Cuban folkloric dance group Las Que Son Son. Photo by RJ Muna.
It’s January and that means audition season. Over the past two weekends in San Francisco, Calif., more than a hundred solo artists and groups in culturally-specific dance forms have presented their work in front of a panel of experts, fellow dancers and the general public, in the hopes of securing a spot in the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, one of the largest cultural dance festivals in the U.S. Julie Mushet, executive director of World Arts West, the organization that orchestrates the annual festival, elaborates on the selection process leading up to the final performances in June.
EH: The San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival is celebrating its 31st year of production in 2009. What are some of the keys to sustaining this large-scale event?
JM: I think one of the important factors was the foresight of the folks who started the festival 30 years ago. Because there has been this opportunity, this professional-level festival where artists can be showcased, I think it just sort of built upon itself. Because there was a stage, it encouraged people to rehearse, to put together an audition, and then the festival was enticing enough to really help be one of the factors that encouraged people to keep doing it.
EH: Tell me about the audition process. On what criteria do you make your selections?
JM: On our website, www.worldartswest.org, you can go to the audition application and download the guidelines, which will show you all of the criteria that are being used.
There’s a scoring process. Every year we put together a different panel. It’s like a check and balance; the panelists are actually charged only with evaluating the auditions. We try to have expertise in as many of the forms that are being auditioned as possible and if we don’t, then we’ll often bring in an expert for consultation for a form that we haven’t seen or that the panel isn’t knowledgeable in.
Then the panelists, after they watch all 100-ish auditions, are asked to put together their top 20 list. And that’s a really excruciating process, but in forcing them to do that (they always complain that they can’t pick [just] 20), those lists are all merged and we get this amazing spreadsheet that has an order [how many panelists chose each artist or group]. It’s really fascinating to see where those cutoffs happen. Even though they all have different expertise, there’s usually a pretty consistent crossover.
The merged list is then handed to the artistic directors, Carlos Carvajal and CK Ladzekpo, to program with. Obviously if all the panelists were unanimous, it pretty much follows what that list lays out in a nice graphic way.
EH: During your seven-year tenure as executive director, what have you learned about putting on the festival?
JM: Something I think is underestimated by a lot of presenters, and is really my number one job on some level, is to fill the house. We sold out the festival for the last three years. I think there’s something really magical that happens when an artist looks out and feels a full house—a thousand people—that are all there participating to support their performance. It’s something I’ve experienced now to really urge presenters—and artists, actually. A lot of the groups are doing their own home seasons, and they work hard to make these beautiful shows, but no one’s making sure the audience is full. It breaks my heart to see 10 percent of the house full; nothing makes me crazier these days.
EH: You mentioned that the audition weekends are your favorite part of your job. Why is this?
JM: Between the auditions there are some really wonderful dialogues. Part of the audition process is to give feedback to the groups that are auditioning. So that’s one of my favorite parts—to really listen to the conversations, and then those get typed up and given back to the groups a few weeks later. (A DVD of the audition performance is also provided to each group, as are professional photos shot and donated by RJ Muna.) That helps everyone get to the next level professionally.
EH: What happens between now and June, when the festival begins?
JM: Working on creating transitions between the pieces, which is what makes the festival so different from the auditions. There’s no time when nothing is happening onstage. Auditions are just: lights up, groups on and off stage. There’s no lighting design, no scene design. But once those groups are selected the first week of February, they go into rehearsals to make the transitions.
A musician from the first group and a musician from the second group will create a fusion piece between the two of them: a musician from Takjikistan doing a jam with a musician from Peru, for instance. This has been the vision of the artistic directors, who are now in their third year.
A Mexican folk dancer of Raices de Mi Tierra. Photo by RJ Muna.
EH: What do you think about artists whose tradition is not in the proscenium theater?
JM: That’s the crux of one of our greatest challenges. Most of these dances were never meant to be on a proscenium stage, which is why I think the work of the festival is so incredible. Many of these dances were in temples and village and squares, wherever—they’re changed. We fight every year to try to communicate that, in fact, these dances are changing all the time, and that’s probably the most palpable way of really looking at the most obvious way they change. They’ve been shifted or re-choreographed to be on a proscenium stage, and, therefore, they have inherently changed. That’s what makes them now kind of American dances—Indian-American dances or Peruvian-American dances or whatever—because they’re now being presented differently. I think that’s healthy, actually. I think that’s exciting. It really speaks to the artistry and excitement of the field.
EH: Do you think that the Westernization, the proscenium stage, is ever doing one of the dances a disservice, maybe taking away from its own integrity?
JM: Yeah. I’m sure. But I think that that’s the artistic process.
EH: That’s what you have to work with. You have a venue that would suit most in a way that’s familiar to the audiences. Is that true?
JM: I think a lot of the dances are being done in similar environments to the home country. They’re still being performed in local temples and churches and community centers in ways that they traditionally were—at least closer than the proscenium stage. But what’s amazing about the festival is that everyone comes onto one stage, and it’s an amazing cross-cultural experience. I think most people who come for the first time are coming to watch one particular dance. A culture: either their own culture, their friend’s or loved one. Or someone is performing, or something sparks their interest to come see that dance. But what I’ve seen over the years is that this is how people fall in love with other forms and become intrigued about other forms. Then they might go see that [company’s] season. It’s really helping raise the cultural literacy of the whole community, because you can’t sit through a whole performance of eight or nine different cultures and not really learn something or see something that you hadn’t seen before.
It’s happening right here. And if this is just what’s coming to the festival stage, it’s the tip of the iceberg. It’s exciting to think what’s happening throughout the Bay Area in all these communities in their own spaces, because we’re just seeing 5 or 10 minutes of what they’re doing year-round. It’s a glimpse into the richness that surrounds us. It’s pretty exciting to let someone have broad exposure with pretty minimal investment.
The 31st Annual San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival takes place every weekend in June at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.
Tickets: (415) 392-4400 or purchase online at www.cityboxoffice.com, www.tickets.com
Emily Hite is a freelance writer based in San Francisco, CA.
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