Prisma Forum, Oaxaca & DF, Mexico

Sunday July 5th, 2009
I wrote this while in Mexico City for week 2 of Prisma Forum a hybrid event that resembles a European contemporary dance festival (with all its hybridities of performance, choreography, laboratory, conference) with more participatory, communal and DIY aspects of popular social forums. Instigated by participant interests, daily plenary sessions are complimented by several seminars, round tables, and informal discussions. At least 10 daily classes or ongoing workshops, from physical techniques in somatics, dance, yoga, and chi gung, to choreography and performance making influenced by a wide range of strategies from shamanism to permaculture, discursive questioning and experiential anatomy. In the late afternoon and evening there are several performances each day. Contemporary work from emerging and experienced artists from New York, many European countries, Mexico, Brazil, Israel, South Africa, Korea and beyond. A big vision and an extraordinarily generous commitment by the small team of Mexican organizers stewards this pioneering experiment.

The highlight of the first week (held in the city & small pueblos of Oaxaca) was a brilliant talk by Amaranta Gomez, a Muxe political candidate running for federal office. To a North American queer, muxe seems synonymous with transwoman, but Amaranta was quick to request that she not be called trans. Indigenous to the Zapotecas, muxes have a traditional social role. The word muxe, adapted from the Spanish mujer, identifies males who live as women. Muxes are pre-colonial, pre-Spanish. When I asked Amaranta if she worked in solidarity with LGBT activists, she briefly spoke of common struggles with AIDS and homophobia and that she was a member of ILGA, the international lesbian/gay NGO. However, Gomez said that muxes had more in common and more solidarity work to do with feminists than with those focused on queer issues. Amaranta spoke simply, directly, warmly and with a sharp wit, addressing more intersections of issues than any pomo interdisciplinarian could imagine addressing within a single hour. She embodied and shared generously her contemporary indigenous wisdom. Her talk became an inspirational reference for many of us, and we quoted her throughout the week.

I taught a 3-day workshop called Potential Shamanic Action. Staging the class as an encounter between a European-based international community of dancers with local Oaxaqueño artists of all ages, I framed a few simple ideas (the earth is sacred, everything is connected, the border is a space not a line) for experiential explorations in ritual and performance. Over 50 people participated, of whom half were Mexicans. We're still buzzing...

I hope to write more about this amazing and complicated encuentro but I'm still travelling...

Scott Wells & Dancers, Men Want To Dance

What Men Want
Scott Wells & Dancers
May 31, 2009
Part of the 2009 SF International Arts Festival
CounterPULSE, SF

Scott Wells makes wonderful dances for men and women and sometimes he makes wonderful dances for men. Wells treats modern dance like a sport in a postmodern fusion of relaxed lyrical dancing, physical comedy, and surprisingly tender partner acrobatics. The leaps, catches, cat like landings and spiraling falls to the floor reveal the company’s roots in the dance known as contact improvisation.

What Men Want was a suite of four premieres, including two big works for an ensemble of eight men. In this meandering writing, I don’t review each piece. I’m exploring a few ideas, mostly about men dancing.

Wells’ work for men charms with a playful engagement of masculine clichés, anxieties and interventions. The work is so unabashedly straight, as in heterosexual, that it’s almost queer. I mean that Wells and his guys, regardless of their personal identities and affections, come across as straight dudes whose physical intimacy most often recalls the homosociality (aka male bonding) of a compulsively hetero locker room. At other moments of sensitive dancing and careful touch the choreography dares to intervene on hetero norms. We don’t expect sporty dudes to roll together quite so slowly. It’s queer in it’s intentional questioning of masculine performance. If there’s a weakness to this expansive view of hetero masculinity it’s the way that Wells’ choreography responds to nearly every gentle moment with a kind of defensive reaction of physical comedy, martial arts jokes, or just vigorous muscular activity. The choreographic rhythm is like a pendulum that inscribes a binary code, swinging from masculine to feminine, gentle to vigorous, sensitive to hilarious. This binary insistence is decidedly not-queer. The only device I contest is the ubiquitous ‘gay joke.’ There are a million variations - in dance, television, sports, Hollywood, advertising – in which two or more guys suddenly become aware of how intimate they’ve become, and the energy shifts, and the audience laughs. And that laugh, for queer boys, is too often a cruel laugh.

K. Ruby was a dance student and choreographer at Berkeley High 30 years ago. Recently, she told Linda Carr, the current head of Berkeley High’s dance program, how times had changed. With the addition of hiphop to the dance curriculum, it seemed to Ruby that more boys were dancing. She recalled that classes in the late 70s were predominantly female except for the occasional gay or soon-to-be-gay male. Carr pointed out that, sadly, today’s gender demographics were consistent with Ruby’s experience. And that’s the news in a town noted for its liberal and radical social politics, in a Bay Area known worldwide as a place for queer challenges to normative behavior. How much does gay anxiety and homophobia influence our dance cultures? Why is it so unusual for men to dance together in this culture we might call contemporary or post-European or even post-colonial? In Ballet, Modern dance, and the styles that follow, females are probably 80% of the practitioners, many in training since the age of four or five. Males start dancing later, take fewer classes, have significantly less competition for professional opportunities and consistently get more attention and resources. Despite the male dance superstars from Nijinsky to the Nicholas brothers, from Gene Kelly to Baryshnikov, and from Jose Limon to Savion Glover, dance – in the American popular imagination - continues to be gendered female, or feminine. Try to consider this while simultaneously and paradoxically noting that the most viewed YouTube video (100 million + hits) is a comic dance by Jud Laipley called The Evolution of Dance, AND the top prize for the past two years of Britain’s Got Talent was won by male dancers, who received millions of votes and even more YouTube hits. Diversity, a multi-racial, age diverse, all-male dance company, won this year’s prize and the 2008 winner was a 14 year old named George Sampson who performed a hiphop remix of Kelly’s Singing in the Rain. European and American boys and men are dancing but they’re still not taking modern dance classes in any great numbers. Scott Wells & Dancers operates within this larger social context of homophobic masculinity, gendered dance expectations, and special attention for dancing boys.

The two jewels of this oddly named evening of dancing were the smaller more formal works, Catch, a duet for two dancing jugglers, and Bach solo trio, danced by a solo woman and a trio of guys. I think I like Catch because of the lack of comedy. The duet connection between Aaron Jessup and Zack Bernstein (of Capacitor) was super sweet. All dance duets are about love, but some are less romantic than others. In this pas de deux with objects, the love was a shared loved. If I could call it Whitmanesque and not evoke sex, I’d call it the (chaste) love of comrades. They danced on and around each other’s bodies, always a red ball in hand, or traveling between them. As the work progressed, virtuosic ball tossing alternated with swirling lifts and spiral rolls over backs. Sometimes there was one red ball between them, but towards the end they each juggled five balls simultaneously, beginning and ending in perfect synch. Impressive. The dance ended the way it began, roles reversed, one man a landscape of body lying in a circle of light and the other walking the perimeter.

Bach solo trio opened with a short solo by Rosemary Hannon. Hannon (recently seen dancing with Non Fiction at The Garage) repeated a short phrase focused on the arms and torso. Hannon is tall, lean and articulate, a hyper-aware dancer whose long arms unfold in delicious detail to the ends of her fingers. Dancing in silence, her breath had a resonant presence. As she exited, the Bach began, and the men, Andrew Ward, Sebastian Grubb, and Cameron Growden, entered. As they repeated the same phrase as Hannon, I looked for difference and tried to determine which details were because of gender and which were due to the particularities of these bodies. The men were each and all more compact and dense than Hannon. They didn’t have the openness of shoulder flexibility nor the articulate detail in their fingers. Unlike Hannon, they hadn’t been taking dance class since early childhood. The openness and breath in their chests felt like a distant reminder of Hannon. The men really came to life in the curvy tumbling and floating handstands. There was a section of low spinning into and up from the ground, weight on and off of hands, that recalled the Brazilian dance/fight form capoiera. When they spun on one leg and dove to the floor I recognized the influence of Wells’ body or the Scott Wells that I remember from ten or fifteen years ago. Grubb especially reminded me of Wells’ unique style. The trio section ended with a marvelous thrill of lifts and tumbles, every landing unexpectedly quiet, like cats. Hannon returned, with arms and fingers so alive, her curly mane extending every action of head and spine, and somehow it was her female-ness in response to the trio’s male-ness that filled the space, and took this piece home.

The eight men in the ensemble make a delightful team. In addition to the five men previously mentioned, there is Rajendra Serber, Cason MacBride, and Ryder Darcy. The guys are generous with each other, authentically affectionate, and trustworthy in their attention and precision. Their joy of dancing is infectious and they love to entertain. Wells’ and his dancers are not hesitant to put on a show, to perform tricks, to make us ooh and ahh for a spectacular overhead lift and laugh with an unexpected yet intentional collision. Although they perform some synchronized movement, Wells’ laid-back choreography never enforces conformity. Some dancers shine more than others, but that is more an indicator of accumulated experience than of a lack of necessary talent. A fab flurry of athletic dancing closes the evening. Darcy runs up a wall and flips head over heels. Others run sideways to the wall and propel themselves into dive rolls onto a well-placed mat. Growden is a superb jumper with a loft to rival any high jumper. When he dives horizontally at the brick wall, two other men arrive to pin him, freezing the moment in time. Wells plays often with this kind of sustained time, floating bodies, pausing handstands, and full-body catches that linger, not so much frozen as floating, and then when released the falling weight becomes the momentum that drives the dance onward.

(A few months later I deleted a little joke of a line at the end that seemed to color the previous writing too much. There are comments by two of the men in the cast and another local choreographer - going further with questions of queer, masculinity, dance.)

Joah Lowe, my first SF dance teacher

In 2004 David Gere asked me to write a short piece about a dancer who had died of AIDS for his book release celebration.

Gere, who came of age as a dance critic at the height of the AIDS epidemic, wrote How To Make Dances in an Epidemic: Tracking Choreography in the Age of AIDS, the first book to examine the interplay of AIDS and choreography in the United States, specifically in relation to gay men.

I can't brag too much about the book because I'm lucky to be featured in it, but the writing is lovely and the research is generous and precise.

I decided to write about my first teacher in San Francisco, Joah Lowe. I'm including this 2004 writing about a teacher I worked with in 1982-83 for two reasons. 1) I like the writing. 2) This year when teaching a Queer Performance class at USF I heard from several students that they really weren't aware of how intensely AIDS had impacted gay life and culture. In honor of our ancestors, let's keep remembering.

Letter for Joah Lowe

Dear listener, dear living dancer, dear dead dancer, dear Joah Lowe:

To write a love letter is to willingly open memory’s door. To invite the images and sensations of yesterday to obliterate the distractions of today. But once the door is open everyone comes rushing through. There are so many half-told stories, half-choreographed dances. I’m writing for Joah but I want to write for everyone. For Tracy Rhodes and Peter Kadyk, for Ed Mock and Jim Tyler, for Wayne Corbitt and Arnie Zane, and for all the guys whose names I can’t remember: the one who came to all my sex healing rituals for queer men, the one who gently confronted our Body Electric retreat about our fear of dying, the bedridden one whose voice was barely a whisper yet requested that I come and sing with him at the Hartford St. Zen Hospice.

I’m afraid to write to you. Your presence has become a complicated pattern in a fabric I wear like skin. I hesitate to unravel you individually for fear of my own unraveling. Who am I without you, here, now?

I remember dance class with Joah Lowe, over 20 years ago, in a studio (in this building) at 8th & Folsom. Joah was my first teacher in San Francisco. All the basics that would become Release and Releasing, he shared with us a decade earlier under the names of Aston Patterning, developmental movement, improvisation and whether or not he ever studied with Halprin or Laban, he taught us their rituals as well. Every good dance teacher transcends technique, copywrite, and culture. I’ve been lucky to be in the zone of the one dance, the prayer dance, the now dance, and Joah took me there. He wasn’t the first or the last but because of it he’s unforgettable, indivisible from my story, my dance.

Joah taught a weekly class, an introduction to contemporary dance that involved technique and improvisation. Open to beginners, his class gave me knowledge and confidence to graduate to Lucas Hoving’s Mon-Wed-Fri technique classes, where I folded myself into dance history for the next three years following Lucas from Margie Jenkin’s studio at 15th & Mission, to Footwork (aka Dancers’ Group now Abada Capoeira), the Women’s Building and Third Wave (now Dance Mission). I can’t remember if Joah sent me to Lucas or Lucas sent me to Joah. I’m sure it’s written in some journal that I’ll never read again. I only remember that I refused to study technique with anyone that didn’t also teach improvisation and that’s how I chose them as teachers.

I remember Joah in Lucas’ class and I remember Joah performing but these memories are cloudy, distant. I remember hanging off the ballet bar, learning to maximize the tilt in my pelvis. I remember Joah’s hands on my hips and only later, years later, did I recognize this memory as sexual. Years later when I really learned to fuck, to release into being fucked, I knew what I had learned from Joah. I’ve thought about Joah and those pelvic rolls and tilts a million times, while warming up, studying Pilates or Klein technique, masturbating, fucking, even riding a bike or hanging below freeways, yelling to god (Saliva 88-89, Spell 04)

I remember asking Joah about his own history in dance. All I remember is an injury and some kind of betrayal, I think with Graham technique. I was a wannabe revolutionary pacifist anarchist feminist then and assumed that all orthodoxy caused pain so this out-of-context image became another brick for me to throw at the glass house of Dance. Now I’m one of those who occupy that house, only part-time. I show up to do repairs; to work on additions to the house so more folks can visit. There’s always work to do.

I hope Joah is proud of me. He’s the kind of ancestor from whom I want praise and recognition. I know it’s supposed to go the other way, so I hope that this letter fulfills some of the debt I owe. Joah, thanks a lot. Thanks for welcoming me, for steering me into the future and away from the past. Thanks for paying just enough attention to me, which was not much, because I was not yet ready to be seen, to be revealed, even to myself. Maybe you knew that but probably you just sensed it. You were my first authentically intuitive man. The more I write this the more your body comes to mind, to body. I’m seeing your legs now. They’re very strong. I could go on, but I’m getting nervous, now that your body has caught up to memory and all this presence, yours and mine, is alive, here, now. Thanks again. I bow to you.

With love, Keith

Ps.

Just before printing this letter, I had a twinge of insecurity. Do I really remember? So I googled you. Yes I googled an ancestor. And there you were, noted teacher of Lessons in the Art of Flying, releasing your signature bowling ball to the sky, in a piece called Bowling Lesson #1 – Letting Go of the Ball.

Dance. Lesson. Memory. Body. Letting Go. Love. Thanks.

Photo:

Joah Lowe in his

Bowling Lesson #1—Letting Go of the Ball

(1984).

Photo by Christine Uomini, courtesy David Gere, lifted from the awesome site The Estate Project. Check it out here:

http://www.artistswithaids.org/index4b.html

How To Die, 2006

In 2005 and 2006, I was invited to create new works at Les Subsistances in Lyon and Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers in Paris. These residencies resulted in the 2 part performance How To Die, featuring musician-dancer extraordinaire Jules Beckman (Contraband, Cahin-caha) and the amazing butoh-drag-ritualist Seth Eisen (Circo Zero's Sol niger).

Homeless USA, 2005
(in French, SDF USA)
Performance: Hennessy & Beckman
Text: Robert Olen Butler & Hennessy

American Tweaker, 2006
Performance: Hennessy, Beckman, Eisen
Text: Kirk Read & Hennessy

Why now?
Rita Felciano, a treasure of Bay Area dance writing, just sent me a review that she wrote in 2006, and coincidentally we are in discussions to restage the work in January 2010, at Dance Mission in San Francisco, as part of A Queer 20th Anniversary, a series events celebrating the 20th-ish anniversary of my first solo performance Saliva. So consider this review and these pics as a promo teaser.

The review:
http://archives.danceviewtimes.com/2006/Autumn/08/sfletter18.html

On my vimeo site you can watch Loren Robertson's 7' promo for How To Die, as well as full versions of both Homeless and Tweaker.

How To Die, 2006, Photos

Top photo:

A guy sleeping on the stairs of my house. At the beginning of How to Die I give everyone in the audience a photograph of a homeless or drunk sleeping guy, documented within a block of my place.

Middle photo:

Hennessy in Homeless USA, Photo by Andy Mogg. What you can't see is the 30 foot length of fish line going through the piercing hole in my septum, holding me in place.

Bottom Photo:

Hennessy & Beckman in American Tweaker. Photo by Mark I. Chester. This is the polite photo from the dance of insatiable crystal meth. What you can't see is Eisen, as Sylvester, lipsynching Do Ya Wanna Funk?

Check out Loren Robertson's promo video of How To Die
(below). This link get you to my Vimeo site where both performances (Homeless & Tweaker) are available for online streaming.

Rita Felciano's review of How To Die: http://archives.danceviewtimes.com/2006/Autumn/08/sfletter18.html

Dada Fest, Davis CA

Performer, producer and UC Davis grad student Hope Mirlis organized a sprawling day & night of Dada performances, May 16, 2009, in central Davis.

Riffing off Joseph Beuys explaining his work to a dead rabbit, I whispered, grunted, and ranted for 30 minutes in the 99 F degree heat.

Here are a couple pics snapped by Hilary Bryan and the improv text that I wrote as a kind of rehearsal. Clearly I'm drowning and somehow delighting in the academic texts I'm reading. Fortunately, I finally realized that the critique of

spectacle

is hideously spectacular.

Help, I just realized that the anti-spectacle is indeed a spectacle

Yes it's true. My DADA needs a MAMA, but not in a heteronormative way, or even in a way that supports the idea of binary gender. My DADA also needs a ZAZA and a MEEMEE, a QUSO and a WEBFART.

What am I trying not to say?

Help, I just realized that the anti-spectacle is indeed a spectacle.

Most specifically I just realized that I am being interpellated by cultural studies texts that challenge the hegemonic culture making machinery. What does that mean? I mean that just when I think I'm resisting, or conspiring an "alternative", I realize that the university, the books produced in academia, and the language that we speak to critique hegemony, spectacle, and ideology are all spectacular distractions shouting, "Hey you, look over here!" Just when we get an embodied awareness of the matrix, we get seduced back into the fold, the plié, the crease, the contraction.

Cultural studies texts induce an internalized and masochistic prison industrial complex, including panopticonic surveillance structures, inescapable tortures, punishments, and incarcerations. The room has no windows. Only a ceiling open to an infinite sun, camera, eye. 24/7 people, I'm talking 24/7.

And I'm an artist. A performance artist past the edge of a nervous break (dance). No one understands me. Which is predetermined. We/they want it that way. And I am only now understanding how deeply embedded this failure is. But embedded does not equal embodied. The msm journalist in Iraq is disembodied, cut off from the socio-political body, in a way that should seem familiar to contemporary artists.

So I'm approaching DADA in Davis with some trepidation, some concern about my nostalgic formulations. Isn't nostalgia a further embedding of the ideology that is cyborg-izing what remains of the living tissue that was my bodymind. Ouch, why doesn't cyborg-izing hurt? Why isn't the surgery of interpellation leaving visible scars at the corporeal points of entry or exchange. And how are these points of contact, penetration, and embeddment, anything but the primary material of my dancing, where dancing is the live moment presence of the dance, the making of the dance, the embodiment of the dance?

So I refuse to dance DADA. I will speak to the dead object that is alive with fetishistic vibrancy. I will share my concerns with whoever can hear me. I know that the ear has not kept up with the eye, i.e., the ear listens from a more archaic paradigm than the eye, cyborgized at a faster rate by visual technologies and the languages that support them. So that means I will also sing, sound, moan, whisper, grate, shift, burp, scratch, vibrate and resonate.

Saturday. Davis. 90 degrees in the shade. I'll see you there wearing shades, dishing shade.

Keith X Hennessy