THE MAKING OF “DANCING FROM THE HEART” -- A LETTER FROM MARILYN HUNT

Andrew Garcia and I met about 1995 when a colleague introduced us at the University of New Mexico, where Andy was teaching his course in Pueblo Social Dance. I wrote an interview-article [ www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1083/is_n2_v71/ai_19060976 ] about him for Dance Magazine (New York) where I was an editor. Our families stayed in touch, visiting on Pueblo feast days. He and I each had the idea of making a film, with the then-new technology of the inexpensive mini-DV camera. It was my first venture in hands-on filmmaking.

It has been a very moving journey for me working with this talented family, especially because as a child I was already drawn to the harmonious and spirited Pueblo dances that I visited. How fortunate it is that the Pueblo way of life, within the serene architecture of its adobe towns, their dance plazas and the majestic setting of mountains and rivers, has survived. But not without continuing struggle to come to terms with the Anglo society that surrounds it.

Andy and I started out to make a film about the traditional Pueblo dances of his family dance group, Tewa Dancers from the North, with his explanations. Over the period of years that we were filming, however, the scope widened, drawing on his own history of struggle and the personalities of his family. The dances themselves often became major individual events.

FILMING THE DANCES

Having received the agreement of San Juan Pueblo (now Ohkay Owingeh) to film there for the project, we were able to record not only their widely known Feast Day dances with their fever-dream-colorful Comanche Dance, but a serene and timeless Deer Dance for the inauguration of new tribal officers, where the space of the dance plaza itself emerged as a microcosm of the world.

A performance in the restored stone kiva (religious structure) at the ancestral site of Chimney Rock, Colorado, became a homecoming to a place where Andy feels his forebears may have lived.

A film shoot at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque started with the dancers, mostly young family members, bantering in the dressing room; in the end, they proposed dedicating their performance to the then-recent victims of 9/11, and carried an American flag in the dance. As Andy said in that context, "THE DANCES ARE PRAYERS FOR ALL PEOPLES." This is an important perception that viewers can carry away with them from the film.

An outdoor performance at a late hour became ghostly in the low light, and turned out to be perfect for a dream-like sequence, set to a recording by Andy's late singer-father.

Perhaps most poignantly, Andy's 8-year-old granddaughter Kayla danced for the recovery of her mother Dorea from cancer. When Kayla finished, the family embraced and wiped tears from their eyes. I filmed that private moment with doubts that I would use it in the film. But Andy and the family were generous in sharing. And they greeted the film itself with tears and laughter.

I thank them all, from my heart, for the deep life experience of working with them. And especially Andrew Garcia for sharing his wisdom, time and patience. This film is his, and theirs.

We hope that you, too, dear reader, find “Dancing from the Heart” a blessing.