In 2007, Liz and members of the Dance Exchange were invited to Japan to facilitate workshops with the Kyoto Art Center, Japan Contemporary Dance Network, Fukuoka City Foundation for Arts and Cultural Promotion, and Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media. Liz wrote this note attempting to make connections between her pieces “613 Radical Acts of Prayer” and “Small Dances about Big Ideas”. It still holds relevance today.
How to be an upstander rather than a bystander? The very cogent and difficult question posed by Samantha Power in 2002 book “The Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide” through the powerful and brave human beings she chooses to chronicle in the midst of the pain of also describing years of genocide and mass mayhem. What makes it possible for some of us to do more than register our distress, shrug our shoulders, turn away, go shopping (or be told to go shopping by our leaders).
One of the scientists we came to know during our work on genetics is Bonnie Bassler, the American molecular biologist at Princeton. Bonnie has been working in the world of bacteria. What she posed initially is what makes one tiny bacterium realize that it can’t do its work alone. What makes the one tiny organism literally change its genetic makeup so that it can work as part of a group? And when it does that, Bonnie calls it quorum sensing, then the power of bacteria begins and we experience the impact of a viral epidemic.
Acting in the world alone or in groups can have such goodness and do such harm. What makes the difference? (Religion is supposed to help us make better decisions, but as we know too much faith can be part of the problem)… And is part of our dread of action the knowledge that it can go so wrong? Certainly part of our fear of engaging with others is losing the delight we might take in our own individual lives (for those of us lucky to enough to live in a time and place and with resources that make this actually fun).
Again, old questions for me and the Dance Exchange. We have covered this territory before. What makes this time new and special. I suppose again, I can explain it by thinking about science. The genome is showing us that without a doubt evolution has occurred. And at least in part, evolution is caused by the interaction of our genetic makeup with the environment. It is, it turns out, and we are all about both nature and nurture.
And so we might look and say that both our nature and our nurturing are being called into question right now. The actions of world governments require world citizens to wake up and look around. What does it mean to be an upstander and not a bystander? And how do we recognize the myriad ways people have tried and will imagine in the future, to bring their bodies and minds and spirits together to try to tame the viruses we inflict on each other?
