Welcome! This is a buffet of resources, working toward anti-racism & empowerment practices in the choreographic process.
Callie’s collaborative, multimodal research on “the art of critical whiteness: moving toward anti-racism practice in participatory dance productions” was funded from February to June 2023 by the German Minister of State for Culture and Media within the program NEUSTART KULTUR, Assistance Program DIS-TANZ-SOLO of the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland. Below you’ll find a trailer of the “Distant Pulse Here” dance film, audio recordings of conversations with Cherie Hill and Amelia Uzategui Bonilla, as well as movement practices shared from the “Distant Pulse Here” rehearsal process. If you scroll further down, you’ll find Callie’s presentation at the tUrn Conference in Santa Clara University (April 2023) and the original invitation to the “Distant Pulse Here” production (September 2022). Please feel free to reach out to me if you would like to exchange about this research.
Online showing of the dance-film “Distant Pulse Here”: new date coming soon!
„Distant Pulse Here“ was a site-specific and audience-interactive dance performance in Westpark in 2022. The team explored anti-racism practices throughout the artistic process. These practices organically informed the choreography, in its exploration of how nature mediates our sense of and longing for belonging.
This is an interactive film showing. During the film, you’ll be invited to move (screens on or off), as the audience was invited to move in the live performance. Following the film, Callie will host an exchange, in which you are welcome to share reflections of how you experienced the dance film.
This event takes place in German and English. It costs 10 Euro.
To register, please contact Callie: calitaha@gmail.com
Please enjoy the “Distant Pulse Here” trailer below!
Audio Recordings of Distanz-Solo Research Exchanges
Below is an audio intro to Callie’s Dis-Tanzen funded research and two conversations that Amelia Uzategui, Cherie Hill and Callie Arnold had in June 2023, as a reflection on some aspects our research process. We share thoughts and questions about “Distant Pulse Here” and related experiences in the fields of dance and anti-racism. We offer you a little look into what emerged for us, three years into our research collaborations. You’ll hear Callie’s voice introducing different themes in the conversation, as well as adding some additional context.
Audio Introduction to this Dis-Tanzen funded Research (Click here for link)
Movement Practices from “Distant Pulse Here”
Intentional Space Ritual: Detangling from White Supremacy Culture
As a warm-up practice, Callie would read aloud from Tema Okun’s writings on traits and antidotes of white supremacy culture. The dancers were invited to sense and move in their bodies as she read. They were also invited to ask Callie to pause or to repeat a section of the text. Afterwards, Callie and the dancers gathered to share and write down what group intentions were important to us in our working space (this part of the practice is often referred to as describing a “brave space”). We also reviewed the intentions that we had written the last time, and moved these in our bodies, as well. This practice emerged out of two practices which Callie had originally proposed: She re-designed them in response to what worked for the dancers and what didn’t. The intention of this practice is to support personal practice of tracking one’s identity with and detangling from white supremacy culture, and to layer this into group intentions regarding shared working culture. Please find Tema Okun’s writings here: https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/characteristics.html
“Brave air Score”
This is a score that Callie created in 2022, as a creative act of solidarity. She used it in rehearsal process as an example for dancers to create their own “brave/intentional nature score.” Feel free to create your own “Brave/Intentional [insert Nature element]” score. How do elements of nature sustain your intentionality regarding anti-racism practice?
The air connects us.
It flows outward and inward.
How does the air resonate in your body, in your voice?
James Baldwin said
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed
until it is faced.
The air is not just flowing.
The air is engaging with the world.
How do you feel resistance in your breath?
How do you feel resonance?
How do you listen?
How do you engage in exchange?
Every person needs air.
Without air, no life.
Reflection on “Distant Pulse Here” at tUrn Conference, April 2023
I shared the following reflection as part of the panel “Intersectional Climate Expression through Dance & Visual Arts” at the tUrn Conference, Santa Clara University on April 25, 2023. The panel was organized by Cherie Hill and included: Cherie Hill, Choreographer/Educator; Callie Arnold, Dancer Therapist/Choreographer; Liz Harvey, Artist; and Andreina Maldonado, Artist Disruptor/Entrepreneur.
Panel Description: Our climate crisis is intersectional; its effects are accelerated and compounded for certain individuals and communities already experiencing social injustices, and its causes are deeply connected to inequities and discrimination. Thus a liberatory consciousness or stance is needed to solve the climate crisis, and positive outcomes we cannot envision will not likely come to pass. Expressing where we are and how we might want to shape our collective futures is a key component of realizing solutions, and the arts open this space. In this panel, artists working with dance, textiles, somatics, wellness, therapeutic contexts, ensembles, the environment, and social justice share how their creations address topics such as anti-racism, eco-feminism, and the climate crisis.
Sharing regarding “Distant Pulse Here”:
My work seeks to question our relationship with nature, through our relationship to each other, and vice versa. What kind of understanding do we have of power, in how we allow ourselves and each other to relate to nature and how we discuss our shared responsibility to nature?
How do we acknowledge the lineage and complexity of each of our relationships with nature? How do we acknowledge racialized experience as part of this? How do we give ourselves resources to deepen awareness of our identification with, or detangling from, white supremacy culture?
The guiding artistic question of "Distant Pulse Here" was, how does nature mediate our sense of belonging? We also explored how to accompany our artistic process with anti-racism practice, as part of our working culture. This anti-racism practice organically informed the choreographic process.
I want to point out, that as there was one POC dancer and one white dancer, people often think that I chose to have one POC and one white dancer, because of the anti-racism work. That’s actually not the case. I asked close colleagues to collaborate with me on this project. In this project I was asking questions about nature and belonging, where colonization clearly plays a significant role. And then I thought, ok, more than half the team are POC and I’m a white-positioned person leading it. What kind of working culture would support my team as they participate in this artistic process and question these themes from their own perspectives? And that’s how I came to invite the team into having an anti-racism process accompany our artistic process.
I chose a large park field as the site for our rehearsals and performances. It’s a place I’m very familiar with and where contestation is happening (and has been since before the park’s creation) around racialized oppression and empowerment. I wanted to honor this site of dissonance and possibility, in a project where we are interrogating and dreaming about our own relationships with public parks.
What several people in the team have shared as being rich for them was the relationship with this field ecosystem over time, over different seasons, different exchanges and witnessing of various animals, people, and families in the park.
The weather has become much more erratic and extreme in the last two years in Munich, which also made it more challenging to develop a site-specific piece.
We considered how we showed up in the space and what we invited in: there was a nature walk as part of the performance, which we played in three languages: Turkish, German and English. Given the racialized politics in Munich, it was very significant for us to fill the space with Turkish being spoken.
One of the big themes that arose in this project that I continue to explore is listening:
There was listening to one’s own creative aliveness and authority, within one’s role & function in the production.
There was listening across racialized experiences. We each have a unique understanding of when something is unspoken or what is missing in a space. How something is said, asked or invited into the space, or what is only meant to be shared in certain spaces.
Listening across dynamics of power: When is there a hook to give up our own authority or an invitation to take over someone else’s authority.
And there is listening to our environment, and the exchanges taking place around us in our creative ecosystem. What is our relationship to these dialogues?
This performance was an hour long, inviting the audience to shift between roles of witness for the performers and active sensory movers in the space, across distance and closeness. This trailer above highlights the relationship between the two dancers and their various relationships with the ecosystem around them. There were also community dancers, who gave their input regarding the how the audience was invited to interact. These community dancers (who are not shown in the film) modeled the audience roles during the performances.
Einladung zu “Distant Pulse Here” Aufführungen, September 2022
Invitation to “Distant Pulse Here” Performances, September 2022
Ich lade Sie herzlich ein zu… I warmly invite you to…
“Distant Pulse Here,”
einer kostenlosen Tanzperformance im Westpark, München am 29. September, 30. September und 1. Oktober 2022 um 18:30 Uhr…a free dance performance in Westpark, München on Sept. 29, Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, 2022, at 18:30
Wenn Sie planen, teilzunehmen, würde es mir helfen, wenn Sie mir eine kurze Rückmeldung schreiben. Vielen Dank! It helps with our planning, if you RSVP by sending a short email to calitaha@gmail.com. Thank you!
Bei starkem Regen findet die Vorstellung in der Halle 6, Studio 1, Dachauerstraße 112d, 80636 München statt. Am Tag der jeweiligen Aufführung finden Sie hier bis 16:30 Uhr Informationen darüber, ob die Aufführung draußen oder drinnen stattfinden wird. If there is heavy rain, the performance will happen indoors at Halle 6, Studio 1, Dachauerstraße 112d, 80636 München. You will find information here by 16:30 on the day of each performance, to confirm whether the performance will take place outside or indoors.
Wie vermittelt die Natur unser Gefühl der Zugehörigkeit? Wie können wir eine antirassistische Praxis in unserem künstlerischen Prozess verkörpern, um uns selbst dabei zu unterstützen, in unserem künstlerischen Schaffen allumfassender zu werden? Während des Entstehungsprozesses dieser Performance hat unser künstlerisches Team versucht, die Kultur der "whitesupremacy" zu hinterfragen (Praktiken, die die weiße Kultur in den Mittelpunkt stellen und Schwarze, Indigene und People of Color schädigen). Wir haben uns Zeit und Raum genommen, um das weiße Privileg zu erkennen und um uns neue Wege vorzustellen und zu leben, wie wir miteinander und mit unserer Welt in Beziehung treten können. How does nature mediate our sense of belonging? How can we embody anti-racism practice in our art process, in order to support ourselves to show up more fully in our art-making? Through the process of creating this performance, our artistic team tried to interrogate white supremacy culture (practices that center white culture and harm Black, Indigenous and People of Color). We took time and space to notice and acknowledge white privilege, and to imagine and live new ways of being in relationship with each other and our world.
Jetzt bieten wir Ihnen eine Performance, die Sie einlädt, mit wechselnden Perspektiven zu spielen, während Sie zuhören, zusehen und sich durch ein Feld im Westpark bewegen: ein Raum voller Leben, menschlich und jenseits des Menschlichen. Ein Raum, der viele Möglichkeiten der Zugehörigkeit bietet, die vielleicht noch nicht realisiert wurden. Diese Aufführung ist ein Ort, an dem Sie sich mit Ihrem Körper einfühlen und Raum für neue Wahrnehmungen, Fragen und Möglichkeiten rund um das Thema Zugehörigkeit schaffen können. Jeder ist willkommen. Now, we offer you a performance that invites you to play with shifting perspectives, as you listen, watch and move through a field in Westpark: a space full of life, human and beyond human. A space that holds many possibilities for belonging, that may not have yet been realized. This performance is a place to sense-in with your body, opening space for new perceptions, questions and possibilities around belonging. Everyone is welcome.
Vielen Dank an unsere Förderer. Diese Produktion basiert auf Forschungsarbeiten, die vom Münchner Kulturreferat gefördert war. Diese Produktion wird unterstützt durch Tanztendenz München e.V. und durch das NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETZ - STEPPING OUT, gefördert von der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien im Rahmen der Initiative NEUSTART KULTUR. Hilfsprogramm Tanz. Thank you to our funders. This production is based on research funded by Munich's Cultural Government. This production is supported by Tanztendenz München e.V. and is supported by the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK - STEPPING OUT, funded by the Minister of State for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR. Assistance Program for Dance.
Callie Arnold (she/her), Producer, Artistic Director, Choreographer
Die Aufführung findet auf der großen Wiese vor dem Bayerwaldhaus im Westpark statt. Die Karte unten zeigt Ihnen, wo die Wiese in Bezug auf den U-Bahnhof Westpark liegt. Es wird wasserfeste Picknickdecken geben, auf denen Sie sitzen können. Sie können aber auch gerne Ihre eigene wasserfeste Decke oder Ihren eigenen Klappstuhl mitbringen. Die nächstgelegenen öffentlichen Toiletten befinden sich in der Nähe des "Biergartens am Rosengarten". Das "Wirtshaus am Rosengarten" und das "Café Gans am Wasser" verfügen über Toiletten für ihre Besucherinnen und Besucher.
The performance takes place in the large field in front of the “Bayerwaldhaus”, a traditional Bavarian house in Westpark. The map below shows you where the field is in relationship to the Westpark U-Bahn station. There will be waterproof picnic blankets for you to sit on. Please feel free to bring your own waterproof blanket or folding chair. The closest public bathrooms are near the “Biergarten am Rosengarten.” “Wirtshaus am Rosengarten” and “Café Gans am Wasser” have bathrooms for their patrons.
Producer, Artistic Director, Choreographer: Callie Arnold
Dancers & Co-creators: Stephanie Felber, Suzette Sagisi
Choreographic Mentor: Cherie Hill
Dramaturg: Amelia Uzategui Bonilla
POC ”Critical Whiteness” Mentor: Sandra Chatterjee
White “Critical Whiteness” Mentor: Juli Rees
Original music compositions: Uygur Vural
Sound Technician: Florian Lorenz
Photography: Severin Vogl
