A New Recipe

An apron-clad Marjani Forté-Saunders, spotlit on the steps of the St. Mark’s Church sanctuary, rocks from one bare foot to the other while swinging a brown paper bag, presumably filled with groceries. She makes her way to a simple wooden kitchen chair, sets down the bag, takes a seat, and begins miming an animated conversation, her face wildly expressive. She cups a hand at her mouth as if whispering into someone’s ear, then turns it the other way, now on the receiving end. With a great arcing swoop of arm, she threads an invisible needle and begins mending. Her fingers grab at the air as if beaks of baby birds while a narrator in voiceover describes a kitchen scene of women gathered around a white enamel kitchen table: “all summer they drank iced coffee with milk in it … endlessly talking about childhood friends, operations, and abortions, deaths, and money.”

Performance

Marjani Forté-Saunders: Blondell Cummings’ “Chicken Soup”

Place

Danspace Project 50 St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, New York, NY, May 30, 2025

Words

Karen Hildebrand

Marjani Forté-Saunders performing Blondell Cummings’ “Chicken Soup.” Photograph by Rachel Keane

In Blondell Cummings’ “Chicken Soup” for Danspace Project’s fiftieth anniversary, Forté-Saunders conjures the essence of Cummings herself performing in this same space in 1981, as well as Cummings’ grandmother, whose 1950’s era kitchen inspired the choreography. As Forté-Saunders points out in the post-show discussion, “Chicken Soup” depicts a Black woman in her own kitchen. Yet the domestic tasks portrayed vibrate with a long history of Black women in domestic servitude.

When Forté-Saunders first performed “Chicken Soup,” she was 23. Her life as a dancer—at the time with Urban Bush Women—didn’t bear much resemblance to the domestic scene of a woman in her kitchen. At 40 and now a mother, she has a fuller understanding as she returns to the work after nearly 20 years. “The whole piece requires you to simply be about the task,” she said. “It’s a meditation of repetition.”

The expressive arms and torso work of the chair segment speaks of Cummings’ (1944–2015) early Martha Graham training, and her character study and use of multi-media developed as an original member of Meredith Monk’s company, House. “Chicken Soup” features music of Monk, Colin Walcott, and Brian Eno, along with text from Grace Paley, and recited recipe ingredients from a poem by Pat Steir.

Marjani Forté-Saunders performing Blondell Cummings’ “Chicken Soup.” Photograph by Rachel Keane

The initial exuberance of the woman in the chair sobers as Forté-Saunders contracts and grabs her abdomen, either in pain or grief. She springs from the chair to stand in profile, her full body twitching as if she’s trying to control a rage. She drops to hands and knees and begins scrubbing the floor with a stiff brush, as if in absolution. A tablecloth that she shakes, then waves overhead as a celebratory gesture, quickly shifts to a symbol of grief when wrapped around her wrists. The infant cradled in her arms disappears as the scarf slithers to the floor. The woman returns to scrubbing. “We inherit their spells,” and “We shall prevail” are from lines spoken in voice-over and projected on the wall. This kind of tension makes the work as timely as ever, considering migration, fears of deportation, and racial violence.

My favorite part is when the dancer takes up a cast iron skillet, plucking ingredients from an imaginary shelf, shaking the pan over a flame, sampling its contents. The skillet becomes a potential weapon when she lassos it above her head. The movement here is inflected with West African dance: chest flexion and quick forward-darting lunges. Sanders walks into the audience and flirtatiously accosts a man in his seat—to give him a lap dance? The twitching returns and she falls to the floor to sleep it off. When she comes to, a quick glance at her watch, she’s back to cooking. A woman’s work is never done.

For the 2025 production, Forte-Saunders has added a section where a community of live women join her in the dance. They rise from their seats in the audience and enter the stage one by one, seven on the night I attended. Moving rhythmically, they mirror her gestures, stirring, rolling, pouring salt from the shelf. Each places a hand to the forehead in half a prayer gesture, and together they gradually drift to a crouched stance, their mouths open in a silent yell or scream. A video projection of sparkling blue sea water shows behind them as they cluster and stomp once all together—a quick ta-dah. Then again. We hear the inexplicable barking of a dog. Are these women a pack of dogs? In Forté-Saunders hands, the “Chicken Soup” community of women around a white enamel kitchen table emerges fully embodied, fiercely protective. As she said later, “We’re not in the ‘80s anymore.”

Karen Hildebrand

Karen Hildebrand is former editorial director for Dance Magazine and served as editor in chief for Dance Teacher for a decade. An advocate for dance education, she was honored with the Dance Teacher Award in 2020. She follows in the tradition of dance writers who are also poets (Edwin Denby, Jack Anderson), with poetry published in many literary journals and in her book, Crossing Pleasure Avenue (Indolent Books). She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Originally from Colorado, she lives in Brooklyn.

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