Cracked but Not Broken: Toni Valle on her new work at DiverseWorks

Toni Valle in Cracked
Photo by David Brown

Toni Valle is Houston’s do everything dance girl. She’s the woman sitting behind the Dance Source Houston table, promoting concerts and making sure the media gets everything in time. She’s also a choreographer and has landed a prestigious DiverseWorks (DW) residency. Cracked is her opus for and about the slippery slope we modern babes find ourselves sliding down. Somewhere in the middle she is also raising her 2-year old son, Dante. She took the time to fill us in all things Cracked.

Cracked? Is something broken?

TV: Yes, in our society, there is something wrong in the dual-standards we set on women. Even though we've been through the sexual revolution and women's rights, I still feel hit over the head with what to wear, how to act, how to behave. Parents, teachers, friends, siblings, and - more forcefully - the media, scream at me what is feminine and sexy, yet I am to behave with a submissive character and high moral standards regarding sexual behavior. It’s very confusing and causes severe consequences.

You call Cracked “a painful but tender exploration of nakedness, self-image, sex and surrender.” That’s a mouthful. Why should a woman, who’s fighting this fight, come to this performance?

TV: To know she's not alone. To realize it's time to turn away from the outside forces telling us how to look and act and find the natural force within to guide us. Society's views on women are still screwed up. I'll never be thin enough or pretty enough. For me, the way out was to not try winning the battle, but to walk away from the fight.

Works for me. But, don’t you worry just a tiny bit that by making this dance you are showing that something is still getting to you. Can we ever really walk away?

TV: Yes, but not in the sense that I think I can ever ignore the fact that when I look in the mirror, I'm not satisfied. What I can do is recognize that the voice inside my head telling me, "If I could just lose 5 more pounds" is not my voice. It's an implant from years of hearing media, my mother and society tell me what an "appropriate" size for all women is.

What still gets to me is that many women have not labeled that voice yet. They believe that the critic in their heads is themselves. We weren't born critiquing ourselves. When I realized that, I could walk away from the fight because I realized there is no fight.

What made you want to bite the evening-length bullet? Is it a daunting project or does the time frame feel right for the subject?

TV: This project has been percolating since the birth of my son so there was a lot of material to think about before I ever hit the studio (or the computer - I wrote all the dialogue.) It also covers body image and sexual issues I've been dealing with through 3 decades. My problem was what to cut out so that I don't have to have an intermission.

Donna Walker-Kuhne at Dance USA On Tour talked about dance needing a little help for people to get it. She mentioned leaving some bread crumbs for audiences. Give us some crumbs for Cracked.

TV: I have a very sexy cast that starts the show in black cocktail dresses and high heels. This is a world where women are interviewed before they can get a date, thinner is always better, and life is for the young. Media has taken over our thinking; there are half-naked women, drinking, and drugs. I feel like I'm in that old movie, Logan's Run, and my number has come up. All the stories are my own crazy personal thoughts and experiences, yet over and over, I am hearing, "that's mine. That has happened to me. I've felt that way. I didn't know other women felt like me." What's wrong with this picture?

You have described yourself as a storyteller. Is there a tradition of storytelling in your family?

TV: I grew up with my mother explaining my life to me - where my family came from, how I fit into the big picture, and so on. She is also a painter and has that exact eye for the details. My mother doesn't miss a thing. I've inherited that eye—the ability to stop in the moment and mentally record every detail to pull out for later use. It's a good storytelling device. I also just like talking a lot.

How ever did you get this fabulous (and fabulously busy) group of dancers, John Box, Allyson Giesen, Erica Lewis, Jennifer Magill, Maria Montes de Oca, Priscilla Nathan-Murphy, and Rebecca Valls to dance with you?

TV: There was a master rehearsal plan. There were no huge dance numbers with nightmare rehearsal schedules. There are sections everyone is in, but we literally set them in one rehearsal. I tried setting rehearsals around people's lives. Each dancer seemed very excited to be working with me. That could be my imagination.

A DW residency is a big deal in my mind. It’s a bit of a rite of passage for local artists. Eyes are on you. Do you feel the pressure?

TV: Yes - not the pressure to create a fabulous work of art, but the pressure that I am laying myself on the line here with some very vivid personal stories of my life. Taking my dress off and displaying my not-perfect body in "I Take My Clothes Off" was only the beginning - I've opened a can of worms from my past that I'm not sure I am ready to put onstage. For instance, I didn't know until lately that my out-of-hand drinking experience as a young adult was going to be incorporated into the show. Then I realized that getting drunk was a direct consequence of poor body and self image. I couldn't leave it out. Many of my family, friends and colleagues know these stories about me, but to actually witness someone degrade themselves and beat themselves up is scary. It's intense. Opening night is going to be fun.

Cracked premieres December 7-9, and 14-16, 2006, 8:00PM, at DiverseWorks, 1117 East Freeway. For tickets, contact DiverseWorks’ Box Office: 713/335-3445. For more information, call 713/409-2838 or email toni@houstondance.org

OWN THIS DANCE: Jane Weiner's 's a tale of possession

Lindsey McGill in 's a tale of possession
Photo by David Brown

Houstonians know Jane Weiner as a woman with a cause, several causes actually. As founding member of the Pink Ribbons Project, Dancers in Motion Against Breast Cancer, her high-spirited fundraisers are legendary. Others know Weiner as someone who cares about kids from her multi-disciplinary arts program, Kid’s Play. She is the artistic director of one of Houston’s finest modern dance companies, Hope Stone. Wait, there’s more. She’s also a co-founder of the annual benefit for HIV/AIDS called The Illumination Project.

Last season she remounted her whimsical look at all things food, The Cooking Show, and this month she revisits a more serious piece, ‘s (a tale of possession), created in 2002 during a DiverseWorks residency. Weiner’s dance takes shoes as a jumping off point (in more ways that one). “Shoes are very user-friendly, we all own shoes,” says Weiner. “It just seemed a natural place to open a discussion about our possessive culture.” Weiner’s dance poses the question, “Do we really own anything or anybody.” With a back wall of stacked shoe boxes, the dancers slip in and out of various pairs of shoes, identities, and relationships.

Weiner’s dance has an interesting history. She was just coming off the success of the premiere of The Cooking Show in 2002. Sixto Wagan invited her to be part of DiverseWorks 20th anniversary celebration. “Jane is such a key person in the community. She’s great at creating these wonderful community events with casts of 100 or so,” recalls Wagan. “The company was really starting to gel. I wanted her to just think of herself as a choreographer and explore what she had built with the company.” He also wanted a new work. Exhausted from just having mounted a huge show, Weiner wanted to perform The Cooking Show. Wagan was insistent that she do a new work; after all DiverseWorks is all about producing new work. “Sixto is a rock star to me,” jokes Weiner. “In retrospect, it’s astounding to think how important he was in the evolution of this piece.”

Normally, Weiner is a slow-cook choreographer, and enjoys a long gestation time for each piece. “This was the first time I was coming into the studio without a plan,” remembers Weiner. “But the dancers and Sixto trusted me enough to create from a different place.”

Weiner had a life-changing experience that put the piece’s message in her head. In the middle of the might a fireman knocked on her Montrose townhouse door to tell her to vacate due to a restaurant fire next door. Weiner and her parents, who were visiting along with her dog, left her home in the middle of the night. The fireman asked Weiner if there was anything in the house he could retrieve in case her home caught fire. She looked at her parents, and her sweet dog, and responded, “No, I have everything I need.” In an instant, the idea of ownership shifted into a perspective that deeply informed her dance.

In the end, Wagan was glad he pushed and was more than pleased with the result. “It was amazing to me that Jane, who is so good at making people laugh, could make something so emotionally raw,” says Wagon. “It was by far the most serious piece I had ever seen her do.”

Wagan is excited to see this work again. “It makes me happiest as a producer to be part of the trajectory of an artist’s career.” Weiner is looking forward to transferring the piece to the big stage at Cullen; that means a whole lot more shoeboxes, 3,000 to be exact. Wiener’s frequent collaborator DJ Shwahh Mass, arranged the sound score, an eclectic sampling smoothie of Klezmer through David Byrne, and sounds from grocery store self check-out machines.
Weiner cut her dancing teeth during the ten years she spent as a founding member of the acclaimed Doug Elkins Dance Company.

Now as artistic director of her own company, Weiner works on keeping her dancers motivated and challenged. Ranging in age from the early twenties to the early forties, Hope Stone dancers are a serious but fun-loving tribe. So far they are enjoying revisiting the piece and Weiner is noticing how much more they have matured as dancers and movers since its inception.

Veteran Hope Stone dancer Penny Tschirhart finds Weiner’s work involves a good dose of self-exploration. “It's about my relationship with the people I dance with and the things I learn about myself and others during that process,” says Tschirhart. “Dancing in this piece reminds me I have a lot to learn and nothing is really mine.”

Weiner cannot leave the community behind. Young people are still at the top of her list and she doesn’t forget that when she puts on a show. The entire balcony will be filled students from Houston schools and community groups who will get to see the show for free. In addition to running her company her teen program, Kids’ Play, takes up a lot of her energy. Combining dance, music, and theater, the program is open for all students because, according to Weiner, “all kids are at-risk.” (Weiner is no stranger to at-risk kids; she ran the Youth Arts Program at Bates College Dance Festival for 11 years.) She drew her early inspiration from Jacques d’Amboise’s work with kids. “He made everyone feel as if they could dance,” says Weiner.

Weiner recently handed the reins of the Pink Ribbons Project to her sister, Susan Rafte, but still stays involved as artistic director. “Susan is going full tilt,” says Weiner. If that isn’t enough on her plate, Weiner also runs a popular dance and fitness studio which houses all of her ventures. “I am the owner and chief janitor,” says Wiener with a smile concerning the never ending work of running a studio. Whether Weiner is crafting a dance, a fundraiser, or a program for 100 kids, her humor, wit and dedication comes through. “I love selling art; it’s the best product in the world.”

Hope Stone presents ‘s (a tale of possession) on November 11 at 8pm and November 12 at 2pm at Cullen Stage, Wortham Center. Call 713-526-1907 ext. 3.