Nurturing Diversity in Dance

By LEWIS SEGAL

Dec. 29, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES DANCE CRITIC

UCLA professor Judy Mitoma’s current projects represent some of the most visionary approaches to dance and related arts at the turn of this century. As founder of the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures, she brought her interdisciplinary, intercultural perspective to university arts education--a perspective that helped change a conventional dance department into an innovative, experimental school for what she calls “culture workers” reflecting the diversity of American society and the richness of its traditions.

Five years ago, the Ford Foundation invited her to develop an international exchange program and from that idea came the UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance, an arts think tank that Mitoma sees as “similar to what research in the medical school is to medicine,” and the Asian Pacific Performance Exchange, which brings foreign artists to the campus for intensive cross-cultural collaboration and exploration.

A five-year media project funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts involves dancers and videographers in the question of how dance on screen can document and support live performance as well as be a creative act in itself. And a related Rockefeller-funded program brings arts writers into the process.

Most recently, Mitoma served as chair for the Dalai Lama’s World Festival of Sacred Music--the Americas, a groundbreaking event reemphasizing the spiritual dimension in life and the performing arts.

Question: Do you think the so-called multicultural revolution has been won, that Americans now understand that European culture represents only one tradition shaping our national identity?

Answer: In general we have really achieved an enormous amount in the last 20 years in regard to understanding the value of being a part of a multicultural society. This is something we need to work on constantly; there’s still a lot of slippage, a lot of resentment, but there’s also a lot of forward motion and positive action as well.

I like to shock people by saying that I believe there are more 1/8classical Indian 3/8 Bharata Natyam dancers in Los Angeles than there are ballet dancers. And while I can’t prove that statement, I feel in some important ways that it’s true--that there are more people committed to Bharata Natyam in this city than people committed to ballet. The cultural environment here is giving some weight to their practice that goes beyond the dancing itself, that makes it a social, a communal, a religious and spiritual practice.

Our challenge in the next 10 years will be to look at those other values and learn from them--not just focus our attention and energy on an aesthetic physical practice. It’s not that we need to become Bharata Natyam dancers, but we need to look at the dynamics that are occurring in that world to learn how we might apply them to 1/8what 3/8 other kinds of dancers could be doing to contribute to the health of our society.

Q: What trends do you see in end-of-century concert dance that interest or bother you?

A: I often see people drawn to the spectacular, the shocking, the dangerous. I understand why: It has an element of physical suspense, the sense of going to the fullest extent--and also, potentially, harm or injury. I find it more satisfying when the art form goes to a deeper place of revelation and insight.

Also I feel that we are suffering because of the economics of live performance. We cannot produce and recover costs, it’s just impossible in dance. We have got to figure out how to make our practice accessible--to put it out there in a way that we can afford and that the public will support.

My approach is that you always start doing things with nothing. People will eventually see the value of what you’ve done and resources will come forth. What can you do with nothing? You can do a lot. When you go to other countries you see that’s all they do. There is no other option. They never have money.

Q: Do you believe that classical ballet is completely outmoded or can you find value in it?

A: On my last trip to New York I saw “The Nutcracker” at Lincoln Center and it was a beautiful thing to watch families bring their children to the theater. I am fascinated to see that there exists in this society a sense of “enculturation”--this is a really important thing. And I think that participation must go beyond “The Nutcracker.” We’re underestimating our children by just thinking that’s the only thing they’re going to be interested in.

We must take that lesson and think more broadly about it and create more opportunities for children to go into the theater to see things that can be a family experience. We as artists have got to get over the sense of a narrow definition of our audience.

I was told that in Japan, one out of every three kids studies a musical instrument. You meet a lot of Korean students who have learned to paint as just part of growing up. Unfortunately we have lost that sensibility.

Unless young people at an early age understand the power of dance, the pleasures, the sense of personal satisfaction, the self-expression and exploration, all we will see is flag dancing out on the football field.

In the 10th grade, I had a wonderful gym teacher who taught modern dance in her white gym shorts. If Doris Richardson wasn’t there at that high school, I’m sure I would not be here now.

Q: Talk to me about the local dance scene. Haven’t you found it strangely isolated from the community issues that interest you?

A: I don’t think anybody should speak without taking personal responsibility for the problem, and I do--but dancers are social creatures, a community-oriented people. They take classes together, they create together, they’re on the stage together. That’s the nature of our discipline as opposed to, say, a poet’s.

My feeling is we have not taken that fact to heart and integrated it in our larger sense of purpose and practice here. We don’t have the kind of interaction that New York has because in New York people are taking class in the same studios, tripping over one another, finding out what’s happening. If only we could get ourselves organized to create this sense of inclusive community, beyond the heroic efforts of Dance Kaleidoscope, we would get back on our feet. When I say community, I’m also referring to a self-reflective body of artists that is in dialogue or discourse with itself--one that is supporting but also demanding high standards from each other. This doesn’t happen overnight. 1/8But 3/8 we can’t leave it only to the critics. We need to engage in it ourselves.

Q: In the past you’ve said the dance world is too obsessed with performance issues, that it’s missing the larger picture. Would you explain?

A: We need to look at the whole arc of dance activity, and see that some of it is simple, repetitive participation and other kinds are very complicated, virtuosic art--and we need to care about it all. If we only worry about what happens on a stage or the demise of concert dance or touring work we will continue to lose sight of the other infrastructure issues that make all that happen.

If people actually do something, they know the value of it. I am convinced about this: You will never feel the same about people if you have danced with them. We need to make sure that dance is part of our daily lives, not just something on a stage.

I’m talking about investing in human interaction in such communal activities as holding hands during a line dance in Eastern Europe. I’m Japanese American, so of course I think of O Bon 1/8group folk 3/8 dancing. And I think O Bon at its very best has that sense of coalescing the energy of the community. At its worst, it’s some diffused step-to-the-right, step-to-the-left empty-hearted effort. But at its best it’s very powerful.

Anybody can do this kind of dance, and instead of being about me, me, me, it’s about us, us, us. And it doesn’t take away from the individual; in fact it adds to the individual’s sense of power to know that there exists, through the physical practice of the group, a deep sense of cohesion and bonding.

I think performing artists are one of the most powerful sectors of a society because what we do is we bring people together in a shared experience and ask from them the most precious thing that anybody can give, which is time. I don’t believe we’ve taken that role as seriously as we could or should. That opportunity of convening people must be more powerfully mined for its potential. If we did that, there could be a serious transformation of our society.

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CROSSROADS

This is the fourth day in a series of interviews, conducted by Calendar critics, with leaders in the arts and entertainment. It continues in daily Calendar through Friday.

Dec. 26

* MUSIC: Tod Machover, MIT media lab and new music composer

Dec. 27

* TELEVISION: Jeff Cohen, founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

* MOVIES: John Lasseter, creative guru at Pixar Animation Studios

Dec. 28

* THEATER: Cherry Jones, Tony-winning actress

* FOOD: Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panisse in Berkeley

Today

* POP MUSIC: Tom Morello, Rage Against the Machine guitarist

* DANCE: Judy Mitoma, director, Center for Intercultural Performance, UCLA

Thursday