CIRCLING UP AT THE CIRCLE SUMMIT
by Felicia Holman

November 21, 2022

Although there is still over a month left in 2022, this year has been chock full of full-circle moments (FCM) – some painful, some pleasurable. As a full-circle witness and participant, I'm glad to testify that several of my own 2022 FCMs have occurred within the kinetic confines of my pandemic era creative community, and some of the most pleasurable and impactful FCMs I've experienced this year have come from the same source: Soham Dance Space — an artist-run studio which stands as a true testament to the community-driven vision and mission of its dynamic founder, Anjal Chande. Anjal and I have maintained and grown our connection throughout the ongoing pandemic through numerous Zoom happy hours and artistic collaborations, which have been a true touchstone of love and care and creative community. Having attended Soham’s Town Hall, in January 2021, about the launch of new pilots including this Artist-in-Residence Program, where I first met resident artist Parijat Desai in a breakout room, it feels like an apt FCM to be writing these reflections on the final culminating AiR event - the Circle Summit. 

Per the event description, "As part of Soham's inaugural Artist-in-Residence (AiR) program to uplift, complicate, and reframe South Asian dance in the diaspora and to close out the AiR events, Soham [held] an interdisciplinary Circle Summit inspired by Artists' Sessions at Studio 35 (1950; Soberscove Press; Chicago, IL)." Essentially an invite-only, BIPOC-only, virtual artist salon, the Circle Summit was designed to facilitate in-depth conversation between Soham's AiR artist, NYC-based Parijat Desai, and local Chicago artists about "the power of circles as artistic and communal structures to bring about change". In alignment with Parijat's own community-centered, garba-based performance practice, Soham primarily invited the attendees because of their respective circle-based practices within their creative disciplines. In attendance were "pyropoet" and cultural organizer Tiff Beatty, Capoiera professoro Edward "Amani" Conley, choreographer Ayako Kato, breaker/performance artist Maya Odim, filmmaker Diana Quiñones Rivera, and myself, an avid hooper and flow arts lover. 

As Parijat would share during the evening, her favorite circular patterns tend to be concentric because, both logistically and energetically, "concentric circles allow more room for more people and more ways of moving to be included." In many ways, the Circle Summit was a gathering of concentric circles – by placing the circle-practice visions of each participating artist within or around each other’s, resulting in an energized and flowing exchange of multi-circular inspiration.  

Having participated in the 90-minute summit as both an artist attendee as well as the official Circle Summit synthesist, I now share the following reflections in hopes that you, the reader, will 1) Consider the power of circles in artistic and social realms & 2) Consider harnessing and utilizing the power of circles in your own practices and work.

FLOW VIBES OF THE CIRCLE SUMMIT

The Zoom room that early Tuesday evening, October 18th, was, for me, a warm online reunion with creative community, resonating with the inspiration laid out by Parijat’s philosophical, political, and artistic experiments with collective circular movement throughout Soham’s AiR programs. After an embodied warm up of circle-inspired eye and body movements, we began the conversation with each artist taking their turn sharing their relationship to circle practices through oral and visual reflections and examples of their work.

Amani, from Gingarte Capoeira Chicago, a multivalent dancer and martial artist, aptly explained that the composition of capoeira's "hoda" (circle) is actually a microcosm of a community's essential structure— a circle of people playing and moving together, based on their specific place and role within the circle. I then gleefully shared that in our repertoires, we hoopers actually utilize a modified version of a Capoiera move called the Ginga, the hooper’s version of which I gleefully demonstrated to the Zoom room.

I also found particular affinity with Diana, Maya, and Tiff's familiarity with and use of the communal concept of the cypher– a circular tenet of both Hip-Hop (including spoken word performance) and House music cultures, in which we each are steeped creatively and socially as Black & Brown women creatives from/in Chicago. 

When I mentioned how cyphers are seminal to my own creative social praxis, Maya followed up with her own cypher testimony as a break dancer and salsera. Maya also recalled that one of her family's most cherished traditions is the intuitive formation of sitting in a circle that concluded their annual family reunions.

Tiff's yearslong southside event, "Art Is Bonfire", is essentially a beloved outdoor spoken word version of a hiphop open mic; one where the mc shares center stage with a roaring bonfire, and the wind n' waves at Promontory Point provide the ambient music instead of a dj. As Tiff shared, her pyropoet programming is all about "circles, cyphers, and conversations" which enhance Black folks' connection to art and nature. The connection of circles to nature repeatedly came up across artists.

Ayako shared that in 2017, in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, she became "obsessed" with circle dance after having an epiphany about the lack of ritual in her community art making observations in the U.S. as opposed to her upbringing in Japan. She then began producing a prolific series of multi-format circle dances – beginning with 2017's "blue fish", to last month's LUCA/Res Communis: ETHOS Episode III– each work infused with a keen sense of building solidarity around community-centered response to environmental apocalypse. 

Diana's testimony included family and community histories of cypher dance traditions, at home and in public. Additionally, her latest documentary film project, "Resistimos", follows members of the Bomba community in Puerto Rico and how they are preserving African drum-based culture in the ongoing socio-political aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

Parijat's presence and contributions at the Circle Summit were even more amazing, however, because she actually logged in from the middle of a medical emergency (Note: Parijat has received care and is recovering)! That demonstrated level of curiosity & commitment to community-building was astounding to witness in real time. At the same time, I recognize that Parijat might not have sustained and grown her Dance In The Round (DITR) programming without that level of passionate curiosity & commitment to artist relationships and the power of collective gathering.

After a thoroughly inspiring go-around of rich introductions, a conversation continued to build around imaginative prompts related to the circle, the most foundational of which I highlight here:

WHAT IS A CIRCLE?

Participants reflected…

• Foundational

• Shared breath, shared responsibility

• Facing each other; face to face; standing equally

• Where doing same thing is magical

• Enclosure of energy

• Self-regulating

• A line that just keeps turning

• Togetherness

• Awareness

• Boundary and portal

• Portal of pleasure and play

• Liberating structure

• Simple, like the shape itself

• Defined by the negative space

• No beginning, middle, or end

• Seasons

• An embrace, of openness & space

• Non-hierarchical

• Circles demand community, more than a few individuals

• Way to communicate, relate, and connect universally

CLOSING THE CIRCLE SUMMIT

As we discussed the circles we currently or hope to participate in - naming the desires for our circles as youth, intergenerational, communal, intentional, mutual aid, FUBU / for us by us, people-powered, diverse, multicultural - it was another FCM, as I noticed the context that led to our gathering.

The overarching sentiment of the event among all in attendance was a quite visceral sense of gratitude to be in diasporic intergenerational community together. It was uplifting to have shared the wisdom, alignment, and intersections of our respective circle practices and communities. And it strengthened a resolve to continue employing the “deceptive power of the circle” in our daily lives. 

In closing, I make one last offering; a sonic & visual proxy of the Circle Summit's resonance by Zambian artist/mc, Sampa The Great - “Let Me Be Great", feat. Angelique Kidjo.

#fullcircleaf #fullcirclemoment #hooplife #flowarts #generativeplay #embodiedjoy #pleasureportal #diaspora #transferableskills #alignment #communitypraxis