Spotlight in PURPLE: The Podcast

[PLEASE NOTE: This transcript was generated automatically with machine learning and there were some minimal edits. There are likely to be inaccuracies. We will be fundraising for better transcription services in the future].
Hi, my name is Kirya Yvonne Traber. I'm a Black, queer, femme, a writer, performer, and cultural worker. And this is Spotlight in PURPLE: The Podcast, (Season 2)
This podcast is a part of a multimedia and multi-phase project, a Maximalist universe developed by the Dance Theater Collective, Sydnie L. Mosley Dances known to friends as SLMDances or SLMD for short.
You made it to episode 2! In episode 1, Building the Altar: The Creation of PURPLE by SLMDances, we learned about the history of how they became a collective. The values that guide the work and how those values show up inside their newest work: PURPLE: A Ritual in Nine Spells
…if you didn’t get a chance to hear it, I encourage you to go back and listen…
In this episode, A Place for PURPLE, we're going to continue the journey. We’ll hear about where the project was developed – the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, which is also the neighborhood formerly known as San Juan Hill. And we’ll get an inside look at the community engagement process with the Lincoln Square Neighborhood center.
Before we begin, I invite you to get cozy and settle in with me. Let’s take a deep breath….
Last time, we heard first hand from the creative partners and collaborating artists of SLMD about the collective’s commitment to a radical practice of caring for themselves and each other…
Kirya: in PURPLE. This Commitment to care work is extended beyond the company to a broader community, a community of intergenerational women of color, and their co-conspirators and the literal community in the geographic area surrounding Lincoln Center, the neighborhood, formally known as San Juan Hill.
These are excerpts from interview footage recorded in 1985 by New York City’s municipal broadcast television station, WNYC-TV.
Nearly 70 years since it was destroyed, Lincoln Center is finally doing the work to acknowledge their role in this historic gentrification. They have emblazoned large decals across the campus, repeating the name, and mounted a webpage with a growing collection of historic articles and research as the website states, San Juan Hill was a collection of largely working class Manhattan neighborhoods that existed in and around the area where Lincoln Center was built in the 1950s and sixties.
A huge swath of the area home to more than 7,000 families and 800 businesses by mid-century was raised in the 1950s as a part of the Lincoln Square Development plan. The plan replaced existing residential and commercial buildings with a series of super blocks and other developments, including Fordham University, Lincoln Towers, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
The Amsterdam Houses, a New York City Housing Project established in 1948 is one of the few remaining residential buildings of what was once San Juan Hill. Today, the Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center, a community based organization, offers daily programming to many of the elder residents of the Amsterdam Houses.
When SLMDances was invited to Lincoln Center in 2018, they were largely drawn by the opportunity to collaborate with the center, and to build relationships with the elders who still remember San Juan Hill
Sydnie: When we first began this project, we were invited by Lincoln Center to work with folks at the Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center,
Sydnie L. Mosley, Founder and Artistic Director of the collective explains further.
and when we began that work, We were excited to co-create something. We didn't know what that something was going to be, but we were moving with these ideas of purple in our mind.
Kirya: Moving with the idea of PURPLE meant building a multi-year partnership with members of the center, which included line dancing classes, field trips across the city, and eventually an oral history gathering event, which they called the Great Day. All of these activities, center joy and care for the elders of the center and the members of the collective.
I spoke to two of the elders that were integral to building and sustaining this community relationship. They are affectionately known as Ms. Jacqui and Ms. Marie by members of the collective.
Jacqueline Wright is a Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center community member Leader and Co-conspirator. She is the founder of SEEDS Service, educational Economic Development Sciences a 501C3 organization committed to expand libraries globally.
Jacqueline Wright: We had so much fun. it was very gratifying and it was a learning experience, and they keep talking about it. When are they gonna come back? When are we gonna do some more things?
Kirya: Marie Steven, community leader liaison co-conspirator, is a strong-headed woman and does what is best for her and her community. She came to the US from Haiti at the age of 19. She's been living in Amsterdam Houses for 50 years.
Ms Marie: Some of the young people, they are not patient. But these ladies over there, they are patient when they came to the center, they, even if you, the seniors don't want to do anything, but they engage with the seniors . When they came to the center, they, even if you, the seniors don't want to do anything, but they engage with the seniors
That's how come, you know, I, come here, be with them. Because when I, when they come, they engage, they talk to us, they encourage, the seniors to do thing. They are doing because they are doing a good job.
And then I hope they continue to do it wherever they go. This is, you know, my opinion because I like them. I like them all.
Kirya: Though the relationship with the Center remains strong to this day, there were challenges early on. In collaboration with community leaders like Ms. Jacqui and Ms. Marie, among others, SLMD was able to deepen trust, and help shift the culture of engagement programming at the center. Eventually the collective hosted ambitious off site-excursions like attending the revival of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girl’s Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow is Enuf at the Public Theater, and a trip to the Lavender Fields at Governer’s Island for the PURPLE Field Day. Pre-pandemic, their engagements on-site at the center had up to 50 regular attendees.
I asked Ms. Jacqui to speak from her role as a community leader about what this relationship with SLMDances has meant to the neighborhood center.
Jacqueline Wright: The thing that comes to my mind is the, the community, the sense of community and, the warmness of the community. The seniors that I work with, and most of the ones who were participants, they've been living in the Amsterdam housing for many, many years. You know, so they have a sense of community that I think, It's necessary now.
And, I think that, just that ability of the generations to come together and just, be pleasant, warm, giving and, receptive. That's what the project has been like, and continues to be.
Kirya: Quote, unquote, "community engagement" has been in vogue in the predominantly white nonprofit arts world as of late, but Brittany Grier (known as Britt), the community engagement liaison for SLMD, did not learn her approach to community work in the nonprofit sector.
Britt: So very transparently. It was not my practice as much as it was my, my mother's upbringing about going to church. So church is the first community that I know of, and it's, it's something that, I recognize now as an adult has prepared me for the work that I'm doing. Like, you come together for the purpose of, receiving the message that you need. You come together to be fed.
You know, I grew up Pentecostal. My grandmother was a, a pastor, and so I was, was in the office with my grandmother when she was talking to people, coming to her about, uh, problems that arose for them and her giving a scripture or for, or her laying hands on them or giving them oil.
And, and helping them through as bests as she knew how, through the struggles that they were dealing with. And so this is, these are things that as an adult I can say, oh, that's what that was.
For Candance Sumpter, another Creative Partner and Community Engagement liaison with SLMD, the collective’s approach to community building as a regular and integrated part of their work has shifted her perspective of what it means to be a professional dancer.
Candance: I didn't think about community work and a company coexisting. I never thought that that was a thing until I, I got here and we had quilting workshops with the elders. We took them to Governor's Island and performed for them. They had food. I didn't think that that was a thing, but.
That level of grounding to, to, to give respect to the community in which we're dancing, dancing in the land that we are dancing on. Like, I didn't think, I didn't understand how important it was. And I appreciate the lengths that the company goes to, like, making connections. Sending that olive branch, I feel like helps build a stronger community for our voices to keep moving forward. So yeah. It's very powerful and I, and I appreciate that I am a part of this company cuz again, I really didn't think that, that was a thing I thought a company was. You get the dancing, you do the work, you go home, we get paid. That was it. But it's so much bigger.
Kirya: Following the lead of Britt and others in the collective with deeply rooted community experiences, SLMDances was at the center weekly building these rich relationships until March, 2020.
Sydnie: And so then we all know what happened. There was a pandemic and we were no longer able to go to the center.
We weren't able to do all of the activities that we had been doing. And that also meant that our opportunity to create something together was also lost.
Kirya: Determined to follow through on their commitment to a creative collaboration with the elders of the Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center. The collective began to think expansively beyond their medium of dance. Drawing on the oral histories and photographs from the Great Day, which they organized in 2019, they commissioned music producer Ebonie Smith and Composer Counterfeit Madison to create a five track EP called "What Does PURPLE Sound like?"
Here's an excerpt.
The impetus behind this EP was to find a safer way to collaborate in the pandemic, but as Sydnie is a self-professed Maximalist, it became much more than that. They mounted a two week installation at Hi-Arts in East Harlem, which included Kim Hall's original quilts alongside Jules Slüsky's portrait of community members listening booth for the EP and intimate dance performances for just a few guests at a time.
From this successful experiment, they activated the multimedia talents among the SLMD collaborators and expanded the PURPLE Universe. A pathway became clear to continue to activate their relationship with the Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center through performance and those themes and characters are what anchors the work of PURPLE to this day.
Britt: There is also a lot of translating these stories, um, into movement that then looks like grief and looks like, conversations where we are very much, um, calling out this institution.
We are actually calling in elders who we have communicated with, who have passed. And so, uh, that's, uh, is Isabel Espinel , Diana Marantadis and Maria Perez.
And so that is very much a, uh, real moment of recognizing that while they are not here in flesh, they are still taking up the space because their stories are actually a part of the conversations that then show up in purple
Kirya: There is an aspect of PURPLE that could be called grief work. Ms. Marie spoke about the impact of seeing her friends who have passed on but are now represented in the photography and music of "What Does PURPLE Sound Like?"
Ms Marie: When I heard them, you know, the words and everything, it seemed that even though they are no longer with us, but it just make you remember them.
You think about them. It's like they are, they are not gone. They are here cause the picture are here. And then at the same time, you know, they are not here. It's, it's hard. I cannot explain it to you, but it's hard.
Kirya: The grief present in PURPLE is not just for lost lives, it's also for the community that was lost when Lincoln Center was built.
Britt: We're asking them to come to Lincoln Center. How are we accommodating the space that we are asking them to be in? Making sure that they Are able to feel welcomed into this space.
And paradoxically, this is the place that has displaced a lot of their family members. It's an interesting dynamic. To acknowledge that like it's messed up and we are asking them to tell their story.
It's, it's holding the, it's holding the harm and trying to repair it time and time again, and being mindful that there is also, there has been a, a wound left open with it, not with everybody. And nevertheless, it's there.
Kirya: The world premiere of PURPLE asked the audience to witness this grief. The world premiere of PURPLE asks the audience to witness this grief and also to be in dialogue with the community that still lives here. I asked Brit to speak to the values beneath this invitation to an audience.
Britt: So it's important for people to speak to the elders that are into this space, because they were one of the first people here. And so how do we acknowledge, the place that it is and who has been here?
What does it mean to, um, come into this space and really, be in rhythm with people. I don't mean that performatively actually, I do not mean that performatively. I mean like, what does it mean to actually be in rhythm with what is happening, because you are aware, and even when you do not know, how do you allow yourself to ask questions? And how do you allow yourself to observe? And how do you allow yourself to make a fool of yourself? And how do you allow yourself to just not know and be uncomfortable and say, is it okay? Oh, it's not okay. Okay. I'll be back next week because I'll try again.
Sydnie, like many Black women cultural workers before her (June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Ntozake Shange to name a few), believes that art can be a vessel for transformative justice and healing. She sees this skillfully modeled in Alice Walker’s 1982 novel, The Color Purple, which I named in episode one as an inspirational reference for SLMD’s PURPLE
Sydnie: Now I think politically amongst Black folks, where we are having more frank and more frequent conversations about restorative justice, about, restorative circles, healing justice circles, all of those types of things where we are talking about defunding the police and we are talking about how do we move from, punishment to transformative justice models, right
That some of that blueprint. Is in The Color PURPLE, and it happened through art making. It happened through quilting together. It happened through making pants together. It happened through teaching and learning from one another in a way where Celie, in particular with Celie and Mister, where she was able to share a space of expertise, a space of power, a space of creativity for herself with someone who had harmed her extensively. And the fact that she was willing to do that and he was willing to receive that and to understand what that meant for their relationship. MAJOR. Is so major.
As with all every aspect of PURPLE, there’s an inextricable weaving between this healing work for the community and for the individual. Candance shares what that means for her personally.
For me, I wasn't as close with my grandmother before she passed away. So in some way working with the elders is like trying to pay that forward or pay that back, to make up for that, uh, relationship. So anything they need, I try to, give them.
If you can make it to see PURPLE: A Ritual In Nine Spells this month at Lincoln Center, you too will have the privilege and honor of dialoguing with the residents of what was once called San Juan Hill. And even for those who cannot see the work in person, you are invited to think more deeply about the elders in your life, and communities in which you live, work, and travel through. And I hope you will.
You can learn more about SLMDance’s community engagement practices on their website, which includes a 20 page engagement syllabus which is free to download. I’ll provide a link to both in the show notes.
Thank you for joining me. In the next episode you’ll sit in on conversation about the Black Womanist literary cannon that inspired PURPLE with Black femme artists Ebony Noelle Golden, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and Sydnie L. Mosely.
For now, invite you to take one last breath with me…
Take care, and talk soon…
Spotlight in PURPLE is a project of Sydnie L. Mosley Dances. This episode was hosted, written, and produced by me, Kirya Traber. Assistant Producing by Ziiomi Law. Production support by Max Van and Lance John. Music featured in this episode was produced and composed by Line Neesgaurd, Spring Gang, Ebonie Smith and Counterfeit Madison. Special thanks to Shaheim L Page for listening to early drafts. And unending gratitude to Emma Alabaster without whom this project never would have been possible.