{"id":344,"date":"2020-03-22T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-22T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/?p=344"},"modified":"2025-06-11T10:07:41","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T10:07:41","slug":"barriers-bias-what-its-like-for-immigrant-dance-artists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/2020\/03\/22\/barriers-bias-what-its-like-for-immigrant-dance-artists\/","title":{"rendered":"Barriers & Bias: What It’s Like for Immigrant Dance Artists"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tHussein Smko premiered Ballade: The Rain Song<\/em> at the 2017 Battery Dance Festival, on a platform with a view of the Statue of Liberty. There couldn\u2019t have been a better backdrop. The work pairs Smko\u2019s unique fusion of contemporary dance and hip hop with powerful spoken word read by journalist and Iraqi-American refugee Riyadh Mohammed. With the icon of freedom behind them, their performance drew on their experiences as Muslim immigrants to this country and channeled their resistance to Islamophobia.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe work might be sensitive,\u201d says Smko, an Iraqi of Arab-Kurdish roots, \u201cbut it\u2019s what we witness and what\u2019s going on, and you need to be aware of it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIn fact, he moved to the U.S. not only <\/strong>to get top-notch training, but also to challenge prejudice through his art. \u201cI could have done something in Kurdistan,\u201d he says, \u201cbut it wouldn\u2019t have been as effective. I came here to give a different image from how Muslims are portrayed.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\tSmko is one of thousands of dance artists who have come to America from all parts of the world and represent a panoply of races, faiths and cultures. In an era of escalating hate crimes, new laws and increasingly stringent immigration policies, they face unique challenges.\n<\/p>\n

\n

Assumptions About Identity<\/h3>\n

\n\t\tAfter first visiting the U.S. on a scholarship, in 2016 Smko got his green card and moved to New York City, where he dances for Battery Dance Company and makes solo pieces and films. For now, his focus is on creating work that foregrounds his experiences with war and immigration and addresses anti-Muslim prejudice. Yet no artist wants to be pigeonholed. \u201cI don\u2019t want for the rest of my life to do just one thing,\u201d he says.\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\u201cThe assumption is that if somebody is an immigrant, they are a representative of everyone from their country or their culture\u2014or they have to assimilate,\u201d says Alejandra Duque Cifuentes, the executive director of Dance\/NYC<\/a>. In 2018, the nonprofit service organization released two studies on foreign-born dance artists in New York City, and in 2019 produced Advancing Immigrants. Dance. Arts.<\/em>, a survey and analysis on the needs of immigrant dance artists in the New York City area. \u201cWhat we found is that immigrant dance artists are making dance across all of it: ballet, contemporary, culturally specific forms, fusion work.\u201d\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\tAs central as the immigrant experience is to an artist\u2019s identity, many choose not to make it a focus of their choreography. Modern dancer Peiling Kao, for example, emigrated from Taiwan in 2007. Though her work may not overtly address political or cultural issues, her Asian identity is sometimes regarded as \u201cother.\u201d She experienced this during her 2016 participation in Hope Mohr Dance\u2019s Bridge Project: Ten Artists Respond to Locus<\/em>, in which the dancemakers were inspired by Trisha Brown\u2019s 1975 solo.\n\t<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\tPeiling Kao<\/small>
\n Marley Aiu, Courtesy Kao<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n\t\t\u201cWhen Trisha Brown choreographed Locus<\/em>,\u201d Kao explains, \u201cone of her prompts was to help her to understand more of her movement vocabulary, to understand more of herself as a mover. I thought, Wow, I can use that as a prompt too.\u201d So Kao, who trained in ballet, modern and Chinese dance forms, incorporated elements of classical Chinese movement into her interpretation.\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\u201cIn the post-show discussion, an audience member asked me if I am trying to empower my Asian identity,\u201d recalls Kao, now 47 and an assistant professor of dance at the University of Hawai\u2019i at Manoa. \u201cIt made me wonder, Why haven\u2019t you seen me as a Taiwanese until you see me do Asian movement? Is my yellowness erased when I do modern, but when I do a gesture of Chinese dance, somehow my yellowness becomes even more yellow?\u201d\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\tAssumptions about who immigrants are based on their country of origin or their ethnicity can impact performance opportunities, as well. \u201cA presenter might be more reluctant if they don\u2019t already have a huge following,\u201d says Cifuentes. \u201cOr presenters say, \u2018We already have the Latino for this season.\u2019 \u201d\n\t<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Barriers to Entry<\/h3>\n

\n\t\tIn addition to the costs of training and rehearsal space that all dancers and choreographers contend with, immigrant artists tend to bear daunting financial and social burdens, says Cifuentes. \u201cThere are lawyer costs, visa costs, language barriers, social media harassment, and they often don\u2019t know what resources they can access,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd if they are undocumented, they might face deportation.\u201d\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\tThose anxieties are a constant presence in Gabriel Mata\u2019s life. Mata migrated from Mexico to Southern California at age 5 with his mother and sister, and only learned he was undocumented at 16, when he couldn\u2019t get a job because he had no Social Security number.\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\u201cIt came as a shock,\u201d he remembers. \u201cI navigated in a limbo state, and dance was a great way to get out of my head.\u201d In solos like Dreaming<\/em>, which blend spoken word and modern dance, \u201cI share my personal narrative as well as financial insecurities from being an immigrant,\u201d he says. \u201cI also question notions of citizenship.\u201d\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\tReceiving DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) status at 21 afforded Mata work eligibility, a driver\u2019s license and access to higher education, but his residency remains uncertain, even though he is married to an American citizen. His experience directly informs not only the content of his work, but also its format: Solos are portable and inexpensive to create, and that helps Mata save for expenses like the biennial $495 DACA renewal fee.\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\u201cI can\u2019t have a five-year plan to develop as an artist,\u201d says Mata, now 28 and enrolled in the MFA program at the University of Maryland, College Park. \u201cHow will I be financially? I just don\u2019t know. It\u2019s just living day by day.\u201d\n\t<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\tGabriel Mata<\/small>
\n Hillary Goidell<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n\t\tSome immigrant dance artists are also ineligible for certain government and private grants that require U.S. citizenship. Additionally, there may also be insufficient social resources that take into account their unique needs, such as language services and fees associated with immigration.\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\tWhile Cifuentes cites the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Center for Traditional Music and Dance as notable resources, she says, \u201cby and large, there isn\u2019t intentional support for immigrant dance artists.\u201d Or, as Mata puts it, \u201cAs immigrants, we get the scraps of the scraps.\u201d\n\t<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The Bias Against Minorities<\/h3>\n

\n\t\tImmigrants who are perceived as people of color experience additional discrimination, says Cifuentes. Over a three-year period, the number of Muslim refugees to the U.S. has been decreased by 91 percent. And over the past two years, the U.S. government has put DACA protections in limbo and instituted \u201cextreme vetting\u201d procedures at the borders, such as the January 2020 questioning by the Customs and Border Protection agents of Iranian-Americans returning from abroad.\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\tContrast that with Pascal Rioult\u2019s experience. \u201cI was lucky, being a Western European citizen and white. Getting a green card was a really easy process,\u201d says the New York City\u2013based choreographer who emigrated from France in 1981, performed with the Martha Graham Dance Company for 10 years and founded RIOULT Dance NY in 1994. \u201cThat is not the case for a lot of other people, and that\u2019s unfair.\u201d\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\tWell aware of his privilege, he is trying to increase equity with a youth program at Rioult Dance Center in Astoria, Queens, an exceptionally diverse neighborhood that is home to people from nearly 100 countries.\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\u201cWe have kids from all different ethnicities,\u201d he says. \u201cWe hope that training them from the bottom up will increase diversity in dance, and that eventually they will start to funnel into the company.\u201d\n\t<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\tPascal Rioult leading a rehearsal<\/small>
\n Sofia Negron, Courtesy Rioult<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

New Ideas Become \u201cAmerican\u201d<\/h3>\n

\n\t\tCountless influential dance artists were and are immigrants, from George Balanchine and Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n to Ephrat Asherie and nora chipaumire. \u201cImmigrant dancemakers have been vital to what we know as dance today,\u201d Cifuentes says.\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\tDance\/NYC sees immigrant artists as a boon to American dance, and among its recommendations for fostering inclusion and equity are field-wide education on immigrant-rights issues and implicit bias, bringing more immigrant artists onto funding panels, and encouraging leading organizations to provide mentoring.\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\tEvery immigrant dance artist brings with them their unique perspective as an individual and a cultural legacy of their country of origin. Over time, their contributions get absorbed into American dance culture, and it\u2019s easy to forget that they originally brought their ideas and identities from other parts of the world.\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\tAs Smko sees it, that\u2019s simply one aspect of dance\u2019s power as an international language. \u201cThe idea behind the movement is to touch your mind, regardless of who you are,\u201d says Smko. \u201cIt\u2019s made for humans.\u201d\n\t<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

The post Barriers & Bias: What It’s Like for Immigrant Dance Artists<\/a> appeared first on Dance Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hussein Smko premiered Ballade: The Rain Song at the 2017 Battery Dance Festival, on a platform with a view of the Statue of Liberty. There couldn\u2019t have been a better backdrop. The work pairs Smko\u2019s unique fusion of contemporary dance and hip hop with powerful spoken word read by journalist and Iraqi-American refugee Riyadh Mohammed. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":347,"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\/344"}],"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=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":366,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions\/366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/supplychainstrategynow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}