Maha & Company Brings Dance to Saturday’s Excursions

Photo and video by Sander Roscoe Wolff.

This Saturday Maha and Company, a Long Beach-based dance troupe, will be participating in Excursions: The New Jazz Age, an interdisciplinary performance that includes live music, live video art and dance.

The event, which runs from 1:00PM to 11:00PM, is taking place at 729 Pine Avenue, in conjunction with the Cultural Alliance of Long Beach and in partnership with Keith Lilly’s non-profit organization, Developing Future Leaders.

Performers include the Scott Heustis Group, Grievous Angels, Trio919, Dwight Trible, MsT Musze, Babylon Blues, BlacVulkan, and The Trio. The show will close with a performance, at 10pm, by NotQuiteFree, which includes event organizer Dave Williams, Scott Heustis, Gabriel ‘Slam’ Nobles, Rebecca Lynn, Martin Espino, Jeff Dent, and Joe Dean. They’ll also be joined by famed live performance painter Norton Wisdom.

Maha Afra was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and described her family as dysfunctional, traditional and poor. She studied dance as a child and, in college, received a BS in Biology and an MS in Anatomy. After moving to the United States, she earned BA and MA degrees in dance from UCI.

Long Beach Post: How did you come to dance?

Maha Afra: I always needed to dance. My dad loved music and dance. He was an absent father. What he encouraged in me is to love music and dance. He competed. He danced till he died. My mom, not at all.

Middle Eastern dance was an integral part of life, and I discovered ballet through a cousin and a friend. I paid for my lessons by babysitting and tutoring little kids. I was extremely shy. A ballet teacher pulled me from the very back to the very front. I had to do it. I had to dance. I needed it. Despite the school I went to deeming dance as a sin (a Southern Baptist school), in spite that, culturally, it is not accepted especially for girls. In spite of the horrors of the civil war.

I studied ballet with an amazing teacher and danced with her, and also with a Lebanese group. It was on and off, depending if the war was bad, or on a break. There was no dance in academia, and I did not even know that there existed a dance major. I went to school for science, got married and immigrated. I discovered the dance major thing in the United States. I went back to school and decided to change the world and lives through dance.

What roles do improvisational and choreographed dance play in your work?

I did improvisation in a class setting, as a modern dance movement. CALB has given us the door to improvise with live music. it was, and is, a dream. Choreography is what I dance, and do. I do it through the dance company and through my job. I am a Professor of Dance at Cypress College and this is my second year as chair of the department. I have performed so much, and choreographed so much, that I cannot keep up with the number. Improvisation is the outlet we have, the escape from choreography.

What is there to escape?

Choreography is set, counted, with the music, a certain style or a fusion of styles. It is repeated in the same way no matter where or when it is performed. We have pieces in our repertoire that we can do in our sleep. I still remember many of the choreographic works I performed as a teenager. Improvisation is moving to move, an impulse, a reaction, a statement that has no count, no rules, no parameters. It is freedom, almost complete freedom, but I do not believe there is complete freedom.

What are the limits to freedom in improvisational dance?

The audience, the setting, the context, the source of music, or no music, the weather, the mental and physical status of the moment, the number of dancers. Is there complete freedom in music? Is there complete freedom in anything?

Below is a brief video where Maha speaks about a new work, still in development.

Afra is presenting a Celebration of Dance at Cypress College on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8pm, and on Sunday at 4:00PM. Tickets are $15. For more information, call the Campus Theater box office at 714.484.7200. Tickets are also available on-line.

Advance tickets for Excursions: The New Jazz Age are available for $10. Contact Keith Lilly via DevelopingFutureLeaders.org. At the door, tickets will be $20. More information about the event can be found on Facebook.  

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