Sweat Your Truth

If you grew up in 90’s you probably know what it meant to be “sweatin” somebody. It’s something like liking someone, and doing all sorts of things to make sure they know you like them. You are after them. And you might do a little too much to make sure they notice you.

What if you were just as committed, just as passionate, willing to go just as far, when it comes to sweatin’ your truth?

I imagine your body would move in all sorts of ways. I figure you would get in tune with others around you. I know you would not hide. You would let us see what you are finding, because you would know that we would find ourselves in it too.

Here I’m sharing a beautiful interview with Maria Bauman, Artistic Director of MBDance. Her bio starts with the words:

“Muscles. Beads of sweat. Exertion. Inversion. Carving out selfhood.”

She is “a woman dancer, a person of color, a southern not-quite-belle who grew up poor, and a queer person.”

Her “choreography for MBDance is based on physical and emotional power, desire for equity, and fascination with intimacy”

She asserts that “the popular notion of a ‘neutral body,’ often described in contemporary dance classes, does not exist in her experience.” Instead she creates “from storied bodies, mythological bodies, bodies-in-creation, and bodies-as-manifestos.”

In the previous episode of the podcast I invited you into a conversation with the great Jawole Zollar, founder of Urban Bush Women. Here I am inviting you into a conversation with one of her mentees. I met Maria while working with UBW and I have not met too many other people who are such kindred spirits.

We go about our work in very different ways. But there is spiritual alignment, a commitment to the body, a passion for culture and a promise to community that makes me feel like Maria and I are here serving the same force, aiming to fulfill a similar purpose.

I encourage you to listen with care and to let yourself be inspired. I invite you to get after your truth with all of your spirit and to dance in such a way that the truth sweats out of you.

Links

Bio

Maria Bauman (she/her) is a Brooklyn, NY-based multi-disciplinary artist and community organizer from Jacksonville, FL. Since 2009, she creates bold and honest artworks for her company MBDance, based on physical and emotional power, insistence on equity, and fascination with intimacy. In particular, Bauman’s dance work centers the non-linear and linear stories and bodies of queer people of color onstage. She draws on her long study of English literature, capoeira, improvisation, dancing in living rooms and nightclubs, as well as concert dance classes to embody interconnectedness, joy, and tenacity.

Before beginning her own company, Bauman danced with Urban Bush Women and was associate artistic director of the company as well as director of education and community engagement. She has both learned much from and added much to UBW's entering, building and exiting community methodology. She has also danced jumatau poe & Donte Beacham, Nia Love/Blacksmith's Daughter, jill sigman/thinkdance, Tatyana Tenenbaum and apprenticed with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.

Bauman was recently recognized with a Bessie Award for Outstanding Production for her choreographic work on Saul Williams's The Motherboard Suite, and this follows the Bessie she won in 2017 for Outstanding Performance with the Black dance improvisation group Skeleton Architecture. Currently, she is an Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center 2.0 Fellow, as well as a member of the Bessies Selection Committee and a mentor with Queer Art Mentorship. Bauman is a community organizer and co-founder of ACRE (Artists Co-creating Real Equity) which is built on the foundation of The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond's anti-racist community organizing principles. She's also part of the Dancing While Black family/organizing circle. Organizing to undo racism informs her artistic work and the two areas are each ropes in a Double-dutch that is her holistic practice.

Gibran RiveraComment