• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

magazine of the philadelphia folklore project ● Dance journeys Toni Shapiro-Phim ● Chaos knocking at the door Matthew Hart Volume 15:1/2 summer 2002 ISSN 1075-0029 ● Reconnecting with tradition special issue: dance happens here! Shawn Saunders ● Kormassa Bobo Cory W. Thorne ● Lithuanian folk arts journey Jen Cox ● Procession for the new year Toni Shapiro-Phim ● On flamenco Anna Rubio ● ¡Aquí estoy! Toni Shapiro-Phim To learn more about the Folklore Project,please call 215-468-7871 or visit our website at www.folkloreproject.org inside Editor: Debora Kodish Guest editor: Toni Shapiro-Phim Designer: IFE designs + Associates Printing: Garrison Printers Printed on recycled paper 3 Dance journeys philadelphia folklore Chaos knocking at the door: project staff 4 spiral q Debora Kodish,Director Shawn P. Saunders, Folklorist Toni Shapiro-Phim, Community Projects 8 Procession for the new year Director James D. Yoo,Program Assistant 12 On flamenco philadelphia folklore project board Terrence Cameron Lois Fernandez Germaine Ingram Thomas Kramer Chiny Ky Nora Lichtash Mogauwane Mahloele Samien Nol Steve Rowland Ellen Somekawa Welcome, reader! Merian Soto Deborah Wei,Co-chair This special issue of Works in Mary Yee,Co-chair Progress, guest edited by Chamroeun Yin Toni Shapiro-Phim, PFP’s Xu Juan Community Projects Director, reflects some of our work on we gratefully acknowledge dance—one of the threads of support from: tradition most valued and ● National Endowment for the Arts vital in local communities. If ● The Rockefeller Foundation ● The Pew Charitable Trusts the issue encourages you to ● The William Penn Foundation learn more about our work ● Pennsylvania Council on the Arts sustaining our region’s other ● The Humanities-in-the Arts Inititative, community-based folk arts, administered by The Pennsylvania ¡Aquí estoy! Humanities Council, and funded principally our advocacy, or technical 14 by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts assistance efforts, we invite ● Independence Foundation you to visit our website, Kormassa Bobo ● Pennsylvania Historical and Museum 16 Commission www.folkloreproject.org, or to ● give us a call. As always, we Dance Advance, a grant program funded by Reconnecting with tradition The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered invite your feedback and 18 by Drexel University involvement. ● Philadelphia Music Project, a grant program Lithuanian folk arts journey funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and 20 administered by the University of the Arts Debora Kodish ● Office of Curriculum Support and Office of Director Language Equity Issues, School District of 30 New pfp video! Philadelphia ● Samuel Fels Fund ● Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation Front cover: 32 Membership form ● The Philadelphia Folksong Society South 7th Street ● WYBE Television Cambodian New ● and individual Philadelphia Folklore Project Year Festival. members Trot procession. Photo: Rodney thank you to all Atienza, 2001 from the editor Dance journeys: movement versus silence here are times when one ries, and contextual and corporeal in West Philadelphia, collaborates may be terrorized from afar distinctions: from the theatrical to with various communities to create into silence. In preparation the ceremonial; from fancy foot- and actualize parades and pageants for this issue of Works in work to intricate finger motions; often with social change as an Progress,a local dancer, from the professed re-creation of explicit goal. Spiral Q’s founder and here because of civil and tradition to the creation of what director, Matthew (Matty) Hart, fea- Tmilitary unrest in his native coun- might become a new tradition. tured in an interview in this issue, try, spoke with us. He ultimately Particular movement vocabular- is attracted to projects that provoke decided not to allow us to publish ies or choreographies may traverse debate and challenge injustices.As any specifics about the political sit- time, from one generation to the participants move together— in cir- uation in his country and its impact next and the next. Some cross terri- cle dances or parade columns on him as an individual and as an torial and ethnic or national bound- manipulating towering puppets— artist, for fear of reprisals against aries; others advance only down they reject that which is unjust, and family and colleagues back home. the block as part of a pageant; still shape a vision for what is possible. “You don’t know what it’s like,”he others grow manifest as a result of Local performer and teacher told us.“Nobody knows what ‘they’ combinations of some or all of the Anna Rubio, who reflects on might do.” above. Meanings arise from the flamenco in this issue, positions There are yet other times when ways in which dance is taught, the dance as a site for personal, one may be terrorized here and learned, presented, and from the social, and political journeys of now. Called by derogatory epithets, ways people respond.And because transformation. For students in told to get out of the neighbor- these are all dynamic, evolving con- dance classes she teaches in North hood, surrounded by oftentimes texts, dance and its meanings are Philadelphia, most of whom live random violence, or marginalized always open to re-interpretation. in distressed inner-city neighbor- from those with resources and The articles that follow introduce hoods, the very act of working political clout and thus vulnerable several dance worlds in the context toward mastery of the rhythmic to unremitting poverty and its of present-day Philadelphia and and movement patterns is a step attendant woes, some among us are trace some of their metamorphoses (or a series of steps) in the direc- “attacked” from all sides.At a meet- along the way. tion of asserting control in an ing of artists and educators at our The dancer mentioned in the untenable situation.Anna paves office earlier this year, participants first paragraph of this essay often the way for young people, most spoke passionately and eloquently chooses, here in Philadelphia, to dramatically girls, to lay claim to about the above concerns and teach and perform dances that may dignity and pride in the face of about the additional need to be have all but disappeared as they are what scholar Alicia Arrizon, in her careful when expressing personal practiced predominantly in regions book, Latina Performance,labels opinions about current political decimated by years of warfare and “the cultural tyranny embedded in realities, whether international, poverty, regions in which most of a history and society which has national or local.They shared the population has been displaced attempted to make [them] submis- stories of the antagonism, indeed and many, many, have died. His sive, obedient, mute, and anger, some of them, as immigrants, dancing speaks against the feared powerless.” have faced from neighbors and col- disintegration of a way of life, and Kormassa Bobo, a former mem- leagues when they have openly preserves the knowledge and mem- ber of Liberia’s National Cultural questioned government tactics and ory both of that dance and of this Troupe, too, aims to inspire positive priorities. Is it prudent to silence history. Dancing, for him, is one growth in a new generation oneself, to try to be invisible, rather means of creating anew in the face through dance. Here in this U.S. than to risk being labeled a traitor? of disorientation and loss.We may city, isolated from those with the They wondered aloud. not tell his story here, but we can- same movement and musical The themes of risk and dignity, not ignore his struggle, or the vio- knowledge, she is limited in her of silencing and invisibility weave lence against which so many artists performance repertoire. Exorbitant through the articles included in and others must work.We have air travel costs and political unrest this issue devoted to dance. included several essays and inter- and extreme poverty in Liberia Philadelphia is endowed with a views in the following pages that restrict exchange possibilities multitude of dance forms and present individual points of view between Kormassa and her former styles, many of which have been on personal, political and artistic colleagues.Yet in part because of explored in the pages of this maga- histories and quests, written (or the on-going conflict in her home- zine over the years. Here, we high- spoken) by people deeply engaged land, Kormassa ascribes enhanced light several that together trace a with performance. meanings to those dances she does range of political and social histo- Spiral Q Puppet Theater, based [Continued on page 26 ➝] 3 as the chaos of the world is knocking on our door an interview with matthew hart of spiral q puppet theater Spiral Q Puppet Theater aims to illuminate the victories, frustrations, and possibilities of living in the neighbor- hoods of Philadelphia through the construction of giant puppet parades, park pageants, and toy theater. “The Q” works with activists and community groups to create, artist profile: develop, and realize public events in public spaces (the streets, the parks, the schools) that give voice to imme- diate concerns, to neighborhood narratives. Hand-made giant puppets manipulated by three people at once dance in place and through space as central figures in Spiral Q-facilitated parades. Participants join hands in circle dances and may bring history or even visions for the future to life in short plays by, for, and about the community. Matty Hart, the Puppet Theater’s founder and director, shared some thoughts and experiences with us during a conversation in the group’s puppet-filled 2nd story home on Spring Garden Street. Excerpts from that interview follow. —Toni Shapiro-Phim Right : Children from West Philadelphia carry a giant puppet during the 2001 Peoplehood parade and pageant. Photo courtesy Spiral Q. Giant “Justice of the Peace” puppet (who married “Big Busi- ness” to “Govern- ment”) at the 2002 Mummers Parade.

Load more

  32

Copy Link