Iconic choreographer helps Richmond teens tell their stories through dance

On a nippy Saturday afternoon a few months ago about a dozen teenagers are standing in a circle wearing various expressions of apprehension, bemusement and discomfort. Choreographer Robert Moses is in his element. 

They’re students at East Bay Center for the Performing Arts in Richmond, and they’ve committed weekends and after school time to help create a new dance theater piece about, well, mostly themselves. But before the choreography can start, Moses leads them through exercises that stretch their imaginations while breaking down resistance to the possibility of looking awkward or silly in front of their peers. 

“It was just our fourth meeting, and we’re spending a fair amount of time building rapport,” Moses said in an interview with Richmondside a few days later at Dance Mission Theater in San Francisco. “We just started with some dancing.”

After a brief session going around the circle to describe what would constitute a “best day” or “worst day” (most choose the former), Moses begins a progressive story game. One student shares a scenario that gets passed around the circle, with each student advancing the story with a new movement. The story quickly turns into a surreal and apocalyptic tale involving a cat invading the Super Bowl with an airborne feline army. 

Each plot twist comes with a representative movement, and the students repeat the sequence of gestures, adding moves for every new narrative detail. Only after the cats have spent most of their nine lives does dancing commence, with Moses playing a rhythm track to weave the story into dance. 

“We’re supposed to find the things in their life that are important,” Moses said. “That’s where we start, with what they hold on to and what they share or what they don’t share. How their lives are different at the center from school. How studying trombone or folkloric Mexican dance makes them different from their friends, and we build a narrative out of that.”

EBCPA brings Robert Moses to teach for first time

The teens are only vaguely aware that the artist leading them through this exercise is an icon of Bay Area modern dance who recently celebrated the 30^th year of his company Robert Moses’ Kin.

Over the decades he’s carved out an expansive creative realm as a choreographer, writer and composer/sound designer, but this is his first experience working at EBCPA, a free performing arts school launched in 1968 that employs working artists to teach youths and young adults skills in theater, music, dance and media arts. 

Supported by a grant from The Creative Work Fund, a program of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund that also is supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Moses’ commission blends right in with the beehive of creative activities that keep the EPCPA humming. About 500 students are enrolled in 70 classes covering a far-flung array of dance traditions, musical styles, theater and musical theater. The center also offers private lessons.

“Last year we commissioned five alumni from our Young Artist Diploma Program to create new works, and the year before that we commissioned C.K. Ladzekpo,” said Linda Samarah, the center’s newly hired communications manager, referring to the legendary Ghanaian percussionist dancer who’s introduced generations of youths to West African music and dance. “It’s an incredibly exciting opportunity to bring in Robert Moses.”

With a faculty brimming with leading Bay Area musicians, dancers and educators, the center doesn’t often bring in outside artists, but Moses’ availability proved irresistible. A few days after the cat apocalypse session, Gabrielle Alexander, 14, and Nila Araiza-Singh, 13, students at Korematsu Middle School in Richmond, sat down to talk about working with Moses. 

The two are close friends who spend much of their free time taking EBCPA classes, and the Moses class is a small part of their creative pursuits. Alexander has been studying steel pan drumming for four years and is now enrolled in the diploma program. 

“I also took ballet and hip hop, Mexican dance, jirana, requinto, and West African dance,” she said. “We both really like dance, and it’s what we want to focus on, anything involving dance.”

With Moses, “we’ve been learning different movements and a completely different style,” Araiza-Singh added. “It’s really fun to branch out and try new things.” 

They explain how Moses changes things up.

“To experiment with tempos, trying different songs out,” Araiza-Singh explained. “His ability to take a story and make it into a dance, that’s really cool, I’ve never seen anyone do that, take a crazy story and turn it into movement.”

The result is a collaboration called “In Visibility,” debuting June 13. It’s billed as a work that “challenges the narratives imposed on Richmond youth, making visible what systemic oppression seeks to erase. Through movement and storytelling, it confronts harmful stereotypes, reclaims agency, and reimagines the lived experiences of the city’s young artists. By breaking through limiting narratives, In Visibility fosters understanding, inspires dialogue, and illuminates the resilience and power of Richmond’s next generation.”

While the center’s shows are free, limited space for audiences often means performances aren’t publicized, and the demand for spots in classes often outstrips the supply. 

Despite a vaunted track record of bringing high quality arts education to underserved Richmond communities since the late 1960s, EBCPA tends to fly under the radar on the Bay Area cultural scene, relying on word-of-mouth. Samarah says generations of families have been educated there.

The collaboration with Moses won’t change the center keeping a low public profile, but he’s definitely a convert. 

“This is still in the early stages,” he said. “But the center is a truly amazing place. You should see the range of things they do and the amazing teachers they have! I’m really glad to have the opportunity.”