How Agasan Changed After COVID19
Written by Rachel Lastimosa
Initially, the idea was to have a fully interactive experience in a physical space. We were prepared to present AGASAN at the Brava Theater Cabaret in San Francisco. Participants could immerse themselves in video projection mapped environments, feel the vibrations of frequencies sourced from singing bowls, bells, percussion and stringed instruments, and move in dissonance and harmony with other participants. On our walk-through of the venue, we talked about how travel from certain countries in Europe had just been banned and that the theater was already receiving cancelations from rentals. A couple of the collaborators and I left the theater with a plan nonetheless to push forward with our presentation. Four days later, the order to shelter in place was made as a Bay Area wide public health measure to flatten the curve.
Not knowing whether the SIP order would be lifted by the time we were to present, we planned to prepare for both an in-person and online experience to cover our bases. What became more and more apparent, was the fact that presenting online was a whole other beast, that many of us (whose work relied so heavily on sharing physical space and person to person connection) had little to no experience in. Also, it became more clear that the option to present at a theater was no longer viable. We had to pivot and do so quickly. All the while, individuals that comprised our collaborative team were facing personal challenges: canceled gigs, loss of income, raising children (and in my case a newborn), working as essential medical frontliners, hearing of friends and loved ones succumbing to COVID-19, distance teaching students that were having major difficulties adjusting to a level of existence we were all to accept as “normal” - on top of experiencing a global pandemic.
We didn’t have to push forward considering everything that was happening, but as we confronted the many challenges posed by choosing the path less traveled, we became more entrenched in the creative community we were cultivating and making some serious breakthroughs in the process. Our individual arts practices were being upended, stretched and pulled which, if you can identify with not being able to separate what you do from who you are, can make you really question your own existence. Through the process of play and exploration as a pack, we were able to support one another - we became stronger. And this is the essence of AGASAN in practice. Our ability to create in the face of upheaval is a defiantly joyful act of preservation. We know that in circle, our ancestors communicated in song, crafted weavings and anting-anting with care and mastery, communed with nature Herself in dance. AGASAN gives us the permission to recognize our authentic selves without the masks that have been placed upon us or the ones we have chosen to wear. Taking great care to replenish ourselves in all the rawness, is to honor those that came before us and taking the time to recalibrate prepares us for what lies ahead.
To be able to share AGASAN as an offering to a larger community is a responsibility we don’t take lightly and in the midst of a global pandemic, we all know that medicine must always be shared.
