GIRLFLY at Quesada Gardens

Summer 2013“The Palm Trees Wave to the Sun

Las Palmeras Saludan el Sol”

Flyaway Productions founded GIRLFLY in 2006 to bring a dance-based program of art and activism to low income girls in San Francisco. Each summer, we bring together young women to get hands-on experience in contemporary, site specific and/or aerial dance, earn a summer stipend, create original dances for performance, learn dance repertory with professional dance artists, and research and carry out an activism project that connects with young women across neighborhoods, schools, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

GIRLFLY at Quesada Gardens was a site specific dance with seven teen girls. The project’s purpose was to expand the magic of Quesada Gardens—a local environment for community organizing and community empowerment—to include youth voice and youth creativity. The project also proposed female empowerment as an essential element of community empowerment for underserved urban girls. Finally, this project humbly offered the creative force of live performance to the group of community builders who steward the gardens in the Bayview district of San Francisco. Below is the story of our process, co-mingling community action and site specific dance.

JULY 1, 2013Day One. Seven Girls. Two Dancers. One Intern. And the Quesada Gardens neighbors. The girls: tentative about dancing outside on a street and in a garden, also, intrigued.

They comment:I didn’t like the bugsI didn’t like that the plants make me sneeze

Then: I like the climbingI like hiding in the cornI liked making up the moves in the garden

Quesada Gardens Initiative Director Jeffrey explained how Quesada Gardens came to be.

Two neighbors fed up with the drug traffic started planting flowers when Quesada Street was ground zero for the drug trade, sex workers were working out of abandoned cars on the street and no one knew each other.

As the garden took root, things changed within six months. Not perfect, but a kind of peace now. And people talk to each other.

Drawing and writing on what the neighborhood is for them. One drew a gun and a flower side by side.

Their words: DIVERSE PARTICULAR SASSY.

JULY 2, 2013A video of one of the QGI founders, Annette Smith; she describes herself as just a farmer’s daughter. She spoke of exchanging litter, syringes and liquor bottles for flowers. Speaking of the garden she started (and is still board president of) she said, “We didn’t know what it was going to do. We were just trying something. I am proud of it.” I’m so glad the girls are able, for these two weeks, to live inside of what Annette and her neighbors created.

We ended the day with a question to the girls about what they would like to have on their block. “A park, a video store, a creams store, a dance studio.” This is their youth voice. I hope the world will listen.

JULY 3, 2013We started the day working with the image B. drew the first day: a seed made stronger if it grows with help from the whole community. She said that the image would be more real if we used the hose in the garden.

In the afternoon a visit from Joel and Mary, the couple who have stewarded the Bridgeview Garden. They took the dump yard right next to their house, cleaned it out and got to work transforming the land. Now Bridgeview grows food: corn, squash, citrus trees, chard, strawberries, and tomatoes dot the terraced garden.

The food grown there is distributed weekly to neighbors, mostly seniors, whose incomes are fixed and low. One plot of land on a tucked away corner of a down and out neighborhood has brought healthy food to a lucky handful, and an incredible symphony of hope and courage to a group of neighbors.

JULY 4, 2013Independence Holiday. Boom.

JULY 5, 2013Today the girls showed their dances to each other. Our intention with the showing was to help them inspire each other toward greater investment in the process, the collaboration, and their performance. I was impressed, as I always am with teens, with how high they rise to the occasion.

Our conversation: the girls’ relationship to their own neighborhoods. We divided a large piece of paper in half and asked them to list the good and bad elements of their neighborhood.

On the positive side we had:Always something going onHappy and activeI know everyoneThe Black Rock Church ChoirA new libraryA viewCommunity

We then asked them to work in groups, picking one of the listings from the negative side and design a solution. Most of their solutions involved getting the police. I was surprised. But Jeffrey from QGI was not surprised. Jeffrey shared with the group that until Annette and Karl started to plant flowers nothing changed.

We asked the girls to go back to the positives side of our communal list and think of how to expand the good things on their own streets. The conversation ended very positive, very hopeful.

I learned a lot today about a kind of community organizing that is self-reliant, based in the passions and personalities of the people doing the actual work—who are really the beneficiaries of the work.

On the negative side we had:Smells like weedDrug dealers, thugs, drugsKids throwing rocksRampant sexismThe 24 Bus stopGuys hitting on youThe bus at night

JULY 8, 2013An easy day, the girls have accepted the dance and have taken ownership of it, and are investing their whole selves into their technique and performance.

A moment of rough start when one of the girls stepped in puke, a dirty, noxious reminder of all the garden is trying to do, and what we are trying to do as well. More comments from the neighbors who walk by, aware that we will perform on Saturday and excited about it.

Vivian’s Story. Vivian Richardson, a neighbor on the 1400 block of Quesada (a couple blocks away) spoke of facing the loss of her home due to foreclosure, two years ago. On her block, 11 houses out of a total of 60 were in foreclosure. Because of grass roots action, 8 have been saved, and the remaining three are still hoping. Vivian went through a job loss in the telecommunications industry, and then became a home healthcare support person, opening her home to people with disabilities. But her new paychecks came from the state, which went through its own upheaval in the past few years and so she was not paid on time. She was late with her mortgage payment one time, and was immediately put into foreclosure.

But Ms. Richardson did not take it lying down. She joined up with the people of ACCE (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment) and with a huge community activism network behind her, got 1200 people to call the mortgage servicer on her behalf. She spoke out at press conferences in City Hall, Sacramento and Washington DC. And she won. She has gotten her house back.

I asked her what she would say to Eric Holder and Barak Obama if they were sitting with us at the table today, and she said she would tell them to correct the wrongs done to homeowners and jail the bankers. I loved that this message came to the girls via a mild mannered, soft spoken older woman who is nonetheless an absolute powerhouse.

JULY 9, 2013Excitement is brewing among the girls.

Interesting things are happening on the street. A team of construction workers arrive to repair the street surfaces around the neighborhood. They made a choice to delay their jack hammering until we were done dancing in Bridgeview Garden.

A woman sitting up on her porch watching us, cheered when Jen taught all the girls a final section and they really improved their execution of the material after the third run through.

Tracy Zhu, a long time environmental activist in the Bayview introduced Environmental Justice as a holistic solution to livelihood, environments, culture, people and communities. She painted an overview of the Bayview, its labor history, its rise as a middle class mecca for Chinese fisherman and their families, for African Americans working the ship yards, and for the butchers of butcher town; and its descent into poverty and struggle, because of pollution, the many garbage facilities in the neighborhood, the mass of trucks that come to the neighborhood each day and bring air contaminants with them. Also, financial racism entrenched in our lending institutions, and the close of the shipyard and the loss of jobs.

On the up side she spoke of the closing of the PGE plant, a source of intense pollution in the neighborhood, and the birth of Heron’s Head Park and the Eco Center there.

We are the 7 flavors of GIRLFLY, affectionately known as Cupcake, Big Mami, Baby Shakira, Barbie, White Chocolate, Tropic Swirl and Miss Berry. We are 15, 16, and/or 17 years young. We live in the Bayview, Lakeview, Visitation Valley and Richmond Districts of San Francisco.

We learned that community is very important because it is connected to everything, and that teamwork builds the foundation for change. We also learned that in order to make a big change, we have to start small. Patience is the key to everything around us.

We hope that our community becomes essential and stronger than what it is right now. We care about knowing the people around us and saying “hello” once in a while. We believe that if we get to know our neighbors better, we will have a safer environment. We care about everyone’s history and everyone’s future.

Finally, I asked them to speak about their artistic experience over the last two weeks, in context with the community building focus we have immersed them in. They spoke of the insight the guest speakers brought them, of the opportunity to do a new creative thing they have never done, and how good it was to be watched in their dance making (by neighbors and the men who hang out every day on the street), because it has made them much more confident to perform the material. The nervousness of having an audience has already passed.

One girl described her experience within the metaphor of gardening. She said,” We were on our own, but only so much. The teachers (Jen and Jeffrey and Jo) were the fertilizer; the guest speakers were like the water. And on Saturday, we will blossom.”

JULY 10, 2013Words for today: unification and detail. The girls began to master both; they’ve grown from being seven students to one group of committed artists.

The commitment level rose so much today, they are starting to feel how dependent they are on each other for not just cueing and technical information, but for energy and spiritual rise. Today one of the construction workers working on the street near us got to see the whole run thru of the Bridgeview piece…she just kept clapping. She asked about the show, and told me she would try to bring her grandbabies.

Our last program speaker: Jazz Vassar of the Food Guardians. Jeffrey shared a statistic that people in the Bayview are likely to live 13 less years than someone from another San Francisco Neighborhood, because of lack of healthy food access. Jazz and the Food Guardians are dedicated to changing the systems that prevent healthy food from being the norm here. They are starting with the corner stores, and with youth like the girls of this program. She spoke for a while about food production and the difference between industrial and local food systems.

JULY 11, 2013Tired. Dragging their feet. The girls are feeling the fruits of their work in every joint and bone of their body. The ones who do the knee hangs on the square steel rail are feeling it on the bruised backs of their knees.

The girls had an opportunity to critique themselves and the group as a whole. (Far more productive than the adults’ critique.) They really seemed to rally much better after their self-critique. They re-engaged, despite their own fatigue.

In the afternoon, we asked them to write a mission statement that tied together everything they were learning as artists out on the site with everything they were learning from the neighborhood activists. The first thing they did was to profile themselves one at a time…name, age, personality traits and a fun nickname.

In the middle of the street are the corner men. That‘s what I call them. They are slightly older men, likely ex-cons, who have not found their way back into legitimate society. Or maybe they have. Maybe their place is along the gardens, bearing witness to the flowers and plants. At a few minutes till two today, I let them know the very last show was about to start, and after the show the dance project would be done.

“Oh, don’t go,” one man said. “We want you to stay a little longer....”

JULY 12, 2013Dress Rehearsals. Their commitment grows with each run.

We ended the day with appreciations, having the girls talk with each other.

This is what they said: “I love your inner sass.”“You have a really nice three/ four.”“I love how big Mami takes care of us and makes sure we are doing’ right.”“I like your grace.”“I love your theatracism; I love how you are jolly.”“I love your vibe.”“I love that when we get bored you keep our energy up.”“I love that you know things.”

Tonight I hope the girls are taking care, so they can bring their shine and sass into the shows tomorrow.

JULY 13, 2013Performance Day. Two shows over three hours. The girls are witnessed by neighbors, mothers, fathers, cousins, toddlers, hipsters, neighborhood activists, and the regulars who hang on the street smoking weed and playing dominoes. Quesada Street and the gardens activated with dance by young women.

The dance was joy; it was grace; it was hips, kicks, arms flowing like the wind rustling through the azaleas. It was young girls pulling themselves up over a chain link fence and hanging upside down on a square steel banister. It was coordinated unison on steep steps and tableaus beneath the palm trees. And the girls nailed it.

Choreographer/Director/Instigator: Jo KreiterTeaching Artist/Co-conspirator: Jennifer ChienProject Intern: Belgica RodriguezCommunity Partner: Jeffrey Betcher, Executive Director of Quesada Gardens InitiativeYoung Artists: Pearl Khuu, Grace Nevarez-Ortiz, Annabel Brain Hope, Celeste Zuleta, Brianna Robert, Alasia Waters, and Lewana KidaneCommunity Volunteers: Joel and Mary McClure, Jazz Vassar, Tracy Zhu, Vivian RichardsonDonations: Fresh and Easy Market in the SF’s Bayview NeighborhoodCoordinating Organization: Flyaway ProductionsEditor: Deborah GersonGraphic Design: Jon Weaver, Johnny4Eyes.com

All photographs by RAPT Productions

GIRLFLY 2013 is an Artist-Investigator Project of the Triangle Lab (a joint program of Cal Shakes and Intersection for the Arts), supported in part by The James Irvine Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and MetLife Foundation and Theatre Communications Group. Additional Support by EILEEN FISHER, College Track, and the Walter and Elise Haas Fund.

www.flyawayproductions.com 415.672.4111