Taking to the Soil: A Reprise and Response to Spring Circle X

by Sarah Cargill

My mother is a wonderful storyteller. She is effusive, hilarious, and quick to mirror the secret habits, unconscious mannerisms, and tender idiosyncrasies of everyone she encounters. She speaks with her whole body, carefully pacing the ebbs and flows of story, setting listeners up for big reveals, surprise twists, and abrupt, anticlimactic endings that make you question if anything is ever as mundane as it seems. Her stories almost always position her as the life of the party. She joyfully pulls details from a running catalogue of mental ephemera, crafting a narrative that reveals less about the moment itself and more about her sense of place, kinship, longing, and home. 

Despite all of her capacity for language and description, my mother had kept my birth story brief throughout the majority of our relationship. Here’s what I know: My mother gave birth to me during a seasonal shift from summer to autumn. It was nighttime and San Francisco was blanketed under a dangerously dense layer of fog. She was prepped for a C-section and left in her hospital gown with a bare belly for what may as well been days. She came down with a fever during the wait. I was born, 12 hours later, “with eyes wide open,” she emphasizes. 

While I’m certain that there were other details and players driving the trajectory of this story, my mother’s version consistently features three characters: me, herself, and the fog. San Francisco fog was the first element to greet me into the world. At our first encounter, the fog imparted two valuable lessons: First, the distinction between medicine and poison is in its dosage and application. In my version of my birth story, fog was medicine. A cooling balm for the heat generated by my mother’s fever. Atmospheric moisture to soothe the cracks in her skin and voice. The same fog that likely made my mother sick is also the fog that sent breath into her lungs so that she could welcome me into the world. My relationship to fog has fortified my capacity to navigate density, shadow, shape-shifting, and complex relationships. This brings me to the second lesson: my relationship to being here and being from here is complicated.  

On May 5th, 2019 I attended Spring Circle X at the Polish Club in San Francisco’s Mission District to explore my relationship to home and locality. As I write this, I am beckoned by the memory of this experience to retrace my footsteps and locate myself in Yelamu (San Francisco). Moments upon entering the Polish Club, I was greeted with offers of nourishment and connection. Nearest to the entrance was a cornucopia of food for event participants and guest speakers to enjoy. The spread was designed to suit a multitude of palettes and dietary needs. Despite a fully scheduled day of activities, the atmosphere was relaxed, coaxing a slow integration. There was enough time and spaciousness to savor the abundance that was offered. A reminder: colonization and capitalism create the conditions for insatiable hunger - for food, time, space, connection - driven by the self-generated illusion of scarcity. Slowing down is decolonial praxis. 

With bellies full and hearts softened, we migrated to a large hall where the listening/talking circle took place. Chairs were arranged in a tight horseshoe, normalizing the active negotiation of space. The gentle clacking of beads and bone cultivated a sense of aural intimacy, a welcome shift from the cavernous echos that filled the space moments before. We were guided through conversation by five gracious speakers that afternoon: Tupili Lea Arellano (Rarámuri), Gregg Castro (t'rowt'raahl Salinan/rumsien Ohlone), Mary Jean Robertson (Cherokee), SissySlays the Indigecunt (Paiute Nation), and Snowflake Towers (Yaqui/Tzeltal). 

Gregg Castro opened the circle with the Fog Song, a multipurpose tune sung to redirect the area’s infamous fog while keeping nearby children focused on the potent magic of their own voice. In teaching us this song, Gregg lifted the fog that kept me hidden from others and from myself. In this moment, I felt my connection to place affirmed, deepend, and simultaneously challenged. Similarly to how I take pride in the fleeting kinship I experience when encountering other San Francisco locals who were born and raised in the city, I was delighted by how our relationship to fog connected us. As someone who is protective of the hidden lore and sacred codes that activate the magic of this city, I am aware that Gregg’s choice to share the song with us was nothing short of an act of generosity. Bravery, even. At the same time, positioning myself primarily as a listener in a conversation about locality and nativity necessitates a shift in my own perception of who is and is not local to this place. A challenging disposition for someone like me, being one of the few working class, black, queer locals who, despite everything, intends to stay in San Francisco. I swallow the words “Native San Franciscan.” Regardless of my local pride and best intentions, this descriptor is historically flattening and perpetuates the epistemological harm that the Ramaytush Ohlone continuously encounter. I am learning to make room for language that is more accurate and holding. 

Mary Jean Robertson reminded us that, when engaging in decolonial work within ourselves and communities, we must show up for what heals. If you’re unsure of where to begin, start where you feel connected. I am reminded of the exchange between Minnie and Velma from Toni Cade Bambara’s book The Salt Eaters where Minnie, a community healer, asks Velma, a community activist in dire need of experiencing her own wholeness, a foundational question:

 Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?… Just so’s you’re sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well.

Healing is no trifling matter. Tupili Lea Arellano beckoned us to be deliberate and bold when facing our deepest wounds, reminding us that, “every bad thing that happens to you is your medicine.” Much like the fog, we have the power to shapeshift and transmute sources of harm into powerful, life-affirming medicine. We exchange the weight of our wounds with the weight of our wholeness, learning along the way to discern the difference between that which keeps us burdened and that which keeps us rooted. Within the context of personal and collective healing, connection is a powerful antidote to overwhelm and stagnancy; it’s what makes healing both worthwhile and possible. Connection is what supports us to stay engaged in the process, trust our struggle, lay the groundwork for integration, and claim the bliss that we deserve. 

SissySlays the Indigecunt reminded us that we are not mere participants of a space, but co-creators of it, and that we must center lucidity over idealism as we reconcile our way forward. We transform space into place through active negotiation of power and accountability. Towards the end of the listening/talking circle, Snowflake Towers turned our collective attention to the tender subject of Indigenous and black relations. How can Indigenous communities integrate black people and dismantle anti-blackness? What work must black people engage in to propel decolonization? Where do the priorities of Indigenous communities and black communities intersect? How do we articulate our respective relationships to landlessness in ways that acknowledge the intersections of our specific struggles while honoring that which makes our circumstances unique? How do we care for ourselves and each other throughout the process? Snowflake calls upon us to stand in our full truth and power, reminding us that we get to decide which cycles we perpetuate or break. 

As Snowflake transitioned the conversation and collective energy to prepare participants for next portion of the afternoon, she noticed how our semi-circle had taken on a new shape. Throughout the conversation, many listeners moved the energy in their bodies by stretching, walking, eating, and shifting locations. By the end, our tight horseshoe became porous spiral. Snowflake spoke to how this new shape was a reflection of the collective capacity we had built to hold, acknowledge, and permeate space while staying connected and accountable to each other. 

I experienced Spring Circle X as its own expedited seasonal cycle where seeds of testimony and personal revelation were planted and geminated in the course of a few hours. I took to the rich soil lovingly prepared for our arrival, cracking open to receive the warmth and light of spring. 

QUEERED CARE to hear INDIGENOUS VOICES SPEAK

Praba Pilar responds to Spring Circle X

Queerness. Ease. Flow. Food, Sharing, Free.

As a performance artist, I long for art that takes fecund risks. I long for depth over surface, for commitment over quickness, for openness over salvation. As a mestiza Muisca from Colombia and as an Idle No More organizer, I long for recuperation and reparations for our Indigenous and Afro Americas communities. As a queer cis woman, I desire meaning making and movement that doesn’t just break me, again. As a diasporic person, I long for works that challenge the denial of the pain and trauma of racialized violence in the United States. Sometimes, even if for a short time, I find a home.

Entering the Spring Circle X gathering at the Polish Club, I was welcomed to join the many folks seated together sharing food. Made by artist Jesse Hewit, the food was delicious, gorgeous, plentiful and free. I sat, ate, and drank up the queer beauty reflected through the room. I was invited to experience the day in my own way, on my own terms, entering and exiting as needed. Queerness, ease, and flow.

Listening. Hearing.

I was here to listen and write about the Talking & Listening Circle Prioritizing Indigenous Voices. The talking circle featured Tupili Lea Arellano (Rarámuri), Gregg Castro (t'rowt'raahl Salinan/rumsien Ohlone), Mary Jean Robertson (Cherokee), SissySlays the Indigecunt (Paiute Nation), and Snowflake Towers (Yaqui/Tzeltal).

The talking circle opened with Snowflake acknowledging the land we are on, and the pueblos originarios from the area. Snowflake spoke about coming to this process of a talking circle prioritizing Indigenous voices, shared some of the themes they were interested in exploring through the circle and invited the other speakers to share. A conversation ensued between the speakers about their lives, processes, concerns, experiences and more, which lasted about two hours. Here are some of the themes that really hit home for me.

Gregg began by singing phrases from an Ohlone fog song, in the Ohlone language. Fog is a constant presence in the Bay Area, and Gregg shared that this fog song can help lift the fog, not only outside but also inside us. Conditions can change, and we can help change them. Gregg shared some of the history of the Ohlone in the Bay Area and further south in Monterrey, and the work they are presently engaged in. 

When Mary Jean introduced herself and shared how it was she came to be living in this area, she spoke to her rootedness in her Cherokee community. Being on this land now, she spoke of her sense of responsibility to work with and support the pueblos originarios from the Bay Area. 

Snowflake introduced the concept of being born a criminal. To be born already a criminal, solely for existing as an Indigenous body in the Americas. Pueblos originarios are not only inexplicably treated by the legal system and dominant culture as foreigners to their own land, they are criminalized. Snowflake spoke about how central decriminalizing is to decolonizing.

Two-spirit medicine carrier Tupili spoke of the creator as a co-creator. The co-creator has to be invited in, as Tupili emphasized that we have the free will to make choices about inviting in our co-creator, or not, to further the medicine work and healing. 

SissySlays spoke of finding ways to reach a place of lucidity in your own process, of becoming clear on why you are doing what you are doing. On creating other options, choosing intentionally what one passes on, and not creating new cycles of colonization. Of taking the opportunities to turn seemingly poisonous moments into something else, while remembering to make space for others. 

Shared themes flowed through the conversation. One theme was time, and concepts of the future present past – specifically how ‘first contact’ is spoken of as of the past, but no, first contact with Indigenous people is always being enacted in the present. Likewise, colonization is seen by many as something of the past, when it impacts personal, social, and political life daily. That the work, including this circle, is not to overcome conquest, but to speak the truth, to find ways to see the false divisions and separations imposed by white supremacy, and not follow them. To take the tools used against one and turn them into tools to build. 

The circle came to a close with Snowflake speaking to the trauma of anti-blackness. They movingly shared how anti-blackness can be addressed not only in the general public, but in Indigenous communities in the Americas. We have a profound shared history between Afro descended and Indigenous communities across the Americas. Snowflake asks us not to excuse or dismiss anti-blackness, but to center undoing anti-blackness in our work. 

Care. To care. To take care. To give care. To be cared about. To be cared for. To care together.

Care came to me as the pattern – a layered weaving pattern - of the event. Palpable care was woven through the many moments, one that held the vulnerability and openness of sharing and listening alongside a warmth of being cared for. 

What do I care about? What is the impact of that care? Who do I care with? Who cares for me? What do I not care about? What do I take care of? What is the impact of not caring? How was care used to traumatize my community? Who do I take care of? Who have I alienated through care? Who do I not care about? What do I not give care to? How do I care? How do I care together with others? How am I cared for? Who do we leave out of care? When was my care control, not care? When was my control not caring? When was my care controlled? When was care used to control me?

Care can be a risky framework. At its best, care asks one to acknowledge and attend to the manifold factors that construct every single moment of life. On the land, this can be caring for waterways, for soil, for plants, rocks, and critters large and small. In the mountains in the north of Colombia, the Kogi have always taken care of the lagoons at sea level, because these regulate rain over the entire mountains. The Kogi care for the entire water system, not for themselves, but for all. In the social, this can take many forms that engage intersecting oppressions in community, including restorative reparations, supporting social and political movements that focus on specific communities, including people with disabilities, understanding the violence underlying patterns of migration, engaging the Zapatista concept, ‘todo para todos, nada para nosotros,’ and so much more.

At its worst, care can be about power, control and domination. Care can be used to normalize violence, further colonial conquest, and weaponize salvation narratives. Care can be patronizing, can be used to force others to change according to gender identity, sexuality, ability, race, ethnicity, and nationality. Much blunt trauma has been perpetuated under the term care; queers have been medicalized, people with disabilities have been harmed and killed, worlds have been destroyed. Fundamentalist Catholics in my own family in Colombia bludgeoned me with care: “I care about your salvation, do…. I care about your future, do not… I care about your soul, do… [fill in the blank with violence to my identity].

There’s been a complex and nuanced dialogue on care since feminist scholar Carol Gilligan articulated the ‘ethics of care’ in her 1982 book In a Different Voice. The ethics of care framework looks beyond moral justifications and legal frameworks to interpret social actions. Yayo Okano explains the difference in the political sphere as: “On one hand, liberal theorists respect the autonomous will when people make a decision, on the other hand, care theorists ask why and in what context people make such a decision.” 

Black feminists and post-colonial scholars critiqued the ethics of care framework because of the complex and violent history of how this quality – care – has been used to perpetuate violence, conquest, and trauma. Uma Narayan pointed out how Europeans used a care framework to do colonial conquest, as “justifications for colonialism and slavery in terms of crude self-interest alone seem to have been rare. These enterprises were made morally palatable by the rhetoric of responsibility and care for enslaved and colonized Others.” She articulates how European states claimed an obligation, and burden, to share Western civilization around the world (the white man’s burden). She asks us not to forget, quoting Edward Said, that by 1914, “Europe held a grand total of roughly 85 percent of the earth as colonies, protectorates, dependencies, dominions, and commonwealths.”

It is a grappling – how to introduce other ways of being and doing in the social outside of moral justifications or legal frameworks – while attending to historic and present day colonization, oppression and asymmetries of violence. The grappling has yet ways to go, as racism persists in the field of the ethics of care. The organization and online portal Foundation Critical Ethics of Care maintains a website with research, publications, a network of care ethicists, conferences, reviews, blogs, thesis, dissertations and more. In a February 2019 interview on Care Ethics and Political Repair featured on the website, Jorma Heier discusses the lack of diversity in the field, stating “when I look at publications or attend conferences on Care, EoC [Ethics of Care] still seems to be predominantly a white middle-class feminists academic event.” Heier speaks of an inclusion problem in the field, speculating on the causes and on possible remedies. Most daunting, she relates that “there are only a few publications on care that draw on indigenous or non-Western concepts and practices...”

The ethics of care field revolves around concepts of relational ontology, interconnectedness, and reciprocal thinking. To exclude Indigenous voices from the field is a form of epistemic violence that invisibilizes the ethics of relational accountability, reciprocity, and stewardship deeply embedded in the cosmologies and world views of Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Art

English grammar provides three verb tenses: past, present, and future. Speaking, thinking, writing, dreaming or being in English can take one outside of cosmovisions and experiences of multivalent time, of being in all three in simultaneity. Cual presente no es formado por el futuro del pasado?

Art remains a setting, a place, a landscape where what seems impossible can be possibled. Porque, si, se debe, aun in the midst of catastrophe. Artists experiment with space, bodies, voices, sound, movement, presence, spatial relations, temporal differences, relations, absence, networks, form, futures, content, language, silence, pasts, emptiness, and… care.

In this event, Snowflake Towers and Keith Hennessy offer a care centered on past, present, and future Indigenous principles of reciprocity and relationality. A care that makes networks of relationships visible and physical. One that asks, to quote Kendrick Lamar, ‘Sit down. Be humble.’ Listening to the voices, words, and languages from worlds that have persisted and endured through genocide across Turtle Island, across Abya Yala, is a different kind of collaboration, of coalition, of working together. By acknowledging that we have heard enough from the dominant white supremacist culture, by listening in silence instead of interrupting and imposing, is to experience what it can be to work with others. While we are all relations, some relations have purposively sought to maintain and care for the world, while others have purposively ended worlds.

These artists share a politics of care, of queered care. They are not asking the audience to do it hungry, or alienated, or from outside, because no one is outside of relations. They ask us to sit in the circle, be a part of it, without imposing. The speakers do not make believe it’s not complicated, that there is not trauma, that there is not a need for reparations, that there are easy answers. Why make believe this is supposed to be easy? Why leave because this work is hard? Be here, but don’t go hungry, don’t suffer more, don’t be more violent, don’t be ashamed. Don’t quit. Don’t provide your solution. Don’t save anyone. 

As political movements glorifying individuality and personal greed at the expense of the commons and community are growing around the world, this future, present, past work becomes even more important. Within this intervention, as part of the 500 years decolonizing project in the Americas, is this invitation: listen, learn, decolonize, decriminalize, support. 

Care.

Encounters through, around, and within Winter Circle X

By P. Dante Cuauhtémoc

Encounter 1: Self

I am writing this to offer a perspective as to what happened December 16th, 2018 at the Polish Club in San Francisco, CA. I am writing as a graduate student critical dance studies ethnographer, still early in his experience with academe, and too, as a two-spirit butch queen storyweaver/storywalker with great experience in collecting and sharing stories of all of my relations. I am writing as a participant-ethnographer, as an artist-scholar, as a quare indigenous person, and as a healer. And, I am writing, to practice the tradition of my peoples telling our own stories.

On the facebook event page, it states clearly:

“Winter Circle X [is] An unsettling winter gather of talking, listening, healing, ritual, and performance with food and a punk band. A three-part event to support moving into winter considering indigenous/settler relations, healing from political harm, celebrating queer solidarity. All are welcome. Come for one part or stay all day. Everything free.”

And, in all honesty, I had not planned to attend on the sheer fact that, as a poor indigenous person, it is difficult work for me to heal, engage, speak about, or speak around issues and politics of settler colonialism and indigenous relationships... More, with Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero as the producers/hosts, which is a traditionally post-modern, politically radical, and experimental arts group--I was, again, at first untrusting of their ability to hold a space for indigenous voices. Our voices are too often exploited or silenced, and our traditional ways are too often seen as obsolete, or too conservative. I was unsure that an experimental time and space, with punk, would understand and have us, in the ways we need...

But, when I saw who was speaking in part one of the event, I felt at ease--I felt like I could go, and be in safe company. The speakers were Kanyon CoyoteWoman Sayers-Roods who is of the Mutsun-Ohlone peoples, Snowflake Towers who is of both the Yoeme and Mayan peoples, Mary Jean Robertson of the Cherokee peoples, and Sissy Slays, Indigecunt of the Paiute Nation. These peoples are known as leaders in my various communities with whom I walk, and I knew that if they were to start the opening prayers and talking, then the space would be charged towards a peaceful exchange. I know, that when indigenous people, and especially when our leaders are given the steering wheel of any function or happening, we tend to give it to the non-humans: the earth, the animals, the plants, and the elements. And, when we start that way, new relations, and new healings between peoples of shared traumatic experiences can and do take place.

Before the event occurred, I received an email, asking me if I was available to be a healer. I said yes, and then, I was a part of the day--a facilitator of the second part of the day: The Community Political Healing Clinic. For this event, I was no longer going to attend as a member of the community--but honored as a leader, and a healer.

With this in mind, I write as a giver, a guide--as a part of the event, but not of the whole event. I write with many relations...

Encounter 2: Family

It must be stated that I did not attend this event alone, and that I did not participate in this event alone. I was with my family. My mother, Amparo, who is in her own right a medicine woman, was with me, along with my cousin Brandon. There too, was my Tia/Aunt Rosa, and her husband, my Tio Mark. My Mescalero-Apache, my Mexica Chichimeca and Cano peoples, my mestizo peoples, and my european peoples of my blood and marriage were there. I had my family with me.

As an artist, as a scholar, from a working class family, I haven't always had the privilege to have my family with me at events of high art, or experimental art functions. At indigenous ceremony, or gatherings, such as pow-wow, sure; but not at an experimental gathering based in western ideas of art. Here at “Winter Circle X”, my two worlds collided, my indigenous art practices and knowledge, and my experimental art practices and praxes--and, my family was present to be there, listen, participate in the healings, and be with me.

In a space about new discussions of how to heal from the trauma of settler colonialism, and create decolonial practices and talks, I am so happy to have had my family there. Personally, I have become accustomed to being alone in the struggle to decolonize western practices, while my family, decolonize through traditional practices at home and within our communities. And, to be together, in these new spaces, discussions, rituals, performances, and ceremony--was a dream come true I did not think I would see in my lifetime. And, for that, I am grateful, and humbled.

Encounter 3: Tribes & Houses

At Winter Circle X, it was not just my family of biological nature that was present--but also, my family of queer, tribal, and indigenous relations. And, they brought their families, and their relatives, relations too.

From Radical Faeries, to Houses of the Ballroom Scenes, and Indigenous Nations, collectives of all sorts of natures were present to gather and exchange, share ideas, time, cookies, soup, bread, and reflection with one another. Punk bands and dance companies, families and friends, rivals and healers, descendants of colonizers and the colonized--so many were present to be present, and be open to healing. Or, at least, many seemed to try to be present to be open to the healing that was offered.

It is usually unheard of, for so many people of so many different scenes to be present at a focused gathering to talk about the issues between them. It is a very rare thing for diversity to speak with itself and talk about why diversity exists in the first place, and perhaps where they are, and why they are there, and how they can be together in new and healthier ways. And with so much diversity, the indigenous people lead the first part of the day, from ceremony to discussion, between peoples of all walks of life.

Kanyon CoyoteWoman Sayers-Roods, Snowflake Towers, Mary Jean Robertson, and Sissy Slays spoke to all of us in the main room, in a large circle. Each of them were in a different spot in a circle of layer and levels of other circles. They were a panel, but more, a plenary embedded in a larger body, made of bodies of people of diverse experiences. And, they spoke about what they knew, how they felt, and why they were present.

Kanyon spoke about her life as an artist and an Ohlone woman. She focused on land, and indigeneity--and how even indigenous people can be colonial. She reminded us of context, and how to be open and humble about not knowing our shared indigenous histories. With erasure and genocide so very present in the world, Snowflake spoke about the need for healing, and the recognition of people present that are indigenous. With the caravan of people crossing borders to our south, it can be easy to forget that brown peoples of the Americas are all indigenous. But too, more, indigenous people exist all over the world, and indigeneity, and relation to that word, to ancestors must be explored and complicated. And, it must have space for the femme, for the queer, for the quare, for the non-conforming, for the fluid, and for the trans. Sissy Slays, in her words, told us of her experience being an indigecunt, of being femme, butch, passing, and in resistance to conforming to the gender roles, traditions, presentation, and performance of her people. She spoke of the trauma that comes with resistance, and too, the liberation she felt when she found vogue and the House Ballroom Scene. Through dance, through this queer black and brown art form, she found a way to express her genders in ways that made sense to her, and also, as a way to understand her indigeneity in a way necessary to her. To all people, to all relations, to the genocide, trauma, and the history that must be told, remembered and moved forward, our elder Mary Jean kept us centered. Decolonization is not a metaphor, and neither is indigenous. From her, we were reminded of the people from whom we come. We were reminded where we sit, and with whom we sit. We were reminded of a future that is possible, but one that must reckon with the past, is ever we are to move forward.

I gathered, that this first part of the day was about sitting with each other, reflecting, and becoming a new family. To listen to the words we use, to not assume meaning, and to ask before we use--and to be okay, and to let go, if we are denied access or ability to that which we want, or want to do. That first panel, in many ways, was about the protocol of asking permission to the first indigenous peoples of the land, but too, to the people from whom we descend. It was an ask, a ritual of asking permission, before we act, so that we may walk into the future together, instead of alone, with the hubris that we can do as we please--which only continues to lead to the destruction and pains of colonialism. The talking, was the thinking, and understanding, as to why we need, healing… and then came the healing clinics.

Encounter 4: Healings

Part two of the day was set up with ten healing clinics in the main space of the Polish Club. And, while the healers set up (which included myself), the participants/guests/witnesses, were asked to move to the other room to rest, process the talk, and to eat soup, drink and quench thirst, and to enjoy the holiday treats. For the healers, this was a time of transition and focus--to prepare for the work to be done to help each other work through the trauma of colonialism. For the participants, this was a precious “unstructured time,” for them to freely talk to one another, make new friends, and release the tension any sort of serious discussion often brings. This sort of event transition was smooth and lovely--giving ample time to the facilitators to find their place in the room, to conduct their healing clinics.

Soon it was time for the clinic. As Keith and Snowflake explained at the start of this section of the program, there were nine healing stations, each with a facilitator, and the tenth station is the clinic itself, which includes the participants. Healing is not only given, worked, prescribed, implemented and discarded. Healing is in the interactions with others around us, and is in the space we tend to inhabit. ‘The tenth healer’ was the unifying aspect of the clinics, that carried over from the day’s earlier panel--and, carried over onto the next parts of the day. It is a taking notice of what is there, that often goes unseen and uncredited. And here, in this way, all the relations were sought out to be acknowledged.

Because of the time and space limitations of the clinic, not every participant was able to visit every facilitator. I myself was only able to see some clinics across the room, but given the time limits and flow of the day, I really only participated in my healing workshop, and the workshop of “the tenth healer.” I taught an “authentic movement” based healing clinic, and was able to facilitate many participants at once. The goal was to have a moment to listen, watch, respond, and share what our bodies like doing--or do, and don’t do. And while my clinic was group oriented, other clinics, had to work on a one-to-one, one at at time mode--which allows for a focus on intention, with intimacy. And, the downfall to that sort of specificity, is that in a time allotted for 3-4 healing sessions, the healer is limited to only working with 3-4 people. And so, thank goodness for balance, and “the tenth healer”--at least everyone participated in at least one healing clinic--everyone had some good medicine that day. 

Encounter 5: Giving’Thanks’Giving’Thanks

Most striking to me was the way in which Keith gave thanks after the clinics were completed. In a circle created by bodies standing and moving together, Keith moved to the center with a big jug of water. He asked us to say thank you, and to pray, and give away our appreciation for this time in any or all languages we chose. Using the indeterminacy process of hydro-chronography, Keith set a time to give thanks based on how long it took him to pour the jug of water into a bowl. In a circle, we gave thanks, unified by water, and it’s associated action, the pour. Perhaps here, is another way to say “thank you” and “give thanks”--which is very important, as this world is changing rapidly, and there is a lot to be thankful for…

Encounter 6: Pogo into the Futures Present

Moving into the last part of the day, came a dance performance with a punk band. And though I was unable to stay for the full duration of the performance it was quite an energetic way to begin the end of this day. Bouncing up down, shaking limbs and heads, the dancers moved around the space. Sometimes, like in traditional punk pogo dance, they would hold each other, and bounce with and on each other. For the most part, it seemed as though pogo was a warm up for what would come. As the music grew, so did the locomotive movements of the dancers. Some witnesses decided to join in this dancing too, and there a sort of circular running to moshing ensued. Then the music changed, and the dancers moved slower, and started to dance with props.

The props consisted of blankets, ropes, strings, clothing, and signs with adjectives or messages. As the performance unfolded, the dancers, folded themselves with each other into the blankets, and pulled at each other, placing the signs specifically, at certain times to create a message; such as a “failure” sign next to a dancer underneath a bunch of blankets, and slowly moving out of that space to another. The dance did not seem choreographed, but it did seemed scored in a sort of machine like function, with cues in the band, the dancers, and in the props. As I left the building I gave thanks for the day again, and removed my earplug to return to normative sonic cityscapes, instead of the deafening sounds of live punk in a small hall.

Looking at this day is an action of awe. The future is here. The time to work through colonial trauma, and build new relationships with one another is now. And this day truly kicked off the winter, and into the new year, with love, devotion, change, and refreshing kindness.

Omteotlzin

P. Dante Cuauhtémoc

Unsettling Cycle (Winter Circle X)

with the voices of

Kanyon Coyote Woman Sayers-Roods (Mutsun-Ohlone, California Native)

Mary Jean Robertson (Cherokee)

SissySlays, the Indigecunt (Paiute Two-Spirit from the Walker River Paiute Reservation)

and Snowflake Towers (Yoeme, Mayan)

as heard/arranged by Jess Dorrance (descendant of Polish, Scottish, Irish, and English settlers, born and raised in Tkaronto (Toronto, Canada), the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, and now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples)

It’s a rainy winter San Francisco Sunday and we are at the Polish Club in the Mission and we have been asked to listen. There are rows of maroon chairs in a circle. Hanging above on a dusty black wire a disco ball, a deflated green balloon, a cluster of four fake leaves. A series of paintings line the walls. AVery Serious Lady, AWhite Political Man, A Military General. “Join the Polish NationalAlliance,” a sign tells me (I decline).

And then, there is music and two dancers. Bright tangerine and blue bubble gum glitter capes. The sun and the sky. It is a soft early morning wake up dance. A brush off and a self-wrap. Soft gaze and open palms finding loose unison.

Keith says, “This is a talking listening circle.” (This is Winter Circle X.) “There are four people who were invited to speak and then there’s everyone else who is here. And you are very welcome to be here. It’s not prescribed what’s going to happen.”

WHAT FOLLOWS—

Is an attempt at poetic listening. It is part of what I heard with my white ears and settler psoas. With my F1 student visa and deep lez heart.

I was asked to respond to what was offered and here are some questions I am sitting with:

What does it mean for me (for you) to listen into a present future archive riven with settler colonial violence?

How can I stand in myself on the page without centering myself?

I have been thinking lately about what scholars Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang call an ethics of incommensurability. To forge solidarities with projects of unsettling, they argue, we must

recognize what is distinct, what is sovereign in fights for decolonization. We must build collaborations from what cannot be aligned and allied between different struggles for justice.1

I have been thinking lately, too, about scholar Christina Sharpe’s call to practice an ethics of care (as in repair, maintenance, attention) for Black life in the ongoing wake slavery and the weather of anti-Black violence and, as she writes, the ditto ditto of the archives of a past that is not yet past. (She addresses this call to a “we” I am not a part of; I hear it nonetheless.)2

What follows are quotes but the quotes are not exact. The line breaks the spacing the omissions the selections reflect how what was offered hit my body my senses of timing my desire to slow what happened down. (A risky dance between absent present voices on the page.)

There is ethical significance in mediation. My listening produces things too. Who (what) trained my ears and yours? How can we listen and care towards unsettling?

—Jess Dorrance, Unceded Ohlone Territory (Oakland, CA), December 18, 2018

1 Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012), 1-40.

2 Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016).

I

GRANDMOTHER SONG

Listening to Kanyon Coyote Woman Sayers-Roods (Mutsun-Ohlone, California Native)

Right here, right now

we are in Ramaytush Ohlone territory.

Can I hear you say Ramaytush?

(Say it.)

And right here, in san francisco, the village site is known as Yelamu. Can you say Yelamu?

(Say it.)

You just said two Indigenous words local to this territory.

Spoken before english before spanish.

This is one step towards decolonization.

This is one step in acknowledging Indigenous protocol.

I come from a matrilineal society. My mother and my grandmother believe that when song ceremony and dancing stops

so does the earth.

This is a grandmother song:

(There is a song. Can you hear it?)

II

ON GENOCIDE (98%)

Listening to Mary Jean Robertson (Cherokee)

In california there was such a genocide that 98% of the people no longer exist.

And that is a huge loss

of language culture joy.

And if you don’t know what “federally recognized” means

it’s a process whereby the united states government takes control and dominion over the sovereignty of land-based tribes with treaties

and other constructive agreements.

And because we, the Cherokee, are the largest federally recognized tribe there are more Cherokees living in california

than california Native communities.

Which, I don’t know

I don’t think that makes us settler-colonists but here

maybe it does

(our numbers overwhelm).

How do we

as dominant cultures

make sure that the original people have a voice place vision

that can be shared with all of us?

III

STILL HERE

Listening to SissySlays (Indigecunt of the Bay Area, Paiute Two-Spirit from the Walker River Paiute Reservation)

Everyone kind of believes that there’s no conflict and turmoil here.

That everything’s been buried and everything’s over and that all these things have ended.

But all the struggle all the trauma everything’s still been passed down to the existing generations.

Everything’s still here.

Even though I’m Indigenous, I’m not native everywhere. Being indigenous is such a big group of people.

There’s no way to just typify all Indigenous people.

Cause even the way

they go about their similarities are different.

We all have room

to decolonize something in our lives.

Think about the question you’re gonna ask before you ask it. Cause intentions are great but y’know

impact is a thing.

IV

THE WORK

Listening to Kanyon, reprise

That’s one thing with decolonization work.

We don’t capitalize or enterprise or profit off of interactions. It’s about establishing

a relationship.

It’s about recognizing that

our radius of awareness needs to be larger than our radius of impact.

The dawes act of 1887 ripped apart california.

Taking away land from Native peoples.

The 1850s is when the u.s. government put out a bond

for 1.4 million dollars.

5 dollars a head 50 cents a scalp.

So all these misnomers with how Native peoples are talked about. The Natives scalped?

No—

the Natives scalped back.

All of us have Indigenous lineages. From any country that you came from

your ancestors had their earth-based practices that are indigenous to those lands. That’s the calling. To reengage.

I don’t want to be representative of my whole culture.

You’re representative of every single tribe that ever existed

when you’re Native.

What tribe are you, though? You don’t look Native.

We are the creators of our own reality. What makes it to look?

My uncle, who’s Native, did not want

to play the Indian in cowboys n Indians cause guess who always lost? He himself didn’t want to identify as himself because he

would always lose.

And when you’re finally

taking Native studies you almost get a heart attack your mind is blown all of the lies you’ve been taught what is

the education institution it’s an industrial method.

I’m sitting here like da fuck?

Dangerous information spreads like wildfire.

Leonard Peltier.

Corrina Gould.

There are many groups and bands and families within these territories that identify as Ohlone and local to these territories.

THERE ARE MANY.

V

PRAYING

Listening to Snowflake Towers (Yoeme, Mayan)

The way that I was taught is to go and ask.

There’s dancing

where I’m going to go to, like, THE STUD

or something. And just, like,

go to a party and dance.

And then there’s actual dancing where I am praying.

Anyhoo.

I was raised to ask permission from the people of the land. Otherwise, if you don’t get permission, you don’t dance.

Like, somebody asked me one time, what happens if they say no?

Well, then I don’t dance. Like, period.

And I don’t feel like I’ve wasted my time.

Because it means that I had the opportunity to practice who I am. Not just my family’s culture but also my ancestors’ culture.

It does a million things.

That whole 526 almost 527 years of history.

Of stuff.

That my family has survived from.

It means that I’m still here I’m not gone I’m still fighting I’m part of the Yaqui nation I’m Yoeme.

We are one of the only tribes to never be defeated by the u.s. mexican or spanish governments.

And we’re still fighting. Hey,

I grew up in california and we had to do that

mission project.

I refused. Because I knew

that there were actual Ohlones that were alive.

I knew that these missions

were not the starting point of history.

I’m carrying a lot just being me.

May the Creator of my people bless and forgive you all.

(In our culture, it is the same

thing to bless and to forgive.)

VI

HOW THIS BODY SPEAKS (YOU HAVE NO IDEA)

Listening to SissySlays, reprise

So I’ve had different people who are non-Indigenous try talk to me about

my body language before.

And I’m just like— you have no idea

how this body speaks.

For me as a Two-Spirit there’s ways where even other people in

the LGBT community also like to talk about my body language.

As a Two-Spirit growing up.

My family is very just like.

This is another thing—

not every Native person is just like a natural born medicine man called down onto the earth.

We don’t all just have Extremely Spiritually Secure And Insightful Elders.

We’re also just people. We’re people that have been here but

we’re still just people. We’re sensitive. We want to be loved. We want

to give love. We hurt we hurt other people.

We feel bad about it we don’t know what to do. We feel pain we want to feel happiness.

So growing up on the reservation, machismo culture is a huge thing.

Especially in non-white communities because The Men are the ones that are supposed to be representative. It’s always the men

that represent an entire group of people. Men define each other men define other non-men. So growing up I didn’t really come across

as one or the other. And nobody wants to talk about Two-Spirits on the reservation.

It took me leaving to find out that my tribe

was holding back my legacy from me in an effort to protect me.

But not really.

Cause you’re just like passing

down the trauma.

At some point one of our generations has to be like okay, we can’t keep passing this down to the kids. Like, these kids.

Y’know what I mean?

People want to be in touch with their spiritual sides. I grew up with an uncle who was like

just that medicine man uncle that thinks he knows everything.

He’s got all these local herbs that he’s like smudgin all the time.

He’s like Oh I’m doing so much for this person cause they’re going through this and that.

You should be recognizing me.

You should be passing down my legacy to the tribe.

There are things that all people deserve.

But, like, I’m not striving to be equal to white people. Cause I’m just, like, why would I want that?

Whiteness isn’t culture, so why would I want to equate my worth to that?

The thing about decolonization is

now that we’re acknowledging we fucked up come back with some humility and be like we fucked up. How can we do better?

How can we work with you to help make this work?

Cause we can’t send you all back.

It’s funny that natives are always called like

magical or earth spirits and all this. But at the same time no one actually wants to listen to the things we say.

When Native people share information appreciate it. Cause it’s not something that anyone’s entitled to. Cause it’s like

we live this.

VII

THE FACT THAT WE’RE HERE (HUGE)

Listening to Snowflake Towers, reprise

I know we’re kind of jumping around and stuff.

But I think this is all really useful information for people. And it’s healing for me. So thank y’all for being here

for my therapy session.

My daddy

is from the jungle in chiapas, mexico which borders guatemala.

It’s Mayan. It’s on the opposite side of the Yucatán so we’re touching the Pacific Ocean. And

being Chiapas Mayan is different

than all the other Mayans. Like, we’re all

Mayan but, like, we are a little more junglely people.

If you’ve ever heard of the Zapatistas

that’s my people. We took back our land, our rivers all of that because

they were trying to take away our corn.

Anyhoo.

So part of being Two-Spirit is knowing that

if you’re from belize, guatemala, honduras, the north part

of el salvador, chiapas, yucatán, campeche, tabasco. If you’re from any of those regions and you’re brown you’re Mayan.

We are still part of the same people.

I say this because right now my people and the children of my people are dying at the border. And they’re still being persecuted.

Because they are not seen.

Our Indigeneity is being taken away.

Part of what I’m trying to say here is that. Again going back to everybody thinking that a Native has to look and dress and act like a Lakota, right?

We’re not all like that. We’re so different. Brown mexicans are Indigenous.

They just had their language taken away from them

and their spirituality taken away from them and they were forced to be catholics and some of their families forced themselves

to be catholics forced themselves to have spanish last names because they didn’t want to be killed anymore.

Even white mexicans.

The light skinned mexicans. The white latinos.

The reason why their blood line is whiter

is because the spaniards didn’t bring women with them. And were very rapey.

And we were constantly and constantly raped.

When the spanish came they killed off they didn’t understand Two-Spirit. They killed anybody that dressed male so there was a lot of Two-Spirit men that were murdered and cis men that were murdered because

they were dressed as men.

And they would save the women to basically just rape them and

it was the Two-Spirit women that

when the men were being killed they would hide the men and they

would give their clothing to protect all the people who were male presenting and it was the Two-Spirit women that if it wasn’t for them

I wouldn’t be here my people would have been wiped out they led the war parties they took care of the kids they

were the ones that were still there.

This is the history

that the catholic church and the mexican government have tried to take away

for a very long time.

I am so proud to be who I am

to have that lineage.

I’m literally alive my language my culture is preserved because

of the Two-Spirit women in my genealogy in my people’s genealogy. So I just want to bring that in.

So if you see somebody. And they’re mexican. And they’re brown.

Stop looking at them with that american mentality that we are not from here.

Decolonize your mind on how you see them and see them as Indigenous people to Turtle Island

who got a lot taken from them.

AND THE FACT

THAT THEY’RE HERE IS HUGE.

VIII

WINTER PROCESSING (WE GOT COUSINS)

Listening to Mary, reprise

First of all, I want to thank the parents in the room for bringing their children. It is

so Indigenous to always include the children in a meeting and a space.

I want to thank Keith for doing a winter ceremony

that is actually about what we consider to be winter processing.

Because it’s a time of year when we reflect when we hibernate when we have to entertain children in the dark.

The best way to do that is with storytelling. And every child when you read them a story will be able to tell you

when you get it wrong.

So every child knows how to tell the story over and over again. Especially if it’s around a campfire and it’s their grandfather telling them a very special story they are supposed to remember.

This is the honor and respect of oral history. And what we’re asking is to say

this has meaning in our contemporary society.

Because right now, the court says that the Hopi tradition of at least thousands of years

of sacred mountain practice San Francisco Peaks

has no validity.

It’s alright to use effluviant to do snow machines for a ski route for the public good. Because the public owns the land.

There is an economic benefit.

But the Hopi just have their religion and it doesn’t matter and it’s

not as important.

IF WE CAN’T EVEN SAY that there’s a value other than economic

to a sacred peak like San Francisco Peaks which is sacred to 22 separate

Indigenous nations—

Yeah, I’m an angry Indian.

(And that’s okayyyy. We have so much to be mad about.)

And I have to say that John Trudell said a long while ago— We all come from tribes.

And it’s because we have been so separated from our Indigeneity That we can’t see someone else’s Indigeneity.

So our responsibility

as human beings is to reconnect

with our own ancestral roots. And to bring that connection—not that dismissal but that connection— to a relationship with other Indigenous people.

Cause I think that’s where we have the total disconnect. Where we’re no longer responsible

for the healing of the planet. The healing of the earth.

All of the original instructions are about responsibility to

what we live on.

To our kindom.

The animal kindom. The plant kindom. Take out that G.

We got cousins everywhere.

Hope Mohr Dance / Have we come a long way, baby?

The Bridge Project 2014:
Have We Come A Long Way, Baby?

Hope Mohr Dance in association with Joe Goode Annex
Sep 26, 2014

From the program:

“For its fifth anniversary, HMD's Bridge Project presents Have We Come A Long Way, Baby?, a program that celebrates and explores a West Coast post-modern dance lineage through an intergenerational lineup of female soloists.”

Anna Halprin

The Courtesan and the Crone (1999)

Anna Halprin, one of the most innovative, experimental and influential of dance artists, performed a mime piece; a five minute dance-theater work wearing a Venetian mask that was a gift from her daughter and a floor-length gold cloak that she previously wore to the White House. 94 years old. Fragile. Eager to make contact. To move. To move us. To touch. I felt lucky to share this moment that vastly transcended the actual choreography and yet of course was deeply implicated in its embodied narrative and mimicry, desire and nostalgia, power and loss. Halprin's courtesan was articulate and unabashed. She presented the mask of a younger woman and the body that still remembers her, at least in gestural fragments. Her crone fluctuated between grief – what have I become? – and a calm resolve or affirmation. We applauded. Anna smiled and bowed and exited carefully, each step significant.

Simone Forti

News Animation (1980-current)

An improvisation about water, Syria, cockroaches, a baby... is also an improvisation about Simone Forti, aging, improvisation, politics, and art. A way or reading and re-reading the news, News Animation, since 1980, has modeled a creative process for bridging the many gaps between Forti's (and perhaps y/our) lived experience and the political realities presented and framed as news. White haired and 70 plus, she knows her body, how it can get to the floor and back up without excessive effort, how it feels.

Meandering movement – she reveals an artist looking and finding – but then the mood shifts sharply as she walks directly toward us, speaking, “So we're bombing Syria. And we don't know why. And they tell us it's to protect the homeland. (pause) The homeland.” It's easy to say that of course we should be talking about Syria today and of course we don't know how, especially in public. Forti accepts this ethical challenge gracefully. “We want the borders that we established after WWI to hold.” Is it her age, her quivering gestures, the humbleness of the situation (a small studio theater, an audience of dance people) that help us to see the tragic absurdity in this statement? With her head gently bobbing beyond her control, she gestures, “If I'm the map, Iran is on this side (right thigh), and Saudi Arabia is on this side (left thigh), and Iraq is here (hands form a triangle over her crotch).” I'm reminded of Deena Metzger's late 70s or early 80s efforts to map the world onto the body, a feminist imaginary that recognizes the many resonances between one's body and one's world, between one's perception and one's projection. Considering her own body/mind/self, Metzger asked questions like, where are my borders open and where are they fortified? Where is there starvation or drought? Where are the rivers dammed and where are the war zones?

Forti emerges from a similar era of feminism and an art scene whose political critique of art and society led them to share creative process as “product” (Prioritizing “practice” as Arrington and Hewit might assert). For News Animation, Forti reads a newspaper and takes notes in the form of poetic journaling. In tonight's performance the notes were read live, an exposure of process but also a deepening of the material, revisiting it but from the past, rewinding time to reconsider the now. “Colonialism. I can never remember so I reach for my colon.” Her body grounds and recontextualizes language, perhaps patriarchy and its logic as well. Reading from a notebook, head bowed to the page, white hair vibrating with her shakes, she recounts a dream of power men and their penises and closed sexual circuits that exclude everyone else.

A dance with a white sweater and scarf shifts unexpectedly into a story of fish that know how to organize in solidarity and resistance. Forti is a gentle master. Using the tactics of innocent (or is it subversive) children's theater, she transforms the clothing into a snowy Montana horizon along her body (mountain), and then admits to failing to represent the milky way... Perfect and imperfect, her imagination always in process of both refinement and wilding, an ethical feminist artist researcher child whose failures are gateways to magic.

Lucinda Childs

Carnation (1964)

Performed by Hope Mohr

White chair. Black table. Red leotard. Blue jeans. Her right foot in a blue plastic bag. A kitchen sieve treated as an iconic or holy object. Carefully she constructs sandwiches from green sponges and pre-cut carrots that fit the width of the sponge. Color and form redux: Fluxus tasks, Dada disruptions, Judson deconstructions. Carrots ceremoniously inserted into sieve create an altar of orange radiance, then a crown when place delicately on her head. Many sponges are stacked vertically and one end inserted into her mouth. The mask is further manipulated by cramming the fanned gaps of the sponges with the carrots from her crown. The game ends by spitting everything into the blue bag removed from her foot.

At the back wall she does a headstand. In precarious balancing she performs a circus act with socks and a white sheet and she disappears. Ta da! It recalls certain actions/images in Xavier LeRoy's Self Unfinished, created 34 years later.

She captures air in the plastic bag and it stands unsupported. Another circus act with magic fully exposed and yet it's still magical, that is, whimsical, unexpected, and previously unimagined. She looks at it. Stomps it. Smiles. Proudly. The smile turns on and off. Then she cries. Steps away. She performs tasks with arbitrary rules that must be obeyed. If this isn't the essence of art, it's one of them.

I propose this work for an Izzy: best reconstruction of 2014!

Hope Mohr

s(oft is) hard (2014)

Performed by Peiling Kao
Sound by Ben Juodvalkis, Video by David Szlasa, Costume by Keriann Egeland

We hear the sound of writing, by hand. A mix of knocking and scratching. Peiling faces away from the audience but her face, in close up, is projected, large, as if staring back at us. She is wearing black tights and a blue crocheted top. A voice over, Hope I presume, tells of writing 89 journals in 20 years. She recites specific dates but not the entry that follows... After reading through the journals while making this piece, the voice tells us that she recycled all of them except the first and the last, numbers 1 and 89. I believe her and vow to hold on to my old journals even tighter.

There is a more complicated relationship between text and movement, or language and embodiment, than in the previous works tonight's program. More dates. More sounds of writing. More silences. More shapes and gazes and self-touching gestures and other dancing movement. Minimal piano accompanies the continued chronological progression of dates...we're in the 90s...then 2000s. Video is intermittent. We switch from face cam to feet. Peiling's breath becomes the dominant text as her movement increases in vigor. Today's date. Tomorrow's date. She rolls and jumps repeatedly. A virtuosity that impresses, viscerally. On her back, the lights fade, slowly.

Resources:

Deena Metzger

I can't find the actual reference that was a radio piece from the 80s but here's her current work:

http://www.deenametzger.com/Home/home.html

Xavier LeRoy, Self Unfinished (1998)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3rv1TeVEPM

PS:

I am an enemy of the slow fade to black at the end of a dance. Also the device of the blackout to begin a piece, to tell the audience that it has begun, and to allow the dancers to enter the space unseen (or the suggestion of unseen since I can almost always see and hear them). The framing of the stage or the theatrical moment with darkness is a cliché, a trope emptied of any specific meaning that carries more ideological weight than dancers in the US are taught to consider. In San Francisco I witness these devices at almost every concert I attend. In the “contemporary” dance scenes I frequent in Europe or New York, they are extremely rare, and when they occur they are more likely to be conceptually integral to the work.

This Is The Girl / Funsch Dance Experience, Sep 2014

This Is The Girl
Funsch Dance Experience
Sep 12-14, 2014
Dance Mission, SF

Observations and opinions by Keith Hennessy
followed by a comment by Christy Funsch

Choreographer Christy Funsch enters to give the (now) compulsory pre-show announcement that unnecessarily frames dance performances in SF... but with a twist... when we realize that the announcement is (integrated into) the performance. Information about exits and cell phones erodes into awkward silences and unfinished statements, until finally Funsch states, “I am nothing” and exits as if lost... This opening action reveal's Christy's dry (or is it wry?) sense of humor that threads through and sometimes even structures her work.

A woman in a red dress plays electric guitar with five young, fit, multiculti, dancers. Christy and Nol (Simonse) are the seasoned performers in this work, sometimes exaggerating their “experience” by playing old farts who need help from the young whippersnappers. When they chat, the text and performance are so unforced. The audience relaxes. It's easy to laugh along and enjoy. Later Christy tells me that the conversation is improvised. I say it's like watching old friends play together. Super charming. Amid family tales of sisters and coming out, they talk about story versus nonlinearity and ponder the relationship between construction and imagination.

SF choreographers never got the memo that unison movement is “out” or at least should be questioned and not assumed as integral to dance making. But then I think about how many companies based in SF (at least 5, maybe 6...) employ photographer RJ Muna to make them look practically indistinguishable, their (wannabe) sexy lithe bodies revealing lots of bare skin, leaping. Add some flying fabric for extra drama. Neo-classical modernism thrives here. That's not what Christy's doing with her young dancers, but it's a meandering rant that follows my questioning of her use of synchronized ensemble movement. What is possible to communicate, invoke, or inspire with dancing and when is unison the best tool or sign for choreography?

The next section involved the Dance Brigade's Grrrl Brigade on Taiko drums, led by Bruce Ghent. I thought Bruce's role was perhaps too big for a young female empowerment project but my main experience was of the joyful power of the taiko, and the particularly feminist approach to taiko that the Dance Brigade, with Bruce's coaching, has brilliantly pioneered. I don't know whether it was the thrill of the precision drumming or the ubiquitousness of teen girls in daisy dukes but I didn't notice at first how short the girls' denim shorts were. But when I did, they distracted me. How does fashion happen? Can shorts be too short? And would I be a terrible parent of a teenage femme?

The young dancers help out the fake-old dancers and everyone plays together – electric guitar, taiko teens, big showy dancing. What does dancing do? It invites me to ponder issues of age and power, of gender and sexuality, of color and racism, of the relationship between individual and group, of the invisible exchanges and collaborations from which choreography emerges. Maybe a better question is, “what does dancing want?” or “what do dancers and dance makers want?” But maybe not.

Nol joined the quintet for encounters of touching and measuring. I'm writing this in Rome from notes I scribbled in the program's margins three weeks ago. And this note doesn't trigger any memories. I wonder how long I've been watching Nol perform... more than a decade I'm sure. He's a generous dancer who plays well with others in so many different contexts. I loved seeing him outside a sprawling warehouse in Oakland in the work of Mary Armentrout and I remember being provocatively surprised when I finally saw him in his own work.

My notes kinda fall apart. I noted three slow pods, cuddling but not ________ then simply “taiko + dance” and an observation about recurring cross generational themes that made me re-assess my earlier comment about Bruce and the Grrrl Brigade.

The emotional tone of the work coalesced with the entrance of a team of young girls from the SF Community Music Center's Children's Chorus. The vibe intensified – I don't know how to describe it but something was happening – to all of us it seemed – the energetic-emotional field intensified when Christy and Nol started dancing, fierce at first and then in unison. “Horses in my dreams...” the girls sang. Teens hung out in the back, looking out windows, and although the image was 'staged' it didn't feel fake. It just felt good, like how it's supposed to be, and I mean the whole thing, all of us, sitting there in the dark and light. The person beside me started to cry which simply seemed like part of the plan, or part of the potential of the plan, as if (Christy's) choreography is not a plan but an invitation for an experience to happen, inside and among us.

The song ended. A light, fast, repeating dance moved upstage, with one dancer downstage center focusing our gaze into a four-generational world of music and dancing, in the Mission, where many of us live(d) and work(ed). And this history of place and creativity, while delicate, seemed neither precarious nor exceptional but just right, just right now.

Response by Christy Funsch, choreographer of This Is The Girl

One of the most difficult decisions I made in my recent full-length work, This is the Girl, was how to costume the teenage women of the Grrrl Brigade (who accompanied several sections of the work on Taiko). I allowed the six 8-year old girls from San Francisco's Community Center (who sang to accompany the last section of the work) to dress as they wished-why wouldn't I offer the same freedom to the teeagers?

Perhaps because it isn't so simple. Questions of who is in charge and in control of their presentation in public beleaguered my wrangling. Do they realize that they stand on the brink of our culture's vapid insistence on objectifying them? They study dance and music (and some have for ten years or more), with Krissy Keefer's Dance Brigade, a crucial, strident collection of women who have pushed back against mainstream depictions of femininity for decades. Surely some of this counter-cultural politic has rubbed off? Why, then, when given the choice of costuming, did they all decide to wear revealing, tight-fitting clothing very similar to each other's and very much emphasizing their physiques?

Should I have asked them to wear pajamas? Or martial arts clothing?

Most disappointing to me is owning that when I was wrangling over this decision I did not set aside time to have this conversation with them. I should have made it as much of a priority as getting their music rehearsed. It also brings up for me a larger query which served as subtext for the work, subtext that was latent perhaps but nonetheless alive in my decision to assemble an age-diverse cast for the work. Is there a time when we realize our place in power's structure? Does this happen at different times depending on where you are in the structure? How does our confidence shift when we grow from young girls into teenagers? What happens when we come into sexual awareness and how can we cultivate autonomy in young women when it happens-not just inside the household but all of us, culturally? Is provocative dress a sign of empowerment or compliance with expectations and objectification? Is it the height of conformity or a bold act of rebellion and resistance?

I don't know and will now have to (sadly) file under "conversations that didn't happen." I was so focused on the power implicit in the choreography (what I call "who is lifting whom"), that I missed an opportunity to engage the extended cast in this troubling, rich discussion.