Izzies Award Ceremony 3/26/18

Izzies Awards Ceremony and San Diego Deaf Dance Festival (stay tuned for more details on this to come later) -- Two historic moments in 3 days, these are the moments we live for (I live for...)  As a Deaf person in a hearing world, you have to fight barriers everyday against stereotypes, inequality, inaccessibility, diaspora to name a few.  These barriers are tripled if you are a person of a color and exponentially quadrupled if you are an artist.  After 7 years of people rejecting his ideas and not offering support, Mr Antoine Hunter despite all barriers set up the first Deaf Dance Festival in 2013 as a place where Deaf artists can come together in a professional and full accessible capacity to present their talents.  It's very easy to give up when life throws you walls to stop you dead in your tracks, Mr Hunter dances around those walls to continue making his visions a reality.  The Bay Area International Deaf Dance Festival (and the other Deaf Dance Festivals in San Diego and Turkey) are a special place for Deaf and Hearing performers to come together and leave feeling bonded together as a family and inspired/motivated to elevate Deaf Arts around the world.  Many of these Deaf Artists have grown up feeling alone as the only Deaf dancer of their art form in a hearing world so that when we all come together at the festival, its as if we are finding our long lost family.

It's such an honor that 5 years later, he's presented with a Special Award Honoree of the Isadora Duncan (Izzies) Award, an equivalent to the Grammys for Dance Achievement and Excellence in the Bay Area, California.  Not only am I proud of this well deserved recognition for Mr Hunter, I am honored to have performed a solo during the Awards Ceremony as a tribute to all of Mr Hunter's hard work and a celebration of recognition of Deaf Dance and Arts in the hearing world.  Thank you for this privilege.

To add to the specialness of the evening, Mr Hunter's HS teacher Ms Dawn James gave a heartfelt speech in honor of his award and my HS teacher Miss Elvia Marta was sitting in the audience.  Her encouragement and support pushed me as a dancer during my entire career and I will always honor her, regardless of Deafness or not, she saw a Dancer in me and that's what I've always been.

Thank you to Mr Hunter for staying resilient, never swaying from his vision and providing a platform of opportunities for the Deaf community.  Thank you Izzies for honoring Mr Hunter.  Thank you to everyone who has given their support.

#AntoineHunter #Urbanjazzdancecompany #zahnasimon #TheIzzies #Deaftalent #Deafdancers #BAIDDF #BayAreaInternationalDeafDanceFestival

Content description: Top title: 2018 Isadora Duncan Awards, Get your photos at:funframephoto.com. Picture of 6 Deaf smiling faces from the left, Antoine Hunter, Brian, Zahna, Maim, Joy and Bobby.

Picture of Mr Hunter wearing a blue suit holding the Izzies Award in his right hand out front and left hand up in a pose with the Izzies backdrop

Image Description:  Zahna with hair down, wearing purple shirt, black pants, black shoes and black jacket with performer tag around neck smiling and holding both forearms out to the side.  Backdrop is the Izzies and red carpet.

Picture of Urban Jazz Dance Company, Maim on left wearing green floral long sleeve shirt holding her red jacket, Mr Hunter in the middle in a blue vest, white shirt and blue tie, Zahna on the right hair down, purple shirt and black light jacket with Performer Tag around neck.  Background is of golden prints of historic events unknown to me at Brava Theater.

Content description: Zahna on stage wearing black shorts and sportsbra standing with arms and hands stretched out to the side looking up to her left.  Background screen shows "the izzies, 32nd Annual Dance Awards"

Image description:  Zahna on stage wearing black shorts and sportsbra, right leg in plie, left leg high on the side and arms in rounded second.  Background is Stage with audience and pot of flowers on the left.

Traveling Deaf

True story on traveling Deaf and alone:

On my flight back to the Bay Area from Hawaii, a girl sat next to me.  A young college age girl who is learning some ASL at CSU Hayward.  Happens there’s major turbulence once we were in the air and I immediately had a bad feeling.  I’ve been flying all my life, honestly I love flying and I’ve never been worried one bit until now...my gut feeling told me something was wrong and for the first time I was actually nervous and scared on a plane.  The turbulence died down so I attributed it to a rare temporary incident and hoped it was just a passing.  They went ahead to pass out snacks and water so I figured we were safe by then.  Then some time later the girl next to me tried to tell me something, ended up writing in her phone : “we are going back to Honolulu.”  My first internal response was I hope we make it back to Honolulu...I asked for more details, why?  What else did they say?  Did they say what time we would land?  I wanted to know more and felt so anxious not having full accessibility.  The girl wrote it was mechanical problems with the plane and that's it.  I asked her how she knew, did they announce it over the PA System?  She nodded.

The plane landed back to Honolulu.  The girl informed me that we need to exit the plane.  When we exit the plane go left.  I asked her why go left?  Then she says Gate 31 and there's another flight at 7:45 pm.  I thanked her for her help but knew when I get off the plane I needed to get my own information of what’s going on, I want to know more details and also make sure they know and remember that they have a Deaf passenger.  I proceeded off the plane and to gate 31, everybody grabs their seats in the lobby, runs to outlets to charge their phones (lucky I have a portable battery with me fully charged) and scatters about while there’s not an attendant in sight.  The line was so long at the help desk with no one there to help.  There was one stewardress around and then she left to head to the gate doors which is blocked off by sliding glass doors.  I wrote on my phone “Hi I’m Deaf.  Can someone let me know what’s going on with my flight?” And tapped on the glass door.  The two women looked up at me and I signed “I’m Deaf” so one came to talk to me.  I showed her the note on my phone through the glass so she came around and started verbally telling me what’s going on.  I again gestured that I’m Deaf and to please write it down.  She looks exasperated and heads back to the gate stand talking with the other lady taking a long long time to do anything.  Then I started to write more questions on my phone because I had a feeling she wasn’t going to give me ANY details.  Another different woman walked up near me talking on her phone, she works for the airport but looks like she works in the office and not at the gates.  I gestured to her that I am Deaf and to please help.  I showed her my notes on my phone and she typed on it answering all my questions about what time the flight leaves, what time is boarding time while she’s still talking on the phone and also signing “sorry” to me.  Then finally the other lady from earlier comes up with one sentence on her paper “plane swap, mechanical problems”.  I said thank you to both but really to the lady that treated me like a person and took the time to inform me fully what’s going on.  I also always double check with them where I should stand and wait and where exactly they will be boarding, she said I can wait in the area next the glass doors.  Some time later(15 to 20 minutes later) I saw them talking over the PA system and people were moving around, they were collecting wheelchair users to get ready for preboard.  I caught one of the stewards and told him I’m Deaf so he brought me in line for preboard.  When it came my turn to come up, I walked up holding my mobile boarding pass in my phone and the woman just looked at me.  So I put my phone to be scanned and the same woman said no and something inaudible but there were no facial expressions.  I gathered I should stop and a different woman started talking to me.  I told her I was Deaf and then she gestured to wait and that they’re taking care of the wheelchair users first.  I appreciate her willing to communicate with me and give me actual details.  After waiting for a few minutes the woman from the phone earlier came up to talk to the gate people and they pointed to me. She turned facing me smiling and relieved.  I smiled and told her “thank you” reading between the lines that she was informing them of a Deaf passenger — me.  THEN as the original woman who didn’t want to write anything down for me takes my ticket and smiles at me along with all the other gate stewardesses.

My point is never to complain about these situations because I’ve actually kept quiet about the millions of similar or worse experiences than this one.  I rather educate and express my experiences as a Deaf woman.  Many times it’s frustrating and anxious because we live in a world that doesn’t naturally provide accessibility for Deaf people.

Additional note:  Also adding that the in flight entertainment did not have any captions. (Disappointed face)