Aug 16, 2009, 10:23 AM
UAA professor traces jazz dance from Ghana to Cuba
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH2G9rrRfcQ
By KATHLEEN MCCOY
DAILY NEWS CORRESPONDENT
(08/14/09 23:58:19)
She chased the roots of jazz dance from New York City to Ghana, West Africa, only to find herself, years later, in Perico, Cuba, dancing with the possessed.
Through a dozen years of fieldwork in both countries, University of Alaska Anchorage dance professor Jill Flanders Crosby now understands that the artful steps in Cuba echo those of Ghana, physically retelling the dislocation narrative of a people -- the Ewe (Eh-vay) of West Africa -- as they were tricked into slavery and sent sailing across the Atlantic as a labor force for the New World.
Arriving in Cuba in the 1800s, the Ewe worked in sugar refineries while preserving their African roots in a danced religious experience called Arara.
The steps, the percussive drums and rhythmic gourds, the sacred objects called "fudones," the exotic chants -- all are elements of centuries-old religious rituals. According to their beliefs, participants invite deities to teach lessons and heal by "possessing" (the word is used in the supernatural sense, here) dancers at community ceremonies.
Crosby's collected oral histories of Cuban elders and the work of her other collaborators -- UAA dance professor Brian Jeffery, San Francisco visual artist Susan Matthews and Alaska videographer Brendan McElroy -- will converge as an art installation at the Ludwig Foundation in Havana, Cuba, in December 2010. From there the work will travel to venues in Los Angeles, San Francisco and eventually to Anchorage. Crosby plans a book within two years.
Crosby herself has danced among the Arara, watching spirits take hold of dancing worshippers. "It was humbling to watch," she said, "to see the body change."
CEREMONIAL POWER
Crosby contributed a chapter to the book "Caribbean Dance: How Movement Shapes Identity," publishing this December from the University of Florida Press. In it, she more fully describes dance possessions she's witnessed and how cultural context gives them meaning.
One possession she witnessed followed her visit with a local, Mario Jose, to the remains of the old sugar refinery at Union de Fernandez. Enslaved Africans often fled the refinery for nearby Laguna la Ramona to hide and participate in religious rituals. Her team joined Mario Jose there.
"The power at the lagoon that day was deeply felt," she wrote. "It was a moment we would talk about for days to come."
She and the others joined Mario Jose at a special community dance that evening.
"The ceremony began that night and, almost immediately, an elder named Miguelena was possessed by (the deity) San Lazaro. The energy was high. As the intensity grew, Mario Jose's dancing became deeply evocative as he enfolded and unfolded into and out of the creases of his body, seemingly reaching into the deeper wells of meanings and pulling forth the histories, the stories and the contexts of Arara.
"One could smell the lagoon and see the ceremonies there, hear the sounds at Union de Fernandez ... It is these histories, stories and contexts that infused his dance with such passion. It is these histories, stories and contexts, embodied in Arara dance, that continue to give it power and life."
(Readers can view a scene of Mario Jose possessed by a deity during ceremonial dance by selecting the video link at the beginning of this story.)
Crosby says the whole community provides the context for these possession events. They recognize certain gestures performed by the possessed dancer as coming directly from his or her deity.
'PURE PERFORMANCE'
At the invitation of Cuban elders, Crosby has spent years gathering their stories about the dances, the deities, the disruption and dislocation of the slave trade. One of her two longtime research assistants in Cuba, Melba Nunez Isalbe, transcribes and translates these histories. Responding by e-mail, Melba said her translation work can be difficult because elders "use words and ideas that somehow correspond to a different universe."
An example? "Fundamento."
"In English, we have 'foundation,' " she wrote. "But 'fundamento' implies more than being the base upon which something is founded. (To the elders) it implies the work of the unseen world, it implies prayers and ceremonies."
Without these stories, a culture could be lost. "The oral history is so important," Crosby said, "because it helps explain their circumstances now. Their elders are the link back to the first Africans. This link to Africa is critical to their identity as Cubans today."
Crosby said she finds the purity of the ceremonial dancers "intoxicating."
"It's a kind of 'giving in' to the dance," she said, with no concern for audience or approval. "Once you become possessed, all self-consciousness is gone. When you come out of possession, you have no memory of it."
In scholarly writing about her research, Crosby further describes the purity of this moment:
"Watching the events unfold of dance and music-making, tightly bound to community and religious belief, is a moment of its own ecstasy. Reaching this state of pure performance ... becomes the binding glue of community practitioners and a dropping of all boundaries of everyday life ... what we call the edge of the sacred."
Crosby values the surging energy of the dancing worshippers; as a dancer and a teacher, she seeks this abandonment in performance. While such selfless surrender isn't limited to religious performance, it's tough to teach to students, Crosby said, "unless you have a very experienced dancer."
COLLABORATIVE EFFORT
What began as basic dance research has morphed into an inquiry touching religion, ritual, anthropology, history and artistic expression. To strengthen her grasp on the anthropological aspects, Crosby sought the guidance of UAA anthropology professor Kerry Feldman -- taking his classes and seeking his input on her grant applications.
Crosby is now applying for funding to take her videotapes of Arara dances and the recorded oral histories back to Ghana for comment and reaction.
"Maybe ultimately what's interesting to me is collaboration," Crosby said. "I want to build some kind of scholarly and artistic ideas to express this, to re-create it."
One of her collaborators, visual artist Susan Matthews, is a percussionist who has traveled to Cuba to study drumming every year for 14 years. On her second trip, she met Crosby at an art installation and they began talking.
Matthews had been drawing and painting the drummers and teachers she'd worked with in Cuba. Together she and Crosby began to imagine documenting the Arara elders. Her working illustration of Hilda Zulueta, inspired by a photograph, captures the Cuban elder standing before spiking sugar canes near the refinery known as Espana.
Hilda, who died just a year ago, was in her 80s when Crosby and Matthews met her. As "godmother of the drums," according to Matthews, Hilda was the keeper of rituals and chants, meaning and history within the community. At ritual ceremonies, she frequently became possessed, Matthews said, and was called "the daughter of Eleggua." Eleggua is the deity of the crossroads who gives permission to travel or make life changes.
The white butterflies in the image signify that Hilda has crossed over to the place where the deities are, Matthews said. Now that she is dead, she moves among them.
Matthews' contribution to the 2010 Havana installation will be illuminated manuscripts reminiscent of those found in medieval Europe. At about 17 by 22 inches in size, they will combine a figure like Hilda with excerpts from her oral history.
The idea of preserving the figures and their stories in illuminated manuscripts is inspired by Matthews' Catholic heritage and her appreciation for the role these manuscripts played in saving and spreading culture in the Middle Ages.
Videographer Brendan McElroy is creating a multimedia presentation using Crosby's footage from Ghana and Cuba. UAA dance colleague Brian Jeffery, who traveled to Cuba with Crosby, will collaborate on choreography that offers a response to the research, to be performed along with the art installation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Former Daily News features editor Kathleen McCoy is the electronic media specialist at UAA.
http://www.adn.com/life/arts/story/899804.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH2G9rrRfcQ
By KATHLEEN MCCOY
DAILY NEWS CORRESPONDENT
(08/14/09 23:58:19)
She chased the roots of jazz dance from New York City to Ghana, West Africa, only to find herself, years later, in Perico, Cuba, dancing with the possessed.
Through a dozen years of fieldwork in both countries, University of Alaska Anchorage dance professor Jill Flanders Crosby now understands that the artful steps in Cuba echo those of Ghana, physically retelling the dislocation narrative of a people -- the Ewe (Eh-vay) of West Africa -- as they were tricked into slavery and sent sailing across the Atlantic as a labor force for the New World.
Arriving in Cuba in the 1800s, the Ewe worked in sugar refineries while preserving their African roots in a danced religious experience called Arara.
The steps, the percussive drums and rhythmic gourds, the sacred objects called "fudones," the exotic chants -- all are elements of centuries-old religious rituals. According to their beliefs, participants invite deities to teach lessons and heal by "possessing" (the word is used in the supernatural sense, here) dancers at community ceremonies.
Crosby's collected oral histories of Cuban elders and the work of her other collaborators -- UAA dance professor Brian Jeffery, San Francisco visual artist Susan Matthews and Alaska videographer Brendan McElroy -- will converge as an art installation at the Ludwig Foundation in Havana, Cuba, in December 2010. From there the work will travel to venues in Los Angeles, San Francisco and eventually to Anchorage. Crosby plans a book within two years.
Crosby herself has danced among the Arara, watching spirits take hold of dancing worshippers. "It was humbling to watch," she said, "to see the body change."
CEREMONIAL POWER
Crosby contributed a chapter to the book "Caribbean Dance: How Movement Shapes Identity," publishing this December from the University of Florida Press. In it, she more fully describes dance possessions she's witnessed and how cultural context gives them meaning.
One possession she witnessed followed her visit with a local, Mario Jose, to the remains of the old sugar refinery at Union de Fernandez. Enslaved Africans often fled the refinery for nearby Laguna la Ramona to hide and participate in religious rituals. Her team joined Mario Jose there.
"The power at the lagoon that day was deeply felt," she wrote. "It was a moment we would talk about for days to come."
She and the others joined Mario Jose at a special community dance that evening.
"The ceremony began that night and, almost immediately, an elder named Miguelena was possessed by (the deity) San Lazaro. The energy was high. As the intensity grew, Mario Jose's dancing became deeply evocative as he enfolded and unfolded into and out of the creases of his body, seemingly reaching into the deeper wells of meanings and pulling forth the histories, the stories and the contexts of Arara.
"One could smell the lagoon and see the ceremonies there, hear the sounds at Union de Fernandez ... It is these histories, stories and contexts that infused his dance with such passion. It is these histories, stories and contexts, embodied in Arara dance, that continue to give it power and life."
(Readers can view a scene of Mario Jose possessed by a deity during ceremonial dance by selecting the video link at the beginning of this story.)
Crosby says the whole community provides the context for these possession events. They recognize certain gestures performed by the possessed dancer as coming directly from his or her deity.
'PURE PERFORMANCE'
At the invitation of Cuban elders, Crosby has spent years gathering their stories about the dances, the deities, the disruption and dislocation of the slave trade. One of her two longtime research assistants in Cuba, Melba Nunez Isalbe, transcribes and translates these histories. Responding by e-mail, Melba said her translation work can be difficult because elders "use words and ideas that somehow correspond to a different universe."
An example? "Fundamento."
"In English, we have 'foundation,' " she wrote. "But 'fundamento' implies more than being the base upon which something is founded. (To the elders) it implies the work of the unseen world, it implies prayers and ceremonies."
Without these stories, a culture could be lost. "The oral history is so important," Crosby said, "because it helps explain their circumstances now. Their elders are the link back to the first Africans. This link to Africa is critical to their identity as Cubans today."
Crosby said she finds the purity of the ceremonial dancers "intoxicating."
"It's a kind of 'giving in' to the dance," she said, with no concern for audience or approval. "Once you become possessed, all self-consciousness is gone. When you come out of possession, you have no memory of it."
In scholarly writing about her research, Crosby further describes the purity of this moment:
"Watching the events unfold of dance and music-making, tightly bound to community and religious belief, is a moment of its own ecstasy. Reaching this state of pure performance ... becomes the binding glue of community practitioners and a dropping of all boundaries of everyday life ... what we call the edge of the sacred."
Crosby values the surging energy of the dancing worshippers; as a dancer and a teacher, she seeks this abandonment in performance. While such selfless surrender isn't limited to religious performance, it's tough to teach to students, Crosby said, "unless you have a very experienced dancer."
COLLABORATIVE EFFORT
What began as basic dance research has morphed into an inquiry touching religion, ritual, anthropology, history and artistic expression. To strengthen her grasp on the anthropological aspects, Crosby sought the guidance of UAA anthropology professor Kerry Feldman -- taking his classes and seeking his input on her grant applications.
Crosby is now applying for funding to take her videotapes of Arara dances and the recorded oral histories back to Ghana for comment and reaction.
"Maybe ultimately what's interesting to me is collaboration," Crosby said. "I want to build some kind of scholarly and artistic ideas to express this, to re-create it."
One of her collaborators, visual artist Susan Matthews, is a percussionist who has traveled to Cuba to study drumming every year for 14 years. On her second trip, she met Crosby at an art installation and they began talking.
Matthews had been drawing and painting the drummers and teachers she'd worked with in Cuba. Together she and Crosby began to imagine documenting the Arara elders. Her working illustration of Hilda Zulueta, inspired by a photograph, captures the Cuban elder standing before spiking sugar canes near the refinery known as Espana.
Hilda, who died just a year ago, was in her 80s when Crosby and Matthews met her. As "godmother of the drums," according to Matthews, Hilda was the keeper of rituals and chants, meaning and history within the community. At ritual ceremonies, she frequently became possessed, Matthews said, and was called "the daughter of Eleggua." Eleggua is the deity of the crossroads who gives permission to travel or make life changes.
The white butterflies in the image signify that Hilda has crossed over to the place where the deities are, Matthews said. Now that she is dead, she moves among them.
Matthews' contribution to the 2010 Havana installation will be illuminated manuscripts reminiscent of those found in medieval Europe. At about 17 by 22 inches in size, they will combine a figure like Hilda with excerpts from her oral history.
The idea of preserving the figures and their stories in illuminated manuscripts is inspired by Matthews' Catholic heritage and her appreciation for the role these manuscripts played in saving and spreading culture in the Middle Ages.
Videographer Brendan McElroy is creating a multimedia presentation using Crosby's footage from Ghana and Cuba. UAA dance colleague Brian Jeffery, who traveled to Cuba with Crosby, will collaborate on choreography that offers a response to the research, to be performed along with the art installation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Former Daily News features editor Kathleen McCoy is the electronic media specialist at UAA.
http://www.adn.com/life/arts/story/899804.html