What We Talk About When We Dance
Milwaukee choreographer explores language loss in 'Ghost Tongue, Mother Tongue."
Maria Soledad Gillespie. Photo by Christal Wagner.
Milwaukee choreographer and UW-Milwaukee dance professor Maria Soledad Gillespie created her latest dance concert after asking a simple question: “What happens to the stories we carry when the language to tell them begins to disappear?”
The question was personal for Gillespie, who has powerful memories of her grandmother speaking and signing in Spanish. The memories “are a precious connection to her Chicana heritage, one shaped by generations of assimilation and language loss,” reads the press release for this concert, called “Ghost Tongue, Mother Tongue.”
But the question is one that affects all of us as language ebbs and flows and changes, as new words and phrases become common and old ones of our parents and grandparents fade away. Language is how we pass on cultural information, stories and traditions from one generation to the next, but that process leaves behind what might be called the ghost tongue, all the language that gradually disappears.
Dance, too, uses language and tells stories. It uses specific movements, a kind of vocabulary, in specific sequences or phrases to tell stories and pass information between people, communities and generations. Our bodies have communicated with gestures going back to the beginning of time.
“Ghost Tongue, Mother Tongue” is an experimental dance work that was developed over four years of artistic research and nine months of creation. It features solos and duets, each shaped by the personal experiences, memories and signature dance styles of Gillespie’s cast.
“I wanted to explore how my choreographic thinking played out through the ideas and bodies of the dancers,” Gillespie said in the press release. “Language is the thread connecting these works.”
Dancers from Detroit and Atlanta will join Milwaukee’s Zoe Mei Glise and Maggie Seer on stage.
Glise is set to perform a solo piece titled “Quiet Joy,” which “celebrates the beauty of gentle solitude.” Together, Glise and Seer will perform a duet titled “Love, Perpendicular,” which was recently performed at the Seoul International Dance Festival in South Korea.
Music will be performed by Milwaukee composer and percussionist Paul Westfahl. The performance’s lighting is designed by Milwaukee’s Colin Gawronski.
Gillespie is the director of MG The Collaboratory and Hyperlocal MKE, collaborative dance groups dedicated to improvised performance. As a UW-Milwaukee dance professor, her choreographic research, broadly, explores “embodied storytelling” and how dance expresses “body-based knowledges that exist before and beyond language.”
Performances will take place in UW-Milwaukee’s Mitchell Hall, in Studio 254 on Nov. 6-7 at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets for “Ghost Tongue, Mother Tongue” are $28 for general admission and $15 for students. Those who wish to support Gillespie’s work can purchase a supporters ticket for $40. UW-Milwaukee’s Mitchell Hall is located at 3203 N. Downer Ave.
Existing members must be signed in to see the interactive map. Sign in.
If you think stories like this are important, become a member of Urban Milwaukee and help support real, independent journalism. Plus you get some cool added benefits.
