Sara Shelton Mann & Maurya Kerr: Y-Exchange Summary, 02/24
On the last Wednesday of every month, we here at Kinetech Arts like to co-host “Y-Exchange” alongside ODC Dance. Y-Exchange is a series of presentations about performing arts, technology and science and how they intersect and inform each other. Every month, selected artists and scientists are invited to talk about their life and work. The event takes place on the last Wednesday of every month. Since 2014, we have featured hundreds of artists and scientists from all over the world!
This month, our two artists were Sara Shelton Mann and Maurya Kerr.
Sara Shelton Mann
Sara Shelton Mann, a San Francisco based choreographer, performer, and teacher. In 1979, she moved to San Francisco to work with Mangrove, now Mixed Bag Productions, for which she serves as artistic director. One of its early manifestations was the company Contraband, launched as a performance group and research ground combining the principles of contact, systems of the body and spiritual practice into a unified system of research. Her Movement Alchemy training is an ongoing teaching project and is influenced by certifications and studies in the metaphysical and healing traditions. Sara’s performance work is a platform for collaboration and research in Consciousness.
In her part of the talk, she was kind enough to share with us the process she took to create her book launch, despite some technical difficulties.
We were also lucky enough to watch a trailer for another collaboration she did.
In the audience Q and A, we asked a lot of questions about how she understands the world and her guiding philosophy to her work.
"I see time, space, location. That's it," Sara replied. "I see the potential for joy. It's when intention and the moment come together when something else occurs."
Sara talked about training and how we are all learning to be conscious of our bodies. "Training and consciousness comes in when you learn to see all the details and see the whole room."
When "non-dancers" walk into a dance studio, it seems like they forget how to use their bodies even though we all use our bodies every day – to cook food or to do chores or to get us from one place to another. Yet, in a dance studio or in some other kind of art, the intent is different, and suddenly we don't know how to be conscious of our body and use them well. Training allows us to be conscious, match an intent, and express it through our body.
If I can be 100% conscious of every movement I make, that would be enlightenment.
"I just want performers to know the power that they have." - Sara Shelton Mann
Maurya Kerr
"I feel like contextualizing work is cheating," Maurya Kerr began, but continued on. "I deeply believe in blackness and brownness and we have to destabilize white supremacy whether it's filmic or poetic or choreographic."
Maurya Kerr is a bay area-based choreographer, poet, educator, and the artistic director of tinypistol. Much of her work, across disciplines, is focused on Black and brown people reclaiming their birthright to wonderment. Maurya was a member of Alonzo King LINES Ballet for twelve years, an ODC artist-in-residence from 2015 to 2018, and holds an MFA from Hollins University. A recent Pushcart prize nominee, her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Blue River Review, River Heron Review, Inverted Syntax, Oyster River Pages, Chestnut Review (1st prize winner), and 'The Future of Black: A Black Comics and Afrofuturism Anthology' (2022).
She spoke about her piece BLACKSTAR, a continuation of a previous work Cosmos.
In Black Star, she explored a wide range of different emotions – joy, rage, and more. "The decolonization of the mind and body is getting to inhabit states that are not allowed.
My work is really about black and brown people claiming their birthright to wonderment. And to destabilize what black art or dance is. There is no monolithic blackness. No one ever asks "what's authentic whiteness"? There are so many ways to be white, just as there are so many ways to be black. And I'm interested in trying to show that.
Now she finally has the time and money to send her poems out to get published and she read us some poems – one about her ancestor's rape and a definition poem for the word "constellation."
She pointed us to this New York Times op-ed about confederate monuments: it begins with the line "I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South."
In the audience Q and A, Maurya spoke about how her fight for decolonization was more external at this point. She was lucky enough to not have too much of an own internal struggle, having grown up with close proximity to whiteness.
We spoke about cultural inferiority – the insidiousness of that inferiority complex that is present not only in America's minorities, but in Asian countries as well.
"Whiteness has the privilege of not noticing," she pointed out. "The point of white supremacy and racism is to make us lose hope."
Here are some resources for you:
Listen to the reflections of Suzette Sagisi on the process of BLACKSTAR: https://www.hopemohr.org/blog/2020/9/22/on-decolonizing-movement-embodied-feeling-and-intentionality and share the following Anti-Racism resources with your community.
Anti-Racism Resources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BRlF2_zhNe86SGgHa6-VlBO-QgirITwCTugSfKie5Fs/preview?pru=AAABcqAMTNA*9GumvUyF6fzMSwszbq_OzQ
Anti-Racist Checklist: https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vTVNi03ahFVhFnAn9d8NRb81T2PX5otIPuEJzPCLNJyoLRBXlW5cX7_DiWffORMN9rR3xoz3ziPRloH/pub
White Fragility: https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vQNJV5wYiH1Dgl6U4kFhk4bbl6_RZqezBgrzt81I7brmp1x8z40ZzkfguNSpMBBOLiMD3iZnUyHOJBy/pub
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack: ( https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vS7DsKmc00n3pUenB1stguRK0P9_XQLwUt2q634KclwMaAVDvXAaPUvGNDU6Kge9pjT2vAR6bSVmtuY/pub)
Kimberly Jones on How Can We Win: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9_qGOa9Go
If you're curious to explore more art or even to stay up to date with more future Y-Exchanges, feel free to join our meetup group here and pop on by between 6-7:15 PM Pacific time on any Wednesday!
Y-Exchange is Co-Presented by Kinetech Arts, ODC Theater and The Djerassi Resident Artists Program.