UW-Madison got to experience a community celebration in the Jamaican tradition called Moonshine, thanks to professor Chris Walker. For the past seven years, students have shared a piece of themselves in response to the world around them. This year, with a full moon simulated onto the stage backdrop, students offered the same powerful energy.
Before suspense could sweep through the space, drums rolled over and surrounded the audience in a fit of passionate rhythm. The percussionists Mandjou Mara, an expert of traditional and contemporary Guinea, West African Music, and Juan Martinez prepared an atmosphere for the African Dance Classes to stomp onto the stage. The first piece comprised of sixteen dancers following the beat onto the stage in two lines. With each performer dancing gleefully, the audience began a journey to Guinea. The dancers swung their arms, lifted their knees and flexed their chests in a style that allowed us to witness the heritage their movements embodied. With fifteen new dancers, we remained in Guinea a little longer. Then, as the drums rushed them out, we moved to the Caribbean Islands as performers of an African Caribbean masquerade group took the stage.
Professor Walker explained that we were exposed to movements that show us 22 steps of "Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, Trinidad, Barbados and Guyana." In reflection of black culture during the month of February, Moonshine was given a strong opening with the African and Caribbean dance pieces.
"I come from a space where we really believe in the African contribution that is very much an important part of the North American cultural quilt," Walker shared, and he went on to say that the dancers are presenting, “[the] black experience through performance".
The drums continued their rhythmic flurry, and we received a surprise performance from Walker himself and special guests Ali Sylvester, Keil Alibocas and Najja Codrington of the KowTeff African Dance Company. Walker was covered in silver feathers when he entered, and if that were not striking enough, Alibocas and Codrington entered from the sides of the space on stilts. Codrington shared the intentional effect of the shock value of the stilts was to bring the audience to a "different level of awareness". The stilts were intended to touch different people in different ways, because, "you can extend a message to a multitude of people just from expression."
Alibocas and Codrington embodied the Jumbie spiritual creatures of Caribbean folklore. These creatures are said to be able to bridge the gap between the land of the living and the dead. From this legend, we received our story on the stage. Walker articulated as one of an old man who wants to know, "how close can I get with the ancestors," through these giants, the Jumbies.
With the atmosphere fully set, the dancers exited, and the room became dark. The silhouette of our next performer centered on the stage. Riley Faison featured an excerpt of his Masters of Fine Arts thesis performance of “Mambo Mouth” by John Leguizamo. Faison selected Angel Garcia as his feature character, a Latino man arrested for domestic abuse against his cheating wife. His initial MFA production was the weekend prior to Moonshine, and, just as before, he did a fantastic job being in the moment and using his audience as his final element. The sighing signaled that the audience responded with an identical sympathy for the character as in last week's production. Fasion used the reaction to fuel his performance further, and filled the theatre with his voice without the need of a microphone. He deserved the applause bestowed.
Again, we were presented with a monologue, with more hard-to-swallow depth. When the silhouette was revealed, we knew our performer to be Zhalarina Sanders, a First Wave scholar of the fifth cohort. But the character, a sickly-toned black woman, had already made a disturbing entrance in the dark, repeating the word "abortion" several times. Shivering from the way Sanders’ body cringed and hunched every time she repeated the word was expected. The story of a mother who commits abortion so as to not give her husband another victim to abuse was not easy to swallow. We all held our breath, until she said the line, "24 years of unclaimed babies," and our lungs seemed to drop in unison.
Next was the Touring Ensemble, a group of First Wave scholars who have auditioned to form a traveling performance group. This year, the Touring Ensemble includes juniors Melana Bass and Sean Medlin and sophomores Joseph Verge, Deshawn McKinney and Eric Newble Jr. These individuals presented a joint work that forced the audience to face the issue of violence without justice against black men in the U.S. and asked us to think deeper about the frivolously-used concept of "safe space".
The presentation began with Bass, who brought the full impact of a strong black woman. She used her brother as an example of her fear for his life, because of the violence he's likely to face. The other four followed Bass’ piece with three different presentations. They first spoke about the pressures minority students experience as a part of UW-Madison. They lifted tipped over chairs to illustrate their supposed “equal” welcome to the school as other students. The guys then rearranged the chairs in a circle and rotated around the seats to take turns charging the teachers and faculty with questions of creating a non-micro-aggressive environment for students of color. The chairs were then rearranged again for a final presentation that challenged the concept of safe space. Similar to the previous piece, they posed the questions: "Who is safe space really for?” and "What does it really mean?”
"Safe space has to come from us and them, for us and them," Newble Jr. said during the performance.
James Gavins, another First Wave scholar of the second cohort, was the fifth performer and changed the tone of the show, returning our attention to dance. He electrified the space with expertly controlled joint-ticks, waves and isolated robotic movement. After Gavins, Taylor Scott, of the First Wave’s fifth cohort, lead The BellHops in a smooth jazz/doo-wop performance, followed by rapper Michael Penn II, known as CRASHprez, who popped hard with his rhymes of survival against the odds. CRASHprez called everyone to their feet and turned Moonshine into a lively rap concert. There was no time to think of who was around, you simply nodded your head and rapped along with the lyrics you managed to catch on to. He exited with the crowd in mid-chant, allowing singer/rapper Myriha Burton, of the Fourth Cohort of First Wave, to take full advantage of the energy for a jazz and hip-hop session.
McKinney’s voice then rang from the top of the theatre. He used recent success of black performers in pop culture to bring to our attention the violence that is still present. He wants us to stop ignoring the facts, and understand our individual duty to end violence. All the performers joined McKinney for his final words then bowed in gratitude of the audience.
Moonshine was a success for its way of exposing a variety cultural traditions to the campus. Just as those in Jamaica who gather in celebration, UW-Madison students had the same demonstration of passionate artistry.
