Eugene weekly., September 14, 2017, Page 13, Image 13

we’re too light with our words. And it’s been theft since
we got here. I mean, we were stolen. And we got placed
here in America and the stealing kept happening.”
This isn’t a new process.
“On the plantation, they imitated blacks. And since
then, this has been going on,” Harris says. “The imitation
of the black body — from Venus Hottentot — to the bustle
of white women wearing those dresses extending their
derrieres, right? We were stolen and everything is usurp-
ing, taking from that culture, from day one.”
Harris notes that this is not even European land, but
land that was taken from its indigenous residents.
“When you don’t acknowledge where something
comes from, or how it came about, you’re eradicating the
idea that it even came from another culture — you’re just
wiping that slate clean,” Harris says.
“The white kids walking around with hip-hop gear,
they have no clue who Spoonie Gee is, they have no clue
who DJ Cassanova is or who MC Caz is, right?” Harris
asks. “So now you have successfully wiped the memory
of a particular culture and their contributions. And you
could say that for a lot of other cultures here as well, not
just African-American culture.”
Then Harris says something that stops me in my
tracks.
“At the end of the day, I don’t see myself as an artist,”
Harris says. “I see myself as a human. To say that you’re
an ‘artist’ — they’ll put a fucking label on you and put
you up on the shelf. And then people treat you a certain
way — and that’s the issue.”
He continues: “I never sought to be a choreographer
— wasn’t my plan. Wasn’t trying to be a dancer — wasn’t
my plan. It was a means to an end economically. It gave
me some money, and I danced and I just kept going. And
I became this ‘choreographer.’ But I don’t like the chore-
ography that I do. I don’t like any of the work that I do
— I think all of it is shit and bullshit. I think the whole
field is full of shit.
“But what I realized by doing what I do, is it became
clear that I was touching people in their lives — and that
was the reason that I stayed in.”
Harris relates American black dance back to its subju-
gated origins, and points out the razor’s edge between
“success” and selling out.
He says he’s disbanded his company three times in 25
years, “because I thought this was the most evil business
of them all — to enter and then contain someone, i.e.
‘entertainment.’ Once I figured that out, I was like, ‘Oh, I
don’t really want to be a part of this.’”
But Harris and his 25-year-old company persist, tour-
ing internationally, offering workshops and performances
around the globe.
“If you want to speak to someone, don’t use language.
And specifically, don’t use the English language to say
anything to anyone,” Harris says. “Movement is the first
language. Ninety-eight percent of our communication
comes from body language.”
“You know a person loves you not because the person
tells you they love you — that’s our own vanity,” he adds.
“You know that person loves you because when they went
into the kitchen they got themselves a glass of water and
they brought you a glass of water, too.”
Harris relates body language from love, back to fear
and, finally, to violence.
“There are actions that we understand, that we com-
municate,” he says. “Think about it: How would you move
slaves onto a ship? No one spoke the language. The Euro-
peans went in and, without any help from Africans, actu-
ally started to capture Africans. How did that come
about?
He continues that it was through the body language of
those particular people who sensed fear in Africans.
Either Africans went into flight, or they gave in. "This
was done through body language and energy,” Harris
says.
The onslaught of recent media images of bodies
engaged in political, economic and social unrest commu-
nicates volumes. We’re inundated with raw emotion — a
kind of trauma. Too often we see and are desensitized to
the routine destruction of the black body.
Yet Harris’s dance company — one of the only perfor-
mance groups of its kind on the planet — still faces a
steep challenge when they ask audiences to explore
deeper artistic themes that might confront our current
social climate.
“If anything, it’s like the 1970s, 1980s here in the
States,” he says. “Everyone else outside of the U.S. has
evolved on some level. In the U.S., we have become elitist
about how we receive anything that’s considered hip-hop
culture — or that comes from the street.”
Harris loops back to cultural theft.
“I think what it is when you take something from a
culture and you don’t have the background of that culture,
you’re interpreting what you think you’re seeing — that’s
through your cultural lens,” he explains. “Audiences want
to be entertained, to see people flipping, doing what I call
the ‘Nova monkey’ dance of yesteryear.”
(The derogatory term “Nova monkey” refers to some-
one who’s trying to figure out how something works by
swinging and banging it around — like a monkey on the
PBS television programs Nova.)
“Economically, we can kind of get our feet going, get
some traction, but we’re not able to evolve, because audi-
ences aren’t evolving,” Harris says.
Harris notes that some hip-hop dance companies sur-
vive by fusing their work to a modern dance aesthetic,
placating audiences with a product they understand, one
built on “Western language — and therefore it’s elevated,
as if one culture is higher than another one,” he says. “I’m
not a fan of that, but it is what it is.”
“And then the other ones, they aren’t getting any help
so that they can develop, so that they can move on and
evolve,” Harris adds. “We’re in a catch-22. Audiences are
not appreciating that we need to have support in order to
develop the work and have a voice.”
Because dance, he explains, “has always been about
the darkness and the light. Dance celebrates life. If the
harvest comes, we dance. If someone dies, we dance. If
someone is born, we dance,” Harris says.
“Dance is always about living.”
Rennie Harris Puremovement performs at 8pm Jan. 25-27, 2018, at Lincoln
Hall, Portland State University, in Portland. For more information or for
tickets, visit whitebird.org.
RENNIE HARRIS PUREMOVEMENT'S LIFTED
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