Arts Listings

Though Eve A. Ma traveled the world, she spends much of her time trying to bring that world back home to the rest of us. Ma is the entrepreneurial force behind Palomino Productions, a Berkeley-based company producing DVDs and television programs on the art of dance.  

As a writer, professor, dancer and now as a producer and director, Ma has devoted years to honoring and promoting diversity in the arts. Her latest work, Improvising Jerez-Style, will be screened at 8 p.m. tonight (Friday) at La Peña Cultural Center in South Berkeley as part of a program of film and live performance. The evening’s entertainment will include a second film, Arts That Cross Borders, a compendium of previous Palomino programs about Mexican, Afro-Peruvian and Ecuadorian performers living in the Bay Area. Live entertainment will include the Afro-Peruvian group de Rompe y Raja, Mexican dance troupe Grupo Folklorico, and Ma herself dancing flamenco.  

Though Palomino is a relatively recent creation, Ma has been involved with diversity in the arts for some time. Her resume includes a Ph.D in modern Chinese history, and stints as a historical researcher for the Golden Gate National Recreational Area and the Army Corp of Engineers, as well as a stint as a professor of Chinese and Japanese history at Mills College and the former Cal State Hayward. She has published several books and more than two dozen articles and is a member of the state bar association. 

Ma also founded and served as executive director for six years for a Contra Costa County cultural nonprofit, Celebrating Culture and Community. 

In 2004, with little experience in the field, Ma created Palomino Productions and essentially learned the ropes of film and video production through trial and error. “I just made enough mistakes so that I learned how to do it,” says Ma. 

She soon launched a six-part series on rural music and dance entitled “The Languages of Sound and Movement,” co-directed by Richard R. Lee. The series examines Afro-Peruvian, southern Indian, Tahitian, Thai, Mexican and West African music and traditions. The first film in the series, Of Beauty and Deities: Music and Dance of India, is hosted by Ma and spotlights the artistry of rural Indian dance, with performances interspersed with interviews with the dancers and musicians, including a Berkeley group called Kalanjali: Dances of India, led by K.P. and Katherine Kunhiraman. The film was honored at the Berkeley Film and Video Festival and also received a Western Access Video Excellence award. It was screened at the annual conference of the UNESCO-sponsored Center for International Dance in Athens, Greece, in addition to several airings over Peralta TV and KCCC TV in Contra Costa County. The film is available, along with another Palomino title, Weaving With Spanish Threads: The Spanish Immigration to Hawaii and California in the Early 1900s, through the company’s website: www.PaloPalomino.com. 

Her most recent work, Improvising Jerez-Style, takes a look at Jerez-style bulerias, a fast-paced improvised dance often considered the quintessential flamenco form, known for its passion. The film was shot in the city of Jerez in southern Spain and includes interviews with dancers such as Moralito Chico and Antonio de la Malena.  

“In ‘the good old days,’ you learned to dance it in the community,” says Ma in her notes on the film. “This meant you learned by watching other people in your family, at fiestas, and on the street corners. ... But when modern times came to Spain and the southern Spanish city of Jerez, life changed. Around the same time, flamenco also began to be seen around the world. Now, in addition to the thousands of flamenco academies in almost every country imaginable, many hundreds of foreigners come to Jerez every year to learn the dance form and find out more about flamenco. 

“Our show was filmed in Jerez where bulerias is taken very seriously—so seriously, that there are two forms of it in today’s Jerez, related to the two historically Gypsy (gitano) neighborhoods in the old city. The show gives us lots of professional level dance footage as well as the all-important singing, interviews with famous flamencos, historical videos, classroom shots and vistas of this city which gave birth to and still inspires the art form.” 

The primary interview subject in the film is famed bulerias teacher Ana Maria Lopez. Ma explains: “Since the art of dancing bulerias can no longer be learned in the community, it has now become a gift from a very small number of specially talented teachers. There are a few, select dance masters in Jerez who have developed a way of teaching how to improvise in this exciting solo dance without going outside of its essential form and losing the tradition.” 

IMPROVISING JEREZ-STYLE 

8 p.m. tonight (Friday) at La Peña Cultural Center, . $10-$12. 3105 Shattuck Ave.  

849-2568. www.lapena.org.