GWU students engage in artistic and critical dialogue

Students in the section I teach of “Understanding the Dance” are required to attend and write about dance performances. I have often heard students tell me they dread the assignment when they first read the syllabus, or they object to the idea that I expect them to attend a cultural event in the city when their lives are so busy.

Most students change their minds. The experience not only gives them a chance to witness creative projects in the city, but it also gives them the tools to communicate images, thoughts and concepts in effective ways.

Below are excerpts of reviews written by students this semester: Lauren Doyle, Bill Collier, and Lauren Marmol. They capture the ability to translate visual and visceral experiences into words. They exhibit both creative and critical thinking skills, drawing together disparate ideas from their courses and experiences, then analyzing what they see and how it connects to their understanding of the world. They also reveal the talented faculty of GWU’s TRDA Department: Dana Tai Soon Burgess, the choreographer described here, is chair of the department and his company was presented at Dance Place in Washington DC.

Lauren Doyle: “Island, a piece choreographed by Dana Tai Soon Burgess, was characterized by the idea of cultural depravation and yearning for identity. Burgess’ work premiered on the weekend of October ninth, and I attended the final performance on the eleventh at seven o’clock. The theater in Dance Place was packed to experience this multimedia innovation. The name of Burgess’ show is based on Angel Island, an early immigration center for Asians in California. The work exhibited an expedition, both physical and mental, towards finding the essence of our own identity and embracing the identities of others. I have seen countless dance performances, but Island affected
me in a way I have never experienced. The amalgamation of special effects, music, props, and the dancing revealed a message…. The technological elements helped intensify the journey Burgess wanted the audience to experience with his dancers. As the immigrants faced struggles and their circumstances oscillated, the effects mirrored the fluctuation… As the curtain opened, I was pleasantly surprised to see my modern dance professor, Connie Fink, as one of the performers. It was absolutely remarkable to watch her dance; I felt even more connected to the piece because of her presence onstage. She danced as the immigrant who battled with a guard and was killed. It is one thing to perform a piece that has no relevance to your life but it is quite another to display the story of your ancestors... The show touched my heart particularly because my family is from Colombia, and our culture is everything. I know how difficult it is to try to be a part of this culture without losing the magic of my country. My parents have passed on their unfathomable love for Colombia to me. ‘Love is God, your family and your country. People, who forget where they came from, have nothing. Never forget that the blood that courses through your veins is yellow, blue and red.’ (Blanca Doyle) This performance brought me to tears; any person who has been alienated, discriminated against, or looked down upon because of their race can surely feel the power of Burgess’ work. Island reminds us that we live in a multicultural society; no culture
can survive if it tries to be exclusive.”

Lauren began her review with this quote: "What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life"” Octavio Paz


Bill Collier: “The performance, Island, by Dana Tai Soon Burgess & Co was a powerful
and emotional experience, a window into the mind of someone of foreign decent and what their experience may be when coming to America. The title of the piece refers to Angel Island, a place located in San Francisco Bay where Chinese immigrants waiting for permission to enter the United States were held between 1910 and 1940. Due to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, many Chinese were detained there for months on end. To this day, some of the buildings on the site still remain, there are hundreds of poems etched on the walls of these buildings speaking about the poor conditions, mistreatment, and worry about what their future would bring. The performance was a ‘multimedia piece’; it utilized a variety of tools including image projectors, television screens, and an interesting soundtrack. All of these components were used together to illustrate the internal struggle of identity. To this day, some of the images that I saw are still engrained in my mind. The atmosphere that was created seemed to engulf the audience; I felt uncomfortable yet intrigued, I was eager to see more. I really enjoyed the multimedia component of the dance performance… I think that the performance was trying to illustrate the issue with staying ‘connected’ to one’s cultural roots. Many see America as a place to go and reinvent oneself, a place to obtain the ‘American Dream,’ but if you lose the connection to your roots and where you came from, you can’t know yourself at the most basic level. It is like building a structure on an unfinished foundation, it is bound to fail.
The dance style was unique, a blend of precise, simple movements and theatrics that told a story. Especially in the first act, the hands were used a lot, to frame, cover and bring attention to the face. I think that this was to explain that when people see someone, they use their face as the first, most basic way to identify a person: their race, the country they are from. The act of hiding ones face most likely represents the shame or embarrassment that one may feel when coming to a new country, their quest to integrate, or to become ‘American.’ I was touched by the performance. As an Asian American I sometimes feel unsure of my identity. I am undoubtedly an American, but I try to remain true to my Japanese heritage. This summer I had the opportunity to work on a research project on the Japanese-American internment during WWII. Many of the images that I saw in the performance reminded me of the Japanese relocation centers that these people were sent to, the only difference is that many of the Japanese Americans incarcerated were American born citizens. I thought that the performance was extremely innovative, interesting, and well executed, I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in modern dance or Asian-American history.”


Lauren Marmol: “The movement of the dancers expresses a greater movement, both social and political, that occurred over a hundred years ago. Dana Tai Soon Burgess and Company’s performance at Dance Place on Sunday, October 11th both engages and educates its audience about the struggles of Asians trying to enter the United States at the turn of the 20th century. Divided in two parts, the story of Asians in America is depicted into two very different and real ways. The first, Hyphen, serves to express the difficulties of assimilation in a new land. The performance itself represents a state of limbo in which Asian Americans are attached to their identities of origin while trying to create new ones in America. The second part investigates the Asian immigrants’ experiences in Angel Island off the coast of San Francisco, California. The movements and choreography expresses both physical and emotional abuse suffered by people attempting to immigrate into America.
...In Hyphen, instead of dancing to songs, the performers move with the overlapping and echoing voices of immigrants speaking of their experiences. Together the images and voices help to create a tense, peculiar and overall disturbing atmosphere surrounding the performance… The contrast between the television set and water jugs on stage reveals the contrast between old world and new world and what these concepts represent for the immigrants traveling to America. The dancers start to move in larger strokes, sometimes paired off and in sync and at other times individually. This part of the performance speaks of the struggles of immigrants tied to their origins while starting a new life in America… The second part, Island, echoes the feelings of the immigrants who went through this station during the early 1900s. This performance is distinguished by a large illuminated rectangle on the center part of the stage. This rectangle may be representative of the island itself or isolation itself experienced by Asians during this period attempting to enter the United States. The performers are divided into two very different groups made obvious by their garments: the first group represents Asians interned at Angel Island, wearing maroon robes with small detailing around the neck resembling traditional Chinese attire. The second group is wearing black robes and obviously representing the administrators of Angel Island and may actually symbolize the entity of the United States. These roles are not only made obvious by their costuming, but more importantly by their dance movements. The immigrant group spends most of the time on the floor on the illuminated square while the other group is standing over them. This helps to establish the encroaching inferior-superior relationship between the two groups. Images of internment immigrants as well as Chinese writing pass through the illuminated space on the floor. These images suggest the experience of these immigrants, helping the audience to connect a face to each experience expressed by the dancers… The performance conjures emotions of sympathy and anger… I am not Asian American, but I find myself feeling an inner connection to these immigrants and their experiences through my own family’s immigrant struggle. I find the most climactic point of the performance occurs at the very end. The struggle between the two groups becomes most obvious when one of the immigrants is being beat and thrown about the stage…. Finally the dancers of the immigrant group leave the stage and ascend into the audience, representing the journey of the universal immigrant that is among us all.”

posted by Kate Mattingly