I’ve been thinking a lot about Hands Dances, which I made in 2015 and toured in New York in November 2016, during the days leading up to the election. It was inspired by quotes from Milton Glaser and George Saunders about how “real truth” isn’t just a singular idea, but lies within the tension between opposing values. I thought of how one idea could mean opposite things for opposite people, most exemplified by Star Wars Force Awakens; People who loved it did so for the exact same reason why people hated the shit out of it. This concept of different-experience-from-the-same-experience somehow encapsulated for me the cultural undercurrent of that time, most notably in how I observed people interpreting “Black Lives Matter” in 2014-2015. With video proof of the murders of Eric Garner and Walter Scott, how was it that people around me were calling BLM a terrorist organization, calling freeway protests a terrorist act?
It was so easy for me to attribute the formation of the American part of my identity to Hip Hop, yet I saw so much being sourced, stolen, & disregarded by contemporary dance. Hands Dances was inspired by my identifying as a Hip Hop artist, and the obligation I felt to situate my participation in relation to the Hip Hop community, history, and Black culture; Hands Dances was inspired by the visceral rage of protests and riots in the US that I wanted to see in Hong Kong & Taiwan — but wasn’t seeing — at the time. Hands Dances was inspired by the difficulty I felt to act, articulate, and be affecting. Hands Dances was a culmination of all these ideas, and I wanted to show people who were like me that grappling with these ideas was OK, was necessary, was required. More than anything, Hands Dances was created to act as a jumping off point for myself. To hold myself accountable for the change I wanted to see. A self-mobilization of sorts.
Did it work? I don’t know. Is Hands Dances good? There’s a lot I would revise if I did it again. Since then I’ve tried to “give” my physical presence to causes by attending protests. I tried to be involved in work with systemically disenfranchised populations and in the sharing of their stories. I tried to listen and learn and give hope where I could. Besides voting, all I feel like I do is try. I only try. I don’t make calls, I don’t sign online petitions, I occasionally donate but it feels disconnected, dissatisfying, and I guess, uninvolved to not really know how the $ will be impactful. It’s draining to engage and argue with resistant mentalities of opposing perspectives. I stopped posting & writing online because I wanted to clear the peripheral and extraneous talk and refocus on actions in real life, but felt like I could only do it in a way that “fit” my personality — in a way that was comfortable. And I guess this post is a roundabout way of me returning to confront my own complacency and comfort, and knowing that change begins with the individual, with discomfort, and that every increment forward in the process has value. Even in trying. Especially in trying. Am I continuing to try?
An aesthetic that pleases becomes the anesthetic that polices.
Live performance feels so useless in these days of not congregating, in these days of being bombarded with the knowledge of blatant, despicably evil acts. The evil is so concrete and definitive; how is it even possible to match that? I think of images I’ve seen from the Hong Kong protests: Common folk civilians & students lobbing bricks & molotov cocktails at authoritarian forces, health workers treating injured protestors, people storming government buildings but protecting historical artifacts, gluing bricks to the street so police vehicles can’t drive fast, volunteers cleaning the streets after a mass gathering, feeding the protestors & rioters, boycotting businesses. I’m imagining how to be a cog in the wheel of a revolution. I imagine the fear of being beaten, of being cornered, being arrested by a government that disregards human rights, and I admire these people so much, for believing in something so strongly that they will die (and perhaps worse, suffer before death) for it.
My spirit feels broken and I don’t know what to do.
Trying.
♥ George Floyd
♥ Breonna Taylor
♥ Ahmaud Arbery
♥ Minneapolis
♥ Hong Kong