January 24, 2012
I was inside, cooking a meal with my daughter and we heard the younger children’s shouts as they played in the waters after their baths splashing in it, swimming in it, drinking it. We all thought it was water until that day.
As I cooked in silence the children’s voices mixed with the hiss of my stove “Look! There is a rainbow in the water!” hisssssss. Such words sound beautiful at first. Like words in a lullaby. I thought, it is possible a rainbow has appeared in the sky and is so strong that they can see the rainbow’s reflection in the Aguarico.
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January 10, 2012
By Chitra Vairavan
Where do I go when I dance?
There’s nowhere to go but rather pass through your moments into my tomorrow. The news will only reach you late. And timing is everything in your today.
Digging for something that will never be found but still exists in my safe space. That is where my body breathes in tomorrow. Come find me there.
Intentional eyes see beats vibrating from feet, no stomping. Foot-working the love it has for earth, stepping in its own sweat. Not yours. Understand what is left to be understood.
My hands will only reach beyond your sight. Needing more than wants will offer. What’s to become of me in your moments? Whispers in the wind.
Days pass yet when my tomorrow comes it will last beyond dreams. Walk with me for a while. Tomorrow catches what today lets slip through its fingers.
Movement is my lifetime, not moment, in tomorrow. What you see is how I seem to be. Turn away and look again.
Where do you go when I dance?
Chitra Vairavan trained in Bharata Natyam with Hema Rajagopalan. In 2004 she began her journey in contemporary Indian movement through Ananya Dance Theatre (ADT). Chitra has since become a principal dancer in the company and received the 2008 Sage Cowles People’s Choice Award and been named Artist to Watch by Minnesota Monthly in 2011.
November 29, 2011
By Kulvinder Arora
What does it mean for women of color to collectively perform their relationship to gold? Ananya Dance Theatre explores this question in their latest dance performance piece, Tushaanal Fires of Dry Grass. In the opening scene of Tushaanal Fires of Dry Grass, dancers engage the glitter of gold. Blanketed by a sheer golden coverlet, a dancer writhes underneath exposing the shimmer and sheen of shiny objects. By beginning their work with the allure of gold, Ananya Dance Theatre exposes what literally lies beneath the mining, production and consumption of gold. Second in a series on the systemic violence that affects women, gold is seen as an alluring resource that belies virulent exploitation. As the dancer writhes underneath the shimmering blanket of gold at the left of the stage, the other dancers perform to the right their conflicted relationship to the shimmering play. The dancers seem enticed and yet controlled in their movements. One is left to wonder what will come next and one has a sense that “all that glitters is not gold.”
With great skill in movement interspersed with spoken word and haunting music of women’s wails, Ananya Dance Theatre exposes how gold affects women. Some of the themes they explore are the lure of gold for power and status embodied in a story they tell about the Empress Dowager Cixi, gold as a source of oppression for women who work in the mines, gold as a lure of survival for sex workers who live around the mines, and gold as a form of control of women in dowry exchanges. What is impressive about Tushannal is not only the range of stories that Ananya Dance Theatre exposes in women’s relationship to gold, but also how these stories are artistically rendered. Starting form the Indian Odissi dance form as inspiration, the dancers combine several other traditions of dance, yoga and martial arts to create a syncretic form that speaks not only contemporaneity in dance but also solidarity in struggles. Unlike modern dance, which speaks of individual self-expression, Ananya Dance Theatre speaks of how women of color bodies inspire relationships based in unity.
I return to the question with which I began. What does it mean for women of color to collectively perform their relationship to gold? Ananya Dance Theatre builds not only an aesthetic vocabulary to express solidarities between women of color but a real dialogue about what brings women together and what separates them. Gold, as a natural resource much sought after, illustrates perfectly the idea that capitalist patriarchies generate competition between women over resources. What then does resistance to capitalist patriarchy mean in relation to gold? Women of color share in histories of colonial exploitation of the western world of non-western labor exploitation. Resistance, in this instance, means different things for different women. Sex workers around the mines have a different relation to the allure of gold then women who suffer from dowry exploitation, and yet if we come to the realization that these women’s stories are linked through the structures of capitalist patriarchy, we realize also that resistance may look different in these circumstances conditioned as they are by class and sexuality. Nevertheless, women in these circumstances may come to see how their resistance is linked rather than prioritizing their differences. This is the message that Ananya Dance Theatre communicates so well with its expressive movements but also how the group comes together to create such a piece of work.
Ananya Dance Theatre creates solidarities across women of color’s struggles by creating a strong woman-centered space. In this day and age where discussions of post-race and post-feminism pervade our culture, the importance of such a space is not to be overlooked. More than a movement vocabulary, Tushaanal creates a vocabulary for collectivities of resistance. Each dancer contributed to the piece through research and dialogue and the strong connections forged through that dialogue are reflected in the beautiful dance movements.
Ananya Chatterjea’s vision to create a woman of color dance group of women from different communities speaks to what is missing from racial and gendered discourses which privilege representation over inter-relationality. By having their voices heard loudly and clearly Ananya Dance Theatre is a space where each women of color performer can express her loving support, conflicted realities, and sympathies for other women. In this way, Ananya Dance Theatre is more than a performance group; it revises what performance and communication mean to people of color communities.
Kulvinder Arora is a cultural critic and Professor who teaches courses on transnational film, feminist theory and gender studies. She is currently working on a book project on positive representations of women of color in feature films that is provisionally tiled Plotting Resistance: Acts of Social Justice in Women of Color Films. In shifting the conversation to positive representations, she asks the question “How does viewing women of color resisting oppression rather than being victims of it alter social stereotypes?” By looking at women of color’s struggles across racial and ethnic communities, she argues that there is something productive in seeing similarities between women of color to build solidarities between them and yet important differences between nationalism, patriarchy and colonialism need to be recognized to see how women resist oppression differently.
September 27, 2011
Nimo Farah was invited to share her words and images in the lobby during our run of Tushaanal Fires of Dry Grass. We were honored by her talents and our audience were moved by her. We wanted to share, once again, the work of Nimo Farah
My gray hair makes men listen.
And when people stare, I wonder
if they are reading the stories of my wrinkles.
While every step tells us heaven is at the feet
of the mother
the distance between the feet and the lips
becomes the longest to travel.
My feet traveled here
to a empty hut hemmed in by parched acacia
with skinny white goats and red sand.
In this hut, I once told my daughter
things would be easier for her if she didn’t step out of line.
I sat in this hut, hiding from the rumor that was real
when my husband married another wife.
She is the age of our daughter.
Our daughter’s daughter looks over the fence
and sees little boys playing. She wants to be a child
and play also.
That is the story of my wrinkles.
Nimo Farah loves orators and different forms of storytelling and sees the material for a compelling story all around us. Being exposed to Ananya Dance Theater’s powerful storytelling through movement has inspired her to write about the struggles of humanity, particularly those of women. Feeling that our collective and most basic human values have been adopted without the counsel of women of color and that the abuse and imbalance of power has left a legacy of great hardship. With their natural resources thrown into the fiery pit of consumption and greed only to be branded into gleaming instruments of oppression and violence. She is moved by these women’s fortitude and shares some photography and poetic narrative that is inspired by Tushaanal: Fires of Dry Grass.
September 22, 2011
Nimo Farah was invited to share her words and images in the lobby during our run of Tushaanal Fires of Dry Grass. We were honored by her talents and our audience were moved by her. We wanted to share, once again, the work of Nimo Farah
I go to bed with ideas lately
after hearing women speak through the radio.
The women on the radio are free.
I wonder if they know about me, a girl
who lost her smile at fifteen
when I was married to a man older than my father.
I was a child decorated with henna and borrowed gold.
I don’t remember smiling.
Time moves slowly
as I sit under the sun.
When I sell mangos in the market, I think of going away.
Now I have gold of my own, small pieces I bargain for
from the other market women
and bury under our hut.
I listen to the radio to learn how to speak
like a city woman.
I save newspaper pictures of dresses I want to buy
when I go there.
I will keep my head covered.
Nimo Farah loves orators and different forms of storytelling and sees the material for a compelling story all around us. Being exposed to Ananya Dance Theater’s powerful storytelling through movement has inspired her to write about the struggles of humanity, particularly those of women. Feeling that our collective and most basic human values have been adopted without the counsel of women of color and that the abuse and imbalance of power has left a legacy of great hardship. With their natural resources thrown into the fiery pit of consumption and greed only to be branded into gleaming instruments of oppression and violence. She is moved by these women’s fortitude and shares some photography and poetic narrative that is inspired by Tushaanal: Fires of Dry Grass.
September 20, 2011
Nimo Farah was invited to share her words and images in the lobby during our run of Tushaanal Fires of Dry Grass. We were honored by her talents and our audience were moved by her. We wanted to share, once again, the work of Nimo Farah
Should I blame the mothers,
or the villagers who did not sing?
Who did not light a bonfire from dry grass
or roast meat in my name?
They only sing songs when boys are born
and like a straight arrow to an enemy’s chest
boys bring freedom.
To the people of my village a boy completes a half empty home
but a girl is pain, born from a man’s crooked rib.
So I was welcomed with silence.
Nimo Farah loves orators and different forms of storytelling and sees the material for a compelling story all around us. Being exposed to Ananya Dance Theater’s powerful storytelling through movement has inspired her to write about the struggles of humanity, particularly those of women. Feeling that our collective and most basic human values have been adopted without the counsel of women of color and that the abuse and imbalance of power has left a legacy of great hardship. With their natural resources thrown into the fiery pit of consumption and greed only to be branded into gleaming instruments of oppression and violence. She is moved by these women’s fortitude and shares some photography and poetic narrative that is inspired by Tushaanal: Fires of Dry Grass.
September 15, 2011
Nimo Farah was invited to share her words and images in the lobby during our run of Tushaanal Fires of Dry Grass. We were honored by her talents and our audience were moved by her. We wanted to share, once again, the work of Nimo Farah
My mother wants more for me
than she’s ever had.
She was pressured to say “yes‟;
to use her hips that were not yet developed
before her lips were formed enough to say “no‟.
My mother sends me to a school
she cannot afford.
My hand is raised, my arm stretched.
I want to say “Call on me.
I want to tell you about the courage of my mother.”
My mother has flat feet, forcing her heels
that know no shoes to walk to her parents home
in the village where she was born.
To find them before death finds them,
and say, “I forgive you.”
Her pain gives her wisdom
and her wisdom gives us both wings.
Nimo Farah loves orators and different forms of storytelling and sees the material for a compelling story all around us. Being exposed to Ananya Dance Theater’s powerful storytelling through movement has inspired her to write about the struggles of humanity, particularly those of women. Feeling that our collective and most basic human values have been adopted without the counsel of women of color and that the abuse and imbalance of power has left a legacy of great hardship. With their natural resources thrown into the fiery pit of consumption and greed only to be branded into gleaming instruments of oppression and violence. She is moved by these women’s fortitude and shares some photography and poetic narrative that is inspired by Tushaanal: Fires of Dry Grass.
September 8, 2011
By Submission by Gina Kundan
As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, development of Tushaanal has relied on each dancer to not only hone and articulate their artistic craft, but also to research all the many attributes of, and associations with, gold. Each dancer contributed research and concepts for the work. Some examples include Chitra Vairavan and Brittany Radke who focused on cultural norms and family traditions of beauty and wealth; Kenna Cottman who uncovered the often dire working conditions of artisanal gold mining camps; Renee Copeland who examined religious practices in Thailand; Hui Wilcox who explored stories of the Empress Dowager Cixi. All of these studies have been woven into brilliant choreographic elements and inspired artistic choices. Dancers transform! Not just portraying characters, but genuinely embodying images of Goddess, Slave, Empress, Televangelist, Creature, Fire, and amidst all of that, some of us have lives as Women!
Come to this performance to witness an artistic expression of gold as adornment, gold as beauty, gold for wealth, gold for environmental degradation, gold for power, gold for status, gold for divinity, gold for oppression, gold desired, gold coveted, gold taken, gold lost.
Unique to dance theater in general and Ananya Dance Theatre in particular, our work is never about movement alone, it always has multiple layers of meaning, intention, emotionality, and physicality. Truly “like no other,” artistic rigor, dedication, focus, precision, and theatricality are essential requirements of this dance form. At every moment dancers must be acutely in tuned with their bodies. The precise placement of each finger and elbow, every glance, every raise of the eyebrow has meaning and purpose—carries a specific message.
Some have warned us that we have gone too far, that our work is too intense—nearly unbearable to witness—others say we haven’t gone far enough. One thing is certain: Tushaanal Fires of Dry Grass is not for the faint hearted. Our sequins draw blood. Light hearted whimsy isn’t spoken here.
September 6, 2011
By Camille LeFevre
For years, I had the pleasure of reviewing Ananya Dance Theatre as a dance critic. Today, I have the greater pleasure of being the Director of Public Relations for the company. Last spring, at Ananya’s insistence (she has a way of saying, “Camille, please, will you do this for me,” that’s so beguiling, I can’t say no), I participated in her Saturday morning warm-up/technique class that she leads for her dancers.
Using the Indian classical-dance form Odissi as her choreographic starting point, Ananya has innovated a movement style that articulates social critique while advancing artistic excellence. Her original choreographic model for practice and performance—generated on the women of color who were ADT’s founding members—transforms the company’s factual research and story sharing into metaphor and movement with the power to changes viewers’ lives—as you’ll witness during “Tushaanal: Fires of Dry Grass.”
Because it had been years since I’d taken a dance class of any kind, I warned her: Ok, but I’m only going to watch. So when I showed up in yoga pants and a t-shirt, ready to move (I had decided, well why not?), she was pleased. I positioned myself in the back of the room so I could watch the professionals, like Chitra, who embodies Ananya’s technique so thoroughly, and with such tremendous strength and grace, Ananya sometimes has her take over the class. And so, I flailed my way through. And experiencing Ananya’s singular, distinctive movement vocabulary was a revelation.
Understanding this technique or movement vocabulary is essential to a greater understanding of ADT’s work. So what did I learn? The movement was an intriguing combination of yoga, balletic fluidity, powerful transitions, intricate gestures and rigorous footwork! Now I know how, why, and from where these incredible dancers derive their strength and expressiveness, powerful feminity, intensity and truthfulness.
August 30, 2011
By Negest L Woldeamanuale
How many times?
How many times before?
How many times before a child can walk 12 miles to school without hearing bullets busting rusted roofs?
How many times before a father could farm without seeing limbs on the brown soil that would feed his children, mother and sisters?
How many times before a kid turns a soldier in the name of the precious metal…future lost in struggle
How many times before a mother loses her daughter?
How many times before her dignity is torn?
How many times before a girl is raped in the name of your engagement ring?
How many times before the blood stops drowning the minds of the youth?
How many times before we brain wash our kids with glitters bearing the scars of their peers?
How many times before we realize beyond land and borders across the sea and sky sits a mother waiting for her child to return, a child that is mining out our pride?
How many times before villages are destroyed, schools ruined, and raiders honored?
How many times before conflicts are initiated by bracelets, earrings and chains?
How many times before death marks empowerment, pain grants pleasure and happiness bear muted sobs?
How many times before the bling bling fuels the bang bang?
How many times before genocide cuts and shines graves for our distant relatives?
How many times before life is indirectly affected, without knowing is robbed?
How many times before dreams are shot in the name of venom gifts wrapped with delusional vow?
How many times before we expose ourselves to reality instead of exposing innocents to cruelty?
How many times before…we stop deceiving ourselves?
How many times before we end following standards without knowing the reason, valuing nonsense to impress the system?
How many times before we avoid financing horror, conflicts, and terrorized metals?
How many times before we start mending the wound?
How many times before we stop ignoring the facts?
How many times before we see,
How many times before we change,
How many times more before?
August 27, 2011
By Lela Pierce
embodied
memories
reaching behind the past to the
present emotion
of nothing.
washed and swept out
while
leaking puss of tears,
oozing mind juice out tiny orifice pores,
and
falling
falling, falling
in and out of
here
in and out of
reality
security
consciousness
knowledge
bliss
the ultimate embarrassment
is
ecstasy
is
the unknown
is
NOW
How do you know?
anything.
what is?
nothing.
i knowness:
a spiral
path within paths and circles within circles that can never be completed or followed at once.
How do you know when you’ve really let things go?
and
where exactly does IT go to?
and
what does it become?
These things creep into the crevices of our embodiment –
oscillate from past to present, mind to body to breath-
vapor to sky
…to nothing?
emotional traces
haunt
blown away
magnetic dust.
bloodless,
painless(?)
scars of filigree
habitual phantom quivers from an age-ed truth.
A foreign language of a distant self
trompsing through the forbidden forest of fears
mirrored traps
encapsulating movements
to an endless ripple of ecstasy
*…So i think this stuff came out after Laurie Carlos’s very intense emotional workshops last month as part of the recent work with ADT and the upcoming show Tushaanal….i let it sit for a while but thought maybe i should just risk sharing it in all its meritocracy now for some reason…just to recap what she did in the workshop: basically we sat in a circle and she started by acting (expressing) an emotion to us all very intensely… then she raised her left hand as a signal that she was finished. Then whoever felt drawn to go next interpreted/embodied that same emotion wherever they were at with it and then again raised their left hand as a signal of being done with it (no one was to interact with whoever’s turn it was)…it was very intense and it felt like everything kind of oscillated in and out of actually feeling the emotion vs. forcing it and pretending… im sure it was different for everyone but this is just some of the stuff that came up for me at the time…
August 25, 2011
By Laurie Carlos
Some of us have lives as women
Myths around dreams
Crystal clusters
An exchange for the life of a person
Crystal habits
Hardness /gravity /fracture
Color luster
Transparency of intent
Exchange
A woman
A child
Include streaks /jagged/ isometric
Life of both sisters
an exchange/ a specimen /
stunning
mouth full
opens
crushed
massive nuggets
settled turning up
Opaque
melted
Dance as these woman will
Rolled around in the various levels
of dust left behind by
the diggers
These are the women
who
shake loose all the dread
when
justification for preserving will bring a higher price
this is for the chance
stage
these stories
laced
with
gossip
trumped up with bribes
price it in its natural state
ignored
more
Bangles…….
GOLD
Something to believe
With a justice of quantity and a relevance of glow
Want …Want Want…
More piles to store and take
More
More
All the waste can only expand it
There is the beautiful reflection
The beautiful
Replacement of fear
Glitter
Glitter a whisper
DOWN THE NECK AND WE ARE ALL OF US
LACED l
Lightly
Flicker
Did you say they all were sold?
You will never find them again for such a good price
This is the third time they have turned a wife into better coinage
Could get more for a better one every time
Their value dropped
Flecks of color at the bottom of her shroud
Shiny foils roil in acid
Such beauty at first
Such shine out of the dark
To master the a house
To mine
The promise of
glitter
To wrench
the life in stone
for trade
for want
for acid
There is measure for labor
These are the profits for digging into the earth’s veins
We touch each thing hungry and wanting
Delight curls uneven until the measure is declared
Please sing some new song every time
We are smiling for the price promised
We are smiling in every direction
I8 carats
22
We hold back
Pay the price you promised
Trade
Barter away freedom for power
Vow for the price they promised
August 18, 2011
By Gina Kundan
Gold diggers, temporary wives, and ravenous babes coming to a gold mine near you!
Mothers desperate to feed their families, young girls trafficked, entrepreneurs seeking adventure and fortune. They come as merchants, as cooks. Some come by choice, some by force. They come for the promise of high earning potential. They operate as “temporary wives” and community developers. On rare occasions women work side by side with men in the mines, but usually—bound by strict gender roles—women access gold by providing services, selling comfort, creating community, developing social stability, and generally ensuring the well being of male miners.
Indeed the “oldest profession,” you’d be hard pressed to find any gold mine past or present that doesn’t have an accompanying sex “service” industry embedded in the social fabric of the surrounding community. Within that society (like any other) is a strict hierarchy of stigma. Selling sex is all about intention and purpose. Out of work, out of options, need to feed your hungry children? Saintly martyr. Like glamour and glitz and spending cash? Scandalous whore. Innocent 11 year old slave girl? Could go either way. Love is apparently never part of this equation
August 16, 2011
By Chitra Vairavan
You know how when you enter that space of vulnerability, something hits you, melts you, makes you weak…that’s how I felt coming out of rehearsals and in life recently. Parallels in my life outside the studio and discussions and knowledge shared in the rehearsal space spurred these words and my own way of seeking clarity.
Gold:
Bought, sold, traded, devalued, objectified, valued, stolen, appreciated, curing, “pure,” mythical, cultural, part of nature, and most of all it stretches infinitely under heat…under fire.
Fire:
Bendy, fluid, spiritual, feared, destructive, beautiful, healing, and most of all allows for new growth.
…In relationship to women’s sexuality:
Do they pass through each other in relationship? Do they reflect each other? Do they inform each other? Are there similar experiences between the two? Are there different experiences? Are they one in the same, in a system of interactions where everything feeds off of each other, breaking the subject/object duality often used in the Western lens?
Are we controlled by gold or is gold controlling us? Are we gold? What does gold mean to you?
I don’t have the answers, but the abstract concepts and connections being made are inspiring to find friction in and work through. Appreciate the time spent. I believe there is true intimacy between women and gold, where objectivity doesn’t play a prominent role because the connections between both go far beyond that, considering our similar histories.
August 9, 2011
By Gina Kundan
In our developmental process, dancers have unearthed an astonishing amount of information relating to gold. We use this material not only to educate ourselves about the subject matter, but to dig deep and examine the complex emotionality that motivates and inspires our work. Research, presentations, and discussions lead to choreographic workshops and ultimately create the emotional arc that serves as the foundation for Ananya Dance Theatre’s productions.
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August 4, 2011
By Annie Katsura Rollins
Working with ADT is a gift as a designer. The content, the ideas, the inspiration and the team; all of it is the kind of stuff that makes you want to put pen to paper and paper to stage. This year, working on Tushaanal, has been no different. After the close of Kshoy! in fall last year, we quickly got to work on this years production. The timing of this design was truncated and hurried, as I was off to China in the beginning of February for a year on a Fulbright fellowship to research Chinese shadow puppetry.
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August 2, 2011
By Renee Copeland
I watched the film “The Stoning of Soraya M.” as research for last year’s production, Kshoy! Now, in this new project, Tushaanal, Soraya’s story persists in my mind, and I realize this is not a “new” project. Nothing is new when it comes to stories of violence and greed, told repeatedly with ragged breath by history.
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July 28, 2011
By Lori Young-Williams
I watched a movie the other night Dreams of Dust. Ananya said it would help with me writing the blog. I don’t know if it will help but it has stuck with me. I am still thinking about the images from the movie.
Picture a screen shot of the dessert. Not much, some trees, sand, rough land, and in the foreground small piles of sand, rock, mounds of rock and dust. The wind blows and the everywhere you look the hue is gold. The wind blows again and out of the ground up from the mound comes a dark face, dust caked on the face and in the hair. Flashlights along both sides of the head held on by a headband, and a bag of rocks. More heads and faces, male. Climbing out of these holes in the ground. These are the gold mines.
I was struck by the imagery of the people living most their lives digging for gold in the fox hole tunnels, lighting matches to make sure there is enough oxygen to breath. With pic axe and burlap bag the men go down and look for gold. One can almost feel the claustrophobia. Once back to the surface, they take their bags to the compound to hammer, bound the rock to see if there is any gold. Break up the rock and hope.
The movie was about a man whose wife told him to leave after their daughter was killed. The women in the movie were the typical Madonna/Whore dichotomy. One woman had a daughter and was allowed to stay on at the compound, after her husband died in a mine. She stood and watched the men go down and the men come up. She stood and sifted dust, and for any flecks of gold. The other women in the compound, around the mine, were looking to spend time with men who had money (gold) to spend. One woman said the main character was crazy for not wanting to find gold. That was the whole purpose for being there in the first place, almost the only reason for living.
The women were in the background, they held up the community through taking care: feeding, serving, and giving of themselves. And yet their lives are just as shifty and changing as the men. They too are looking to strike it rich. They want the creature comforts money/gold can provide.
But to get gold and keep it at this frontline, is hard. To rise up means someone must die. The bitter truth is one can be replaced. There are more out there willing to search for the gold, sift, break up rock, dig deep in the mines and lay down with the men to find the gold.
The land is speckled with wiry trees
vast colored in gold, tan, ochre
dust
fills cracks and cakes feet, hair and hands
Digging is hard, but the beer
afterwards will go down easy with a
Blue Blue – amphetamine
Women stand for hours
sifting dust, blown in
around, but the comfort of a body
will help for tonight
Women push to save lives and
keep the rhythm to get the work dona
Women push to connect with life through
gold, to put food on the table.
Dust
cakes the hands and fills
the lungs
Seeking the fire, the specks of glitter
to become the next rich one.
Leave the mines a big man,
Hopefully…
Leave the mines with a future of Comfort.
Go and come back with gold
help the family.
July 26, 2011
By Gina Kundan
Members of Ananya Dance Theatre began researching Gold and presenting findings in January 2011.
The first topic: Gold & The Democratic Republic of Congo was presented by former dancer Sherie Apungu. The northeast region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) holds hundreds of mines with a seemingly unlimited supply of gold. Are the miners and their supporting communities benefiting from these riches? Hardly. As one Congolese miner described it: “We are cursed because of our gold. All we do is suffer. There is no benefit to us.” In fact, the discovery of the Congolese gold has created decades of violence and instability in the region, with various armed political factions battling for power and control.
The miners have no choice but to continue working regardless of who is in charge—resistance of any kind is met with torture, rape, and murder— according to Human Rights Watch, “more than sixty thousand people have died due to direct violence in this part of Congo alone.” Miners are forced to work in horrific conditions with a blatant disregard for safe mining practices.
Multinational corporations continue to forge partnerships and support political leaders to ensure continued profit from the region while also ensuring continued violence. Human Rights Watch mentions AngloGold Ashanti—one of the world’s largest gold producers—a company that publicly boasts a commitment to corporate social responsibility while patently ignoring the human rights violations that keep productions flowing.
Similar situations can be found virtually anywhere gold has been discovered. Dancer Brittany Radke presented her research on Gold in Chile, a country that was discovered as a result of the Spanish quest for gold. Gold mining in Chile began in the late 16th century, but recent satellite technology has led to the discovery of gold deposits beneath glaciers in the Andes Mountains. Mining of this gold has been linked to rapid glacial melt and is negatively impacting local farmers and poisoning the local water supply.
Worldwide the desire to attain gold by any means seemingly outweighs the profoundly negative impact gold mining practices have on individuals and the environment. In the next issue, I will share what we’ve learned about human desire and discuss the sex work industry in gold mining communities.
July 21, 2011
The dancers and apprentices of Ananya Dance Theatre, find ways to interpret the information they are experiencing, learning, and researching. ADT’s apprentice Negest, has found her vessel in the form of words, a poem inspired from research and movement experience. We hope you enjoy!
Poem by Negest Woldeamanuale
We rise and fall
Rise and fall
Our backs tied to a string of hope
Rising and falling
In the holes of the desert
We rise and fall
Rise and fall
Scavenging for a stone
Digging for life
In ruined lands, polluted rivers, and destroyed forests
Breathing dust and silicon
Burrowing deep into the veins of earth
Betraying our ancestors’ soil
Feeding labor to our children
We rise and fall
Rise and fall
For rock, for bread, for illusion, for more
We rise and fall
Rise and fall
Addicted to terror, violence and struggle
Deceived by glitter and sparkle
We rise and fall
Rise and fall
Blinded, deafened, and unaware
Lost in scramble of want
Essentials forgotten
Greed exceeding need
We rise and fall
Rise and fall
Rushing to escape poverty
Refusing to see, hear and speak harm
We rise and fall
Rise and fall
The promised price fleeing
To western borders
Values elevated
With conflict and strife
We rise and fall
Rise and fall
In the glowing hues of dusk
Bathed in colors of gold
In mud-splattered skin
In contaminated wells
We rise and fall
Rise and fall
Panning for traces of the precious metal
For glittering beauty
Existing in remote and fragile corners
We rise and fall
Rise and fall
Drained in sand
In allure and fascination
Exploited deposits
Bidding to save fractions
Waiving to accept invitation to destruction
Bending for the system
Fetching horror
Legalizing trouble
We rise and fall
Rise and fall
Possessed by gold
In explosives, toxic gasses and collapsed tunnels
We rise and fall
Rise and fall
Waiting for stroke of luck
For Fruitless reverie
We rise and fall
Rise and fall
To quench our desire
In dreams of dust
In golden reality
