There's a Hole in the Bucket,
Dear Hettie, Dear Cara

Following a Fulbright-supported tour of bathhouses around the world, faculty choreographer Jan Erkert teamed up with two students to create work that made it to the Kennedy Center stage.

By Micki Leventhal / Photography by William Frederking

Sitting face to face on overturned metal washing buckets, two women—one tall and African-American, the other petite and Caucasian—peer into each other’s eyes with open-faced innocence, searching for similarities and differences. The women are dancers Hettie Barnhill (’06) and Cara Sabin (’06), and they are dancing Hole in the Bucket, a new work choreographed by their teacher, Jan Erkert, faculty in Columbia's dance department.

In 2005, supported by a Fulbright Award and a sabbatical grant from Columbia, Erkert toured communal bathhouses worldwide on a quest for artistic inspiration. One piece that grew out of this search was Hole in the Bucket, in which a white woman and a black woman dance a story of discovery and the growth of a relationship across racial and cultural boundaries. Performed to a sound collage of classical music and African rhythms scored by alum Lauren Warnecke (’03), the piece is an exploration of crossing cultures in the intimate world of the bath.

Barnhill and Sabin worked collaboratively with Erkert to develop the dance, which they were invited to perform at the North American College Dance Festival, presented at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. in May. “The piece is very close to my heart,” Barnhill says. “I feel very connected to it because it was created through Cara and me, with our input and emotions. I experience something new about myself every time we perform it.”

Barnhill, an African-American woman reminiscent of the young Judith Jamison, grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois. Despite the economic struggles of being a single parent, Barnhill’s mother encouraged her daughter’s love of dance. Barnhill started dancing at age three, and studied at the Center of Contemporary Art in St. Louis and Central Visual Performing Arts High School, experiences she considers the beginning of her dance career. “Coming from East St. Louis, I was taught that there are no free handouts,” she says. “My family, friends, church, and schools helped mold me into who I am today.”

“The people here have forever changed how I view myself and the world around me.”

Barnhill received her B.A. in dance in May, and has been invited to train in Alvin Ailey’s professional program and to take company classes with Bill T. Jones. She was also invited to take company classes, room and board provided, in Brazil with Quasar Dance Company, which performed at the Dance Center this spring.

Sabin, by contrast, grew up in middle-class comfort in the small, western Illinois town of Rochelle. A high-school track star, Sabin had no formal dance training when she followed her older brother to Columbia. She chose the college, she says, because “I knew that this urban environment that was so foreign to me was a place that fostered artists and encouraged individuals to find and express who they are despite where they came from. The people here have forever changed how I view myself and the world around me.”

Sabin earned a B.F.A. in the teaching of dance this spring, and wants to teach in the Chicago Public Schools. First, however, she’ll spend some time dancing with the critically acclaimed Chicago company The Seldoms.

As their teacher and choreographer, Erkert found her collaboration with Barnhill and Sabin to be a uniquely “Columbia” experience. “In a very real sense, the Kennedy Center performance was a celebration of Columbia’s commitment to open access and diversity,” she says. With no prior training, “Cara would not have been accepted into a dance program at one of the ‘elite institutions.’ Hettie could not have gone to college without substantial assistance from scholarships. Both of them have been dedicated, driven, and inspired. They have more than lived up to their promise.”

 

Micki Leventhal is the media relations director for Columbia. William Frederking is acting chair of the photography department.