- [Narrator] Just ahead on "One Detroit", we're bringing you some of our favorite stories on local creative artists.

Coming up, a documentary about a Michigan family's efforts to keep their restaurant afloat during the pandemic and in the midst of political backlash.

Plus, an artistic presentation inspired by the stories of survivors in Japanese internment camps.

Also ahead, we'll introduce you to a dance troupe that's preserving Mexican tradition, and we'll close with a performance rooted in African culture.

(traditional African music) It's all coming up next on "One Detroit."

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(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Just ahead on this week's "One Detroit", a special best of edition focusing on the creative works of Michigan artists.

Coming up, Asian-American artists tell the stories of Japanese internment camp survivors in an emotional performance piece.

Plus, we'll show you how a Southwest Detroit dance troupe is keeping the longtime Mexican custom of folkloric dancing alive, and the TeMate Institute for Black Dancing Culture delivers a traditional African performance.

But first up, a documentary titled "Bad Ax" tells the story of an Asian Mexican American family trying to hold on to their restaurant business during the pandemic.

The film is set in the rural community of Bad Axe, Michigan and chronicles the family struggles during COVID restrictions and a rise in racial tensions.

"One Detroit's" Bill Kubota spoke with the filmmaker David Siev and his parents who were the focus of the documentary.

(upbeat music) (phone ringing) - They wanted ketchup with your kids' tenders.

Okay, they want ranch, and then you just need a kids quesadilla, right?

- [Interviewer] Hey, Kyle, is it busy right now?

- We're actually in that super busy right now but we're not used to doing this many takeout orders so it's a bit of a learning curve.

- [Bill] This could have been a restaurant anywhere two years ago, a takeout assembly line.

- [Reporter] There are now more than 1,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus here in Michigan - [Reporter] Bars, restaurants, coffee shops, all ordered by Governor Whitmer to stop normal business to prevent the spread... (tense music) - [Reporter] The surge in hate crimes against Asian Americans only getting worse.

- [Bill] A town of 3000 surrounded by the flat lands of Michigan's thumb, two hours north of Detroit up M-53, now a documentary film named after that town.

In "Bad Axe", a family restaurant called Rachel's.

When COVID hit, some of Rachel's family came back to help: daughter Jacqueline and son David, U of M grad and filmmaker.

- If you're not an essential business you need to close and you need to protect your employees.

- When making "Bad Axe" I always said I wanted to like share my family's story even before I started shooting it.

And I always thought I would share this story of a Cambodian refugee.

- Show it to the camera like this?

- They have to have that talk of unemployment.

- [David] And, you know, a Mexican American woman like these two individuals who built their American dream here in Bad Ax, Michigan.

- [Chun] Here's a picture of Rachel with our children Jacqueline and Michelle, our baby at the time, David.

(soft music) Here's the three kids standing in front of the front entrance.

Didn't take a whole lot to keep the childrens happy.

Just tell 'em this gonna be our future donut shop.

- [Bill] The donut shop would become Rachel's restaurant.

- You know, when I moved back home from New York during COVID and just picked up my camera and began filming- - David, why are you filming me right now?

- [David] I got a lot of free time.

- David having the camera in his hands is not something new.

It was something that, you know, he's always walking around with his camera.

But to get like moments that were kind of, you know, very personal.

- Bad Axe is probably a lot safer than New York right now.

It's probably a good thing you guys got out when you did.

But it's crazy to think that literally one week ago we were on a cruise ship and now like things are like starting to get really bad.

- [Bill] The filmmaker's family, willing participants for the most part.

- I think he was also like very respectful because when I did really ask him to stop, he did, but he also didn't sometimes too.

So I don't know, it's just, I guess that's what makes a really good film.

We are!

We will wear masks, glasses, gloves.

We know.

We're not stupid, Jacqueline.

- You have high blood pressure!

Three-fourths of the people that have died, three-fourths.

- The way this documentary, you know, came together it was very unexpected.

I had no plans or intention of making a documentary.

It just, that's just the way it unfolded, so.

- I was taking orders, Jacqueline.

- Shut up!

Mom!

That's not how it works.

- You're wasting more time bitching.

- No, you are, Mom.

- The film has shown everybody, not just in this town but everywhere across the country even in the world, what a family going through.

- [Governor Whitmer] The carry-out, dine-out option is still something that is available to people.

This is an essential service, which is the feeding of the people of our state.

- Obviously out of everybody's control.

(soft music) It reminds me of when we literally like we're just struggling to survive trying to make money off of donuts.

- Through "Bad Axe", we relived 2020 all over again, our lives during lockdown the film a collective history for all of us.

Like when "One Detroit" checked on Roseville restaurant owner Steve Morse who'd been checking in regularly with the governor.

- Well, what do you think she's gonna do?

- [Bill] When can customers eat in again?

COVID cases up.

Will she shut him down again?

At "One Detroit" we heard the fear and uncertainty over in Clawson.

- We're all scared that we're gonna run out of money.

We're scared that people are not gonna come in.

We're scared that too many of 'em are gonna try to come in.

- I wear a mask and a shield while I'm teaching.

- [Bill] The masks and the politics that came with them.

- Oh I did wear, I had one on before.

I wore one in this back area but I didn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.

- [Bill] It was the same year George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis Police.

- [Mandy] I'm Mandy Wright.

I'm live right now.

Right next to the Marriott.

Police are in riot gear pushing protesters back - [Bill] Night after night in Detroit, rallies, skirmishes, arrests.

- [Mandy] There's a line of protestors making a human chain.

- [Bill] So many other Black Lives Matter protests that summer, in the suburbs, even in conservative Bad Axe.

A memorable scene in the documentary: - I feel like one of the reasons why my parents were able to make the restaurant successful is because they assimilated in the way that people expect them to.

Come to work, get your stuff done, don't open your mouth, don't say too much, make sure you don't speak up too loud.

My parents are good at biting their tongue but I don't think I can be that way.

- Hello.

- Excuse me.

- How are you today?

- Hello, how you doing?

- Good, how are you?

- Okay.

- It's so weird having this happen in this environment.

Like I'm more comfortable, I guess in Ann Arbor at a Black Lives Matter protest versus being in Bad Axe at a Black Lives Matters protest.

- The 2016 election, I voted for Donald Trump.

I had been surrounding myself with very Conservative Republican people, families, friends and it took me a really long time to realize what type of a person he truly is.

I really dug deep into my soul and thought I can be my own person.

This will be the first step that I've taken publicly.

I'll be able to look back on it one day and tell my children, you know, it takes every ounce of your soul to stand up for what's right even if your family doesn't agree with you.

- [Protestors] Black Lives Matter!

- You know, couple small incidents that we have see in the film, you know, during the Black Lives Matter protesting with my daughter, my really outspoken daughter Jacqueline get tangled up, should I say it, with those three men that are, you know, fully armed, come in there, try to intimidate everybody.

At the time, you know, it seems like, wait a minute, the town judging us in the wrong way to say, you know what?

Your kid the one that start a problem with these armed men.

No, these not an armed men.

These just the man that have a really bad intention.

Now if anybody in the town support those men, they have some problem.

And they make me really proud when I see that film that my children actually stand up, you know, again for what is right and what is wrong.

- [Bill] Chun Su's immigration story at the forefront of the film.

- I close this and play down and burn it right down.

- [Jacqueline] Exactly.

Just outta spite because you're a child.

- That's right.

- [Bill] The stress of the pandemic but how much is connected to the trauma suffered a half century ago escaping the Cambodian killing fields?

- [Chun] This is the last place that I saw my father.

- [Bill] Despite it all, Chun and his family thrive in 2020.

You'll need to watch to the end as they look back with gratitude to the people in their town.

- Honestly, our town supported all of our restaurants.

Not just ours, but all of 'em.

Hello, Rachel's of Bad Axe, how may I help you?

I cannot thank our community enough for that.

I mean, they helped all of us.

(Rachel sighing) - [Daughter] Mom?

(group cheering and applause) You guys rock, man.

- It's usually like coastal stories, right?

Of like what's going on in New York or LA but with "Bad Axe" like it's a whole other part of America that so many people in our country are a part of that community.

And so when you're seeing our family go through this you have to think about all the other families in all these other small towns that are just like Bad Axe across the Midwest.

People seeing their own experiences represented on the big screen through our family.

- [Narrator] An archive of oral history interviews with survivors of Japanese internment camps was used to create a moving performance called "Invisible Embrace" at the Ann Arbor Public Library last year.

The show was produced by a group of AAPI artists.

Producer Sarah Smith sat down with one of the creatives behind the project, Amber Kao, to find out more about the performance and its impact on audiences.

(upbeat music) - I think art is unique in that it is an automatic platform.

Art offers that space and opportunity to bring awareness.

Is/Land is, essentially, a collective of Asian-American artists.

There are movers, poets, digital designers, musicians.

We love to collaborate with different, all facets of art and design.

The collaborators for "Invisible Embrace", we worked with, there were three dancers.

So myself and then Chih-Hsien Lin and Catherine Hepler and the sound installation was by Juan Park and the music and set design was by Chien-An Yuan.

What kind of pushed us into this space of "Invisible Embrace", it was actually just very unexpectedly.

We came across an archive of oral life history interviews with Japanese American interment survivors.

- [Survivor] Well, when we were very little, well, at age five- - Chen is our music director, set designer, and he found these oral interviews.

This did stem from, you know, there was a lot of Asian hate crimes going on at the time.

And, you know, it just really resonated I think with him and with myself once he shared it with us, their history, their stories, how they were survivors, their trauma, and just their willingness and openness to share that through their interviews.

And, you know, we were just saying, "We gotta use this somehow."

So we decided to kind of use that as our focal point.

- [Survivor] And we gathered the children, I can't remember how many of us were- - We were married on March 24th.

- Juan Park, another one of our collaborators, he is, I would say a sound innovator.

His theories are that there is sound in the air, sound in the space that we cannot hear, but it takes the correct pickups, the correct instruments to draw out of the air.

So we wanted to incorporate that in that, you know, these stories are there, you know, whether we see them or not, they're always here.

And we wanted the act of drawing them out is what we wanted to incorporate into our piece.

So there was a pickup and there are copper wires.

And so we were using these stories, these interviews, and we are running them through the wires.

And then the pickups, we would manipulate the pickup.

So if they are in a close enough distance, these stories would be heard.

But if you're far away from, the pickup and the wire are too far away you won't hear anything.

And I think it's reflective of how, you know, these stories are there, but you have to be intentional to listen and hear and, you know, to really, to process all of it.

(soft music) - [Survivor] And we seemed to hit it off all right at first so, well, I said, "Okay."

- Part of the movement that we were exploring were movements of rituals because rituals tie us back to heritage and culture.

They give us a routine, stability, and they help us process things.

So we were just thinking about our own rituals and how that ties us back to our family and then that brought us into memories.

You'll see a cloth where that kind of resembles, to me anyways, how we're all kind of tied together.

It's a very long piece of cloth.

Maybe 50 feet, I wanna say, even maybe even longer.

And it's also very heavy so that our stories are all entwined together in this cloth in some way, shape or form.

And for me, fruit is a part of my family and how my dad always prepares and cuts the fruit for us, and so we were peeling oranges on stage and so that became a ritual.

And there, of course, then the scent became part of the process as well as it unfolded throughout the dance piece.

We're creating a space and experience and so that in itself offers a platform to share.

And so that's part of what we are hoping to do is to invite people into a space where they can engage, they can reflect, and they can take away something.

I think that what we try to offer as an invitation to a dialogue, an invitation for reflection.

We really resonated with this story.

We hope you do too.

And so I think maybe, if anything, that would be the takeaway is that they can, you know, they connected somehow and that they are engaged somehow and they have an experience that they'll walk away with it.

They'll remember or, you know, want to explore more or want to enter a dialogue into in the future with us, with other people, with themselves, you know.

So all those things.

I think that would be our ultimate goal if we ever had one for our audience.

(soft music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Hispanic cultural traditions are a huge part of the Southwest Detroit community.

That's where a dance troupe named Ballet Folklorico de Detroit is keeping a unique style of Mexican dance alive and bringing awareness to the rich Latino culture.

"One Detroit" contributor, Daijah Moss, visited the group to learn more about this Mexican dance tradition.

(upbeat music) - [Instructor] Hey!

(all stomping) Uno!

(instructor speaking in Spanish) - Our mission is to emphasize or to bring to Southwest Detroit and Michigan and our community an awareness of the Mexican folkloric culture, like the Mexican dancing and its traditions.

(upbeat music) (singer singing in Spanish) - You know, Folklorico is alive in Mexico, it's not over here.

And so one of our missions, right, our students predominantly have Mexican heritage, you know, they're Americans but they have Mexican heritage and we want to give them a sense of pride in their culture.

You know, they can't experience it here, they have to go to Mexico to experience it, you know, so we kind of try to bring it here so that way they can be like, "Oh, this is what it's like, you know, to be over there, to be over there and to experience all of this stuff."

So we're trying to give them like, oh, have pride.

You know, especially in these days and times it doesn't feel good a lot of times in the news and everything to be Hispanic.

- If you've ever gone to a Mexican folkloric performance that you'll see the girls wear or the performers wear different costumes.

Like one time, you know, one time they might have a big dress on, another time a small dress on.

That's because all the states of Mexico and regions within those states, all have different styles of dance.

So, and with those different styles sometimes there was an influence like an indigenous influence or a Spanish influence and it's very serious the keeping those traditions alive and not changed.

So there's a whole culture behind it.

Like if you're doing this type, like right now we're learning Sinaloa and Sinaloa Mestizo, and there's different posture, there's different ways to do the dresses.

There's different ways, the steps.

Everything is unique to that.

(upbeat music) - The role that dance plays in Mexican culture is really free, right?

It's recreation because it's fun to dance, right?

Everybody goes and they love to dance.

It's educational because you're preserving the traditions and the culture, right?

Because they can still, like, if they weren't like making a concentrated effort to preserve it, right, it could change, it could just change.

So it's educational.

And then the third thing is that it's good for your health.

(upbeat music) So anyone can join by Ballet Folklorico de Detroit, right?

One of the first things I ask people, especially if they're not Mexican, right?

They're like, oh well I'm not Mexican.

I was like, well, do you like Mexican food?

Right?

And most of the time, because Mexican food is so good, they say, "Yes, I love Mexican food.

And I'm like, "But you're not Mexican."

So why do you have to be Mexican to love Mexican dance?

(upbeat music) - We've been part of the Ballet Folklorico de Detroit- - For six months.

I like being a student because there's like so many kids there.

'Cause in our other dance group that we were in, there was like not that much kids.

So I like being like part of like the group of kids that are in this group - What connects me to the Mexican culture is the movement.

Because there's like these different types of movements with like, like putting your skirt really high or like low, stuff like that.

(upbeat music) - I've been a part of the dance group six years.

Before I joined the dance group, I did not know much about the dances and the culture.

What inspired me to join the dance group is watching my sister dance and how she was having fun.

- I've been in the group seven years ago.

My favorite part of being part of it is getting to dance, getting to perform, and getting to know new places.

(upbeat music) - So we really want the crowd to feel like if they're watching us perform Sinaloa Mestizo, that they're in Sinaloa watching a performance from the people in Mexico, doing the dance.

So that's what I want.

I want to transport them to Mexico and so they can experience it.

And then they'll be in awe like, oh my God, I just went to Mexico in these three minutes on stage.

(upbeat music) When we're dancing on stage, we're really trying to keep these traditions alive.

And there's people here who haven't experienced it who even though they know Southwest Detroit has this vibrant Mexican culture, right?

They don't know it.

So when they come and they see us, I really want to impact them.

Like, yes, Southwest Detroit, there's this culture that's alive here.

Right, and that when they come and they see us they can really feel it.

Right, when they go to one of our shows they feel Southwest Detroit.

Like, oh yeah, this is why Southwest, they always talk about Mexico Town because it's there.

We're there.

You know?

- [Dancers] Hey!

Hey!

(upbeat music) (crowd clapping in beat) (audience applauding and cheering) - [Narrator] That will do it for this week's "One Detroit."

Thanks for watching.

We'll now leave you with a performance by TeMate Institute for Black Dance and Culture from Detroit Performs: Live From Marygrove.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - [Announcer] From Delta Faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, Serving Michigan Communities Since 1929.

Support for this program is provided by: the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV, The Kresge Foundation - [Announcer] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Visit dtefoundation.com to learn more.

- [Announcer] Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music)