Shifting Tides: A Multidisciplinary Creative Process Fusing Dance, Somatics and Black Feminist Theory. An Interview with the Choreographer.
1NS—Can you first of all state the title of your piece?
CH- The title of my piece is Shifting Tides.
NS- Shifting Tides -- that sounds profound. You must have gone through a lot of process to arrive at that title. Can you say a little about that title?
CH- I felt that a lot of the energy coming from the piece was very ocean-like -- waves, coming in waves -- and I’m personally very attracted to the ocean and the element of water. I also choreographed the piece in sections, and each section seemed to have a pretty crucial shift as far as meaning, as far as movement, and as far as quality is concerned. So after a long process of just writing words that seemed to mean something to me within the piece and after looking at the energy, I came up with Shifting Tides. When you watch the ocean, waves come in different forms. You can have really light, gentle waves that gently touch the sand; you can have harsh like (whoosh) waves that just crash onto the shore, and some so high that you can’t even go back onto the beach because you will be swallowed into them. You can have high tide and low tide; there’s a lot of variations just within that, and I felt like the piece had a lot of those variations, highs and lows, and softness and hardness.
- Photo by Cherie Hill
2NS- So what you’re saying is you arrived at the name during or after the piece was created, or during the process?
CH- During the process.
NS- So what would you say was your inspiration for the piece?
CH- My inspiration for the piece was very analytical at the beginning. I was looking at theories and a big one was black feminist theory, which was partially developed by Patricia Hill Collins. Basically, when you study African American studies or feminist studies, they talk a lot about the black women’s voice not being present in American culture and American society, and that if there’s a black women’s presence in film, or in performance, or on stage, usually they don’t have much of a voice. As far as publications go, there are very few black women who are publishing in academia and able to get their stories out. So as part of the feminist movement, black scholars and women in the community developed a way to get the black female experience out and they called it black feminist standpoint theory. This comes from the regular feminist standpoint theory which is based on experience.
3NS- That’s the feminist theory. How different is the black feminist theory?
Black Feminist History Overview: Historically, the term feminism has been used to describe a western-based movement for the equality of women that began with the fight for abolition. Early white feminists supported anti-slavery campaigns, even though they were rarely allowed to attend abolition meetings due to their inferior status (Davis 51). Frederick Douglas was one of the first males to speak on behalf of women’s suffrage, linking the plight of white women to black liberation. Black feminist Sojourner Truth attended the first national convention on women’s rights held in 1850 where she delivered her infamous speech, “Ain’t I A Woman.” Labeled as the hero of the convention, Truth was the only woman who dared to take on critiques by men that claimed women were a weaker sex and could not handle voting. Truth showed the men the muscles in her arms and said, “Look at me! Look at my arm!” revealing her tremendous muscular strength, “I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns and no man could head me! Ain’t I A Woman?” (Davis 61).
4As the plight for women’s rights expanded, so did its ignorance of the special circumstances of black women. Many feminists have pointed out that early feminism was exclusive to the privileges of white women, despite its history of being supported by black liberationists. Groups such as the Combahee River Collective and scholars including bell hooks have written about the importance of not only analyzing the lives of women, but also dissecting how determining factors that include race, class and sexuality are pertinent. Sojourner Truth’s speech serves as an example of the need for feminists to create an epistemology based on the black female's experience. Truth's experience in the United States was not the same as white females. Her work consisted of heavy labor outside in the fields and although she did learn to read and write, these privileges were considered dangerous in her case and normal to white women. Truth was prohibited from owning land or legalized marriage, and she was not allowed to stay home and raise her children. All twelve of the children she bore were sold as slaves to outside plantations. Truth obviously lived an alternative experience based on the construction and politics of race.
5Another reason why black feminist standpoint theory differs is due to the black female experience displaying points of intersectionality concerning not only gender, but race and class. Patricia Hill Collins, a major scholar in feminist studies argues that historically, black women have always been the female outsiders, despite their involvement within white families. She gives the example of black slaves and maids and nannies, caring for white children and their families’ homes, while knowing they would never be a part of their household due to the confines of racism (Collins 308). Collins’ “outsider within” example shows how a different consciousness developed within the minds of black women and she insists that this perspective needs a different form of analysis to explain its differences from the white female experience. That feminism requires an epistemology that acknowledges the intersectionality of race, gender, class and sexuality.