Proving yet again that even on a two and a half month vacation, I cannot truly bring my routine to a screeching halt. I even temporarily stopped taking tango and Spanish conversational classes to free up my schedule, which made me one of the perfect people to volunteer for the ProArts sponsored Black Arts Movement (BAM) Festival. I originally signed up to volunteer for three days out of the twelve days of festivities and of course, those were precisely the three days that I did NOT have to volunteer with a notable exception of an hour on Saturday.
My first volunteer contribution was to pick up some dancers from the airport. I was apprehensive about driving a mini van, but was quite relieved to discover that it drove just like a regular car. I came pulling up to three women who just looked like dancers while wearing my capoeira uniform. Since I’m one of the few women who don’t like making several dress changes throughout the day, I could almost imagine myself as a quasi-bodyguard even though capoeira is an impractical fighting form–as a mixed martial arts fighter told me.
The following day, I picked up the choreographerof the group, Gesel Mason, from the hotel and transported her to Ballet Austin, where they were rehearsing and performing on Wednesday and Thursday. During the 15-minute drive, I learned that she was based in DC. I knew another Black female choreographer who was also based in DC, Aysha Upchurch. Certainly, I couldn’t resist asking Gesel if she knew Aysha. As this increasingly shrinking world would have it, Gesel and Aysha are very good friends. Gesel seemed blown away that I’d met Aysha when she conducted a dance workshop through the American Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where I was a HS IB Biology teacher at a private school.
I confessed to Gesel that I’d wanted to kidnap her dancers the previous night and take them to my capoeira class since we had a drum workshop after the beginner’s capoeria class. I bragged that my capoeira group were a wonderful, friendly bunch and we did performances on a regular basis to the extent that most people associated me with my capoeira group rather than my book, which, as a self-published writer, I’m supposed to promote in every waking moment, especially since I’m on vacation. Yet, I explained that what I love doing is being sociable, volunteering, performing with my capoeira group; so I couldn’t see turning my writing into solitary drudgery.
She politely asked what my book was about and I proudly told her that it was about a sexually liberated woman who was looking for Mr. Right and attempting to be smart about it by watching how other women pick up men. Then, much to my surprise, she asked me to participate in her show: “Women, Sex and Desire: Sometimes You Feel Like a Ho, Sometimes You Don’t.” Given the content of my book and erotic poetry, this was truly a special honor. The show, which combines different media also encourages audience participation and Gesel normally invites up to five local people on stage.
I arrived an hour before showtime in order to participate in a mini workshop with Gesel, her five dancers and the other four local participants. The workshop started off with defining what a “ho” was. We actually had one man in the group, who suggested that a ho was someone who did something that he or she hated to do for money; in his opinion, the “something” didn’t have to be sexual. We agreed with that definition, but I felt that a “ho” was usually thought of being a sexually undiscriminating woman and that anytime someone wanted to insult a woman, they could toss that word out, just like “bitch” or any other of the numerous insulting words for women.
Most of us could not come up with a positive world to call a woman who was confident with her sexuality. “Diva” was suggested, but any positive word for a woman can always turn negative. Yet, as I sat on stage and intermittently participated in sex-related discussions, I felt both relieved that other women had made similar choices as I’d done and enlightened by other women’s choices and opinions when it came to sex.
On Friday, I attended the BAM Cafe, which was an evening of music, capoeira Angola (not my group) and South African short indy movies, which occurred with significant overlap. Once again, I thought I was volunteering, but found out later that I could just kick back and enjoy, which was what I had been doing prior to receiving the official word. I met the South African couple, Maganthrie and Dingi, whose films would be shown later on in the evening. After they gave me a brief synopsis of their films, I happily told them that I had visited some of my cousins who were living in Johanesburg during the time that I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tanzania. I added, what I thought was an interesting tidbit: my cousin had married a former cricket player and the family had moved to Joburg so he could coach the cricket team there. Dingi gave me a peculiar look before asking if my cousin’s husband was from the Caribbean. Unbelievable! Once again, someone at the BAM fest knew someone from my past travels.
Just before the events began, I took a stroll around the beautiful grounds of the French Legation to see if I could make myself useful…OK, let me stop lying! I actually wanted a glass of red wine, but I didn’t want to be the first person there to have a glass of wine. The bartenders for the evening said that they were waiting for the arrival of a table cloth before they started pouring drinks. I didn’t make the connection between the two things, but figured that’s why they were the bartender volunteers and I wasn’t. Nonetheless, in order to do my part, I offered my multicolored cloth to put over the table. Then I walked away, saving my pursuit of red wine for after the movie presentation.
As I crossed the lawn, I saw the side profile of a Black woman with beautiful orangeblonde, waistlong dreads walking toward the movie screening area. I came up behind her and verbally got her attention. “Excuse me, did you use to teach African dance in Denver?” She corrected me by saying she used to teach AfroCaribbean dance. “And you’re also an indy filmmaker?” She agreed. I finally let her know that back around 2000, I’d taken several of her classes. We exchanged business cards and by this time, I firmly believed the BAM slogan: “A festival that feels more like a family reunion.”
So now, I approach each event with the expectation that I’ve got to meet as many people as possible since someone there HAS to either be someone who I used to know when I lived somewhere else or someone is good friends with a someone I’ve met in another country or state. I try to calm myself down and not attach anything mystical to these chance meetings, but even as I type this, I cannot coldly believe that there isn’t any significance to these “coincidences.”