Not About Race Dance by Gerald Casel (review)

Gerald Casel’s investigations into racial dynamics take many forms. Since 2018, Casel has organized Dancing Around Race gatherings, and, in 2021, Not About Race Dance had its premiere at CounterPulse. I watched a recording of Not About Race Dance made available for free in December, the day that bell hooks passed, and sensed hooks’s description of the politics of white-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal exclusion in the performance. I, as a white, cisgender woman, am aware of the access and advantages my whiteness has provided and that Casel’s multifaceted performance illuminate. Not About Race Dance, choreographed with movement collaborators Styles Alexander, Audrey Johnson, Karla Quintero, and Cauveri Suresh, vivified the racial politics of postmodern dance.

The recording began with a camera situating the viewer within the white walls of CounterPulse while the sound of TLC’s “Waterfalls” filled the space. Casel walked onto the white stage carrying a speaker, accompanied by shouts of joy from the audience. Standing center stage, he faced us. His hips rocked to the rhythm.

Words appeared on the back wall: “I am performing an accumulated sequence”; “It’s an adaptation of Trisha Brown’s choreographic device”; “She made a dance entitled ‘Accumulation’ in 1971.” Brown’s gestures, visible in Casel’s actions, were also transmuted. Casel’s dancing signaled Cholly Atkins’s work with the Temptations and the Pips in the 1960s and ’70s: understated cool with exquisite attention to detail and smooth transitions. The moment provoked thoughts about artists of color who are consistently written out of definitions of post-modernism. Brilliantly clear in this initial moment, Casel’s work brings into physical form the theories of Brenda Dixon Gottschild and Cornel West, who have written about the multiple influences, borrowings, and erasures of white postmodernism.

Casel remained in one place. His dancing was lush and fluid. Words on the back wall connected this event to Neil Greenberg’s Not About AIDS Dance from 1994, the same year that TLC released “Waterfalls” (as celebrity artists, TLC also raised awareness for HIV/AIDS). More words appeared: “Seeing this piece made HIV more visible . . . more real.” By associating his work with Greenberg’s performance, Casel highlights how both of these events are performances that intervene in hegemonic systems of erasure. As dance performances these events operate kinesthetically, communicating through our senses, and offer an intimate sense of connection and vulnerability.

Audrey Johnson, Gerald Casel, Cauveri Suresh, Styles Alexander, and Karla Quintero in Not About Race Dance. (Photo: Robbie Sweeny.)

Born in the Philippines, Casel immigrated to the Bay Area when he was 8 years old. More words appeared: “I am a brown body performing an accumulated sequence in a big white cube to TLC’s ‘Waterfalls.’” About five minutes into this hour-long event, Casel’s solo ended. Duets, trios, and group sections followed. There is a gorgeous intricacy in Casel’s choreography: craft and compositional structure highlight the subtle interactions of dancers’ joints and bodies. Shoulders swivel, elbows elongate, and hips shift to generate a refined and luscious dynamic.

Elements of stillness and nuance underscore this physical virtuosity. Aron Altmark’s lighting design projected shadows of dancers on the white walls, transforming a duet into a dance of ten figures. A zig-zagging walking pattern by Casel ended as he descended to the floor, mirroring his duet partner in a reclining pose, their gazes lifted upwards, suggesting odalisques. This moment emphasized my role as a spectator, witness, or perhaps voyeur, highlighting the power dynamics between watchers and the watched. I appreciate the ways that complex questions emerge from Casel’s kinetic and kinesthetic propositions.

James Frazier considers Not About Race Dance particularly resonant for its ability to foreground the physical and emotional impact of “accumulation,” and I am indebted to our conversations after watching the recording. (Frazier had seen the performance at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography in November.) In postmodern dance, accumulation is a choreographic process that uses a sequence of relatively simple gestures to build...