Artistic Director's Acknowledgement and
Action Steps Regarding Identity Statement
December 10, 2020
SUMMARY
Dancing Earth Founder and Artistic Director Rulan Tangen’s mixed ancestral heritage is Kampampangan and Pangasinan from Luzon Island, known colonially as part of Pacific archipelago of the Philippines, and Norweigian/Irish lineage, while she lives in the partition of Turtle Island which is often referred to as the U.S. For over four decades, Tangen has been invited into, and extended invitations for, collaborative work with global Indigenous artists and intergenerational community members locally and globally. Dancing Earth has been committed to working with Native American, global, and mixed Indigenous artists to support, nurture, and highlight diverse Indigenous embodied values and ways of being through creative artistic practice.
Full statement of identity here.
STATEMENT
Thank you for your honest contributions in responses to the posting of my identity statement in October. Your honest and heartfelt responses allow me the opportunity to understand more, to acknowledge your hurt, confusion and pain that my life path and choices have caused, and to let you know that I resolve to do better in the future. I hear you, see you, love you, and acknowledge all that you are feeling, and I take responsibility to apologize for my mistakes, with mutual humanity.
First, from my heart, I regret any and every negative impact my past actions or inactions have had on you. At the very root of all of this is one central issue for which I now offer my deep apologies, which is this: My misplaced embracing of belonging when it was offered, confusing that with identity, and ultimately with purpose. I am sorry for this essential misstep, from which has grown my entire way of living, being, creating, and understanding and is not in harmony and is triggering more trauma.
I acknowledge that I did not research oral histories with proper and diligent paper research, nor did I proactively correct misperceptions, thus perpetuating ambiguity. I now see how this has caused confusion, burden, pain to some of the peoples and cultures to whom I had dedicated my work. In hindsight, I could have done things differently, and your reactions are helping me to consider that deeply.
I am committed to clarity moving forward with proactive, clear, and consistent assertion of my personal lineage. I want you to know I am listening thoughtfully and it is deeply shifting me from the inside out, to shape changes ahead.
With apology, there should be amends and action steps. Some of these are happening personally with my cultural spiritual advisors, and with myself. And because Dancing Earth is an entity experienced by the public, I am letting you know the first steps of the outward facing shift, which are:
After facilitated meetings with current company staff and artists, Dancing Earth will be taking initial corrective action steps.
Starting November 21, 2020, Dancing Earth will be on hold from public facing programs until further notice.
In 2021 I will take time to convene further with cultural advisors, company artists/alumna, collaborators, community members, and supporters who have been involved for these past 16 years, to listen and consider what is best for the circle.
To continue the practice of referring and recommending ethno-specific artists when that request is made (modeling, acting, performance, teaching) as proactive encouragement of others to move into service of Native American communities through dance arts education and hiring of Native artists for collaboration.
Re-evaluation of vision, leadership, structure, programs, budgets, and scale to assess how Dancing Earth can remain relevant at a time when performing arts and culture in the US is undergoing an extreme and necessary re-imagining.
I am writing from the sorrow of my heart, and I know that apologies can often fall short of expectations, but I hope and pray that you can accept that I am doing the best I can with the full sincerity of my being from where I am now in my growth as a human. I can make time for additional personal exchanges if you request, with the intention that we can move into forgiveness and healing, individually and collectively.