Every time I see someone tread off
a beaten trail, crushing plants in their
wake, my heart crumples inside. “They’re
just plants,” is the usual response I’m met
with, words that cut inside me further.
Plants may seem insignificant, partly due
to their size and their position below our
eye level. Humans are fascinated with
animals larger than themselves — ele-
phants or killer whales, for example — but
aren’t thrilled by a small shrub.
But have we forgotten that plants give
us life? Plants are the reason we can roam
this Earth. Or, in the words of Robin Wall
Kimmerer, plants give us “the privilege of
breath.”
I wonder how often we think of plants
and trees in this way, how regularly we
view the world as animate and directly
responsible for our own lives. How dif-
ferent would our world look if we saw
the non-animal lives around us as our
greatest teachers? In her book “Braid-
ing Sweetgrass,” Robin Wall Kimmerer
shows us just how beautiful that planet
could be.
“Braiding Sweetgrass” focuses on the
space between indigenous knowledge
and scientific thought, where both thrive
and complement each other. Kimmerer
belongs to the Citizen Potawatomi nation,
but is also a distinguished botanist. Lend-
ing her voice to both the scientific and
indigenous perspective, Kimmerer recon-
ciles two worlds drifting apart, and uses
her knowledge of both to envision a more
sustainable future.
When I picked up “Braiding Sweet-
grass,” spring was knocking on my door.
Lime-green shoots were beginning to
peek out of the earth, the endless win-
ter finally ceasing. I remember walk-
ing through the forest and seeing right
through it — the towering trees weren’t
yet filled with leaves, but buds were start-
ing to sparkle in the dim sunlight. I read
as the world was waking from its slumber,
and Kimmerer’s words provided the per-
fect commentary. Kimmerer’s intricate
understanding of the natural world isn’t
intimidating, but rather comforting and
gentle. You don’t have to be an ecologist
to understand her writing and take some-
thing from it. Chapters are told as first
person narratives, but by the end you’ve
inadvertently learned enough about pond
eutrophication or the utility of wetland
cattails to confidently explain it to some-
one else.
Early on, Kimmerer challenges our pri-
vate, capitalist worldview, and instead
urges us to think communally. The world
isn’t rich for individual taking, but instead
generous with resources that sustain lives
and communities. As is the tragedy of the
commons, our species often ends up tak-
ing more than our share, and as a result
we see whole ecosystems — rainforests,
wetlands, tundras — disappear. Kim-
merer gives a good reason for why we do
this: The Western world still fails to rec-
ognize the world as animate. Indigenous
languages such as Potawatomi are about
70 percent verbs, while English is only 30
percent. The verb “to be” applies to much
more than just humans in Potawatomi,
and thus many more things are consid-
ered alive.
7
This week marked four months since San
Francisco Ballet first cancelled a performance
due to coronavirus. In early March, the compa-
ny was one of the first in the country to feel the
effects of stay-at-home orders and their much-
hyped run of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
came to a screeching halt. Soon after, SFB
cancelled four more productions, locked their
rehearsal spaces and spearheaded a series of
online programming that, like most other com-
panies, established Instagram as a quasi-home
base. Over the last four months, SFB’s feed
shifted from a uniform presentation of profes-
sionally staged photography to a rather endear-
ing hodgepodge of at-home studios, amateur
lighting and IGTV streams of digital seasons.
This collage of imagery was no different two
weeks ago on June 19 when the company took
part in the #JuneteenthDanceBreak initiative
started by Theresa Ruth Howard, founder of
the organization Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet. A
week and a half prior, Howard had challenged
the global dance community to join her in “lift-
ing up the legacies, contributions, accomplish-
ments, and stories” of Black artists. The task
was simple: On June 19, “dedicate your feed to
the display of the beautiful diversity of Black-
ness” with at least four separate posts through-
out the day.
Howard’s proposition was one of the many
initiatives born of a burgeoning awareness for
the Juneteenth holiday. The date commemo-
rates the day that the last enslaved people finally
received news of their freedom on June 19, 1865.
The event took place two and a half years after
the Emancipation Proclamation and its history,
like many other facets of Black history, remains
largely absent from our public awareness. This
year, ongoing protests against racial injustice
have emboldened arguments for America to
recognize the date both as a federal holiday as
well as a chance to reflect more generally on the
systemic issues of racism that still exist today.
Juneteenth thus has multiple angles: It cel-
ebrates the freedom of Black Americans while
also offering somber perspectives on the prog-
ress that we have yet to achieve. Howard dis-
tilled these two meanings in her creation of the
Juneteenth Dance Break — she wanted to make
space for Black people’s “beauty, creativity,
ingenuity, elegance, power, and perseverance.”
To celebrate, but also to learn.
SFB was one of many organizations that
partook in Howard’s project. Their June 19
feed started with an Instagram Live stream of
dancer Kimberly Marie Olivier and her father-
in-law, principal bassoon player Rufus Olivier.
The two Black artists took an hour to talk about
ballet, bassoons and Black history. The rest of
the company’s posts were a mixture of shorter
videos and still photos. All in all, SFB shared
over an hour and a half of content and multiple
paragraphs of information about Black danc-
ers, choreographers and musicians who form
part of SFB’s past and present. The result was
an impressive use of the dance world’s quaran-
tined predicament — an insightful yet fully dig-
ital combination of education and celebration
with the timely and timeless lens of redefining
racial perceptions of ballet.
The outpouring from other organizations
was also impressive: The celebration cut divides
of hierarchical status and spanned the distance
between institutions like American Ballet The-
atre all the way to smalltown dance studios.
When the sun rose on June 20, the world sud-
denly had access to a wide-reaching archive
of information about Black dancers of past
and present and their profound effect on our
stages today. In an added bonus, the resources
were (and still are) easily accessible in one place
under the #JuneteenthDanceBreak hashtag on
Instagram.
Howard quickly took to her own account to
thank everyone for their “enthusiastic and cre-
ative participation.” Indeed, the celebration had
uncovered something rather unprecedented:
Dance history, let alone Black dance history, is
a dwindling field. The Juneteenth Dance Break
gave a voice to marginalized stories within an
oft-forgotten domain. “This is history,” Howard
said, “this is world history. This is dance histo-
ry. This is not just Black history, it’s history. It’s
American history, and it’s all of ours. It belongs
to all of us.”
But Howard was also clear: “It’s just a start.
And I hope that this is the beginning.”
June of 2020 operated almost as a highlight
reel of dance companies dedicating and re-
dedicating themselves to racial justice in the
performing arts industry. The process started
with messages of #TheShowMustBePaused
on Blackout Tuesday, moving to initiatives
like #BalletRelevesForBlackLives or #NoJus-
ticeNoDance and most recently the #June-
teenthDanceBreak. These are, of course, only
hashtags — they do not replace updated poli-
cies and real change, but they do seem to have
provided a start for some. The even murkier
side of this movement, however, lies in what
hasn’t even made it to Instagram at all: the
companies that waited until their only Black
dancer complained of racist policies to release a
solidarity statement, the companies that didn’t
acknowledge Juneteenth or the ones that only
posted one haphazard photograph to jump on
the bandwagon. Actions speak louder than
words, even though words are much better
than silence.
Thursday, July 2, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS
SUMMER SERIES
SUMMER SERIES
TRINA PAL
Daily Arts Writer
SUMMER SERIES
SUMMER SERIES
ZOE PHILLIPS
Daily Arts Writer
Reflective moment for
ballet on Juneteenth
Read more at michigandaily.com
‘Braiding Sweetgrass’:
connect with nature
Read more at michigandaily.com