Far Flung

I know what you’re thinking. A few hippies from New Hampshire are about to roll their heads back and skip around to monastic chants. I know because I’ve seen it, too. You’re preparing yourself for the alienation that is performance art. The words, “I don’t get it,” are already forming in your mouth. Wait! Don’t give up yet! Miguel Gutierrez, a contemporary choreographer advises, “When people don’t understand something, there’s often a jump right away to dislike, or to ‘this thing failed to sell itself to me.’ I think, ‘No, you maybe didn’t give yourself permission to not understand it.’”

That is the art of dance. I’m not talking about the antiquated technique of Swan Lake, nor am I talking about stumbling through Bubble Bar on a Saturday night. I’m talking about the choruses that supported the Greek dramas for the audiences in the nosebleeds of the coliseum. Dance is the pained flexing of Martha Graham’s spandex dress that brought a grieving mother to her knees. And, yeah, sometimes it’s the driving force for skipping through a meadow with flowers braided into your hair. Dance is how we are attempting to bridge two modern cultures with two of the world’s most dissimilar spoken languages in Gwangju this Spring.

“광범위한/Far Flung” will premiere on Saturday, May 25, at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. at the theater in the Geumnamro Park (금남로 공원). Three expats, Cindi L’Abbe, Allison Relihan and I have been reunited by the primal drive to communicate through art and to create through action. The program is an array of solos, duets and one trio created and performed by the choreographers. The three contributing choreographers share more than any old background in dance. Cindi, Allie and I all attended Keene State College, which bestows the mission upon graduates to “go forth and serve.” Go forth; we did, flinging ourselves about as far from New Hampshire as we could. Putting English teaching aside, now is our chance to truly serve the community in which we’ve been living for a collective five years. We’re ready to speak up and we’re trying to give everyone a chance to listen.

When I moved to Korea, it was my first time to exist outside of a dance community. I had never felt so isolated. I thought I could make my own niche by starting some dance classes, teaching others what I thought dance was. What happened was the community taught me instead. I learned that we all dance to communicate, but we don’t all realize how and why we do it. Just because you’re trying to get a guy to look at you in the club, doesn’t lessen the integrity of the art form. And just because I have a degree in dance doesn’t mean he’ll dance with me first. So Gwangju, may we have this dance?

For more information about our performance and upcoming workshops, visit www.gwangjutheatre.com/dance or search for the event page on Facebook.