A Movie About San Antonio: What Would It Be Like?

What would it be like to make a movie in San Antonio?

I can see the plot unfolding now: Two unassuming tourists leave their hotel to go sightseeing one morning, expecting to come home with some colorful photographs and bellies full of delicious Tex-Mex food. They're in the middle of touring the Japanese Tea Garden one afternoon when there's an unexpected turn of events.

Here's another idea: A journalist who's covering the local arts scene discovers that he or she has inadvertently become part of the story.

It could happen here, right?

San Antonio is certainly not new to the movie scene. Most locals and TV fans remember Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, made in 1985, where Pee-Wee Herman treks to San Antonio to find his bicycle and ends up taking a tour of the Alamo.

Plenty of other movies have been made in San Antonio throughout the decades, and many celebrities make their home in San Antonio.

The city is also home to a variety of outlets for people to express their cinematic skills and creativity. Local non-profits such as Urban-15, which hosts the Josiah Media Festival (Open to anyone 21 years old or younger with a Call for Entries from now through June 1) and the San Antonio Film Festival give artists and filmmakers a solid platform to share and display their cinematic work with a variety of audiences from around the world. (The Call for Entries for the Film Festival's annual contest is currently open with a March 24 deadline.)

Some of San Antonio's filmmakers have been on the scene for quite some time. Erik Bosse, a writer and filmmaker who works with art and cultural centers throughout the city, is involved in a variety of collaborative works with the local theater and dance community. He creates films that explore urban environments and recently contributed video to Mujer Enterrada: Something Happened Here, a multi-media installation located at Centro Cultural Aztlan, San Antonio's 40-year-old Chicano/a arts and cultural center.

The project celebrates the organization's yearly exhibition exploring the cultural implications, both historical and contemporary, of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on Feb. 2, 1848. This year, the staff and curator worked to highlight the treaty's impact on women, naming this year's show Mujeres de Aztlan y El Segundo de Febrero. The project will be on display through March 15.

Bosse worked with ritualist and theater artist Laurie Dietrich, movement artist Amber Ortega-Perez and structural weaver and fiber artist Doerte Weber to complete the installation, assisting with the short movie that played on a loop.

An image from Bosse's video installation. (Image courtesy of Erik Bosse.)

Bosse has worked on other short films, too, including Magical Creatures: The Butterflies, a scene from Urban-15's recent multi-media performance piece, Lucia in the Faerie Garden, featuring dancers from the group's performance ensemble, including me.

Working on the video for this piece was a lot of fun. It began with a trip to Mission Espada with the Urban-15 production team, including artistic director Catherine Cisneros, Sound Design and Music Composition director George Cisneros, Music and Media Assistant Jonathan Anderson and Event Coordinator Marisol Cortez, and continued with an experimental flight through the park in the red and blue butterfly costumes designed by Catherine.

Erik filming me dressed as a butterfly as part of the video segment of Lucia in the Faerie Garden. 

While I've envisioned making my own movies here and along the stretches of South Texas, this was my first time participating in the making of a video in San Antonio, and for that, I'm really proud. Seeing the butterflies in motion afterward was transcendent, and feeling like a life-sized insect gives a feeling that's comparable to nothing else.

Later in the park, stretching my wings. 

Dancing in the Dark, on Concrete

Me in costume after Carnaval de Muertos 2015.

Standing outside Centro de Artes with the Urban-15 Group's performance ensemble after the Dia de los Muertos opening on Oct. 27, I realized how far I was from the tiny studio in southern Indiana where I used to study dance.

The studio in Madison shared space in a strip mall with a flea market, a movie theater and an arcade. It had three dance rooms – a large one for big classes and two smaller spaces for individual study.
I began taking tap, jazz and ballet dance lessons at a young age at downtown locations before transitioning to the new studio on the hilltop in high school. That was when I also began teaching dance to three to 12-year-olds.

Since the director wasn't always in town, she gave me a key so I could open and close the studio after school and at closing time.

Having a key was one of the perks of the job, because I could practice there on weekends when no one else was around. Alone in the main room, I turned off all the lights and did my warm-up stretches, positions at the barre, floor work and routines. Unlike the hardwood surfaces at the former studios, the floor was concrete and hard on the feet, but I didn't care.

I remember practicing in the air-conditioned studio on hot summer nights and hearing people banging on the front door. Kids who'd just gotten out of the movies would cup their hands over the glass and peer inside, trying to see who was dancing in the dark.

In a small, quiet town, a dance studio stood out among the other shops and businesses. I always kept the door locked when I was there alone, though no one ever tried to come inside.

In the winter, the studio provided a respite from the snow and ice. I'll never forget the feeling of wearing wool leg warmers and tights over dry, itchy skin, or the sound of wind blowing sleet against the windows as I stretched my muscles to keep them limber despite the brittle cold.

I worked at the studio for two years before I discovered the secret door in the back room.

The door opened onto a dark hallway behind the theater, and the hall was filled with the smell of popcorn and the ambient sounds of the films playing on the other side of the wall. At the end of the hall, glass double-doors opened onto a huge, empty room that looked like it was once a department store.

Without shelves and clothes racks taking up the floor, the room was as big as a gym. It was the perfect place to spread my wings.

I drove there on the weekends, plugging my little boom box into an outlet on the far wall and warming up to songs by Technotronic. The music sounded metallic against the hard floor and walls, and the room was so big, there was a split-second delay before the beats bounced off the opposite wall.

There were no mirrors or barres, only my reflection staring back at be from the plate glass office windows like a ghost.

Sometimes I stayed until dark, and headlights from the occasional car in the alley behind the mall cast my twenty-foot-tall shadow against the walls.

The place wasn't clean or even safe. Dead bugs and cobwebs lined the corners, and I could tell by the musty smell that animals had been in there. Still, it was my space to practice, and it became a routine and even a ritual over the next several months.

Once I graduated from high school, I was accepted into the dance program at Butler University in Indianapolis, heading to the big city to study ballet. I pursued it during my first year of college before switching to other majors – first English, then psychology and finally journalism.

Being a journalist has been as challenging as being a dancer in a lot of ways, from finding opportunities to receiving funding and community support. It's also unpredictable, with a lot of highs and lows. The old saying used by performers, "Hurry up and wait," applies to journalism, whether it's in waiting an hour for a press conference and a two-minute photo opportunity to meeting strict deadlines.

Still, dancing has followed me everywhere, and I've always had friends who were dancers, from the passionate people at Urban-15 to the street performers who set up along the walls and terraces of downtown San Antonio.

Recently, I ran into a friend who is a dancer while walking downtown. She was waiting for the bus at St. Mary's Street and recognized me. We talked for a while.

"You seem so calm and relaxed," she said. "Tell me your secret."

I don't have one, but if I did, dance would be it. While there have been long periods of time when I've been neither calm nor relaxed, I can't help but wonder if dance hasn't helped me handle stress in other areas of my life. This is one of the main reasons I'm going to keep doing it for as long as I can.
The studio in Madison closed its doors about ten years ago, so all I have is memories of the place. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and be a student there again.

When I think about where my journey has led, though, I realize I'm happy right where I am.

Conversations, Part II: Vans

Vans. They're everywhere.

We all have our own stories about vans, whether we rode in one as a kid, camped in one as a teenager, own one as a parent, or live in one that's stocked with a fridge, furniture, a TV, and other amenities.

Chances are we've all ridden in a van at least once. Earlier tonight, two generous men drove a separate van of Urban-15 dancers to our performance gig at San Antonio College. I sat in the middle of three rows with five other ladies, and we had a great time laughing and listening to oldies on the KONO 101.1 radio station.

While my family never owned a van, I have plenty of memories of riding in vans with childhood playmates. I remember peering out the back window of my parents' car as we drove past vans on the highway. As a kid, I was fascinated by the fact that some of the vans had decorative curtains in the rear and side windows. I know now that the curtains were there mainly for privacy, though they still have that same homey appeal.

Jeff Spicoli not only rode in a Volkswagen Van with his high school buddies in the 1982 movie, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, he wore black-and-white checkered Vans while doing so.

Then there are vans that are useful for carrying heavy items. Japanese mini trucks, or Kei trucks, are a popular import in the U.S. Back in 2008, I interviewed a man while I worked as a field editor for Indiana AgriNews who built a family business out of buying and selling them to farmers. The vehicles are built in Japan and meet U.S. requirements for low and medium-speed vehicles.

I've also ridden in cargo vans that had too light a load in the back, resulting in a deafening clatter of metal to the floor of the van every time the driver turned a corner.

Good times.

While they'll never be as flashy or individualistic as the motorcycles Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Jack Nicholson rode in Easy Rider, vans are a great way to carpool, a terrific conversation piece, and a kitschy icon of American roadie culture, serving as a sort of ombudsman and reminder to share the road as well as the back seat.

But vans can carry social stigmas, too, depending on the context in which they're driven or ridden. Take, for instance, the resurfacing of the infamous video of Donald Trump riding in a van with Access Hollywood reporter Billy Bush in 2005 and making lewd comments about an attractive young reporter waiting outside the van.

Then we've all heard the horror stories about kidnappers driving around in unmarked vans, or the mysterious white vans rumored to be conducting surveillance.

There's a social dynamic to riding in a van, or any vehicle: The people inside are so insulated from their surroundings, they're liable to say anything. While there are public and private places, the inside of an automobile is both. It's built for comfort and for speed. The space inside may be small compared to the rest of the world, but it's sealed off, like the protective shell we wish we had.

It's a sad fact, though a testament to the strength and durability of cars, that buildings have been torn down, cities have blazed, and earthquakes have rattled the Earth, but that sun-bleached Millennium Hip-Hop party CD cover is still sitting on the backseat of my car, undisturbed since 2006, and that empty granola bar wrapper will remain lodged between the driver's seat and the console until I decide to throw it away.

That got me thinking about how we think of driving in terms of comfort. People choose a certain car or truck over another as much for interior comfort as for price and fuel economy. We want our rides to be as fun as they are functional.

So can cars be fun and functional, or are the two mutually exclusive?

Autos seem to go beyond statement-making design and mobility. In a way, they define who we are. Our roles in life may mature and change, but aside from technological additions, our modes of transportation stay basically the same.

George Carlin wrote about how vans and minivans were an insult to manhood because married men had to trade in their flashy cars once they got married and had children. It's that age-old conflict between individuality and community, which leads me to another philosophical question: Should riding in a car be a solitary activity, or is it better with buddies? What can vans tell us about how we've dealt with this dilemma?

It feels different when it's just me driving with no passengers. There's something about sitting by myself in a car in traffic that embodies that age-old feeling of being "alone together" with other people.

It's hard not to see how we've modeled the faces and physiques of our cars and trucks after the bodies of insects – highly mobile creatures with strong social hierarchies. Volkswagen even named one if its cars "the Volkswagen Beetle." While we as humans value our privacy and individuality, we are social animals with a need to make personal connections with other people. We want things to be personal, until we don't, whereas insects seem to fulfill both needs at once without sacrificing one or the other.

Maybe that explains the van's exotic curb appeal among the other road warriors. When you're riding in a van, it's not just you behind the wheel – you're sharing the space with other people.