Pass It On
We’re driving to Oberlin this weekend to see FLY: Five First Ladies of Dance, a concert of solo performances. Their names are familiar to anyone who follows concert dance. Carmen de Lavallade is described by some as Alvin Ailey’s first muse. Bebe Miller, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and Cleveland’s own Dianne McIntyre [pictured at left] are important postmodern choreographers. Germaine Acogny is the only African choreographer we know of creating contemporary African dance.
It would be difficult to name five equally eminent dance personages, much less get them all performing on the same stage.
The ladies are all 60+ years of age but this is no celebrity parade; all are possessed of fierce powers of projection, and audiences and critics are nearly unanimous in their enthusiasm. The original concerts produced by 651Arts in Brooklyn quickly sold out, additional concerts were scheduled, and a 4-city tour was booked.
Our original plan for a preview piece was to interview all five of the women, but on Thanksgiving even dedicated performers are secluded with their families. Phone tag with McIntyre resulted in not an interview, but an extended voicemail in which she described the tour and her solo:
Dianne McIntyre: It has been a joy and an inspiration working with the other women. We’ve been on tour and each of us is like a cheerleader for the others. And we learn a lot from each other, dance related and also in life lessons. Being with Germaine (Acogny) is quite a boon. She’s from the continent of Africa and she brings ancestral energy that’s quite powerful for us and for the audiences. In the work I’m doing (a 15-minute solo titled If You Don’t Know [2009]), I honor some collaborative ancestors, three artists with whom I’ve collaborated and who’ve been vital to my own development – singer Gwendolyn Nelson-Fleming, filmmaker Saint Clair Bourne, and musician / composer Lester Bowie. In my solo there are elements of each of these artists’ expressions that I dance to and interpret. The three of them have passed away but their art continues fiercely so I wanted to bring their messages and their presence to this particular time and space.
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Germaine Acogny [pictured below] and her husband Helmut Vogt were in Senegal when we spoke with them via SKYPE. After a brief hello in English, Francophone Acogny had Vogt interpret.
Germaine Acogny: Bonjour. I have read your questions and I have spoken with Helmut about my thinking.
Cool Cleveland: How did this project begin? Do you have connections with the other performers in FLY that predate FLY? For instance, we know that you and your company, Compagnie Jant-Bi, collaborated with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s company, Urban Bush Women, in The Scales of Memory.
Helmut Vogt: Except for the connection with Zollar, the collaboration on Scales of Memory, there was no connection with the other ladies prior to FLY. She had heard of them, but that was all.
What happened was, the women met, they created strong connections of love and admiration and respect for one another – there is a great union and support when they rehearse and perform – and they are really happy being together and presenting this show on tour.
What is the significance of older performers dancing?
GA with HV translating: As we grow older, we have more maturity, we have a whole lifetime of experience as a dancer and, obviously, the public can see it, the public can feel it. The way these ladies move, even small movements, has a special energy and a special expression. It doesn’t often happen that women of this age are dancers, so it’s wonderful for them to get a chance to show this maturity and this life long experience which comes out in what they are doing, how they are moving, how they transmit who they are, and how they transmit their energy.
We’ve seen 2 of your dances, Fagaala, which treats of the Rawandan genocide, and your collaboration with Urban Bush Women, which took as its subject the African Diaspora. We understand from our reading that your piece for FLY advocates more women presidents for Africa. Do you indeed believe that concert dance has a role to play in history and a voice in the conduct of national and international affairs? How could that work?
GA: I believe in what I’m putting onstage, that it’s important to put it on stage, that it’s a way – maybe a very small way – to make people aware of something. I have decided to talk about certain problems in Africa and not to always let others, especially westerners, speak for Africans. I have decided to speak as an African for the Africans and to critique the Africans, the presidents, to critique what is happening.
If you look at the numbers of people who see my work, perhaps it is a very small influence, but even a drop in the ocean can do something. Sometimes there’s a snowball effect when one’s own work changes the minds and consciousness of people and they pass it on.
We understand that your grandmother was a Yoruba priest and that you are unusually well-grounded in the traditional religion and culture of the Yoruba people. At the same time, you are a world traveler, a cosmopolitan figure. What do you think traditional Yoruba culture has to teach the world? Or perhaps we should ask, what has Yoruba culture already taught the world?GA: My grandmother always said that Christianity and Islam have nothing new to bring to us. We have everything within our Yoruba religion, even a personality like Christ, the one who opens new paths and who works for the recreation of everything.
This traditional African religion was taken with the slaves to Brazil, to Haiti, etcetera, and it’s still there, present in traditional dances which, for instance, use excess energy or calm the body or pass energy to others.
As we said our goodbyes, Vogt added one more thought. “Germaine asked me to tell you, her call for more women presidents is only one very small aspect of her solo. She’s making a much larger statement about hope for the world and finding energy to face the future and to face up to hope. It’s not only by words, it’s through her body and through her dance.”
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What little we know about Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s solo for FLY reflects a similar faith in the power of dance. Through an exploration of the New Orleans tradition of second line dancing, Zollar makes what’s reportedly a stunning case. Bring ‘Em Home as the title of her 2009 dance has it, bring the dispersed residents of New Orleans back to their homes.
None of the critics find such a clear interpretation of Bebe Miller’s intentions in Rain (1989), in which she dances with, on and around a patch of turf. That’s consistent with our experience of Miller’s work in Verge and Landing /Place. She’s interested in the interaction between place and self — “What does place have to do with who we are?” she asked in the program note to Landing / Place — but she leaves the audience to draw their own conclusions.
Carmen de Lavallade dances and speaks in a piece based on James Weldon Johnson’s poem, The Creation, in which the story of the creation according to Genesis is retold using African-American vernacular.
[Photos by Antoine Tempe]
FLY: Five First Ladies of Dance visits Hall Auditorium on the campus of Oberlin College on Fri 12/3 and Sat 12/4 at 8PM. Tickets are $15 and up and are available by calling 440.775.8169 or 800.371.0178 or visit http://www.Oberlin.edu/artsguide/tickets. FLY is presented by DanceCleveland and Oberlin College and Conservatory Theater and Dance Program. FLY is made possible with the support of Arts Midwest, The National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, The Ohio Arts Council, The National Endowment for the Arts and The Nordson Corporation Foundation.
From Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas. Elsa and Vic are both longtime Clevelanders. Elsa is a landscape designer. She studied ballet as an avocation for 2 decades. Vic has been a dancer and dance teacher for most of his working life, performing in a number of dance companies in NYC and Cleveland. They write about dance as a way to learn more and keep in touch with the dance community. E-mail them at vicnelsaATearthlink.net.