Our dear friend, collaborator, mentor, teacher, and all-around super mensch Frank Shawl passed on last month. We at Dandelion Dancetheater continue to reflect on how much he’s meant to us.
REFLECTIONS ON FRANK SHAWL’S MEMORIAL –
BY CO-DIRECTOR ERIC KUPERS
I’m still processing the immensity of love, respect, and joy expressed at the memorial for Frank Shawl, organized by Shawl-Anderson Dance Center yesterday. It was like dying, going to heaven, and re-uniting with dance friends and colleagues from almost every stage of my dance life.
And Frank’s vastness of spirit pervaded the whole thing.
I feel especially blessed to have gotten the opportunity to learn and perform some of Frank’s choreography from the 1960’s, reconstructed by Abigail Hosein and danced alongside a glorious group of dance family members. It reminded me of the primary function dance has had in my life–a vehicle for deeply inhabiting, processing, wrestling with, accepting, and celebrating all that happens. Words are helpful, but nothing gets me through like dancing together.
In preparing for the event this week, I procrastinated on all the pressing daily business that piled up from my life as CSUEB Theatre and Dance department chair, and turned my attention to seeking out moments that we at Dandelion Dancetheater got to share inside the creative process with Frank. Some of the videos are “out there” already, but I found a few that I don’t think have been shared yet.
Frank was a natural fit as “Rabbi Shawlstein” in our 2010 collaboration, “Dan Plonsey’s Bar Mitzvah”. He grounded all the divine chaos. Some excerpts are shared here in our FRANK-ALION playlist:
https://www.facebook.com/dandeliondancetheater/videos/2921039817926584/
https://www.facebook.com/dandeliondancetheater/videos/1152804741592648/
https://www.facebook.com/dandeliondancetheater/videos/1253835651467293/
The most profound experience I had dancing with Frank was in Kimiko Guthrie’s “There.” I played Frank as a young man–and got to do so many times, in many different contexts. What an honor! A video from our 2005 performances of the work is here:
https://youtu.be/9DnHRutShWw
And I found a video of our 2011 version of the piece at Dandelion’s “Radical Inclusion”:
https://www.facebook.com/dandeliondancetheater/videos/794250461010589/
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Videos, memorials, memories, reminiscing all pale in comparison to the experience of being in the room with Frank, but they help me attune to that part of my being that IS still in the room, the larger and deeper room—right here in the middle of my life, rehearsing with Frank, sharing stories, laughs, and the simple joy of moving together.
One thing that has felt especially inspiring to me as I reflect on all the stories and emotions shared at the memorial, and on Frank’s last years in the body, turns out not to be about how long and how powerfully he danced. I think all who knew him felt Frank’s love of dance down to our bones.
And in knowing how much dance was at the core of his being, I am especially inspired by his decision to stop performing, to stop going regularly to the studio, to stop attending everyone’s dance shows. He didn’t have to. The community would have made it possible for him to keep taking ballet barre and rehearsing, and seeing performance up until the time he was confined to bed (and possibly even after that)—if that’s what he had wanted. But he made a different choice. He honoured the last years of his incarnation in a different way.
Frank stepped offstage in a manner that I hope to emulate. He seemed to know when he had this other work to do, that was more internal, less tangible, and that required a more refined kind of energy and focus. This is a part of the life of a dancer that is more difficult for me, but which seems crucial to the path of embodying wholeness. I think it’s difficult for many of us. We thrive on connection, on moving together in the studio, onstage, and wherever dance takes us. Many of us struggle more with the quiet times, the endings, and the in-betweens.
Frank offered a more subtle mentorship in his last years. I believe he modelled a delicate, precarious, and sacred phase of the path, that we rarely get to witness, with his unstoppable grace, humor, and love. He taught us about entering the in-between times, the unknown times. I am perhaps most grateful for this final lesson, and am re-dedicating myself to practicing in such a way that will hopefully allow me to meet my own dying as a cherished dance partner, on a stage more expansive than I can yet imagine. I carry Frank’s joy with me on this journey, as a precious talisman, a reminder of who we are
EVEN FURTHER REFLECTIONS ON FRANK SHAWL’S MEMORIAL from co-director Eric Kupers
In writing a thank-you-email to Frank’s Angels and the folks at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center who collaborated on Frank’s memorial event, I ended up diving into more reflections on the impact Frank had on my life, and want to share them here:
The three hours that we as a community spent honoring Frank Shawl publicly on Thursday feels to me like a brief introduction to a process of integrating all that he meant to us. I could have easily gone another 10 hours. And even then, it would have only been the beginning.
I’m reflecting on the time I’ve spent in Bali over the last few years. During both of my trips I had the honor of witnessing and participating in what we might call “memorial services” for people who had recently died. Both of the ceremonies took the entire day, and both were only small parts of a much larger cycle of ceremonies that happens for each person’s passing, over many days, and many months.
I believe that the work of integrating and honoring Frank’s impact on our lives is going to take at least as long as each of us have left on this planet, (and possibly longer.) The connections, mentorship, love, joy, play, sorrow, and complexities of our relationships with him are multi-layered and ultimately mysterious.
I’m struck by this sense that we have been in the presence of a being of immense proportions, much more significant than perhaps any of us have realised. The many stories and remembrances on Thursday pointed to a vastness of inter-connectedness and support that Frank and Victor occupied the center of. I’m in awe. I have the sense of having known about the very tip of a massive iceberg–that has power beyond what I’ll ever fully understand.
As a Buddhist and an explorer of mystical realms, I’m finding myself very curious about what a Tibetan Buddhist or Indigenous Shamanic elder might say about the spirits of Frank and Victor. Who were these beings really? They were both so humble, that it was easy to forget what massive effects they had on our communities. Thursday’s event pointed towards deeper and more wide-reaching reverberations from their lives than I had previously considered.
I’m still an agnostic about reincarnation, but I’m finding it fun to imagine who Frank and Victor might have been before they were Frank and Victor, and who they might be next. They remind me of Avatars of Vishnu in the Hindu tradition, or previous lives of the Buddhas to come.
I often lament the fact that as far as I know, I wasn’t around particular creative beings or especially juicy times in history. I would have loved to hang out with Buddha, Jesus, Moses, and many more. I would have loved to talk art with William Blake, Walt Whitman, Hildegard Von Bingen, Rodin, Rumi, Rilke, Isadora, and Ruth St. Denis.
I wish I could have helped Harriet Tubman with the underground railroad. I would have loved to practice non-violence with Gandhi, or march for Civil Rights with MLK Jr. I wish I could have taken LSD and danced and sung in ecstasy during the Summer of Love in San Francisco.
I would have loved to sit Zazen with Suzuki Roshi, and to have followed Ram Dass to India in the early 1970’s to spend time with his guru, Neem Karoli Baba.
I wish I could have been part of the early Judson Church and Contact Improvisation experiments. I wish I could have been at the summer gathering with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and other spiritual teachers that launched Naropa University. I wish I could have hung out with John Lennon and Yoko Ono at one of their Bed-Ins for Peace.
And there are many more moments I wish I could have been present for–when it seems like major awakenings erupted into human history, altering the spiritual, artistic, and intellectual landscapes forever.
But I did get to spend time with Frank Shawl.
I got to take classes at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, with Frank teaching, and with Frank participating, and with Frank hanging out in the lobby. I did get to discuss Buddhist meditation at the front desk with Victor. I got to see both Frank and Victor perform.
I got to give birth to Dandelion Dancetheater, with much of the labor happening in the SADC studios. I got to be married by Frank, with him leading the ceremony bald, just after cancer treatment. I got to perform with Frank many times, and even play the same being onstage.
And I got to spend time with him at his apartment in his last years, sharing stories and songs and the joy of just being together.
I feel incredibly fortunate. I imagine that in future decades, folks might look back to this time and wish (much as I have about other times) that they could have been present at this juicy moment in history and gotten the chance to meet and practice with Frank Shawl. I treasure this part of my journey.
And I am very proud to be a part of the dance community that has emanated from Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. No matter where I am or what I am doing, Frank and Victor, and this community are integral parts of my roots, and are present in all of the ways that those roots lead to creative fruits and blossoms and ever-renewing leaves.
Photos by Luiza Silva