Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation... ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts... and Viewers Like You.

THIS TIME, ON COLORES!

FINDING MY DANCE - INDIGENOUS DANCER AND AUTHOR RIA THUNDERCLOUD SHARES HOW HER JOURNEY IN DANCE HELPED SAVE HER LIFE AND TAKE PRIDE IN HER NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE.

IN 1985 ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ARTISTS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, ISAMU NOGUCHI FOUNDED A MUSEUM DEDICATED TO HIS WORK.

QUILTER RENEE WORMACK- KEELS LETS HIS IMAGINATION RUN WILD.

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

>> Ria Thundercloud: We're ready, oh my gosh.

>> Faith Perez: Okay.

So, Ria, thank you for being here today.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you for sharing the story "Finding My Dance."

Can you tell me a little bit about "Finding My Dance?"

>> Ria Thundercloud: "Finding My Dance" is about my own personal journey and evolution from growing up and being rooted in my culture, being a traditional dancer and then kind of discovering contemporary dance and classical dance and then going professional at a very young age.

So, it kind of talks about that, how dance has saved my life and really rooted me and grounded me.

>> Faith Perez: So then, tell me about your journey in Dance.

>> Ria Thundercloud: I started dancing at the age four and five, corn dancing and jingle dress dancing.

I was brought into the Powwow circle at the age of four and that's basically where they have an honor song for you, and you're given... you're welcomed into the Powwow circle.

So, it was really cool to learn about all the different styles of dances.

And, my mom, for my 13th birthday, took me to my first dance class here in Albuquerque.

So, I started taking Jazz, Ballet, Modern, Tap, Hip-hop and, like, acrobatics.

>> Faith Perez: So, during your first Powwow how did you feel?

>> Ria Thundercloud: Um...

I don't know, I just felt, like, overwhelmed with excitement because everybody made me feel special that day, they knew that it was, like, a big day for me.

I got a brand new jingle dress, I got my hair braided, I got it fixed, and like, got my moccasins and it's, like, a really cool and amazing feeling when you put your regalia on for the first time, but also going into the dance arena and, like, leading my family out was really empowering.

>> Faith Perez: So then, what stories do you tell with your dance?

>> Ria Thundercloud: I just worked with New Mexico PBS... >> Faith Perez: Cool.

>> Ria Thundercloud: ...on American Buffalo.

I danced and embodied the creation story of the buffalo and how the buffalo has been here before humans, but they've experienced a lot of the same genocide that Native Americans have.

For my first piece, I actually did the creation story of the buffalo and how it emerged from underground and came into this world and gained it's, like, strength over time.

And, the second dance I did, it was an embodiment of what it feels like to transform into, um... like, a buffalo and having that experience and what it feels like.

I can't culturally say, like, what these particular dances are.

There's culture sensitivity around a lot of the style of dances that I do, do, but when I do contemporary dance I'm able to kind of embody it without explaining too much, just kind of what it feels like to go through something so magical and beautiful.

I do a contemporary Eagle dance where I talk about the eagle, I embody the eagle.

We have a lot of different stories about how it's linked to Native Americans and what it embodies, like as far as strength, resiliency, and carrying our prayers to Creator, and what each feather represents.

And then I also have this whole series where it's indigenous women reclaiming sensuality and sexuality through movement and dance, and that's basically where I talk about a lot of MMIW, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, and kind of getting our body autonomy back, our body sovereignty back and reclaiming that movement back.

So, I have this whole series in production of, like, these different eras of movement and dance for indigenous women.

Because indigenous women were so fetishized and so over sexualized for so long that it's kind of made it shameful to be an indigenous woman that, like, is in her body and confident with herself so, that's pretty much what I've been working on right now.

>> Faith Perez: Why are these stories important for you to share?

>> Ria Thundercloud: I think it's because I grew up, like, not knowing anything.

I never was taught it, I never got a chance to learn it, and if I did hear anything about Native history in, like, school growing up it would maybe be, like, a couple paragraphs of how we were, like, conquered and massacred and we didn't do anything.

So, growing up I started learning a lot about myself in my own identity and my own history, through my own research, because it's not available for anybody.

So, I think it's just a huge honor to share umm this history.

>> Faith Perez: What does dance mean to you?

>> Ria Thundercloud: Dance is just, like, a huge part of life.

It's life, honestly.

It's something I grew up seeing since I was a baby, knowing, being a part of and it's just so interconnected, it's like one of my lifelines, it's like so necessary for me.

Dance is just a huge part of my culture, like extremely a huge part, and it's helped me express myself without using my words, it's helped me release a lot of trauma, ground myself, get out of my head and into my body and, like, just be present because when you're in your body, like, you're feeling yourself, you're feeling like you're in that moment and so, dance really has kind of, like, it has saved my life.

Like, on many occasions.

It's something I've been able to fall back on and, like, when we have traditional dances in our community it's always, like, the perfect time, like, right when my, like, spirit needs it.

So, it grounds me again and it brings me back to, like, my true authentic self.

It really brings me back to, like, good heart, good mind, so it really is grounding.

So, dance is just, it's life, I don't know.

I know it's so, like, cliché, but it's true.

>> Faith Perez: Well, in your book you talk about like, how you didn't feel like you fit in in high school, why was that?

>> Ria Thundercloud: Yeah, high school is awkward time for everyone so I get that, but I feel like for me, I didn't fit in, I just didn't understand at the time, I just knew I was, like, different and I thought it was because I was shy, I thought there was a lot of reasons, you know?

I tried to debunk it so many times, but I think it was just the fact that, like, I always got ignorant questions, like "how do I live on a reservation?

", questions about my last name, like, constantly being mocked.

And, even, like, there was this time in high school we went on a field trip for, like, a Native American cultural thing and there was all these students called, who I had no idea were Native at all, and all they did was, like, make fun of the singers the dancers and it really, like, it hurt.

So, I just feel like I didn't have a lot of people to relate to because I grew up, like, on a res, so... and I wasn't really around other people who ever grew up, like, in a similar, like, lifestyle that I did, so I just could not relate to anybody.

And it was awkward, like, high school was high school was high school.

>> Faith Perez: Well, how did dance help you through that tough time?

>> Ria Thundercloud: Yeah so, that's when dance came into my life.

Like, I started performing, I started going to Nationals, I started competing, I started traveling, like, that's when my true travels really started so it kept me busy, it distracted me from, like, school life and dance life were two completely different worlds for me.

It gave me a whole different group of friends, a whole different demographic of people, and I got to travel, and then I had something extremely in common with a lot of the girls in my dance studio.

So, like, that's what really grounded me in high school, and I felt like, I felt like I had my group of friends.

>> Faith Perez: So then, why was it important for you to share your journey in dance?

>> Ria Thundercloud: I think it's because dance is, like, it takes you places, and I think a lot of people are scared to dance.

So, I hope it inspires, like, young girls to be active, young boys to be active and to dance and to just try it, dancing is fun, you don't have to be perfect.

I think that dance is just something that everybody should experience, no matter what kind of dance it is, it doesn't have to be professional, just even in your living room or, like, hang out with friends.

I think dance is just so healing in all aspects.

>> Faith Perez: So then, what do you hope young readers will learn from this book?

>> Ria Thundercloud: I like to think that it's nice to go out and travel and venture and do something that really fills your cup up, that makes your heart happy and dancing did that for me.

And I feel like no matter how far I went, no matter where I went, I always, like, desired to come home to my traditional territory and I, like, want to encourage young kids to, like, follow their dreams, follow their heart, and constantly learn as much as you can, but coming home is also important too, you know, we have a lot of elders in our community, a lot of cultural things that need to be nurtured as well in our traditional homelands, but everybody's important, including the kids and the people who leave and come back, because they bring different knowledge, they bring different experiences and I think that's important.

HONORING A LEGACY.

Dakin Hart: Noguchi was born in 1904.

He was born in Los Angeles, California.

His mother was an Irish woman from New York.

She was born in Brooklyn.

His father was a traveling poet from Japan.

Noguchi wasn't even named until he was almost three years old.

His mother just called him boy or yo.

His identity was complicated from the very first moment of his birth.

He was biracial chose to be multicultural his whole life, but at a time when it was much harder.

He enrolled at Columbia in pre-med.

His mother felt that he was destined for bigger things than being a doctor.

Um, and by that she meant being an artist.

He was a spectacular academic sculpture at nineteen, twenty, and then very quickly realized that he was becoming the poster boy of a passe art form.

He really wanted to, uh, change sculpture in a way that made it a force for civic.

He wanted to make it a, an active part of our everyday lives.

That's why he never stopped making furniture.

His Akari lamp series.

He made playgrounds, he made playground equipment.

He made sets for theater and dance.

He had long collaborations with people like Martha Graham.

The museum was founded in 1985, but Noguchi had been here for almost 10.

He bought a derelict factory building, which is the red brick building behind me and started using it for storage and staging.

Sculpture is all about physical inconvenience.

Everything is big and heavy and takes up space and requires equipment to deal with.

So, sculptors always need more room.

He decided that in order to encapsulate his perspective or his point of view, his way of thinking of things, um, that the best thing to do was to build an institution.

And so he began to turn his private garden and space into a display space.

When the museum opened, it was seasonal, or Noguchi would be here himself.

You could ring the bell and he'd come down and walk you through.

One of the things that you'll notice when you come to our museum probably right away, is that we don't have wall labels.

We do that.

Not because Noguchi hated wall labels.

When the museum first opened, there were labels identifying all the sculptures somewhere near them in a kind of traditional museum fashion, gradually he just removed them.

And it's because he wanted your experience of the work to be primary.

The fastest way to kill an artwork is to pretend that you've solved it.

The museum is really about a direct and intimate relationship with these objects and these things, and more important, the larger sense of an environment that they create.

They really produce an atmosphere and we're standing in this garden, which isn't even two thirds of an acre.

It's teeny tiny.

It's a postage stamp.

He called the museum an oasis on the edge of a black hole.

The black hole is New York city and the urban maelstrom.

And as small as it is, you come here, and you just soak it in and you soak it in through osmosis.

It's like visiting a forest, not like going to the museum.

Maybe Noguchi's most successful sculpture overall are his Akari lanterns.

He called them lanterns rather than lamps because he said he wanted them to be, as moveable is butterflies.

The traditional paper lanterns in Gifu City specifically are made with a particular kind of continuous bamboo ribbing and washi paper.

That's made with interior bark of a Mulberry tree and it produces a laid paper that's just more durable, more flexible and more resilient than classic laid cotton paper.

"Breakthrough Capestrano" is made out of Japanese basalt.

A basalt column is a single crystal of basalt.

Noguchi worked with harder and harder stones because he wanted the material to resist him.

What he really liked was stones that had already been marked by some process that he would then incorporate into the work.

You can see the lines of drill holes.

Those drill holes were made manually with hand drills, and then they'll push two bamboo wedges into the hole and fill the hole with water.

The bamboo wedges expand enough to crack the stone.

Noguchi loved that and he loved the product of this breaking process.

So, he would take these stones columns and set them upright, cut off the bottom so that it would stand up and then make his few adjustments to turn them into sculpture, in air quotes.

"The Well" that's right behind me, this wonderful variation on tsukubai that is a circulating fountain.

The water just cascades out over the stone.

That's another one of those basalt columns just lobbed off with a coring drill, making a hole in it.

Some of these sculptures are eroding, but the trees are growing.

Their relationship to each other is changing constantly over time.

He planted all of the trees.

So, the magnificent katsura tree that provides the canopy that dominates the garden.

It really was a sprig.

It was a quarter inch sapling, and now you see what that's become.

And that's why the heart and soul of the Noguchi Museum is this garden.

INSPIRED QUILTS.

My motto is there are no mistakes in quilting.

There are only design opportunities.

When I was a child I learned to sew.

You know those were the days of home economics.

And I made the little apron and the little blouse that you make, so I fell in love with sewing.

As time went on, I think when I was in high school - senior high school I made a lot of my clothes.

And then when my children came along, I started making my children's clothes.

Over the years I kind of got away from it.

Then someone I was on a panel with, we were talking about the things that we like to do, and this person was telling me she was a quilter.

And, I said well I've always been a sewer and when I retire in 25 years or so, I am going to learn to quilt.

And she said, oh Renee, don't wait until you retire.

Let me teach you now.

So, I spent about two weeks with her, learning to make what is called a log cabin quilt.

I wanted to learn the process.

I wanted to learn the skills because I wanted to learn how to make art quilts.

There are traditional quilts that you would put on the bed, versus the kind of thing I make now that goes on your wall.

There's something deeply spiritual about creating something.

It's the playfulness.

It's the letting your imagination run wild.

There are quote unquote "rules" in quilting and while I do try to make sure my seams are straight, my sewing straight, my points don't always match up.

My colors may not necessarily be analogous.

I have put orange and purple together.

I just love the idea of putting different pieces of fabric and watching how they play together.

I consider myself to be a narrative storyteller, quilter.

That is my quilts tell a story.

Typically, they tell stories about women's lives.

What I want people to come away from is -- is not only to be inspired, but to learn about the unsung heroes.

Shereos I guess I should say.

The women whose stories are not told.

Wild women don't have the blues is a the first of a series of three quilts.

I am got interested in blues singers of '20s, 30s and '40s.

Albert hunter, ma rainy, Betsy Smith and I said I'd like to tell the stories of these singers in a quilt.

Because sometimes people will never pick up a book and read it, but they might be willing to read a quilt that goes on your wall.

The second quilt is called café au lait and brown sugar divas.

Because in the entertainment industry, African American women were sometimes segregated according to skin color.

In that quilt is a little different fabric.

It's yellow tones, light brown tones -- because I wanted it to sort of mirror the images of the women and their skin tones.

Cocoa and hot chocolate divas is the quilt that I created for darker skinned women.

Hady McDaniel, Bee Richards are in there.

So that's how that series of quilts came into being.

Maybe about 10-12 years ago, going through some really deep emotional turmoil and quilting became very therapeutic for me.

There's a quilt that I do once a year, and that quilt is for my son who is incarcerated.

One of the things I could not do last year was to go see him.

So, one of my pieces is called "your blues ain't like mine."

Its blue fabric, blue hearts, because I haven't been able to visit him during the pandemic.

That made it pretty difficult and painful for me.

And as you can tell this heart is not completely reconnected.

That's on purpose.

That heart is reconnected, but this heart is not.

Is there a point where you think you won't need to make one.

I am hoping so, yes.

As a quilt I am thinking, you're leaving your own legacy.

Of your own stories and people may not know all of my story, but they will know some of my story and hopefully that will encourage them to think about their own stories as well.

The award-winning arts and culture series ¡COLORES!

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Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation... ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts... and Viewers Like You.