Story and Photos by Hilary Nichols
The center of Maurice Archer’s big vision starts with dance. He’s known around town as the premier break dance performer, teacher, producer, and owner of A2 Breakdance. He has been bringing his unstoppable energy and expertise to classrooms, after school programs, rec and ed offerings, private parties, intensives, local festivals, and street fairs for years. If you’ve seen the linoleum unroll and a simple boom-box set up for a crew of kid and adult dancers to step in for six step, windmill, kick-up, flare, or a bunch of impressive acrobatic dance moves, then you have seen an A2 Breakdancers’ cipher. A cipher is a circle of dancers, jumping in to share a small mobile dance floor with their handstands, back spins, and fancy footwork before the next dancer tags in.
Archer has been building a team of talented dancers with his consistent workshops all around town. The classes offer step-by-step knowledge that builds strength and precision for mind and body for adults and kids of all ages. But beyond breaking, these students receive much more than movement instruction: they are getting subtle but powerful lessons that Archer has dubbed his “life skills sessions.” The encouragement through this practice builds physical and mental strength, self-reliance, and self-love. By putting in the work, students come to trust their ability to know, improve, and empower themselves with their own unique strengths and offerings. Not everyone will master the same moves, but that’s what makes the cipher so compelling. Each dancer gets to throw down their special skill into the mix. Breakdance celebrates all body types, talents, and souls.
Archer discovered the form as a teen while studying martial arts and other strength training practices. He found it combined his love of musicality, creativity, strength, and community spirit. Sharing this love of dance took center stage, yet all the while he has kept up on his martial arts, training seriously in TaeKwonDo at Ann Arbor Martial Arts Academy. He competed at his first TaeKwonDo tournament in 2021 with a nearly instant win. Though the decision was challenged, his ability was clearly on display. His musicality is still an active pursuit as well, engaging in a number of collaborations and independent projects. You can see some of this work on his social media channels.
Archer plays percussion and keyboards, raps and sings at his in-home music studio where he records beats, tracks, and music videos with his collaborators and his kids. Archer is a father of five. As any father will tell you, his kids are his pride and joy. With the talent, charms, and manners of this beautiful troop, no one would wonder why. Exposing his kids to these arts is a crucial part of his parenting philosophy. Archer tells me, “Kids don’t just pick up the interests of their parents, they tap into their devotion and dedication. They witness and mirror how important it is to prioritize their passions, so that interests become compulsions, and hobbies become talents in time.” To see his kid’s mastery of breakdancing and other arts is impressive and inspiring.
From cipher to circle, from students to friends, from audience to community, Archer is building something bigger with his expansive impact. With his community of friends and family Archer is creating an art compound. He found a little place to purchase south of Ann Arbor a few years ago, and it is there that they are combining their whole family’s skill set to build a greater vision. The home was run-down with a wood burning oven and not many other modern amenities, but Archer saw an opportunity, and he’s taken the simple home from rustic to bucolic, as the hub of an expansive and productive property. Now chickens and goats wander around the gardens and pathways that wind through the extensive grounds. He envisions a venue for music production, wilderness retreats, and life-skills workshops that will inhabit the land in time. Weaving together all the talents and intents of his growing clan, this vision is alive and expanding.
Sitting for tea with Archer recently, I felt his calming and focused presence, even as he balances in the sway of all this swirl. The elements seem to add up beautifully for a dancer, teacher, singer, producer, businessman, land owner, farmer, and father. Archer is trained to hold his center in the eye of the storm. All of these disparate elements he sees as one force, fueled by his energy field, that he likes to describe as loosh. Loosh is a new term for me, he described it as the “vibrations of human energy that we each emit and can tap into.” For Archer this loosh is a positive notion that affirms how we can all listen in and harmonize with the human and planetary hum. Maurice Archer has clearly been listening and found his sound wave to ride into his rightful role in this world. As a creator he is clear on his contribution and our community is better for his clarion call, and for his airflare and standing flip on the linoleum floor.
Anne Erlewine is the art in the center of her offerings. A singer-songwriter, poet, painter, maker, and performer, she is an open heart on tap. She channels each word and chord straight from her core as she performs. Erlewine plays the guitar, keyboard, and ukulele to accompany a full set of her hand-crafted tunes. I have seen her perform at the Ann Arbor Summer Fest, at Argus Farm Stop, and house concerts in Ann Arbor. At her home turf, the Earthwork Harvest Festival in Lake City, her stage presence is so natural and dynamic, it fills the converted barn to the rafters. She commands the spotlight with honesty and truth as she introduces her storied songs. She describes her style as, “Kind of folk. It’s vulnerable and genuine, and revealing like folk. Straightforward and poetic, putting my emotions through a microphone. I try to amplify what’s going on in my soul.” Woven along with her precisely parallel arrangements, her work is both surprising and familiar. There is a heart-wrenching intimacy to listen to her inner atmosphere.
“I came into playing music, really wanting to keep my voice alive, to let my expression survive. It is not the easiest thing,” Erlewine confessed. Being a performer may not come easily to Erlewine, but it is a crucial part of who she is. “I was a really good runner; it came naturally to me. When I met this woman who was not natural at it, but did a marathon because it was tough, I had to ask myself, what is my marathon? Performance is that for me,” she explained. “I have had to hang in there with myself.” But, she recognizes it isn’t a choice. “There is just something in it that keeps calling me back.”
That is the ultimate point in her song writing, honing her inner dialogue to be able to express her own voice with clarity. Erlewine looks to energy work, chakra clearing, and somatic experience to quiet the distractions. “I have to disidentify with these over-couplings that set me off in a trajectory that is not my own,” she explained. “My whole journey is to pacify the inner critic and offer the unconfident self a warm cup of tea, just to continue.” Over time the practices have had their impact. “I have been able to shed some of the doubt, calm the nervousness. I have created some space for me to survive and to start to thrive in this environment.”
The payoff is palpable. Her audience hangs on every word, swaying to the elegant tunes, complex arrangements, and engaging rhythms. “It has never been simple for me. But maybe it isn’t supposed to be,” she mused. Writing and recording the ten original songs on her debut album Over The Bones took five years to complete. The album producer, Christian Bathgate, offered this in review: “Michigan native singer-songwriter Anne Erlewine distills her lyrics, and sets them to simple, clever, cyclic guitar parts that support her clear, direct, and hauntingly honest voice. Her vulnerability plows a path for yours.” It is traditionally a close collaboration between producer and artist. This work clearly benefited from the overlap of these two friends and artists. Bathgate honors the alignment. “While it was the gravity of your art that pulled me in, made it worth it, inspired me to agree, to be dedicated, involved,” he commented on Instagram, “Itt was your kindness, your remarkable way of being, your relentless forgiveness, that kept me at the table of promises.”
Kindness emanates from Erlewine and that comes through from the stage. Throughout the weeks prior to her performances, she writes down her life stories as they strike her and brings the prompts to stage in her rusted metal Banter Box. Some find this their favorite part. “My songs can seem so serious, so I like to add levity. I’m funny.” Initially this tall, curly-haired woman seems shy, though quickly it is apparent she is no shrinking violet. She is funny and powerful even while she can be self-deprecating. It is all part of her charm that is apparent in her long prose that she shares on her Facebook Blog. She muses on the humor, frustrations, and minutiae of parenting at eye level with her two young daughters. Lighthearted, but not fluff, her writings are worthy of taking seriously. “The pressures and societal norms put on women to raise children with the lack of community support is difficult for me,” she shared. “I find that when I am in my domain as an artist, I feel most empowered in my life and in relating to my kids.”
As a painter, Erlewine has carved out a home studio in her basement. “When we’re in the studio together, my kids are little artists and the laws that I have around my own creativity are different. There is a lot more relationship building going on there; we share a certain respect.” Sharing her creativity is in her blood. Anne Erlewine inherited her passion from her paternal grandmother along with her tools and equipment. Her grandmother’s 40-year-old hot wax pot and her framed batik pieces grace Erlewine’s garage studio, and her photo is posted beside her painting supplies downstairs. “I want to incarnate what she gave to me; I aspire to be like her, to become her, in this lifetime,” Erlewine said. “She was a matriarch that truly tended to her creativity and passed it along to all fourteen of her grandchildren and her five sons.” Erlewine studied art at U of M, and spent a summer investigating watercolor and poetry at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Co. Today she paints feather light naturescapes and wildflower abstracts with white shadowed interplay on bright birch, oak, or maple panels that give these large pieces a daydream aesthetic. She has shown her pieces independently at art fairs, venues, cafe galleries, as well as the Michigan Guild Gallery and Dear Womanhouse collective. Handcrafted earrings, modern ceramics, and her daughter’s miniature paintings all share space at her booth.
An Erlewine can’t help but create. In her studio filled with her colorful canvases and floral panels, it becomes obvious, this is more than a creative outlet for her. She sees it as her responsibility in this society. “We are the seed savers of culture. If you don’t hold space for that to be real, it will no longer be real, so this is the best act of resistance that I have,” she said. “You are reminding people that it is okay to pull from their own inner design and to bring that out into the world, rather than repeating what already exists. That is necessary for this world. We need new ideas and innovations.” Her motivating force is to create, share, and encourage others as well. “To draw on the inner wisdom of a person, it takes an awakening or a reflection for people to be able to hear that unique aspect of themselves.”
Being an artist is a life mission. It is real work to stay receptive to insights and inspirations. “When you just have you and your own pursuit, you start recycling and it loses oxygen. It becomes a closed loop version of yourself; it doesn’t have the energy inputs. It does nothing but starve you. I have to keep reaching for something greater than myself.” Like her life depended on it, art is her work and her savior. “Creators are always giving birth, mothering these ideas, channeling these expressions,” she stated. With her builder husband she is working to renovate their all-season porch into an indoor addition to host house-concerts and to teach art classes so that she can continue to encourage and inspire others. And so that she can continue to empower her passions. “Music is worth doing. Even if for only one moment of life you experience that connection, it is worth it.”
Related Content:
It was a passion flower that first stopped Susan McLeary in her tracks. The exotic flower ignited her passion and initiated her purpose toward becoming a florist, a designer, an artist, and an author. Yet, educator is the title Susan McLeary identifies with most these days.