photo by Tatiana Zamir
I want to begin with: Obrigada, Bahia (thank you, Bahia).
I got to spend 3 profound weeks with our “Body as a Crossroads” (BAAC) team on the ancestral land of Bahia, Brasil soaking in all the sea salt, sunlight, and sweat medicine it had to offer.
To say this trip was a dream come true would be an understatement… in some ways it felt like my whole career led up to it. A culmination of so many beloved collaborators and teachers coming together, getting to share my work in my home country in a way I never have before… (it’s been three months since I’ve come back, and I’m honestly still integrating it all.)
I’m beyond grateful for the 5 incredible artists who joined me on this trip: BAAC core collaborators Tatiana Zamir and Sammay Dizon, BAAC Administrative Manager (aka my Guardian Angel) Hannah Joo, BAAC Guest Artist Francesca Matthys (who I hadn’t seen since 2016 when she was my student in South Africa!! what a global south full-circle reunion), and of course our indelible photographer, my love Bobby Gordon. Obrigada querides for showing up with your full, open, tender, courageous selves.
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We sat at the feet of so many elders on this trip…
Dona Cici de Oxalá, who told stories of the Orixás, sang and played for us, fed us mingau de Nãnã, and kept blessing us with her presence beyond what we could have hoped for.
Vera Passos, who hosted us so generously in her space— Casa de Cultura SoMovimento— and became our co-dreamer in this residency. Vera constantly ushered us to that place where tradition meets play… inviting mestres and mestras (like Jorge Silva and Isis Carla Cardoso) into our process for us to learn from, teaching workshops on Orixá symbology, and co-producing our culminating performance.
Rosangela Silvestre, who welcomed us into her home/studio on the island of Morro de São Paulo, and invited us to discover the elements through encounters with cachoeiras (waterfalls), forest trails, graveyards, and oceanic views.
One session with Rosangela will live in my skin forever… she guided us in an investigation of water element in her dance studio, where the 4th wall is the forest/open sky. It was mid-afternoon and the sun beating down on us caused sweat to secrete from our pours, our muscles to slow down from the heat. As Rosangela invoked our memory of dancing in/with the waterfall earlier that day, I realized I did not have to reach far for element water. My skin was producing it in buckets. As we closed our eyes towards the sun, I could not distinguish the bath I took at the waterfall from this one.
All of a sudden, I felt on my skin what Rosangela had been saying all these years… that the elements are never separate from each other, and in fact, they each live inside on another. This was the day I discovered the water inside fire.
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This trip was also where we deep-dived into the practices and methodologies of “Body as a Crossroads”, which explore embodied strategies for how to be in/with uncertainty. One such rehearsal stood out— it was the end of our (extremely jampacked) first week. We were deeply exhausted that day, unable to do much with our bodies. But our voices went far & deep… we fell into a sounding vortex that lasted an hour, and felt so wonderfully tender. I wrote the following stream of consciousness poetry after coming out of it:
like a loosening of a knot
an untangling of a necklace
an exhale that finally came…
bodies unraveled.
lingered.
luxuriated.
softened.
released.
a bouncing, a rocking, a swaying.
such simple movements.
how we cradle our children
I felt us cradling our bodies. each other.
a deep surrender, met with a deep trust of self. of group.
these contrasts, oppositions, are sacred duality.
how lucky we are
that we get to bask in it, make a life of it…
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Our residency culminated in an improvisational performance offering, called “Corpo-Escuta” (Body-Listening). Like I shared with the audience at the start of the show:
"Everything in this performance-- the dancing, the music, the lighting-- is improvised. Born of a body-listening practice. It has never happened before, and it will never happen again."
The gems we harvested from our collective listening were many… this video features one such snippet between myself, Tatiana Zamir, the live musicians, and our lighting designer Paco Gomes.
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More videos and photos from our residency can be found on my instagram. “Body as a Crossroads” is a long-term project with many more residencies, performances, and activations to come. Visit our Creative Capital page to learn more.