Silver linings can be hard to find, they are unpredictable, and maybe they are not in the place you are looking. When disaster occurs, understanding what it means to be community engaged is one of the most positive opportunities an arts organization can realize in a community-wide crisis.
Does concert dance happen in a concert hall? Master Juba or William Henry Lane performed in theaters and halls across the United States in the mid-19th century. Does “concert dance” imply some level of professional commitment or success? Lane, a black percussive dancer, toured internationally, receiving top billing over his all-white minstrel troupe. Does “concert dance” suggest some level of peer review or development of craft? Percussive dancer Emily Oleson ponders these issues and others. Read on.
As a teenager I was reluctant to openly study hip-hop dance although I loved the music, like much of my generation, because I had a vague fear I might be “stealing” it. It took a lot of pain and discomfort from many areas of my dance training to realize that no matter what my focus was going to be, racism was an element of so many stories in American dance history that it could not be avoided – and that ignoring it would not make it go away. It might make it worse.
It’s been a week since Hurricane Sandy left its mark on many dance companies and theaters in the New York and New Jersey area. We hear accounts of lost rehearsal time, cancelled shows, destroyed offices, lives altered. While the New Jersey and New York areas bore the brunt of the storm, we in the dance field will be experiencing the after-effects of this natural disaster for months and years to come. What have we learned from other events, like Hurricanes Katrina and Gustav?
A young woman started to cry as she described her personal struggles with a career in dance, and the difficulty of working multiple jobs in the service industry without access to adequate health care or insurance.
This could be you.
This could be your dance student.
Dance has always been there and humanity and the tiny musical strands of which it is made have been vibrating in one way or another since the beginning of known history.
Discussions about diversity — dealing with race, gender, identification, politics, in or outside of dance — are discussions we will never stop having, whether we choose to participate or not. But to shy away from them, because they are uncomfortable or they shatter our safe reality, only provides more unanswered questions and more space for marginalization and the muting of underrepresented people, artistic practices, and the continued segregation of any ‘other’ not socially recognized.
Institutions are set up, in part, to provide job security for key positions, and an overall sense of constancy of support for the art. The problem is that definition leaves out a lot of artists and arts workers: the white elephant in the room at most Dance/USA events I’ve attended in the past. Now more than ever it seems the big ballet companies, the experimental independent artists, emerging leaders, and everyone in between feel the pains of struggling to sustain.
The unfortunate effect was the discussion had been silenced by a dance.... It was clear that
everyone in the room wanted more space and time for the discussion....
And so I was left
wondering again: How and when do we listen to each other as a dance
field? How can we create spaces that make room both for dancing and for
discussing?
Why is it that, often, when I read choreographers’ biographies in performance program notes, I can’t find any information about their artistic evolution: who they studied or danced with, who was their mentor, or who inspired them to become a dance maker? I miss learning about dance artists’ choreographic development.
