History

PARCON

In 2015, when my son was almost three years old, he pointed at the back of a children’s book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, at a small white boy with blond hair and blue eyes and said that was him. I felt a hole emerge in my chest. 

I realized that if I did not figure out a different relationship to whiteness than the erasure I had settled for in my marriage, in my workplace, and in my career, it would also take hold of my son. 

My first impulse to create a different approach happened that winter. I began developing Parcon after I taught Contact Improvisation to Parkour teachers at a teachers’ retreat. Contact Improvisation is a duet dance form where two or more people are sharing weight and balance through a point of contact. Parkour is a site-specific obstacle course sport where movers (traceurs) use different jumps, rolls, and vaults to negotiate their environment. ParCon is a movement informed by both having two or more people or objects to share weight and momentum as they negotiate the environment.

core group of ParconNYC and all projects and classes that I facilitated in Parcon. The most regular investigators and I formed a performance and lab group called ParconNYC: Dean Beckwith, Cecilia Fontanesi. Funda Gul, Richard Kim, and Javaka Steptoe.

PARCON RESILIENCE

Over the next few years I became immersed in the question of how to integrate “somatics'' and social justice. I dove into investigating anti-oppressive methods. I immersed myself in Non-Violent Communication, restorative justice and anti-racist trainings and their communities as per the People’s Institute of Survival and Beyond. I labbed and workshopped with  marginalized communities to figure out ways to make this work relevant to their bodies and lived experience.

In 2017 I began to work at the AXIS project, an all-in-one gym and social service destination for people with disabilities that I was connected to through my work as a physical therapist. I formed a core of consistent investigators and friendships with Ione Lewis, Colleen Roche, and Jazalee Sirius to ground our work in accessibility, the dismantling of ableism and building agency in life. 

I also intentionally worked with people across generations. When my son was 4 I offered summer community classes to other toddlers and their parents at the local playground. It was a space for us to bond with our kids in their climbing and playing on structures, as well as a way to bond with each other in how we were raising our kids. 

I also worked with seniors in Spanish, first through a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council grant that led to work with the local non-profits that managed the city senior centers. Seniors and I play with building balance, strength and self defense skills as a basis for how we play and share stories about our past and families through structured improvisations. 

Parcon Resilience officially launched January 2018 as a somatic education and improvisational approach dedicated to honoring the embodied agency of BIPOC people and their allies in all aspects of their life through our movement. ParCon shouted out to the movement forms of Parkour and Contact Improvisation that the form was inspired by, and Resilience was my navigation through white supremacy even within those forms. In addition to teaching in dance festivals and to BIPOC performance groups, I found collaborations with people across the disciplines of education, modern dance, fine arts, architecture, design, urban planning, community psychology, organizing and restorative justice with universities across the country. 

Starting in August of 2019 I pulled together the first version of this guidebook for a training cohort of 12 students who came to New York City from around the country. I did this again with BIPOC-only training cohorts through ZOOM in the summer of 2020 and winter of 2021. These groups build community and a means for people to go deeper into the work to be able to take into their communities and lives.  

MOVING RASA

The transition of Parcon Resilience to becoming Moving Rasa happened during pandemics of 2020-2021 with COVID and the rise of overt white supremacy in the last year of president Trump’s term.

Our practices adapted to people’s living rooms and personal lives. In response to these times I held and have continued to hold a weekly virtual BIPOC group called Breathe Again. This space has grown to a monthly BIPOC men’s group and a biweekly Southeast Asian Men’s group. The more I dig into the particulars of my culture and ancestors, the more I am able to hold other BIPOC bodies in their nuances. 

In this regard I am specifically appreciative of Kimberly Tate. Since 2017, she has been a frequent collaborator for projects that weave her background in design and architecture with Parcon Resilience and now Moving Rasa. Her journey to connect with her art with her roots, ancestors and spirit has truly inspired me. Rasa, Gotong Royong, and the world of my Austeronesian roots permeated into my being with our 2021 collaborations with the National Organization of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Ending Sexual Violence (NAPIESV). Together with a handful of other artists, activist, and healers we created an E-book to support AAPI sexual abuse survivors. 

The me I wrote about at the beginning of this history would be fearful of diving into Indonesian culture because it felt like a splitting with everything I was assimilated to be. Now instead, my journey to Rasa, my essence, is woven in with the struggle of my blood and spiritual ancestors and culture. Their body is my body. Their momentum is my momentum and our momentum. May we all gather wisdom and momentum from our ancestors to share and discern our Rasa and thus that of our children!

PR has fiscal sponsorship from Fractured Atlas.

Fractured Atlas is a 501(c)(3) public charity. Contributions for the purposes of supporting Moving Rasa are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.  Your donations support classes for underserved communities, community building and the cultivation of embodied anti-oppressive in multiple fields and activisms.