Ballet Memphis showcases ‘unsung’ in Winter Mix
When Steven Mcmahon planned the Winter Mix repertoire last season, I was unable to foresee the flurry of both personal and cultural upheaval that would be occurring as I try to feel and think my way through these works. They were created and selected largely to amplify the idea that there are so many who are unsung, overlooked, and deserve to be seen.
The whole subject of the unseen and marginalized is exploding the fabric of our nation and our world, precisely because they have not been truly and deeply seen as needed, in both obvious and unacknowledged ways.
Furthermore, at the very foundation of the institution I began and am retiring from in several months, is the core value that they, all of us, must be brought to light even as we look around and see anger directed at so many of those trying to gain that better life and respect, indeed, sometimes begging just to survive, never mind have a better life, equal pay, more chances and real fairness.
Julie Niekrasz’s work takes its inspiration from Pauli Murray. She was an early Freedom Rider in the Civil Rights movement (as we currently watch efforts across the U.S. to restrict the voting rights of millions of citizens); a women’s rights activist and co-founder of NOW, as we still hear and fear that women simply cannot lead and currently have pay around 17-25% less than men in management and leadership positions across fields.
Also, she was the first African American female Episcopal priest, rejected from UNC for her race and then Harvard Law for her gender but who now has a new building at Yale University named after her.
She called the various discriminations against her “Jane Crow.” I keep rolling those words around in my mouth, savoring their bitter but pungent taste. They point well to Julie’s thinking about how race and gender are two huge discriminatory barriers, causing so much pain now. We can look around and see the living legacy of slavery, to Jim Crow, to black incarceration rates, to white supremacists’ increasing loudness, volatility, and mayhem. I look around and see Greta Thunberg and the Parkland youth picking up shattered pieces, demanding change. Even in the current chaos, we can find many signs of our better selves.
Crystal Perkins, one of our New American Dance residency winners, has a gentle, loving elevation of the unseen, and ties it to an Afro-futurist lens.
Perkins’ imagining black laundresses of Memphis led me to find a reference to Catherine Hunt, a black laundress in Memphis after the Civil War. (Uplift
Memphis, Uplift the Nation, by Ernestine Jenkins in 2017).
Hunt supported her family here until she died in 1899, leaving a will, and bequeathed what she could save in her life to relatives who were poorer than she was. I think of her as an example of so many women, with dignity and determination across the world, who try to think and act for others.
Perkins sees the power of their light as still shining on us in ways that can affect our communities; there is a skein from past to present, if we look for it. If we touch it, feel it, we could change the map, redraw the boundaries, move them, enlarge them, and jettison them if they bind us too unfairly.
Hunt delves imaginatively into the elders’ possible memories to help imagine a future. This strikes me too, as such a vivid value statement. Aren’t we all the better for trying to reach into ourselves and deal with our pasts, tough though that may sometimes be? And to imagine the “what ifs?” Can’t we keep trying to make the better “what ifs” eventually become “we did it?” Honor, respect, imagine, hope and dream.
We end the program with our restaging, after quite a long absence, of Trey Mcintyre’s “Pork Songs.” In it we see the “Pig” lovely in her classical tutu, and all that is exquisite and inspiring for so many young girls by this very garment, fighting for her life. Trey manages to make us laugh, perhaps so we don’t cry over the many setbacks, perhaps so we can keep hoping, keep trying, keep fighting. There are sharp lyrics that, as always, he molds his choreography so adeptly to:
“I don’t like to fight but fight I will with my own life so you can’t have your bacon in the morning.” –“Porker Song” by The Bowmans
And fight she does, as greed and salivation always seem to almost outnumber her at every turn.
In the end, we see that her sorrowful tear is drunk by her adversaries, her sadness is digested by the gluttons. Instead of chewing her up, my hope, seeing the end of the ballet, is that they experience empathy for another someone who is different, who is refusing to be suppressed or annihilated, who has hopes and dreams. As I plan my leave taking from this amazing idealistic, other-centered, varied, determined, and deeply committed ballet company, I beg you all to keep trying to understand, keep caring, keep hoping, and keep dreaming.
We must do the hard work of finding real empathy, and the strength of character to fight for the love we discover.
If we are pushed down the hill, or stumble by ourselves, we have to keep trying to climb it again.
Dorothy Pugh is the CEO and Founding Artistic Director of Ballet Memphis.