Dance Central Winter 2023

Content

Dance Central

A love for Chinese dance in diaspora with Alissa Elegant, Emily Wilcox and Jessica Jone

Page 4

The dance of detritus: Rumen Rachev and Gull Cry Dance

Page 16

Editor's Note

Welcome to the Winter 2023 issue of Dance Central.

Last month, I had to break the tragic news of Colleen Lanki’s passing to a dear friend in Peru. Pamela Santana had worked with Colleen on a project that was featured in Dance Central Winter 2021. Working on the article introduced me to Colleen and Pamela. While I did not collaborate further with Colleen, I went on to direct the Choreo Dance Film Festival with Pamela last summer in Clermont-Ferrand, France. I am indebted to Colleen for this connection. It exemplifies her lifelong dedication to her sensei, Fujima Yuuko's dream of bringing together people from many backgrounds to celebrate the traditional and contemporary Japanese dance and theatre Colleen left behind a legacy through her work at TomoeArts.

In the spirit of bringing people together, I opened this new issue with a heartwarming conversation between scholars and practitioners, who are united in their love for Chinese dance. Jessica Jone generously shared her journey as the director of Vancouver’s longest running Chinese dance company. Founded by her mother, Lorita Leung Dance Academy has nurtured generations of Chinese dancers in the region. She was joined by prominent American scholars in Chinese dance: Emily Wilcox and Alissa Elegant.

Kristen Lewis contributes her second article to Dance Central with a deep reflection on New Zealand-based dance artist Rumen Rachev’s recent work on 希望学 kibōgaku (hopeology) and how that translates into “these odd ‘after-years’ [of the COVID-19 pandemic] in which many of us seem to walk around as if in a never-ending twilight zone ”

We thank all the artists who have contributed, and we welcome new writing and project ideas at any time to make Dance Central a more vital link to the community. Please send materials by email to editor@thedancecentre.ca. We look forward to many more conversations!

Shanny Rann Editor

Lorita Leung Dance Company in 晨光曲 Dawn In Shanghai

Alissa Elegant performing the Chinese dance 'Jasmine Flower' with Ah-Lan Dance in the San Francisco area © Anna An

A love for Chinese dance in diaspora with Alissa

by Shanny Rann

Elegant, Emily Wilcox and Jessica Jone

In October 2022, the Dance Studies Association held their annual conference in Vancouver, Canada for the first time. Postponed since 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting gathered dance scholars and practitioners from around the world to share information and ideas, to attend performances, and to engage one another on the state of the field. One of the conference committee members and prominent Chinese dance scholar, Emily Wilcox, reached out to me about local Chinese dance groups and immediately I thought of Lorita Leung Dance Academy (LLDA), the longest running Chinese dance company in Metro Vancouver. As packed as conference schedules are, Emily, her protégé, Alissa Elegant, and myself managed to squeeze in a visit to the dance studio of LLDA in Richmond, and were greeted warmly by the directors, Jessica Jone and Chengxin Wei.

SR: This is a lovely gathering of minds around Chinese dance. I am glad we can be together again as practitioners and scholars to talk and debrief after our visit to Lorita Leung Dance Academy (LLDA). Can we start by briefly introducing ourselves?

JJ: My name is Jessica Jone. I was born and raised in Vancouver. My mother, Lorita Leung, came to Canada in 1970. When she got here, she wanted to continue pursuing her lifelong passion in Chinese dance, so she started teaching in our home basement. It gradually grew into what is now the Lorita Leung Dance Academy.

I have always been a part of Chinese dance. When I was young, I used to go downstairs and watch my mom teach classes. I had the

Magda, 86, at her West End apartment in 1991 © Karen Kurnaedy

opportunity to go to Beijing Dance Academy in my teenage years to further my studies. To be completely honest, I did not expect Chinese Dance to be my career, but things happen for a reason. I have now taken over the mantle of the school. I met my husband, Chengxin Wei, at Beijing Dance Academy. He is also my partner in guiding the school.

This year will mark our 53rd anniversary. One of the things we are really proud of is our thirty-year-partnership with Beijing Dance Academy. We are the first dance academy to bring their syllabus to North America. It offers a very thorough and systematic way of training in Chinese dance, and has been a good resource that anchors us. We are honoured to be able to plant the seed here, to allow students to stay connected with Chinese dance.

The Dance Centre

Scotiabank Dance Centre

Level 6, 677 Davie Street

Vancouver BC V6B 2G6

T 604.606.6400

info@thedancecentre.ca

www.thedancecentre.ca

Dance Central is published quarterly by The Dance Centre for its members and for the dance community. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent Dance Central or The Dance Centre. The editor reserves the right to edit for clarity or length, or to meet house requirements.

Editor, Art Director & Layout

Shanny Rann

Copy Editor

Hilary Maxwell, Kaia Shukin

Design Layout

Becky Wu

Contributors to this issue:

Kristen Lewis, Shanny Rann

Photo credits

Front Cover: Jessica performing in China in 1988 © Jessica Jone

Back Cover: Lorita Leung Dance Company in Embroidery of Spring

© Happy Man

Dance Centre Board Members:

Chair

Jason Wrobleski

Vice Chair

Andrea Reid

Secretary

Tin Gamboa

Treasurer

Annelie Vistica, CPA, CA Directors

Jennifer Aoki, Yvonne Chartrand, Judith Garay, Linda Gordon, Arash Khakpour, Rosario Kolstee, Anndraya T Luui, Rachel Maddock, Katia Oteman

Dance Foundation Board Members:

Chair Linda Blankstein

Secretary Anndraya T Luui

Treasurer Janice Wells

Directors Samantha Luo, Lorne Mayencourt, Mark Osburn, Sasha Morales, Andrea Benzel

Dance Centre Staff:

Executive Director

Mirna Zagar

Programming Coordinator

Raquel Alvaro

Associate Producer

Linda Blankstein

Director of Marketing

Heather Bray

Digital Marketing Coordinator

Lindsay Curtis Outreach Coordinator

Yurie Kaneko

Membership Coordinator

Kaia Shukin

Lead Technician

Chengyan Boon

Comptroller

Elyn Dobbs

Development Coordinator

Anna Ruscitti

Founded in 1986 as a leading dance resource centre for dance professionals and the public in British Columbia, The Dance Centre is a multifaceted organization. The Dance Centre presents an exciting season of shows and events, serves a broad membership of 300 professional dance companies and individual artists, and offers a range of activities unparalleled in Canadian dance. The Dance Centre is BC's primary resource centre for the dance profession and the public. The activities of The Dance Centre are made possible bynumerous individuals. Many thanks to our members, volunteers, community peers, board of directors and the public for your ongoing commitment to dance in BC. Your suggestions and feedback are always welcome. The operations of The Dance Centre are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of British Columbia, the BC Arts Council, and the City of Vancouver through the Office of Cultural Affairs.

AE: My name is Alissa Elegant. I grew up as a ballet dancer in the San Francisco Bay Area, where there has been a long tradition of Chinese dance. It was Professor Emily Wilcox who took me to my very first Chinese dance class when I visited her in Beijing when I was studying abroad in Shanghai. When I returned home from China, there was a dance teacher, Ah-Lan 阿岚, who had just opened up a dance studio in my community. I trained with Ah-Lan from 2008 until 2014, at which point, I went on to do a Fulbright Fellowship in the dance department of 中央民族大学 Central Minzu University of China. After that, I got my MFA in Dance and I'm now working on my PhD in Dance at Ohio State University. My research focuses on dance related to the People’s Republic of China.

EW: My name is Emily Wilcox. I'm an Associate Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Chinese Studies program at William & Mary. I grew up taking ballet classes and became serious about dance in college. I went to Harvard University where they have a competitive ballroom dance program, through which I became more aware of dances around the world. I also started studying Chinese in college. During my senior year, my ballroom dance team was invited to perform in China for two weeks. That was the first time I had ever been to Asia.

I became interested in the possibility of pursuing Chinese language and studies. For my PhD, I wrote about dance in China and spent several summers as well as a full year doing Chinese language training there. While in Beijing, I started going to Chinese dance

classes, meeting people in the Chinese dance world and seeing a lot of performances. I was fortunate to get a Fulbright Fellowship to study at Beijing Dance Academy for three semesters. I studied Chinese classical dance, Chinese folk and ethnic dance, Chinese dance history and theory, as well as dance criticism. I mainly focused on ethnographic methods; I did about two hundred oral history interviews with dancers in China to understand their life experiences. I have also written and edited publications on Chinese dance history.

I decided to devote my career to developing Chinese dance studies as a more established field in the United States, because it was still

relatively new at that time. There were other scholars who had done research on dance in China, but it was not as recognized as an academic field. That is what I have been doing for the past ten years: publishing and training students.

I have also become interested in Chinese dance in diaspora, because of amazing schools like Lorita Leung Dance Academy in Vancouver. I've gotten to know more dancers in the United States and in Canada who are doing amazing things, putting on festivals and training students. I think it's something that deserves research and attention in Chinese dance studies as well.

Alissa teaching a dance class to children in China © Alissa Elegant

SR: Thank you for your introductions. I would like to bring us back to LLDA where we had the opportunity to sit in a Chinese dance class with Jessica and Chengxin. As someone who knows very little about the dance form, I was still emotionally fed. I felt it was a privilege for me to be able to witness the passion that is being transmitted by the teacher up close through the beautiful movements and gestures. Emily, would you like to share your experience also?

EW: I felt the same way. It was so fulfilling to watch the class. Beijing Dance Academy is known for its Chinese classical dance tradition, having been the place where the original Chinese classical dance syllabi

were created back in the 1950s and 1960s. It was gratifying for me to see that specific aesthetic in Canada, that kind of attention to the nuances of the movement, which I could instantly recognize.

The teacher brought a high level of expectation to the classroom. It seemed she wasn't simplifying things. I felt as if I were at Beijing Dance Academy or another professional classroom in China, where the standards are high. She was doing the demonstrations in a full way and expecting the students to grasp every detail, and the students were doing an amazing job embodying it. As artists, we love seeing the art practice in its fullest form. It was really

Emily Wilcox with classmates at Beijing Dance Academy © Emily Wilcox

amazing to witness the beauty that was being transmitted. Thank you, Jessica!

AE: I share many of the same thoughts. I could not take my eyes off the teacher. There was an incredible beauty in her movements... her breath came with a serenity.

It was a unique experience, especially in the diaspora, because a lot of dance institutions in the states, even the most prestigious ones, do not necessarily include Chinese dance. Having such a teacher who can fully embody and impart the incredible beauty of classical Chinese dance is sometimes overlooked when it happens in a diasporic space. From my experience in the

US, it would be challenging for most Chinese dance students to turn professional because of the structural issues, but Chinese dance is not any less prestigious just because it is seen as amateur in this part of the world.

I have been working with some dancers at Ohio State University and I was getting frustrated over not being able to express certain concepts sufficiently. After watching that class, I was able to articulate better to my students There was something searing in my memory about the way the teacher embodied the dance that was just so powerful and inspiring.

Far left: Chengxin Wei; 6th person from left in the standing row: Shanny Rann, Alissa Elegant, Jessica Jone and Emily Wilcox © Jessica Jone

JJ: Alissa, you bring up an important point around the challenging division between amateur and professional. Yes, we are amateur because we do not do this for a living. Our dancers are full-time students or they have full-time careers in other fields. We only spend a certain number of hours every week training, yet we strive to achieve professional standards.

When it comes to Chinese dance in the diaspora, as you mentioned, it is very hard to pursue a traditional career because of the lack of infrastructure. There is no outlet for a student to study Chinese dance professionally in this country. So, for us, what is most important is the end results. Some audiences, including those from China, who see our

performance videos on YouTube for example, have commented that we are “ 好专业 (very professional)!” That for me is the goal—that we show what is fitting to represent Chinese dance outside of China when we go on stage.

We are very lucky to have such good teachers who can bring us to that kind of standard in a relatively short amount of time compared to professional training. Of course, we are not exactly on par with professional Chinese dancers in China. I think that would be very difficult, not only due to the time invested in training, but also in terms of the type of physique that is required in China and so forth.

When Shao Weiqiu came to Vancouver, she commented that what we are doing outside

Emily Wilcox with Shao Weiqiu at Beijing Dance Academy © Emily Wilcox

of China is closer to the essence of Chinese dance. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, my mother studied with Tang Mancheng and Ma Lixue, the pioneers, 老老师 (old teachers), and she continued to teach what she had learned from them in Canada.

AE: Within the past decade in the San Francisco Bay Area, there has been an influx of young teachers, who recently graduated from premier institutions of dance training in China (such as Beijing Dance Academy or Minzu University of China), and bring with them embodied knowledge shaped by a different era of Chinese dance. Is there a similar phenomenon happening in Vancouver? If so, are we having multiple temporalities of Chinese dance occurring in Vancouver?

JJ: Definitely. We hear a lot of different teachers arriving from China and starting up classes. The Chinese dance community in Vancouver is very strong, vibrant and active. There are probably at least twenty teachers from not only Beijing, but also different cities in China, such as Shanghai. We are very spoiled in Vancouver in terms of access to dance professionals from China.

I would say that the aesthetics of Chinese dance are constantly evolving even in Beijing Dance Academy, which I'm most familiar with. A lot of times, when we look at new choreographies, we feel, in a way, we are the roots of Chinese classical dance. Nowadays, the value is placed at times on athleticism and other times, we lose track of what the essence of Chinese classical dance really is.

Emily, have you ever had this experience when you are looking at the more contemporary Chinese dances coming out of China?

EW: Part of why watching the class was so fulfilling for me was because the dance teacher came from the same cohort who had trained directly with Li Zhengyi and Tang Mancheng, that pioneer generation of Chinese dance.

When I was studying at Beijing Dance Academy, I remember one of my teachers, Su Ya, would invite Li Xin, who would then invite another much older teacher, Peng Alan, to come demonstrate and teach her students because she was worried that she was already losing some of the core aesthetics. She wanted to reinject that essence of what you were talking about into her students’ dance training.

Shao Weiqiu was one of my favorite teachers when I was at Beijing Dance Academy. I think I remember when she came back to Beijing from teaching in Vancouver, she said she had such an amazing experience because the students there truly appreciated her way of teaching. That is very validating as a teacher. It is interesting how the diaspora is able to maintain that kind of appreciation for a more traditional way of doing things.

I agree with you. There are many new directions happening in Chinese classical dance. As a scholar, I'm excited by that, because I see how different choreographers

are reinterpreting the practice to maintain the vitality of the field. But, as a dancer, I really love and appreciate the style which is more focused on the basic steps and body movements. That's where the beauty or cultural value resides...I think there is tension between the two.

JJ: Yes, there is tension as Chinese dance evolves. The values of society are reflected in the dance. I am more traditional in the sense that I think it is important to know the root and understand the essence of something before one contemporizes it. I feel privileged to be in the position where I can look towards China, and at the same time be a part of what is happening within the diaspora and still be connected to Chinese dance.

SR: Alissa found a 1988 pamphlet of your dance company’s China tour at the archives at the University of Michigan. Can you tell us more about it?

JJ: We were in fact the first overseas Chinese group to be invited by the Ministry of Culture to perform in China since 1949. In recent years, our students have also gone to China to perform at Beijing Dance Academy in celebration of the 30th anniversary of their 考级院 School of Graded Examination. There were also dance groups from Malaysia, Taiwan and Hong Kong but we were the only group from North America.

EW: I remember when we were at your studio, you had a display cabinet full of competition trophies, including 海外桃李杯 Taoli World Dance Competition.

JJ: 海外桃李杯 Taoli World Dance Competition is great. It is a very positive thing for Chinese dance in North America. We have participated in two of them and we are hoping to send more students to participate. It is a worthwhile event for us because

I feel privileged to be in the position where I can look towards China, and at the same time be a part of what is happening within the diaspora and still be connected to Chinese dance.

the adjudicators give feedback directly to the students and they also offer workshop masterclasses to all the participants.

Lorita Leung Dance Association, established in 1984, is a registered Canadian charity and non-profit society. Its mandate is to preserve, enhance and promote Chinese dance culture in Canada and North America. We used to organize the North American Chinese dance competition, which ran from the early 1990s to 2006. Participants came from the US and other parts of Canada. We would invite one adjudicator from China alongside two Canadian adjudicators. At that time, there was not

any form of dance competition, specifically for Chinese dance, so we wanted to create a platform for dancers to have access to knowledgeable judges, who could give them meaningful feedback. It would help enhance their Chinese dance training in North America and fill a gap. As we discussed already, it is not easy to pursue a Chinese dance education outside of China.

AE: There are many things that contribute to the challenges of pursuing Chinese dance in North America, but if you could imagine a different world where we could get past

1988 Pamphlet of Lorita Leung Dancers 1988 China tour at University of Michigan Chinese Dance Collection © Alissa Elegant

America. Until there is an audience for Chinese dance, I do not think professional Chinese dance companies will come to fruition.

When Shanny told me that there are scholars, especially non-Chinese scholars, in the US studying Chinese dance, I was thrilled. I feel supported. This is amazing! We need to create a network where we can have the opportunity to discuss and learn from each other, exchange ideas and grow this seed in North America. I am thankful to have met all of you and that you were able to come into our space, and share this love and appreciation for the Chinese dance culture.

those challenges, what would you imagine that infrastructure to be?

JJ: First of all, there needs to be an overall increased awareness that Chinese dance exists, so that we do not get questions like “What is Chinese dance?”, “Is it lion dance?”, “Is it fan dance?”. There is definitely a need for more exposure, more visibility for Chinese dance.

Once we have that, we can start to look at whether it is possible to have professional or semi-professional dance companies in North

EW: I felt so welcomed when we came to your school. I appreciate that Shanny made it possible. I knew that Vancouver was a hub for Chinese dance. I was excited to go to Vancouver and maybe have the chance to see something. I also appreciate that you welcomed us and allowed us into your space with such openness to watch the class—just be there—and be present in the studio. I am excited to have this connection and hopefully we can do more in the future.

AE: I also want to thank you for welcoming and letting us watch the class. It was so inspiring. As a PhD student and also during my MFA, getting access to that level of Chinese dance training and research access to Chinese dance is a challenge, so it was inspiring to see the best of the best here in North America. Thank you!

Outside Lorita Leung Dance Company after watching the dance class, from left: Emily Wilcox, Amin Farid, Shanny Rann and Alissa Elegant © Emily Wilcox

Jessica Jone is a Chinese dance educator who was born in Vancouver, and received her early dance training from her mother, Lorita Leung. She received her professional training in Chinese classical and folk dance at the Beijing Dance Academy and the Guangdong Dance School in China, and is also a graduate of the contemporary dance program at Simon Fraser University. In addition to being the Director of Lorita Leung Dance Academy, Jessica is a Senior Instructor of the Beijing Dance Academy Chinese Dance Graded Examination Syllabus (CDGES), and regularly teaches the CDGES Teacher Certification program to Chinese dance teachers across Canada. Jessica is an accomplished dancer and seasoned performer who has won many awards for performance and choreography, including the Chairman’s Award at the Fourth Tao Li Competition in Beijing, Highest Overall Score, Most Promising Dancer Award and two Best Choreography Awards at the North American Chinese Dance Competition. Jessica is also a co-founder of the cross-cultural contemporary dance company, Moving Dragon.

who is known for reconstructing early modern ballets. She has set pieces on the dance company World Dance Fusion and shown work at Dixon Place in New York. She earned an MFA in choreography from Temple University and is working toward a PhD in dance studies at Ohio State University Her essay "Dancing Revolutionary Change: China Railway Cultural Work Troupe's Dance Drama Wang Gui yu Li Xiangxiang" won a Dance Study Association 2021 Selma Jeanne Cohen Award.

Alissa Elegant is a dance artist and scholar researching and practicing Chinese dance and ballet. She practiced Chinese dance in the diaspora and on a Fulbright Fellowship in Beijing, taking classes at Minzu University, and participating in field research alongside local professors. Her foundational ballet training is with Ronn Guidi of the Oakland Ballet Company,

Dr. Emily Wilcox is an Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at William & Mary. She holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard University, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Wilcox publishes actively in both English and Chinese, and she frequently gives lectures around the world, especially in Asia.Wilcox is an award-winning scholar of modern and contemporary China whose work spans the fields of PRC history, inter-Asia cultural studies, Chinese ethnic minority studies, and transnational Sinophone and Chinese diaspora studies. She is a recognized international leader in the study of Chinese dance and performance. Wilcox’s first book, Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy, was published by the University of California Press in 2018 and won the 2019 de la Torre Bueno Prize® from the Dance Studies Association.

The dance of detritus:

Dance Artist Rumen Rachev (Auckland, New Zealand) and “friends” in residence with Gull Cry Dance (Victoria, B.C.)

by Kristen Lewis

“We are broken from birth. We are only corpses standing in the shadow of life. Therefore, what is the point of becoming a professional dancer? If a man becomes a laborer and a woman a servant isn’t that enough in itself.” –Tatsumi

Hijikata

“We need to visualize, speak, and practice toward a future that we do dream and create ”

-Dian Million

Rumen Rachev “performing” lonely audio-vibrator stool with Java Bentley’s inflatable work in the background and Adam BenDror’s frugal instrument in the foreground. (October 16, 2022, Zero Waste Network, Glen Innes, Auckland) © Chris Berthelsen

Marcel Mauss’ 1934 article Les Techniques

du Corps did ground-breaking work on the relationship between gesture and social conditioning. As is often the case with work that reaches beyond the strictures of the present zeitgeist, the implications of Mauss’ insights were not realized fully in his time. Taking up Mauss’ work nearly a century later, dance scholar Carey Noland elaborates on how Mauss’ conception of gesture might help us theorize the ways in which social conditioning marks bodies. She suggests that dance art that acknowledges the strictures of conditioning (while also stretching beyond it) might act as a liberating force in an era where mass normalization threatens to restrict gestural range in ways that have disturbing consequences for social freedom. Noland summarizes Mauss’ contribution and its implication for current dance praxis and research as such:

“First, he argues that social conditioning reaches beyond the ideas in the mind…to lodge itself in the very tissues of the body. Second, he observed that cultural subjects have a lived experience of such social conditioning, that is, a sensual apprehension, in those tissues, of socially organized kinesis. Although Mauss does not investigate deeply the ways in which kinesthesia, or the felt experience of moving, might inflect the gestural routines a subject executes, his work provides a roadmap for future research, a critical resource for renovating contemporary paradigms of embodiment, performance, and technesis” (Agency and Embodiment).

This invitation for ‘future research’ into the ways in which the felt experience of moving might inflect gestural routines speaks to the possibility that dance, as a form of research, could reveal: 1) new ways of experiencing movement; and 2) new modes of movement itself, born out of the potential liberated by moving otherwise than according to the dictates of social conditioning.

This is not a novel statement. The most sensitive, skilled, socially responsible dance artists I know, in this city and elsewhere, tend to frame their work along these lines—e.g., as interested in exposing kinesthetic experience that reaches beyond the (often deeply oppressive) norms of current culture and of actually creating new movement pathways, ones that offer the possibility of moving against the grain of the social order. Still, the way Noland carries Mauss’ important work on gesture forward in time to point to dance art as a site of possible liberation from social conditioning is useful in this moment, given the extreme restraints so many dance artists have experienced in the “covid” and “post-covid” era.

Indeed, the manifold constraints this era has imposed has asked many of us to revisit the whole idea of dance-making—to question, first, how to survive as dance artists and, relatedly, why we might want to in a world where so many crises call for a sort of attention that dance art might seem ill-equipped to give. The work of New Zealand-based dance artist Rumen Rachev speaks with rare power to the question of how dance might use the

New folk dances for new spaces, co-created and danced with joy © Damarise Ste Marie

very medium of our extreme conditions of constraint (conditions grown much worse in the post-covid era) to offer avenues for freedom, however provisional, from the massively powerful forces of normalization that condition our social, economic, and ecological life in the present moment—and hence also the movements of our bodies.

I became familiar with Mr. Rachev’s work when covid conditions found us occupying the same Zoom rooms on a variety of virtual collaborations through Performance Studies international (PSi). We later joined forces to create a cross-distance ‘residency,’ in which my BC-based dance company, Gull Cry Dance Theatre, invited Mr. Rachev to present some of his recent work on 希望学 kibōgaku (hopeology) via Zoom to a hybrid-audience of in-person and virtual attendees gathered in my apartment in Victoria, B.C.

Brief Notes After Rumen

Rachev’s Presentation on Hopeology (希望学)

Mr. Rachev’s work on hope-ology activates a choreographic space in which audiences are inspired to reflect on their own relations to that fraught, complex term “hope.” At his December 1, 2022, showing, audience members were invited to share reflections on hope. Rather than describe Mr. Rachev’s piece, I want to offer, instead, the echoes of audience members’ experiences—often, how dance lives on in audience members says more about its kinaesthetic resonance than straight

description (or even recording) of a work. Here is what audiences had to say:

The vitality of moving beyond the casing that hope carries and still finding oneself inside of vitality.

The dance of letting go of the secure: here I am on a boat. The discipline of how you live right now is part of what is hopeful for me.

Wondering about the possibility of hope without futurity.

Is it possible to be hopeful without a future orientation?

Imagine living without a goal, that’s kind of what hope is about. Hope as a method, rather than something that you hope for. What is hope if it is a method rather than something you try to get to in the future?

This isn’t art. It’s survival.

Disappointment is the engine of hope.

In elaborating this question of “hope as a method,” Mr Rachev participated, along with several collaborators (Mongoose Chen, Chris Berthelsen, Adam Ben-Dror, Sena Park, Jason Mathieson, Angela Hu, Xin Cheng, Java Bentley, and Giulio Laura), in an innovative residency titled The Auckland Community Recycling

Centre Art Residency (ACRCAR), taking place at the Zero Waste Network, in the neighbourhood of Glen Innes from July 2022 to November 2022. The residency saw him engaging in choreographic actions centred around various objects figured as “waste,” by virtue of them being brought to the recycling centre. Showing that “waste” is not always that, he and his collaborators repurposed these discarded objects to performative ends—indicating that things (and indeed people) have a value, a purpose, a meaning even when the values of late industrial capitalism render them as “no longer useful.”

Several choreographic actions resulted, a few of which I will elaborate here. As part of his developing collaboration with Gull Cry

Dance, Mr. Rachev routinely sent me pictures of these choreographic actions over the course of the fall of 2022. Reflecting on these refracted through my own practice, I created kinesthetic resonance over the distance.

Experienced Counsellor (a co-production piece by Chris Berthelsen and Rumen Rachev)

In the first photo, the supine figure of the dancer (in this case Chris Berthelsen, at other times Mr. Rachev) is barely visible underneath a giant, weighted pillow marked with the words “Experienced Counsellor” (a sign repurposed from a series of wellbeing events in the city and then thrown in

Rumen Rachev and Chris Berthelsen in “Experienced Counsellor” (Oct 16, 2022, Zero Waste Network, Glen Innes, Auckland) © Rumen Rachev

the trash). A collaborator/audience member plays a makeshift synthesizer cobbled together by Adam Ben-Dror while a crowd of Auckland art-goers look on. In the performance, the dancer remains motionless underneath the weighted pillow for much longer than anyone watching was likely to think wise. This choreographic intervention gestured comedically, but also with a note of deep tragedy, towards what I wish to call the “therapy-industrial complex” that arose during covid—the sudden emergence of all manner of online “mental health” services, sold through sneaky marketing appeals to the pain we all came to carry, in one form or another, through the combination of economic precarity, mass uncertainty, precarious health outcomes, and social isolation ostensibly brought on by covid, but well in place long before covid. By literally placing their bodies on the line, they expose the neoliberal equation at the

heart of therapy-as-big-business (“if there is something wrong with you, it is your fault, not the fault of the social, and it is on you to do something about it—and if you cannot, you must learn to ‘be more resilient.”)

Rumen and Chris’ intervention in Experienced Counsellor welcomes meditations on how, in an era where “mental health” is the new buzzword, our bodies are choreographed by the social equation to move according to the logic of “if you feel depressed or anxious, it’s about you, it’s your responsibility to fix, for instance by seeing a counsellor you must pay more for what you can really afford ” (This is not to disparage the many wonderful mental health professionals who provide deeply necessary services to people in deep need, often working for far less than they deserve—their work is golden, and I love them. I am referring to a wider social trend that pathologizes every reaction to uncertain circumstances as "mental health ")

...in an era where "mental health" is the new buzzword, our bodies are choreographed by the social equation to move according to the logic of "if you feel depressed or anxious, it's about you, it's your responsibility to fix..."

In placing their bodies under the weight of this absurd rendition of “experienced counsellor,” they spoke to the reality that, for many of us dance artists, our bodies are choreographed a priori by a social milieu in which our understandable distress at a social world where survival is more difficult for artists than ever is routinely pathologized. If a dance artist is in distress mentally (even if instigated by the egregious lack of public funds devoted to dance art, for instance), then it is her responsibility to fix it. Those around her can look on, yes, but there is no expectation that they will help—for instance, in their performances no audience member intervened. In each iteration of the performance, the dancer lay there motionless, the figure of a dance artist disappeared under the weight of stress induced by dire economic circumstances but rendered as his “personal responsibility.”

Rumen and Chris’ choreographic action, though severe, served a liberatory function: in performing the dance artist’s paralysis in the face of the mental-health industrial complex and its noxious assumptions about personal responsibility for “mental health” Mr. Rachev and Mr. Berthelsen performed a choreography in negative relief—they performed the absence of community care and in so doing, placed in the imagination of audience members the possibility of enacting choreographics of care that move against the grain of this social conditioning.

Discarded Seat Massager

Mr Rachev and his collaborators' other

choreographic interventions launched in the context of the Recycling Centre residency invited, similarly, reflections on how it might be possible to move otherwise than according to the (often invisible because so ubiquitous) conventions that govern our social choreographies. For instance, in Discarded Seat Massager, the dancer bricolages and then sits on, yes, a discarded seat massager (brought back to life by Adam Ben-Dror), onto which he has mounted an old wooden stool, wrapped in what looks like a used wad of packing foam (an inconvenient type of reupholstery by Chris Berthelsen). Clad in a reflective vest suggestive of every warehouse employee everywhere, his dance consists of simply allowing, without adding to the action, the seat massager to cause his vertebrae and pelvic region to “dance” passively. In the video of the performance, his back vibrates side to side, completely at the mercy of the make-shift machine he has created out of “waste ” This choreographic intervention invites us to query into the ways our bodies, too, have been rendered passive by the ubiquitous technological interventions that move us here and there without agency, turning our surrender, our passivity into the medium through which a Machine, a Social Machine, larger than ourselves dictates how, when, and if our bodies can move at all. In refusing to add “dance-like” movements to this piece, Mr. Rachev shows a brave willingness to expose the social machine for what it is, an instrument that too often renders bodies unfruitfully passive. Again, he enacts a choreography in negative relief, begging through his utter willingness to perform the passive subject with unadorned faithfulness, the question: how might we resist?

Dance Artist Rumen Rachev in “Discarded Seat Massager” (October 10, 2022, Zero Waste Network, Glen Innes, Auckland) © Rumen Rachev

Conclusion

The pandemic years—and these odd “afteryears” in which many of us seem to walk around as if in a never-ending twilight zone— have profoundly altered the dance milieu and, in many cases, have brought an end to dance careers or else stopped who knows how many potential dance careers from even starting. The word “precarity” does not even begin to describe an artistic sector in which, even before the pandemic, many dancers lived at the edge of poverty, seeking out the possibility of dance from amid the ruins of late industrial capitalism. What makes Rachev’s work so crucial—so capable of going to the crux—of dance art today, is that it makes the ruins in which we live the very subject of his oeuvre.

These ruins are places where hope can feel impossible for an artist wondering when the next cheque is going to come through, inside a wider context in which the fate of the human experiment on the whole is always in question. In this, he echoes and extends a tradition of dance that does not turn its back on the social conditioning that marks bodies inexorably, including the bodies of dancers even when we try to pretend otherwise by masking the truth of our bondage to oppression with good training. Mr. Rachev belongs, with Marcel Mauss, with Tatsumi Hijikata, and with countless others (in Vancouver, the dedicated life-work of Lee SuFeh and of Justine A. Chambers comes to mind as exemplary interventions on the implicit

choreographies of the social, and of space itself as transformative agent) who reject the idea that dance should pretend, for instance through excessive displays of a narrow vision of “virtuosity,” that dance can ever be extricable from wider social, economic, and ecological struggles. He makes dances on the margins, out of the rubble, in conditions that acknowledge that we are never not living on the edge—because that is where all of life lives now. To pretend otherwise is to betray the reality of the conditions all bodies find themselves in, though some are far more marked by the burden than others. Mr. Rachev will not pretend that business as usual is normal or fine or good. If you want to see him work you have to go to where he is—in a waste management site, on the edge of town, amid other discarded objects. A crucial site, indeed, for truly contemporary dance art.

Kristen

Lewis , JD,

LLM

is a dance/ performance artist, movement educator, and legal advocate. In all of these overlapping and intersecting roles, she is interested in how embodied approaches to storytelling, in both dance/performance and in the public sphere, can open up information-saturated Human Persons to more nuanced, beautiful, peace-generating alternatives to the divisive narratives that govern our status quo. She is the artistic director of Gull Cry Dance, and the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Men and Families (Vancouver).