How am I going to prepare to see this piece?

I researched Rosanna Gamson through her website but decided to go completely blind into her piece titled Sugar Houses. Since I knew her work addressed more sociopolitical issues, I used this lens while going into her work. I was looking for movement, imagery, and other creative devices that described these sociopolitical issues and if, in my own opinion, they were effective.

Response:
While watching the piece, the dancers first introduced themselves and explained the intention of the Sugar Houses and how it all related to the widely known German folktale, Hansel and Gretel, by the Brothers Grimm. Right from the start, they explained that the choreographic work is about: structural racism, scapegoating, antisemitism, privilege, and self-preservation. It was explained earlier in a short introduction about the choreographer, Rosanna Gamson, that she creates her work by addressing and revealing mythology and global contemporary issues.

Going into the piece blind was very interesting for me because as someone who is neither black nor Jewish, I had some trouble connecting dots within the storytelling of the piece. The piece contained a steady rhythm of dancing and song breaks in another language. The dancers explained how the image of witches was born out of antisemitism and how the ending of Hansel and Gretel alludes to the Holocaust. This allusion is taken further in the end as Gretel locks the witch in the oven to burn her. Throughout the piece, there was beautiful, strong singing. Most of the time in a language other than English (which is my first language) which also made it hard for me to distinguish if the singing was necessary to the plot of the story. Because of the different languages used, I was unable to grasp if the lyrics of each song expressed certain details or key points so I had FOMO (fear of missing out) in this situation. I do recall, my professor Jess Humphrey who has also seen the piece says that some languages spoken in the piece were made up.

It is important to note that the piece, albeit connecting the piece of Hansel and Gretel to black jews and antisemetic rhetoric, was choreographed by a white woman. As a direct observation, most of the dancers were black while one dancer was white. When the dancers used the line, “who’s next?,” they referenced the COVID19 pandemic and how it increased violence towards East Asians around the world. The dancers also referenced how migrant workers from Latin America, specifically Mexicans were stealing jobs from the American people. With these two comparisons in mind, they used the iconography of witches as symbolism of scapegoating they referenced in the beginning of the piece. I did not understand the need to bring up these comparisons when the issues being presented were about antisemitism and black Jews, so I thought the comparisons were unneeded and disrupted the flow of the plot. This disrupted the plot for me because all minority races and ethnicities have been subjected to racism and violence, so in reality, there is no “next witch” because of this.

How am I going to prepare to see this piece?

Since I was a dancer in this piece, I wanted to write about the experience as an audience member and then as a dancer. I wanted to create a small dialogue between me acting as an audience member to myself as a dancer and see how it transpires and makes me realize anything new that I did not know with either portrayal.

Response:

While watching "Above All, Don't Look Down," by Joseph Alter, a full-time faculty at San Diego State University, I was intrigued by the opening of the work. The dancers started in a line while slowly walking and filling in holes between each other. This lasted for a couple of minutes then gradually a dancer broke away and started dancing downstage. After a while, each dancer did the same as the all left to stage right, and left. What was interesting to see was how connected each dancer was to the other as well as how a lot of the movement is recycled and repeated but almost differently each time. For example, the movement the dancers danced in flowy, soft, fluid-like quality, transitioned into duets and trios later in the piece. The movement seemed to grow and build upon each other as the transitions and structure changed within themselves. The piece felt like an organism undergoing some kind of evolution which is a very gradual process over time but the effects stay similar to the ones before it.

Going into the music choices for the piece I recognized the music as Sufjan Stevens. The music with the lyrics shed the movement in an interesting context. A lot of the music has a darker undertone in conjunction with the folkish strings and other instrumentals. For example, while researching each song more in-depth, the first song used when the dancers are in a line called, "For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti" by Sufjan Stevens, the song is about mourning and death. Here possibly in conjunction with the movement, each dancer is shifting away from the other and moving in differing formations. Two lyrics strongly seem to connect to this part of the beginning of the piece, "Even if I come back, even if I die, Is there some idea to replace my life?" (Sufjan Stevens). By the constant shifting of the dancers in and out of the line, facing different directions (towards or away from the audience), and even starting to come downstage, this can represent the coming back and forth or a replacement of something that is missing. The constant shifting, accumulation, resetting, and reverting in a lot of the movement can signify this sort of transition.

A Dancer's Response:

I also would like to note that being a dancer in the piece, the choreographic process is summed up by the use of big scores and systems at work. Each system can repeat with a following of rules related to the title. One big rule, the title of the piece, was to not look down. This is because Joseph Alter stated that if we as dancers look down, we break the connection to not only the choreography but to the other dancers as well. With the music, it was stated in rehearsals that the music he chose is the music he sings with his daughters when they were little and holds important nostalgic significance to him. This may or may not include any other motifs within the songs with the dance as it was not stated explicitly.