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As we approach the sacred time of solstice, we want to share that Dancing Earth has initiated a pause from outward public offerings this winter season beginning November 21st 2020. Dancing Earth’s ongoing creative, cultural, and communal response to these times is one of kinship between all voices, as we recognize the need for solidarity and reciprocity. Reflecting into 2021 In
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Dancing Earth’s ongoing creative, cultural, and communal response to these times is one of kinship between all voices, as we recognize the need for solidarity and reciprocity.
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In 2020, Dancing Earth was able to overcome immense challenges to launch unanticipated and innovative online offerings with creative resilience and joyous positivity. This is something we had only dreamed about in the past, but due to the constraints we had from the pandemic, we got down with our imaginations and drew this dream into reality.
We were able to offer a new series of workshops, Practicing Principles of Ancestral Knowledge (PPAK); two summer intensives: Cultural Collaborative Cyberspace Content Creation (C5) and Movement As Medicine (MAM); 2 symposiums: Afro-Indigenous Empowerment and Indigenous Two Spirit/IndigiQueer/Native Trans Talk; and, 2 virtual performances: Indigenous Futurities and BTWUS Cyberspace as well as numerous online classes with master teachers and student teachers. It was a very full year of offerings adapted so that we could continue to be in contact, collaboration, and connection with our communities through the limitations created by a global pandemic.
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We recently completed the debut of our most significant project of the year, an innovative performance media hybrid, in the form of a 6 part mini series, called BTW US Cyberspace. Please enjoy reading this well written review by Talia Dixon about this project: http://lovedancemore.org/reviews. We are in gratitude to the amazing team of University of Utah Presents, our funders, National Theater Project and The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, the generous donations of our Artist Relief Go Fund Me Campaign donors, and our staff and creative collaborators. Thank you!
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**Look for future newsletters for updates about this reflective work, as well as updates about when we will begin public offerings in 2021.
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Dancing Earth joins performing arts culture across this country and the world in undergoing an extreme and necessary re-envisioning in response to forces of Covid, climate change, colonization, and voices from marginalized communities calling for change. The Founding Director, Rulan Tangen, along with the staff and our current cohort of dancers, had a series of company meetings this fall, to assess our identity as a company in recognition of the response to Rulan’s Identity Statement, released in October of this year. We recognize that our relationship to our community is based on us being transparent about who we are and how we operate. With this in mind and in respect to the many communities we have had the honor to work with, we are sharing here an amended identity summary that includes apology, acknowledgement, and the first action steps the company and Rulan have taken, and will continue to work towards. Link here. We are grateful for the strong voices that have come forward to remind us that even when we are doing our best, there are still things that need to be made right, both for continued equanimity within our company, but also within how we engage with resilient reciprocity within our communities. So, we are taking this time to reflect on all of the voices that have shared with us their deep gratitude alongside their frustrations about how Rulan, and in effect Dancing Earth, has been identified. We want you to know we see, hear, and acknowledge you all. Thank you for reaching out to assist us in growing more resilient, honest, and worthy of your attention and energy.
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It continues to be Dancing Earth’s intention to celebrate a confluence of cultures, and to remain resilient during this moment of divide and exclusion that is being felt around the globe. Dancing Earth strives to uplift our intercultural creative family by working closely with Native American, mixed Indigenous, and global intercultural wisdom keepers, community members, youth and generations of BIPOC collaborators, to create together as change makers with the belief that we are more together than we are apart!
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“Through the human experience culture has always evolved. People experience war and displacement, colonization and racism, migration and assimilation, and also experiences of connection that leads to children, marriage, family and more. These events can sometimes fracture and reform culture and identity and can create families and children who may not have full understanding of bloodlines and culture and who search for community and connection. This is the human experience. There is also an instinct to exclude. In times of division and strife the 'other' can loom larger than ever and today we are witness to growing levels of exclusion in the form of xenophobia, racism, and other bias. People want to connect - and while many have obvious ways to do this: unfragmented families and communities - others are not so lucky. As human beings it is incumbent on us, if we wish to see a better world, to have compassion for those who have struggled to find the culture they belong to and acceptance in community.” Andre Bouchard (Kootenai/Ojibwe/Pend d'Oreille/Salish descent)
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“As the Founding Director of Dancing Earth, I wanted to reach out to you personally to express my gratitude for your emotional, intellectual, cultural, financial, creative, and collective support over the years.” Founding Director, Rulan Tangen Sending prayers to you and your beloveds for good health, well being, peace, and justice as we all continue to love and grow through these turbulent moments of unknowing and uncertainty....to move into 2021 with hope, vision, clarity, and inclusivity, knowing that YOU are here with us on the journey grounds us in a resonance of connection! Thank you!!
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*All donations are processed through our fiscal sponsor,
Intersection for the Arts
(EIN# #94-1593216) 1446 Market Street San Francisco, CA, 94102 . Gifts over $250 will receive a receipt for tax purposes. Please note on check: Dancing Earth Online gifts can be made athttps://www.flipcause.com/secure/cause_pdetails/ODM3Mg==
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