Storytelling is the art behind every medium. Whether through dance, music, writing, or painting, the human experience finds every way to expose itself.
For Emily Culbreath, a second-year MFA candidate at the University of Iowa, experiences and lessons from her life erupt in street dance. She goes by the stage name of Lady M and has been a professional street dance practitioner, educator, and performer for the past decade.
As her disciple, fourth-year undergraduate Niyati Deshpande has gotten a good grasp of the type of dancer and teacher Culbreath is.
“Working with Emily was so magical,” Deshpande reminisced. “She encouraged honesty and vulnerability in our work in a way that I haven’t gotten to experience many times before. Emily is also a very attuned teacher. She was good at picking up on what was and wasn’t working and then how to adjust accordingly. She is incredibly knowledgeable, and that shows, but she is also a great collaborator and made us feel like we all had a place in the work and the process.”
The tension Deshpande explored created a story rooted in sisterhood, exploring her role as an older sister within her family and Marathi culture.
“Realizing the significance of this role I had, and have had my entire life, created a sense of tension I’ve kept with me up until the present day and that I will undoubtedly carry into the future in some way,” Deshpande said.
This success is due in part to the numerous interactions and intersections she has had with other people’s lives, bringing her deeper into the world of hip-hop. She has moved from place to place and gone on tour with remarkable dancers.
“I’m originally from Denver, and I lived in New York City for a while. I also lived in Philadelphia,” Culbreath said. “In a weird way, Iowa City chose us. My husband and I were on a tour with Rennie Harris: Puremovement. We were doing a show in Maine, and one of the original members of the company, named Duane Lee Holland, Jr., got his MFA from this program. He kind of approached us at the bar when we were out one night, and he was like, ‘Are you guys interested in getting your MFA degrees?’”
In May 2015, Holland, Jr. was the first hip-hop artist to graduate from UI’s Master of Fine Arts in Dance program. Meetings with people like him shaped Culbreath’s life.
“When I was like 23, I would go to this club called Cielo on Wednesday nights, and all the best house dancers in the city would be there. It was life-changing for me because you would be immersed in creating an experience with other people in real time,” Culbreath said.
That feeling is what she hopes to recreate in her thesis, “The Space Between – Stories of Tension and Transformation.” While Iowa City is barren of dance clubs like Cielo, it is full of artistic people who yearn to engage in such activities. Culbreath saw this potential in her students.
“I’ve been working with dance students, and we’ve been training in-house techniques and styles. It’s a whole other Black vernacular form of dance associated with hip-hop,” Culbreath said. “Using that, we’re developing characters out of embodied experiments with tension, specifically cultural collision, especially in Iowa City, and what happens with cultural pluralism in a shared space. We can use vernacular dance to navigate those collisions.”
RELATED: Iowa City teacher releases first album on healing and female empowerment
Margil Sanchez Carmona, a visiting student from Stanford, witnessed this collision. Upon arrival, it was evident this was more than just a dance performance, but an interactive experience.
“The bouncers at the door gave us wristbands and checked our names off lists. After we were allowed inside, there was a dance circle at the front, and anyone, including audience members, could join and show off. There was even a DJ posed at the back with a proper set,” Sanchez Carmona said.
In cooperation with Public Space One, Culbreath transformed the rooms into a club setting. From lights to house and hip-hop music, she brought every aspect of the New York club life to the humble Iowa City.
“I wanted to take away the proscenium stage setting and the relationship where we’re performing and you’re watching. At PS1, I got a DJ, a theater student named Tony Nu, and a drummer who plays at the same time. Gabi Vanek, a musician, light designer, and producer, brought in a bunch of moving lights that she reworked into the space. I also brought a bunch of hanging lights and disco balls,” Culbreath said.
In dance, a stage is not just a stage. It needs to truly add to the stories being told, and Culbreath masterfully understands this. Costuming, music, and makeup all come together to deliver a moving, incredibly enrapturing performance.
“When you’re sitting in an auditorium watching people perform from multiple feet away, you can’t communicate to them that you’re impressed or even that you hear the story and emotions they’re trying to convey. But I was seated so close to Culbreath and her dancers, and I not only saw their movements but felt them. When they slapped their hands down or fell to the ground, I physically experienced the reverberation and impact,” Sanchez Carmona recalled.
Watching, listening, and understanding are all different disciplines of human interaction. Culbreath brought this thesis concert to Iowa City because she believes street dance can serve as the crux for storytelling.
“I believe these dance forms are the contemporary forms of popular culture right now,” Culbreath said. “They can infiltrate every aspect of concert dance and contemporary dance. In my opinion, you can’t see any dance without seeing some element of African diasporic movement influencing what’s happening.”