Gabri Christa,
"ANOTHER BUILDING dancing: Making Quarantine and Savoneta"
(page 4 of 5)
Today, much of the Curaçao culture is an unconscious and
fluent back and forth between European and African culture. It is the
ultimate Creole place. And in many ways, the constant exposure to
different cultures makes us, Curaçao people, fluent in navigating
many cultures. My artistic expression is an effort to make the
navigation conscious. In my dances, mixing the hips of Tambu with a
straight leg is an expression that comes from the constant exposure to
different cultures. Curaçao is still a complex society in which
color and one's place in it are still based partially upon the color of
one's skin. This color consciousness has always existed, not only in my
own family but also in the society at large. Gert Ooostindie, a scholar
in Dutch and Caribbean history, explains:
In Curaçao, the free (coloureds) are treated by
the whites with far more contempt than in Suriname[3]: yet, as
to the slaves, the contrary applies; the latter are far better clothed
and less oppressed on Curaçao than in Suriname. Consequently,
colour even more than slavery is the recurring issue in contemporary
accounts of elite discourse (2005, 38).
Naturally, the color of one's skin and how it relates to the
environment plays a significant role in the film Savoneta. In
this piece, I play the part of the light-skinned woman who takes her
partner on a trip to an old plantation house. My dark-skinned partner,
played by Niles Ford, would no doubt have been a field slave in the
past, and would not have been allowed even to enter the house. That is
why he lingers on the front porch and stairs, never fully able to
convince himself to walk through the door. Consequently, the story
doesn't really deal with the architecture of the house but with the
memory of the past; even still, the architecture plays a crucial role as
the hub of many memories and experiences. In the presence of this house,
loaded with history, the dark-skinned man is brought back to a past in
which he once was a powerless slave. The light-skinned woman, too, would
have been a house slave in the past, though she feels less intimidated
by the building and tries to coax the man in to entering the house. One
might read in to this that a dark-skinned man can only gain access to
certain parts of society through the lighter-skinned.
The man in Savoneta becomes overwhelmed by images of the past.
He navigates these flashbacks (actual pictures of the slave families
taken in and around the plantation house where we filmed) and his
complex relationship with the light-skinned woman. His dance is one with
himself, his past, and the woman. Meanwhile, the female briefly enters
the house and finds a picture that reminds her of the two of them. Her
dance channels the pain, desperation, and isolation of her (former)
existence, as well as her complex relationship with the man. Women like
her, back then (and to a certain extent today), were expected not to be
with darker-skinned men but with white Dutchmen—or at the very least
someone of their own mixed heritage. A relationship such as their own
would have caused a great deal of grievance.
In an effort to neutralize the past, the couple then baptizes each
other with water. When they do dance together, she finds solace in his
arms, though she tries to escape his embrace time and again. Together,
they invent rituals derived from Winti[4] and Voudoun. Chalk
becomes face paint and earth, symbolizing the sacred act of blowing away
spirits. Calmed by the rituals, the woman leads the man to the house,
stopping to show him the picture of the couple. He looks at it, seeing
not one but many images.
At last, they enter the house. We never see them walk inside; we only
see the building turning, as if the couple, dizzy from the information
held within the building, cannot keep their gaze steady. The house
literally turns before their eyes. And when they finally reach the top
floor, they can look from the inside out.
Toward the end of the film, the beginning music theme comes back in
an expanded and accelerated version. The song that frames most of the
film is arranged by H. Moen and sung by Rose Heije from the
Curaçao-based Grupo Serenada. It uses an old folkloric melody and
is based on Peirre Lauffer's poem, "Buchi Fil," about a slave.
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