ka/ua is a new collaboration between choreographer/dancer brooke smiley and Leilehua Lanzilotti.
The work will be an evening-length live performance of live music for dance. The title of the work is a word play on the meanings of “kaua” (you and I) and “ka ua” (the rain) in the Hawaiian language.
“Rooting in risk and love, my work enlivens public art experiences as both diplomacy and education. I re-center public spaces and who they serve by guiding creative processes with Native and non-Native communities, National Parks, and institutions worldwide. I uplift the complexity of Contemporary Native Identity across generations through the collaborative creation of embodied earth markers and multisensory dance performances to re-map our worlds.” — brooke smiley
brooke is an artist who guides land and body learning. Grounded in somatic education, public earth art, and dance performance, her work engages a deepening awareness in the body, our relationships with one another, and the world. A 𐓷𐓘𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟 Osage woman, she partners with the history of the land and who lives here—all forms more than human—their wisdom and agency, and honors each voice by slowing down to listen. With a strong background in contemporary, post modern dance, embodied anatomy, earth architecture, and trauma informed pedagogy, brooke invites collaborative spaces of learning through individual sessions, consultation, community engagement, film, and performance.
This collaboration is important now because we are both at a place in expanding our work, leaning into community-focused works and the experimental nature of our own practices. To exist today as an indigenous person—to be visible—is an act of bravery. There are so many ways of being indigenous: whether or not you can speak the language, whether or not you participate in traditional dance, whether or not you work in traditional crafts. brooke and I are contemporary indigenous people, and exist in all the complexities of what it means to be hapa (from different cultures), and what it means to be grappling with historical trauma as well as joy filtered through time. As artists, we have the opportunity to get people in the same room to ask questions—about themselves, about their assumptions, about sharing perspectives. And our work is somewhere in that dialogue, of being visible, present, asking questions, and bringing things to life in the present as contemporary indigenous peoples.
The work will contribute to both our communities of practice (experimental musicians / dancers) and indigenous communities by recentering indigenous voices in the concert hall, and uplifting projects which are community centered in nature. As a part of the development of the work, we may—with consent—lead community movement practices together where I provide live music for lead movement workshops to root our development of material in community meetings.
