At social gatherings, D. Sabela Grimes is used to meeting confused faces as he answers inquiries about his graduate studies.
“When you tell people you are getting your master’s in dance, they go “˜OK.’ There’s that social stigma. Or if I tell someone that I do dance professionally, they think I wear a G-string outfit,” said Grimes, a graduate student studying dance in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures master of fine arts program.
However, Grimes and his colleagues have a chance to clear up the misunderstandings tonight and Saturday night in “Archipelago,” in which the four second-year graduate students of the WAC MFA program in dance will showcase their choreography and dance skills in the Glorya Kaufman Dance Theater.
“It’s a good opportunity to show people what we do, to show how we use our body, sound and movements,” Grimes said.
Grimes will showcase two pieces in “Archipelago.”
“Groceries,” a piece inspired by a poem written by Abiola Abrams, deals with marks of ethnicity and gender.
“Groceries are a metaphor, from the perspective of a woman as having too much to carry, and I adapted the piece to be told from a male’s perspective,” he said.
In Grimes’s second piece, “World War Whateva,” his character travels through time, feeling that he is being chased from one time period to another.
Grimes himself is also familiar with travel, having presented his own work in places including Philadelphia and Paris. His travels and professional experience led him to pursue a graduate degree in dance.
“Having worked professionally in dance theater for the last couple years and traveling abroad, I found that there was a need for some more cultural studies in respect to dance,” Grimes said.
For Waewdao Sirisook, on the other hand, travel plays a central role in her graduate studies.
Sirisook was the one international student accepted into the WAC MFA program in dance, which chooses one international student each year. For her piece, “The Ritualized Tree,” Sirisook draws inspiration from her native country of Thailand.
“There is the image of a big tree, and it’s combined with the ritual ceremony in Northern Thailand that happens every month where we give an offering to the tree,” Sirisook said. “We believe that wherever there is a big tree, there is a spirit in it.”
Sirisook says that the MFA dance program prepares students well for life after graduation, counteracting the argument that it is impossible to make a living in dance.
“In the production-arts seminar, for example, we learn how to sell our projects, do the press kits, make a budget, and how to contact people,” she said.
Hanna van der Kolk, another graduate dance student showcasing her work, says that the seminar alone is not sufficient in preparing graduate students for a career in dance.
“The seminar is particularly (based on) production, which can really only be one vein of what you do because of the funding situation,” van der Kolk said. “Even in the top tier, most artists are not making their living that way.”
Van der Kolk noted that the funding for the arts is limited in this country, so an artist must pursue more avenues of work besides performing to make a living.
“I do a combination of things,” van der Kolk said. “I do some teaching; I do some writing; I do some performing with other people’s work. Luckily, I enjoy that because it’s what I have to do. It’s a real combination. … I certainly have anxiety about how the hell I’m going to make it work.”
Van der Kolk has managed to juggle these various responsibilities while preparing for her piece, “discolevel3.proj.”
Van der Kolk’s piece is a collaboration between her and Carolina San Juan, a WAC graduate student in culture and performance. While at lunch one day, San Juan talked about her passion for disco and its relationship to her native country of the Philippines, inspiring the initial idea. However, the piece quickly evolved to become less about just going into San Juan’s world and more about the collaboration between the two women.
“As we dialogued, the piece ended up being about our relationship as well,” van der Kolk said.
While van der Kolk, Sirisook and Grimes have all been dancing since their youth, graduate dance student Kingsley Irons is newer to the dance world.
“I started dancing late, like at 22,” Irons said. “I just really started dancing for myself, and I really felt so connected to salsa and Afro-Caribbean dancing. It was just the right fit.”
Irons describes herself as an “accidental dancer,” who chose to go to graduate school because she wanted to learn more about these types of dance. After learning about other types of dance in graduate school, however, Irons has found the experience very worthwhile.
“(Graduate school) has been really eye-opening, fulfilling and just a way of pushing myself to talk about things that I never thought I could talk about in a performance,” she said.
Irons will be showcasing these new forms she’s discovered, such as theater dance, in her piece “Dear _______, Waiting … To Say Goodbye to You,” which confronts the issue of abortion.
According to Irons, in Japanese culture, the Japanese have found a way to acknowledge the spirit of the aborted fetus without having the woman regret her choice.
“I think that’s really important, because in the Western world, we don’t really have a way of mourning, or a way of acknowledging, or a way for a woman to have a closing ritual … where she can say (to the aborted fetus), “˜This is my choice and I don’t regret it, but I acknowledge that you were here and I hope that your spirit is at peace,'” Irons said.
As the four students put the finishing touches on their pieces, they report that they are “excited,” “nervous” and “totally stressed out.” But van der Kolk says that the graduate students are in this together.
“This is the fifth quarter that we have had choreography classes together and, because it’s such a small group, we do a lot of watching each other’s work (and) giving each other feedback,” said van der Kolk.
“I’ve shown work in so many other contexts, but that’s what will be so unique about the show ““ the four of us getting to share it.”