The pulse of drums spills out onto the street from an upper window of the Malonga Casquelord Center for the Arts, a big Art Deco building in the Lakeside district of Oakland. Up on the third floor, a battery of eight drummers is lined up against one wall of a large dance studio, vibrating the air with their music.

Twelve dancers -- men and women all dressed in black rehearsal clothes -- move with fierce and graceful undulations through the space. They dance together, totally synchronized, then suddenly break out into individual gestures: shaking their hips, stepping and stomping.

This is Dimensions Dance Theater, one of the oldest African American dance companies in the country. They had their first full season in 1973. Most companies don’t stay in business that long, as dance is not a highly-funded art form. Deborah Vaughan, artistic director of Dimensions, says that making it this far has meant a fair amount of struggle.

“It’s a challenge,” she says. “But one of the things that keeps you motivated is the work itself.”

 

A rich history

The work of Dimensions Dance Theater is exploring and presenting African and African-derived dance. Vaughan herself has been doing it since she was a young girl growing up in Oakland. When she was 12, a friend brought her to Ruth Beckford’s modern and Afro-Haitian dance classes, run through the city’s parks and recreation department. She fell in love immediately with dancing and performing, but says she was also fascinated by learning the history of the dances she was doing.

She went on to study modern, ballet, West African, South African, and Central African dance forms. She earned a graduate degree in dance from Mills College in the early '70s, around the time of the Black Arts Movement.

The Black Arts Movement was a kind of sister to the Black Power movement that flourished in the late '60s and early '70s. The term “Black Arts” was coined by the poet Amiri Baraka, who argued for cultural sovereignty through art-making that refused to assimilate to mainstream, white norms. At its height, artists all over the country were celebrating blackness, digging into African American history and culture, and exploring the roots of that culture. The Bay Area was a hub for such artists, and Vaughan says Dimensions Dance Theater was born out of that influence.

At Mills , Vaughan and fellow graduate student Elendar Barnes were studying the roots of African American dance forms, and they wanted to use that material in their thesis concert. They choreographed dances using modern, jazz, and Haitian forms, and mixed them with spoken word. “What we were trying to do in that concert is just show the diversity of dance that was African-based,” she says.

The concert was so successful that people approached them later to ask when the next show would be. So Vaughan and Barnes, along with another dance graduate student, Shirley Brown, decided to start a dance company. They also began a school to train dancers, but money was tight and funding was scarce. So Vaughan says once they left Mills, they danced wherever they could, including churches and other locations not necessarily made for dancing. From the beginning, Dimensions focused on a range of styles-- Haitian, modern, jazz, and even ballet. This diverse focus was pretty unusual, and still is today.

 

A continuing legacy

Since its founding, Dimensions has premiered over 50 evening-length dance works -- that’s a lot for a company its size. Many of these pieces were choreographed and directed by Vaughan herself, but the company has also collaborated with many other artists.

The work ranges from early pieces like “My People”, set to the poetry of Langston Hughes, to “Common Ground,” a collaboration with the Lily Cai Chinese Dance company that brought African and Chinese dance forms together. Vaughan has also collaborated with master musicians like South African horn legend Hugh Masakela, percussionist John Santos, and the late Bay Area jazz trumpeter Kahlil Shaheed. They have also been running free and low-cost youth programs for 20 years, and a junior company that has performed throughout the United States. Through it all, Vaughan says Dimensions has stayed true to its original mission.

“The company came together to preserve and perpetuate African and African-derived dance forms,” she says. “To that end, I think that we are [still] following our mission in bringing those things to stage.”

That commitment is shown in the piece that will premiere at Dimensions’ 40th anniversary celebration. It’s called Rhythms of Life: Down the Congo Line. The choreography highlights the way that original dances from the Congo have traveled around the world-- in this case to Brazil, Cuba and New Orleans.

Vaughan says that even though many kinds of cultural dance are practiced in the Bay Area, true cross-collaboration is not that common. So she commissioned four different choreographers to make the different sections of the piece: exuberant and joyous Congolese dance by Herve Makaya; the intense Afro-Cuban Palo to connect to ancestors by José “Cheo” Rojas; celebratory New Orleans second line by LaTanya d. Tigner; and fierce Brazilian maculele, danced with sticks, by Isaura Oliveira.

Oliveira says this kind of collaborative performance is unusual for her. But it also seems like a natural outgrowth of teaching at the Malonga Center, where Dimensions is based, and where many styles of dance are taught.

“We walk through the halls and see each others’ class,” says Oliveira. “The music meets in the space, and then we visit each other.” She says they recognize elements of their own dance in others. They see and feel their shared roots.  “So it is around, and surround, and among us -- alive.”

 

An act of love

In the steamy rehearsal studio, Oakland poet Marvin White recites an incantation as the dancers slowly move into place for the next section.

“Tonight we are here to celebrate, to use our bodies in service of our people. Because dance still means we, who believe in the push and pull of the universe. Dance still means we who are celebrating, so children can see us in an act of love…”

Standing off to one side, Deborah Vaughan watches as her dancers stomp, leap and glide across the floor. She says that even now, she is still learning and discovering more about these dances. “When it comes to the African diaspora, I mean it could just go on forever, you know?” And from the rapt attention on her face, it’s clear that 40 years has not dimmed her enthusiasm.

Dimensions Dance Theater's 40th Anniversary Celebration takes place at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Saturday October 5, 2013, at 8pm.

Celebrating 40 years of dancing the African diaspora

Shake the syntax! A tale of borrowed voices

Radio drama, 31 min.

Beginning with her own teenage years in East Berlin, which was conforming to a so-called West, the artist interweaves micro-stories from Kosovo that reveal the effects of identity politics on lived lives. For her essay-like storytelling, she distorts original sounds from archival recordings and fuses them into electroacoustic compositions. In words and sound, she imagines a hypothetical future that could be fed by the dreamed lives of the voices she has recalled. The radio drama serves as the prelude to nine sonic portraits: seven of human beings, and two of spaces. It includes research recordings with Kaltrina Krasniqi, Genc Salihu, Alisa Maliqi and Shkëlzen Maliqi.
Scientific and artistic research consultant, accompanying drawings: Michael Fesca
Producer and research coordination: Donjetë Murati
Copy-editing: Lily Bromley
Bajram Kafu Kinolli`s story is based on his own words in the recording of the Oral History Initiative Kosovo. The entire interview by Erëmirë Krasniqi from 24 May 2016 can be read on oralhistorykosovo.org/bajram-kafu-kinolli/
Mobile audio recordings and electro acoustic sound collages by Anna Bromley
The frame narrative was recorded at BBK Media Workshop Berlin.
Editing and audio postproduction: Michael Fesca and Anna Bromley
Concept, texts, and direction: Anna Bromley, 2022
Commissioned by Manifesta 14 Prishtina

A voice exists in voicing. A prelude

A voice exists in voicing by Anna Bromley, part 1 - Shake the syntax! A tale of borrowed voices

How Katrina Krasniqi almost gets lost in the streets she wasn't allowed to go to as a child.

All the way from the City Park passing by the Dodona Theater to Kino Rinia, 47 min.

In the early morning, the city park is still cool. Kaltrina and Anna take an espresso among some elderly women and start walking. Back in spring, the filmmaker told Anna about her uncle, who directed the craziest plays in a self-organised theatre during the period of repression. Anna is curious so they stroll in the direction of this building.

Scientific and artistic research consultant, accompanying drawings: Michael Fesca
Producer and research coordination: Donjetë Murati
Copy-editing: Lily Bromley
Mobile audio recordings and electro acoustic sound collages by Anna Bromley

The frame narrative was recorded at BBK Media Workshop Berlin.
Editing: Michael Fesca and Anna Bromley
Audio postproduction: Manfred Miersch
Concept, texts, and direction: Anna Bromley, 2022
Commissioned by Manifesta 14 Prishtina

A voice exists in voicing

A voice exists in voicing by Anna Bromley, part 2 - How Katrina Krasniqi almost gets lost…

Water No Get Enemy

In the mid-seventies, hundreds of mini radio stations were set up in Italy, France, Switzerland, and West Germany. Some of these were clandestine, collectively organized stations that dared to experiment with political reporting. They broadcast police riots against street protests, the voices of prisoners, and information about lesbian bars – until the police tracked down and confiscated their equipment. The participatory readings of JetztSprechen bring to mind the forced closure of such radio stations, which had been an important mouthpiece for the New Social Movements.

Reading at the Kunstverein Röderhof with Ralf Biring, Dieter Burgwald, Annegret Dalitz, Hartmut Dalitz, Anette Groschopp, Renate Jochin, Maren Kühn, Friedburg Kühn, Susanne Lieb, Sandra Luckau, Freya Mingerzahn, Renate Schrader, and Olaf Wegewitz using a mobile sound recorder, gray publications, historical flyers, archive recordings and photographs.

JetztSprechen (SpeakingNow) | Auditory re-enactment of the last live radio minutes of "Radio Freies Wendland" on June 8, 1980

Interview with Bush Radio in Cape Town on our first fundraiser dinner.

Bush Radio X Imbokodo Trust

Oregelbundet is the shit! Första podden 2018 är här! Vi pratar om #metoo och det tänker vi göra i varje podd! Sonja hoppas ni alla förstår att hon VALT att vara singel, vi pratar om sociala medier och Joanna blir så arg att hon pratar i halva meningar, vi utreder skillnaden mellan ensamhet och ensamhet och överlag är vi roliga och smarta som vanligt. Lyssna eller låt bli, det är ett fritt val!

Första podden 2018!!!

Some inmates say food in a prison's chow hall is tasteless and bland. But that's not the case when John Parratt — also known as Yah-Yah — is in the kitchen.

He has the ability to make prison food taste like it's been home-cooked. It's why many have dubbed him the unofficial Chef of San Quentin.

San Quentin Radio is a project in which KALW editors work with inmates to tell stories inside the prison. San Quentin officials listened to and approved the script and audio for this story prior to broadcast. Thanks to Sam Robinson and Larry Schneider for their help.

San Quentin Radio: A chef turns chow hall meals into magic

"Lisp" is a startling deconstructed electronic fantasia by Cologne-based Swan Meat. She started the track whilst participating in the RBMA Bass Camp at Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. The track premiered on July 23 on Peak Time, Red Bull Radio's daily new music show, alongside a live interview with Swan Meat. 
@swanmeat

Listen in here: https://www.redbullradio.com/shows/peak-time/episodes/july-23-2018

Swan Meat - "Lisp" [PEAK TIME PREMIERE]

Anna`s artistic work combines drawing, writing, archival research and photography, with producing radio dramas and audio essays. It has been commissioned by Manifesta 14, 23. Triennale di Milano, beuys2021, WDR, and Documenta 14. Upcoming projects in 2023 at ZAK – Center for Contemporary Art Berlin, depo and tarabya ka Istanbul. Tune in!
Photos: Atdhe Mulla (Head shot, 2022), Arne Reinhardt (Drawing, 2023)

JetztSprechen (SpeakingNow) | Auditory re-enactment of the last live radio minutes of "Radio Freies Wendland" on June 8, 1980

Anna Bromley

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