Healing, Social Justice and Community: Dancers Unlimited
Photo Courtesy of www.dunyc-hi.com/calendar/apap-2023-edible-tales-theater-performance
Dancers Unlimited, founded in 2009, is a bi-costal, NYC, and Hawaii dance company. Community, justice, and health are the essence of the company. When I hopped on to our Zoom interview, it was a cold, rainy December day in NYC, but Dancers Unlimited Co-Founders Linda Kau and Candice Taylor radiated warmth and passion.
We discussed Dancers Unlimited’s history, mission, and passion as a group dedicated to social justice and to serve as a space for people to be authentic and explore their sense of self and community.
Both Linda and Candice come from a long background in dance. Linda was born in Taiwan. When she was three, her family immigrated to Hawaii, where her mom signed her up for Hula classes. Hula became Linda’s first dance language and was the catalyst for a deep love of movement and community experienced through dance. She moved to NYC to pursue a career in marketing but was continually called to dance. She quit her marketing job to pursue dance full-time, which led to the creation of Dancers Unlimited (DU).
Linda: After moving to New York to dance, I was exposed to Hip Hop, especially the more authentic, OG, Old School hip-hop. I trained with the pioneers, people who have been teaching around the world for like thirty plus years. Those pioneers became my teachers, my friends, and my family. That opened the door for me to start looking at dance from a different lens. In addition to entertainment, dance is a cultural expression and self-expression.
Candice’s dance journey is similar and reflects many of the same themes. She was born and raised in Boston. Her background in dance started traditionally with jazz, modern, tap, and ballet. When she moved to NYC, Candice discovered street style and their communities, which shaped her. Candice joined Dancers Unlimited in 2019, right before Covid struck. Undeterred by the Pandemic, driven by her passion for dance and the company, Candice invested her time and energy into the company. She became the co-artistic director of Dancers Unlimited this past year. She shared with me about her time with DU and how it has merged with her ideas about liberation.
Candice: I’ve really been able to express my creative ideas, as well as express what’s important to me. I’ve been able to share the stories that I’ve been a part of and the experiences that I’ve had, as well as learn about different cultures and their stories and what’s important to them. Throughout the few years that I’ve been a part of DU, I feel like I really have been able to find my voice and where I stand as far as leadership and artistry. I’ve also been able to learn about some cultures and really dive into the things that matter to them and make it matter to me as well. Because any issue of any culture that is an issue, has to be an issue of mine if we all want to be liberated.
It’s not every day that one sees a dance company laser-focused on social justice and community. Dancers Unlimited strives to create “AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT NARRATIVES For community advancement THROUGH CREATIVE COLLABORATION, community engagement, and social justice work.” From the way they run their open rehearsals to the food tours of Brooklyn neighborhoods, DU aims to be a strong presence in any community where they find themselves.
Linda told me how DU was founded. She left NYC and returned to Hawaii in 2009. While there, she saw a need. The public schools had canceled school on Fridays, creating a problem for parents who still had to work. DU offered free dance lessons and provided a space for those children. The company grew from there and eventually started performing and touring. They built relationships and learned from dance elders from different cultures and infused their company with strong values of the community.
Photo Courtesy of www.dunyc-hi.com/the-performers
Like for so many, everything changed when the Covid-19 Pandemic hit in 2020. The company shifted focus from performing and returned to their roots of fostering community with a new emphasis on healing.
Linda: Like everybody, we had the time to sit back and do a lot of self-reflection work. It was also around this time that the community was calling for healing. There was a lot of healing needed, not just covid, but the fear from it, and also racial awakening, unrest and protests. We decided we’re going to go back to our roots and holding space for the community and really investigate how to use dance as a tool for healing and restorative justice.
Restorative justice and community are keywords that came up repeatedly in the interview. The association is rare when people think about social justice and dance separately. I asked Linda and Candice to elaborate on how dance is vital to community and justice.
Candice: I think that bodies are very political in themselves because they hold so many stories and experiences, especially bodies of minorities, black and brown people. I feel like a lot of times when we speak out with our bodies, it is seen as an act of an active opposition. So why not already just use that as a tool to speak to people?
Candice explained that bodies hold stories. It is through movement, not just dance that healing can take place. When the body moves, shifts happen in mind, and questions arise. Movement gets the stories that were stuck unstuck. Candice talked about how healing and movement are even more powerful when people move together. It breaks down barriers. People in shared spaces moving together start to notice each other and want to learn more.
Linda added that dance has always been a cultural and human expression form. The prominent other forms are language and food, but the movement is vital. If you expose a baby to music, they dance, even when they cannot walk.
Linda: In a way, dance is really the first form of self-expression. And then, somewhere along the way, we started getting shy and getting into our own way of expressing whether it came from ourselves from outside sources, expectations, and restrictions.
Linda told me how dance can be powerful and dangerous for oppressors and is an essential tool for survival. Hula has been banned in Hawaii multiple times throughout Hawaiian history. Missionaries banned it because there was too much hip gyrating. When the United States took over Hawaii, they banned both Hula and the Native Hawaiian language.
Linda: Dance became a very, very real thing, a certain tool for survival. And then my Hula teachers taught me it’s not just a form of expression anymore. Dance became a form of survival and teaching tool to educate the next generation, and not just native Hawaiians living in the land of Hawaii, but also settlers like me, to teach us the history that’s being erased, to teach us the language that’s being banned, to teach us the dance of the ancestors of the land.
Dance is powerful for a community and the continuation of a people. It can transcend language and cultural barriers or strengthen cultural identities. It can create new communities and unite people from different cultures. Linda explained how that happened in the Bronx with Hip Hop.
Linda: The Bronx is burning in the seventies, and somehow out of that burning ruin, there’s this dance. It emerged as a global movement and a culture that’s become a billion-dollar industry now and being embraced by so many people because of that freedom of expression.
One of the most exciting things about Dancers Unlimited is their use of community rehearsals. They do not hold formal auditions for new members of the company. They use a model of community shared space which invites people and dancers to the company instead of holding auditions.
Linda: We used to have auditions and then we started really diving into social justice topics and our creative and shifting our creative process to a very community-centered one, meaning it takes more time. So Edible Tales [their upcoming project] was two and a half years in the making.
We started recognizing auditions, don’t really work anymore. First of all, because it’s really hard to find dancers. It’s not just about having the time, but having a commitment to really to dive into these topics because topics around social justice is not just something you can add to rehearsals, bang out a number and dance about it. We really want people who are dancers to have the opportunity to dive into these subjects. Sit in the discomfort of talking about racial injustice to come up with solutions with each other, and that takes time. That’s where the community rehearsal happens because our community rehearsals mimic the way we will tackle this very important topic and sometimes very challenging and sensitive and uncomfortable questions.
Auditions also take a lot of time. Linda talked about how she had lost jobs due to attending callbacks, an unfortunate Catch-22 in the dance world.
Linda: We just kind of decided to make our rehearsals free. If they want to come, want to join a company and learn what we are about, they can come. And then, if we’ve danced together, if our mission and values align, let’s dance together and perform.
Candice came to the company through the open rehearsals. She spoke about the welcoming and inclusive environment and community-centered process, which was less stressful and more personal than traditional auditions. It helps to find people who really want to be a part of the company in an authentic way.
Dancers Unlimited has a new project called Edible Tales. It is an immersive dance experience that dives into food’s role in our communities and identities. Edible Tales asks, “how does food connect us” and “what do we all have in common?” It also invites audiences to ponder how we use food to celebrate, to heal, and honor our ancestors. Candice explained the reasons they started working with food.
Candice: The more you understand food, the more you understand the cultures, and you understand how important it is to reconnect to these old values and to reconnect to traditional rituals. We also found that social justice and sustainability are also tied to those things.
I wanted to know what questions DU wanted me and other audience members to ponder after experiencing Edible Tales. Linda stressed that they made the performance installations immersive because they wanted the audience to go through the creative process and start thinking about how dance and food were related.
Linda: Most people don’t put dance and food in the same sentence. They think dancers don’t eat. From there, we wanted to be immersive about the cultural practices and conversations we had in our community rehearsals and research. That’s the immersive part.
Mostly DU wants its audiences to talk about healing.
Linda: The last two and a half years have been tough. I feel like we can dance out of it and bring communities together and help each other feel better. We’ve all had a lot of say about the last few years and the shifts in our communities. If we can walk away with healing and feeling empowered about our daily challenges, that’s something I could be proud of. And hopefully, the conversations around food, sustainability, cultural heritage, and social justice can continue beyond our performances and inspire more collaborations.
Dancers Unlimited offers an even larger array of healing opportunities, many of which are not strictly for only dancers. One of these programs is Edible Tales, the Community Program, co-started with community members over Zoom during the Pandemic, where people gathered to talk about food. Then DU got a residence on Governors Island through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
Linda: We were able to work with artists, and people would come look at art, and then join us in rehearsals and answer questions like “what does food mean to you?” and “How do you use food?” Then we turned those answers into movements together, and those movements became our performances.
They documented that two-and-a-half-year process and are turning it into a docuseries that will be released on their app. The conversations around food and community are continuing and will be open to dancers and non-dancers alike.
Linda: The idea is to remove the distance between the audience and dancers. Maybe people think they can’t move, but after they join us, hopefully, they feel nourished and want to move along with us. And maybe we can come up with creative solutions for the challenges around food sustainability, insecurity, and cultural identity.
In addition, DU offers food tours of Brooklyn Neighborhoods. Candice talked about how these tours are a perfect way to get the community involved. Typically, they would invite people to learn about different cultures by tasting food.
Candice: NY is a melting pot, so there are different foods from different cultures on different blocks. Because we got funding from Brooklyn Arts Council, we were exploring Brooklyn and the neighborhood and restaurants that had been staples in these communities and have been feeding and nourishing them. We began understanding the culture, tasing their foods and having conversations. We found that in a lot of places, you get a sense of who the people are, and it makes the food even better. After we eat, we like to dance about how we feel, so it’s a whole-body experience.
I asked both women for advice on how non-dancer, body-shy individuals might start moving and get in touch with their bodies. Both of them laughed. They must get this question a lot.
Linda: There’s nothing to be shy about. We’re shy because we’re conscious of ourselves. Once you remove that part, you’ll be surprised how free you can move once you take the mind out of it. One of our members started something called Introvert Dance. He teaches popular and easy party moves. It’s virtual, so it’s just you and him.
Candice: Everything is low stakes. At the end of the day, we are all movers. Whether you like it or not, you’re going to move. Spend time in your room moving by yourself, and explore a space that is for you. It’s about feeling comfortable with your body. If it needs to move a little bit, move a little bit. It’s low stakes. You aren’t auditioning for anyone. It’s for you and nobody else. You are just enjoying your body and how it moves.
To end the interview, I asked Linda and Candice for their favorite form of dance to participate in and their favorite form of dance to watch.
Linda: I have two favorites. One is House. I’m a House head. I used to party until 5 am and afterparty, just to dance. My other favorite is Hula. That’s my roots and what connects me to home and land. I get excited about watching all the dance forms, but I want to say freestyle. When I watch someone freestyle in their own style, you can tell that you are in the moment. They forget about the world around them. It’s just them, the floor and the movements. It becomes a spiritual thing to watch.
Candice: My favorite dance to do right now is House. It is very freeing. It’s very musically driven and allows me to connect to music and what’s driving the music, and what the artist is feeling. Right now, I enjoy watching the fusion between African styles and contemporary. I love that fusion. I love watching Black bodies do ballet, and I love watching Black bodies do African movements. It fills my whole soul.
how to get involved with du
The quickest way to see all the exciting things at Dancers Unlimited is through their Linktr.ee account. There are a lot of exciting things and performances upcoming with Dancers Unlimited. There are two upcoming shows in January in NYC. January 13th is Booking Dance Festival 2023 and January 15th is APAP 2023: Edible Tales Excerpts. Both shows are free. You just need to grab a seat now and RSVP on their website. There is also an upcoming spring fashion show designed by Kauila Kanakaʻole, grandson of Hawaiian activist Edith Kanalaole. (Edith will be the first Native Hawaiian woman to appear on the US Quarter).
One of the best ways to connect is through Instagram. Their handle is @dunyc.hi. All of their shows are posted there.
Dancers Unlimited also just released a free mobile app supported by Women’s Sports Foundations sponsored by Athletica and Alicia Keys. All of DU’s performances are uploaded there, as well as some virtual classes. It’s a great place to further conversations around dance, community, and justice.
Dancers Unlimited just completed its 2022 fundraising campaign and reached its financial goals. They are funded by community donations and always welcome help and support. If you like a little something for your donation to remind you of them, they also offer fantastic merchandise that can be found on their website. All proceeds help to support the running of the company and its programs.
My hour spent with Linda and Candice left me inspired and ready to start moving. During our short conversations managed to ignite a spark inside of me and a new appreciation for dance and how it’s essential to our communities.
upcoming shows
January 13th – Booking Dance Festival 2023
January 15th APAP 2023: Edible Tales Excerpts
tickets to upcoming shows
links
social media links
Instagram @dunyc.hi
