Roughly 34 percent of students on campus have left their state to attend our university. Six percent left their country for this opportunity. This modern day migration speaks to the nomadic nature of humans, whether traveling for pleasure or for survival. It's also reminiscent of our collective history as a nation of immigrants.
Regardless of the length of one's own family immigration narrative, as individuals we carry bodily habits that trace back to our cultural histories and/or our adaptation to this new space.
To capture our bodies' reaction to immigration, dance department professor Chris Walker has created a concert to explore the theme of movement across nations and generations. Walker describes the concert ""Generation Dancing"" as an ""intergenerational dialogue on body language and body attitudes in an immigrant space.""
As a first-generation immigrant brought to this country by his dance studies at the State University of New York in Brockport, Walker was fascinated by the movements of contemporary dance. Contrasting that style of dancing with the familiar movements of his hometown in rural Jamaica, Chris became curious of how the body holds cultural information. Similarly, Walker remained intrigued by how immigrants retain culture in a new space.
""The body is an encyclopedic resource for resistance, cultural survival/retention and cultural information,"" said Walker. ""If you want to know what's going on with the mind, then look at the body.""
Under these philosophies Chris choreographed ""E Pluribus Enum,"" a premier episodic work that will debut in Madison at the concert. Each episode is a narrative describing how one may react in a new space with their body as an artifact of this expression.
The first episode, ""The People Who Came,"" portrays specific immigration narratives that came from the performers themselves. The work incorporates the mediums of dance from department students and live music, song and spoken word poetry from First Wave students. ""Each element of the collaboration informed the other,"" Walker said as he explained the process of how the dancers shared their family immigration stories, which inspired the poetry that became the music's lyrics.
A commentary on the modern process of immigration to the United States is ""Secondary Screening."" Inspired by Haile Selassie's 1963 speech to the UN about unequal treatment of world citizens, Walker choreographs a narrative of citizens stuck in the secondary screening process, which parallels the war zone that the space transforms into.
The concert moves from the struggles of entering the country to the challenge of adapting while retaining one's identity. ""Backflip"" deals with three young men of color and their reactions under societal expectations of what constitutes professional attire and physical relation. Their discomfort in uptight and strict formality is the springboard to a somersault towards who they are in the end as they revert to casual clothes to express themselves through ""urban"" genre dance styles.
Presenting the positive experiences of immigration, ""One and Two Gather"" tells a story of two women who migrated from different backgrounds, yet share the unconditional love of sisterhood. This episode features live spoken-word poetry in sync with contemporary dance.
""Every work of art is a collaborative effort,"" Walker said concerning the philosophy of his work. The concert is funded in part by the Madison Arts Commission Signature Grant, which helped bring the artistic work of Jamaican-based choreographer Neila Ebanks and Guyanese-Jamaican dancer Guy Thorne of New York-based dance company FurturPoint Dance to the local Madison community.
FuturPoint Dance Company concludes ""E Pluribus Unum"" with the premiere of Walker's ""Dubwise."" This final episode discusses how one can take advantage of the richness of a new space and contribute positively, but maintain individuality.
The concert is scheduled for 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 3, Friday, Feb. 4 and Saturday Feb. 5 at Margaret H'Doubler Performance Space in Lathrop Hall, 1050 University Ave. Ticket information is available through the Memorial Union box office. There is a discussion with the performers at the end of Thursday's performance and an informal reception scheduled after Friday's performance. There will also be free public dance classes facilitated by the guest artist Guy Thorne.
