• By: Dulce Capadocia

Posted on August 25, 2009

Filipino Life Archival Photo, Los Angeles Times

Archival Photo of  Silayan Dance Company  featuring dancers Sandy Mendez and Mandy Burgos  from article on  “Filipino Life”,   Los Angeles Times 1986

(Costume idea for Tikling Bird Goddess in “BIHAG” – look at male dancer in the back)

I write in my pajamas in this late bright sunny afternoon wondering why I haven’t changed since the morning.  I hesitate;   feeling deeply exhausted  from last month’s activities,  I am slow to  recuperating.   I keep having to convince myself that being creative is a fun, engaging process.    Deep inside, I think it should be.  As an creative person, I have always felt that art is a way to investigate life around us.  It makes us truly connected to each other through our movement, our songs, our dances, our poetry and the stories we create and offer to the world we live in.   It is this search for truth and beauty that become my driving force,  pushing me onward and forward to continue my work.   I have a bittersweet relationship with it now.   It is the only offspring I know,  having none of my own.  Imposingly born into the light of the glittering stage on opening night but tragically stillborn in the morning.

Last week,  I lost three important performers because of injury and schedule conflicts.  Fearful,  I recall the four people that came to my audition after many dance department, community, and Facebook postings.   What is really going on?  Is it a lack of interest or lack of interested dancers within my Filipino community?  Is arts and culture relevant or irrelevant in this day and age?   Is it my subject matter?   Are people just too busy and bombarded by so much information to start to bother?   Perhaps  I ‘m too “modern” for the folk and too “folk” for the modern.   What is it…really?   I am feeling a sense of apathy around me.

As a result of having to manage the day-to-day activities of pushing paper, writing grants to create funding, making phone calls, dealing with my cluttered workspace, emailing, texting, auditioning, preparing (always preparing), managing dancers with schedule conflicts, putting in time for weekly rehearsals, conceiving and designing stuff in my head, worrying (always that!), creating possible collaborations to support the new life being created within me,  I sit mentally drained,  fatigued and perplexed about how I can find the energy to lead or inspire an almost new cast of extremely talented, spirited people who I have now assembled.   They are creatively hungry to perform.

I (again) created an epic in my new work entitled BIHAG (meaning “captive”).   I cannot seem to get away from that…………….no sense in scolding myself for birthing another amazon.  And warrior this child is!   Exquisitely beautiful and feminine – but imposing like the woman she will become.   Like thunder,  she wakes me up in the middle of the night.   I now have to sleep with a notepad next to my bed.

Though I complain about taking on big challenges, it is the very thing that makes me feel alive and purposeful.  I am now bamboozled and confronted by the necessity of creating monies and building support for my new incubation;   this dimension is not art, but is a huge part of art and the business (“busy-ness”) of making art.   It is the ugly face behind the beauty and idealism that you see on the stage as an end result to an art product- the recognizable face I abhor.   This  is what tires and drains me.    If I had known I was going to work this hard every time to create a new piece, would I still be a self-producing artist?  This is the question that replays itself in my head.  I hear my late mother’s words shouting at me from 25 years ago.  At 22, I told her I was going to the East Coast to graduate school for Dance.  She scoffed.  “How are you going to make a living?”   I didn’t have any answers then so I went anyway despite her inability to support me.

This new work  is a complex dance drama incorporating 11 dynamic performers –  dancers who act and actors who dance.   It fuses hip hop, indigenous dance forms with modern dance, theatre and powerful storytelling with the visual impact of tall bamboo poles serving as set design for a forest, traps, walls, rooms, pathways and weapons.  It brings together a myriad of dancers with various levels of training.   Some are only Philippine dance trained.  Some are modern dancers.  Some only do hip hop.  Some are actors.  I chisel away at my creation in anticipation.   I envision the reconstruction of stunning bird costumes (crossing my fingers that I get my grants!) with expansive wings and real feathers,  like the one pictured above.   BIHAG’s movement vocabulary relies on human gestures and intimate personal stories.  Its message delves into the question of cultural survival in the form of a Tikling goddess – a legacy bearer.  In order to promulgate, her important role (in my make-believe storybook jungle of ancient Philippines)  is to teach her young to avoid deadly bamboo traps.  BIHAG paints a powerful portrait of culture focusing sharply on its fragility and endangerment.   Life, death, grief and violence are an integral part of this large and dramatic work.  Juxtaposed between two contrasting scenes (the natural and city worlds),  the work is informed by the malfunction of urban society.  I create it now as a mid-career artist questioning  the world I live in, the artistic legacy I am part of,  and the relevance of the Filipino ancestral culture I was born into.  It is not my place to judge the work right now.  What I need to do is simply continue to create it and place it on the stage for exhibition for other people to examine & experience.

My mom was right.   I have not made a living at my art.   That is the one thing I am still trying to figure out.   I guess in the end, she knew what she was talking about.  In this changing and challenging economy where people are struggling to find jobs and security,  I inspect my own position in relation to what I am creating now to justify my place in the world.

Recently, I opened a book at the nearly Tribal Cafe in my Historic Filipinotown neighborhood to read this:

“God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers.   And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face.  A gauntlet with a gift in’t.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The drive to be a creator is strong, commanding and inexplicable.  So,  I continue.  A gift, a gauntlet, perhaps both.   Despite of uncertainty, tumultuous unsteady ground is where I have always stood amidst a  Philippine backdrop.   It is here where I will continue to stand.   And it is here where I will rest……to start work again tomorrow.

I long to come full circle.

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6 Comments

  1. Prumsodun Ok August 26, 2009 at 11:03 pm - Reply

    Dulce!

    It is a very demanding thing to be a self-producing artist – my mentor always told me, “If you want to be a working artist, marry a rich man or a grant writer.” He was joking and being serious at the same time of course. The amount of energy required to sustain ourselves as living creatures while fulfilling our duties as creative beings is mammoth and the frustration, angst, and sleepless nights are certainly catalysts for action.

    I am sorry about the dancers that have dropped out of your project – it is so very hard to work with large amounts of people (and I myself prefer to work as minimally as possible with others). Whatever the reasons for their withdrawal, it is their loss. You are giving them the chance to perform an exciting new work that will be shown in theaters all across California, an opportunity to engage in a larger dialogue that makes visible the complexities of practicing “traditional, culturally-specific” art forms in a diaspora community.

    Keep on pushing, jotting notes in the middle of the night – those feathers look great by the way.

    With Love!
    Prum

  2. CONTRA-TIEMPO September 7, 2009 at 8:47 pm - Reply

    Dulce – your description is so vivid and I am SIKED to see your work – it sounds like such an incredible multidimensional tapestry of voices, ideas and realities – with so much to say – I hope you get the grants too! I am fascinated with the connecting of contemporary street forms with ancient traditional forms – it is also what I attempt in my work -but find that although it calls to me day and night that finding performers for this ‘new genre’ can def. be both challenging and frustrating… but they are out there! For every four or five persons that comes into my co. I find a perfect ONE that winds up being a person not only inspired by the work but also willing to really contribute themselves to this exploration of hybridizing… and they wind up staying for a LONG time – I find that I am getting clearer and clearer about what I am looking for.. for this kind of work we are looking for more than just performers… 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – but more for human beings who are moved to be engaged and fully become this work – to be in relationship authentically with the other co. members and I, to question generously, to contribute their ideas, to push back on assumptions – and who WANT to be there more than anything – and will move mountains to make it work… not just to show up and leave… I guess my point is – if you are loosing folks for scheduling conflicts that they are creating space for you to find the perfect dancers, the perfect collaborators and the perfect performers for this vision… they ARE out there and when you find them it will be magical!

  3. Brian September 8, 2009 at 6:58 pm - Reply

    Hey Dulce!
    you are an inspiration! Prum said it so well above: It takes a massive amount of energy and wear-with-all to being an artist. Currently I am applying for a workshop to better my skills as an artist entrepreneur getting the business part of it all done more intelligently. Keep on truckin’ Baby!
    Love, Brian

  4. Dulce Capadocia September 8, 2009 at 7:02 pm - Reply

    Takes one to know one! You guys are gems. Thanks for the support and good luck with your creations. See you on the 20th! xo

  5. Roko Kawai September 21, 2009 at 8:49 pm - Reply

    Dulce!

    i just watched your video & then read this! wow, i really gotta hand it to you company choreographers! i’m in the Prum-camp — soloist with collaborators… but i also have belonged to a dance company since 1991, lending myself as a company dancer, an improvisation collaborator, sometimes hiring the artistic director as my collaborator, often playing the add’l role of board member & production manager!

    as an artist, i’ve LOVED being in both shoes — i learn so much from the director/choreographer of any project. it’s such a gift to be inside the “womb” to use your metaphor of someone’s universe.

    and i have to say… i’ve seen dancers come & go in Leah’s company, for all kinds of reasons. but what Leah Stein is doing is unique & has deep integrity & that’s what keeps people coming back or new ones coming in! I get the feeling you may be the same!

  6. Michael September 23, 2009 at 1:06 pm - Reply

    Big hugs — thank you for your perseverence… doing what is right and good to be done! It helps me and inspires me, too!

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