Breakin\u2019 Bricks\u00a0<\/em>reflects upon\u2014and responds to\u2014the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, which terrorized the city\u2019s prosperous Black community of Greenwood. The piece is, Archibald says, \u201cone of the most difficult projects I\u2019ve ever done.\u201d<\/p>\nYou\u2019ve called\u00a0Breakin\u2019 Bricks<\/em>\u00a0a \u201cdocumentary-format ballet.\u201d What does that mean?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/strong>I went into the field with a videographer, Guy de Lancey, to interview people about what life in Tulsa is like today from a racial perspective. I put myself in a journalist\u2019s shoes, in a way. What was challenging was getting people to talk transparently. It was hard to peel back the layers and get answers to \u201cWhat\u2019s the difference between North and South Tulsa? Do you cross the tracks? Will Greenwood be prosperous again?\u201d<\/p>\nWhen Marcello [Angelini, Tulsa Ballet\u2019s artistic director] approached me, the only ways I could see this being authentic and successful were, one, if we hired Black dancers and, two, if we brought local voices into the story. I didn\u2019t think I would be able to honor the spirits and authentically commemorate Black people if I didn\u2019t have film and audio sharing space with the movement onstage. That\u2019s why documentation has been so attractive to me, because I feel like, when we watch ballets, they can be so abstract. We don\u2019t usually know who these people in front of us are.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
There was an audition in June to hire Black dancers for\u00a0Breakin\u2019 Bricks<\/em><\/strong>. What were you looking for?<\/strong><\/p>\nInitially, I wasn\u2019t sure if I wanted ballet versus contemporary movers, so I said, \u201cLet\u2019s keep it general and see who\u2019s interested.\u201d What was great about that process were the dancers who reached out to say, \u201cListen, I\u2019m really interested in this, but I\u2019m concerned about\u201d this or that. It was eye-opening in terms of my responsibility to make sure the Black dancers I chose felt supported.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>All while ballet itself is reassessing and metabolizing its relationship to white supremacy culture. How will you bring this history and this art form into meaningful dialogue?<\/strong><\/p>\nI do not have a black-and-white answer, but it is something that has kept me awake numerous nights. It\u2019s important that we all know that, in this process, we can make mistakes and make amends and learn from it. I\u2019ve tried to be as transparent as I can be with all of the dancers, who sometimes email me questions about this process in the middle of the night. It\u2019s a learning curve that extends to how we\u2019re going to market the show, and how we\u2019re going to do outreach during the residency for these Black artists, because they\u2019re interested in teaching workshops and reaching the community that never shows up to the ballet. I really, really want to make sure the audience is diverse and that we\u2019re not just presenting to a predominantly white audience, which is what I do all the time.<\/p>\n
Ideally, it\u2019s a productive process.<\/strong><\/p>\nThat\u2019s the thing: The company has to realize this is not like any other commission, and all of the departments need to realize they are included in that transformation. These dancers can\u2019t come in, as guests, and feel isolated. The residency for the Black dancers we\u2019ve hired is just five weeks. That in itself is a testament to why ballet companies need to be more diverse, so these stories can live for more than just three or four nights.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\nThe post Jennifer Archibald Responds to the Tulsa Race Massacre With a Multimedia Premiere for Tulsa Ballet<\/a> appeared first on Dance Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jennifer Archibald\u2019s professional roles almost mirror the breadth of the dance field itself. A Canadian now based in New York City, she runs her own dance company and its ArchCore40 Dance Intensives; is a guest artist at several universities and teaches at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University; has commercial clients like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions\/313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}