Bronx-based dancer, director, and educator Kayla Hamilton is at a transitional second in her profession. Her largest ensemble venture but, The way to Bend Down / The way to Choose It Up—a multidisciplinary efficiency exploring histories of Black incapacity, whereas imagining a liberated future—premieres at New York Metropolis’s The Shed subsequent week earlier than embarking on a U.S. tour in 2025. She additionally just lately launched Circle O, a cultural group described as “by and for Black Disabled and different multiply marginalized creatives.” Along with these firsts, Hamilton just lately obtained a number of awards, together with a 2024 Incapacity Futures Fellowship and the 2023–2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship.
At the same time as she positive factors momentum and institutional recognition, Hamilton stays deeply related to her roots. The identify Circle O honors her household in Texarkana, Texas, the place her grandfather, Oscar Hamilton, was the principal of an all-Black elementary faculty. Hamilton solely simply wrapped up her personal 12-year profession as a public-school educator—a path she pursued in tandem along with her dance work. She’s now poised to deliver her highly effective creative imaginative and prescient to a nationwide viewers.
I think about you’re in full manufacturing mode for The way to Bend Down / The way to Choose It Up.What has this course of been like for you?
I’m nodding my head and my physique is rocking ahead and again from the hips. I’m searching the window. I simply had a visceral response to that query. The best way my physique is responding is the true reply.
I realized so much about myself via this course of, and I realized that the work I wish to put into the world is a life follow. It’s past simply dance, as a result of we’re undoing ableism contained in the follow. Dancers come into their coaching to get it proper, to make it good, however incapacity is the tactic and the topic on this course of. We’re actually good at being with incapacity as a topic in america. However there’s a lack of expertise of incapacity as a way, too.
How does incapacity as a way present up in The way to Bend Down?
After we ask people for his or her entry wants, we’re additionally asking for entry intimacy with oneself. You don’t must be Disabled to expertise ableism. There could also be components of ourselves we let go of with the intention to be like others. And whilst you might be able to masks your wants and needs, go alongside to get alongside, the place does that depart individuals who can not make their entry wants fade away?
I’m making an attempt to acknowledge the entire individual, every individual as a human being. It makes it tougher in course of, as a result of I’m not asking you to get the step “proper” in rehearsal. I’m asking you to deepen into what your physique is feeling, as an alternative of pushing via simply because that’s what the director requested you to do. It’s possible you’ll dance in a different way each single day, and I’m okay with that.
Do you discover that there’s rigidity between the strategy you’re describing and the social {and professional} expectations to supply one thing that’s recognizable as a dance efficiency?
Sure, completely! How do I make it clear that what’s occurring in my course of is what’s occurring onstage? I’m doing this work to create space for each physique to have entry to bounce as an artwork type. To perform that, we have now to interrupt away from concepts of mastery, magnificence, and perfection.
We’re normally instructed that there’s just one possibility or one strategy to entry one thing. I’m making an attempt to offer a number of entry factors inside a artistic experiment. The viewers can study one thing about themselves, as effectively.
Within the spirit of a number of entry factors, would you be keen to share some sensory impressions out of your rehearsal course of?
Individuals sitting in circles, together with our American Signal Language interpreters. You’ll hear somebody say, “Did you drink water but?” You’ll hear that repeatedly. Blue ground cushions and a fuzzy blanket. The odor of Tiger Balm. Laughter. You’ll hear, “The place are we ranging from once more?” You’ll hear Spanish language and Southern accents. A variety of ages. COVID checks and masks. You’ll hear quite a lot of, “Huh! Oh…okay…hm…I see. So what you’re saying is…? Wait, maintain up.”
I noticed in your web site that one of many questions Circle O poses is the right way to discover joyful and playful expression whereas concurrently holding the “crushing generational weight of systemic violence and oppression.” Are you navigating that query in The way to Bend Down?
Some components of the present are heavy, however we use humor to deal with these concepts. Are you able to think about how drained I might be with out humor? Intergenerational energy, Black, Disabled ancestors, and enslaved individuals gave me the energy to do what I do. There’s any individual round me, in my ear and coronary heart house, whispering, “Push individuals.” I can’t undergo life with out pushing pleasure—in any other case I might burn out. And I’m not going wherever, so I have to giggle and play.
What do you’re feeling your self rooting into, amidst all this progress and alter?
I’m rooting in love. I’m rooting myself in my very own rising fringe of curiosity—no matter I’m asking of others, I’m additionally asking of myself. Dance is therapeutic and religious, and I need each physique to have entry to that. I attempt to create containers wherein individuals really feel cared for, seen, and valued, to allow them to start to dismantle hierarchies. Nonhierarchical constructions in a rehearsal course of are sufficient to shake the room. With freedom comes duty and accountability. Im asking, “Do we wish it?”
