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A DANCE OF IDENTITY
Notes On The Politics Of Dancing
(Previously published in Contact Quarterly
and Footnotes: six choreographers inscribe the page.)
I first used the form the Politics of Dancing in 1986 as
a rehearsal tool while working on Adolfo und Maria, a piece with a large multiethnic cast, which dealt with the complicity
of artist in the racism and fascism of their governments. I needed to get 14 people to really look at and work with one another.
Earlier that year I had had a conversation with Liz Lerman about art/political work she was doing in Washington, D.C. She
described a performance there, and now I can't remember if it was an actual event or just a proposal, at which audience members
were given 3 cards. They would receive either black or white cards depending upon responses to questions placing them inside
or outside American dominant culture. The 3 categories were sex, race and sexual orientation. Since the classification for
this performance assumed male Caucasian heterosexuals to be the dominants in our society, straight white men would receive
3 white cards while black lesbians would receive 3 black ones. Those who had some dominant traits but not all would get 2
of one color and 1 of the other. My memory of what Liz described was that the audience was then seated in 4 sections of the
hall based upon how many white cards they had- 3, 2, 1 or none. With Liz's description of this performance vivid in my memory,
I began rehearsals.
I wanted something more multifaceted that would address the more elusive ways in which people
perceive others and make assumptions about what those perceptions might mean. I wanted to explore some of the subtle and
not so subtle ways people act upon those perceptions and assumptions. I also wanted people to feel what it was like to be
in a minority facing a much larger group. I was interested to know which groupings caused people discomfort and which ways
they liked to be grouped; when they would lie or resist the categorizing. I wanted to break down knee jerk responses and
for people to look beyond the superficial things they were seeing and find the origins of the responses they were having.
The form as it first existed:
The fantasy of Adolfo und Maria was that there was a troupe of minstrels performing
in the cabarets of pre-WW II Germany. The entire cast was in black face and as in the tradition of both minstrel shows and
cabaret they performed skits of topical political satire. The main show was a burlesque about the German choreographer Mary
Wigman and her dubious connection to Hitler, which culminated in her choreographing the opening ceremony of the 1936 Olympics
for him.
I gathered the cast in a large clump, standing very near one another. I explained that we were on a railroad
track and a train was approaching. I instructed that if you were a "MAN" you should go to one wall and form a
group with the other men. If you were "NOT A MAN" you should go to the opposite wall and group with the others
who were not men. What was key at this moment, and as it turned out to be most difficult, was that I wanted the two groups
(the "MEN" and the "NOT MEN") to look at the members of their own group first and not back at the "others."
I asked them to look for similarities and differences, to check themselves for expectations, assumptions, and surprises regarding
the others with whom by this one factor alone they had been grouped. Since this was the first division, I allowed this inward
looking at one's own group to take a longish amount of time. At a certain point I instructed the two groups to turn outward
as a unit and to face and see the other group across the room. To see them as a mass and as individuals. To look for the
same things (differences, commonalities, etc.) as they had while looking inward. After time, I had the two groups merge in
the center of the room and divided them a different way. ("BLOND"-"NOT BLOND"; "HOMOSEXUAL"-"NOT
HOMOSEXUAL"; "BOTH PARENTS LIVING"-"AT LEAST ONE PARENT DEAD"). Besides going through the original
check list of observations and responses, I now asked people to notice how each grouping felt compared to the ones that came
before. Did one feel differently being one of 11 "RIGHT HANDED" people looking across at 3 "LEFTIES"
than one felt being one "ASIAN" woman looking across at 13 "NON-ASIANS." If so, how differently? The
form allowed no talking, only noticing observations and the emotional responses to them. We spent about 45 minutes splitting
apart, regrouping, then spitting apart again. We spent almost as much time afterwards discussing what it all could mean.
How the form is developing:
Over the years I've led the Politics of Dancing in various contexts: At workshops
at U.S. colleges and European dance schools, at The Contact Teachers Conference in Berlin in 1988, as a rehearsal tool for
other performance projects. I've heard that others who have done the form with me have gone on to lead it in workshops of
their own. I've continued to develop the form to try to deepen the possible meanings derived from doing it. The first major
change was that I felt that I should no longer be the only one choosing the categories. I'd always felt manipulative and
in a sense voyeuristic, eliciting personal information from the groups. I decided to give the first 5 or so instructions
and then invite another participant to continue for 5, and then they would turn the asking role to someone else. This almost
inevitably led to a sort of round robin group free association of people randomly asking us to divide ourselves. I feel this
is much more democratic and gets to the core of what the concerns of the entire circle are. I've further refined the role
of the asker by instructing that each of us should think of a categorization that would place us in the majority (but not
include everyone), one that would place us in the extreme minority and one that would split the group in equal parts. While
this last adjustment took away some of the free form randomness of letting anyone split the group whenever they felt an impulse
to do so, (often in response to the previous division), it added focus to the choices made by the participants and clarified
the reasons for doing the exercise.
Another change I made from those first rehearsals is that I merged the Politics
of Dancing with work I had begun doing with improvisation with eyes closed. In the eyes closed work I try to get people to
stop using vision as a handicap; that is, relying upon the information one gets from sight to the impediment of the other
senses. I had the initial group form with eyes closed so that the only clues to the identity of the others around us came
through touch, smell, temperature, etc. I then asked that the person making the category phrase the statement always using
the words "I" or "My" and that the statement had to be true for her/him. If the statement, e.g., "I
AM AN ONLY CHILD" or "MY EYES ARE BROWN,” was true for a person they were instructed to stay in the center
of the room with the person who spoke; if it was not true they were told to go to the wall and form a group there. The railroad
tracks were now situated in the center of the room so that there could be no possibility of waffling in the middle. People
were instructed not to open their eyes until they had formed an inward oriented group. When they opened their eyes they were
guided to look for the same things as in the earlier incarnation of the exercise; i.e., similarities, differences, feelings
about being grouped with these people. We then continued as before, always with a discussion afterwards.
Some
thoughts about the Politics of Dancing exercise, its usefulness and some possible pitfalls as a tool for pinpointing identity
and prejudice:
In its original form, as a rehearsal tool for a specific piece with a large cast, it was a good
and fast way to get a disparate group of people to work together and deal with the difficult material of the piece. Some
of the more dramatic separations were used in the performance of Adolfo und Maria. For example, an ensemble dance was interrupted
by a loud sound and the "WHITE" performers were separated from the "NOT WHITE" performers; then the piece
continued.
From the start I observed a tendency for some people to situate themselves somewhere between the railroad
tracks and the wall, waffling in the middle, not fully committing themselves to either category. Early on, I felt I had to
address this because for the exercise to be most powerful people needed to commit in the moment to being "THIS"
and "NOT THAT," and to experience being looked at as "the other." As I explained to one student who
was having trouble with one division- when the secret police were knocking on doors during the Third Reich they were not so
interested in the subtle grays of identity. Also by not choosing at the moment of questioning you are possibly denying a
component of your identity and you should examine why it is that you cannot declare this trait to be a part of who you are.
At its worst, The Politics of Dancing can become a kind of glib party game where people try to get the embarrassing
"goods" on their friends. This seems to happen most often when the participants are all young (late teens, early
twenties), and have known each other in some other more formal context over time. This has happened when I've taught workshops
as a guest teacher within a college dance department and in my improv class at the American Dance Festival. I think I could
have avoided this rowdiness and lack of serious focus by giving a more thoughtful preamble; perhaps explaining Liz Lerman's
description of the piece in D.C. as a source of the work. Putting the exercise in some sort of context seems to be a necessary
responsibility of the workshop leader. This means being clear why you think this particular group of people would benefit
from doing it and not just throwing it in as a kind of interesting workshop activity.
I do believe that this form
can deepen one's sense of identity in several ways. It forces one to publicly declare aspects of the self that are taken
for granted or are not often acknowledged (perhaps even to oneself). Also one gets the experience of being looked at as one
of a group of people who ... "DO NOT WANT TO HAVE CHILDREN," or "HAVE BEEN ARRESTED," or "HAVE PARENTS
WHO ARE COLLEGE GRADS." While for myself, I have had no qualms with being grouped with other "NON-WHITES"
or "NON-HETEROSEXUALS," I usually am uneasy being grouped with "MEN" and I feel exposed being looked at
with the group of "PEOPLE WITH DEAD FATHERS." I have found that I usually derive a certain comfort being in the
extreme minority whereas others find this to be unsettling.
The most vexing statement has been "I BELIEVE
THAT I AM IN THE MORE INTELLIGENT HALF OF THIS WORKSHOP." People have left the room or insisted upon being hit by the
train based upon their feelings about that one. In one rehearsal with 8 men, 7 went to the side of "MORE INTELLIGENT"
while only one declared himself to belong in the "NOT MORE INTELLIGENT" half. The statements "I CONSIDER MYSELF
TALL" or "I THINK THAT I AM OVER WEIGHT" often produce two groups that look identical in terms of height and
weight. Personal perceptions can be deceiving.
Anecdotes:
I often relate an experience I had in the early
80's when doing a lecture-dem at Elders Share the Arts, a seniors' art center in the Bronx. I began teaching the workshop
using the voice of a nanny talking to very young children. I asked in a completely condescending tone, "If you can,
could you try to lift your arms above your head." Of course, this being a senior center with its own performing arts
group, filled with vital, creative people who just happened to be over 65, they all immediately thrust their arms in the air
giving me very quizzical looks. The point being that in my life in the downtown PoMo dance world, I rarely came into direct
contact with "older" people and my conception of "PEOPLE OVER 65" was that they were all virtual cripples
who needed to have even very simple things painstakingly explained to them.
When leading this form at the EDDC
in Holland, the workshop of 12 was made of about 6 Germans. When someone said, "I AM NOT GERMAN" we split accordingly.
When we opened our eyes to focus in on our own group one of our "NOT GERMANS" said to a man standing with us, "Hey,
you belong over there." He responded that he didn't because he was Austrian, and a rather heated discussion broke out.
Once at the discussion after having done Politics of Dancing at a college here, one student was very upset because
her best friend had gone to the "JEWISH" group. Her friend explained that one of her parents was Jewish so in that
moment she felt to be true to her identity she had to go to that side. The friend continued to be agitated all the while
insisting that she felt neutral about Jews and Jewishness. Someone asked if she would feel the same way if she had just discovered
that her best friend was "BORN IN CANADA" or a "METHODIST."
Defining sexuality takes quite
a bit of finessing. In a single workshop "I AM GAY," "I AM HOMOSEXUAL," "I AM QUEER," "I
HAVE INTERCOURSE ONLY WITH PEOPLE OF MY OWN GENDER" and their "opposites" can each produce very different splits
in one group. A person who can stand with "I AM HETEROSEXUAL" may find it impossible to do so with "I HAVE
SEX ONLY WITH PEOPLE OF THE OPPOSITE GENDER" or even simply "I AM STRAIGHT." It seems that the politics of
gender and identity and language has produced an infinitely complex dance.
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