ARTS

Arts & Entertainment Scottsdale.org l @ScottsdaleProgress /ScottsdaleProgress

Dancing With The Universe | Native Style will bring an informative and lively show to the Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, May 7. (Special to the Progress)

Native American dance comes to arts center Debra Ann Byrd brings experience to Taliesen

BY ALEX GALLAGHER Progress Staff Writer

Derrick Suwaima Davis believes all people are born with a known purpose, with his being to use dance as a form of education and expression.

Raised on Hopi reservation land in Northern Arizona, he began participating in powwows at age 3 and fell in love with his tribe’s native dances.

As he grew older, he grew aware that there was a world outside of the reservation that had become engulfed in consumerism and had forgotten about the resources that our planet provided.

Now, Suwaima hopes to bring audiences back to earth with his latest dance performance, titled “Dancing With The Universe | Native Style,” Saturday, May 7, to the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. “When we first started over 15 years ago, there was no clear way for me to show my own culture but have other tribes show their songs, dances and how they managed their resources,” he said. “It’s all based on the fundamental principle of how to make a good life for their community.

“In each culture, you’ll see that common thread of people desiring a good life. ‘Dancing With The Universe | Native Style’ is about looking back in awe at what nature has made and encouraging people to embrace that more in their daily lives.”

He likens it to a time “where there was no running water or electricity and people harvested the wild foods that may have been available during certain times of the

BY BRIDGETTE M. REDMAN

Progress Contributor

Debra Ann Byrd felt reborn when she joined the Southwest Shakespeare Company as its artistic director.

“I’m a Christian girl, a Bible girl and I was living in the Valley with the mountains surrounding me,” Byrd said.

“I was feeling so much closer to God, and I found myself being refreshed and rejuvenated and more alive. I lost 60 pounds. The environment was very good to me. It causes me to relax, to calm down, to breathe deeper and to smile more from the inside.”

Byrd brings a wealth of Shakespeare experience to the Valley. The founder of Harlem Shakespeare Festival and Take Wing and Soar Productions, Byrd is well known in the classical world. Last year, the Shakespeare Theatre Association honored her with the prestigious Sidney Berger Award thanks to her Shakespearean work.

“I fell in love with Shakespeare because I saw a troupe of Black actors performing it at Harlem,” Byrd said. “Their performances were amazing and magical, beautiful. I said to myself, ‘Wow.’ I had been looking for a challenge in my theatrical career and when I saw them - that was the challenge I was looking for.”

She studied classical theater at a conservatory. Upon graduation, she was told she’d only find success with modern Black playwrights. Unsatisfied with this, she founded the Harlem Shakespeare Festival. Coming up on its 20-year anniversary, the festival will celebrate with her, despite her current position.

Byrd produced an all-female version of “Othello” and, recently, staged “Becoming Othello: A Black Girl’s Journey” at the Lincoln Center. She is writer-in-residence at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, artistin-residence fellow at the Folger Institute and an A’Lelia Bundles Community Scholar at Columbia University.

“My mother is an African American from New York,” Byrd said. “My father is from Puerto Rico. My dual culture has influenced how I view the world and how I make theater. “I am an Afro-Latina who is fluent in Black theater, gospel theater, and classical theater with a special emphasis on Shakespeare, all of which has helped shape who I am as a producer, actor and director.

“Over the years I have become a Shakespeare woman, producing Shakespeare and the classics for 20 years and I’ve spent

Debra Ann Byrd is the artistic director of the Southwest Shakespeare Company.

year,” and people then “were very appreciative of everything that they had.”

He intends to do so by opening the show with a scene set on the darkest day of the year, the winter solstice – also considered the beginning of a new year in some cultures.

“That is when we wake up the earth and encourage snow to come to get everything ready for spring planting,” Suwaima said.

From there, the show changes to a warmer tone.

“Then we move into dances that represent the spring, come around to the summertime when the plants have made their pollen but now are starting to produce seeds.”

It is during the spring portion of the show that Suwaima plans to break out a jaunty number titled “Let’s Get Busy” that will feature native flutes to paint a springtide image in the audience’s mind that is unlike anything he has ever seen on a stage.

“I’m sure people have seen Native American flutists playing solo and a few of them have done duets, but this will be between three and five flutists sharing the spotlight and instead of them standing, they will be wearing deer hooves or other percussive instruments around their ankles and turn the performance into a dance,” he said.

The show will utilize the whole stage to reflect the vibrancy of “when life is really big and busy” during the summer, according to Suwaima.

It displays the intermingling of tribes during the harvest season when tribes would barter with one another.

This is best done during a number called “Horse Dance,” which depicts the harvest time when tribes would barter crops and how the arrival of horses and how they

SCOTTSDALE PROGRESS | WWW.SCOTTSDALE.ORG | MAY 1, 2022 sped up trade and travel.

The show will conclude with what Suwaima calls the “Hoop Dance” to signify the end of the year.

Joining Suwaima on stage will be performers from multiple Arizona-based tribes, including Hopi, O’odham, Diné and Apache dancers and musicians.

“I’ve grown as an artist as well as many of the other artists that will be gracing the stage at Dancing With The Universe | Native Style and part of it is because we have found a common thread within cultures around the world,” said Suwaima, who is Hopi and Choctaw.

Suwaima hopes that the show displays the unity that the tribes share and reminds people of the importance of the planet.

“I would hope to encourage the audience to continue to work with strengthening ourselves as humans to take care of the earth and all of the other life that does important jobs,” he said. He also hopes that the show will be informative and help people shed any misconceptions they may have about Native Americans. “I want people to learn things about Native people that they didn’t learn in the classroom,” Suwaima said. “It’s sharing with them in a healthy way a good interpretation of who we are as indigenous people.”

If you go

What: Dancing With The Universe | Native Style When: 7 p.m. Saturday May 7 Where: Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, 7380 E. 2nd Street Cost: $8 to $18. Info: ScottsdalePerformingArts.org/ events or call 480-499-TKTS (8587).

DEBRA ���� page 24

the last 32 years as an actor. I look forward to working with the Southwest Shakespeare team as we strive to make great theater for Arizona and the Southwest.”

The position came about at an apt time as she felt she needed a change.

“I needed to grow,” Byrd said. “I needed to see for myself if I could do this career challenge.”

Southwest Shakespeare and Byrd were already familiar with each other. She performed here in 2019 and was an artist in residence for three years.

“I thought that they were a great organization,” Byrd said. “I thought that their work ethic was great, their shows were great and what I was seeing was all good.”

She was impressed with Mary Way, the executive director.

“She is kind, loving, giving and has a beautiful heart and a beautiful spirit,” Byrd said. “It was not really difficult to say let me go that way.”

The feeling is mutual.

“She brings a skill set and advanced industry experience having founded and run the Harlem Shakespeare Festival,” Way said.

“She is critically acclaimed and was the Phoenix Actress of the Year in 2019 for her role as Othello. She is thoroughly decorated and it’s an attribute to our education mission to have an artist share both the Latin and African American experience with our community.”

Byrd is organizing the next season and promises at least three Shakespeare plays, maybe even five. Southwest Shakespeare Company wraps its season with “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles” on May 8 at Taliesin West.

“I think the best way to seduce someone to Shakespeare is to perform it for them and show them your heart and your soul,” Byrd said.

“When you perform Shakespeare and share your heart and soul, people cannot help but to be seduced if you honestly share.”

If you go

“Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles” When: Various times through May 8 Where: Taliesin West, 12345 N. Taliesin West, Scottsdale Cost: Tickets start at $35 Info: swshakespeare.org

Popular teen musical at Desert Stages Theatre

PROGRESS NEWS STAFF

Scottsdale Desert Stages Theatre will present a popular teen musical that has never been presented in Arizona starting Friday at Scottsdale Fashion Square. “Be More Chill,” running May 6-15, is based on Ned Vizzini’s young-adult novel about an average teenager who takes a pill in the hopes of becoming more cool - or “chill.” The play has had an internet teen cult following since 2015, streaming more than 300 million times. The musical by Joe Iconis and Joe Tracz ran for six months offBroadway in 2019 and has never been produced before in Arizona. "We listen to our DST teen community, and this title was one of the shows they wanted to perform," said Walt Versen, DST artistic director. “’Be More Chill’ is an exciting and contemporary musical with sci-fi elements so we invited Valley theatre favorites and DST alums Mark and Lynzee 4man to direct and choreograph our production.”

With recent news of the controversial closing of “Be More Chill” at a Turlock, California high school after only one performance, there is already a high level of interest in DST’s production.

“Mature themes are referenced in the show. We auditioned and cast teens ages 13-19 and believe this age group - the same as the high school student characters they portray - is well-equipped to understand and honestly deliver the storyline to audiences,” said Versen.

DST’s production will feature live music and teen musicians. "Be More Chill" will run at Desert Stages Theatre from May 6 through May 15 with shows Friday and Saturday evenings at 7:30 p.m. and matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $25 and available at DesertStages.org or 480-483-1664. Masks and social-distancing are optional, but still encouraged, at Desert Stages Theatre.

Audiences are required to wear masks during the first Sunday matinee and second Friday performances.

Scottsdale Desert Stages Theatre is located next to Wonderspaces on the lower level of the Scottsdale Fashion Square Mall.

Desert Stages Theatre is an award-winning, nonprofit performing arts theatre located in Arizona’s premiere shopping, entertainment, and dining destination, Scottsdale Fashion Square. Established in 1995, Desert Stages has grown to offer over 250 shows year-round consisting of 10 adult productions and up to eight youth productions. Its mission is to not only provide quality entertainment for the community, but to also provide an educational experience for young people interested in the arts.