Choreographic Residency: Week 8

Today is Labor Day, and I'm in Santa Maria, CA (my hometown) for a family reunion of sorts that my father helped start a long, long time ago.  My father immigrated to America in 1933.  I mentioned this earlier in a previous post about the treacherous venture across the Pacific he took to get here. He came here in a large steam boat of Filipino men, landing somewhere in Northern California.  A few of those men were some of his friends and family from the area of Loon (pronounced: loh'ohn). When they came to America, this group of friends and family hailing from Loon sought solidarity and community.  They created a network of friends that met every Labor Day.  It started off as a small party with just about a dozen men, and now, almost 100 years later, has grown to an organization of over 500 members and attendees.  I spent this holiday with my family and friends contemplating how large it has become... and perhaps how distant we've come from our immigrant, founding fathers.  

I think my dad would be proud of me now, continuing to research the work of his histories and unspoken narratives.  

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I am thinking of changing the title of this work to Out of Bounds. Somehow I don't think LUCID is appropriate anymore.  I thought of two titles that I'm going to share with you, whoever you (the reader) are:

• I thought of "The Lines Between Us and Them" after reading about Alejandro Inaritu's VR installation simulating what it's like to cross the Mexican-American border, now on view at LACMA, called Carne y Arena.  I just scored some tickets, excited to see how it might influence the work.
• Then I thought it was too on-the-nose, title-wise, so then, "The Grey Between Us" came to mind.  I likened of us/them to a Venn diagram.  I thought of the boundaries that categorized one entity from another, and where they overlapped.  These boundaries then led me to think of the title I think I'm going to stick with:

It as a sports connotation, which I don't know yet how it relates to the work.  Somehow, changing the title to this is liberating my process.  Excited to explore with this in mind.  

RSVP to the event here.

Images by Andrew Mandinach