were hung on the wall – possibly alluding to the Trayvon Martin case – with video screens strategically placed in the hoods, playing some of the more rare (and more violent) police brutality footage from the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. A poem in the program further commented on violence and social injustice: “kick, punch, drag, tase,” “he is dragged off but still/ and still we are twirking in a blink of an eye it’s forgotten.” We slowly took our seats.
Jesse Hewit and Sara Shelton Mann at the West Wave Dance Festival (Photo: Robbie Sweeny)
Jesse Hewit and Sara Shelton Mann’s piece began with Hewit sitting on the floor in the dark, and as the lights came up we could see him trembling and starting to cry. But not for long, as Shelton Mann sailed in and lured him out of his despondency with music and dance, set to Justin Timberlake’s Mirrors. These two worked well together. You could feel a genuine chemistry; there was trust. Their program note simply read “Yes, you can have that one ghost that sits on the edge of my bed on Thursdays.”
The audience was then invited down to the stage to sit in a circle for Laura Arrington and Brontez Purnell’s piece. Purnell was the only performer and took to the stage wearing nothing but a poorly cloaked sheet as he kicked rolls of drawing paper across the floor. Arrington (who was not physically there) was present through her words, typed out on sheets of paper that Purnell tossed into the circle. It was a set of directions bestowing us with the authority in a game of one-word-at-a-time while whiskey bottles and Pabst Blue Ribbon cans were passed around. We were asked not to record, but to be present and have the moment, to experience it. Following directions, the game began and the audience began shouting random things like “Queen!,” “Narnia!,” “Faggot!” and “Beautiful!” while Purnell casually rode around the theatre on a bike and then a skateboard, naked all the while. He owned it, and it was brilliant.
Monique Jenkinson at the West Wave Dance Festival (Photo: Robbie Sweeny)
Liz Tenuto and Monique Jenkinson followed and were just as fabulous. Clad in metro business woman attire, they began standing with their backs to the audience, swaying on sensible heels and A frame skirts while digging their fingers up their… derrières, trying to remove an infinitely deep wedgie or something else that wouldn’t budge. As their quest for freedom continued, somehow their panties ended up around their ankles which did not deter their newfound freedom of movement. I was amazed by how well they could dance with their panties around their ankles. Not one ankle, both ankles bound by spandex and lace. Part of their program notes read “who is the woman I want to become? Am I the woman I want to become? Do I have to wait to be the woman I want to become?” And as they finished, they wiggled their panties back up, grabbed their 16 ounce Starbucks coffees and sauntered off with their briefcases.
The evening ended with Mica Sigourney and Keith Hennessy’s piece on identity. After asking the audience a variety of revealing questions – where are you from, where are your parents from, do you rent or own, were you ever a vegan, will you fight for San Francisco, how long have you lived her, are you still in the closet, when was the last time you danced in a circle – they continued the questioning, never answering, as they set up light and sound machines and invited selected pre-rehearsed audience members to join them in a sort of club circle dance that resembled the hokey pokey.
This was a thought-provoking and daring evening of performance, thanks to these talented dance artists, who call the Bay Area home. And thanks are due to Joe Landini for taking the helm when the festival’s existence was recently threatened. It’s festivals like West Wave that continue to provide artists with these opportunities to explore new ideas. When times are hard economically for everyone, not just for artists, it’s especially important to keep the arts alive. Arts are not a luxury, they’re a necessity, especially in difficult times.
You have one more chance to catch the West Wave Dance Festival this year. Buy tickets now for the Monday Oct 28th program at Z Space curated by Amy Seiwert and featuring work by choreographers Robert Dekkers, Maurya Kerr, Julia Adam and Milissa Payne.
