CUNY’s Eugene Nesmith moderated the symposium with Dr. Kimberly F. Hall, creator of the Digital Shange Project at Barnard, director Woodie King, Jr., Tony-Award winning actress and Julliard faculty member Trezana Beverley and Shange’s longtime editor, Michael Denneny, sharing highlights and insights into the artist and her seminal work. Hall reminded us that even as “For Colored Girls” reflected Shange’s “desire to sing a Black girl’s song” it also attacked an English language “that denied the relevance of life along the African Diaspora.” Instead it replaced it “with something that celebrates our ability to get to the root of ourselves in everything from a well-made pot of greens to a beautiful line of poetry.” King pointed out, Shange laid the foundation that playwrights Susan Lori-Parks, Lynn Nottage and even “Hamilton’s” Lin-Manuel Miranda and others have built upon. Beverly, who won the Tony for her portrayal of the Lady in Red reminded folks that “For Colored Girls” is in the African American Museum in Washington, D.C.
Taking time out from a hectic schedule, Shange sat in a corner booth of an upper West Side restaurant talking to the Amsterdam News about her life, her work and her legacy. She still exuded the vibrant, indomitable spirit I encountered years ago. Her smile beamed. Her eyes, highlighted by blue/green shadow, twinkled. The loose ends of her colorful braided hair framed either side of her face. Multicolored African bracelets encircled her wrists. Her joyful, high-pitched laughter shattered the restaurant’s din. A nearby walker and a fork held at an unusual angle hinted at the strokes and neurological disorder she has had to grappled with these past few years.
I asked if she had any inkling at the time that her landmark choreopoem was breaking new ground. “No,” she said, “I came from the poetry world and what I was doing seemed organic. I was accustomed to working with musicians and to working with dancers because I was one.” So, it was only natural to think “the nonverbal plus in the words would expand the meaning of the poetry.”
Shange recalled the joy of working on improvisations in classes with dancer/choreographer Dianne McIntyre, whose “Sounds in Motion” company studio was, at the time, located in the heart of Harlem. “Dianne doesn’t count, so you have to feel the people around you to know when movement will happen,” Shange explained. “She also depends on the breath as music, so the sound came out of our bodies and it was like a chord from the piano that let us know what to do. It was very exciting.” Later Shange and McIntyre collaborated on a few productions, including her play, “Spell #7.”
Eleo Pomare was another dancer/choreographer who had an impact. “Eleo’s warmups challenged the body, so they were almost like dancing,” Shange said. “You had to be fully involved. Your body had to do things you weren’t expecting to have to do right away. Also, the dances we did after the warmups used the same muscles so that the class became a whole experience. There wasn’t really separation between warmup and movement.”
Noting that dance and music have been both tool and catalyst, she said, “I used to write after class because my endorphins would be so active, I just had this need to keep going. One of my lines in one of my poems is, ‘I still sweat when I write.’”
Asked what prompted the donation of her archives to Barnard even while she’s still artistically active, Shange said, “What happened was, I had a stroke in 2004. I recovered from that very nicely and I was walking with a cane. I was doing very well. I had a personal trainer. Dianne choreographed a dance I performed at the Nyorican Cafe in 2010. Then, in 2011, I was stricken with severe sensory neuropathy, which affected my legs and my hands.
“I had to learn how to hold things, how to walk. I couldn’t even stand up. So for the past few years I’ve been contending with that. I have constant tingling sensations all over my body. I’ve learned how to live with it … I just worked on my physical rehabilitation and decided I couldn’t write any more. That’s when I decided to do something with my papers because I felt my career was ending and I needed to do something with the work I had done. I called Barnard and asked if they wanted them and they jumped at the opportunity.”
Happily, Shange was wrong. Her career is far from over. In fact, she is working with the Barnard archivist as she sifts through the treasure trove of drafts, letters and journals. She added gleefully, “I’ve also been sending poems to Ishmael Reed’s talking magazine, and I gained the use of my fingers about six months ago, so I can type on the typewriter. I like that because I can control it. I can’t quite control the computer yet. I don’t know how to make the lines dance on the page the way I like to do.” She’s also working with a writer who’s “doing an extensive critical biography.”
Although “For Colored Girls” is still being staged around the world, Shange says she doesn’t oversee those productions any more: “I have had to let it go,” she said. “Otherwise it would consume my life.” Now she is working on a theater piece called “Lost in Language & Sound” based on the book by the same name. What drives her? “think that as artists we can change things … The day after Trump was elected Iposted on my Facebook page, “The struggle continues and don’t give up,… I wrote that we must persevere and keep doing our work and, even though it’s sort of Leninist, artists are the vanguard of the revolution and our work is more important now than ever.”
Clearly, this girl is a colored girl for whom the rainbow is not enuf.