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Relevance & Reform: a Remixed Response to Randolph Belle

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By Eboni Senai Hawkins

“In a capitalist system, culture is a system of control.” – Todd Lester – Founder, www.freedimensional.org

It’s 3am.

I just got off the phone with a friend of mine – a talented visual artist – who is threatening to become a Republican and abandon her practice. She says that the American public has voted with their dollars and that she cannot continue to make a living in a society that doesn’t see art as relevant. Especially now that she’s a mother.

Our conversation started at 1am.

Throughout it all I had to draw upon the immense spirit of collective action present at the Emerging Program Institute, an intensive offered by the Alliance for Artists Communities for culture workers interested in creating or strengthening residencies for artists.  Todd Lester’s quote struck me to my core.  Upon hearing about Quan’s plan to cut arts funding, my first response was, “F— Oakland! We can do it on our own, we MUST do it on our own.” The personal is political, right? As a single woman, I would never wait around for a man who had courted me and left me dry to one day wake up and recognize my value. I would go out and seek other options, secure in my self-worth.

It is now all about options.

Lester’s organization, Free Dimensional, works with an international network of individuals who are interested in providing safe space for artists who have been persecuted for their work. They do not accept money from government agencies, depending on foundation and individual support.  I am ready for Oakland to do the same. To turn away from the City, turn to our neighbors, engage them as cultural stewards, and say, “Hey, I’m doing this really beautiful/amazing/RELEVANT work. Why don’t you come to a rehearsal, check out my studio? How would you like to support a show?”

I appreciate Randolph Belle’s wisdom and continued enthusiasm after years of working around Oakland arts and culture. I trust his proposal that “reforms to the permitting, planning and zoning processes to expedite housing, venues, and special event projects would generate significant impact.” It is a broader way of approaching recent roadblocks.  I want to temper the heat of my disbelief, the sting of budget rejection. I want to believe that Oakland will value its artists. But I know we have to value ourselves first. We have to take inventory – what we have, who we know – and leverage that to a sustainable future.  It is time for Plan B, C, and D.

My friend is not going to become a Republican. Of that I’m certain.  I can’t say that she’ll continue her practice. I know that she’ll forever be a mother. Faced with the economic realities of raising a child, my passionate words on policy meant very little. So I spoke about relationships.

I spoke about a neighborhood where a child might see an artist doing their art. Where that child, coming home from school one day might ask the artist a question, “What are you doing?” and follow up with a “Why?”  I spoke about the subtle shift that occurs when a child, a family, a neighborhood, a COMMUNITY maintains consistent contact with creative thinking. How creative thinking would seep into every day life. To the point that, hopefully, when it’s time to vote again, that art isn’t some thing on a pedestal. Art is your neighbor.

 

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Eboni Senai Hawkins is the Producing Artistic Director of see. think. dance.

After valuable experiences in arts administration (Jacob’s Pillow Dance, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts,Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet), she took a leap of faith and started working directly with the art and artists she loved.

Inspired by the opportunity to present intimate performance in a low-pressure environment, Eboni curated a short program for the June 2007 Mission Arts Performance Project (MAPP) hosted by the Red Poppy Art House, featuring dancers Antoine Hunter and Rashad Pridgen.

 

The response from the primarily visual arts/music audience was overwhelming and in collaboration with Todd Brown and the Red Poppy’s Street-Level Curating Program, Eboni established see. think. dance. to produceTruth + Beauty (November 2007), Word. Warrior. Music. Movement. (March 2008), and Urban Art Sessions(May 2008).

May 2008 also marked the formation of and the first performative installment by The Intimacy Project, an ongoing collaboration between artists/educators who draw creative inspiration from their connection to the African continent and are deeply invested in social change through the re-integration of the mind and the body.  Losing a dancer at the last moment and concerned with the flow of the evening’s program, Eboni overcame her fear of the stage to perform a duet with actor Kwesi Hutchful, a movement composition incorporating media installation, tempest tossed by lauren woods and layered with a recorded version of Intro to Kemetic Science by David Boyce.

In 2010, heavily influenced by the REVIVE workshop, Eboni created the annual REflect film series as part of the Black Choreographers’ Festival: Here and Now. Subtitled “The Black Dancing Body on Film”, REflect mines the rich visual history of Black dancers and choreographers on film through a dynamic selection of documentaries, feature films, and shorts.

Don’t miss Reframing the Arts : Advocating for the Public Culture at Oakland Museum of California (OMCA)on Saturday, April 16! Register here.

 

Cultural Stewardship (from the San Francisco Ballet to Big Freedia)

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by Eboni Senai Hawkins

“Katrina played a big part in spreading bounce… We were displaced all over the world.  People were trying to find bounce music like it was a drug.” ~ Big Freedia (on Late Night with Carson Daly)

I was introduced to Big Freedia – a transgender star of New Orleans’ bounce music who has a hit song entitled “Azz Everywhere” – last year via Namane Mohlabane and the New Parish.  In that one concert, it felt like all my worlds – Southeast college parties, Brooklyn dancehall sound systems, and gender-fluid Oakland – had collided and settled comfortably around me.  I can only imagine what it would have felt like if I had been one of the hundreds who had come to the Bay Area from New Orleans. The rapid tempo, the booty-shakin’ bass, the gritty, insistent call and response could very well have sounded like “home.”

At one point in the show, the beat dropped out and Big Freedia’s acapella verses hit hard.  We all stopped gyrating and caught our breath to witness this person who was giving her all, working a limelight that was a long time coming and might not last.  I looked around and wondered, how many in the room could feel the history in Big Freedia’s voice and follow that thread to the story of New Orleans?

If we’ve learned anything from DJ Kool Herc having to reach out to hip hop fans to cover medical expenses, we cannot depend on market forces to assign value to the subcultures that make up this nation’s legacy.  It is too easy to equate cultural stewardship with a certain class.  At the same time, we cannot ignore the fact that the cultural forms that have the investment of time and money from their audiences are the ones that thrive and become representatives of what we value as a whole.

One day I found myself inputting plans in my Google Calendar for an evening out.  San Francisco Ballet at the War Memorial Opera House at 8pm… Big Freedia at Public Works at 11. In that moment, it saddened me to think that while the San Francisco Ballet has multiple tiers of support, is touted as one of the city’s gems, and will probably live on for another 73 years, the event at Public Works is only one of Big Freedia’s many solo shows in a packed schedule. She performs up to six nights a week, working the music circuit from nightclubs in New Orleans to SXSW, attempting to bank on a “trend” that’s just reaching cult status after 20 years.

Who will be cultural stewards for Big Freedia and bounce music?  Can we get the hipsters that dive into the safe space of “shaking for Big Freedia” to also support the post-Katrina communities that remain dispersed throughout the U.S.?  Can we get urban Black communities to embrace “Big Freedia, the Queen Diva” AND move towards accepting the LGBTQ community as a whole?  In the attention deficit world of “click, click, done” via Kickstarter campaigns how do you get someone who buys one ticket to one concert to understand the effects they could have on a subculture?

Sometimes you have to start where you are, build relationships, and hope the significance sinks in.

In the dance world, intimate artist-audience conversations are too often a “benefit” reserved for high-level donors.  When I created the DANCEfirst! salons at the Museum of the African Diaspora, attendees jumped right in, taking in performance, asking the hard questions after, and coming back the next month.  In the push for empowered citizens of culture, I am inspired by local institutions who are making the move to deepen relationships.  YBCA’s Big Idea Nights earned it a reputation as “that museum that throws really good parties.”  Oakland Museum’sOakland Standard gets me out almost every First Friday for the eclectic, socially-responsive activities that celebrate local community.

If we look at engagement alone, cultural stewardship is evolving. We are a DIY, participatory culture – we curate our own shows and raise our own funds.  Now we just need to be consistent.  See ourselves as “supporters” and not just “consumers”.  The difference is what will ensure that the art we value, that speaks to our multiple voices, continues to receive the support it needs to be heard.

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Eboni Senai Hawkins is the Producing Artistic Director of see. think. dance.

After valuable experiences in arts administration (Jacob’s Pillow Dance, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts,Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet), she took a leap of faith and started working directly with the art and artists she loved.

Inspired by the opportunity to present intimate performance in a low-pressure environment, Eboni curated a short program for the June 2007 Mission Arts Performance Project (MAPP) hosted by the Red Poppy Art House, featuring dancers Antoine Hunter and Rashad Pridgen.

 

The response from the primarily visual arts/music audience was overwhelming and in collaboration with Todd Brown and the Red Poppy’s Street-Level Curating Program, Eboni established see. think. dance. to produceTruth + Beauty (November 2007), Word. Warrior. Music. Movement. (March 2008), and Urban Art Sessions(May 2008).

May 2008 also marked the formation of and the first performative installment by The Intimacy Project, an ongoing collaboration between artists/educators who draw creative inspiration from their connection to the African continent and are deeply invested in social change through the re-integration of the mind and the body.  Losing a dancer at the last moment and concerned with the flow of the evening’s program, Eboni overcame her fear of the stage to perform a duet with actor Kwesi Hutchful, a movement composition incorporating media installation, tempest tossed by lauren woods and layered with a recorded version of Intro to Kemetic Science by David Boyce.

In 2010, heavily influenced by the REVIVE workshop, Eboni created the annual REflect film series as part of the Black Choreographers’ Festival: Here and Now. Subtitled “The Black Dancing Body on Film”, REflect mines the rich visual history of Black dancers and choreographers on film through a dynamic selection of documentaries, feature films, and shorts.

Don’t miss Reframing the Arts : Advocating for the Public Culture at Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) on Saturday, April 16! Register here.

 

 

Making Dance Visible: Prioritizing Place for Public Performance in Oakland

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by Eboni Senai Hawkins

“Our communities need to see our artists doing their art.” ~ Senay Dennis (aka Refa 1)

As a transplant from New York (8 years and counting), I have come to expect the performing arts to take over the landscape during warm weather in major cities.  New York sets the bar with Summer Stage across 5 boroughs.  L.A. organizes Grand Performances in spite of its urban sprawl. Chicago, with only 2.5 real warm months, has a jam-packed schedule at Millenium Park.  San Francisco’s approach is a little disjointed but at least the effort is there: Stern Grove and Outside Lands fill a niche. And in SF, when all else fails, there’s always someone performing at BART & MUNI’s busiest stations.

So what’s going on in Oakland?

Oakland is home to some 90 parks, (compare that to Brooklyn’s 39).  With so much public space, why are we only graced with two days for the Art and Soul Festival, four days of Sundays in the Redwoods, and a smattering of lunchtime performances as part of Sweet Summer Sounds?  In the debate around encouraging arts appreciation in youth, why are we not making it simple, direct, and affordable?  While we’re at it, why not change the focus in favor of involving whole families through a dynamic network of outdoor, neighborhood-based performances that span the range from music to dance to theater?

Outdoor performances (usually) = free performances.

The economics don’t add up. Nor should they, according to Arlene Goldbard’s urging that we “start with open eyes: refuse to pretend this debate is about money; explain how the arts are being used to send a political message.”  Oakland’s political message is a charged one that mimics the overall United States emphasis to exercise control and boundaries rather than encouraging diverse communities to connect around public performance.  What if, post-Mesherle verdict, the City of Oakland spent less on overtime for law enforcement officials and invited Turf Feinz and Youth Uprising to engage the public in a dance demonstration at Frank Ogawa Plaza?

What if Oakland committed to outdoor performances as much as is its highly-publicized restoration projects?  CBS Outdoor contributed $6.5 million in billboard revenue so that Oakland School of the Arts could pre-pay its first seven years of rent to the Fox Theater.  What if the City negotiated with CBS Outdoor to use a portion of the billboard’s continued revenue to support site-specific performance activating the Uptown Sculpture Garden?

In the midst of the furor around Mayor Quan’s most recent push to cut Oakland’s arts funding, we also need to look at our neighbors’ understanding of “the arts”.

I would bet that the majority of Oakland-ers, like the majority of Americans, don’t define themselves as artists or see “the arts” as vital to their lives.  Even in the Bay Area, where we are supposedly so culturally-literate, I listen closely to the subtext when young second-generation business owners think artists are people who just want to “live off society” and graduates of Berkeley High are instantly cynical when a new acquaintance describes herself as “an artist.”  What if Oakland’s residents, encouraged by the presence of dance and music almost in their backyards, became more active cultural stewards, showing just as much enthusiasm for new bars and restaurants as the performance-packed but seemingly one-off Uptown Unveiled?

Performance artist, Adesola Akinleye, discussing the overlapping elements of bodies and buildings, writes:

“… The person who watches dancing does none of the physical work themselves but in perceiving the performance they experience the rhythm of it as though it were in their own body…  I see choreography working in such a way that the audience becomes aware of their own feeling of the aesthetic of the body in space.  I aim for my work to continue to be alive within the space when the dancing bodies have finished; for the dance to have left a trace.”

Dance demands a kinesthetic empathy, a way of experiencing art bodily simply by watching.  Another video featuring Turf Feinz is “RIP Rich D”.  The intense and simple beauty of humans finding an outlet for mourning through movement has accumulated over 2.5 million views on YouTube.  Such empathy has the potential to pierce the layers of urban existence and bring together Oakland’s diverse yet self-segregated neighborhoods.  Especially if we commit to it in public.

 

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Eboni Senai Hawkins is the Producing Artistic Director of see. think. dance.
After valuable experiences in arts administration (Jacob’s Pillow Dance, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts,Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet), she took a leap of faith and started working directly with the art and artists she loved.

Inspired by the opportunity to present intimate performance in a low-pressure environment, Eboni curated a short program for the June 2007 Mission Arts Performance Project (MAPP) hosted by the Red Poppy Art House, featuring dancers Antoine Hunter and Rashad Pridgen.

The response from the primarily visual arts/music audience was overwhelming and in collaboration with Todd Brown and the Red Poppy’s Street-Level Curating Program, Eboni established see. think. dance. to produceTruth + Beauty (November 2007), Word. Warrior. Music. Movement. (March 2008), and Urban Art Sessions(May 2008).

May 2008 also marked the formation of and the first performative installment by The Intimacy Project, an ongoing collaboration between artists/educators who draw creative inspiration from their connection to the African continent and are deeply invested in social change through the re-integration of the mind and the body.  Losing a dancer at the last moment and concerned with the flow of the evening’s program, Eboni overcame her fear of the stage to perform a duet with actor Kwesi Hutchful, a movement composition incorporating media installation, tempest tossed by lauren woods and layered with a recorded version of Intro to Kemetic Science by David Boyce.

In 2010, heavily influenced by the REVIVE workshop, Eboni created the annual REflect film series as part of the Black Choreographers’ Festival: Here and Now. Subtitled “The Black Dancing Body on Film”, REflect mines the rich visual history of Black dancers and choreographers on film through a dynamic selection of documentaries, feature films, and shorts.

 

Don’t miss Reframing the Arts : Advocating for the Public Culture at Oakland Museum of California (OMCA)
on Saturday, April 16! Register here.