Tabled, a project by Chlo & Co Dance, takes what has been set aside – “tabled” – and brings it into conversation. The series ran from March through December 2021. The panel “Funding and Social Justice” was held on October 21, 2021 via Zoom and featured San Francisco-based theater-maker Erin Merritt, San Francisco-based administrator/dance artist Andréa Spearman, and Brooklyn-based dancer/administrator Megan Wright. This transcribed and edited version seeks to continue the conversation.

Questions for panelists:

1. What role does identity play in funding?
2. How is privilege related to funding?
3. How can the arts reconstruct funding and grant applications?

~~

Erin: I’m Erin, a theater producer, director, and formerly an actor. I have written my own grants for many years.

Andréa: I am Andréa, and I currently work for Dancers’ Group in San Francisco as an artist resource manager, connecting our local community with events, activities, and opportunities. We currently have our CA$H Grant program that we turned into a yearly program versus twice a year. I also have experience working with the California Arts Council doing grant review panels.

Megan: I am Megan, a dancer and arts administrator. I am currently in Brooklyn, New York, where I have lived for the past six years, but formerly I was in the Bay Area. I am not a grant writer, and I’m not somebody who applies for grants. I’m not a generative artist. I am an artist who gets hired by other people to do their work. I’m also a student at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, where I think a lot about government funding. So those are my entry points into this conversation.

Erin: Everything we say tonight will be undergirded by the fact that this country does not support the arts. There just isn’t enough money out there. Even the best-funded people don’t feel like they’re getting any funding. There aren’t enough jobs in the arts for all the artists. There is not enough money being put out there by government grants, foundation grants, corporate grants, any of those things. There’s not enough out there for all the people who need to be funded. It puts companies – I can’t speak to individual artists – in this creepy position where the artistic director is just hitting up big donors, on the phone all the time, schmoozing.

Andréa: It is very stiff competition with grants, so you have to seek out resources and think about what makes sense for your company or you as an individual artist. Go for something a little bit more in your wheelhouse that you might have a better probability of getting, or local grants, or grants specific to your identity. I’m seeing a shift of panel reviewers toward people from all different kinds of communities, geographies, and dance genres. It’s not just the ballet and modern dance. It’s spreading out and getting more perspectives. I think that’s changing the way funds are distributed.

Andréa Spearman, photo by Alexandria Spearman

Erin: The clearer you can be on the identity of your art and yourself, your company, and your mission statement, the quicker and easier it is for funders to know if they want to fund you.

Andréa: You also want to send an invitation so they can start to get familiar with your work, so when your application comes in, they’re like, “Oh, I went to see them.”

Erin: You want to make yourself inevitable for these funders. They see your name so often they start thinking, “That person or that group is doing a lot of stuff.” Funders are susceptible to the same kinds of trends and fandoms as anybody else. If you keep hearing about an artist repeatedly, you start thinking, “I want to know who that artist is.” This is why it’s harder to start getting funding but easier once you get going.

Megan: Remembering that institutions are animated by people who are differently empowered and invested is crucial. Take the time to figure out your values, and then try to find people within institutions who are aligned; they can be your allies. I think a lot about the itchiness of private cultural philanthropy. It’s a uniquely American institution that developed out of massive Gilded Age wealth inequality and continues today. Class identity plays a role in terms of access to individual donors. If you are rich, you probably have rich friends who want to give to your art. If you are not rich, you probably don’t have rich friends who want to give to your art. The resources an individual artist can leverage depends on their class. I would prefer more robust government support for arts and employment so we’re not so reliant on individuals. That would be my jam.

Andréa: The way the Bay Area is set up is, the more you get to know people, the closer you are to six degrees of separation from a Google employee who can do a matching fund. It’s really about networking. For folks who have applied to larger foundations and have not gotten the grant again and again, I ask: Are you on their newsletter? Are you going to their workshops to discuss the application? Take up those opportunities and email those people constantly.

Megan: I have a hard time asking artists, who are already so underpaid, to invest so much time, effort, and labor into the uncompensated work of seeking funding. Seeking funding requires a fluency, a kind of language, behavior, and approach that not everybody has access to. Have either of you had experience with organizations that will compensate you for the time it takes to fill out their grants? That, for me, is a compelling model — a funding body that says, “We know it takes time, and we know this is real labor.” If you’re not wealthy enough to hire a grant writer and you’re doing it on your own, I just don’t feel good about asking people to invest more time and effort into seeking funding when they’re not being paid to do so.

Erin: I’ve seen a move toward simplifying applications. Government funding, whether it’s local or federal, is focused on making sure they’re giving money to people who they won’t get sued to give money to. Those are contracts, and there will be a lot more paperwork, but you also tend to get more money from them. It’s almost easier to get money from them if you have the time and the experience of writing a grant. The way you write for them is also very simple; you just have to answer the questions thoroughly. But it’s a ton of work and a ton of backup material they want.

Foundations are run by people putting money forward, usually from wealthy families. Because they care about art and usually a particular type of art, they’ll be specific. That’s where you want to do emotional writing. You need somebody who’s a great wordsmith. And when you read it, and it makes you cry, that’s when you know it’s ready. It’s much less formulaic.

And then there are the little community grants. You don’t get that much money, but those tend to understand you might not have a grant writer. They’re much more likely to have simple questions. The CA$H Grant is a great first grant to write because it’s like, “We know you’re an artist, and we just want to know what you’re doing.” The people on the panel who are reading your application are your peers. They are other artists. And there will probably be somebody on a panel who actually knows you.

Erin Merritt, photo by Lisa Keating

Andréa: With the Dancers’ Group CA$H grant, we’ve taken time to make the application simpler and easier to understand in the past few years so it’s a user-friendly experience for artists and organizations applying.

Erin: If you are able to get funding, it tells you somebody believes in you. This is also what makes it hard when you don’t get funding. I want to temper that by saying to people, if you don’t get funding, it’s not because you’re not worthy. That same exact application, if you put it to another panel, you could get it. It’s matchmaking.

Panelists are reading thousands of applications, and they get tired. If you’re using any kind of corporate speak, like, “We’re going to create a revolution,” it sounds exciting, but I don’t know what you mean by “revolution.” Fancy language is less important.

Andréa: Abstract language sounds good for a press release, but not for an application. I’d recommend finding a mentor, even a peer mentor, just someone who has been applying for a while. It also helps to get the history of what has been funded and how long it’s been funded so you can see where and when foundations or other organizations have given their money.

Erin: You don’t need to apply everywhere because applying takes so much time and energy. You find the agencies whose wording matches the way you talk about yourself because you’re going to want to mirror their language in your application.

Andréa: If you are a group or artist doing an annual event, you have to bring new life to it every year. You have to say why this year is different than the last.

Megan: In the pandemic, we’ve seen a focus and curiosity around mutual aid and alternative sources of funding and community care. I would love to hear from both of you what your experiences have been.

Andréa: A few people or organizations have been getting funds for re-granting. That way, they can trickle the money down into their community. It’s about looking for those smaller organizations to support you, and for you to support them in the same way.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to receive as many newsletters as possible from foundations, arts venues, dance companies, etc. You have to dedicate yourself. If you want to be a full-time career artist, it’s the work you have to do. Set aside time to really dig into those resources.

Erin: I want to second that. You also want to meet funders even if you’re not getting funding. You can start a relationship with them and say, “Hey, we’re not eligible for your money right now, but I want to talk to you about what we do.” It’s worthwhile having those conversations and getting to know funders as people because it’s their job to be responsive to the needs of the field.

Audience question: What are the panelists’ thoughts about when an artist who’s consistently gotten grants stops getting them?

Andréa: That’s something I’ve recently seen. I think of it as an opportunity for that artist to shift. If you’re doing the same thing year after year, that’s great for you and the audience you serve. But now funders need to shift and fund somebody else. That should be a wake-up call or an opportunity for that artist to think, “Am I getting stagnant in the work I’m presenting?” How can I move differently, collaborate with somebody new, take a break for a little while, or add a new medium or layer?

Erin: Funding is never guaranteed. It’s an ugly reality, especially as you get older and you start to need more money because you have family or health issues. It’s a tricky switch from early career.

Megan: It’s definitely not set up right, particularly if you are a generative artist and you’re hiring other artists who are then dependent on you. How transparent can you be about your granting situation?

Erin: Your artists did not sign up for the risk, so do not make any promises until you have money in the bank.

Megan: Thinking of it as a lottery is much more valuable. You detach your ego a little bit so you’re not wounded if you don’t get funding. You don’t expect that it’ll come to you.

Erin: I don’t think the arts are sustainable, and it’s not our fault. The arts will never pay for themselves because they are collaborative art forms. You need a lot of people to make them, and you need almost as many people to come and see them. They’re never going to make enough money to pay everybody a living wage. You’re always going to need contributed income of some sort. The way capitalism works is it wants you to keep getting bigger and bigger. But if you make more stuff, you have to pay more people, which means you need to make more money.

Megan: I think we’re at a point in the United States’ arts infrastructure where we have arts organizations that shouldn’t exist anymore. Why not plan to close your organization after an extended period? If we’re not going to be sustainable in the way the rest of the economy understands as sustainable, why not embrace that transiency?

Megan Wright, photo by Jaqlin Medlock

Erin: It goes back to our first question about how important identity is. If I started something because there was a need at that moment, and then there came the point where there wasn’t the same need, it is a natural place to close.

Audience question: Is arts journalism still helpful for artists? Does arts writing help artists pursue grants?

Erin: There are a lot of online reviewers, and people tend to know who they are and if they are trusted or not. Sometimes a quote that expresses an experience can be valuable.

Andréa: Previews are still helpful for artists. Feedback is also important. Will that help with granting? Sometimes yes and sometimes no, depending on the grant.

There is a privilege in having somebody speak on your behalf. Collecting articles and feedback on social media is great. Capture them and keep those screenshots in a folder. If it’s a more intimate audience, email those people from your event, “We would love to hear about your experience if you have the time; here’s the form.”

Megan: Writing can do what artists might otherwise look to funders for, which is to feel like you’re not alone. It gives you feedback and a place to feel seen outside the context of seeking funding, which is where artists spend so much of their time justifying themselves and talking about their work.

~~

To learn more, visit www.chlocodance.com/tabled.

The post Tabled: Funding and Social Justice appeared first on Stance on Dance.

Tabled, a project by Chlo & Co Dance, takes what has been set aside – “tabled” – and brings it into conversation. The series ran from March through December 2021. The panel “Gender and Sexuality” was held on July 10, 2021 via Zoom and featured Bay Area performance artists Nick Brentley, Jaq Dalziel, and Kevin Seaman. This transcribed and edited version seeks to continue the conversation.

Questions for panelists:

1. What do gender and sexuality mean to you in your art form?
   2. How are gender and sexuality co-opted?
   3. What future do you imagine for gender, sexuality, and the arts?

~~

Nick Brentley: My name is Nick Brentley, he/him pronouns. I identify primarily as a dancer though I’m also a musician. I was an art model in the Bay Area and in New York City. I’m also a wardrobe stylist. Anyone who knows me well knows that clothing’s a very important part of my life.

Jaq Dalziel: My name is Jaq. I use they/them pronouns, though I’m thinking about putting she/her back into the mix just to reclaim it. I identify as an artist and a choreographer. Right now, I work primarily with preschoolers. I teach in Berkeley and Oakland. I’m very passionate about giving gender-inclusive workshops to dance companies. I’ve also done a few for nonprofits in the greater Bay Area. I think it’s really needed, and I’m proud to do it.

Kevin Seaman: My name is Kevin Seaman, they/them pronouns. I am an interdisciplinary artist. I’ve been in San Francisco since 2004. I am also a consultant. I work with a lot of different organizations. I am doing artistic direction for a new organization I founded a few years ago called Diamond Wave. My artistic practice is about exploring identity and drag culture.

Nick: I believe the first question is: How do gender and sexuality show up in your art form? Within the dance world, lots of different ways. You have males doing masculine things like lifting other people, typically women, in the ballet world. They have this term, “the crane,” for a tall man who’s just lifting people throughout the entire performance. I’m 5’7″, 5’8″ on a good hair day. I’m not a crane. I’m more like a Fisher-Price Tonka Truck. I’ve been thrown into scenarios where, because I’m male, there’s an expectation for me to fit into that role of being the strong arm. Or there have been times when I am expected to bring in masculine energy as a male presenting person, whether it be in an audition, class, or a body of work.

I’ve been in the Bay for about ten years now. Prior, I was in New York City, and coming to a place like the Bay Area that is very progressive and where identity is so central, the question is: How do you teach to a variety of genders and identities versus just two? How do we bring ourselves into our work while being inclusive of others who might not be like us?

As it relates to clothing, if you go shopping, you’ll find men, women, children, that’s it. While there is unisex clothing out there, there’s typically not a section for it. People are accustomed to having only those options and being pigeonholed into choosing one. People who know me well have seen me wear things that a lot of other cisgender straight men might not wear. There’s a reason for that. I’m a smaller male, and finding clothing that fits has been challenging. The men’s clothing industry typically doesn’t acknowledge people my size. Either I have to invest a lot of money in alterations to get it to fit, or I’ve discovered I have a lot more success in the women’s section where most garments fit right off the rack. They don’t need any alterations. Shopping in the women’s section has exposed me to more cuts, styles, fabrics, textures, and colors. At this point, 70 to 80 percent of my wardrobe is women’s clothing, and that’s not in an effort to dress like a woman, but more so to cater to my size and dimensions.

Nick Brentley, Photo by Tanika Baptiste

Kevin: I identify so hard with not fitting into men’s clothes. I was a costuming double major in college. It’s such a lack of imagination.

Jaq: My partner Eden-Marcel is also non-binary but masculine center, and that’s something they are confused by; women’s clothes have endless options and endless expression.

Kevin: I’ve also found that most gender-neutral clothing lines are men’s clothes for women’s bodies.

Jaq: I’ve seen this meme floating around that’s like, “Why do I have to choose a square sack if I’m choosing unisex clothing?” It’s all very modular clothing.

Kevin: And earth tones.

Jaq: Exactly. I relate to something you said, Nick. We get so pigeonholed. Part of where gender and sexuality show up in one of my art forms is teaching, seeing all the little kids just wearing whatever they want. We’ll have little boys come in pink leggings, and little girls come in Tonka Truck shirts, liberated from this binary.

We have this book; it’s called Neither [by Airlie Anderson]. It’s about a little bunny bird hybrid born in the Land of This and That, where there are birds and bunnies. Neither gets told they’re neither, and they need to go away because they don’t fit in. So Neither flies away to the Land of All where everybody is everything. Just seeing the kids’ acceptance, “Oh yeah, I see that Neither is neither, but Neither should fit in with all, all are welcome” is so cool. They’re three to five years old.

Kevin: I want to talk about one of the first projects I conceived of and made. This was back in 2011; it was this short comedic sketch video. For about four months, I acted out a bunch of sexual positions. A lot of it was just being able to talk about sex. I grew up with Catholics. We did not talk about sex ever. Being in that environment, I was hungry to have conversations about sex.

I also want to talk about the drag I do. I’ve pulled back from drag recently; as I’ve shifted into a nonbinary identity, LOL McFiercen (my drag persona) hasn’t felt as great on me. But LOL was a way to start playing with my femininity in a way that I was denied. I debuted a show in 2019 called #femMASCULINE about my journey through gender and sexuality. It starts with being a child and starting to talk to people in chat rooms, developing a sexuality through apps and online platforms, because that was what was available to me as a closeted child in suburban Colorado. This show was about understanding that a lot of that behavior is the basics of toxic masculinity. As I grew older, I began to fetishize that as a gay man, and then reject that, and finally queer it as a drag queen. Ultimately it left me with a lot of question marks. Right after this show, I realized I’m nonbinary. I did the whole show to figure that out.

Kevin Seaman, photo by Kevin Seaman

Nick: That’s fascinating to hear about your journey, Kevin, particularly from your youth. I also came from a Christian household. I went to an Episcopalian all-boys prep school from grade four through 12. All boys, coat and tie, every day. In college, I was able to start playing with clothes. At the end of freshman year when classes were over, people were moving out so quickly they just started throwing away things. It was a lot of electronics, clothing, and furniture, and amidst that, I found a pair of flare pants. I love the seventies. I remember looking at them like, “Oh, those look like fun.” I put them on, and they fit. But I knew they were women’s pants; you could see it on the brand. I felt self-conscious initially when I wore them. It took years to be comfortable and to accept that, yes, these are from the women’s section, but I would much rather wear something that fits well and makes me feel good regardless of where it comes from. At the end of the day, it’s all fabric, just sewn together in different ways.

Kevin: Clothes don’t have gender; people do.

Nick: Women are expected to turn over their wardrobes a lot more quickly. As a result, a lot of clothing is made very poorly and flimsy, with thin materials and poor construction. It has a very short life versus men’s wear, which is typically made with higher quality materials and better construction. Something I’ve discovered from wearing women’s clothes is the small one-inch shallow pockets or the pseudo fake pockets. I love to be hands-free when I am in the world and only carry a bag when I need it. If I can’t carry my phone, keys, chapstick, and money clip on my person because the pockets are not functional, then it necessitates either having a bag or adding unnecessary layers that do have pockets. Why is the clothing industry so deceptive in this way?

Jaq: I don’t want to wear a purse because even cross-body ones highlight my chest, which, even though I am very feminine center, I don’t love. I have this denim jacket that I wear all the time because it has seven different options with deep pockets. In the Bay it works because of needing layers.

In 2015, when I first started living my identity as nonbinary, there was this “death to gender” conversation. I always felt this sadness; gender really works for some people. Sometimes people feel proud and at home in their gender. How can I honor that in dance when I’m trying to get rid of any drop of gender presentation? That’s something I’m grappling with. I’m nonbinary, and my gender expression or my gender identity is none. I don’t have a gender. I feel at home in that. And yet I get read as a woman. I wish for the deconstruction of the binary but also honor that it is important to a lot of people. It’s so hard for me to find what feels good while honoring both. This topic of clothing and costuming is a big part of that for me.

Kevin: For me, also as a nonbinary person, I feel fluid. Sometimes it’ll be extremely masculine. Sometimes it’ll be extremely feminine. Sometimes it’ll be extremely everything. Sometimes it’ll be extremely nothing. Sometimes people will not recognize me.

Jaq: My hair is a huge part of my gender, and my hair uses she/her pronouns. Sometimes I’ll just shave it all off. And then, in the grow-out phase, I’ll go for a bowl cut. I had the quarantine cut. When I started doing Zoom with my preschoolers, the parents would be like, “That’s Jaq.” And they’d say, “No, there’s no bun.” It is refreshing to step out and have this aesthetic that is so different than the usual high femme type. It’s refreshing sometimes to have a blank canvas.

Nick: I’m consistently read and acknowledged as a dude. Kevin, I love that you mentioned the fluidity of one day being super masculine, another day a little feminine, and sometimes there are elements of both. As a cisgender straight male, to go out on the town wearing makeup, heels, and form-fitting wear, there’s an assumption that’s not something a straight male would do.

Regardless of what I wear on my body, on my face, what I do for a living, the way I move, the way I speak, all the things that might clue people into categorizing me have no bearing on who I’m attracted to or who I choose to sleep with. Those are completely independent. That’s hard for people to accept or grasp. I watch people try and categorize or label me based on the information they’re receiving. But when the reference is changing daily, it can be confusing for people.

Jaq: Watching kids, one of the earliest developmental phases is to categorize and figure out what’s what. At the beginning of the year, the kids use any pronoun for anybody because they can’t figure out why we say “he” for some people, “she” for some people, and “they” for Jaq. Throughout the year, it changes to, “Well I don’t know if you’ve heard, but boys have penises and girls have vulvas.” But it doesn’t matter. We could say that for any body part. Girls have elbows, boys do too, and so do nonbinary people.

Kevin: As we’re talking about those norms, it’s important to articulate where those norms come from. There’s a great book by Alok Vaid-Menon called Beyond the Gender Binary, where they talk about their nonbinary identity and then go into how eugenics influenced the binary model. It’s a structure that is embedded within our society and norms that is racist, misogynist, homophobic, and transphobic.

Jaq: I’m interested to hear from both of you about how gender and sexuality are co-opted. I really grappled with this question.

Nick: It was hard for me to ponder that question without including race. As I look at specific dance forms, particularly street dance forms, which is a huge umbrella, some emerged from gay culture and specifically gay culture of people of color. This community of people of color who created these art forms in very secretive or underground places have since emerged and been regarded as cool. And now they’re being incorporated into a Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance. Those people who deserve credit get erased.

In 2007, I was working at a dance studio checking people in at the front desk. It was the same year Dancing with the Stars had Emmitt Smith on the show, who is this large Black male football player, this icon of masculinity, dancing on a public stage. He qualified dance as being something that was cool for men to do. I watched the enrollment for men in partner dance classes explode. At one class, there were 17 people and five of them were women.

Kevin: I’ve done a lot of research about people who did the work in the 1960s for us. I think a lot about José Sarria, who, if you’re not familiar, was the founder of the Imperial Court System. They’re known as the Widow Norton, just an amazing person. They helped found the Society for Individual Rights, which was a gay men’s organization. They created the pocket lawyer for when people got arrested in raids.

LGBTQ people finally get advertised to from corporations. It’s a major step up, but it’s also largely performative allyship. That’s one way I feel gender and sexuality get co-opted. I think about corporations co-opting and just wanting our money without actually caring about our lives.

Jaq: The audacity of corporations to put a rainbow on their logo when they’re donating millions to anti-trans, anti-gay, anti-everything that the rainbow represents is mind-blowing. Seeing how much money can be made points to this ultimate co-opting of what we hold dear and sacred.

Jaq Dalziel, photo by Robbie Sweeny

Kevin: I’m going to lead us to our last question: What future do you imagine for gender and sexuality in the arts?

Jaq: I would love to see more support, respect, and advocacy for everybody in our communities. I want the future to be full of sharing knowledge, working as a team in a community, and getting back to that sacred place of love.

Kevin: There’s not a path forward for gender and sexuality in the arts that does not center racial equity. Gender and sexuality are critical components of liberation, but in this struggle, if we’re not centering our trans artists of color, then we’re going to have to do the work again.

I want to share a fantastic book for anyone who identifies as male that was written by Rocco Kayiatos and a lot of other contributors called Mindful Masculinity Workbook. I also want to share bell hooks’ book The Will to Change.

I will say the one thing that needs to happen for gender and sexuality in the arts is that all venues need to have all-gender bathrooms. There’s no reason why we can’t do it. If anyone has a venue and you do not have an all-gender bathroom, go online right now, look up a sign that matches whatever plumbing you have in there, and put that sign up.

Audience question: Can you talk more about gender expression, sexuality, and perception?

Nick: Clothing is powerful because it affects the way you look, how people see you, and all your interactions with people. It also affects how you feel, how you can move, how you sometimes behave, how you think.

Kevin: As someone who is very gender fluid and has a lot of different expressions, I have often conformed to how I expect people to see me in a certain environment or what’s expected of me in a certain place. Over quarantine, I just started dressing for myself, not for other people. I was expressing my gender externally for what I know is true on the inside. But for people to do that, you have to get through the mental space so that you can take those chances and make yourself uncomfortable. That discomfort is ultimately going to lead to growth.

~~

To learn more, visit www.chlocodance.com/tabled

The post Tabled: Gender and Sexuality appeared first on Stance on Dance.

Tabled, a project by Chlo & Co Dance, takes what has been set aside – “tabled” – and brings it into conversation. The series ran from March through December 2021. The panel “Labor and a Living Wage” was held on June 1, 2021 via Zoom and featured San Francisco-based dance artist Emily Hansel, New York City-based storyteller and photographer Steven Jones, and Connecticut-based artist and arts administrator Malakhi Eason (also known as Dr. Kreative). This transcribed and edited version seeks to continue the conversation.

Questions for panelists:

1. As an employee, what standards do you have when making compensation decisions?
2. How does this affect your role as an employer?
3. How can financial viability be improved and maintained in the arts?

~~

Malakhi Eason: I’ve been working in the arts administration field for about 15 years. I’m currently the director of programming and community impact for the International Festival of Arts and Ideas.

Steven Jones: I’m a photographer. I’m also a sixth-year PhD candidate at Rutgers University. I’m about to be a professor at William Patterson University as well. I’m also the editor and founder of Late Fee magazine, a small magazine that I created to highlight and showcase artists of color.

Emily Hansel: I work as a dancer, choreographer, and arts administrator for dance organizations, and a dance teacher for young children. I like to say I’m an artist advocate or a dancer advocate. I do a lot of work with Dance Artists’ National Collective, a national group of working dancers focusing mainly on labor and wage issues for our freelancer community.

Malakhi: The first question is, “What standards do you have when making compensation decisions?”

I’ll start with a personal story. When I started working in this field, I basically was like, “I’ll take anything to be in this organization.” At that time, I was working a job where I was getting paid less than I was offered, but for me, it was a worthy sacrifice, and I really wanted to work in that field. But as I was going forward in my career, I realized I was getting paid less than those on the same level as me. I talked to one of my mentors and shared that I was struggling, unable to pay my rent, I have a son, and I was extremely stressed about the amount of work I was putting in and the amount of pay I was getting back. It’s always a sensitive topic to talk about. You’re scared you’re going to lose your position. But what I’ve learned over the years is that you have to believe in yourself before anybody else believes in you. I had to believe my work was worth it. I remember the day I went into the HR department. I went with a speech written out because I like to be calculated, but I ended up just speaking from my heart. The HR director said, “We don’t necessarily have the means at this moment, but we really value your work.” I appreciated her being transparent with me, but nothing was set after that, so I had to go back again and put my foot down. When I fought for it, I felt like she knew I was not playing. We had a conversation about what a pay raise increase could look like. It’s hard to fight for yourself because you’re always fearful of losing. But once you put your worth out there and people recognize that, they value you.

Emily: Oftentimes I don’t acknowledge my full worth. When I graduated college and started out, I did a lot of work pretty much for free. Then slowly, more opportunities came with slightly higher rates. I’m five years into my professional career, but I’ve recently hit a milestone where I was able to say no to someone who offered me a job. It was mostly because the pay rate was so low. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the guts to explicitly say, “I can’t do it because that’s too low for me.” I find myself needing to smooth over the reason. I’m challenging myself moving forward to be honest if I’m saying no because it’s a low wage or stipend.

Malakhi Eason, Photo by Perry Tayor for Uncanny Photography

Steven: I totally agree about knowing your worth. For me, in the beginning, it was just about balancing: trying to learn, trying to gain access. I may not have been getting paid, but was I gaining experience? But then eventually you have to know your worth because people will abuse your talents. As an employee, I like transparency and fairness on both sides, like, “Hey, I know what I’m worth. Can you provide for that?” If they can’t, be transparent enough to tell me and then let me make that decision. Especially when you’re starting out with your art, you have to get experience, but you also have to know your worth, and every time you do your art, you get better, and your value goes up.

Malakhi: As a singer, I had to learn how to just say no. I have history and experience. If you’re not able to pay this rate, I don’t need to do it. I don’t care if I’m struggling. Once I allowed myself to be devalued when I know that I am worth a whole lot more, then that’s going to become regular. I may end up negotiating a lower price. Do you ever get in that place where you feel like you know you’re selling yourself short?

Steven: I used to until I became aware that I was doing it. One of the things I do now is send invoices with the full price, and then I’ll mark down the discount from what it is, as if to say, “This is my worth, but I’m doing you a favor because I love you as a friend or I love you as an organization.” I try to save my good favors for close friends and organizations I really love and want to help.

Emily: I have 10 to 15 different part-time freelance jobs at any given time. Some are performing, some are teaching, and some are admin. The jobs that pay me the most are the teaching jobs by far. I used to always say I never want to be a teacher. I never wanted to have that much influence over a young mind, but I’ve learned to love it.

Malakhi: What are our standards when making those compensation decisions? For me, it’s important that everything’s in writing, as well as doing my research: the amount of work that I’ll be doing, what other people are getting paid, the company’s history, the company’s pay history. Doing the research helps when you’re making those negotiations.

Steven: In the beginning of my career, contracts and invoices weren’t a thing because we’re very relational as artists. But then, stuff happens even with friends. So that’s a good point you made about the contract because that’s the binding thing. Even with my students, I say, “This is a syllabus. This is our contract. Hold me to it.” Sometimes it feels like you’re hurting the relationship by bringing up money and contracts, but you’re doing it for your livelihood.

Steven Jones, photo by @freakovasquez

Emily: I have three standards, and I have broken all of them. I want there to be a written agreement. I want to be paid as an employee instead of as a contractor. And I want to get paid $30 an hour or more as a dancer. Right now, I dance for someone with whom we don’t have a written agreement, I dance for plenty of people who pay me less than $30 an hour, and I dance for plenty of people who pay me as a contractor instead of as an employee. These are my standards, but I know not everyone who’s hiring me can accommodate. Whenever any of those standards aren’t there, that’s when I consider: What am I getting? What can I give up? I assess the sacrifice.

Malakhi: Can you talk about the difference between being a contractor and an employee?

Emily: I made this standard for myself recently because of the California law AB5. The benefits of being an employee play out in the amount of taxes I have to pay. Contractors pay roughly 15 percent of their contracted income. As an employee, I pay half of that and my employer pays half of that. There are more expenses you can deduct as a contractor versus as an employee, but I’ve calculated, and I save a lot more money by being an employee. The other benefits are workers comp, which is huge for dancers, as well as accumulating sick pay, worker protections, and minimum wage.

Malakhi: The next question is, “How does this affect your role as an employer?”

Emily: I can jump right back in because it’s the same three standards. I am not currently an employer, but I intend to be soon. I have been planning this for a few years. I used to choreograph informally on close colleagues and friends and pay people a small amount. But I took a few years off, saved money, and this fall/winter, I’m going to become an employer. I’m going to pay dancers $30 an hour. And I’m going to make a thorough written agreement with them. It’s going to be a short project because I’m testing it out and because it is going to be really expensive. Ask me a year from now, and I hope to have more answers on if this is viable, but I’m trying hard to practice what I preach.

Steven: In the beginning for me, it was a lot of trade for print. But now, before I even start a project, I try to save money so I can hire people. Sometimes as artists we have ideas, and we want to get these ideas out. But people need to eat. If you focus on the project and not the people, that can be very detrimental. If you’re in a position to pay people, you should try. That’s where transparency comes in. Sometimes you can’t pay people. I’ve had friends pay me months after a project. I try to remember that when I hire people or ask people to do favors, because you can always pay your friends later.

Malakhi: Let’s try to hit the last question, “How can financial viability be improved and maintained in the arts?”

Emily: If you can’t make a living wage being an artist, then it’s not a viable career option except for those who have access to other wealth or other sources of income.

Malakhi: How we can improve it is by conversations like this, as well as talking to executive directors, board members, and donors.

Steven: I think we also need to create strong communities of artists who will stand up and fight for each other. Without the artist, there’s no art. How do we fight that fight together?

Audience question: Relative to dance, do rehearsal hours, tech rehearsals, and performance dates need to be a part of contracts?

Emily: Here’s an example. Let’s say we’re rehearsing on and off multiple days a week. Maybe it’s a year-long process. There are upcoming rehearsals, but we don’t know exactly when those will be yet. That’s fine, but it does need to be accounted for. Maybe there’s a line that says the January rehearsal schedule will be distributed by December 1st.

Audience question: COVID has been an interesting time for a lot of reasons. One thing that happened with a company that I was working with is the show was supposed to be this summer, and then it was supposed to be this fall, and now it’s in January. It’s been tricky to recommit to a somewhat unknown schedule continually. As someone who’s also a director, proactively checking in with people is important. COVID has been so wild, and being asked to commit to moving targets is tricky. Make sure you have the opportunity to regularly communicate in your contract.

The other thing I want to share is I have a job in the corporate world in addition to dance stuff. The idea of not negotiating my salary or starting work without a contract is a joke. I would never do that. One of the things I think about when I negotiate my salary or ask for a raise or promotion is this idea of taking the emotion out of money. I don’t mean to be insensitive about it, but I think sometimes we get so nervous as artists asking for more pay because it feels so emotional, but you really have to step back. I need to ask for what works for me, and I’m not going to let myself go down the slippery road of having a breakdown about what’s going to happen if I ask for what I feel like I deserve.

Emily: Removing the emotion from negotiating is something I’ve recently heard a lot about and not actually practiced yet, but that’s so key. My apartment costs this much, my food costs this much, my healthcare costs this much. Divide that by the number of hours I might work in a week. Can I afford to be there for the amount they’re paying me? It’s not emotional. It’s math.

Audience question: This isn’t so much a question. I work with Emily, and in those moments where she has spoken up are so impactful because, as dancers, we’re often conditioned to be grateful. To have my peer and colleague speak up about that is so empowering.

This whole conversation feels linked to utilizing the privilege we have, and when we do this actively and with empathy, it’s also an anti-racist force. It’s really empowering to have these conversations with one another because then we can move forward as a group as opposed to feeling like individuals.

Emily: Thank you for saying that. I’m just copying the people whom I admired before me.

Emily Hansel, Photo by Tricia Cronin courtesy of Post Ballet

~~

To learn more, visit www.chlocodance.com/tabled.

The post Tabled: Labor and a Living Wage appeared first on Stance on Dance.

Tabled, a project by Chlo & Co Dance, takes what has been set aside – “tabled” – and brings it into conversation. The five-panel series runs from March through December 2021. The first panel, “Race and Identity,” was held on March 17th via Zoom and featured Bay Area artists Jhia Jackson, Fanny Kahlo, and Katie Wong. This transcribed and edited version seeks to continue the conversation.

Questions for panelists:

1. How do race and identity manifest in your art?
2. How is race addressed or not addressed in arts communities?
3. What revolution(s) do you want to see within the arts?

~~

Fanny Kahlo: My name is Estefanía, but people know me as Fanny. I have been living in San Francisco for more than 11 years. I currently do a lot of different projects, but one of the main things is I run an online queer Latinx vintage shop, Ojo x Ojo. I created it with the idea of having a space not just about clothing, but to make a space for people who look like me or who I didn’t see growing up.

Fanny Kahlo, Photo by Ralph C.R.

Jhia Jackson: My name is Jhia Jackson and my pronouns are she, they. I am a movement-based artist and scholar in San Francisco. I am currently getting my doctorate at UCSF in medical sociology, where my research is on death, dying, and end-of-life care. I’m also the founder of Emerging Black Bay Artists, a grassroots organization in the Bay Area dedicated to connecting and supporting early to mid-career Black artists of all disciplines. I often engage in other people’s works as a dancer or costume designer. And then I lead my own projects, which are movement-based and sometimes manifest as stage performances, site-specific works, virtual, or all-written.

Jhia Jackson, Photo by Thais Aquino with Mojo DeVille

Katie Wong: My name is Katie Wong and I use the pronouns she, her, hers. I’m a movement artist and choreographer who has been based in the Bay Area for almost 10 years. As a freelance dance artist, I’ve worked with more than 15 local companies and choreographers. I’m also a freelance choreographer and have been commissioned by a variety of organizations. Two and a half years ago, I joined the leadership of RAWdance, first as an Associate Artistic Director and now as Co-Artistic Director, and helped shepherd our company into an expansion, not only by moving beyond the two original founders to include myself but also in our location. We are still based in the Bay Area, but our two founders moved to the Hudson Valley in New York. We’re now exploring what it means to have this bicoastal model together.

Katie Wong, Photo by Elena Zhukova

Thinking about the first question, early in my career, so much time was spent on survival and auditioning. How do you join a company based on a one-weekend audition? We’re taught to fit into a mold and emulate the choreographer. It often felt like an erasure. So infrequently were you invited to be your authentic self in the space. That felt troublesome and problematic. It wasn’t in every circumstance; there are many choreographers out there who try to create opportunities to get to know dancers better. But it’s certainly an important norm to continue to evaluate in our field.

There is a shift when it comes to becoming a choreographer; I’ve been able to step into my own identity and voice. One thing I’ve held onto is my values when approaching rehearsal with others. It is connected to my upbringing and the different cultures I hold within my personal history where we prioritize listening, respect, creating a safe space for voices to be heard, giving credit where credit is due, compensating people for their time and labor, and showing kindness and generosity.

Fanny: Coming from a background where my art is not my primary source of income, I think everything is amplified when it comes to having another 9-to-5 job and still finding the energy to make some art, be creative, and take the time to think about what I want to create. That’s how I view race and identity and how it manifests through my work; I haven’t had the privilege to make my art my primary focus.

Jhia: I love that you brought up the question of who has access to make art their livelihood. Art is literally a privilege you don’t have access to if your basic survival needs aren’t being met.

Jhia Jackson, Photo by Matt Goldhill

Something I’ve been struggling with, especially during the pandemic, is suddenly everyone’s Instagram has turned professional. I don’t know when we stopped posting pictures of our cats and started posting headshots all the time. Suddenly our Instagram profiles have become our businesses, our self-marketing.

Fanny: When I step back and see the opportunities that have been provided to me through a platform like Instagram, I feel like it was based on me presenting who I am. Instagram has changed a lot and sadly. Everyone’s promoting the same brands, the same style, and it’s very dull and boring to me.

During the pandemic, because I’ve been stuck inside all day not meeting people at pop-up events or clothing shops, it’s all been through Instagram. It’s been hard for me. It’s heavy to understand: What is Fanny Kahlo? Because that itself is my brand, Fanny Kahlo and Ojo x Ojo shop. I want to continue to show that there are people who look like me who were raised by strict Mexican parents. My parents never told me, “You should look into the arts if you’re interested.” It was always, “That’s not going to provide you any income.” There was never a conversation about art. I want to continue to be on Instagram and other platforms, but it’s so hard when you’re not agreeing with what you’re seeing. I need to be reminded that you can put yourself out there and just be yourself, and opportunities will present themselves. It’s about finding that middle ground of when sharing yourself is too much.

Fanny Kahlo, Photo by Lindsey Shea

Jhia: That’s a central question for me: When is sharing yourself too much? I think back to when I first met you, Katie, and where I was in my journey around liking myself and liking my skin tone, which is a weird thing to say because I’ve always loved the fact that I’m Black. My parents met at Howard. They were both in frats and sororities. Even though I have been schooled in predominantly white institutions and danced in overwhelmingly white spaces, I’ve always had a grounding in Black culture. I didn’t have that phase of not necessarily embracing the fact that I’m Black, but rather the questions of, “I’m too Black here, I’m not Black enough there, I don’t quite fit in, I’m just dark enough to read Black onstage, but I’m not Black enough to read Black for your piece.”

A strength of mine is that I literally cannot lie to you. I can’t do it. Don’t invite me if you don’t want me to open my mouth. We’re in the Bay Area where there are hella Black dancers. I know y’all think there aren’t, but there are so many. That’s why I made a group, Emerging Black Bay Artists, so you don’t have to pick me. You can pick all these other artists.

Every time I open my mouth, I’m suddenly that angry Black woman. Then the pandemic happened and suddenly y’all want me to open my mouth. You fired me from your dance, you told me I was mean, you let your dancers point at me and cry and yell. And I had to be quiet and take it because if I open my mouth, I’m an angry Black woman, when I’m actually the sweetest.

From Jhia Jackson’s “Of Crowns and Cages”

I have a friend, Liz Mulkey, who I collaborate with in LA. We made this dance and performed it at Movement Research in New York. Afterward, this Black dancer came up to me and said, “I have never seen a Black person dance like that.” That’s why I have to show up, for that one person who says, “I didn’t know that was possible for someone who looks like us.”

I love being in other people’s work. It gives me a chance to learn and test my own limits. But I have found over the years that if someone asks me to work with them, I let them know the things that are important to me, which are communication and transparency. I know what it feels like to be gaslighted because everyone else is acting like things are fine, but things are very clearly not okay. I don’t understand why we in the arts community are advocating for change, for activism, for economic empowerment, if we’re not showing up for each other. In my artwork, a commitment to upholding my personal values around the way that we, as humans, should strive to treat each other is central.

Katie: It’s important to continue to share those stories with our community because we all experience them from different perspectives. It’s all about representation. The first choreographers I worked with in the Bay Area were both women of color. Without those experiences, I would not see myself where I am today. It is that vision, that perseverance, and that possibility that completely opens doors.

Jhia and Katie performing in PUSH Dance Company (choreography by Raissa Simpson). Photo courtesy PUSH Dance.

Walking those boundaries between sharing too much or too little, making ourselves our brands, these are difficult questions when it comes to vulnerability in our art. It is towing that line, making sure you’re saving time for yourself, your care, and your personal space, but also realizing the power you have in your Instagram account or in your performance where someone you might not know is going to meet you and your work for the first time.

Jhia, it resonated with me the way you’ve been able to build a connection with Black communities while living within primarily white institutions. The struggle I’ve had with my art and identity has been around being mixed race and feeling like that must mean my experiences are watered down and not as authentic. I never really fit into specific containers; which box do I check? Can I check more than one? It’s about stepping into that strength and seeing it not as a disadvantage, but as a superpower. I have a massive amount of history, an incredible number of ancestors to draw on, and multi-layered cultures. That is such a benefit and something I am grateful for, but it’s been a journey to get to this point of understanding and appreciation.

Fanny: Moving to San Francisco from a small agricultural town, I had to ask if I wanted to try and fit in with people who have no relationship to me. Or am I going to just continue to focus on what I’m here to do? I could be placed into this box of looking a certain way and following certain trends, or I could continue to learn about me.

With that is the question of how race is addressed in arts communities. It’s something that has recently started to happen. There’s also this idea that everyone is trying to make money off people like us. Suddenly everyone wants to work with people who are of color or queer, but what are the motives behind that? It’s hard to navigate the idea of feeling used but also feeling empowered.

Fanny Kahlo, Photo by Katie Walsh

Jhia: Something I’ve been thinking about is: Are there aspects of my identity that I can’t help but have people know? For the most part, you look at me and you immediately know I’m Black, but the fact that I’m bi doesn’t necessarily come forward in my art. We have more readily seen and less readily seen aspects of our identities. Some things can’t help but come forward and other things you have to assert.

Fanny: I studied sociology and Latinx studies in college. I was taken aback by how much history I didn’t know. I come from a very strict, religious, Mexican background. Most of the time now, I’m in spaces with white folks who come from money. They’re just sourcing clothing as a hobby. I do it because I want to provide this space for people like me. It’s hard, but doable. I’ve been able to have my 9-to-5 job, but also create art.

Katie: The first work I did as Co-Artistic Director of RAWdance, called The Healer, came from a personal place. It was connected to the loss of my aunt and her relationship to our Chinese culture and ancestors as well as to Eastern medicine. I was reintroduced to these philosophies during my time on the West coast. The more I researched and reached out to Bay Area Asian communities, the more it felt like an opportunity to create space to hold our histories and share my personal grief and healing process. Realizing how art can be a tool and container for connection and growth was beneficial for me.

Photo by Stacey Yuen of Katie Wong’s “The Healer”

Jhia: Hearing both of you talk about how your work as artists has allowed you to reclaim and rediscover aspects of your identity hits me so good. My dad has Parkinson’s disease. He’s actually been living with it since I was nine, but I didn’t know until I was 16. A couple years ago, RAWdance asked me to show work in their Concept Series. I asked my dad if he would dance with me. We made this piece based on interviews with my grandma, who was a sharecropper’s daughter. We would be driving through Louisiana and she’d say, “I used to pick that cotton.” I’d look at her like, “Damn, that shit was not that long ago.” I interviewed her about the way my family has spread and also asked her thoughts about my dad’s chronic illness.

Then my dad and I made this structured improv, which is a big deal because Parkinson’s disease causes impaired motor skills and cognitive slowing down. We performed at RAWdance’s Concept Series and at a bioethics conference. Especially in dance where our bodies are so much of our identity, it’s been lovely to have this vessel to talk about family, bodies, and illness.

Photo by Amal Bisharat Photography of Jhia Jackson’s “Daddy Issues” (2018) at SF War Memorial for RAWdance Concept series.

Audience question: This past year, everything has obviously taken a lot out of us. How have you been able to give yourself some self-love? How do you find balance?

Fanny: At the beginning when everything started to close, it was hard to find that balance, especially navigating from working in an office to working at home. I started to meditate. I was never a person who could shut my brain off. I still have a hard time, but that has really helped me just be present.

Katie: I’m always trying to chip away at what it means to say yes or no to projects. How do you gracefully understand how to monitor your time and not give everything you have away? That was tough for me to do before the pandemic. Now, if I come out feeling rejuvenated, if I come out not feeling completely worn down, if I come out learning something to take with me for the future, then it is a successful experience.

Jhia: I instituted this practice called Sundays are for the water. That is my day when I turn to myself. The other days I try to set boundaries on my energy. I found that just communicating with people about my energetic boundaries is helpful. Alternately, I do need to throw myself around to release emotion, but I have found other ways to get that same feeling.

Audience question: What revolutions do you want to see within the arts?

Fanny: In my personal experience, when I’ve been asked to be part of any conversation, a white person always has to be the one talking. That would be something I would love to see change. A lot of folks are aiming towards that goal, but it has a long road ahead.

Jhia: I love that predominantly white institutions hire a Black artist to lead Black-centered work, but then why aren’t they practicing how to collaborate with people intentionally as opposed to just dropping us in? People have a Black Lives Matter profile picture, but then they don’t hire Black dancers, they have one Black friend, and they’re not owning up to their past mistakes or awkwardness. These aren’t things we expect people to get perfect. But if art is supposed to be about possibilities, dreams, futures, and envisioning, then why is that limited when it comes to the awkward personal things? That’s the revolution I want – some humility, grace, practice, and support around the hard things.

Katie: The few things I might be able to add is valuing artists as humans and not just as sacrificial culture bearers. Pay artists a living wage, pay them for their labor and time, not just when they’re in rehearsal or for a performance, but for every hour they’re spending in preparation, for their technique classes in order to maintain their skills and perform at their highest level.

All that has to do with shifting our social understanding around philanthropy. We can’t just hope the same large donors, foundations, and governments that change every four years are going to prioritize artists. We need to band together and re-strengthen our relationship to giving back. That includes all nonprofits, but especially the arts, because I feel like we’re often taken for granted. We shouldn’t have to wait tables and be bartenders. There should be a support system from our nation and also from the pockets of individuals. Giving back is essential.

Katie Wong, Photo by Hillary Goidell

Jhia: Suffering doesn’t make our art any more artsy. If you had happy artists who didn’t have to worry about their economic stability, maybe everyone’s art would be better, it would be easier to make, and it’d be more enjoyable and interesting to engage with.

Katie: We should all uphold this narrative that artists can be strong, employed, and comfortable.

Fanny: A revolution for me would be to continue to build community, to continue to empower one another, and to continue to ask questions and learn.

~~

To learn more, visit www.chlocodance.com/tabled

The post Tabled: Race and Identity appeared first on Stance on Dance.

This transcribed and edited version seeks to continue the conversation. Please feel free to get in touch with emmaly@stanceondance.com or chlocodance@gmail.com with your own thoughts on the mental and emotional dichotomies of the artist!

Notes: randy reyes (they/them) has recently renamed themselves estrella/estrellx supernova and will be subsequently referred to as estrella/x in the remainder of the article. Lindsay’s last name is 최; the name she publishes under is “최 Lindsay,” and in her academic life she goes by “Lindsay Choi.”

estrella/x, Photo credit: Performance Primers

~~

Rachel Howe (she/her):

My background is in visual arts, and I worked in the art world for a long time. About eight years ago, I embarked on a spiritual journey and brought a healing aspect into my work. I still consider myself a visual artist, but my art is now linked to the idea of healing. I currently work with tarot and astrology. My approach involves changing one’s perceptions and working with how our thoughts affect us and how our emotions determine our behavior.

I feel a lot of pressure as far as having to perform, having to be available, and needing to constantly have new ideas or new things to show everyone. I lived in New York for about 20 years and I recently moved to Los Angeles. My environment has changed drastically. When I first moved here, it was super mellow. Now, with all the things that have happened this past year, it’s not mellow in California at all, but that’s another part of the whole personal health aspect.

estrella/x (they/them):

I am a choreographer, performance artist, and healer. I don’t see healing as separate from my choreography; they are and have always been intertwined. I’ve lived in the Bay Area for the past four years. I’m originally from unceded Lenape territory, or New Jersey. I lived abroad for a bit and now I’m on the East Coast because of the fires. It was a choice based on where I needed to be to feel both grounded and in my body in order to keep my mental health intact. Obviously not everyone can shift their geography.

My choreography is very ritual based. It’s tricky for me to navigate that in relation to the “art market” and who’s watching the work/who the work is for. This past year especially has pushed me into redefining my role as an artist as not just someone who makes work, but as someone who’s reorienting and redefining my values and my beliefs.

최 Lindsay Choi (they/them):

I’m a poet and a grad student. I’m in the process of PhD-ing in English Literature at UC Berkeley. I have a forthcoming book called Transverse. It’s somewhat related to the topic of mental health and the arts. When I was writing the book, I was processing this particularly severe period of PTSD. It occurred to me later, when I looked back over the manuscript, that it captures a lot of early experiences of what some people have called “gender euphoria,” rather than dysphoria.

There is a recurring debate over whether poetry is therapy. I feel inclined towards thinking that poetry is not therapy, although poetry is used sometimes in therapy. I situate myself as an inheritor of a tradition of experimental/avant-garde poetry that was innovated in the Bay Area where the ambition is to make the poem a mind. If the poem is a mind and you succeed in that formal venture, what does this mean?

Rachel:

When I’m doing a tarot reading, the discovery of ideas and the articulation can be therapeutic. To me, being able to articulate something in a specific way that I couldn’t earlier is healing. It helps to find meaning and make sense of the world. I sit down and let my mind discover how to put the words together. It’s almost like there’s already something there that’s invisible and my mind has to discover it. It’s by putting words to this invisible thing that makes it real. And then, it makes it something that a person can engage with, interact with, and learn from. When it’s just an invisible sense, it’s much harder to interact with.

Rachel Howe, Photo credit: Chloé Jarnac

최 Lindsay:

Astrology and tarot are about something that’s quite formally restricted but still has its own semiotic code. You gather a set of objects that exist in discreet relation to each other, and it helps to draw out what already exists in the psyche. The task is to fill in the gaps.

estrella/x:

I’m predominantly in the experimental dance world. I feel this inherited pressure to constantly be productive in order to be successful and get money. I think it’s really important to take breaks. It feels like one of the hardest things for me to do as an emerging artist because there is this attachment to the idea that one must hustle to make a living. But within the dance world specifically, we, as artists, are not getting paid enough to really thrive.

I’ve always had this inner dialogue of, “Maybe I should shift fully into my healing practice,” but I don’t because I can never see myself not performing. The performing aspect is critical. It has supported me through and beyond moments of extreme emotional despair. It’s definitely therapy. It also brings out my capacity for healing and supporting others with their healing processes. If I were to train, for example, in Craniosacral, which I’m considering, it takes a year or so to get certified. But I’m still longing for a durational break in which I can just tune in to what my body is trying to tell me, without the art market involved, without needing to make money, just to rest. It’s been the hardest thing to do, and I’m still struggling with that.

Rachel:

When I lived in New York and worked in the art world, I was very turned off by the idea of turning people into commodities and making them more easily understood to a superficial audience. They’re not interested in the actual people who are making or producing things; they’re just interested in the product. The message is to package ourselves to be more easily understood. Social media adds to that as well: If I can just be one little package that everyone can understand, then I’ll be more successful.

I have an intellectual belief that you don’t have to be constantly producing work to call yourself an artist, choreographer, healer, or writer, but, at the same time, I feel the same pressure that everyone else does to be constantly producing and prove my value. randy, you mentioned being an emerging artist. There is always a fear that if you do step back and take that rest, you’ll disappear and there’ll be someone else to take your place. But there is room for everybody, especially if you’re doing multiple things, because not everybody is the specific combination that you are. It’s conflicting messaging: Be your unique self, but also be something easily digestible for the broader society.

최 Lindsay:

I love that this conversation turned to the pressures that the three of us feel due to the temporalities of capital and how it circulates in the particular forms of art that we specialize in and the orientation towards it that the field itself has. I hadn’t thought about what both of you were talking about in your careers as artists. Part of it has to do with the small press poetry world that I mostly work in, which is not in any way an arts industry. I can’t think of a single poet who makes money from being a poet. Everyone has a day job.

So much of what we call “mental health” is conditioned by what is offered within preexisting systems of capital and positionalities within it. I’m interested in how both of you identify yourselves as healers. I think there’s something to be explored here, what bodywork can offer someone as opposed to the deeply fraught classifications of mental illness within paradigms of pathologizing.

최 Lindsay Choi, Photo credit: J.S. Wu

Rachel:

I agree. I wrestled with a lot of issues when I was younger that traditional mental health therapy did not help and, in some ways, maybe harmed. It wasn’t until I started doing energy work that things started to drastically change for me. Our minds, emotions, energy, and bodies are all constantly engaging with each other. To only treat one does not make sense and doesn’t work. It alienates the rest. The standard is to treat physical ailments as if they have no connection to emotions, to treat emotions as if they’re not stored in the body, to treat thoughts as if they’re not connected to energy, and that just doesn’t make sense. All it does is keep people feeling not whole. I experienced my healing by learning different healing modalities and going to different healers. Some were bodyworkers, some were talk-oriented. I’ve had therapeutic breakthroughs via bodywork without even talking about my emotions.

estrella/x:

My mental health strategies have been a combination of different elements. Initially, it was a lot of talk therapy, but that wasn’t enough. Talking is in the realm of the intellect. Like you were saying Rachel, some things get worked out through drawing or singing, or just through being witnessed. This is why I personally love performance. I’m grateful that I am a performer because it opens this other space for my transformation. There’s room to check in with how my body is making work in relation to what I’m going through, in relation to what’s stimulating me, in relation to who is around me, and in relation to how my heart is doing.

Rachel:

One role of the artist is to be somebody who doesn’t know. The idea that an artist is creating, exploring, discovering, and inventing is attractive to the rest of society, but they don’t realize how difficult or courageous that is to do, especially without support.

Audience Question:

As a nurse, I completely agree with what you’re all discussing. I work in oncology, specifically with bone marrow transplant patients. It’s amazing to see what massage and acupuncture do for my patients. Have you ever worked with patients in the hospital or considered it?

Rachel:

I have not but I would love to do that. Bringing non-traditional types of healing into more traditional institutions would be great. When I was in New York, I did an arts program at Rikers Jail. My original intention was to do energy work there, but they said no, I couldn’t do that because it would involve touching. So I made an arts program that turned into talking about whatever they wanted and holding space for them.

Audience Question:

I’m wondering about the artist’s relation to their expression/practice. What are the conditions of its fulfillment? Is it only fulfilled when it exists for an audience? If so, do you experience loneliness when your expression remains self-contained?

estrella/x, Photo credit: Sophie Schultz

최 Lindsay:

It’s different for an artist whose main vehicle is performance. This is something I take a hard stance on when it comes to poetry: The worst commonly held belief within poetry is that you have to publish to be a poet. This ends up creating a sense of hierarchy within poetry when so many publications are started by random poets.

estrella/x:

Personally, I don’t necessarily need an audience in the room because, even when I’m in a space alone, I feel the space is full of memories. My ancestors accompany me everywhere I go. I always feel like I’m constantly being witnessed on some level by something, someone, nature even if I’m outdoors. This question of audience is important to me. I want my work to be witnessed by QTPOC folks because that’s who I am. When I’ve been abroad in Europe and – this is a huge generalization – it often felt like I was being consumed or extracted. I’m not interested in that.

Audience Question:

Since art and work often need to be capitalized in order to survive, how do you reconcile the sale or sharing of art when it originates from a personal healing process?

Rachel:

There’s this huge block people have about charging money for healing work. It feels very uncomfortable because it’s such a gift and, in an ideal world, it would be an exchange. It would not be something that has a price tag attached to it. Whenever it is a gift, it always feels energetically better. However, as someone who uses the healing world as a resource for myself when I need it, I am willing and grateful to pay people for their time and services. Yes, I monetize my insights so I don’t need a second job and so I can devote myself fully to this work. I feel this strengthens the personal connection and uplifts the people who are receiving it even more.

Tarot deck designed by Rachel Howe, Photo credit: Mario Gallucci

~~

To learn more, visit www.chlocodance.com/tabled.

The post On the Mental and Emotional Dichotomies of the Artist appeared first on Stance on Dance.

This transcribed and edited version seeks to continue the conversation. Please feel free to get in touch with emmaly@stanceondance.com or chlocodance@gmail.com with your own thoughts on recruiting an audience!

Michelle Mulholland, Photo by Cheshire Isaacs

Jennie Scholick, Photo by Murray Bognovitz

Duncan Wold, Photo by Mark Semegen

~~

Michelle Mulholland:

Like many theaters, Golden Thread Productions is not having live performances at this moment, but we have finally decided to do some audio plays. One of the things I’m wondering is how our marketing may or may not be effective. Our audience is still engaged; that’s clear from our communication with them and that we’ve still been receiving some financial support. But as we move into a temporarily different work, I’m curious whether our marketing, which has been relatively effective when we have live performances, is still effective with these audio plays.

[Check out Golden Thread Production’s audio plays here!]

Jennie Scholick:

San Francisco Ballet is a very large performing arts nonprofit organization with about a $50 million budget. We have 75 dancers, 100 plus staff, a 45-member orchestra, and, during the season, an extensive crew and house staff at the War Memorial Opera House, where we perform. We do eight programs a year, three of which are story ballets and the rest are mixed repertory. We commission about one to four new works per season. And we’ve done Nutcracker every year for the past 75 years.

My role within the organization is both to deepen our engagement with our existing audience members, as well as to grow and develop new audiences. I confess, I feel a lot more capable in the first part of that description than I do in the second part. Especially with COVID, what does it mean to keep growing our audience when just hanging on to the audience we have is such a challenge?

I have a unique role at San Francisco Ballet. I spend 50 percent of my time working on our adult education programs, and then I spend 50 percent of my time in marketing. I do a lot of our new audience development events and programs, and I work on content as well. My role was created in this hybrid way because audience members who feel comfortable and informed about what they’re seeing are more likely to become committed audience members. My role was to figure out how to make both our 65-year-old eight-series subscriber and our 25-year-old discount ticket buyer feel connected to the organization. And then COVID screws it all up.

Duncan Wold:

My name is Duncan, he/him. I’m from PianoFight in San Francisco and now also Oakland. My role is the booking manager in San Francisco. We have three spaces, and we host plays, comedy, music, and magic shows. We run on the anti-social distancing business model, and that’s just impossible and irresponsible these days. The whole goal of what we’re doing has changed. Our marketing strategies have to change to support those new goals. Now, it’s much more about keeping our community engaged. By presenting digital works through Facebook and YouTube, we’re helping with the production and supporting with promotion. The goal is to keep the people who were coming engaged, so that when we get to the other side of this pandemic, they’ll be ready to come back and support us again. That’s one of the big goals. Another big one is: Don’t lose money! And then the third is trying to innovate formats. There’s the potential for some of the stuff we create during this time to persist and be interesting in and of itself.

When performers do shows with us through our virtual venue, they ask, “When should I start my show?” In the old days, it was an eight o’clock or nine o’clock show because people would come out after dinner. Now, I have no idea when a good time is to start. A show that goes on at five o’clock, people from the East Coast tune in, or a show that goes on at ten o’clock, people from Australia are tuning in. We’ve gotten feedback that people appreciate having performances on while they’re making dinner, which is different than at a PianoFight live performance.

Jennie:

Duncan, you’re talking about live programming? It’s not pre-recorded?

Duncan:

Primarily.

Jennie:

That’s not on our radar. Everything we’re looking at is going to be pre-recorded and then accessible for some predetermined time. Michelle, what’s your approach to that?

Michelle:

Live productions are not possible in the short term for many reasons. It’s not just about the audience; it’s also very much about the artists. It’s not safe.

We gravitated toward audio plays because there was a certain amount of imagination that would take place. The difficult thing is: How do we get the audience to engage? At Golden Thread, the engagement with audience members at performances is a big part of what we do. Is there a way for technology to recreate that around an audio play? For example, I have seen a couple of plays where they have a chat going.

Jennie:

What we did this spring for COVID is mostly release archival streams of past performances for free. The cons of that model are you run out of archives and you run out of money. We are trying to figure out how to monetize that content looking forward, assuming we have to.

The most interesting thing we’ve done is release a seven-minute dance film, Dance of Dreams. It was created by four choreographers over Zoom with six dancers and then filmed separately. We got special permission from the City to go to certain outdoor spaces. All the dancers were in sneakers. What was interesting about it was we weren’t trying to recreate the experience of being in a theater. We were no longer showing something that had been filmed for archival purposes from the back of a theater. It was San Francisco Ballet thinking like a digital media company. I think it’s very accessible, shareable, and short. We are not asking someone to sit in front of a screen for 30 minutes or three hours. This, for me, is the place where we might be able to reach new audiences. Someone might watch that short six-minute film and want to come see us in person when it’s possible, or they might be willing to pay for a slightly longer version of something like it.

[Watch Dance of Dreams here!]

What we’ve found historically is that, if you’re new to ballet, you’re going to buy the Swan Lake ticket, no matter how much I try to tell you that the cool new work is much shorter and you’re going to like it better. If you have never been to the ballet, you’re going to buy Swan Lake first, and it’s going to take three to five years before you buy tickets to something else. If we do enough of this short, interesting, more accessible work, are we going to get a different way of building audiences?

Duncan:

There is new interactivity that exists in these formats. For instance, we work with this group called San Francisco Recovery Theater that did a presentation of David Mamet’s play Race on Zoom. There were four actors in four squares, and they would appear and disappear. We would discourage the audience from jumping up and commenting in a theater, but now they can in this format. I don’t know if it’ll last past this time, but I appreciate the ability to explore.

Michelle:

We do have archival videos, but it’s a bit cost-prohibitive for us because we need to compensate people for showing it. Honestly, I just think we’re not interested in digital. I don’t know if anybody else is surveying their audience to find out what they are interested in. Our audience is not very interested in digital content. Live is really what they’re interested in.

Jennie:

We’ve done a ton. I think we streamed eight to 10 full ballets throughout the spring. For a while, we were doing weekly artist talks. We’ve done a variety of online classes. We churn out a ton of content. For our loyal audience members, it’s been important to keep them in the loop about what our dancers are up to, and that we’ve managed to keep dancers and staff employed and on payroll.

One thing that’s been incredible through all of this is, we work with seven unions, and they’ve all waived a lot of rights temporarily around allowing us to share content. We have a much closer relationship with our artists right now, and the marketing and artistic folks are working closely together in new ways. It’s been exciting to let our dancers and orchestra members do whatever they dream up and then put some of the force of our marketing department behind it.

Duncan:

How have the classes been going? That’s something we haven’t done but I’ve had interest from various artists who we work with.

Jennie:

We’ve been offering ballet class on Zoom from pretty much the beginning. Teachers teach from their living rooms. We charge $10 a class for a one-hour ballet barre and get between 30 and 75 people from around the world consistently. For our audience engagement classes, which are more ballet appreciation classes, we average between 30 and 60 participants, which is similar to an in-person class.

Michelle:

It’s been exciting to reach people around the world. Because we produce plays from and about the Middle East, in some ways we have a deeper national and international presence than we do in the Bay Area. People can access our work now who could not access it before.

Duncan:

We had a piano player who performed every Friday night. We closed for COVID on a Saturday and the following Friday, he asked if he could stream through our Facebook and we said, “Absolutely, yes.” All these people in the chat were saying, “Oh my gosh, it’s just like a normal Friday night.” I identified a real desire for normalcy. We’re trying to connect with people and remind them that things are okay.

Audience Question:

What platforms are you using for virtual shows?

Duncan:

We have tried everything, and they all have their merits. We upload videos both to Facebook and YouTube, and then set them to premier at a specific time. It treats them like live videos. People who are fans of our page will see it come up, and it’ll have the live chat. For stuff that’s either interactive or live and not just one-person streaming, we’ve used this software called Mix from Microsoft. It costs money and needs somebody who’s got a tech brain to use it. The other thing we’ve used for a similar effect is this software called OBS, which is used by people who stream on Twitch. We did a film festival with Glide and they wanted to do a film screening and then a Zoom Q & A with the filmmakers. They needed to have filmed content that went at a high frame rate and then have a live component. They were able to pull that off with OBS. Those are the two most sophisticated software we’ve used.

PianoFight’s digital venue

Jennie:

We’ve mostly been using YouTube and Facebook Premiere. We use Vimeo when we’re hosting on our website. We upload to Vimeo and then embed it on the website, but we are trying to figure out a way to put a paywall up.

Audience Question:

Have you been dealing with issues of accessibility on online platforms? Have you started using subtitles? If so, what are the best platforms specifically for that?

Duncan:

Some platforms like YouTube can do captions live. When it’s a Zoom show, we have an ASL interpreter who’s on with us.

Jennie:

In dance, we don’t have that much talking. When we do shorter clips, we transcribe it and our video person adds subtitles. We haven’t been as good with some of our longer or live interviews.

Michelle:

I’m curious, specifically with an audio play, how best to make this content available in alternative ways.

Audience Question:

What do you do if a music artist doesn’t respond to an inquiry about using their music for online performance?

Duncan:

On all these platforms, if you use something copyrighted, it flags it and takes it down. When we reach out to smaller or more local artists on SoundCloud, we usually hear from them eventually. Generally, if someone doesn’t respond, I wouldn’t use their music.

Jennie:

One of the benefits of working for a large organization is we harass people until they respond. We don’t put anything up that hasn’t been a 100 percent cleared.

Audience Question:

Are you thinking of distanced performance outside?

Michelle:

That was the original plan for our most recent audio play, The Language of Wild Berries, which is about a road trip ostensibly. The original idea was to do it at a drive in. We work with Actors Equity, and they were not giving us as gracious a treatment as they’ve given you, Jennie! They were not ready to issue contracts. They wanted to have a health and safety plan in place, which is understandable. But if they weren’t going to issue contracts, we couldn’t do it. COVID is like a rollercoaster; one minute we’re thinking, “Oh yes, it seems like we can do this safely.” And then, 10 days later, we’re like, “Whoa, this is not going to be doable, it seems more dangerous.”

Duncan:

There are the city guidelines about outdoor dining, but most of the guidelines have pretty much explicitly prohibited any form of entertainment.

Jennie:

Our orchestra has been doing pop-up concerts. They’ve been doing them for a while. It’s strings only at this point, nothing that creates aspiration. They’ve been doing them in a variety of neighborhoods. We share many of our orchestra members with the opera, and they have branded these pop-up performances. We are hoping that a couple of our dancers will elect voluntarily, in sneakers, to maybe pop up with our orchestra here and there. Keep an eye out for those performances happening throughout the city.

~~

To learn more, visit www.chlocodance.com/tabled.

The post On Recruiting an Audience appeared first on Stance on Dance.

This transcribed and edited version seeks to continue the conversation. Please feel free to get in touch with emmaly@stanceondance.com or chlocodance@gmail.com with your own thoughts on appropriating gender, sex and identity!

Note: A week after this conversation, Wolfman Books announced it was closing, to be reopened as the QTPOC-led Wolffemme+Them.

Justin Carder, Photo by Anna Xu

Bhumi B. Patel, Photo by Lara Kaur

Grace Towers, Photo by Sloane Kanter

~~

Questions for panelists (given in advance):

1. What do gender, sex, and identity mean to you and how do they manifest in your art form?
2. How do you organize events, programming, and/or performances with gender, sex, and identity at the forefront?
3. How are gender, sex, and identity addressed or not addressed in the arts community? What examples of colonialism do you see as prevalent in the arts?
4. What role do gender, sex, and identity play in funding and grant applications? Are gender, sex, and identity invoked by artists with privilege as a way to gain funding? How can white/cis/hetero artists respect and raise the voice of gender non-conforming, BIPOC, queer folx beyond optical allyship or tokenization?
5. What revolution(s) do you want within the arts regarding gender, sex, and identity? What locations/events/artists do you admire in your field?

~~

Bhumi B Patel:

Thinking about answering these questions was a huge challenge for me. I started thinking: What do I do? What have I done in the past? There was a time when we could gather. One of the ways that I decolonized the system of performance was that, when I put together performances, there would be food, tea, and conversation, the stuff that connects people beyond going into a theater and sitting in a chair. I want to create spaces where we are co-creating as audience, choreographer and performers. We all co-create what happens, which dismantles who holds the power in the room.

Grace Towers:

Yes, and cheers to finding creative ways to make these kinds of systems work. I’m curious Bhumi, and I’ll ask because I’ve had to navigate this myself, having done a weekly five-year run of a drag show that was fed by audience engagement: Have you considered using Zoom or any other internet platform, as far as performance and curation?

Bhumi:

I think about it a lot. Is it possible to cultivate the feeling of the thing without it being the thing? I sometimes tell people if I’m getting on a Zoom call to make yourself a cup of tea, grab a snack, enjoy, and sit in a chair that’s comfortable. We can only see you from the torso up, don’t wear pants if you don’t want to wear pants, you’re in your house, live your best life. It’s not the same but it attempts to create the feeling.

Grace:

Speaking to that feeling, we’ve been doing a drag show on Zoom. It’s been a beautiful platform and a creative way to stay connected as a community. There’s another platform called Twitch that provides a sense of absorption. We try to decolonize the structure by having a post-show where I unmute everybody and have a check-in, even if it’s not in-person.

Justin Carder:

It’s exciting to see people transform what’s ostensibly business software. Zoom is for meetings, and now all these people are making it a club. It’s fun but it’s also hard work. I’m challenged because so much of what I value about performance is everything around it: How to make the space feel nice, how to make the conversation happen.

Then the conversation switched in an amazing way toward the George Floyd protests. We went into direct service mode; our project turned into fundraising. We’re moving toward a more direct service model. Can art more easily direct money to the people who need it?

Bhumi:

There was this month of full throttle, “We are reading White Fragility, we are reading How to Be an Antiracist, we are taking down racism.” Now the Instagram feed is going back to pictures of dogs and homemade granitas, but some of us are in it for the long haul. That’s the thing I’m so excited about in the arts world, or at least the thing that I want to be hopeful about in the arts world: that we are sticking to it. That these solidarity statements that were made literally by everyone, from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to someone I bought a t-shirt from 10 years ago, and everyone in between, that they lead to an examination of what these institutions are. There’s so much more to look at: Who’s on your board of directors? Who are you hiring? Is your work environment hostile for marginalized people? If so, stop hiring marginalized people and harming them. Look at yourself and reevaluate. I feel hopeful that we’re in a moment that could lead to change. Maybe that’s as a result of this perfect storm where the arts industry is being decimated because of the pandemic. We’re not in the theaters, we’re not in rehearsal studios, we’re not creating in the same way. If we go back at some point, at least we can do it in a way that doesn’t harm so many of the marginalized people in our community. That’s my hope for the future.

Justin:

One of the ways our work manifested recently, that I’m thankful for and has been inspiring, was during the protests. Wolfman Books is right downtown in the center of Oakland, across from the Tribune Tower, right next to Oscar Grant Plaza. I was away camping when the biggest protest started and I got all these text messages, “Is the store okay? What’s going on?” I worked with my staff the next night, and we opened the store for people to use the bathroom and get water, hand sanitizer, and snacks. We did this as support for the protestors who were out in the street. It was honestly beautiful to be there, to see all these people come through and hold a space of direct action. It was the difference between barricading and opening our space, showing up to be with people.

Justin Carder

Bhumi:

This interesting thing has happened in the past months, and I’m sure this has happened to a lot of people who maybe look similar to me. I’ve gotten a lot of emails asking about antiracism and queerness. It feels like another tendril of tokenization. I’m not going to speak for all Brown people. I can tell you my opinion, but you need to talk to a lot of Brown people, and you need to not be afraid of Black and Brown people. I don’t know if anyone else has had this experience, but I’ve gotten at least half a dozen people asking, “Can you fill out my Google form and tell me how you think my organization has been racist?” No, I can’t because that requires you going on an inner field trip to think about the actions you have done, the systems you have bought into, and really interrogating that. I’m not doing that work for anyone because I do that work for me. Right? We all live on a spectrum of privilege and marginalization. So I’m doing that work for me.

Grace:

I’ve had friends reflect the same, there’s a lot of people who are reaching out. A lot of my BIPOC friends, my Latino friends, my Black friends are tired, and I’m tired, of doing the work for other people.

Bhumi:

The phrase I’ve been using is “There’s an entire internet out there for you to help you.”

Justin:

Grace, I wanted to put the question to you about events.

Grace:

Being very honest, it’s challenging on many, many layers. A lot of what I do is very social and physical, intentionally so. When I create events or performances, they’re derived from my own personal experience being ostracized as a queer Latino faggot who was kicked out from a home and had to find connection and community through chosen family. A lot of that is found around dinner, around a camping trip, around a sex positive space, around workshops and discussions, whatever it may be. I’ve leaned into my close-knit chosen family to support me and we’re all finding ways to stay connected. And this is one of those ways, right? These virtual platforms.

There are different answers for different events. This past weekend, I was trying to figure out what outside spaces feel right and safe. I’m trying to find site specific moments. I went on a beautiful bike ride to Hunter’s Point. There is a great little outside amphitheater there that I’m going to do a little gathering at. Golden Gate Park has a bunch of meadows that are beautiful, and we do these little bike rides/dance parties/picnics. That’s what I’m envisioning right now.

It’s very clear that we’re not going back into the bars, the clubs, the camp outs. I do drag performance that has shifted into a beautiful adjusted format via Zoom. I’m bringing in people from New York to do my show. I’m doing shows that are hosted and curated out of places that I’m clearly not going to go to at this point. Some of the drag shows that I’m hosting online, I’m able to pay the performers more than I was paying them at bars. That’s a whole other thing to wrap your brain around. It’s not all negative; it’s just a new set of challenges. We do some mentorship programs that are kind of like arts residencies, but drag residencies. I’m considering doing them as an online experience this coming year, though I’m not fully committed to that yet.

That’s something I would rather hold on to: the opportunity to say, “Let’s take a year to reflect, meet, and develop at the organizational level, to take in what we’re learning through these conversations and address holes that we can look into, develop, or change.” That’s been one of the pros of this experience. I’m a pretty “go, go, go” kind of queen and I love that. At the same time, I don’t know that I would have ever been able to reflect or take the time to process what has worked and what hasn’t worked to the extent that this time has allowed me to do. I have to remind myself of that.

Justin:

I’m the same way. I’m just “go, go, go” all the time. It’s been the decision that we made as a collective, and I made with myself, to pull back a little bit right now. I want to listen, watch, see what’s going on, and try to imagine bigger structural changes. This is the opportunity. Maybe this is the chance to build something else that is equitable. I’m excited about that.

Grace:

I do a lot of video and photography, but now I’m having to do it all on my own. This speaks to my process and reflection on productivity: “I’m not going to do anything but read today, what a pleasure. And then the next day, why don’t I look on YouTube and learn about photography?” It’s been powerful to reflect on what we can make the time to learn.

Bhumi:

Something I’ve been grappling with is sheltering in place. It brings up the question of access and how it is incredible how much access there is to artmaking. People could be on this Zoom call from anywhere in the world. I’ve been going to some of the Drag Alive! shows on Twitch and it’s so cool to see people write in from all over the world. There are some dance classes I’ve been taking online through Zoom and folks are invited to share where they’re from. I’ve taken class with someone who is in Thailand and someone who’s three blocks away from me, all at the same time. I love that. It also leads me to this question of who has access to the technology.

Grace:

And to counter that, who doesn’t?

Bhumi:

I struggled with this with my college students. I teach dance technique class at a community college in the South Bay. When we went to shelter in place, our department was immediately told, “Great, start teaching online, here’s a Zoom account, have fun.” And I was like hold on, do my students have computers? Do they have iPads or phones they can use? Do they have space where they can move? Are they caring for children or are they ill? Is anyone in their family ill? The dean of my department didn’t even think of that and I was like, “Really white man? Really? You didn’t think about the young people at this college not having access to technology and internet service.”

Grace:

Lived experiences!

Bhumi:

It’s something on my mind as I think about how we’re recalibrating to this platform.

Bhumi B. Patel, Photo by Douglas Calalo Berry

Audience question:

What role do gender, sex, and identity play in funding and grant applications? Are gender, sex, and identity invoked by artists with privilege as a way to gain funding? How can white/cis/hetero artists respect and raise the voice of gender non-conforming, BIPOC, queer folx beyond optical allyship or tokenization?

Bhumi:

I have so much to say about this. A lot of these conversations about antiracism and dance, about uplifting voices of marginalized identities, really come down to funding because we are required to make art and operate in a system of capitalism. Baseline, I would rather not deal with money at all; I don’t like the transactional nature. However, to answer your question, one hundred percent, yes. I’ve served on half a dozen grant and curatorial panels. I see applications that state: “Because I am a homosexual, I am marginalized.” But you’re also white, cis, and a man, so sit down. Or I see, “I’m a woman and therefore I’m marginalized.” You’re a white woman who is independently wealthy, so actually, no. And I’ve had so many program managers at granting institutions say, “If someone identifies as marginalized in any way, that has to hold the same weight.” And I push back on that because our experiences of marginalization do not hold the same weight in this country or on this planet.

How can white/cis/hetero artists respect and raise the voice of gender nonconforming/BIPOC/queer folks beyond optical allyship? Sit out grant cycles. I would love to see a mass movement of white artists in the Bay Area sit out grant cycles for three years and then see who is funded. And while you’re sitting out the grant cycles, reach out to all the funders who you’ve made friends with and tell them why they need to implement policy changes. Remove colonized language from applications. Stop requiring people to have some sort of white American grasp on the English language. How can you not have accessibility options for your application to be submitted? You’re telling me, the only way I can apply for your grant is if I have a Google account and fill out a Google form? Not everybody has a computer. Not everybody has the skillset to to do that. Figure out ways to disperse funding that don’t require a W-9 or a social security number because there are a lot of people in this country who don’t have access to those things who deserve to get funded for their art. You can’t measure the success of every artist based on how many tickets they sell. That is not every artist’s mode of understanding whether their art is successful. I’m going to pause right there and let other folks respond.

Grace:

Oh my god. Go off Bhumi!

Something I have found refreshing is working with specific folks like Ernesto Sopprani, a Peruvian artist and curator, Kevin Seaman, a wonderful drag queen and performer, and Beatrice Thomas, who also does amazing work in drag. The arts funding system has been in place for a long time. There are things that people know work and a lot of things people know don’t work. When you’re trying to be part of that system, and you’re not in the know, folks like these have mentored me through applications. That approach has been fruitful for me. The whole concept of access – how to value work, who decides what that value is – is super problematic. I’m always thinking about how we can move beyond it. I have more questions than answers.

Justin:

I’ve often seen my role as a bridge between these communities, trying to use whatever I have to support others. Now I’m learning that maybe in addition to acting as a bridge, I can act to dismantle the structure rather than accept the structure.

Bhumi:

What I’m seeing right now is that funders suddenly have a lot of money to disperse. In these applications for emergency grants, I am asked little more than if I identify as Brown, if I identify in some gendered way, if I identify as disabled or as a veteran. These are basic questions at the end of many grant applications as a demographic survey, but now it feels like organizations are saying, “We can see that the pandemic has negatively affected these groups so we’re just going to ask if you’re a part of that group and then we’ll give you money.” I understand artistic merit in granting, but why isn’t this given more weight in a traditional granting cycle when we’re not in a pandemic? All these things you’re asking about – if I identify as queer, trans, disabled – these aren’t going to go away just because the pandemic goes away. These are still going to be institutional things that keep marginalized people down.

~~

To learn more, visit www.chlocodance.com/tabled.

The post On Appropriating Gender, Sex and Identity appeared first on Stance on Dance.

This transcribed and edited version seeks to continue the conversation. Please feel free to get in touch with emmaly@stanceondance.com or chlocodance@gmail.com with your own thoughts on the ethics of production!

Monique Jenkinson, Photo by RJ Muna

Joe Luttwak, Photo by Noah Kadner

Colm McNally, Photo by Rebel Fox Photography

~~

Questions for panelists (given in advance):

1. What does it mean to source materials ethically? What factors go into the cost of certain materials? How does the artist exercise creativity within a budget while sourcing ethically?
2. When considering material usage in the arts, how can artists achieve sensory impact while maintaining ethical sourcing and preventing exorbitant cost?
3. How is material ownership defined in production?
4. What responsibility does the arts sector hold towards changing practices of material usage?

~~

Colm McNally:

What does it mean to source materials ethically? That is the great challenge. I personally find it hard to know what’s ethical and I struggle with the problem of ethical displacement, i.e. “We solved a problem here but we’re just causing another problem over there.” Most of my work is in lumber. Theater construction is basically reliant on the same materials that the general construction industry uses, although we use less concrete and steel. I try to buy lumber from sources that are certified through the Forest Stewardship Council, but that often gets trucked from the East Coast. Is that better? Would it be less impactful to just buy locally even if it is not certified in terms of its replanting? I don’t know. On workers’ personal protection and housing safety, I feel more confident in that area in terms of trying to minimize the use of materials that are chemically problematic. I try to make sure workers’ spaces are reasonably well ventilated and that they’re not just inhaling tons of microscopic dust every day. And then there is changing infrastructure, like transitioning to LED lighting.

Joe Luttwak:

The guitar industry usually uses old growth rainforest wood, meaning trees that are 500 years or older. That’s the best material to make musical instruments. A lot of the good wood also comes from the Pacific Northwest. We’re still cutting down old growth trees even though there are five percent of these trees left worldwide, and deforestation is about 20 percent of global CO2 emissions.

If we stop using wood completely, we have to find something else, which leads to frankenwood. Frankenwood is medium density fiberboard, also known as MDF. It was invented in Ukiah, California, because that’s where they were cutting down all the redwoods. They had so much sawdust from the logged redwoods that they turned it into medium density fiberboard.

Lingrove’s plant-based wood, photo by Christine Col

Colm:

Materials like frankenwood that were developed as a way to use byproduct have become the product in and of themselves. We’ve discovered that MDF in particular is useful. It’s what we call dimensionally stable. Wood will change size and shape depending on moisture and temperature, but MDF doesn’t do that because it’s mostly glue. As a result, MDF cuts cleanly and is much easier to work with. For mass production at places like IKEA, it is a no-brainer to use frankenwood materials.

This moves us towards the question of cost. Dimensional stability is not a big problem in theater, but durability can be an issue. The real cost in theater are not the materials, but how quickly we can manipulate those materials. That’s why we find ourselves using frankenwood products. I would love to make sets out of environmentally friendly or reusable products, but it takes longer. It’s harder on the tools and it’s heavier. It just makes more sense for me to make sets out of MDF because I can cut it, depending on the thickness, with a knife as opposed to needing a saw. I can fabricate much more quickly. Speed is everything, as the cost of running a venue is enormous.

Monique Jenkinson:

I’m thinking about the principles of sustainability, specifically “reduce, reuse, recycle.” We reduce first and then reuse if we can. If we have to use frankenwood, which is great for theater sets, being able to reuse it is contingent upon being able to store it. I barely ever work with sets, but I made a set for a piece in 2017. Luckily, I have a tiny storage space in my apartment where I could wedge the blocks I made. Otherwise, if we don’t have space to store our sets, they just get destroyed.

My world is on the costume end. I used to be able to go to Clothes Contact, Thrift Town and Mission Thrift. In the early 90s when I started making work, I could go to Clothes Contact and costume six dancers for $10, because it was by the pound. That place has gone, along with many other thrift stores. That goes back to another principle of sustainability. I might be buying something that was not necessarily made ethically, but at least I’m reusing it. The next option is Forever 21 or H&M, which is egregious, but we have to go to whatever cheap place dance artists can afford. Anything that costs $5 new was not made under ethical circumstances, but dance, of course, is a poverty-stricken form.

Colm:

In preparing for this discussion, I was poking around on the internet and found a theater company called Superhero Clubhouse out of New York City, who are decidedly an eco-theater company. I have a quote here from one of the directors, who says, “We acknowledge that sustainability in the arts is culturally vital but insignificant as far as global environmental impact.” That is an interesting point because it speaks to reality. I did a show a couple of years ago where we covered a large stage in a foot of sand. It was a lot of sand – 15 tons! I’ve also worked in the construction industry where 15 tons of sand would arrive on a construction site and be gone in 10 minutes. The volumes we are working with in the arts are functionally irrelevant. It’s more about trying to find a cultural way forward than trying to be the trendsetters in terms of new environmentally friendly material. In the theater arts, we’re reflecting on the impact of our materials and our work practices, but also looking for cultural solutions in terms of certain expectations.

Monique:

It’s the degree to which we have power to lead conversations. I think it’s ultimately about getting creative, sharing information, borrowing materials, reusing materials, leading conversations like this, and, sometimes you end up having to go to H&M.

Monique Jenkinson in Disintegration Series at Catherine Clark Gallery, 2016, Photo by Anton Steubner

Joe:

The new CEO of H&M is their former chief sustainability officer. That’s how serious they are about dealing with their fast fashion sins.

Monique:

That’s great. And actually, H&M has a textile recycling program. I don’t know where it goes, but they accept bags of old clothing.

Joe:

Colm, what do you do when you’re done with the materials you use in a set?

Colm:

Right now, I hire a truck to take it to the dump. Waste disposal in the Bay Area is expensive. For a mid-sized show, we spend close to a thousand dollars disposing of the set.

Joe:

There’s something wrong when we’re incentivized to spend a thousand dollars to throw away what used to be a tree.

Colm:

Absolutely. I think a lot of this must be addressed legislatively. Someone needs to decide on a better plan.

Audience question:

My creative partner and I are trying to scale larger and have found it difficult to do so ethically while avoiding large expenses.

Colm:

Those problems come up for all theater companies. At Sugarglass Theatre, most of us are technicians and designers; three of the five of us have worked in construction. For smaller theater companies, the key is to work with someone who has a better handle than you on these materials and how to do things cheaply.

The Brothers Karamazov by Sugarglass Theatre, designed by Colm McNally

Audience question:

How do you ethically source flameproof materials that have to be in close contact with artists’ skin? This is often a requirement for bringing materials into theater spaces.

Joe:

Flame retardants were developed by the tobacco industry because people were setting fire to their houses due to smoking and then falling asleep on their couches. The idea was, “It’s the couch’s fault; the couch is catching on fire.” So they invented flame retardants. Today we have phosphorus flame retardants regulated by California that are considered a lot healthier. California leads in regulating chemicals and has been informing the rest of the country.

Colm:

In the theater world, unfortunately, we are still using a lot of ammonia-based flame retardants. In theater textiles we have three different levels of flame retardancy: We have NDFR, which is non-durable flame retardant, so if you wash it, it is not flame retardant anymore. DFR is durable flame retardant, which means you can wash it a few times. And then there’s IFR, which are materials that are inherently flame retardant. IFR is what you want to use next to a performer because they’re mostly natural fibers like wool or horsehair. They are sufficiently flame retardant to a standard that the San Francisco Fire Department and various other authorities are happy with. However, this does not mean that they are flame proof. We use a good amount of electrical tape in theater because it is self-extinguishing, which means it will light on fire but will put itself out in five seconds because it admits a gas when it ignites that is not oxygen.

In the past few years, I’ve seen a rise in the use of big sheets of transparent plastic as a material onstage. It’s difficult to make that safe from a flame retardancy perspective. The fire department will put in place other requirements. For example, if someone is wrapped in a sheet of plastic, then that person might have to be 30 feet from any heat sources, including most of your theater lights, and there must be three people backstage with fire extinguishers and an ambulance onsite. Fire retardancy is not the way around those problems. Often, it’s thinking about alternate routes to achieve the same effect.

Audience question:

How can we, as consumers of the arts, support ethically focused artists or choose to see more ethically focused shows?

Monique:

By just going to see them and keeping this discussion happening. Connect with people in the industry. And raise your hand if you know how to help ethically make art.

Monique Jenkinson at Headlands Center for the Arts, 2015, Photo by Marc Kate

~~

To learn more, visit www.chlocodance.com/tabled.

The post On the Ethics of Production appeared first on Stance on Dance.

Photo by Zachary Brill Newman

This transcribed and edited version seeks to continue the conversation. Please feel free to get in touch with emmaly@stanceondance.com or chlocodance@gmail.com with your own thoughts on labor and a living wage!

~~

Questions for panelists (given in advance):

1. How has your relationship to accepting, rejecting or seeking work changed over time? What perspectives and values do you have now that you may not have had in the past?
2. As an artistic professional, what standards do you have when making decisions about compensation? How does this choice relate to your values of time, experience, energy, effort, and artistry? How do these values affect you when you take the role of employer?
3. How can financial viability be improved, achieved and maintained in the arts?  What role and responsibilities do arts professionals, the arts community, and beyond have in this pursuit?

Charles Slender-White:

The first three years that I was running the company, we said yes to everything; every showcase in Sausalito, everything in San Mateo, every little performance. We were there full on; full company, full costumes, and we were just hemorrhaging money. The point was to build a track record, because I didn’t have one yet. Now, I find myself giving different advice like: “Follow projects you love and that pay you well or, if they don’t pay well, you should really love them, and if they do pay really well, then it doesn’t really matter if you love them too much.” That sort of thing. But, I personally feel like I’m able to pick and choose now because of that hustling at the beginning.

Jessica Baldwin:

My first job was doing audience development for a theater. When I got the offer, I thought, “I could survive on that. I’m not going to live off it, but I could survive off this.” The biggest mistake I made is I didn’t ask enough questions, like, “If we’re working late, can I get my taxes reimbursed? Are any of my meals covered? What’s the reimbursement policy for putting money on my credit card?” It turned out that, with this company, all those things were nonexistent, and I ended up going into debt for a job. The biggest thing I’ve learned is, when I get job opportunities, I try to ask the right questions about what the full financial situation will be. That’s made a big difference.

For example, this past fall I was working a production gig for Goop. The stipend was great, but I also asked about the per diem to make sure my transportation was covered. In negotiating, the biggest thing I’ve learned is being able to argue for a larger package and not just the stipend. I think about the full expenses.

Matt Small:

Going back to the artistic identity, there’s this balance between the commerce part and following your artistic vision. Develop what’s unique about you as an artist and then try to find where your work can fit. Don’t try to change: You’ve already developed what you do well. Find a way to make that work while still being flexible.

Charles:

Here’s a story: A colleague of mine had been scheduled to do a gig for a big, local tech company. Something came up for her and she couldn’t do it, so she offered it to me and another choreographer. I think this was a bit of a mistake; it effectively pitted me and the other choreographer against each other. We are friends and had been working together for a long time, but now we were fighting for this gig because in our minds it would be prestigious and there would be real money.

I talked with an executive who runs a PR firm and does a lot of contracts with tech companies. I asked what to pitch them. She wanted to know: “What’s the scope of the event? How many collaborators? What are they doing? What’s their budget?” In the end, she thought 10 grand was reasonable for a dress rehearsal, a show, me, three dancers, and some costumes. I said, “10 grand sounds great.” I get on the phone with the creative producer from the tech company and he asks me to pitch what I will do. I asked, “What’s your budget?” and he responded, “I would like to know what you’re going to ask for so that we can then assess if that works for us or not.” He held his cards super tight, and I felt like a piece of shit. I said, “I want 10 grand,” and then started negotiating against myself: “But it’s flexible.”

He ended up booking the other choreographer for three grand. She and I had not talked. I didn’t tell her what I asked because I knew she was going to undercut me. I thought she might ask for eight or 8.5 grand, but she said three and I was like, “Oh shit.” I felt like we got hosed. The tech company rented the Hibernia building downtown. This was not a $20,000 project, of which $3,000 was going to dance artists.

That was one experience I had that was crappy. One that was great was recently with Velocity Dance Center in Seattle. They run a building with three different spaces in it, and they booked me for this workshop. The artistic director and I agreed on dates and the fee. I would get paid $2,000 for five days of work, which is super. It’s $400 bucks a day.

Charles Slender-White, Photo by Robbie Sweeny

Jessica:

I oversee the rental program at SF MoMA, a key program for us because we use it as a relationship building tool by allowing companies and organizations to come in and use our space and experience it in a unique way. But it’s also an education opportunity. People look at our pricing for rentals and they balk and tell me there’s no way they’re going to pay that much. And then I have to tell them about our overhead. When you have millions of dollars of artwork, there’s some security that’s required. We also have staff that we pay a living wage. I educate them about the value they’re getting. I think that can happen on any level. Whether you’re an individual artist or a big organization like SF MoMA, it’s important to talk about the value of whatever the price tag is.

Matt:

I think the education happens on both sides. If you’re an artist in a situation where you don’t know exactly how all the details work, you get an education as you work through it and, sometimes, you’re the one educating people about how things are and how things should be. I had a trial by fire when dealing with the Giants and the Port of San Francisco. The contract was 400 pages, but I read the whole thing. When I asked them to sign off on two changes, they were like, “Sure, no problem, you’ve really gone through this.”

Charles:

Earlier in my career, I often felt like I was in an antagonistic relationship with presenters and funders. That they didn’t book me meant they had something against me. That was an operating ethos of mine for a while, which was of course unproductive. Then I realized that we are all allies working in the same direction. We might operate our ships in slightly different capacities and our boats might be different sizes, but we all want high quality work by an array of artists to be available to as many people as possible. But how we achieve that along the way matters quite a bit.

Matt:

It’s so hard to maintain a Zen professionalism where you make the person who’s rejecting you an ally of yours. That’s the most positive thing you can do when someone’s telling you no and you’re like, “Thank you so much for your time, I appreciate the feedback.” That goes back to this idea of building your bulletproof foundation, because there are always going to be situations you’re going to fit or not. But you can create your own solid base from which to work. You want to get to a place where it doesn’t matter.

Matt Small, Photo by Noah Berger

Jessica:

When I think about leadership positions in major arts institutions and the lack of diversity, I wonder what the barriers to entry are. Pay is often one. I was proud of SF MoMA last year; it was our first year paying interns, underwritten by Bank of America. It opened our pool of interns who otherwise may have had to take a summer job or were not in a place of financial privilege.

Audience question: There’s a lot of talk about transparency and equity. An idea I had with a colleague was to start an equivalent to an actor’s equity. Why don’t dancers have the same thing, to ensure health coverage and maybe a pension at the end of our careers? It’s a great idea, but what a nightmare that would be administratively, as well as the effect on people who are in leadership roles who might think: “I have to pay these people union wages? It’s hard enough paying people a stipend.”

Charles:

For the past five to six years, I’ve been talking with other organizations about having some sort of agreement on wages, working conditions, and a budget-to-compensation ratio. Do the dancers get a warm-up? Is someone leading the warm-up? Is there company class? Are they paid for that time? Do they get breaks? In the freelance community, these things don’t happen consistently. With an agreement on wages and working conditions, dancers could voluntarily adhere to a set of principles.

Jessica:

In America, we are not talking enough about the value of the creative economy and what we are genuinely contributing to the revival and importance of cities. With the way arts organizations are leaving San Francisco, we’re going to hit a crisis. No one wants to live in a city where there’s no art and culture. Gentrification happens in parts of town where art is vibrant. Restaurants pop up, hotel occupancy goes up. This whole economy grows from it. We need to be talking about the value we’re contributing. We have systems like Broadway, but we shouldn’t underestimate the value that even small arts organizations contribute to the local economy.

Jessica Baldwin, Photo by Jessica Baldwin

Audience question:

There’s a long history of dancers working as sex workers, like exotic dancing. That’s one of the ways we have historically made money from dancing and from our bodies in general. That’s also really complex because of legal issues, shame, and the devaluation of the body.

Charles:

A lot of the dancers I work with teach Pilates and fitness classes or they’re massage therapists. I’m not trying to draw an equivalence between being a massage therapist and being a sex worker, but both require knowledge of the body, empathy and touch.

Audience question:

Specifically, in the modern dance community, there’s a real question about equity. We commonly use “no one turned away for lack of funds” or a sliding scale. What are your thoughts on pricing and how to bring different types of audiences in?

Jessica:

Those are real questions. There’s been a lot of conversation about this in the museum world. Some local institutions are offering free memberships, and there hits a point where the question is asked, “By placing a zero price tag, are we saying it has no value?” It’s hard to try to create solutions that meet everyone’s needs. At SF MoMA, our adult ticket is $22, which I’ve heard people say is expensive. But, based on the number of visitors a year, we spend about $60 per visitor a year. The rest is subsidized through donations and grants to create that $22 ticket.

Under London Breed, the City of San Francisco created a program where, if you present your Medi-Cal or food stamp card, you get access to any museum free of charge. It’s not talked about a lot, but it exists. A press release went out, but I wonder how the program is being communicated to the actual communities that would use this?

There’s also been a lot of conversation about how we offer free days, as it’s a large expense to us. I have mixed feelings about it. We took a big sponsorship from Cruise, who make self-driving cars. They sponsored a bunch of our free days this past year, and all the sudden we were sticking a car in our lobby to market for them. I think there are ethical questions around that.

Charles:

I feel conflicted about this question. I think it’s ridiculous that we charge $20 for people to come see a show when that is what we charged when I moved here in 2008, in the middle of the recession. Everything has gotten more expensive, but when FACT/SF moved from $23 to $25 a ticket, there was a fair amount of pushback. This feedback is often from people who inevitably don’t offer to volunteer, don’t ask if there’s a “NOTAFLOF” policy, don’t ask if there’s a sliding-scale, and don’t ask if they can come to dress rehearsal, and, in the same breath, are advocating for higher dancer rates.

I don’t know that any of the modern dance venues in town would actually prevent someone from coming in to see a show. If you say, “I don’t have $20, but I have $10,” someone’s going to scoot you in. The ballet used to have a standing room for $20. I had a show with $40 tickets five years ago. It was inside a house and we only had 16 audience members at a time. Because it was an intimate audience, I was able to use the post show discussion to let everybody know that the per ticket cost was $268, and that their ticket was being subsidized to the tune of $228 per person by donors and funders.

Audience question:

There was a wonderful study that came out maybe 20 years ago on cultural tourism. Part of it looked at how you get someone to buy a ticket, and the study framed it in terms of risk: Do I know what the show’s going to be like before I go? Is it going to be good? Do I know where to park? Do I know how to get from the parking to the theater? Is there a good place to eat nearby? With contemporary work, it’s all about risk, and that’s why Nutcracker sells. People know what they’re getting.

Matt:

That’s an important thing to remember. There’s great cutting-edge stuff happening in the city, so we need to have that public conversation about the importance of supporting what’s new and vibrant, as well as the value of that. There’s a little bit of risk, but the payoff can be great.

Jessica:

In terms of Tabled, a future conversation might be the idea of cross-pollination. We all need to work together to survive. I think that’s a great subject to circle back to another time.

Photo by Courtney King

~~

To learn more, visit www.chlocodance.com/tabled.

The post On Labor and a Living Wage appeared first on Stance on Dance.