INTERVIEW: Baye & Asa interrogate male insecurity at La MaMa Moves!
Photo: Baye & Asa will present Suck It Up at La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival. Photo courtesy of Richard Termine / Provided by press rep with permission.
The annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival has returned to New York City’s East Village and will present “moving” programming for the rest of April. The dance performances, curated by Nick Paraiso, take place La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre, Downstairs Theatre and the newly renovated The Club, according to press notes.
One of the programs this year comes courtesy of Baye & Asa, who will present their duet Suck It Up, April 14-16, on a program that also includes Wendy Perron and Morgan Griffin’s The Daily Mirror 1976/2022. Baye & Asa’s piece, according to a news release, centers on the idea that “commercial images promise status, offer solutions to inadequacy, and breed entitlement, and how internalized deficiency has created a culture of resentment.” The work explores what happens after the “violent fallout of male insecurity and entitlement.”
Baye & Asa, according to their official biography, are Amadi ‘Baye’ Washington and Sam ‘Asa’ Pratt, two New York City natives. The dancer-choreographers have known each other since first grade, and their work often addresses political themes. They use hip hop and African dance languages in their work, and they often interrogate systemic inequality and create work that celebrates and condemns various characters on stage.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Baye & Asa about their new work, Suck It Up. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
How long did you work on Suck It Up?
Suck it Up was originally commissioned by Tariq O’Meally and Blacklight Summit at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. We began creating the work during a week-long residency in August 2021 at the Stonington Opera House in Stonington, Maine. We were fortunate to have another 10-month residency at the 92nd Street Y immediately after that initial development phase and premiered the piece at 92Y’s Kaufmann Concert Hall in February 2022. A film version of the work also premiered at the University of Maryland during the same month. We’re excited to be performing Suck it Up for the first time since its premiere.
What would you say are the main themes of the work?
This duet confronts the violent fallout of male entitlement. In our past work, we’ve addressed the cult of White Victimhood — the White Supremacist ethos that not only positions Whites as inherently superior, but justifies White violence with the enduring delusion that White people are politically oppressed and culturally under attack. In Suck it Up, we look at how commercial advertisements contribute to male entitlement and examine the violence perpetrated by men who feel inadequately rewarded and cheated by society.
In some of our preliminary discussions, we spoke about the 2017 Charlottesville rally, incel chatroom communities and the pervasiveness of mass shootings. While these incidents of violence are horrific, the pathetic delusions of male victimhood reveal an underlying insecurity and frailty in these individuals. Despite the seriousness of their impact, we laugh at the smallness of these men. In Suck it Up, our comic depiction of male archetypes helps us portray the reality of male violence.
Does the finished piece answer some of the questions you may have had when you started developing the work?
Going into this piece, we had a pretty clear source. Because we were working with commercial ads, we knew that there was an opportunity to juxtapose a comedic soundscore with the themes of this work. Before making it into the studio, we didn’t necessarily have unanswered questions about the narrative we wanted to portray. But once we began creating, we did have questions about certain design and choreographic elements:
Do our characters have fixed identities? No.
Is it boring to see a dance to elevator music for six minutes? Verging on it.
Is this piece also intrinsically about race? Yes.
Do younger kids know what Columbine was? Mostly no.
Does the ending of the piece communicate what we intended? Still unsure.
How would you define a culture of resentment?
A culture of resentment forms when a group of people believe themselves to be oppressed, under attack or unfairly treated when in actuality they possess far more political, institutional and financial power than those they believe to be their usurpers.
How does your creative process work? How do you two work together?
Our choreographic process begins with political dialogues. We come from different places in New York City but have known each other our entire lives. This has created a deep brotherhood with a safety and trust that allows for the disagreements and healthy arguments that make our work better. Sam is a White Jewish man from the Upper West Side. Amadi is a Black man from the Bronx. The differences in our ethnic identities and social environments as children are imprinted in these conversations.
Once we have narrowed towards a specific thematic interest, we search for source material — a book, a film, video footage, journalism — that focuses the scope of our content. We devise gestures to create a foundation for unique movement vocabularies specific to each piece’s primary source research. When we are in the studio creating duet work, having a collaborator provides inherent accountability and challenges us to move beyond our personal aesthetic preferences. When we work with a group of dancers, having two directors allows us to be energetically dynamic and organically responsive to the needs of the room. It offers us space for moments of individual silence or processing that a solo choreographer might not feel they can afford. We feel lucky to have each other.
Is it extra special performing at a legendary venue like La MaMa?
Of course! As native New Yorkers, we grew up coming to La MaMa and have both been deeply impacted by performances in their spaces. This will be our first time performing and presenting our choreography there. We’re ecstatic.
In 2022, La MaMa announced the opportunity for artists to have 15-minute meetings with Mia Yoo, the theater’s artistic director. This is an incredibly rare curatorial practice, especially for such an established institution, and that conversation led to our involvement in this festival. Thank you to Mia and [curator] Nicky Paraiso for making this happen — it’s truly an honor and a privilege.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
La Mama Moves! Dance Festival continues through April 30 at La MaMa’s various theaters in New York City’s East Village. Baye & Asa will present Suck It Up, April 14-16, on a double bill with Wendy Perron and Morgan Griffin’s The Daily Mirror 1976/2022. Click here for more information and tickets.
