Ancestors: Vision + Verse With the Divine Poetess
A reflection on a performance for Chattanooga Festival of Black Arts & Ideas
(Hope by Whitfield Lovell. 1999. Charcoal on wood, found objects. Hunter Museum of American Art.)
In this fourth issue of DanceChatt, a publication dedicated to dance writing centered in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I share a reflection on participating in a performance of poetry, music and dance. The performance was part of both the Vision + Verse series at the Hunter Museum of American Art and the Chattanooga Festival of Black Arts & Ideas. We have more articles in store about the wonderful dance that came out of that festival.
Good news for dance writers — thanks to generous new subscribers, DanceChatt can now pay a tad more for dance writing. If you’re interesting in writing a review, interview, reflection — even a poem or short story — about dance in Chattanooga, this is a great platform to share your work. Check out the bottom of the page for information on pitching stories or being added to the DanceChatt writers’ email list.
Ancestors: Vision + Verse With the Divine Poetess
By Jenn McCormick
Video: Hunter Museum of American Art promotional material
The Divine Poetess. Her name’s Denise Adeniyi. She’s also known as Divine. I was called that one time, I heard her say, and I embraced it. She is also a composer, singer and songwriter. She creates artistic mélanges of her own works and those of others: Divine with her band. Divine with dancers. Divine with works of fine art.
The event. Vision + Verse at the Hunter Museum of American Art encourages such collaborations. For each evening of Vision + Verse, the museum asks a performing artist to respond to several pieces of art in the collection or a visiting exhibit.
For this installment of Vision + Verse, Divine has asked three musicians to perform: Kofi Mawuko on drums, Mark Anderson on harmonica, and Dexter Bell on bass fiddle.
The process. Divine creates a poem. She asks a musician to learn part of a song — maybe the drums, the melody, or perhaps the bass line. She then combines music and verse. Here’s the tricky part. The musician is now playing music intended for one set of words across a different set of words — Divine’s.
Then, as she’s asking the musician to create his or her work, she also reaches out to a dancer and asks her to create a dance. I don’t how she works with other dancers, but when Divine reaches out to me and asks for a dance, I know it’s going to be an experience of improvisation. An encounter with the unexpected.
For one thing, I don’t always know what I’ll dance to, or about. Sometimes she sends me the poem. Sometimes she sends the original to the song that the musician will interpret. On some occasions, she sends both.
I listen to the music. I read the poem. Triangulating a bit — okay, guessing — I sketch out a movement vocabulary. Maybe this? I think. Maybe that?
Rehearsal. We might get together in one person’s house or another. Space is generally small. Pluck that, says Denise to her string player, don’t bow it. To her harmonica player: Don’t play over me — play in the silences. Let the words breathe. Mostly, though she lets everyone do what they do. As a result, we’re thinking all the time.
Are we all that good? The musicians certainly are. I shiver with that harmonica, pulse to those strings. And yeah, I’m afraid I don’t measure up. On one hand, I’m giddy with the creative energy filling the room. On the other, it’s eerie. An experience fecund and unsettling — a tease for the mind.
Do you have notes for me? I ask Divine. She smiles. No …
The event: Mansion, Gallery, Second Floor 08. That’s the room in the Hunter Museum where we’ll present Divine’s interpretation of the mixed-media work Hope. To go with Hope, Divine’s poem is called Ancestors.
The picture, colored in soft charcoal on what look like three repurposed boards or planks, depicts a beautiful, middle-aged Black woman with a drape over one shoulder and around her torso. Her short, smooth haircut is reminiscent of the early 20th century. Maybe a flapper haircut, or a practical 1940s or 50s do? Her eyes gaze down and her lips, pressed together, smile faintly. She looks both happy and sad. In front of her, on a shelf made of board, stand several Mason jars containing different substances: salt, cloth and so on. The last jar stands empty.
The room contained other paintings. I notice two photos in gilt oval frames. They’re titled Mr. William James Bass and Caroline Watkins Bass (wife of William James Bass). The lady wears azure and looks at the viewer — a serene forthright stare. Her husband, 15 years younger by their dates of birth given, wears smooth rosy cheeks, an unimpressive beard, and what is probably meant to be a gaze of command. Both portraits are dated circa 1850. Across the room from this couple is a larger painting: Colonel and Mrs. James A. Whiteside, Son Charles and Servants. It’s dated 1858–59. One servant, a little Black boy in livery, is entering the the frame upstage right, carrying a tray and glasses. Another holds Son Charles.
Adera Causey, the museum’s curator of education, organizes these challenging events and also acts as emcee. In her hands, the job is something between enthusiast, docent and college professor. Adera has a gift for drawing folks in. She asks the audience what they see in this woman’s face. Serenity, they answer. Sorrow.
The picture, Adera says, is titled Hope.
Let me tell you how I am not going to start this dance. This is a series of decisions I have made in the few minutes in the snug, almost claustrophobic blue-green gallery with Hope and the Whitesides and Basses. I am not going to attempt to portray a descendant of this sorrowful and serene Black woman with her smooth hair and round cheek that could so easily know a tear’s track or a smile’s warm glow. That would be the absolute height of conceit.
But then to whom do I gesture as ancestors? These slave-owners?
As perhaps Divine knew it would, my hair stands up.
To dance in, I have a smallish, kidney-bean shaped oval with the works of art and artists making an arc on one side and the audience snugging in to form the opposite arc.
Only halfway realizing the decisions I’ve made as I dance them, I create — or try to create — a dance about the problem I now confront. Who are my ancestors? In this room, among these limited options, who do I choose? Who do you, audience, choose? Can you choose? When you invoke, as Divine is invoking, what do you feel? On whom do you call?
But at the same time I dance Divine’s words and Kofi’s drumming — sound, rhythm, sorrow, sweetness, spirit.
I start facing away from the audience, toward Caroline Watkins Bass, my arm echoing the curve of her gilt frame. Then I find her husband. Then the audience. This person. That one. Then the beautiful Hope.
Remembering and writing. The problem with writing about improvisational dance in front of a crowd is I forget it almost as I create it. What happened?
For Ancestors, the first section of the three-part performance, Divine gave me her prose poem to read about 30 minutes before the performance started. Then we did one run-through with Kofi. I warmed up. We spaced out the two other locations and Divine and the musicians checked the sound there.
These preparations go by so fast.
I remember kneeling, arching back, arms overhead in a big loose moving fifth, hands tumbling almost to the floor.
I remember moving focus from art to audience and back.
I remember Kofi hitting one drum a sharp crack, crack, crack, crack, bringing the pattering counterpoint rhythm uptempo, giving me a beat to spot on as I made a couple tight circles of probably six turns each, clicking my spot around with each crack.
Am I doing it? I wondered. Am I asking these people how we find, how we create, how we remember ancestors? Am I responding to the powerful feeling in Divine’s words?
I don’t know.
When you dance with the Divine Poetess, or, I would guess, when you make music with Divine, you’re part of her thought experiment.
The first poem Divine gave me to dance was called Wet Dream, so there’s that. Then another one had to do with creation and numerology. There’s always something that makes you larger than you were before you tried to dance the poem.
Years back, when she asked me to dance to a poem about the Black experience for perhaps the second time, I asked her: Why do you ask me to dance to these poems? What do you intend? What is your thought process?
She smiled, as if from a great distance.
It interests me, she said.
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I hope you enjoyed this reflective essay.
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Until then, keep dancing.
— Jenn McCormick