INTERVIEW: La MaMa kicks off 2021 Moves! fest
Photo: Nicky Paraiso is the curator of the 2021 La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival. Photo courtesy of Movement Research / Provided by La MaMa press rep with permission.
The 2021 La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival will be a combination of streaming performances and in-person presentations. Under the direction of Nicky Paraiso, the festival runs May 12-23 and features a variety of dance events built upon artistry, diversity, community and identity.
Some highlights of the program include a May 12 talk in recognition of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. The conversation will focus on how dance and performance can challenge and change stereotypes of Asian and Asian American women. Maura Nguyen Donohue will curate and moderate the evening, which kicks off at 6:30 p.m.
Hadar Ahuvia and Tatyana Tenenbaum will present Prayer of the Morning, May 13 and 15 at 7 p.m., while Ricarrdo Valentine and Brother(hood) Dance! will present All About Love, May 21 at 7 p.m. and May 23 at 5 p.m. Other choreographers represented in the festival include Tiffany Mills, J. Bouey, Sugar Vendil and Jasmine Hearn, among others.
Paraiso, curator of the festival, recently shared insights on what audience members can expect during the next 11 days. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What can audience members expect at this year’s festival?
This year’s festival is a hybrid-presentation of live-streamed performances as well as pre-recorded videos/vimeos, a LiveTalks event, a La MaMa Kids class, a virtual international showcase, which includes US-based work outside of NYC, and outdoor performances in the second weekend in an open lot on East 3rd Street.
I selected these choreographers — Hadar Ahuvia and Tatyana Tenenbaum, J. Bouey, Jasmine Hearn, Tiffany Mills, Ricarrdo Valentine, and Sugar Vendil — for the core part of the 2021 La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival because these particular artists have all been working during the past pandemic year in both isolation and reflection: They have each been literally alone and reflecting upon their own individual existences and deciding that by taking action (performatively, psychically, politically), they each might (hopefully) make an impact on their community/communities as well.
How difficult was it to plan these events for a virtual audience? Does dance lose any of its impact when transmitted through a laptop?
Planning these events for a virtual audience has its own degree of difficulty. La MaMa is fortunate enough to have a technical team which has been working steadily for the past year to hone the craft of live-streaming as well as using Zoom to make live performances possible. Although I do believe that the virtual format can never fully take the place of in-person live performances, there is an inherent value and unique quality in the streaming form, which has yet to be fully-developed and realized in all its seemingly limitless possibilities. Thus I don’t think it’s going away.
What are some of the highlights you are most looking forward to?
As curator of the festival, I of course see each core festival event and each choreographer’s work as a highlight: Hadar Ahuvia and Tatyana Tenenbaum researching and investigating their relationship to their Jewish lineage while acknowledging their connections to colonialist and nationalistic histories; J. Bouey’s and Ricarrdo Valentine’s explorations of grief and love, at the intersections of Black Lives Matter, Black queerness and global pandemics, promise a deep-mining into both collective histories and personal loss; Tiffany Mills’ deeply-felt research into the essential privacy of one’s home and the need to articulate personal loneliness: Dancers’ lives are seen in reflective states, re-evaluating notions of “normal” and discovering new, active ways of adapting to an unknown future; and both Jasmine Hearn’s and Sugar Vendil’s transcendent use of music and vocalization to move through uncertainty, pain, loss and, finally, love.
The choreographers of the Virtual International Showcase — Morgan Bullock (U.S.), Gerald Casel (U.S.), Daudi Fayar (Kenya), BamBam Frost (Sweden) and John Scott (Ireland) — all delve into their own personal histories with a view towards the actual world they, and by implication, we all live in.
It is important to acknowledge Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. How is the festival recognizing this month?
As an Asian American of Filipino heritage myself, I thought it was important to include an acknowledgment of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Dance artist, writer and educator Maura Nguyen Donohue requested that we speak with particular Asian and Asian American women choreographers and performers through one of our La MaMa LiveTalks programs. This year the festival will officially open with these talks with Asian and Asian American women artists.
In recognition of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, artists from across the diaspora will hold an inter-generational dialogue about maintaining personal and artistic practices of resiliency and resistance prior to and during the pandemic. Set against the backdrop of the rise in anti-Asian violence, in particular, the murder of six women of Asian descent in Atlanta, Georgia, the group will touch on hidden American histories, the “model minority” myth, and how dance and performance serve as a vessel for challenging and changing stereotypes of Asian and Asian American women. The event is curated and moderated by Maura Nguyen Donohue. Artists include Yoshiko Chuma, Sophia Gutchinov, Potri Ranka Manis, Paz Tanjuaquio and Sugar Vendil. The evening will include links to resources and ways to support the local AAPI community.
What will be going through your mind the first time you are safely able to take in a dance performance in person?
Ah well. Many things, ideas, recollections, past performance moments will be flashing through my mind and performance memory as both an audience member and as a performer participant in both dance and theatre. The essential fragility of life and living in this world on this planet will be foremost on my mind, I can safely imagine. How life and the people we love and even the strangers we come into contact with are precious gifts and ineffable commodities. Nothing is to be taken for granted, and every moment has its own particular weight in the passage of lives, histories and artistic legacies.
How has this last year changed you as an artist?
Although I know we’ve all been changed in very deep, unknowable ways by this last year of pandemic and sheltering, lockdown and loneliness, reflection and despair and then (perhaps) hope, we haven’t yet been able to completely process what all this means in the long run and how our lives will inevitably change and be changed.
As an artist, I hope to be even more vigilant of each passing moment and how each person, friend, family member, colleague continues to maintain an importance not only in our lives as artists but how those relationships impact both our lives and the lives of others. I think it’s an important watershed time for discovering what a true community looks like and how we can never go back to what was considered “normal” in the before-time.
I’d like to come back and re-evaluate what I’ve just articulated above and keep doing so as the months pass and we continue to uncover and re-discover and live.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The 2021 La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival runs May 12-23. Click here for more information and pay-what-you-can tickets.
