The Eaton Fire, in all its intensity, may be no match for the fire that burns in the souls of artists.
Choreographer Marjani Forté-Saunders and her husband, sound designer/composer Everett Saunders, longtime New York transplants, had decided upon what they called a “reset” late last year. They packed up their 9-year-old son along with every other treasure in their expensive NYC apartment and headed back to Forté-Saunders’ stomping grounds in Altadena. With 17 suitcases and boxes, they weren’t just coming home for the holidays. They were truly coming home.
“As working artists, it had just got to be a little too much. We had expended so much, all of our savings, and we just needed a reset,” said Forté-Saunders. “We didn’t know it was going to be this kind.”
Forté-Saunders had been offered a residency at her alma mater, Loyola Marymount University, so the cross-country move to stay with family seemed a perfect opportunity to restore and recoup. Related Stories:
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After settling in and enjoying the holidays with her mother and stepfather, the couple returned briefly to New York for a presenting conference, and it is there that Forté-Saunders learned of the fires in Los Angeles.
“We got the call about what was happening, and my husband left right away,” said Forté Saunders.
They hadn’t fathomed at that time that it could get quite so close and so real, but several hours later, as the fire raged on, that changed.
“I performed knowing, by then, that the house had burned down with all of our most important, most valuable things that my husband had inherited and had been holding from his late father and his late grandfather, my wedding ring, everything that I had been carrying with me and kept close with me from touring for the last 20 years.”
From rare diamonds to a dance archive of all the work she’d done professionally over two decades, which Forté-Saunders’ mother displayed in a hallway of the family home—all of it was suddenly gone. The freshly built 1500-piece Lego set, and all the Christmas clothes just purchased for their son’s new 9-year-old body, gone.
“It’s just been heartbreaking every day, thinking, remembering…how much is gone,” she said.
Forté-Saunders’ memories are also of the town that, in many ways, shaped her. “Many, many moons ago I started dancing at Loma Alta Park with Maggie Randall,” she said.
“We used to walk from Loma Alta all the way down to the Boys & Girls Club [then down] to Washington, Penn and Grandview.”
Lush and mountainous Loma Alta Park suffered much damage in the Eaton Fire as did the Boys & Girls Club, one of many centers for young people erected in the Altadena area. One of those was founded by Forté-Saunders’ aunt, Naima Olugbala, director of what was the Omowale Ujamaa Northwest Community School.
“There were Black liberationists and folks who had traveled to Tanzania and were bringing back Africanist cultures and ideas to our people here in Pasadena and in the Altadena area,” said Forté-Saunders.
“Many Black liberationists, many Black families, many Black leaders who were working in the movement that was about our liberation and building our communities when we were not allowed to build communities freely, they were doing that in Altadena, and many of those places and homes are in ashes now. So, the heartbreak…runs so deep because this was a very quiet but important historic landmark for Black wellness that I’m a witness and I’m a child of. I’m a child of that place. I’m a child of Dena.”
As exploratory minds dreamt up and built distinctive communities in the past, the Forté-Saunders family is poised to revitalize a creative investment made a few years ago.
Providentially, in 2017, they bought Forté-Saunders’ mother’s former home for use as income property and built on its campus two studios for artists—one for music recording, one for movement.
Their award-winning collective, 7NMS, “a revolutionary commitment to the Black radical imagination,” launched the studios in 2023 but was paused by a need for programmatic funding. With her mother and stepfather’s home gone—and fortunately, their insurance company is working with them on rebuilding and securing temporary housing—the Forté-Saunders are now living at the home adjacent to the studios.
Save for a door blown off in the gusty pre-fire winds and related damage, the Pasadena property made it through the Eaton Fire unscathed. Thus, the family’s focus is on readying and offering their platform/studios known as Art x Power to artists. Art x Power invites artists in residence to “rest, create, and most importantly, to Dream.”
Most imminently, Art x Power is in need of institutional funding for repairs, sponsorship to get the studios operating, and means of reaching prospective residents.
With the proper support, as in the case of the city of Altadena, what comes after the fire for 7NMS may be stronger than before.
Of the city, Forté-Saunders said, “I am prayerful that the rebuild efforts really work with the Altadena residents and look at the historic landmark and the offering of the Black community and Black home ownership that was there…because that’s a jewel in this country.”
To learn more about Art x Power, contact info@7nms.com. Tax-deductible donations may be made here: https://fundraise.givesmart.com/form/kllvIA?vid=1hbjys
