Gesel Mason Pushes Boundaries

Gesel Mason usually wears a black tank top and black sweatpants when she goes into work. Her daily routine consists of rolling around on the floor, springing through the air and shouting at her students to "engage your abdominals."

Mason doesn't work at the gym; she doesn't train athletes, either. She is a modern dance teacher and choreographer.  

 "I'm at the place now where performing isn't ‘the thing' anymore the way it used to be in my life…" said Mason.

Mason is also the artistic director of her company, Gesel Mason Performance Products and co-founder of Mason/Rhynes Productions. She uses the challenges she has faced as a black female to inspire her work.

The Horton style of modern dance technique, practiced and popularized by the famous Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, had become known by many as "black dance."

In "NO BOUNDARIES: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers" Mason longed to destroy the label that black dancers can only execute this one type of movement.

The concert presented "a vast array of choreographic approaches and styles, refuting common stereotypes of Black Dance," according to Corey Harrower in an article in the Brooklyn Rail. "Mason is capable of executing nearly any movement she is given."

 Mason has recently been exploring the "different ways dance can make an impact" and "that ability to shift thinking" of her audience members.

"She's done a great service in bringing work to audiences that we hadn't seen," Alvin Mayes, a full-time faculty member in the school of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies.

Her work, "Women, Sex, & Desire: Sometimes You Feel Like a Ho, Sometimes You Don't,"was inspired by the double-standards that women encounter.

Last month, Mason was invited to teach a workshop at the University of Minnesota.

"The dance program didn't bring me, the history program brought me," said Mason. "I went to a black feminism class and I got to talk about my ‘Women, Sex, Desire' project. I made all of these really smart people who normally sit at their desk and talk about philosophy and read gender studies, and I made them dance. I made them move."

Mason said she uses dance as another way to look at history, another way to look at feminism and African-American culture. Instead of searching through books, she likes to "look at movement as a form of research and intelligence." She then presents her findings to audiences as well as her students.

 "She has so much knowledge to offer. In every class I learn something new about myself," said Devin Brosnan, a junior dance major.

One of Mason's goals as an instructor is to help her students go beyond movement patterns that have been ingrained from old dance training. Her class exercises often focus on discovering new, more elaborate and efficient ways of moving. 

"She likes to go back to basics and she also challenges us with newer steps that you wouldn't think of doing in a technique class," said Sydney Pearson, a sophomore dance major.

 Mason wants her students to "be clearer about their choreographic voice" and have a deeper understanding of the "power of the body and moving." She does not want her students to be stereotyped as only being able to dance one way.

"I feel like she has completely changed my dancing. I've never had a teacher that has been as tough, but in a personal motivating way," said Brosnan. "She doesn't necessarily hold everybody to the same standard; she really wants you to improve you."

Mason's fellow faculty members also believe she has had a positive effect on her students.

"I think she's a really wonderful role model; she's a role model particularly for women of color, but [also] for all women," said Mayes. "This is an artist of today.