Local Dance Teacher Helps Lift Up Family Struck by Eaton Fire

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Left, Jasmine Albuquerque relaxes in her dance studio at Angels Gate Cultural Center. Photo by Arturo Garcia-Ayala. Right, Film still from "The Arrival" directed by Justin Tyler Close filmed in the ruins of Jasmine's family home. Film courtesy of Albuquerque.

 

Jasmine Albuquerque speaks to the effects of the 2018 Woolsey fire

Brook family GoFundMe:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/lift-up-the-brook-family-as-they-recover-from-the-eaton-fire

Dancer, choreographer, and San Pedro resident, Jasmine Albuquerque, spoke to Random Lengths just as the LA wildfires were ablaze throughout Pacific Palisades and other areas of LA, enough so to permanently change the City of Angels.

Unfortunately, she’s familiar with fire; she lost her family home to the Woolsey fire in 2018. Just as many Angelenos will today, she had to start anew. On her Instagram, Jasmine has a GoFundMe for a family that left their home at a moment’s notice before the Eaton fire ripped through their neighborhood, destroying everything. When they returned, everything was gone. She now knows over a dozen people living this brutal reality.

The dancer spoke to Random Lengths about her home and how the fire’s aftermath connected to her creative process.

“The Woolsey Fire was particularly odd for me,” Jasmine said. “We got that property in 1990, I lived there as a very young girl … from 7 on. I left at 17 to go to college and from there had a whole life. I got married, did all the stuff. I got a divorce when I was about 33 and that’s when I moved back up to that property. I hadn’t lived there in 19 years. It was magical and surreal. I was up there for about eight months before it burned to the ground, engulfed in flames by what they call a checkerboard fire … one that hops with the wind, burning some homes but not others. It was bittersweet to be at my old stomping grounds again, living with my mom (multidisciplinary artist Lita Albuquerque) as a 35-year-old woman. It was shocking to lose it all in one night. Not to mention the fact that I was 8-and-a-half months pregnant with my first son.”

Jasmine’s mother Lita lost “three freight trains” full of archived work from 1965 onward, a fully functioning studio and pigments you can no longer find. Old photographs of Jasmine’s mother coming to America from North Africa were lost, a whole wall of drawers of photographs of a “very rich family history.” Jasmine emphasized that losing the photographs was really devastating for her family. Coming out of that experience she was focused on delivering her baby. While her family was devastated and in shock, having the baby was the light at the end of the tunnel, “to bring some life to the ashes.” After she gave birth, another great thing happened; her dance community came together “in a way that was unreal,” she said. They started a GoFundMe for Jasmine and her family and raised $45,000. They did other fundraisers selling art and a full dance performance for Jasmine and her partner Emeka. They even did an event called “Library for Lita,” where they acquired all of Lita’s books that were lost in the fire.

“It was so beautiful how they came together for me and my family during that time,” Jasmine said. “As strange as it was to not have anything, I felt immensely supported and so deeply loved by the people around me. I was speechless. Dancers I had never even met before performed for me, placing bouquets of flowers in my arms, treating me like a queen.”

Their house was incredible, the strangest place ever Jasmine said. There were several bungalows on four acres of land. It was where the band Jefferson Airplane hid out and lived in the ’70s. One of the houses was built around a tree trunk. Jasmine and her sister Isabelle had their own little cabin with a wooden ladder and a potbelly stove, a boat door, a castle door and an outdoor shower. It was over 100 years old and their bedroom was all glass with a giant bulletproof skylight. You could see the stars from bed.

“It was five miles up a canyon and overlooked the ocean… her mother’s fascination with blue fully actualized. It was where we cried, laughed, sat alone, ate together, and celebrated art, poetry, love and philosophy. It was the earth beneath our feet – the earth I was imagining my soon-to-be son running around on too,” Jasmine said.

“It was hard to lose it because it felt like a great grandmother…the land was sacred. There were bobcats and wild peacocks, snakes and spiders you couldn’t find anywhere else. The wind in the trees spoke to me of those who came before and tended to this land with their hands, with their tears and their stories. You could feel it. The land was vibrational. When I told people I was a little wild and strange, if they came to “the mountain” (as we called it) they could understand why. It was how I explained my soul to people.”

Jasmine and her family dedicated themselves to the loss before the house was completely eradicated, honoring their home before it was completely cleared. She, her mother and her dancer friends made a poetic film in the ruins of the home directed by Justin Tyler Close and co-choreographed by Nina McNeely. Her then three-month-old son Ade was in her arms as she and the dancers moved through the rubble, accompanied by the live music of Lo-Fang and the poetry of her mother Lita.

They titled the film The Arrival. https://vimeo.com/368143083

“The fires right now are very triggering,” she said. “It’s also California and this is what we deal with. We did this to ourselves. We need to drive less, fly less, consume less.”

“In terms of my creative process, I love dance because I don’t need anything for it except my body, music and space. I try to go into the darkest, deepest void in my brain. When I turn on a track it tells me what to do and thus picking that track becomes one of the most vital parts of the process. The conversation between my body and the music needs to be worth having.”

Growing up in art studios since she was born, Jasmine said she resonates with large open spaces. The fire brought her back into her empty space, “light and minimal and open.” There were moments where she felt it was amazing, she said, and so free. And with a new baby, it felt like a huge shift.

Now Jasmine is helping the Brook family that suffered the same losses. The Brooks are almost to their goal of $35,000, and all of the money will go directly to them.

“Tara and I danced together for years. She was the dancer with all her hair completely in her face that never missed a single beat. She just moved back to LA and settled in Altadena with her family. I dedicate this dance to you Tara.”

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