What Does a Modern Dancer Look Like? Reflections
After meeting Katrina Toews, Director of thewashingtonballet@THEARC, Gesel Mason, founder of Mason/Rhynes Productions and Gesel Mason Performance Projects, and Meisha Bosma, Artistic Director of BosmaDance, what does a modern dancer look like? Is she black? or white? or blonde or brown-eyed? Is she from the South? the North? the Midwest? Does any of that matter? Appearance and upbringing do play a part in how each dancer is shaped; but they do not quite account for the echoes heard in the languages--both physical and verbal--they speak. As cliché as it sounds, for these dancers, the inside counts. Their dancing and their performance quality reflect experiences, thoughts, passions otherwise hidden or overlooked in the quotidian necessities of work and home life. In the studio and onstage expressions of truth unfold not only for the audience. Like Gesel Mason says, "Dance is life and death." Dancers, artists, teachers, choreographers, community leaders, Katrina, Gesel and Meisha have found their unique voice and vocabulary, and in that, each has found her own truth.
"I want to continue growing as a leader in the community....in a thoughtful, an honest and real way so that my leadership can help other women feel like they can do it," says Katrina Toews.
"I feel like all of it is about peeling away the layers to just try to get to--closer to--what I honestly believe...[Dance] is what I do...that is how I contribute to my community," says Gesel Mason.
"I'm not interested in wowing the audience and making an audience happy. I want it to come from a place that's really deeper than the core," says Meisha Bosma.
Gesel Mason's, "How to Watch a Modern Dance Concert (Or What the Hell are They Doing Up There?) underscores the fact that modern dance does not need or even have one definition. Owning the movement by creating a place for yourself within is what counts. This ownership is precisely what Meisha Bosma's respects in her dancers. I have become a better performer since dancing with her. Her movement and the freedom she gives to explore it in your own body have allowed me to reach an internal understanding and maturity. I was able to use that understanding when teaching in the DanceDC program with Katrina Toews. Working with her has given me a great respect for what the arts can do for so many children who might never get the chance to dance, and who might never get to find his or her own voice, however small it may be at first.
Katrina, Gesel and Meisha are home in their bodies, their work and themselves. Whether her path has led her to a place that integrates service and education with art, or explores personal themes through choreography, or pushes the boundaries of dance in a community unfamiliar with it, each woman brings their home to Washington, DC. Washington, DC becoming her home is the happy by-product in which we get to share.
"I never knew how much the community needed until I actually worked there," says Katrina Toews referring to the Southeast, DC community twb@THEARC serves.
"I want to put DC on the map as a place to be. If I'm here, I want DC to be a place to be too. I don't want dancers to always run away," says Gesel Mason. Mason/Rhynes Productions serves as a platform to present, award and aid dancers, choreographers and dance leaders in the DC community.
"I want to create my own mini-Israel," says Meisha Bosma, who strives to continue to bring the sense of honesty she found in herself to the work she creates and presents in the milieu of the Metropolitan area.
I became a travel writer over the course of this journey through "What Does a Modern Dancer Look Like?". This project began as an attempt to answer questions foremost in my mind. What is modern dance and how am I a part of it? The answers to these questions will continue to reveal themselves gradually. Sometimes it was sunny; sometimes it was dark and cloudy; sometimes there were only glimpses of the sun through the clouds. It was here in the undulating weather, in the successes, the struggles, the passionate attempts to continue to grow and change I vicariously experienced throughout each interview that I caught a glimpse of my own potential. It is something that every dancer needs to find. Like the search for the Holy Grail, or the Fountain of Youth, or even the Gingerbread House, the thing itself is not so important as what you learn about yourself along the way.
For more information on programs, performances and upcoming events in the lives of these women, please visit www.washingtonballet.org, www.mason-rhynes.org, and www.bosmadance.org.