Dance Brigade’s Wild Woman: The Political and Spiritual Krissy Keefer by Anne Bluethenthal In Dance, November 2009 Krissy Keefer is known to many of us in the Bay Area dance scene as a passionate performer, flamboyantly outspoken artist, an ardent activist, a charismatic and committed leader, a prolific producer, and a mentor and teacher to countless young artists and children. I have been privy to her thoughts and progress for years, as a fellow artist, peer and friend. Keefer’s work is a hybrid of agitprop political theater, story ballet, martial arts, spectacle, and dance ritual. She is a dedicated dance artist who is framing her dialogue with the field. She knows she is not talking to the academics, or the dance theorists. Although she has dedicated her life to the empowerment of women and the struggle for social justice for all beings, she loves the aesthetic of the story ballet. While donning a bustier and leather jacket, she may espouse a piece of Rumi, spliced with Yoko Ono, peppered with Michael Moore, and topped off with a lip sync of Leonard Cohen. Her forthrightness and humor have endeared her to her colleagues and friends. The Sacramento Bee reviewed her work as “politically savage, dramatically rambunctious, wonderfully tasteless and utterly brilliant.” Right now she is in rehearsal with her ensemble, Dance Brigade, for The Great Liberation Upon Hearing, a piece inspired by her fascination with and devotion to The Tibetan Book of the Dead. What follows, comes from several conversations we had about the upcoming piece, the state of the art, and her evolution as an artist. Her responses are refreshingly Krissy—at once excited and defiant. In the past your work has been synonymous with feminist dance with a clear social justice agenda. How have these themes translated into this new spiritual dimension? I get juice from whatever interests me at the time. For example, my new piece is about the Tibetan book of the Dead, but I am writing a grant to do something about Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Over the last five years, my work was shaped by the anti-war work we did, performing at demonstrations, curating shows, and creating works such as Spell with Circo Zero at SomArts. I gave speeches and delivered text to very large audiences, which in turn affects my work. The piece I am presenting at Laney College Theater this month is based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It has been on my radar since 1999. I produced a workshop for Sara Mann at Dance Mission then and we semi-collaborated on a piece that was called The Community Performance Extravaganza. I always wanted to revisit it, use my text and make it about the Tibetan perspective on the journey of consciousness when someone dies. Two of my closest friends died with in a year of each other. The practice and understanding of death and dying and journey of consciousness, reincarnation, and karma from the Tibetan tradition was very helpful. I am a story-teller. I like people to “get” my work, that is my strength, but it can be a weakness as well, as I try too hard to be understood; it can get dense or corny. Sara works in a totally different way and I learned a lot from the early Contraband stuff and even her work now. I learned to not try so hard to make sense, trust that the audience can get it. But I like to be understood; nothing is more satisfying than that epiphany when the audience says, “ yea, me too! I can relate to that on some level.” The Great Liberation Upon Hearing is one of your most explicitly spiritual works to date and features key performances by male dancers. Can you comment on how the role of men in this work as well as the dominant male roles in traditional Tibetan Buddhism meet with your feminism? I am most interested in the Dakinis. They are the wild women witches of the Tibetan pantheon. I spend most of my time communicating with them. I went to Tibet in 2007 and went to all these amazing places where women practiced Buddhism and had miraculous powers. Everything is dominated by men. Unless you are going to really take yourself out of the game and go back to the land as we did in the 1970’s you are going to be with and work with men. And you know, I really wanted to work with Ramon Ramos Alayo. He is part of my family at Dance Mission and he and Tina Banchero are spectacular in this show, as are the other performers. What are your views of dance and the commerce of the form, both over the past couple of decades and the topography of dance today? There is a huge dance scene in the United States right now, driven by hip hop and “So You Think You Can Dance.” In the last five years, the number of people dancing, paying attention to and discussing dance, dance styles, etc., has exploded. It has gone way beyond the modern dance scene as we know it. In fact, we are helped by it. People are discussing and critiquing dance as all these viewers are interested in “lyrical.” I think it is great. I look at the local and even national dance communities and, honestly, I don’t see a real change happening, either in the distribution of money, or in the substance or content of the work being made. What has changed is that the general public is interested in dance. It’s becoming a people’s art form; there’s a tsunami of activity. The people are dancing and I think that is disturbing to the mainstream modern dance folk, because what resonates with these people is not necessarily the same as what resonates with the critics and the funders. Furthermore, newspapers are not the determining factor in people’s career success. We used to reside inside the arbiters of The San Francisco Chronicle and The Examiner whose judgments would determine our success. These pieces of paper no longer propel a choreographer’s career. The castle of print media is crumbling and they’re still reviewing mostly ballet. But where dance is happening, where the real discourse is alive, is with the public. As for me, I’m not trying to figure out where I stand in relation to Foucault. [Laughs.] All the discussion around dance and form – these are not my questions. My questions are about whether my intention comes across, or whether it serves the greater good. What do you see when you look back at the past 35 years of your career? I have had a great career. I founded the first feminist dance company in 1975, at the age of 21, and we performed all over the world. I really have done the same thing my whole adult life. If anything, I would like to take a year off. It is quite intense to take care of Dance Brigade, Dance Mission, a school of 400 children and the Grrrl Brigade which is about 70 girls, most of whom want a career in dance. I feel so responsible to give them good training and great performance opportunities. Of course, money and funding are the main things we have all suffered around. It’s hard to be looking toward retirement with nothing in the bank and a very unstable economy. I have wanted to eliminate suffering. This propelled my political and my spiritual journeys. I was into the Dakini’s because I thought they would give me the magical powers I needed. I really just wanted to take out the bad guys. I wanted to walk on water and raise the dead. Clearly that never happened. But through meditation, I was able to get calm, to not have a habitual reaction to problems, to have some distance between the situation and my reaction.The more I meditate, the more distance I have. You have to spiritualize the physical—like Mother Teresa. Being of service is the spiritual act. Being in service with no attachment to outcome is the enlightened act. For more information on The Great Liberation Upon Hearing see the calendar on page 7 or visit dancemission.com. Anne Bluethenthal is Artistic Director of ABD Productions/Anne Bluethenthal and Dancers, has a private practice in the F.M. Alexander Technique, and is on the faculties of California Institute of Integral Studies, MFA Creative Inquiry; Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, MA Women’s Spirituality; and Academy of Art Univeristy, Motion Pictures and Television. www.abdproductions.org