My heritage informs both my artistic expressions and my worldview. And if I identify myself as Caribbean/Antillean, my world is a reflection of the complexity that comes from being a member of a crossroads culture, and the multi-cultural baggage that it entails. I strive to tell a story, without the urge to explain the plot or for the audience to 'get it.' I cherish the questions and the unexpected. I aim to give voice to an intense desire to create something new out of what is already perceived to be fact. I don't try to recreate, but rather to 'blend all the ingredients' or influences, and make something new, something 'Creole' in its truest sense. This is where my work is most typically Caribbean. As a member of a 'crossroads' culture, I am constantly negotiating the links between tradition and modernity, realism and the supernatural, colonial and post-colonial. (Christa 2002, 302)

Film and history together beg for meaning and interpretation. I didn't fully realize the ramifications of putting these stories up on screen. The added meaning inserted itself while filming and afterwards through the eyes of an audience; even I come away with many questions: How do I combine my urge to educate with my desire to make an artistic interpretation of history? How do I motivate viewers to do some of their own research (by visiting the Web site) after the film? How do I tell a visual story that remains open to interpretation? Can dance even tell the story I want to tell, or is it too ephemeral? I initially believed all of this was possible—that is why I took on this project. Yet I wonder: Do I need to provide more background information, or shall I leave the films as they are&mash;artistic interpretations?

Writing this essay about my film series (ANOTHER BUILIDING dancing), which places narrative dance in and around historical buildings from the Dutch-African Diaspora, proved difficult. Obviously, I thought about what I wanted for the films when I conceived of them; I talked about the meaning in several Q & A sessions after screenings; I wrote funding requests; I communicated my intentions to my collaborators (the costume designer, director of photography, composer, and editor). In all of these efforts to get the films going, nothing challenged me more than transferring the clarity I found in creating the films into writing. How could I, on paper, combine the many elements and sources of my work? How could I communicate my motivation? In what context could I place it? I hadn't really thought through these issues until this point. After all, I made the films within one year, leaving little time for self-reflection.

On many levels, I just stumbled upon this series and felt right away that this is exactly who I am and what I am supposed to do. These films combine all that I am interested in—history, anthropology, dance, and architecture. When I found the series, I just ran with it: fast! Writing this essay, then, gives me the chance to step back and think about what I created. In doing so, I hope to show how personal history "motives" are inflected with and informed by larger post-colonial histories.

Thoughts, Goals, and Process

I set out to make each film in the series stand on its own as a work of art. Ideally, these pieces talk about the past without preaching. They also, I hope, spark an interest in investigating the past, leading young and older audiences to a website that provides background information on place, architecture, music, and dance.

I started the series with what I know best: the history of my native island Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles. The first two films in the series, Quarantine and Savoneta, take place in Curaçao. The island was (and is) dry and unsuitable for plantation agriculture, but it grew to prominence because of its natural harbor, Willemstad, which enabled it to become a trade (smuggling) center and slave depot (Oostindie 2005, 3). It was during the occupation of Brazil (1624 to 1654) that the Dutch became involved in the slave trade and took interest in Curaçao.

In designing the shoot, I made a book full of images that gave a close impression of the look I wanted to achieve. And in creating the aesthetic, I juxtaposed the intense history of the place with the beauty of the landscape. Cinematographer Dolph van Stapele and I chose to use mostly a single handheld camera to create a more intimate feeling.

The sound includes live sounds and composed music, both of which I used to convey a sense of place (to create authenticity) and to make it contemporary. I chose my own music (mostly original music from the island) and also asked composer Vernon Reid to create a score that made it timeless and global but not connected to a particular place. In Quarantine, the main music is Tambu, a form of spoken social commentary (hailing from the 17th century) that has much in common with rap, which also shows up in the film.

For the choreography, I looked for dance that combined both old and new movements or referred in some way to the past. What I aimed to accomplish in Quarantine (and Savoneta) was to have the dance and story take place in the present time, looking back. The performers in both narratives are visitors to the place, and the confrontation with the history within and outside the walls triggers a journey through time. We witness what happens when they are confronted with the past, and as several narratives and viewpoints take place at once.

Quarantine

Situated on a hill overlooking the sea, the building in which Quarantine takes place originally housed (or quarantined) enslaved Africans who survived the trip from Africa but were too sick to continue on to other places. After their recovery, most traveled on to their final destination on one of the other islands—or to any part of the rest of the Americas.

At the start of the film, a young man visits the abandoned building, literally feeling the space by resting his head on the door. Through dance, he uses his body to possess the space, asking it to accept him. He communicates with the spirits of his ancestors in movement, wanting acceptance for his male/female dichotomy (he wears a skirt and dances). His dance combines white Western movements with contemporary black American (hip-hop) culture. During his dance, an elder observes the young man, who remains unaware of the onlooker's presence. Perhaps the elder is the father—or is he an older version of the young man dancing, looking back on his life and wishing he could/did dance that freely? The subtext here is the issue of what a macho Caribbean/African male can and cannot do—dancing in skirts does not make the cut. At the end, however, we become aware that the old man, like the younger one, actually longs to dance freely in a skirt. Just when he shows signs of disapproval (by throwing the younger man a pair of pants), we find him wearing a skirt, dancing happily and finally liberated.

This context—that a man might long to dance freely—is based entirely on the story of my father, who plays the old man in the film. My dad passed on to me his love of dance, and he is on many levels a sensitive and feminine man—yet also very heterosexual. He always wanted to be a dancer but never became one because of his upbringing and society.

Throughout the film, the abandoned building triggers and empowers the growth of the two men. The history the young man feels by touching and becoming one with the building, and by confronting and possessing the building with his dance, comes to life for him.

I, too, believe (and feel) that life still exists inside those buildings.

Savoneta

My real motivation in creating Savoneta—and Quarantine—is perhaps to understand my own place in this complex post-colonial society. As a teen growing up in Curaçao, I was fascinated with its history. In fact, history and geography were my favorite subjects in high school. Although most of our books came from the Netherlands, and our exams were sent to the Netherlands for grading, we were lucky to have teachers who thought it was critical for us to learn the history of the region. My geography teacher, Eddie Baetens, even took our class on field trips, where we would stay in an old plantation house for the weekend and take day trips out from there.

My interest in history also started with stories about slavery. In some ways, my view was a romantic one, fueled by short stories about slavery in Curaçao from Marek Decorte's historical novel De Bullepees[1]. These stories reveal the often cruel and highly sexual interactions among the colonizers and slaves, and they take place in around plantation and other colonial houses on the island. One such house, at least in my imagination, sat along the Penstraat (the road along the sea) in the city of Willemstad and also next to the houses of the West Indian Company traders. Friends of my parents rented this house, and I always imagined it as the setting of a certain Decorte story, where two single sisters lived—and where they brought male slaves only for their own pleasure.

This particular Decorte story wasn't the only one that triggered an intense curiosity about the past. There was another one about a man named Sjon Freddie, who fell in love with the lighter-skinned house slave Sarita. To come even close to Sarita was forbidden by Sjon's father, who offered him access to any other slave but this one. Why? Sjon Freddie found out the hard way. After falling in love with Sarita—and eventually impregnating her with his child—he discovered that she was, in fact, his sister.

The constant sneaking around, and the constant attention from all sides that Sarita endured, was something that I, as a young girl, was well aware off. It was everywhere in my society. I likewise identified with the two sisters in the other story, who could not live an open, authentic life in the gossip-ridden town that was/is the island. Not finding a husband in the limited circle of suitable men, they inherited the fruits of their father's slave trade and plantation; yet as single women of a certain standing, they couldn't do anything without drawing intense scrutiny. To have sex, even, they practically had to buy slaves. And all turned out tragic when one of the sisters became pregnant—with an inter-racial child whom society would in no way accept. Here again, as an inter-racial child, I identified with the child who never fully came to be.

What most intrigued me about these stories, aside from the complex relationships between characters, were the cruel things that happened inside and immediately outside of the beautiful and colorful buildings in which the scenes were set. Situated under a radiant sky alongside the most incredible aquamarine sea, these bright buildings inspired me when times were tough—and when I felt different or alone. Like the characters, I understood how it felt to live outside of the norm. Even as a child, I was already an artist, though I didn't know it at the time. My self-expression, my dresses, the poems I published, the solo dances I presented—all of these made me an easy target for bullies and easy prey for the eyes of many men. But I found solace in the buildings, the landscape, the sea, and the stories I read and made up under the never-ending blue sky.

As an inter-racial child, I often identified with the light-colored house slave, Sarita, and her complex existence. I lived between two worlds, neither of which I truly belonged: one was the world of the slaveholders and the other of my dark-skinned brothers, sisters, and lovers. Unlike my peers, I spoke Dutch at home instead of Papiamentu[2], the language developed by slaves. Much pride comes from speaking Papiamentu, which allowed slaves to talk openly, without slave owners and other whites understanding the conversation. Language was a form of resistance.

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.

In all, the first two films in the series have given me a chance to create an interpretation of place and history, documenting in an artistic way these two magnificent buildings before they transition to something else. The quarantine building will be converted to a hotel, and the 17th-century plantation house, "Landhuis Savonet," will open in 2010 as "Museum Savonet: A Museum for Nature and Culture." My film Savoneta will remain on permanent exhibition in one of the rooms in the plantation house.

Glossary

Benta: A one snared instrument from Curaçao, played with the mouth and a stick.

Birimbau: A Brasilian one snared instrument with a resonating sound that comes from an attached calabash. Also played with a stick.

Chapi: Percussion instrument in Curacao music. It is a hoe.

Muzik di Zumbi: Music form of Curaçao lit: music of the spirits.

Papiamentu: Language spoken in Curaçao, Aruba, Bonaire, and Dutch St. Maarten.

Seu: Music and dance from Curaçao. Original word means harvest in Bantu.

Tambu: African-Curaçao's music and dance, also the name of a drum.

Works Cited

Christa, Gabri. "Tambu: Afro Curaçao's Music and Dance of Resistance" in Caribbean Dance from Abekua to Zouk, Susanna Sloat ed. University of Florida Press, 2002.

Martinus, Frank Efraim. The Kiss of a Slave: Papiamentu's West-African Connections. Willemstad: Drukkerij De Curaçaose Courant, 1997.

Kristensen, Ingvar. Plantage Savonet. Verleden en Toekomst. Willemstad: STINAPA no.35, 1993.

Oostindie, Gert. Paradise Overseas: The Dutch Caribbean: Colonialism and its Transatlantic Legacies. Oxford: Warwick University Caribbean Studies, 2005.

Endnotes

1. Translates as hanging rope or whip. [Return to text]

2. Papiamentu is an Afro-Portuguese Creole with many links to West-African languages, such as Guene and the language spoken in Cape Verdia. Curaçao writer and scholar Frank Martinus Arion traced the language back to its African connections in The Kiss of a Slave: Papiamentu's West-African Connections. Martinus found that the name Papiamentu itself could be derived from different origins in Saramaccan, a group of maroons from Suriname. There, papia-papia means small talk. In Portuguese papear means to chatter. (Martinus 1997, 6). [Return to text]

3. Suriname was the only Dutch colony with a traditional plantation system. [Return to text]

4. A syncretic African diaspora religion from Suriname. [Return to text]