By Josiah Barnum
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Ghost Factory
Oral Histories Told Through Dance
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October 28 & 29 at 7:30 pm
HCC Ybor Performing Arts Center
Details here
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HCC Dancers had a wonderful experience working with our fall guest artists, NYC’s Bridgman|Packer Dance. Our project began on September 28 as we focused on gathering family stories related to life during Ybor City’s early manufacturing days and comparing our stories to those of other towns.
Dancers started off creating groups and figuring out each person’s role in their group. Our first Zoom with Bridgman|Packer was scheduled for September 28 but it got canceled due to Hurricane Ian. The hurricane pushed all our dates back, so we had to push all our Zooms closer to each other and all our projects were a week behind.
That didn’t stop any of the groups from pushing forward and completing the task at hand. Along the way, we were introduced to Gio Fucarino. He is a local Ybor Historian and member of Club Unico a Tampa nonprofit that gives scholarships to HCC students.
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Gio shared his knowledge of Ybor and was able to walk us through the history behind the buildings and the cigar factories around our campus, as well as share fun stories along the way.
Once we came back from the hurricane, we had our first Zoom meeting with Bridgman|Packer Dance. They talked about how to hold an interview and gave us some questions and guided us on how to ask follow-up questions. They taught dancers how to hold the camera and how to shoot objects in order to make our videos stronger statements.
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We began our oral history interviews by reaching out to find people who had relatives that worked in the factories. Interviews included Patrick Manteiga, whose grandfather was a lectór – a professional reader who entertained and educated cigar workers – at the Morgan Cigar Factory. Mantiega is the editor of the tri-lingual La Gaceta Newspaper and a third-generation Tampanian.
Also interviewed was Gilda Capitano about her mother and her aunt who worked at the cigar factories. Gilda and her husband have been important leaders of the Italian Club for decades.
As the interviews progressed, we took a trip to the JC Newman Cigar Company, currently the oldest family-owned cigar factory in the country – and out of 150 Ybor cigar factories, the only one still operating. We were able to take a tour of the facility and museum.
During the tour, we saw all the many different steps that a cigar goes through as it’s made – starting with cleaning the tobacco leaves. There’s a lot that goes into these cigar factories that make them so unique and mind-blowing. We as students think mall jobs are hard.
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We learned a lot about what hard work really is by visiting the factory and hearing stories passed down through generations about the work in cigar manufacturing in early Ybor.
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The culmination of this project is for each group to have a 3-minute video ready to put on display in HCC’s Gallery114 as a free pop-up exhibition called Places With Hidden Stories on October 28 and 29, before the stage performance.
Join us to see how it all comes together.
Dance meets film meets virtual reality –
Ghost Factory is the latest in Bridgman|Packer Dance’s
acclaimed and genre-breaking work that features “Video Partnering” —
the integration of live performance and video technology.
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Inspired by the residents and vast deserted factories of Johnson City,
an upstate New York town, Ghost Factory reveals how architecture
can hold a town’s human stories hidden within its walls.
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hccfl.edu/…dance-performance-schedule
