Acrobatic troops across Kenya’s coast continue to perform at star-studded venues while struggling to support themselves financially. (Photograph by Sabine Skiba)

The majority of acrobats working on Kenya’s coast today come from impoverished backgrounds. They chose this work because it allows them to celebrate their cultural identity and heritage. (Photograph by Sabine Skiba)

Though formal training centers don’t exist across the coast, acrobats form brotherhoods of performers to fine-tune their choreography and support one another. (Photograph by Sabine Skiba)

Kenyan acrobatics nods to both the long history of circus artistry in the African continent and its modern evolution. (Photograph by Sabine Skiba)

Kenya’s acrobats have toured the world, appearing in venues from Mexico to Israel. (Photograph by Sabine Skiba)

Over the last two decades, the salaries for performers have remained largely stagnant in Kenya. (Photograph by Sabine Skiba)

To ensure this profession has a sustainable future, acrobats are advocating for fair pay and for Kenya to recognize the circus arts as an integral part of its national heritage. (Photograph by Sabine Skiba)

It’s showtime at one of Kenya’s five-star resort hotels.

Tourists from around the world move in small groups to the performance area next to the pool to see the evening’s headliner: Burning Spear Acrobats.*

The five members showcase the art and skill of Kenyan acrobatics. They adjust themselves into elaborate human pyramids. They fly through the air in perfect synchronicity as the ropes turn in opposite directions during the double rope skipping act. And they create an impressive tower of stacking chairs and hand balance from one to another to great heights.

Their performance is both a glimpse into the centuries-old performance traditions from Kenya and other African countries, with accounts dating back to at least the 14th century, and the evolution of its modern form, which developed in Kenya alongside its tourism industry in the 1960s.

But the future of this art form is in jeopardy. While resorts across Kenya’s coast sell tourists on these shows, they do not pay their performers a living wage. Because of that, Kenyan acrobats don’t know how much longer their show can go on.

The majority of acrobats working on Kenya’s coast today come from impoverished backgrounds and have only basic schooling. Though the path to becoming an acrobat is less financially stable than working in construction, as gardeners, or as drivers of motorcycles or tuk-tuks, those who seek it out do so because it enables them to be creative and steel their bodies, while taking pride in their cultural identity and heritage.

To break into the industry, young Kenyans will approach relatives and friends who already perform to mentor them. The troupes’ training is self-driven. They meet on the soft sand beaches before the heat of the day to practice and then again in the afternoons to fine-tune choreography. They have no facilities, no safety equipment, and no health insurance. The Burning Spear Acrobats were fortunate in that they started in a north coast village that had a training location with a pole and a rudimentary stage. But though formal training centers do not exist on the Kenyan coast, acrobats form brotherhoods of performers who support each other in their quest to live their lives with dignity.

Troupes tend to have a fixed day of the week performing in the various hotels, for weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly engagements. Successful troupes will work five to six days a week. Others are not so fortunate and have to make do with one to three performances. The frequency of performing is also dependent on the tourism seasons; the low season provides only scant opportunities and is a tough time for performing artists.

The unpredictability makes international contracts more prized. Over the years, many Kenyan acrobats have performed in tourism venues from Mexico to Israel, on cruise ships, and at international festivals. Despite being a fixture on the cruise circuit around the world, Kenyan—and African acrobatics more broadly—have yet to receive the mainstream recognition they deserve. Still even the base-level international contracts they take provides them with some financial stability. Most acrobats who have worked internationally for a year or more are able to save and acquire a small plot or build a small dwelling on ancestral land.

But in Kenya, the profession is struggling to survive. Part of this is because of the state of the tourism industry. Over the past two decades, the country has been hit hard by terrorist attacks, notably the 1998 U.S. embassy bombing, the 2013 attack on the Nairobi Westgate shopping mall, and a series of al-Shabaab strikes. More recently, the COVID-19 crisis handed a significant setback to the sector. As hotels have tried to maximize their profits amid this uncertainty, they’ve done so by not adjusting their performance budgets to the rising costs of living.

Over the past 20 years, salaries for performers have remained largely stagnant. As reported by senior artists, salaries in 2003 ranged from 1,500 to 3,000 KES (Kenyan Shillings) per show for a group of five (the equivalent of roughly $20 to $39, though that represented a higher purchasing power back then). Salaries have increased only marginally since; today they range between 1,500 and 5,000 KES for most shows (roughly $10 to $32 per group per show), which amounts to a de facto decrease.

Meanwhile, the cost of living has skyrocketed in Kenya. Food inflation has been especially dramatic, averaging 9.74% per year from 2010 until 2023. This has left performers living hand-to-mouth, with hunger knocking on the door, especially during the off-season. The fact that the situation is especially bad in hotels catering to audiences of predominantly white tourists from the global north is reminiscent of colonialist practices of showcasing “exotic” people and animals. While complaints about low wages have increased across the working-class population in Kenya, acrobats and other performing artists are particularly vulnerable.

Ethnic discrimination also plays a role in these worsening conditions. Performers are overwhelmingly members of the Mijikenda, an ethnic group consisting of nine distinctive peoples who live along the coast. Since independence, the ruling parties of Kenya have invested heavily in their own ethnic constituencies, while coastal Kenyans—without sufficient political power in the capital city of Nairobi—have had to put up with pot-holed roads, poor healthcare, underfunded education, and a general lack of investment. The overall situation has also led to the performers and other members of the Mijikenda to be treated poorly by some of the hotel management staff and entertainment managers, who are responsible for determining performers’ salaries. Several of these managers have even taken small cuts from the salaries of acrobats. Most hotels do not allow tipping after the show, and where it is allowed, the result varies and are not enough to supplement incomes.

Combined, these factors have led to a precarious financial situation that if it continues, will push the culture of acrobatics in the country to disintegrate. That would be a loss for Kenya and the world.

One step to rectifying the situation is for Kenya to recognize the circus arts as an integral part of its national heritage. Neighboring Tanzania, for example, is already investing in training institutes for its acrobats, who also tour internationally. South Africa houses the renowned Zip Zap Circus, the Zip Zap Circus School, a permanent venue for circus arts in Johannesburg, and an Acrobatics Federation of South Africa that specializes in acrobatic dance, among others.

Currently in Kenya, the nonprofit Sarakasi Trust Foundation is the only major development organization investing in the circus arts. Located in Nairobi, its Sarakasi Dome—which has dance studios, an auditorium, and various multi-purpose spaces—offers training that empowers artists creatively and economically, including education on social entrepreneurship and life skills. More such support is needed for acrobats on the coast. For now, the performers are left to continue to push to find solutions to their dire situation, despite the many obstacles in their way. For example, a well-established advocacy association they created was shut down in 2015 as part of a larger government crackdown on community-based and other non-governmental organizations that were suspected to have ties to terrorist organizations. Performers continue to attempt to organize and negotiate with hotels, but such campaigns come with a risk because artists fear retaliation and that they will lose their jobs if they become associated with such movements.

The result is that Burning Spear Acrobats, along with other troupes on the coast, continue to perform at star-studded venues while juggling other jobs to get by. They continue in the hopes that Kenyan acrobatics, and African acrobatics more broadly, are given their rightful place in the pantheon of awe-inspiring circus arts of the world, and receive fair compensation for such work. As one of the members of Burning Spear Acrobats said recently, “People need to understand that acrobatics is a serious career, that it requires commitment and discipline. We deserve respect for our work.”

The post Don’t Close the Curtains on Kenya’s Acrobats appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The first time I really paid attention to boxing ring entrances—the long, celebratory walks fighters take from their dressing rooms to the ring before a bout—was in 1992, when I watched the classic match between Julio César Chávez and Hector Camacho that symbolically pitted Mexico against Puerto Rico. I was a 7-year-old U.S.-born Mexican, yet it was Camacho’s entrance that drew me in: the blaring strains of McFadden and Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now”; the flashy Captain Puerto Rico outfit; the way Camacho danced his way to the ring.

Camacho lost the fight, but he won the narrative—at least, as far as I was concerned. His ring entrance was a bravado performance of political and cultural resistance. It made such a strong impression on me that it launched me into my career researching the political economy of boxing. Today, I excavate ring entrances to understand the ways boxers make their mark on their sport—and the world.

The ring entrance allows boxers to reach new markets and increase their earning potential. It also provides a way for them to express themselves, and to communicate messages of political and cultural dissent. For this reason, the boxing ring entrance is the most important ritual in sport. It forces the world to witness boxers in all their performative glory.

Every single boxer in the history of the sport, dating back to the establishment of the 1867 Marquess of Queensberry rules, has made that long walk. Jack Johnson blew kisses at racist fans who razzed him in Sydney in 1908, and enjoyed adulation during ring entrances in later decades. In 1989, Sugar Ray Leonard entered the ring to fight Thomas “Hitman” Hearn wearing a white and red-striped robe with the word “Amandla” stitched on the back. Amandla is the isiNguni word for power, and was used by the African National Congress as a rallying cry in efforts against apartheid in South Africa. Ring entrances are spaces where boxers exercise agency and express their cultures, lived experiences, and social identities.

An effective political ring entrance has three crucial components. The first is music, which helps boxers communicate pointed messages. In the 1990s, when Mike Tyson entered the ring to Public Enemy’s “Welcome to the Terrordome,” it amplified Black hip-hop culture, and Chuck D’s powerful message. When I spoke with Chuck D and asked him what it meant to him when Tyson entered the ring to Public Enemy’s song, he replied, “Well, Tyson never lost when he did.” By linking his athletic prowess to a soundtrack that spoke truth to power, Tyson legitimated and boosted calls against racial violence.

The second is fashion and style. Boxers get to select their own uniforms and ring outfits, and their fashion choices are often connected to their lived experience and culture. World champion Kali Reis describes her purple-and-white, wampum-festooned trunks as “boxing regalia”—and they are a direct manifestation of her experiences as a multiracial Black Indigenous woman, hearkening to the tradition of fancy dancing, a type of dance performed at powwows that was reserved for men until Indigenous women challenged that societal norm. Kali is part of this rich rebellious history. By wearing garments that express her identity, she rebels against dominant structures and ideologies.

The final crucial component is an entourage. Popularized by Sugar Ray Robinson, the entourage is a traveling team, rooted in a boxer’s obligation to bring along the people who have contributed toward their success. Entourages are also a way to show the world who you are and what you stand for. In 2002, world champion boxer Fernando Vargas was scheduled to fight against Oscar De La Hoya. Vargas entered the ring with his boxing hero Julio César Chávez, a Mexican boxing icon who represented a Mexican working-class ethos, to express his pride in being Brown and Mexican. This ring entrance was particularly powerful given its timing: In post 9/11 America, the population of immigration detention centers was rising, along with anti-immigrant sentiment.

On September 13, 2018, after a successful weigh-in at Save Mart Arena in Fresno, California, fighter José Ramirez wears his “Pro-Immigrant and Proud” t-shirt. Its message is a response to President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration administration. Photo by Rudy Mondragón.

Kali "KO Mequinonoag" Reis enters the ring with her entourage, the Ashaa Takook Bird Group of the Kumeyaay/Diegueno Nation, at Sichuan Casino in El Cajon, California on August 20, 2021. Photo by Rudy Mondragón.

Deseree "Shines" Jamison enters the ring wearing a boxing robe that reads "Queen of the Ring" at Commerce Casino in Commerce, California on July 30, 2022. Photo by Rudy Mondragón.

Today, fighters such as José Ramirez continue to use ring entrances for collective empowerment. Ramirez’s parents were Mexican immigrants to California’s Central Valley, and he grew up witnessing the harsh work conditions they endured doing agricultural work. Ramirez started boxing at seven; at 14, he began working the bell pepper fields to help his family. Somehow, he kept up his training. In 2012, he represented the U.S. at the London Olympics, and soon after, he made his professional debut.

In the first years of Ramirez’s career, he partnered with the California Latino Water Coalition to raise awareness about funding for water infrastructure. When Donald Trump became president, and delivered his now-infamous speech calling Mexican immigrants murderers and rapists, Ramirez leaped to action again. At his first world title fight, against Amir Imam in March 2018, he used his ring entrance to unveil a pro-immigrant, anti-Trump message. He wore a white and red Fresno baseball jersey and a red cap, similar to Trump’s MAGA hats, but refashioned with the message “Pro-Immigrant and Proud.” His trainer at the time, the famed Freddie Roach, accompanied him to the ring, wearing the same hat. Ramirez won the fight, earning the World Boxing Council World Super Lightweight championship.

I made it my priority to attend his next fight, in Fresno, and to sit ringside, so I could see what he would do next.

Seconds before Ramirez’s descent to the ring, fans yelled, “You can do this s–t!” and “Avenal homie!,” referencing his Central Valley hometown. Ramirez and his entourage stood at the edge of the tunnel, wearing their “Pro-Immigrant and Proud” hats and t-shirts and waiting for their cue. The sounds of his theme song, “Yo Soy José De Avenal” started playing, and they began their walk.

The song was performed live by Chuy Jr. (son of Jesus “Chuy” Chavez of the well-known norteño group Los Originales de San Juan), who composed the song for Ramirez in 2017. A corrido, or traditional Mexican narrative song, it is about Ramirez’s roots in Avenal, his perfectionism in and out of the ring, his courageous no-quit spirit, his family, and his mother’s hometown of La Piedad, Michoacán. Its lyrics frame a compelling counternarrative to Trump’s racist rhetoric. For the 80 seconds of Ramirez’s ring entrance, the fight centered Mexican culture, unity, and the visibility of undocumented immigrants.

I sat down with Ramirez a few weeks after this fight and asked him what “pro-immigrant and proud” meant to him. Whether it was our president or our neighbors, he explained, “the reason they like to divide people is to make them weak. The message is for me to remind everyone that they should be proud that they’re immigrants and they come here and are doing something positive.”

Ring entrances are ephemeral, only lasting a few minutes. But through music, fashion and style, and entourages, these shows subtly and overtly communicate pride, dignity, and at times political protest. Beyond the pyrotechnics and pageantry, there is a story in every ring entrance.

The post Boxers Know the Power of an Entrance appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Back then, in 2002, I did not know, exactly, what a mentalist was. But the performance changed my life.

The mentalist asked my wife at the time and another woman—someone we did not know—to get up from the audience, to stand about 8 feet apart in the performance area, and to close their eyes. He silently touched the woman with a feather, twice, on different parts of her arm. He then asked my wife, whom he never approached, if she felt anything.

“Yes,” she said. Something had touched her arm.

“Where?” the mentalist asked.

My wife pointed to two places—the same spots he had touched on the other woman’s arm.

“What did you feel touch you?” the mentalist then asked my wife.

Her answer: “A feather.”

The audience gasped audibly. This was inexplicable. Over the next hour or so, this guy performed impossible feats of thought-reading, precognition, telekinesis, and verbal persuasion. If I had seen him on TV, I would have sworn he was using stooges, confederates, camera tricks, or doing some sort of “cheating.” But I had no explanation for what I saw in that hotel suite that night. I know there were no confederates. My wife volunteered in a couple more demonstrations, and I knew she wasn’t in league with the mentalist. (Or, perhaps she was, which would explain our eventual divorce.)

Right then and there, I became hooked. Mentalism provided me with a new passion, an obsession. What drew me in was the mystery of it all—the power to read and control thoughts, the ability to predict actions, and the opportunity to perform a wondrous, other-worldly show.  Having someone merely think of a drawing, then taking a pad and duplicating their vision perfectly?  Or handing someone in your audience (not a stooge) a sealed envelope at the beginning of the show, and opening it at the finale to reveal every single choice made by spectators throughout the night?

Mentalism forces people to consider that things they previously thought to be impossible are, in fact, possible. My father was a philosophy professor at New York University for more than 50 years. Mentalism, like philosophy, involves the quest to figure out the unknown; there’s a strong metaphysical aspect to it. And, like stand-up comedy, mentalism asks its practitioners to observe the human condition, find the things we have in common, and make a connection with the audience. Both are all about understanding patterns.

After that demonstration at the Waldorf, I wanted to understand how it worked, and to learn how to read thoughts myself. I probably acquired close to a thousand books on mentalism, and several hundred videos. I found a couple mentors, too. I started practicing whenever I could, doing simple demonstrations everywhere I went. I worked up one demonstration where someone drew a picture and I duplicated it without ever seeing it, standing in a far-off location. I perfected another where I asked a person to think of a loved one, and then I guessed their loved one’s name. After blowing people away, everywhere from dinners out to the checkout line, I started doing my mind-reading act at parties, and eventually I took a shot at going pro. Over the past 10 years I’ve traveled around the world several times, performing in hotels, comedy clubs, cruise ships, and theaters.

The longer I do this work, the less I believe in the supernatural and the more I believe in intuition. So much of what I do is based on psychology, observing human behavior, and recognizing patterns of thought and body language. It’s also about knowing how to control someone’s choices through linguistics or “verbal judo,” as mentalist Andy Nyman calls it. I can get a volunteer to make the choices I want them to make without them, or the audience, ever getting a sense of my process.

One of the greatest mentalists of all time, the late Bob Cassidy, once said, “If you want to be real, don’t claim too many talents.” Mentalism includes thought reading, thought sending, clairvoyance, remote viewing (seeing something from a far-off location), and psychokinesis (which consists of effects like metal bending). Can I bend cutlery and coins? Sure, but I heed Cassidy’s advice, and I don’t. If I step onstage and bend a fork with my brain, it makes everything too unbelievable. “You can pick up on thoughts and you can bend spoons?” an audience member might say, the seeds of suspicion creeping in.

My favorite mentalism exercises rely on verbal persuasion techniques—using spoken language, and body language. There are no props. It’s not sleight of hand, like traditional magic. It’s sleight of mind, and it draws on neuro-linguistic programming, hypnosis, statistics, behavioral patterns and other science-based methods. And while sometimes I’ll fail, that ultimately is to my benefit: getting something wrong offers credibility, because what mind reader would make an intentional mistake?

So, yes, what I do is real, and I present it as such, as do many of my colleagues. But I believe it is not ok, nor ethical, to say we can talk to spectators’ dead relatives, or to prey or profit on people’s grief. Some mentalists offer a disclaimer before their act, informing the audience that there’s nothing supernatural involved. I respect the impulse, but from a performance standpoint, I think this is counter-productive.  As Cassidy used to say, “Why would anyone pay to see a fake mind-reader?”

I never say what I am doing is real, or that it is a trick of the mind. I leave that to the audience to decide for themselves.

The post Where I Go<span class="colon">:</span> My Life as a Mentalist appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

What I remember most of all is that I was completely smitten with this dance thing.

A friend later suggested we try ballet, and I was all in. Within a few months, though, she had dropped out, while I became even more committed. In college, I tried modern dance, then jazz, and, decades later, an oh-so-brief stint at tap dancing. As a teen, I was clear-eyed enough to know I was not ballerina material. But I had other ambitions. I was a voracious consumer of newspaper and magazine arts sections, and by the time I was 15, I had decided I would become a dance critic.

What an absurd aspiration! Maybe a dozen people in the whole country were making a living writing about dance. But my passion was born out of doing, in the same way that millions of children play and compete at soccer, football, baseball, volleyball, tennis.

My own muscle memory of waltzing, spinning, and grand jêtés developed into and fostered a love for observing others performing those same steps, which is not so different from how children who play Little League end up becoming diehard baseball fans.

Learning to appreciate dance in its many forms was a little bit like learning to eat. Because most of us like to move our bodies, even a little, anyone can understand and enjoy a dance performance. You don’t have to know the meaning of specific gestures. Early on, I was most impressed by the obvious things like a performer’s physical prowess and remarkable athletic feats. I would sit up in the balcony at L.A.’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to see American Ballet Theatre, where company stars Cynthia Gregory and Fernando Bujones were first crushes.

The dance world cracked open a little more each time I tried something new; it was like tasting an unusual dish in a different country. At UCLA’s Royce Hall, the Martha Graham Company shook up my entrenched stereotype that modern dance was not as masterful as classical technique. It certainly was. I remember how elegant the dancers looked, how stretched and tall. And I was struck by the stylized movement, the Graham contraction in which the torso is concave, almost scooped out. The heroic emotions of Graham’s storytelling touched me in a way I hadn’t anticipated.

Twyla Tharp’s “The Fugue” was another memorable performance, further busting down my preconceptions and expanding my ability to appreciate. It was stark, simple, and yet miraculous: three performers making dance and music simultaneously, the only sounds consisting of feet hitting the amplified stage.

About the same time, I had my first encounters with the works of modern dance pioneers Paul Taylor and Merce Cunningham. I was mesmerized by the physicality of Taylor’s work and baffled by Cunningham, whose dances seemed, to me, to meander without meaning and I could not decipher the strange body shapes he devised. I had to learn about his movement experiments, how he ordered sections by chance “operations,” such as flipping a coin. When I was still looking for harmony and narrative, I learned that Cunningham believed movement and music existed in separate universes, even if they accompanied one another. Watching Cunningham changed the way I see—and criticize—dance forever, because it forced me to see dance not only with my own eyes, but through the lens of the creator’s intentions.

In 1983, I moved to New York and was lucky enough to start my first regular reviewing gig for a Brooklyn weekly newspaper just as the Brooklyn Academy of Music launched its Next Wave Festival. That festival was a groundbreaking series for large-scale dance, music, and theater and it introduced me—all at once—to envelope-pushing dance by an extraordinary generation of original-thinking artists of the United States and Europe: Pina Bausch, Mark Morris, Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and others.

At the same time I was watching all of this avant-garde work—Bausch covered the stage with a thick layer of loamy dirt for her version of “Rite of Spring”—I was also trying to figure out neo-classicism, the style of ballet without an overt story, but which was wedded to the score in ways that required I have a more thorough knowledge of music, too. I got a subscription to the New York City Ballet the year after George Balanchine, the co-founder, died.

What looked like a professional life was also a personal life that I was carving out for myself. Without fully realizing it, seeing dance, and also going to museums, galleries, plays, was becoming more and more a defining part of who I am.

Dance is both inside and outside the mainstream of life. In this country we have a finicky and complex relationship to the arts. A 10-year comparison of the National Endowment for the Arts’ public participation surveys found that audiences attending live performing arts events have declined slowly, but 70 percent of Americans in the 2012 NEA survey said they watched art (including dance) electronically. Sure enough, dance keeps cropping up in pop culture, demonstrating that it’s still a powerful force—whether it’s the nearly 23 million views for Hozier’s “Take Me to the Church” video starring Ukrainian ballet superstar Sergei Polunin, or the longevity of hit television shows such as “Dancing With the Stars.”

“Cravos,” by choreographer Pina Bausch. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

My first reviews were mediocre—or worse. I used to think a critic’s job was to educate the reader. But I developed a different understanding of my role in the triangle that is the artist, audience, and critic, thanks to all those years of learning about contemporary dance and art. I wanted my criticism to tell the reader what the dance looked and felt like; what was good or bad about it and why; and to put the company and the performance in its proper context. I aimed to create my own piece of artistic writing that could stand on its own worthiness.

I also came to understand that I was witnessing and writing a slice of history. In 1973, the Joffrey Ballet and Twyla Tharp’s company came together to perform Tharp’s cross-over dance “Deuce Coupe,” with music by The Beach Boys. Soon after, other choreographers started picking apart the virtual wall between modern dance and ballet. Now, 45 years after the premiere of “Deuce Coupe,” a fusion of ballet and modern dance is the ubiquitous and dominant style. Some ballet-lovers have despaired that, even though 19th-century classical ballet is still taught through rigorous daily classes, stylistically appropriate performances of traditional story ballets will disappear. I, too, would mourn the complete loss of classic portrayals of, for example, “Sleeping Beauty” (by Marius Petipa, 1890) or “Giselle” (by Jules Perrot and Jean Coralli, 1841). But I’m being optimistic, and I don’t think that will happen entirely because these traditional ballets still sell well. On the other hand, dance is carried forward through oral tradition, and with each passing year it becomes ever more difficult for dancers to perform these 19th-century pieces with artistic integrity.

As the dances and dancers have changed, so have the critics. Many newspapers have laid off their arts critics, disrupting that artist-audience-critic triangle. Dance companies and artists can directly reach out to their fans through the internet. But the best critics supply context and that all-important impartial authority that can’t be replaced by stories written by the marketing department. I and other critics have artists begging us to keep writing reviews.

But one thing I feel is that dance is kinetic and you don’t have to know everything about it to find pleasure and discover gratification in a performance. Most choreographers care less about the audience deciphering their specific meaning and process, than they do about viewers feeling stimulated by what they see onstage.

Which brings us back to creative movement. That’s what dance is—movement born from a creative impulse. Just bring a little imagination, an inquisitive nature, and your youthful muscle memories, and you’re prepared for any dance performance.

The post Mesmerized, Baffled, and Smitten by the Magic of Dance appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Spin the wheel until it stops. For the next ten minutes try to feel what it would be like to be in someone else’s shoes. In case you land on your own identity, spin again.

Notice your reaction to the result. Do whatever you were about to do in the next 10 minutes, just imagine yourself in that person’s shoes. If you wish to share your experience please use eye contact or #HiddenFortuneWheel.

I spun the wheel.

For weeks I had been pondering Zócalo Public Square’s invitation to write about arts engagement, specifically about approaches to building arts audiences.

The term “audience” means something very specific to me, as a performer: a person or group of people observing, probably passively, performers who are providing a product like entertainment or experience. The audience may or may not have bought a ticket. Either way, there is a transactional nature to the relationship that—especially if the audience has paid—somehow smacks of the reversal of the balance of power, as if the artists are begging the audience for their attention.

“Hidden Fortune Wheel” by Ori Alon and Ana Azzue Gallira. Photo by Priya Sircar.

As a dancer, I’m used to this: I often feel in the dance field, we’re begging audiences to sample our wares. And while most performers will tell you that, in return, we get an unparalleled thrill from our audiences through live performance, there is still that element of seeking—whether we seek ticket sales, a full house, applause, or all of the above.

But in my role as a consultant to arts organizations who interface with the public, I generally prefer to use terms that connote service—like “constituents” or “community/-ies”—rather than “audience.” Arts and cultural organizations exist to serve their community or constituency in whatever ways those are defined by the organization. Service implies that the service provider offers something that the consumer actually wants or needs. In other words, we provide something of value rather than something frivolous or extraneous. (Boosting the value Americans place on arts and culture is an ongoing challenge as any arts practitioner knows. While that should not be the goal of arts engagement, it could be a byproduct.)

Communities may be defined by external factors, like geographic boundaries, or internal ones, like shared identities or goals. In my consulting work, I often encounter divides within communities. It’s crucial to listen to how communities define themselves and discover which communities exist within others.

If “community” is a more suitable word than “audience” to describe the people served by arts organizations, then is “community engagement” a synonym for “building arts audiences”? Not exactly.

Doug Borwick, of ArtsEngaged, describes activities undertaken by arts organizations: audience development, audience engagement, and community engagement. To summarize, audience development comprises activities “undertaken … as part of a marketing strategy to produce immediate results,” such as sales and donations, in which the principal beneficiary is the arts organization. Audience engagement comprises activities “as part of a marketing strategy designed to deepen relationships with current stakeholders … to improve retention, increase frequency and expand reach,” where the principal beneficiary is the arts organization. Meanwhile, community engagement comprises mission-driven activities “to build deep relationships between the organization and the communities in which it operates” to achieve mutual benefit, based on developing trust and understanding.

I would take it one step further: All arts engagement should be community engagement, because arts organizations should exist to benefit—or serve—their communities, however those communities are defined and whatever form that service takes. The benefit to the arts organization is a moot point, since any benefit to an arts organization is in support of continuing to serve its community or communities.

So, what does service through community engagement look like?

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, takes an interesting approach through its Process Lab, which currently invites visitors to participate in their Citizen Design exhibit. Individually and collectively, participants in Citizen Design take part in an exercise that illuminates design processes while generating ideas for addressing social issues identified by the participants themselves. An example might be addressing accessibility through alternative transportation options. The exhibit gives visitors the opportunity to play with the processes that designers use to solve problems while “envisioning a better America.” Whether or not the resulting ideas are acted upon following the exhibit’s closing in September 2017, the experience of participatory design has the potential to help visitors see and think differently about how to solve community problems in a semi-collective way and, perhaps, to help them feel empowered to do so.

Last November, I was fortunate to organize and moderate a panel that included Chanon Judson of Urban Bush Women and Ebony Noelle Golden of Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative. In a powerful performance of Urban Bush Women’s origin story, Judson described UBW’s practice of engaging communities reciprocally, which begins with listening first and then involving communities in co-creation with the artists of UBW. Golden, a frequent collaborator of UBW, shared the notion of community as family, “a team that can get something done.”

Golden also stressed that, in her work as a cultural strategist, she applies the notion of “radical imagination”—not just how we see the world but how we see the opportunity to change the world. We explored the difference, if any, between “change” and “transformation.” Semantics aside, Golden offered a working distinction: Change occurs on an individual level whereas transformation occurs systemically as a result of individual changes.

Whether the goal of an artist or an arts organization is change or transformation, whether it is to make an impact on the individual or systemic level, the process starts with seeing—seeing things differently, or seeing something at all.

Thoughtful engagement done in service to the community, and often with the community, has the power to make us see things—and each other—differently. So, while “community engagement” isn’t a synonym for “building arts audiences,” it should replace the latter as our goal.

Of course not all art has to be community-based or community development, but arts organizations, which act as conduits between art and the public, need to look at all of their activities through a community engagement lens to ensure they continue to have a reason for being.

The pinwheel landed on Indigenous. Hmm, I thought. Okay. And then, in my excitement at finding this example of arts engagement in the wild, I immediately forgot the instructions and instead examined the pinwheel and the rest of the sign, then fairly skipped home as I reflected on what it all meant. I wondered how many people who saw the pinwheel actually spun it, and how many put themselves in the other person’s shoes for ten minutes (or for any minutes). At home, I looked up the artist’s website and the Instagram hashtag.

Was the Hidden Fortune Wheel successful? Did it get me to put myself in an indigenous person’s frame of mind? Not yet. Did it engage me, get me to think critically and to see something in a new way? Absolutely. As James Baldwin said: “The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.” Lover, artist—I’d add arts organization to that mix. And perhaps to the pinwheel.

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When I finish high school, I hope to move to Japan and join a famous taiko group called Kodo. But before I can do that I have to get through middle school and into high school. So I practice every day. Sometimes I work by myself, but I also have group practices with Sonoma County Taiko and another group called Oh-In Taiko in Richmond. Every other week I practice with a Japanese traditional dance troupe called Ensohza Minyoshu. All in all, I play taiko drums about 15 hours a week in addition to playing in my middle school’s band and jazz ensemble. I never go any length of time without practicing—even if I’m too sick to play, I listen to taiko on my iPod.

Taiko has made me powerful. Not to brag, but since I started hitting the drums, I’ve become one of the strongest kids in gym class. But I‘m also becoming powerful in a different way. When I stand with my legs wide and grounded, with my knees bent—in position to hit the drums—I feel confident and proud. I can display my emotions loudly through the drum. After they see me play, guys often say, “I don’t want to mess with you.” I like that! When I’m not playing, I’m short and young and I usually get ignored.

In school, I’m pretty goofy. I don’t talk about taiko because to me it’s serious, and the other kids don’t like to talk about serious things. They don’t understand how I love taiko or why I want to go to Kodo instead of college, and so I’ve lost many school friends.

But through taiko I’ve made friends outside of school, and many of them are adults. They all take music seriously. Taiko is a community that anyone can join—as long as you can play the drums and work with the group. My mother started playing taiko before me, and I joined the group when I was 9. Now we always go to practices together. When we perform, she is always behind or in front of me so our eyes never meet, but it is fun to poke her with my elbows.

Taiko originated in Japan, and we usually perform in Japanese clothes, but I don’t think of it as an exclusively Japanese thing; it’s really just music. I was born in the U.S., and my parents were born in Japan, so I speak both English and Japanese. But even if I didn’t speak either language I could still join a taiko group, because the music and the other musicians will help you learn what is important to understand.

Taiko drummers are connected to each other by the beat. Before I begin, I plant my legs, grab my sticks, and say a one-syllable word to myself to focus my energy. I remind myself that I am really happy to play the taiko at this moment because no one can ever know what will happen next. Then I raise my arms very slowly and let them fall hard toward the drum.

When you hit the drum correctly, it feels as if the drum is part of you because you use your whole body, and especially your core muscles, like the tanden, an energy center below your belly button. Playing taiko is athletic—sometimes I have to play a whole song in a sit-up position—but most of it is about learning to relax. Something funny happens when I hit the drum: It’s like I’m letting go of something and hitting that “object” into the drum, and then it bounces back at me. I have to control that, or it disappears. When I hit fast, I relax. And the more I relax, the faster I can hit. My hands seem to jiggle by themselves. The moods of a taiko song can be many things: serious, tiring, happy, jumpy, or strong. Hitting the drum and feeling all of these emotions is a lot of work: Sometimes by the end of a concert it feels as if I’ve just run three miles.

Sometimes the drummers yell to give energy to the song and the soloist, and to energize the audience. It’s usually one syllable at a time: “Ha! Yo! Sei! Sa!” Some chants have more syllables, like “Sorya! Sore! Soya!” We’re encouraging the drummers to, “Go, go, go!” Or: “Keep going, don’t give up!”

The sound of these drums connects directly to people. Taiko players want our audience’s hearts to beat to the beat of the Taiko. I have seen babies and young children—and even adults—sleep through concerts despite the fact that they are incredibly loud. They wake up when the applause starts. I think they fall asleep because the taiko reminds them of being close to their mother’s heartbeat.

After every concert, I watch myself play on video. Sometimes I see myself making mistakes. Occasionally I get mad at myself and cry. Sometimes I watch it a few times and realize it wasn’t as bad as I thought. But one thing I’ve learned is that failing makes everything better. When I fail, I can learn from my mistakes. The only way to become successful is to really fail a lot.

Achieving my dream of joining Kodo, the famous taiko group that lives on the island of Sado, will be a rough road. First, you have to apply by reading a book and writing an essay. If that is good enough, you become an apprentice for two years. As an apprentice, you wake up at 4:50 a.m. Before breakfast, you run 6.2 miles and clean the dojo where you practice taiko. Then you eat breakfast. But you don’t eat it the way you normally would, with your right hand. You eat with your left hand so that when you hit the drum, the left hand is as strong the right. Some days are spent doing skits and plays at schools, playing taiko in festivals, gardening or planting rice, or practicing until 10 p.m. In the summer, it is very hot and humid, and there is no air conditioning. In the winter, there is snow and no heat when you wake up. There are no electronics and no dating, because you need to just think about drumming and the group for those two years. In the summer of 2014, only three of the apprentices went on to become members of Kodo. The Kodo members I met warned me that the two years of apprenticeship were the hardest two years of their lives. Many of them had the same dream as I did, but they started very young, at 4 or 5 years old. Most of them said they didn’t get serious until the end of middle school or high school. So if I am going to be the first foreign woman to join Kodo, I have to start now.

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There are only 10 slots on the open mic list, so everyone gets there early. We greet one another with tight hugs before we disrobe of wraps and scarves and take our seats. I usually sit on the right aisle near the wall to watch and listen as each poet spills his or her story and wait for my turn to release. It’s a time to testify. To tell truth or fiction about our lives. There are no saints or sinners here. Only artists.

The World Stage will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year with a grand show on August 24 at the Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood. I will perform at the show with other creative and energetic artists, including poet Kamau Daaood.

Daaood and Billy Higgins, a jazz musician, founded the World Stage in 1989 in Leimert Park Village, which is just east of Crenshaw Boulevard and north of Vernon Avenue. Every Sunday, the streets are soaked with the sound of drummers, the stomp and elegance of dancers, and the smells of vendors selling food, sage, and oils. And there are activities every night of the week at the Stage: free drum lessons for children, vocal workshops, poetry readings, and the Shine MuWasi Women’s Drum Circle. On weekends, there are jam sessions.

For me, poetry began in a circle. We called it a cypher. Back in 1990, I spent about a year at Grambling State University. We’d get together on some street or inside someone’s living room and sit cross-legged on large pillows or relaxed on couches. We were word weavers communicating our truth, anger, joy, and sadness. Until the wee hours of the morning, we would spit words with spread fingers and wailing arms.

I was also an avid reader and lover of Nikki Giovanni. I could recite her poem “Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)” like I could rattle off my social security number. So when I came back home to Long Beach, I was starving for more.

One of the first poetry venues I attended regularly was Uhuru Sasa in Long Beach. It was there that my poetic voice and performance skills flourished. There where I had intellectual conversations with my peers about holistic health and history, especially black history. And hip-hop. There was a lot of hip-hop. My attachment to that place—and to poetry—fed me like water. And I was parched.

At Uhuru Sasa, people told me they were moved by my poetry and that I should read at the World Stage in Leimert Park. I was intimidated, but I couldn’t resist. So about seven months later, I went.

On that first visit to the World Stage in 1992, I paid my $5, took my seat, and was mesmerized. Poet after poet, each moved me deeper than the one who came before. I think my name was called somewhere near the end. I remember being nervous as I walked to the stage, but after the first few words came out, I was OK. I knew I was home. It was like finding my tribe. My other kin. We bonded in being the weird ones in our families. We come from similar broken and abused spaces. Similar joyful and erotic places. And we have similar desires to shout and howl at the moon.

Back then, there were tables and chairs out all night and well into the morning in front of Fifth Street Dick’s Coffeehouse in Leimert Park Village. Jazz blared throughout the block, and people were outside playing speed chess, rapping on the corner, buying and selling incense, flowing in and out of the record shop, and making new family.

I couldn’t wait to go back to the World Stage, and others couldn’t, either. The cozy space would be so packed and the seats would fill up so quickly that many had to sit on the floor. (What fire laws?)

V Kali’s face was the first one I saw when I walked through the door that first time. She was the first one to embrace me. Everyone knows and respects her. And she knows everyone. Soon after I met her, I claimed her as my godmother.

She is a poet who demands to know, in a first line, “How dare you love me like you mean it?” She is a mother, grandmother, priceless and funny friend, chef, Reiki healer, nurse, and doula. And hugger. V Kali is a good hugger. She is also a vault. Tell her anything, and it stays with her.

V Kali is probably such a great healer because she has experienced her share of pain and grief. She understands. In 2004, 40 people she knew crossed over. Two years later, her first birth child, Zuri, was killed in a drive-by at a liquor store in Los Angeles. Last May, V’s mother made her transition. Still, somehow, she is always taking care of others. She is always giving a word, a touch, cooking a meal. Always mixing herbs, planting flowers. And in the process, healing herself.

Once, when I was going through a particularly troubling time, I asked V Kali why artists seem to have these onerous periods in their lives, and her response was direct: “Because we will tell it. And it needs to be told and shared.” And V tells it. In her stories, her words, her poetry, her life.

The World Stage has ebbed and flowed in its tide of attendance, a mirror to the ebb and flow of people in the neighborhood itself. Thankfully we are on the rise again. The workshop and open mic have gone through a few hosts, and we have new writers. Some of the elders who taught us have passed on, and now we have new, young energy.

But Sika’s shop, where you can get your nose pierced or buy fine African jewelry, clothes, and art, is still a few doors down. You can still hear the drummers across the street. And V Kali is still there.

Onstage, there is a black baby grand piano, a drum set, a microphone, and a music stand. Hanging from the stand is a sign that says: “No bullshit.” It’s a black-and-white picture of a bull defecating with a black strip across it to remind poets to come with our “best shit.”

On a recent Wednesday night, the poets were exceptionally galvanizing and inspired the host to raise his hand and the audience to shout: “One, Two, Three, DAMN!” We did it for brother Food 4 Thot, who co-owns Nishati Vibrations with his wife, Socks. Food ripped it!

After the last poet finished, V got on the stage and talked about our shout, “DAMN!” She shared that not every DAMN is a DAMN, but a DAM. “A dam holds water,” she said. “Water! Do you know how strong water is? Nothing can beat water. Not even fire.”

One! Two! Three! DAM!

The post You Can Find My Poetry Tribe in Leimert Park appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Oh God, they’re not laughing. No one is laughing. Do the next joke. Setup, punch line … nothing. A bead of sweat slowly ran down the side of my face. The next one, do the next one. This always crushes.

Except this time, it didn’t. My jokes were falling flat in front of 80 people, and I still had six minutes to go.

After a year of doing comedy shows at any place in New York City that would have me, I experienced my first true bomb. I’d been performing mostly at open mics and bringers—shows where you have to bring a designated amount of people in order to get stage time. But this was supposed to be my big break: a potential weekly gig at a West Village bar where one of my stand-up buddies worked.

When I’d arrived 20 minutes earlier, the place was packed, but I noticed one thing: There wasn’t a single sign that said there was going to be a live comedy show that night. Then I noticed another thing: no stage. And another: no microphone. And no spotlight. Luckily, my friend had a plan: We were going to do stand-up on a staircase in the corner, with all the houselights up, using the DJ’s microphone—at a bar where no one knew there were going to be people doing stand-up. What could go wrong? (Insert heavy sarcasm.)

When my friend took the mic from the DJ, the bar patrons turned their heads toward him—only to turn away as soon as they heard the words “stand-up comedy.” The guy next to me, not knowing I was a comic, actually said, “Ugh, I don’t wanna see stand-up.” (Fun fact: That was disheartening!) What followed next were the longest seven minutes of my life.

I don’t blame the audience for not listening to me. They’d come to the bar to get some drinks, hang out with friends, and flirt. And then here comes this guy who interrupts their flirting to tell some jokes. I was basically one huge cockblock. I was my mom!

Five years later, I’m extremely thankful for my first real bomb. Like most new comedians, I’d been petrified of it. And when it finally happened, it was a relief: It wasn’t that bad. Don’t get me wrong, bombing feels as bad as it looks, and it certainly did that night. But it also goes with the territory: I’ve seen Dave Chappelle bomb at the Comic Strip Live in New York. I’ve seen Dane Cook bomb at the Laugh Factory on Sunset Boulevard. Comedians are constantly trying new material, and sometimes that material isn’t so good. (And luckily for us, you guys let us know that rather quickly.)

Up until that moment, I’d been pretty happy with how my career was progressing. I’d been getting big laughs fairly frequently, and once in a blue moon I’d even get the beloved applause break—when the audience claps so much at a punch line you have to wait for them to stop before you can move on. But after bombing, I went home and started tweaking my jokes. And I thought a little harder about how to play a room. When you’ve got a rowdy crowd, sometimes the best thing you can do is toss your jokes out the window and try to win everyone over with a little audience work—whether it’s making fun of something an audience member is wearing, or asking someone a question and responding with a smartass answer. This kind of improv makes the audience feel that they’re part of an inside joke—and gets them on your side so you can go back to your jokes.

Stand-up comedy might be the only job where you are set up to fail. It’s one of the only gigs I can think of where you perform in front of people without ever getting to practice first. You can rehearse a joke in the mirror until you memorize its nuances and rhythms, and you may personally think the joke is funny because you wrote it. But you won’t know if it works until you go on stage and perform in front of people. Actors and athletes practice behind closed doors, repeating a scene or a particular play until they can do it perfectly. But with a joke, you take your cues not from your film director or from your teammates but from the audience.

If you’re in the audience at a comedy show, you expect nonstop laughter. But it’s just as likely—especially if you’re at the Laugh Factory, or any other local comedy club, on a weeknight at 9 p.m.—that you’ll see something new, or something in progress. And sometimes it’s not pretty. Testing and tweaking a new joke can take weeks, if not months. When you think about that, that’s freaking crazy! We’re walking on stage in front of a group of people, over and over again, knowing that the jokes we’re about to tell may not work. That we’ll get some awkward stares and silences. Who in their right mind would do that?

We do it because we love to make people laugh. To me, there is no better feeling in the world. Someone in that audience could have had the worst day, then you give that person 15 minutes of joy, and suddenly that crappy day feels pretty decent. I once did a show where everyone in the room had cancer. But they let me make them laugh for 10 minutes. It was one of the most powerful moments of my life. It makes the bombs—and the work that comes after them—worth it.

I’ve been doing stand-up for about six years now in New York City and Los Angeles, where I moved in 2009. I’ve been lucky enough to play some great comedy clubs and colleges all over the country. I still bomb every now and then when I try some new jokes—though never as hard as that first one. But it doesn’t bother me. Don’t feel guilty if you don’t laugh at one of my jokes. It lets me know I have to fix it. Just don’t throw shit at me.

The post Please Don’t Laugh at My Jokes appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Ali Prosch investigates modes of female representation through her work in video, installation, and performance art. A 2009 MFA graduate of CalArts in Valencia, she has exhibited at national and international venues including Redcat, Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art Miami, Fred Snitzer Gallery, The Company, White Box, and Tomio Koyama Gallery.

In our interview at her studio in Los Angeles, Prosch discussed three recent videos, “Fall,” “Tossed,” and “Ground.”

Q. How did you come to the premise for your video “Fall”?

A. I was making imaginary flying devices at the time–simultaneously thinking about the body in motion, falling, and flying. I decided that the only way I could figure out how to fly was to fall, and there’s that split moment in a fall where I’m flying!

Q. So you really had to practice falling?

A. I worked with a dance teacher, and she taught me how to fall in an elegant, graceful way. But I wanted “Fall” to appear authentic and almost comical, like Charlie Chaplin kicking his foot out to launch himself into the air. When I made the piece, there were definitely better falls than others, and the good ones actually hurt the most.

Q. Can you describe the various costume changes?

A. I go through outfits in between takes. My work is always dealing with representations of women. I was thinking about the multiple roles of being a woman and also the personas people move in and out of on a daily basis.

Q. Women in comedy still seem like too much of a rarity in the world. What does humor offer in terms of your interest in feminism?

A. It allows me to discuss the problems I find in the world without forcing the viewer to directly carry that burden. I definitely don’t want to dilute an issue by using humor, but it can make things more accessible. I mean it’s really a psychological strategy, and a coping mechanism, and for me the best way to touch upon taboos and stigmatizations in American culture.

Q. The comedy largely comes in relationship to your own body. It’s a strange place to work from, as both the producer and performer. That tension seems important.

A. The ideas in my work are generated from personal experiences. And in my practice it makes more sense to use my own body rather than hiring an actor. I get stage fright, which surprises people because I’ve done some crazy performances, like humping castles when I was traveling all over England. I don’t really know how to detach myself from my experiences, but I think that energy is conducive to the work.

Q. In “Tossed,” I really feel like I’m watching a personal experience and not a performance. Your gaze is so fixed and unflinching and unavailable to an audience.

A. I just toss a salad–lettuce, cabbage, and chard fling up and across the frame, over and over again. My intention was to pull a mundane gesture from the everyday and transform it into something that is mesmerizing. I realized I had to push the character into a strange psychological space for the piece to work. Something really magical happened by not blinking. I removed myself from being looked at as the object.

Q. There’s also all this cabbage whizzing by that you seem maniacally oblivious to. You disengage not just as the object of the viewer’s gaze but also from the physical world.

A. I went into the void! The use of repetition is important. Formally, there is a push and pull that I think really draws the viewer in. And repetition seems very relevant given that our contemporary world is so much about appropriation, recycling, looping, obsolescence.

Q. Right, that repetition really gets at an aesthetic of failure. But your willfulness there is pretty hypnotic too.

A. A lot of the new work explores futility. It’s getting pretty existential. But I think it’s also very much about seduction.

Q. How do you think about using the camera in relationship to the experience of performing?

A. I strongly believe there is a difference between the bodily experience and just simply viewing an event on a monitor or screen. On a social level, what is our capacity to use our imaginations, to fill in for the things that we cannot see? If every detail and nuance are handed to us via cgi and graphic manipulation, how does this affect our minds? I’m interested in extending the suspension of disbelief through various editing techniques–analogue and do-it-yourself strategies. For example, in my new video “Ground” I create the illusion of tap dancing myself into the ground. There are several shots in which I use non-sync sound, or sync-sound with no image, in order to push the viewer to fill in what they cannot see with their minds.

Stephanie Washburn is an artist based in Ojai and Los Angeles and a lecturer in the Department of Art at UC Santa Barbara.

*Video art stills by Ali Prosch.

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