Almost two months ago, an incredible performance took place in a backyard on the west side of Salt Lake City. Dominica Greene (who you may know from Ririe-Woodbury) and Courtney Mazeika (who you may know from SALT) created A Shedding as “a donation-based, socially-distanced, outdoor evening of live performance created by and for Black, LGBTQIA+, Artists of Color, and allies in the Salt Lake community.” It took place behind Courtney’s house in Salt Lake’s Glendale neighborhood. A list of local antiracist resources which accompanied the program can be found here.
The gathering “offer[ed] up the space for those involved to mourn, address, discuss, and celebrate our experiences both individually and collectively, including offerings by local movement artists, a guided post-performance conversation, and a collection of resources for actionable steps towards supporting antiracist principles and BIPOC rights.”
I think this performance and the conversations it started about race, queerness and art making in our current moment are important. (Full disclosure: I had a bit part in one of the pieces, Alex Barbier’s Sometimes Dance is Bullshit.) As loveDANCEmore editor, I didn’t want A Shedding to go unremarked. So I invited a few people over to my backyard, which luckily has ample space for social distance, to continue the conversation. What follows is a transcribed discussion between two brilliant artists who saw the evening: Gabby Huggins (a teaching artist with SpyHop) and Daniel Do (also an RDT dancer). The conversation has been edited for clarity and length. The photos below are courtesy of Tori Duhaime, who, along with Jo Blake, moderated the post-performance talkbacks at Courtney’s home.
– SBH, editor
A press image from the A Shedding online program by Dominique Greco
loveDANCEmore: Can you start by telling us what brought you to see A Shedding?
Daniel Do: I came to A Shedding through Dominica [Greene]. She had been talking about wanting to bring dance to a non-traditional proscenium stage. We were actually in Courtney’s backyard and we thought, “this place is beautiful, we should create a show here.” It had to have been before coronavirus. We weren’t wearing masks. [Daniel was a volunteer for one of the performances, mopping the stage down between acts.]
Gabby Huggins: I came to A Shedding because a friend of mine, who is a dancer as well, sent me the RSVP. It was really wonderful to see the content of that work in that space, and in that neighborhood. It was a very meaningful place for me to be, personally, and the work just made that experience deeper.
A Shedding happened in Glendale and I grew up in Rose Park. It’s weird to be in a place in my life where I want to be able to afford housing in that neighborhood. Given all the conversation about gentrification, it’s interesting to be at a white person’s house in Glendale. At the same time, a lot of the gentrifiers that I know are people who are young artists, who I think have some sort of awareness of their impact on that space. In that sense, it was cool to see white space relinquished to POC and queer performance.
Growing up here, I was really lucky to have a dance community at West High School, where Hilary Carrier taught. It was very clear when we would go to the annual UDEO conference: no company is like ours. We had a diverse company and even the kids who were white in our company were weird, white, queer kids. “Alt” children in this sea of white, Mormon, drill team and contemporary dancer companies. In general, I don’t think that the arts community here in Salt Lake feels like a space for POC or queer people. That exclusionary nature made this event, which centered POC and queer bodies, feel really empowering and reflective.
Daniel: I actually grew up in Glendale, so, the venue was really close to my childhood home, though I don’t really go to that area anymore. My family moved out to West Valley when I was in sixth grade. I also feel very lucky that I went to a really diverse high school and was on the dance company there and, yeah, you’d go to these conferences and see the stark differences between companies. And I feel that most of the people who were on my dance company either started dancing in high school or in junior high through the public education system and there were very few of us that actually went to a studio growing up. I feel very grateful to have found dance by taking it as an elective. It felt like home, being in that space. There’s a lack of events like this happening in the Salt Lake community, and I had been blind to that.
Gabby: There’s something unique about seeing other people of color dancing, even if I’m not going to become friends with them. It’s important to find that they’re real, especially here. It’s sad to think that there is a community of POC, queers, dancers, artists here and that we’re just not organized. We’re not around each other.
That’s why I appreciated A Shedding. It was an intentional organizing of POC queer artists together. Existimos does this too — they take the different silos that we exist within and bring us together so that we can have a coalition of POC queer artists.
I think a lot of people watch dance and ask themselves, “What the fuck is this? I don’t understand,” because dance is often built to be exclusive. A Shedding was accessible to a broader swath of the community. It was a powerful evening, I started crying.
loveDANCEmore: Which piece made you cry?
Gabby: Dominica [Greene’s piece Fitting/Standing] really fucked me up — the repetitive motions. It was about cooning and shucking and jiving. I felt it so deeply. It was so indicative of what the entire show is about and why we’re all here watching this work. But also, as a Black person in this place, all the time, I feel like that’s a performance. A really shitty fucked up performance that’s exhausting.
Dominica Greene’s work Fitting/Standing, made satirical use of steps from Grease, and featured music from the film as well as "Tezeta (Nostalgia)" by Ethiopian jazz great Mulatu Astatke.
Daniel: Trying to please the white man, essentially. Or thinking, “tell me that I’m worth it, or I’m just like you.” Why am I trying so hard to be like you? I think it’s reflective of growing up in a community that’s so predominately white. You feel like you are the odd man out and instead of owning that, for me personally, I felt myself wanting to blend in and do whatever it took to fit in. I sensed that in Dom’s solo. She was doing these moves, trying to execute them perfectly to get some kind of validation.
Gabby: Right, while the work and the moves themselves are reinforcing ideas about you as a POC inherently, anyway. You’re doing these moves, you’re shucking and jiving, it’s reinforcing that you’re different. It was very simple, but there was so much pain in it.
Daniel: Laja’s piece really resonated with me as well because I see myself in her shoes, having that conversation and seeing how far that conversation can escalate was really interesting. Whenever I’ve been asked “where are you from, or, where are you from from?” I just politely answer and move on. But no — what if I actually challenge you and ask you why you’re phrasing the question that way? Obviously, I know what you’re trying to get at. I feel like now, I’m gonna make them work. If they want to know more, they have to tell me why they want to know more.
Laja Fields’ solo We’ve All Seen It unfolded both sides of an uncomfortable conversation between a self-righteous (white) homeowner and a (racially-ambiguous) newcomer to the neighborhood. Fields deftly portrayed both roles.
Gabby: I’ve known Laja for a long time. It was funny to realize that she is racially ambiguous to some people — to me Laja is white. It was interesting to watch someone that I know is white processing that “otherness.” I’ve never thought of her having to deal with that question, “Where do I belong?”
Daniel: I’m one-hundred-percent Vietnamese and I fully lean into that identity. Entering the Salt Lake City queer scene has been an interesting journey. I meet a lot of biracial gay men who are totally leaning into their whiteness, to the point where I feel like they’re trying to erase their “otherness.” It’s been an interesting world to navigate. I think Masio Sangster’s piece, F@@GT!, touched on that a bit too. He pushed himself in his solo to talk about what being a queer man is like and what that journey has been like for him, and being fetishized.
I just loved all of the queerness he was exploring — there was some drag in there. It felt very personal. I felt very honored to be able to witness him exploring his faggotry.
Masio Sangster explores identity in F@@GT!
Gabby: I loved this piece. I thought it was a great way to come back from intermission. It made me think of a friend of mine. A very specific experience of gay maleness. Mase talked the whole time, so, it was almost a monologue. He very directly addressed race and queerness. It relates to what you talked about earlier, Daniel, your experience of being a gay man here, and watching other brown or biracial men not be brown because they’re gay. He really addressed that. “Am I too brown, do they not like me?” It was very straightforward but super celebratory. It was a really lovely cap to the second half, in contrast to Mar [Undag}’s much quieter opening.
Daniel: I’ve known and loved Mar for a long time, and I was left feeling so proud. He’s a beautiful singer and he rarely shares his voice with anyone. The fact that he sang a song in Tagalog was just, like, wow! He really inspires me because he’s so proud to be Filipino.
Mar Undag in midnight musings (work in progress).
Gabby: It felt celebratory, but not in a showy way. A celebratory exploration of self, like I had a window into a part of this person – his ethnicity, his heritage – that seems really important to him. It was a nice opener, very grounding. It was also very sweet, very tender.
What about Sometimes Dance is Bullshit [choreographed by Alex Barbier]? I love the “sometimes.” I love this piece. I just have so many questions, why the suit? Louisiana [where Alex grew up]? The camouflage?
Daniel: I loved the fun that was made of classic dance moves. It still hits me, when [they] prepped for the pirouette and just did the clapping and the fouettés — that shit — it’s so clear in my head. I almost fell out of my chair, you can just relate to that so hard.
Gabby: I guess I want to also put this piece in the context of the evening. I think it’s so interesting that Alex chose to critique dance as an art form, as a queer POC person, the thing [she was] lampooning was the art form [she’s] using. Dance is also everything. Amazing. Important. Beautiful. Fun. And so there are so many moments where — the grooving, again so funny to me —it’s cutting, but hilarious…
Daniel: I’m glad it was explored.
Gabby: The lampooning isn’t about the art form, it’s about the people and structures around it! I appreciate the critique.
Alexandra Barbier’s duet entitled Sometimes Dance is Bullshit.
Daniel: I’ve been talking to my therapist about this. Because we’re starting to categorize what is essential. And I am wondering? Is dance essential? I’ve been grappling with that idea. My job was not seen as essential. I was on unemployment for sometime before I was able to go back with RDT. It just makes me question if it is this thing to be fun and explored, but also, there is a lot of importance and value people gain from dance. With every thing there are two sides, or more…
Gabby: Sometimes there are seventeen sides.
Daniel: It was refreshing to see the other side. Sometimes I think wow, I can’t believe there are so many people right now who don’t have a job and I do. It’s me going in to dance and to rehearse something I don’t even know if will get to perform.
I was impressed with the vulnerability that the younger artists in A Shedding decided to embark on. It made me reflect on myself and what I was creating at that age. It felt like there were a lot of things that Harlie [Heiserman] was trying to explore [in their work excerpts from Tuesday], and it reminded me of myself at that age — of wanting to say so much in my work. I felt the same about Mase’s piece. I saw youthfulness.
Harlie Heiserman in their solo excerpts from Tuesday.
Gabby: I found myself laughing out loud with them. They were laughing on stage, and my friends and I all started laughing too. Harlie’s piece exemplifies the idea of A Shedding being a showing and not a performance, because you’re right, they were exploring so many different aspects of their personality. The costume changes were really interesting. The movement felt like a morning routine. I was thinking about tropes and motifs: rinse and repeat. This routine of exploration, back and forth across the stage. It was expressive and intimate…
Then there was Courtney Mazeika’s piece, Not One Thing.
Daniel: Her body is insane — what it can do. The physicality of her solo was what really resonated with me. I was like, “Ow. Why are you putting yourself through that?” In a way, it’s similar to what Dom was exploring and putting herself through. I was just on the edge of my seat that whole solo. Wow, what are you going to do next?
Gabby: I would be so interested to know what people were thinking and feeling — how they would describe their own work. I think there’s so much discomfort in Courtney’s piece and then she kept going — why are you doing this? — oh, that looks so uncomfortable! There were points where it’s clear she doesn’t want to.
To me, it resonated as the constant process of making consolations. You’re not doing it for yourself, you’re doing it for someone else. I think you’re really spot on, Daniel, in connecting it to Dominica’s piece.
Daniel: That’s interesting, because they’re the curators, too. You point out the moments when you saw her discomfort. Maybe that’s a commentary on the discomfort of the subjects that are being talked about right now. In a way, connecting to an earlier conversation we had — doing the work.
Gabby: The context of the show was about centering QTPOC people, however those things intersect. When I think about Courtney’s piece specifically, the recognition of the conciliations — I think it’s interesting that your bring up doing the work.
Not One Thing (work always in process), a solo by Courtney Mazeika, who co-organized and hosted A Shedding.
Dominica’s piece made me cry, and it seems like Courtney’s piece was sort of about the same sort of idea, but I didn’t cry, because she’s white? And, so, then I was thinking, but there’s queerness here, and womanhood here, so there are points of access for me, and then still somehow it feels very localized to her experience. I’m glad that there’s recognition there, that it can somehow cross-pollinate, but I do think you making the connection between those two pieces is interesting. It goes to show we see other people and see ourselves in other people. It’s interesting that you’re an openly queer person — queer in a way that I’m not — and yet we’re both attaching it to her whiteness, maybe because we’re both POC?
Maybe something I was thinking was, “this is about queerness.” But even talking to you about it, that something that’s still not quite a lynchpin for you.
Daniel: I was definitely thinking that and I’m glad you said it out loud.
Gabby: I also want to say, one thing I really appreciated about this showing was that it started with a queer POC person. And I appreciate the way it was laid out. There’s a weird “Olympics” situation happening — and the context of George Floyd and COVID made it more relevant — but there’s something about it being queer folks, then queer POC folks and then queer Black women, and then — and I don’t think Ursula [Perry] identifies as a queer person, I don’t know — but, the structure was interesting to me, the way people were centered and the things you were left with closer to the end. Even Ursula being last as a dark-skinned Black woman was super important and powerful to me.
Ursula’s [work-in-progress, to matter] was, from my perspective, the most classical, it felt like something you could watch in an auditorium. I think the themes I took away were also straightforward — striving, falling, gaining — a lot of struggle present in her work.
I really do think watching a dark-skinned Black woman dancing in that way was a powerful way to end A Shedding. It goes back to what I said about the intention of the show.
The show felt like it was supposed to be about queer and POC people but it actually felt like a show about Black people to me. I just feel like the blackness in those pieces — something about the context of what’s happening is related to blackness.
In some ways, maybe the queerness gets lost, across the board. Not that Ursula’s experience has to reflect that. Her being the last piece was important to me, and it sort of erases this queerness that was happening. Does that make sense at all, what I am trying to say?
It’s not a critique, even. It’s just an observation. But I think it’s interesting, the choice to frame a showing in queer and POC contexts. But there weren’t a lot of moments where blackness and queerness coalesced together. And that’s not a problem. Alex [Barbier] is queer. Dominica {Greene} is a queer person.
The ending with Ursula did feel very powerful and important, but I also think that it leans the entire show — and maybe I’m wrong to view it cohesively — but it leaves me with a specific attention to a specific identity.
Daniel: I am curious if it’s because of what’s happening in the world. I wonder if A Shedding had happened after the Pulse shooting in Florida, how that would have framed the conversation and our viewing of A Shedding.
Having worked with Ursula, knowing her intimately, a lot of her recent work falls under an umbrella of healing — from trauma in the past. I think I’m seeing that as a recurring theme. Hearing her talk about moments in the solo reflected the challenges she overcomes at work. I’ve seen her face some of that, so It was fascinating for me to watch.
A Shedding should happen again. Period.
Ursula Perry in her solo to matter which closed the evening.
Trung “Daniel” Do was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah and received his BFA in Modern Dance from the University of Utah. He relocated to Portland, Oregon where he collaborated and performed with various project based companies before being offered a contract with Repertory Dance Theatre. He is now on his third season with the company and also serves as Assistant Director to project-based company, Cat + Fish Dances.
Gabriella Huggins, multi-media arts producer and former modern dancer, works as Community Programs Mentor at Spy Hop Productions. A Salt Lake City native, Gabriella is pursuing an undergraduate BSW degree and hopes to apply her education to working on issues of food justice, environmental racism, and trauma-informed therapy. Gabriella enjoys long naps, cold beers, and working with young people in her community.