“We Don’t Do Art for Art’s Sake.”

Anat Shinar with Deneane Richburg, Artistic Director of Brownbody

In April, Twin Cities-based choreographer Deneane Richburg brought together three Black female choreographers for a week of workshops, discussions, and performances at the Southern Theater. Richburg is also the Artistic Director of the on the ice/off the ice company, Brownbody. Having trained as a figure skater had a lasting impact on her aesthetic and subject matter. I sat down with Richburg a couple weeks after her show to talk about her inspirations, thoughts on collaboration and community, and her sense of responsibility as an artist.

Anat: April 27-29, you premiered the show, The Requisite Movers at the Southern Theater. For the show, you brought together three Black female choreographers: Yourself, Leslie Parker, and Lela Aisha Jones. What was the impetus behind bringing together these artists for a shared evening?

Deneane: I was fortunate to have been able to get my MFA at Temple University in Philadelphia. I first went out there in 2004 with Leslie Parker. We roomed together for the first few days we were there and it was an amazing, transformational experience for me to see the beauty in Black femininity. Growing up in Minnesota, in suburban Minnesota, where in the 1970s and 80s my family was one of only a handful of Black families in our entire suburbs. So the idea of seeing beauty and power in Black femininity was something that I struggled with. I developed a friendship with Leslie that shifted my way of thinking about my own insecurities, and about my own power and beauty as a Black female.

Then, in 2010, I met Lela Aisha Jones. She reached out to me on Facebook and asked me if I want to dance, so I said, “Of course you don’t even have to finish the rest of your sentence.” I was ready to go. I loved her process.

I grew up in this competitive skating world that was heavily ballet based so you know it’s all about the port de bras and elongated ways of moving the body. I always felt like I had two left legs when I was doing more West African African inspired movement and movement where we were really rooted and connected to the ground, where it’s about the energy more so than the shape of the body. When I worked with Lela she allowed me to bring myself as I was to the rehearsal process. She would ask us to improvise and she would use some of the improvisation and integrate that in the work. I felt like I could be me inside of her work. It was powerful.

We became friends and formed an organization called The Requisite Movers. We saw a void in terms of the types of choreographic voices that were being supported and presented. We worked with Nia Love and Marjani Forte, two phenomenal artists based in New York. They have a process called Kitchen Konversations. We brought them to Philly and we worked with them to hold and host Kitchen Konversations. We invited a handful of Black female choreographers in Philadelphia to present works in progress. Then we would literally prepare food and eat and talk about the work. Then we’d go and workshop the ideas that we talked about. We are able to create community, continue to support one another, and push our own artistic practice and artistic work further.

We created a beautiful community and I came back [to Minnesota] and I felt like I lost that community, that connection. When I came back to Minnesota, I would reach out as much as I could, as much as I had the capacity to, to other Black female movement artists and we would connect as much as we both could but that same kind of—I don’t know what to call it—synergy, for lack of a better word, just didn’t seem to be here. I haven’t seen everything that’s going on here of course, I go, but I missed the radical work focused on nuanced and complex stories around Blackness from a Black female perspective. I was spoiled. I want more of it here.

So that was really the impetus. I’m always interested in—I know you said we’re going to talk about collaboration, so I’m just going to launch into it. You don’t even have to ask me any questions.

Anat: Great, perfect.

Deneane: I’m always really interested in collaborating and always looking for opportunities to see and support people. I think everything should be seen, everything should be supported, and everything should happen at the end of the day. If you have an idea, it sounds a little idealistic, but it makes the world a better place if it can be fully supported and produced. There are a lot of Black women here who are doing some really important work.

I think collaborating is really important because there’s so much work to be done. It doesn’t make sense for us to work in siloed spaces. We’re all trying to almost reinvent the wheel, so why not come together and extend our reach, support one another, and create this really complex, dynamic, rich experience? All of those things were the impetus behind doing this performance and I, knock on wood, there’s no wood to knock on…

Anat: The floor.

Deneane: The floor! [I hope] this is not the last time that we do The Requisite Movers in the Twin Cities.

Anat: What does it actually mean that the three of you collaborated on this project? You invited them to do this performance, were there any sort of check-ins or parameters that you put on or that you collectively agreed upon?

Deneane: My primary intention was that we craft the week of activities and performances. That our voices, our perspectives, our experiences, our skill set, our desires, wants, opinions were at the helm. I feel that too often Black voices are silenced or put in a position where we are forced to be complicit in our own oppression, our own voicelessness, our own disenfranchisement. So everything Brownbody does, we are always trying to take these forces and these events and these ideologies and turn them on their head and really center Blackness.

We worked with a number of community partners: East Side Freedom Library, Indigenous Roots Cultural Arts Center, and TU Dance. Everybody was amazing. We hope to deepen those partnerships and to continue this type of work.

Anat: What were the community events and what was the vision around crafting them?

Deneane: Leslie taught a master class in collaboration with TU dance. Taking her class is no joke. We were all sweating and huffing and puffing. We partnered with Indigenous Roots Cultural Arts Center, where Lela held a workshop called Intergenerational Dancing to Live and Let Go.

We partnered with the Great River Passage, which is a part of Saint Paul Parks and Rec. Definitely look them up.The workshop was phenomenal. I was able to take the first half, and I was in there with my elders and we were doing diasporic movement like the two-step. Lela was wonderful at showing us how different West African and East African dance was layered on top of this basic two-step. The ability to share that—I mean, my mom took it, my aunt took it—the ability to share this with my elders, with other Black women was so powerful. It was beautiful.

Also at Indigenous Roots, we had a community conversation about Black, Brown, and Native Bodies in Performance and we had some guest artists who participated in that including Karen Charles, Kenna Cottman, Sergio Quiroz, and Ayana Sol Machado.

The focus for this conversation was how do we bring movement forms and traditions that are not born of these Eurocentric ideals to our ideas of performance? What happens when we bring them into these performance spaces? What compromises do we make? How do we not make compromises? How do we continue to honor and to help maintain the integrity of the original experience of these non-Eurocentric movement forms while they are being forced in proscenium stages?

This was an invite only, but we had a curatorial conversation where we could just talk candidly about our work in front of gatekeepers and funders. That was at the East Side Freedom Library and I’m still processing. For me it’s always about centering Blackness so I feel like we were walking this fine line in front of funders, presenters, and gatekeepers of how much is okay to say without isolating them or alienating ourselves. Historically, we couldn’t be fully open and honest about frustration and anger in regard to skewed power dynamics, racial power dynamics. I feel like it’s only been in the last 2 years that I have felt comfortable enough to talk about some of this openly in public settings.

Anat: So those were the community events.

Deneane: Yes. Those are just as important as the performance. We don’t do art for art’s sake. I can’t do art for art’s sake. Everything that I have I feel very fortunate and blessed to be able to do. What I do and everything that I’m able to do carries with it a weight, a meaning, a significance. In order to do what I do in a responsible and nourishing way, I feel that I need to bring the communities that want to engage with me on that journey. We are a part of community and we can’t, I can’t, I feel like I can’t just… I’m sorry I’m upset with Kanye West right now. I shouldn’t go down that road.

Anat: It’s ok; go down that road.

Deneane: I can’t be like Oh I’m just going to spew this crazy rhetoric and think that it exists in a vacuum.

Anat: Yeah, it’s about a sense of responsibility. Of community responsibility.

Deneane: Historically, us Black Folk have always been in disenfranchised positions and the playing field is not level. So it’s important for us to build this community bond. There’s a lot of healing, there’s a lot of trauma that we have experienced and we need to come together and actually work through some of this stuff. If I’m able to offer a platform in which to do that through community engagement events and or performances then so be it. But I can’t just throw something out there, something crazy like slavery was a choice, and then just be like I’m going to go on about my merry little life.

Anat: Have you read the Ta-Nehisi Coates essay?

Deneane: I have not yet. I’ve seen posts about it.

Anat: It speaks to a lot of what you are saying about the responsibility. As marginalized people we don’t get to just say whatever you want or if you do there’s a lot of weight to it.

Deneane: The whole old adage that I don’t have to be responsible for XYZ, but when you’re Black or brown, unfortunately the way things are set up in the space in this society your words and your actions do carry weight.

So Back to Kanye, sorry I was trying to get away from him. When he says slavery was a choice or whatever, especially right now with 45 in office and the explicit racism that has risen because of his presence and his stance. There are people that are experiencing real world consequences. When Kanye comes and says something like that it gives permission to folks to justify their explicit racism.

Anat: It adds value to the myth around “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and this false meritocracy.

Deneane: There are folks who are really truly struggling and whose lives are truly at risk because of these crazy systems and these unconscious bias and all of this stuff that Kanye just dismisses in that little statement. And he wants to absolve himself of responsibility I’m sorry, I just…

Anat: Just considering the size, the volume,  The enormity of his platform. The wrong people, the wrong type of person, the poor-intentioned person will grab onto that comment.

Deneane: Yes, use that to justify crazy racist behaviors and attitudes.

Anat:  Earlier you said that there were not artistic parameters at all. Can you talk about the juxtaposition of the three of your works? How do you think your works contrasted, complemented, or supported each other in the final result?

Deneane: All three of the works presented a thorough platter. Highlighting how distinct and unique the choreographic voices of Black female artists can be, because they were all so different. I think that is may be a metaphor for the breadth and diversity of the type of experiences Black women have in this country and how those experiences can manifest in completely different perspectives. I’m hoping that people saw the beauty in all three. Maybe this is my thing that I’m hung up on like femininity and beauty, femininity and power, femininity and whatever, but I feel like growing up there were certain elements that would negate power and beauty that were race-based. If you were too dark you weren’t beautiful, if your hips were too big, you weren’t powerful or you weren’t whatever the thing is. I’m hoping that people experienced the beauty and the power in all of the varied work and that we can start to appreciate those elements in Black femininity in all the different forms and shapes that it takes.

…

Anat: I have a question about the ice. I saw your solo in the Walker’s Choreographers’ Evening in 2014, then the large production of Quiet As It’s Kept on the ice, and then this piece at the Southern. How does it feel different on marley versus ice?

Deneane: I think about this a lot. The one very clear thing is that [on the ice] we have all this  horizontal momentum that we can play with, which is great. What I find on the Marley is that I’m able to really excavate and mine a lot of power out of stillness in different moments that don’t necessarily rely on this big dynamic energy. On the ice, that’s really challenging to do because it’s hard to stay still. If you’re staying still, then I start to think why am I even on the ice? I’m not really using this form, so I have to figure out how to find this power while moving. It’ll look like something different but that same energy will still be there. How do I create that same energy using the momentum and the tools that the ice can lend to the process?

Last year for Co-Motion, Quiet As It’s Kept, the second half of that performance consisted of translations of two Urban Bush Women pieces, Give Your Hands To Struggle and an excerpt from Walking With ‘Trane. Sam Speis and Maria Bauman came and taught us the work off the ice so we could understand the energetic dynamic that crafted or created the piece. Our task turned into how do we find that energetic essence on the ice, using spins, jumps, and momentum. We aren’t necessarily doing the exact same movement only with skates on, but are finding those nuances on the ice. What’s really exciting is that you begin to understand the work differently. You begin to really experience the work, the essence of the work, the soul of the work.

Anat Shinar is a Minneapolis-based contemporary performance and visual artist, curator, writer, and educator, and member of Fresh Oysters Performance Research collective. Her choreography has been presented at Red Eye Theater, The Southern Theater, The Soap Factory, SooVAC, Bryant-Lake Bowl, and Ritz Theater.

Deneane Richburg grew up competing in figure skating and received her MFA in dance and choreography from Temple University in 2007, an MA in Afro-American Studies from UW Madison, and a BA in English and African American Studies from Carleton College. She has created work for both the ice and stage. brownbody.org