Monica Bill Barnes: Awkward Singularity

Monica Bill Barnes
(photo by David Wilson Barnes)

Monica Bill Barnes: Awkward Singularity

by Komal Thakkar

Seeing a performance by Monica Bill Barnes & Company, you might be surprised by how much you laugh. When I saw Barnes & Company perform Luster, Mostly Fanfare, and Everything is getting better all the time at the Kennedy Center in May, I certainly did, enjoying her enthusiasm and the athleticism of her muscular body flying through space.

Barnes comes to dance by way of training in theater at the University of California in San Diego, where she also studied philosophy with an emphasis in ethics. After graduating, Barnes applied to law school but rethought her choices. Shifting gears, she moved to New York City, attending a summer dance program at the Alvin Ailey School. The routine, she found, was not for her. She wanted to make her own work.

“Philosophy asked me to articulate my understanding of ideas,” says Barnes. “Choreography is articulating your ideas through your movement, and what you’re judged on is your ability to be specific and communicative in expressing those ideas.”

Specificity and attention to detail, essential components of a successful work, are two factors that compel Barnes to the process of making dance. She deeply admires Bill Irwin, an American actor trained in dance and clowning, for the physical specificity in his work. Ira Glass, the creator and host of NPR’s This American Life, her current collaborator, exemplifies nuanced, detail-oriented practice in work that bears his unmistakable radio personality.

“Specificity and attention to detail help you clarify what kind of performer you are trying to be and help you become a distinctive artist,” she believes.

Barnes (front) in Parade
(photo by Steven Schreiber

How can she “step outside” of a piece and view it with a critical eye while actually dancing in it? Barnes explains the necessity this way: she doesn’t understand herself as an artist without having the opportunity to perform.

She recalls the horror she felt as she viewed one of her pieces from the audience.

“I recognized that if I were in it, I would have felt it reaching a standstill in its natural and logical progression while we were rehearsing it in the studio. When I was watching it in the rehearsal process, I was taken by the distinctive, powerful performers. There’s a transformation that happens when you shift a dance from the studio to the stage and put it under lights in a formal setting. It’s not that I think I’m a great performer. I understand the work from inside out.” 

from Parade
(photo by Steven Schreiber)

Working humor into a dance can prove to be even more challenging. While Barnes doesn’t usually aim for humor, it does occur--frequently--when it’s unintended. The awkwardness and tragedy of the human condition interest her more.

So many dance artists deal with grace and beauty, she says, that she does not feel the need to contribute more of that type of work.

“I’m less interested in seeing photographs of iconic figures and beauty than I am of seeing photos of real people. You can get confused between one beautiful person and another. There is a distinctive, identifiable singularity that is specific to an awkward individual.”

“Most of the time the audience laughs is when something has gone wrong onstage,” says Barnes. “I never feel like the audience is laughing at us though. I feel like a lot of the laughter comes from empathy. My hope is that laughter serves as a response to us in these moments of awkwardness and humiliation that which they can relate to on a very personal level--a shared experience.”

Mostly Fanfare, set to songs performed by Nina Simone, deals with the struggles of showmanship and resilience. Barnes and her dancers wear large white feather headdresses reminiscent of a vaudeville act and incorporate large, sweeping movement and circus-like stunts in which they balance chairs in their mouths.

In Anna Bass’s solo, the dancer stacks large brown packing boxes on top of one another and then attempts to lift this tower of boxes. Clearly, the odds are stacked against her. Suddenly, boxes pelt her from the wings as the determined dancer struggles to carry on.

“When Anna gets hit with a box, she usually gets a laugh,” says Barnes. In this moment, she recognizes the humbling experience of being a performer, attempting beauty, failing miserably and somehow recovering.

Bass recalls surprise at the audience’s laughter during Mostly Fanfare's premiere. What’s funny in one city, Barnes says, might not work that way in another. To their amazement, one audience let out a collective groan when the boxes hit Bass.

Luster, an autobiographical duet, highlights Barnes’ long-standing onstage partnership with Bass, celebrating ten years of sacrifice, triumphs, and endurance. It opens with a film showing how much they travel and prepare, the less-than-glamorous, exhausting details of packing, unpacking, performing and repeating the process over and over again. At one point, Barnes and Bass, dressed in running shoes and sequined dresses, literally run in circles. For Bass, Luster is a virtual archive of their decade-long experiences in making dance.

“When we show up to a theater,” she says, “we put the set together and preset the props with the help of the production staff. We’re very hands on, and the piece reflects that about us.”

Barnes connected with Ira Glass after he attended a performance during her 2011 run at The Joyce Theater. He wrote her an email, and they began regularly conversing about their work. She admires how he uses radio in unique, innovative ways. “That’s what I aspire to do with dance,” she says.

Together, they created a performance for This American Life Live! before a live theater audience including Glass’s usual narration of stories and segments where Barnes and Bass would dance. Delighted by the project’s success, they next created a full-length show called Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host, which they are currently touring.

“Language forces the audience to think about the movement in a different way,” Barnes says. Without language, choreography and music are the only ways that the audience can discern meaning.

“The challenge in this collaboration is to ensure that movement doesn’t become illustrative of language and that language doesn’t become descriptive of the movement.” 

Glass and Barnes continually rework their respective contributions to assure that neither movement nor language dominates. Their collaboration, like a performer’s career, is a continuous dialogue, a constantly evolving learning process.

*****

Trailer for Monica Bill Barnes & Company's October 2012 season

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts

MC'ed by Ira Glass

BIO

Monica Bill Barnes is a New York City based choreographer and performer. Born and raised in Berkeley, California, Barnes moved to New York in 1995 after receiving her B.A. in Philosophy and Theater from the University of California at San Diego. Before she decided to become a choreographer Barnes studied on scholarship at the Alvin Ailey School, was a member of the high school debate team, played volleyball and wrote bad plays. Since pursuing choreography as a livelihood, she has created thirteen evening-length dance works, numerous site-specific events and multiple cabaret numbers for her company, Monica Bill Barnes & Company. Favorite New York performance venues include The Joyce Theater, Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church, Symphony Space, NYU Skirball Center and Dixon Place. Lincoln Center Institute invited Barnes to tour two of her shows, This ain’t no Rodeo! (2003-2005) and Suddenly Summer Somewhere (2009-2010) throughout the tri-state school system as part of their Repertory Season. Barnes has been an invited Guest Artist at the American Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, North Carolina School of The Arts, Vassar College, Virginia Commonwealth University, Connecticut College, The College At Brockport, Florida State University, James Madison University, University of Michigan, Emory University, Steps on Broadway, Peridance and Dance New Amsterdam. In addition to stage works, she has created several site-specific works and theater productions, including From my Mother’s Tongue (Dancing in the Streets), Game Face (SITELINES Festival), Limelight (Philadelphia Live Arts Festival) and several new works for The San Diego Dance Theater’s Trolley Dances. Recent projects include commissions for Parsons Dance (Love, oh Love) and The Juilliard School (The way it feels). Barnes was thrilled to be a part of This American Life Live! on May 10, 2012 alongside her favorite radio show host Ira Glass and other fabulous guests.

iele paloumpis: Craft of living, healing, making

iele paloumpis
(photo by Tei Blow)

iele paloumpis: The Craft of self and body

by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

[Editor's note: As a matter of respect, Dancer's Turn's style calls for the initial use of an artist's full name with subsequent references using the surname only. iele paloumpis, as a survivor of domestic abuse, notes that, "self-naming has been an important part of my journey, as a survivor and as a trans person." On their request, iele paloumpis will be referred to by their full name instead of the surname, "paloumpis," as a compromise between iele paloumpis and Dancer's Turn that will respect both the artist and the publication's style.]

iele paloumpis is many things–among them, a witch like me.

I knew I’d want to talk to iele paloumpis–a dance artist identifying as trans/queer–when I heard that their workshop in neopagan ritual, Witchcraft: a corporeal practice, would be hosted by New York Live Arts as part of its Shared Practice series this spring. I missed my chance to attend but wanted to hear all about it.

“We created a bodily circle and consumed salt and sage, taking this into our bodies to create that safer, sacred space together,” iele paloumpis told me. “Instead of burning herbs, we made herbal oil infusions for bodily healing.

“I base it on the lunar calendar. What’s happening with the moon, what sign it’s in, what’s happening with the planets astrologically guide what sort of ritual we will do and what sort of meditations we will have–if it’s about welcoming things and bringing energy into our bodies, or if it’s about expelling energy outward in different areas of our lives. The class is ever-evolving. That keeps it exciting for me.

“During the Shared Practice, Mercury was in retrograde, and the Moon was between Taurus and Gemini, void of course. A lot of witches believe, ‘Don’t do anything during Void of Course! And don’t do anything during Mercury in retrograde!’ But Mercury in retrograde--those interruptions that we experience--are telling us to slow down, telling us to go back to self-reflection and think about past experiences, our histories. Void of Course, similarly, is good for meditation, therapeutic things, in between worlds.

“We did a walking/moving improvisational meditation starting at one side of the room which we said was ‘Birth.’ When you got to the other side of the room, you were in the present moment. You were thinking about–and moving–your history and bringing it into the present.”

iele paloumpis in improv
(photo by JJ Tiziou)

For better or worse, our histories continuously permeate our present realities. iele paloumpis lives with a history that both challenges and stimulates the artist, educator and advocate they have become.

“When I was four,” they say, “I got into a major accident: a shopping cart fell on my leg, breaking my femur and cracking a growth plate in my hip–a spiral fracture, one of the worst fractures.”

The child should not have been moved, but a worried adult, not waiting for medical assistance, picked iele paloumpis up and ran through the store.

“The bone twisted, facing the wrong way, and there was danger of my leg never growing again,” says the dancer. “They had to fly in a special doctor who could set baby bones, and he did a good job. I was in a body cast for four months, from the middle of my chest, over both hips and then down to the tips of my toes. I don’t remember a lot from that time, but it was one of my first memories of a lot of pain.”

During their convalescence in the cast, their muscles atrophied. When the cast came off, they would need physical therapy to regain strength. On advice from their doctor, their mother enrolled them in dance classes–mostly tap with the Chicago Human Rhythm Project--and did volunteer work at the studio to defray the cost of attendance.

iele paloumpis continued to enjoy dance, never once considering it as a potential profession. Their future choice of a college, though, would tip them in that direction when, with a primary interest in literature and writing, they selected Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.

*****

The young iele paloumpis had grown up just outside of Chicago in difficult circumstances, raised by a mother who suffered epileptic seizures and a conservative, Greek Orthodox father who was frequently abusive.

“My parents finally divorced when I was in high school," iele paloumpis recalled. "But at the time, there was this horrific law: if you’re going through a divorce, the first person who leaves the household gives up their rights to whatever monetary gains they would have gotten from the household. Since my family didn’t have a lot of money, paying lawyers fees almost caused the house to go up for foreclosure. Neither of my parents could afford to leave the house. It escalated things, and it got really violent.”

Their mother had placed some of the settlement funds from iele paloumpis’s accident in a CD. To help iele paloumpis escape the unsafe household, their mother advised taking half of that money to buy a car to live in. iele paloumpis used the remainder for food and gas for getting to school and work. Friends sometimes allowed the youngster to couch-hop, a chancy situation. Finally, the mother of a fellow dance student, a devout Baptist from an affluent family, opened up her home. She also guided them through the process of applying to colleges, taking advantage of resources available to students unable to depend upon parents for support. iele paloumpis would be the first in their family to attend college.

At the time, iele paloumpis’s mother–with her epilepsy advancing to a dangerous state, with numerous seizures per day--faced emergency, life-saving brain surgery. Within days after the surgery, iele paloumpis headed to Virginia and college with the gift of a Bible and a plane ticket likely paid for by their friend's mother.

Thanks to Donna Faye Burchfield, Hollins University had launched its first baccalaureate and graduate programs in dance in collaboration with the world-renowned American Dance Festival where Burchfield also served as dean. At Hollins, iele paloumpis was surrounded by exciting up-and-coming dance artists.

It didn’t take long for dance to work its magic. iele paloumpis attended a dance festival at Hollins where, oddly and wonderfully, things didn’t quite go as planned.

“A big windstorm cut the electrical power right before the show was supposed to start. No one could see anything. Donna Faye rallied everyone around. They got candles, they got flashlights, they got everything they could and put them on the stage. Chris Lancaster, the accompanist, got out his cello, and Donna Faye called forth Isabel Lewis and all these other people to improvise–the most amazing thing I had ever seen. There was spoken word poetry, too. And then, at this pinnacle moment, the lights came back on–and they did the show!

“I was like, ‘I have to know what this is!’ I had never experienced dance like that in my life!”

So iele paloumpis approached Burchfield. Although their training had been very different from the offerings at Hollins, they started taking dance classes and ended up with with a double major in writing and dance.

photo by Adrien Weibgen

At Hollins, a women’s college, iele paloumpis also began to question gender identity.

“I was very much identifying as a woman--and I still wholeheartedly identify as a feminist, even though I don’t identify solely as a woman now. But there was always something that didn’t resonate for me around the language about being a woman. It didn’t quite feel right. And I don't mean oppressive/homogenizing language that is often used to describe women. No one identifies with that!

"Moving away from conceptualizing myself as solely female has been a complicated journey, but there's something about how I related to my own body. It was visceral and nonverbal, and so it’s hard to put words to.

“There are many different ways to identify as trans. Some people identify within the binary, being assigned a certain gender and then crossing over–male to female, female to male--to better reflect their gender identity. Personally, a binary expression of gender is not how I identify. I feel that there are masculine and feminine forces within my body, and I think to a certain extent that’s true for everyone, but it’s also how I relate to my anatomy. No one knows my body better than I do, just as no one knows your body better than you do, and so on. Ultimately, it's about self-determination and supporting each other within that.

“Graduating from Hollins and moving to Philadelphia--which has a very strong transgender/genderqueer community--was the first time that I was exposed to trans-ness in terms of fluidity of gender, more expansiveness, which was what I identified with and how I came into my own gender identity.”

Using the pronoun “they”–instead of “she” or “he”--came to express that breadth, depth and fluidity of gender.

Defining self for self, and throwing off oppression, had long since led iele paloumpis away from their father's Greek Orthodox religion, as well as the born-again Christianity of their friend's Baptist household. And yet, the symbolic, ornate ceremonies of the Orthodox tradition seem to have foreshadowed the rituals they create in both witchcraft and dance. Both pursuits represent a deep call to healing from trauma.

“It came back to healing, the layers of getting in touch with my body through dance with my history of abuse and violence, and being around women who had experienced violence, too. That was a very strong conversation happening at Hollins, and feminism was a part of that. I was thinking about my body and all bodies in a way that’s complex and about things not immediately visible.

“The idea of invisible disabilities is an odd thing. It’s invisible some of the time...until it’s not. My mother could often walk about the world, and no one would know that she had epilepsy until she was seizing or there was some other indicator. That, and the ableism that she experienced and that was constantly causing her to be between jobs, was always very present in my mind.

“Very young, I innately had the sense of injustice around my family’s class background and how that related to my mother’s disability and the domestic violence, and how that connected to our bodies. As I got older, I became more and more politicized around disability justice, connected to my mother’s struggle.”

This concern for justice extends to iele paloumpis’s work as an educator for the Arts and Literacy Program of the Coalition for Hispanic Family Services, providing consistency and safe space for young people from low-income families.

*****

“Within the past two years, I’ve been experiencing various physical ailments that have not been able to be diagnosed by doctors until recently," iele paloumpis says. "I’ve been navigating those things in my own body. I have an impairment that causes double vision.”

A cranial nerve lesion causes the double vision, a fairly rare condition that falls outside the expertise of most ophthalmologists and neurologists. They now consult with neuro-ophthalmologists specializing in double vision. Corrective lenses help somewhat; physical therapy, so far, has not been as effective as it might be in children with the disorder.

“The condition is very disorienting and causes a lot of dizziness. It’s weird: Your body adjusts over time; your body wants to orient itself. I realized I was compensating in all these different ways: I’m much more of an auditory learner now than a visual learner. Then it was, like, ‘Oh, I haven’t been reading for like a year.’  I can pick out words here and there, but I can’t read paragraphs. Since writing has always influenced my dancemaking, that has been difficult. There’s audio software that can read things aloud and magnification on my computer, but they’re imperfect programs for sure, and it restricts me to only reading things online.”

They avoid the typical bestseller audio books: “I don’t need more of that in my brain!”

Motion heightens their dizziness and queasiness.

“When I’m moving and dancing, it’s way too much, and that inhibited me to large degree when I had this wonderful studio residence at New York Live Arts over the past year. A lot of it was working with a sense of limitation and a feeling of not being able to trust my body in the way that I had once known it.

“At the same time, I was thinking about how to integrate this new thing that’s happening in my body–and not in a way steeped in internalized ableism. This is my body. This is what I’m going through right now. How can I embrace that? How can I integrate that into my dancing and my life?"

Shadows of iele paloumpis at left and Jung-Eun Kim (aka J.E. Kim) at right
in Keening at New York Live Arts
(photo by Joanna Groom)

“Last year, as I was working with J.E. Kim and Joanna Groom, my roommate at the time, I started thinking about orientation through sound," iele paloumpis said. "I found singing to be really calming. Joanna taught us how to use our voices, and it became a kind of meditation and spiritual practice to sing together. There’s subtle movement–your vocal cords, your breath–but not the topsy-turvy feeling that I get when I’m doing large movements.

“I had this deep desire to map out the space. I didn’t feel that I could see it anymore, that I could feel it anymore. Part of J.E.’s role was her ability to do that. The locomotion and directionality of her movement was about outlining the perimeter of the room. At New York Live Arts, although it was still very frontal–and part of that was for me to not be further disoriented--we turned the orientation so that, for the audience, it was from a corner vantage point.”

The disorientation, therefore, was placed on the viewers.

“For me, I was feeling the dizziness within my body, going there, doing some deep work around violence."

Three scenes from my mother keening
(photo courtesy of Arts and Literacy)

This season, iele paloumpis will be further developing their work through a Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) Space Grant. So, it’s onward, no matter what.

“The queasiness has made me not want to dance, but what my doctor has given me, recently, is the ability to patch one of my eyes, allowing for singular vision. It messes with depth perception, and I have no peripheral vision. I have to rely more on sound or craning my neck. I’ve been trying that out, and it’s actually been very freeing. I’m able to dance in ways that make my body feel good again. It’s a new form of navigation–both familiar and new–which is exciting!”

For a dance artist often improvising with others, could this be a challenge?

“I was very visual before in my understanding of the world around me. So that includes the way in which I watch work, how I come to understand it. I’ve been putting myself in my work a lot more recently because, despite all the physical difficulties, it has become less about watching the work and more about the experiencing of it. It’s been important for me to be inside of it. I know less about what it looks like but maybe more about what it feels like. For me, that’s very linked to improvisation.”

*****

iele paloumpis’s background as a survivor of adversity also guides how they view
the struggles faced by dance and dancers in an often uncomprehending and dismissive society.

“The only place I want to be is New York City because I have so many amazing people here, part of our dance community, that are deep friends. When the money goes away, it’s not like when I was in Chicago, when I’m not going to have a place to go. There are couches that I can still crash on here. When I first moved here, I wasn’t able to make the rent, and I was facing eviction and didn’t have the safety net. I know a lot of dancers who are on food stamps in order to survive and make their work, but I don’t know a lot who have contended with potential eviction and homelessness. So it’s hard to have a conversation with dancers around poverty."

"Within the last year, my class status has shifted quite a lot," iele paloumpis says. "I went from housing court to moving around a lot, collecting unemployment then luckily getting a steady teaching job--with health insurance!--and newly living with my partner and their sister who are from an upper-middle class background. It's very surreal. I'm coming to understand the idea of a 'safety net' in my chosen family.

"But, at the same time, my mom just got another pink slip while her current husband is laid up due to a work-related injury. I hope to one day be in a place where I can be her safety net. My mom loves dance, but she's never seen me perform in my adult life because travel costs are too high. We only see each other every three years or so."

Life experiences such as this make it impossible for this artist to be oblivious of social realities outside of the world of dance.

“For me, I think it’s important to think about accessibility, and I think that our dance community can keep itself very insular–you know, like the same people going to all the shows. The language we use is often very academic and sometimes inaccessible to others.

“We often will complain, ‘Why isn’t dance being seen? Why isn’t it considered important?’  Part of that is our own cycle of not branching out further, not thinking about accessibility.”

In fact, iele paloumpis says, the availability of dance as a healing and spiritual force becomes limited to the few. That’s one reason they remain dedicated to their work as an educator in underserved communities.

“I want to extend that to others. Those of us who do have safety nets, let’s do more and extend that conversation outward: What it means to be broke for a while because you’re not getting income as opposed to what it means to be in poverty. Of course, I think that, for most dancers, there isn’t a lack of interest in doing that. There’s a feeling of being stuck in the how of it because of a general lack of resources. But, as a community, we could work harder to extend outward.

“I think people are worried about ‘simplifying’ dance, because we’ve really worked to make it this thing that’s recognized in an academic setting. There’s this real drive to not let go of dance being an intellectual pursuit. But we’ve gone too far in that direction.”

*****

Witches learn early that words have limitations, but the right words-- combined with imagery, gesture and other sensory phenomena--can empower. By claiming the word “witchcraft”–which, they admit, is not taken seriously by a lot of people, iele paloumpis also lays claim to a history and feminist analysis of the oppression of women and pagan healers under patriarchal religion.

A rebellious thirteen-year-old iele paloumpis--influenced by their mother’s interest in witchcraft and psychic dreams, as well as by an idolized cousin, who was a survivor and healer–began to explore neopaganism. When iele paloumpis’s mother slipped a Tarot deck–the teenager’s first–into an Easter gift basket, their father grew angry.

“Him hating it made me love them all the more. It was a special gift that allowed for that sense of healing that I was needing. I still have that deck; it’s the only one I use."

Years later, while iele paloumpis was studying at Hollins, their cousin died from a drug overdose. Sara, who was more like an older sister to iele paloumpis, had struggled with addiction throughout the latter part of her life.

"Sara's body was found in a dumpster, and the coroner told our family that she would have likely lived had she been taken to the hospital. There was no further investigation into Sara's case. She and whoever disposed of her body were just chalked up as 'junkies.' And my world shattered. It is still incomprehensible to me--these acts of violence and people's indifference to suffering."

iele paloumpis found comfort in re-connecting to Tarot as a spiritual practice, learning what they could through reading, the Internet and just “acts of doing.”

“Doing ritual, more and more, gave me deeper knowledge, intuitive knowledge. It allowed me to feel connected to Sara and my ancestors. It's been life-saving in terms of my own emotional and physical well-being. Only recently have I desired to have more community around and to share these things. Within the trauma and physical impairments that I’ve been dealing with, I’ve felt the need to have healing connected to my neopagan, earth-based spirituality as a way to be inside my body. I’ve been thinking about it as a somatic practice and that there must be people out there who yearn for that or who already have a connection to it who can help me deepen my practice as well. So, I've been branching out more.

“It’s only very recently that I’ve been allowing this into my work in an intentional way--though it might have bled in before--based on the disability that I’ve been experiencing, as a way to orient myself and be inside my body. Joanna is open to doing ritual with me as part of our rehearsal practice.

“I’m studying herbalism right now, and a lot it is just about taking your time. Sitting and being quiet. I’ve been allowing for time to unfold. The seedlings on the work started at New York Live Arts. Right now, we’re finding movement vocabulary and language around our rituals. Wearing this patch, it’s going to be navigating through a half-sightedness–a new element coming into it.”

History subtly streams through the work-in-progress that iele paloumpis is conjuring and exploring this fall.

“my mother keening locates remnants of invisible trauma. The work explores various ways in which people heal themselves--through ritual and science and the magical nature of it all. Historically, acts of ‘healing’ or ‘fixing’ have often been used as forms of domination and control. my mother keening reflects this duality and complexity. It is a ritual, a celebration, a humiliation, a lament for the dead.

“While Joanna and I are still working with ritual and healing, our current emphasis seems to be shifting. We're now looking at the many ways we try to escape pain but are ultimately still bound to it. And recently we're approaching this heavy subject matter somewhat lightly, in that we hope to make the absurdity of it all visible.

“We're trying to find the levity in always trying so hard, but ultimately always failing. At the same time we are not putting the emphasis on failure alone. There's been enough of that in queer art over that last decade.

“With all sincerity, we are striving for a different outcome--something like euphoria, bliss or hope.

"We'll see!”

*****

See a free showing of a work-in-progress by iele paloumpis with Jen McGinn and Joanna Groom on Monday, November 18, 8pm (on a bill with Germaul Barnes, Amapola Prada and Daniela Tenhamm-Tejos) at Movement Research's at Judson Memorial Church. For information, click here.

iele paloumpis and Joanna Groom will also be showing my mother keening on Friday, December 6 and Saturday, December 7, both at 8pm, at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), 421 5th Avenue, Brooklyn. For information, click here.

BIO

iele paloumpis is a trans/queer dance artist, choreographer and teacher. As an educator of 9 years, they've taught movement improvisation and composition, as well as dance theory and critique. iele has also practiced various forms of neo-pagan spirituality since age 13 and recently began sharing this knowledge through workshops as a part of a bodily practice. In 2010, iele was a co-recipient of The Leeway Foundation's Art and Social Change Grant. This past year, they felt fortunate to be a 2012-13 Studio Series Resident Artist at New York Live Arts, as well as work under the mentorship of Trajal Harrell through the Queer Art Mentorship Program. iele is currently a 2013 Fall SpaceGrantee at BAX. At the center of their practice are ideas exploring body politics and artistic self-empowerment.

Dance lives in the world: a Dancer's Turn project

Dance lives in the world

At Dancer's Turn, we seek to locate dancers in real-time, real-life context, as witnesses and active players not insulated within intellectual gated communities. What does it mean for the art of dance to live and play its part in the world? How do dancers listen to that world and how do they contribute?

Please contemplate this idea: "Dance lives in the world," and send us your thoughts--anything from a paragraph to 500 words--to be considered for posting. Our targeted readership is general, non-academic.

Our address: dancersturn(at)gmail(dot)com

Thanks so much!

Eva Yaa Asantewaa
Editor in Chief
Dancer's Turn

Coco Karol: Journey of a Female Voice in Dance

Coco Karol
photo by Joseph Victorine

Coco Karol: Journey of a Female Voice in Dance

by Melanie Greene

4 o’ clock in the afternoon. The air is thick and hot. Eying a table and bench made of wood, we find a cozy spot underneath a covered patio. Condensation forms on the outside of my plastic cup and runs down the back of my hand—refreshingly cold against the vibrating heat. Ice cubes clash inside the container, melting into the green tea liquid. I’m look forward to taking a sip of this cool refreshment.

Karol sits comfortably on an adjacent wooden bench to my right. She carefully sips her tea, while I sip mine. In the shade, we catch bouts of wind that we gladly coax through the fibers of our clothes and against our skin. Taking one last sip of our liquid refreshment, we begin to talk at length....

If you Google or Bing modern dance images, you will encounter a visual menagerie of female and male bodies frozen in suspensions, extensions, and vertical contradictions to gravity. Refine your search further to choreographers and you may peruse lists counting up and down the decades of modern and contemporary dance greats.

I’ve become increasingly fascinated by discussions in recent literature surrounding the presence of the male gender bias in dance. From choreographers and company directors to performers, male visibility is undeniably large in a field dominated in numbers by women.

The Dance Advantage blog offers a possible reason for this phenomenon through a guest article written by Dorothy Gunther Pugh. Because there are fewer men, a perceived male scarcity leads to preferential treatment in the form of free training, bonuses, and unique performance opportunities and experiences (http://www.danceadvantage.net/2011/02/22/women-in-dance/a). It is within this climate that I wish to remember the female artistic voice in dance; the choreographers, creators, educators, performers, and provocateurs. To highlight the female artistic voice in dance brings into question what it means to be female or have a feminist voice in dance. The feminine mystique does not only appear in issues and content relating to females; therefore, it is not exclusive to females. This aesthetic can extend beyond culturally constructed ideas of gender, so it may be important to first define what I mean when referring to the female artistic voice.

Locating the feminist voice in dance involves considering how women and other under-represented minorities are represented in dance. It considers the stereotypes and portrayals of women and does not assume to locate a universal idea of feminine identity. It considers the fine line between oppression and empowerment. It is this voice that I wish to hear and highlight in this article.

To find the feminist voice in dance--and indeed that of other under-represented minorities--we must consider how the population is currently represented and treated in dance. We cannot assume that dance holds one universal truth about feminine identity that dictates how women should exist and participate in dance. Instead, we consider the information that flows through and around us as a tool to perceive, understand, and sometimes provoke existing circumstances. It is this information that shapes our understanding and consideration about interactions and relationships. It allows us to consider the fine line between oppression and empowerment, real and fantasy, and realized and fetishized. It is this voice that I wish to hear and highlight in this article.

I met Coco Karol during a six-week dance summer intensive in Durham, North Carolina. We participated in a theory class designed for dance professionals and artists wishing to obtain their Master of Fine Arts. We shared a unique space with others that nurtured questions and considerations about dance as it related to pedagogy, sexuality, phenomenology, and visual aesthetics.

Upon our first encounter, I was struck by Karol's careful consideration of thought during group discussions. She appeared genuine in the way she chose to articulate her ideas without appearing disrespectful, combative, or condescending.

Collective Collaboration         Passion projects                  Long hours


                Distant    work that brings people together


Different-Language-New                                                   Communication

                                                          Problem-solve

Collaborations cultivate a collection of ideas, insights, talents, and passion. It marries disciplines and encourages many languages to come together as one.

Karol and I shared stories about the nature of collaboration and the possibilities that can manifest even when artists speak very different artistic languages. It is very rewarding when artists are able to bridge gaps and discover new ways of communicating.

Karol has worked on a series of collaborative projects with artist Björk; photographer Steven Sebring; sculptor Eve Bailey; composer Inhyun Kim; and dancer Chloe Douglas. With each work and collaboration, Karol identifies a set of conceptual challenges that are influenced by the collaborative medium. These seeds of consideration and contemplation root the foundation of her works. As a set of challenges becomes realized, Karol sees it as an opportunity to explore new challenges. For example, when moving within the physical structures designed by Sebring, Karol spoke about how conceptual challenges served to mirror physical ones. Working inside a 360-degree photo rig with Sebring, Karol described how, “the two of us talked our way to a final product, each person at different times responding, reacting or having agency, within our respective mediums.”

As a mover, it is important to work within evolving environments that present new questions and challenges for the performer. It keeps the mind and body active, thinking, and agile. Many would agree that this trait is also advantageous in life. We have to be able to fluctuate and adjust to daily challenges. Collaboration gives you an opportunity to work with different people, which has the potential to generate unique excitement when you see “what can happen when everyone involved is learning and growing” together.

Collaboration with architect Marcos Zotes
from the installation Rafmögnuð Náttúra--
a temporary and site-specific light installation animating the facade of
Iceland’s Hallgrímskirkja Church with a large 3d video-mapping projection

from Karol's film-in-progress, Topography
photo by Azmi Mert Erdem

Entasis Dance (2012), Karol's collaboration
with sculptor Eve Bailey
photo by Adam Bailey

Examples of recent collaborative works for Karol include Entasis Dance with Eve Bailey, Rafmögnuð Náttúra conceived by Marcos Zotes, When Insight Comes In a Dream III. I write to you and you feel me composed by Inhyun Kim, and Karol's own creative brainchild Topography.

Interacting with sculptures designed by Bailey (http://evebailey.net/), video footage and images can be found of Karol twisting, molding, and elongating her body around organic sculptures. In Rafmögnuð Náttúra (http://www.rafmognudnattura.com/), Karol created and performed a dance in Brooklyn that was later projected on Hallgrimskirkja church in Iceland. During When Insight Comes In a Dream III. I write to you and you feel me, Karol's movement sequence created a duet with Kim's composition (http://findingcoco.net/videos) guiding the eye and ear to consider musical and physical forms.

Karol’s current Topography project continues along the spirit of collaboration, combining a collection of mediums, including dance, film, music, and projection. Her vision for this project continues to create a space that nurtures the intersection of diverse voices and disciplines. Topography enlists film to explore the human body as a landscape and navigates the physical perimeters of that space to allow the body to alternate between "map and means, path and pathos, guide and guided." While Karol spends a majority of her time teaching and performing, she is fueled by collaborative projects and doesn’t mind the flexible lifestyle. She attributes this to being surrounded by a supportive family and community of inspiring artists.

For a time, Karol articulated her gratitude for her experiences and opportunities. When I asked Karol how she comes by these amazing projects, she spoke about how they grow organically. Work begets work. One opportunity leads to another. She added that, “whenever you’re open to the possibility of something happening, something does.” She did admit that she has a difficult time saying no to projects, but fortunately she has met some amazing people by not saying no. Over the years though, she has figured out how to say yes with terms and conditions.

from the 2012 gallery show, Method of Loci
photo by Rogue Space

In Brooklyn, Karol built and managed a performance space called the Petri space: “a small petri dish concept, dedicated to experimentation, education, community, and roof top gardening" (findingcoco.com). While it was really hard to live and work in the same space, Karol spoke proudly about the nurturing vibe of the Petri space. Here you were allowed to fail, succeed, and discover. The Petri space cultivated beautiful moments where roles were given the space to combine, collide, and shift like an enchanted orchestration of improvisation. Karol has also participated in programs that promoted arts in education. Working with schools in Staten Island and Queens, she said, “You have the capacity to do more and feel rewarded by what you’re doing” when you see how it resonates with students.

Life/Inspiration

Karol was raised in Boston but has lived in Brooklyn for about ten years. She acquired her undergraduate degree at Tisch School of the Arts and has a background in ballet, modern, contemporary, and improvisation. The opportunity to travel a lot has greatly influenced her worldview, with trips to South Africa and Austria leaving the biggest impact.

As a proponent of physical and mental wellness, Karol advocates establishing a daily meditation practice of one's own. She practices a type of insight mediation, which brings one's busy, straying thoughts back to one's breath. The consideration here is to be mindful about the bodily sensation of breath and how it can inform one' s thoughts and treatment of reality. This practice allows you to observe how your mind wanders–or gets distracted, or reacts–and how to have compassion for it and treat it with gentleness without struggling to control it.

Remembering to breathe mindfully while living in a big city is very advantageous. Like a piece of advice a man once offered me while sitting over a continental breakfast in a hotel in San Francisco, “The most important thing for me is that next breath. Without it, there is no next step.”

There are many ways to find balance, but you must commit to it being an ongoing investigation. “One way is to remember to take a pause. You can go to the Met and have a home for a day,” Karol added. This mindfulness promotes a healthy life and state of mind when living in a big city. As many have experienced, life in the city can be difficult, but Karol reminds us that

"There are a lot of different New Yorks. You just have to carve out the right one for you."

As we concluded our interview, Karol spoke about her part in the dance world and her hesitation to call herself a choreographer. She doesn’t see herself as a conductor, commanding bodies in space. Instead, she sees her role as creator, dance maker, and dancer. “It feels good to be a woman creator in dance,” she says.

Karol occupies a powerful place that encourages women to be artistic explorers. Through her, we see, feel, and experience how the female voice becomes manifest within artistic mediums. This evolving voice may speak to many or only a few. It is generous, considerate, challenging, provocative, delicate, aggressive, and all that flows in-between.

A friend of Karol once gave her this powerful reminder that also inspires me and fuels optimism within my spirit as I continue my journey and personal history with dance…

The universe never says no, but answers with one of the following…

(1) Yes, (2) Yes, but not now, or (3) I’ve got something better.

BIO

Endlessly fascinated by the different modes, means and mediums of communication and transformation, Coco Karol has made collaboration with artists and musicians who speak in entirely different and vast artistic vocabularies, the focus of her choreography and performance work. Likewise, the language of existing or created environments, of installation or site specific stage settings, have excited her imagination.

After graduating with a BFA in Dance from Tisch school of the arts she has had the pleasure of getting to work closely with many interesting artists such as the singer Bjork and film collective Encyclopedia Pictura, designer Jennifer Gonzales, director Steven Cook, and magazine Beautiful Decay. Karol is an eager, existing member of Chris Elam's Misnomer Dance Theater, where she also wrestles with themes of communication in its varying degrees of choreographic language.
In Addition to performing works at an experimental performance space in Brooklyn, Karol built, called the Petri space—a small petri dish concept, dedicated to experimentation, education, community, and roof top gardening—her  collaborations have been shown at D.U.M.B.O Under the Bridge Festival, New York Studio Gallery, Galapagos, Brooklyn Ballet, Death By Audio, and Aunts collective, as well as at some unique community events for neighborhood youth and gardening.

findingcoco.net