Uplifting talent
Dancers take to the street in downtown Bakersfield before heavy storm hits
Well before the Saturday downpour drove weekend plans indoors, dancers enlivened the Brickyard Downtown in Bakersfield with their performance of “Visibility: Self Reflections.”
The dance — performed by about 30 people, most of whom were local — incorporated synchronized movements and the occasional limbs akimbo as the group sauntered from one end of a city block to another.
Following three turns within the block on N Street, the group entered the courtyard, inviting nearby onlookers to join them. The movements, done in semisync between the circling performers, were relatively simple: weaving steps, arms extended and retracted, a snap of the fingers, maybe a leg kick.
The project was the culmination of a 10-week rehearsal, put together by Dance Camera West, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit funded through a $255,000 state arts grant.
The idea behind the project was to take the energy and virtuosity of street dancing and marry it to the formal structures of concert dance, with respect for the individuality of the dancers.
“It just offered this opportunity to have people share a practice,” said Marlene Miller, the show director. “And even talking to some of them, just physically they’re feeling better after doing this weekly for the last two to three months.”
While it wasn’t the Bolshoi Ballet, the performance marked an important day for the dancers, most of whom were amateur dancers, not consummate professionals.
“That was a sense of community that I haven’t experienced in a long time,” Amethyst Morrison, one of the Bakersfield-based
performers, said of the dance. “Post pandemic that’s a big thing.”
The state grant prioritized underrepresented artists — those normally not afforded the chance to work in this space — including those in the LGBTQ community and artists of color.
Kelly Hargraves, DCW’s executive and artistic director, said finding these “citizen artists” was integral to the performance’s ties to wellness and meditation.
The Los Angeles-based nonprofit was one of the grant recipients from the Kern Dance Alliance Creative Corps, itself a pilot program from the California Creative Corps, a project of the California Arts Council.
Andrea Hansen, arts administrator and president at the Kern Dance Alliance, said the program is funded by a 2021 initiative signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that funds arts projects — $60 million spread across 58 counties.
The program was created in the spirit of uplifting the talents of underrepresented artists from low Healthy Places Index in neighborhoods across California. Yet in the San Joaquin Valley and the eastern Sierras — home to poor air quality, and worsened access to education and clean water — the governor approved $4.2 million to be used across 14 counties, from Kern to Amador.
“That sounds like a lot until you realize we asked for $22 million,” Hansen said.
The program created 652 jobs and more than 30,000 hours worked for the sake of publicly funded art programs — a crowning achievement, Hansen said, despite the dismal funding.
Next week, Hansen will have to do her own song and dance. Her audience: the state Legislature. Upon invitation, she will deliver a keynote address at the state Capitol to request more funding.
“Because they just can’t believe what we’ve done,” Hansen said. “And my response to that is, ‘You never gave us a chance.’ I mean, there’s a reason you go to L.A. or San Francisco to see stuff because that’s where the money has, historically, always gone.”
For those interested in seeing the performance, “Visibility: Self Reflections” will be performed again on April 21 for the EarthDay661 Festival at Yokuts Park, 4200 Empire Drive.
“That was a sense of community that I haven’t experienced in a long time. Post pandemic that’s a big thing.” — Amethyst Morrison, one of the Bakersfield-based performers