July 25, 2024 | Albuquerque Journal | By Rozanna M. Martinez
A new partnership is bringing together high-caliber choreographers with NDI New Mexico students.
The new Teaching Artist in Residence program invites a renowned choreographer and their dance company to participate in a series of projects with NDI students from Albuquerque and Santa Fe over the course of a year. Dana Tai Soon Burgess is the first choreographer to be part of the program.
Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company members perform part of a choreographed piece titled “Transformations” that will be featured as part of NDI’s 2024 inaugural Teaching Artist In Residence performance on Saturday, July 27.
Burgess is the choreographer-in-residence at the Smithsonian Institution.
“He does all of these really amazing collaborations where he’ll be commissioned to create choreography inspired by exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery (in Washington, D.C.),” Salganek said. “His company does a lot of really beautiful choreography that are based in historical events and personal stories and sort of really beautiful modern dance choreography about this human experience, and he calls it the ‘cultural confluence of American life.’ He’s really interested in choreographing about the intersection of different cultural identities and so he’s a really wonderful choreographer, really wonderful storyteller. He has all of these connections with New Mexico. So we thought he was just sort of the perfect person to be our inaugural artist-in-residence.”
Burgess’ choreography created as part of the Teaching Artist in Residence program will be featured during “Seeds of Toil: Pineapple Plantation” and “Transformations,” performed by the Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company and NDI New Mexico advanced students at 6 p.m. Saturday, July 27, at NDI New Mexico at The Hiland Theater, 4800 Central Ave. SE. Admission is free.
Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company members perform part of a choreographed piece titled “Transformations” that will be featured as part of NDI’s 2024 inaugural Teaching Artist In Residence performance on Saturday, July 27.
“We have two pieces that are approximately 25 minutes each, and they’re interspersed between a couple of NDI students’ works,” Burgess said. “One work is called ‘Pineapple Plantation,’ and it’s actually based on my family’s immigration to America in 1903 from Korea to Hawaii, where they worked the pineapple plantations for generations. My family is part of the very first Koreans to come to America, essentially in 1903, and when they got to Hawaii, (they worked the) sugarcane and pineapple plantations for three generations. So that’s what that piece is about. It’s really about resilience, in a sense of the human spirit.”
Burgess’ work, “Transformations,” is an abstract work based in the transcendental painting movement.
“They were artists that came from the East Coast to Santa Fe and Taos in the 1930s and ’40s,” he said. “And they are some of the earliest abstract painters in America. This is based on their paintings.”
“Transformations” includes costumes by Patricia Michaels.
“(She) is a really well-known costume designer out here in New Mexico and across the country,” Burgess said. “(She is) from Taos Pueblo, and she and I are old friends from when we were young teenagers. It’s always great to be able to work with her again, and her costumes are inspired by the paintings of the transcendentalist painting group.”
Burgess said each of the works are “very different visually.”
Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company members perform part of a choreographed piece titled “Pineapple Plantation” that will be featured as part of NDI’s 2024 inaugural Teaching Artist In Residence performance on Saturday, July 27.
“I think (it) will be exciting for people,” he said. “They’re different subject matters. They’re full company pieces. There’s nine dancers.”
Creating choreography for NDI hit close to home for Burgess.
“I grew up in Santa Fe and then to be back in Albuquerque,” he explained. “I went to University of New Mexico, the dance program, so to be back here is always really wonderful. It’s a homecoming. And to be able to tell my family story and to be able to show something that’s inspired by how other people were inspired by New Mexican landscapes and created abstract work because of it, I think that’s exciting too.”
Following the performance, Burgess will sign his book “Chino and the Dance of the Butterfly,” published by UNM Press.
“It’s really about my growing up in New Mexico and ultimately building a dance company,” he said. “… It will be there for people to purchase copies and I’ll be signing after the show. I feel really proud about it and it has gotten really nice acclaim. I think that it highlights just growing up in New Mexico in the early ’70s through the mid ’80s, how it was to be here and trying to become an artist.”
SEEDS OF TOIL: PINEAPPLE PLANTATION and TRANSFORMATIONS
Featuring choreography by Dana Tai Soon Burgess, performed by the Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company and NDI New Mexico advanced students
WHEN: 6 p.m. Saturday, July 27; book signing of Chino and the Dance of the Butterfly follows the performance
WHERE: NDI New Mexico at The Hiland Theater, 4800 Central Ave. SE
HOW MUCH: Free, visit ndi-nm.org
Photos courtesy of Stefan Jennings Batista and Lauren Victor