Arts
EWDance Company: Tour Fantastico
The following is a journal of the adventures of the Emma Willard Dance Company, April 2008.
By Sue Lauther.
his year the Emma Willard Dance Company toured to Puebla, Mexico, to see the sights, meet the people, taste the food and interact as dancers with other dance lovers.
Day 1: Sunday, March 30
We met Youngmin, who had been performing at Julliard Saturday night and flew in from LaGuardia to meet us in Charlotte. Spirits were high and the flights were easy-going.
Though many slept on the bus from Mexico City to Puebla, others remarked how sad the naked cement buildings seemed—with tires on the roofs to hold them down, and how beautiful were the colors of other buildings and the lovely tropical flowers and vegetation that they had never seen before except in encyclopedias. We arrived via three taxis for all 13 of us (plus our luggage) at our dormitory, which seemed more like a hotel suite. It had a kitchenette and meeting room on each floor, staff to answer our questions and call taxis for us, and a bubbler of purified water so we didn’t have to buy more plastic containers. The evening air was cool, so we took a tour around the campus looking for registration: it was closed.
We decided to go into the city of Puebla for some food and a dance concert. Most places were closed on Sunday night, so we ended up in a small restaurant across from the Teatro Principal, where we would perform the next night. We surveyed the old opera house, with mostly box seats and a huge stage. Our students were impressed by the last dance on the program, as they looked forward with trepidation and eagerness regarding how they would perform at Puebla’s 7,500 foot elevation the next day. Afterwards, a University bus took most of us to a site-specific dance locale, while Barbara took some others to Wal-Mart to pick up a rice-based dinner for those with special dietary needs. At the restaurant (converted to performing space,) we wandered among local dancers in reflection pools, around a bench, on top of ledges, among four potted trees (the most impressive to our girls) and over water falls. Afterwards, we gathered outside where we met one of the directors of the Performática festival, Ray Schwartz. Ray wittily charmed the girls, and (good-looking dancer) Miguel dramatically serenaded Ariel with the traditional Mexican birthday song, to make her day very special.
We all met back at the dormitory for our nightly meeting to debrief and to anticipate the next day. Members looked tired but in good spirits, and happy that they had gone to the late performance even though they were tired from a long travel day.
Day 2: March 31
Each company member could get food at the school cafeteria or the stands near registration while we took turns to register. We each received a ribbon around our wrist indicating that we were performers at the festival; thus, we could take any class that had room. Each of us chose to take Yoga, Jazz or Contemporary technique before we were whisked away to Puebla to work on the technical needs of our dances for the night’s performance. Barbara stayed back to teach “Inside the Pilates Body,” a well-received class that transformed the participants into greater self-awareness through Pilates concepts and Barbara’s sensibilities about alignment, coordination, and strength.
We were on a program with other professional dancers and our high school girls matched the professionalism of the event. While I was in the booth working with Yayo, (technical director) making lighting magic happen on stage, the company members rehearsed and spaced the dances on their own. They learned how to adjust so that they made best use of the lights at the most dramatic moments. Before and after our “tech,” the girls went to the Zocalo to haggle for typically Mexican treasures and personal items, or to immerse themselves in the culture. They came back with shirts, dresses, jewelry, souvenirs, and stories about how generous and kind are the Mexican people.
That evening our dancers shone bright. Suzanne Oliver’s (our guest artist) work was stunning on that large stage, and the technical director chose our other dance to close the concert. This spot is usually reserved for the strongest and warmest dance. I was very proud to have them show off Emma Willard School the way they did. Many people expressed appreciation of the work and our girls’ execution of it, and our girls were thankful of the genuine support of the other performers who danced at the festival events. Reflecting the day, the girls’ sentiments included, “The kindness/sincerity of the Mexican people inspired us to unite as a group with love,” “Why can’t Americans be more kind?” “They made me want to pay more attention to the way I presented myself to others.”
Day 3: April 1
The morning offered us nine festival classes in three slots. Everyone took at least two classes, and could take the third or choose to go swimming, do homework, practice the violin or rest. My class combining contact improvisation with Rudolf Laban’s theories regarding effort continuums was very successful. Represented was the full range of ability in the class (from raw beginner to teachers of the form), yet each person gained understanding and control of the elements. The performance of the skills at the end proved exciting. Some of our girls took classes that were taught in Spanish; they enjoyed the experience of having to understand in a different way than they were used to. One said, “It showed me how dance is its own language and I don’t need words to communicate.” They were inspired and also intimidated by meeting, watching and taking class with talented professionals, “I was surprised how much I learned and that I can apply that learning to other classes.” As for me, I was thrilled to meet and take classes from the legendary Barbara Mahler, who is a co-founder of the release technique, around which much of the dance world revolves these days.
At noon, I ate tortillas with red sauce next to the pond (and the ducks, crows, peacock, turtle) to watch the site-specific work where dancers paraded in, explored the shore, crossed the bridge of plastic bottles tied together and onto the tiny island, before departing via boat with a long ribbon unwinding into the distance. The red and white clad performers offered a variety of movement textures, while live music streamed over the water. It was lovely, and then time to go to the local pyramid. After marching through the inside of Tepanapa Pyramid (known for having the largest base in mesa America), we climbed to the top, petting the police horses on the way, for an exquisite view of the entire valley and volcanoes.
The sky was deep blue, old woman vendors sold unusual fruit (Granada-chinas?) and Mexican-styled chocolate. I spent my time trying to find directions to the restaurant where there was to be a reception for the festival, only to find when we got there that they were not open for dinner. However, they convinced all but the vegetarians that the reception food was enough for dinner. So we sipped our Cokes and made friends with the young daughters of the two small women who were making tortillas from scratch on a grill, while four of us went looking for a Hare Krishna restaurant, a mere “10 minutes” (really 30) walk away, to eat tofu and have a more intimate dinner. The little daughters were teaching our girls Spanish, and they repeated names like Youngmin and Mimi with great glee and animation. As the reception grew, Emma girls mingled amidst the dancers and the scent of jasmine and the varieties of typical Mexican cuisine until the vegetarians returned. Then we met back in our apartments and prepared for the next day.
Day 4: April 2
In the morning, most of us took the Contemporary class, taught by our host Ray Schwartz, who gave a somatic warm up based on the Bartinieff fundamentals, and then explored partnering communication by taking another person off balance and placing them back on their own equilibrium. Eventually, much the class was dancing contact improvisation beautifully. It was a nice warm up to prepare us for the performance at the local Montessori School.
When we arrived, we noticed the stage was too small for our company’s repertoire, so we changed the audience to sitting on the stage, and we did our performance on the main floor. Our girls explored the slipperiness of the surface, laid out their quick changes and went to chat in Spanish with the youngest children. As the performance flowed, the audience exclaimed, laughed, gestured and commented with each fancy movement. In between dances, we were able to ask different students what they thought of the dances. One described Barbara’s piece as scary and imitated them crawling desperately across the floor. At the end, the youngsters crowded our dancers with requests for autographs. Some practiced their English by complementing the dancing and telling them their own stories of dance and studies and school. As one of the EW girls reflected, “They boosted our confidence. It was great to hear how they enjoyed our performance. It was nice to hear that they admired us.” The school gave us bottles of water, fruit and quesadilla snacks along with a ride for all of our stuff, so that we could save cab fare and walk back to the University. When we got back, several of us took another dance class (Melissa Wilpers and I took a composition class in which she and her partner performed a lovely duet that looked like it had been costumed).
The evening was dedicated to eating a traditional dinner including the region’s specialty, mole poblano (sauce from puebla), and a dance performance on the main square in historical Puebla. The three vegetarians had eaten at their favorite spot near the university, and since they hadn’t returned for our departure, we left the name of the restaurant and theater for them to negotiate their own way to the center of town. They handled this challenge well, and joined us for lemonade at the outdoor table at Hotel Royalty. An after dinner stroll around the zócalo brought us to the quaint theater, where we saw some riveting dance by the participants of the festival. Back at the dorm, we prepared all the costumes and props for the next day’s early performance.
Day 5: April 3
At 7 a.m., the American School picked us up in a cushy school bus, and we made our way to a theater that was to be built as the first planetarium in a school in Mexico. The funds did not materialize, so they made a theater that is now fully in the round. We set up our changes behind the movie screen, Barbara led a warm up, and then altered the dances so that they would fit and also so the dancers could get a feeling for performing 360 degrees. Straight pathways became curvilinear; the surface was carpeted—good for ballet shoes, not so great for sliding on knees. By the end, the company was feeling great about the quality of their performance in such an unusual theater. One enjoyed “meeting the children in our audience, hearing them responding to our every move, and seeing (in the round) smiling faces from every direction.” After signing more autographs, accepting bottles of water and a ride to our next destination, we were at the doors of the state’s children’s hospital.
When we arrived in the hospital auditorium, we immediately went to work, patching the holes in the floor with pads and tape from the first aid kit, feeding wires down into the floor from the podium, removing tables, chairs and fake trees and plants from the surface, and then we cleaned what we could. The dancers were resourceful in setting out their costumes on the stairway, and already the senior citizens had taken their seats and begun dozing as our dancers spaced the dances on a stage that was merely 12 feet deep—half that of Kiggins. We almost cancelled the largest group piece for fear that one would roll off the 3-foot high stage, but they proved to be aware and adaptable enough to pull it off. We learned that part of the audience was children with mental disabilities (the staff said they were amazed at how quiet and engaged this group was), another part was orphans of parents who could not afford their health care needs, and others were nearby school children and senior citizens. Some children came with IVs attached to them and others in wheel chairs. After the final bow, two older women led the audience in a cheer:
A la Bim! A la Bahm! A la Bim Bom Bahm! Las Chicas De Emma Willard: Rrrah, Rrrah, RRRRRAAAAHHH!
This cheer burst several times from various parts of the audience, then everyone gathered in the front for a group photo. Mimi held the baby (who was in her pajamas with IV hook up) in her arms, others cuddled up to the group who wanted to get closer to our dancers. The volunteer staff, many who were dressed in candy stripe uniforms, expressed gratitude. The coordinator gave us a certificate of thanks in front of the crowd and gifts of posters depicting children from Puebla. I offered the hospital a small monetary donation of $40. They thanked us deeply, saying that indeed this is a great gift, since parents cry at the doors of the hospital because they cannot pay the $3 for their child’s medicine. They asked me to think of all the parents who could now make their children well with proper medications.
Back at the dorms we opened the costumes to air out, and then spent the next bit of time taking our last class, packing, doing homework or catching the last rays at the pool before having dinner together. Patrick Lynch, a former student of Les’s at St. Mark’s School who now works for admissions at the University, took us all to his favorite family restaurant. He joked that he is so close to the owners that they have to vet potential girlfriends before he can go on a date. The two sisters who owned and ran the place served us liquados (fruit shakes) and wonderful plates of fresh food. We then walked to the venue for the last dance performance. Near the entrance there was a set up where people could play with their own video projection that were altered electronically. The first dance utilized this, and a contraption that created various sounds depending on the proximity of the dancer. Consequently, the dancers danced and made part of the music for their performance, and a video artist manipulated the video signal to create images cast on the walls. Another performer dealt with issues of race and sexual preference prejudice and oppression in our society, and yet another group explored the outside space as they danced. While in Mexico, Barbara and I were hoping to take the girls salsa dancing, but there were only discotheques to be found, so to Roka we went, where the chemical fog hung, the laser lights projected onto the walls and the music shook our ribcages. The scene was slightly dead until the group from the University of Oklahoma arrived, dancing through the door. Throughout the short week, this enormous group seemed aloof to ours, but as one company member said, “The Oklahoma people seemed much more approachable than we first thought,” and they joined them on the dance floor.
Last day: April 4
We checked out of our rooms at 7 a.m. and made our way, speaking Spanglish to each other, into the cabs then into the bus over the mountains to the airport. Tired and inspired, we made our way back to EWS with only one delay in Charlotte, thankful for the weekend ahead to decompress and catch up on homework missed during tour.
Clearly, many lessons were learned: about working together as a group, demonstrating responsibility and trustworthiness, representing the school with dignity, humility and generosity to many people in the world who will remember Emma Willard School. Also, the company became wiser regarding supporting a culture that (in some cases) has less material goods, more long standing traditions of culture, a more delicate sewer system and different standards for driving the roads, and also negotiating when things are not what we expected so that we do the best with what we have.
Before the trip the company bonded through the numerous fundraising events in which they engaged, but leaving Mexico with warm feelings for each one of the others shown in their eyes and will color the feeling of their “Ilusiones” Spring Dance Concert at 7 p.m., Saturday, May 17. We all hope you can join in the circle of warmth we have created this year and through our tour to Puebla, Mexico.
