Power equals energy over time.

I should know better than to read the arts section of the Times while sipping my Saturday morning coffee.  For many people, curling up with the arts section is a lovely weekend diversion.  For me, it’s a tug back into the whirlwind of conflicting opinions around the support of artists that governs my workweek.  This morning, an article on Contract Disputes in Dance didn’t just tug me back to work, it catapulted me full force:

First of all, I want to stress that everyone in the dance field feels under-served, underpaid, and under-appreciated.  By everyone, I mean everyone: choreographers, dancers, presenters, writers, designers, stagehands, everyone.  So, this continuing argument of “who has it worse?” and “who deserves the most pity or sympathy or extra-special treatment?” drives me insane.  We all chose this route, and yes, it’s unfair, but blaming each other does nothing to solve the problems of the field.  In fact, I’d wager that it makes things worse.

Second, the fact that, according the the article, an artist involved in a conflict over his contract with the 92nd Street Y, claims that Y’s decision to stick to their contract’s exclusivity clause, which limited the artist’s ability to perform at other venues within a specific span of time, was “appalling,” because the Y’s dance festival doesn’t have “a track record of being a festival that is well attended,” also drives me insane.  Think for a moment.  If you host a festival that is perceived as being generally not well attended, wouldn’t it be that much more important for you to drive as many people who are interested in the artists you are presenting to your venue to see them?  Wouldn’t it hurt your attendance even more if those same artists were performing concurrently in better-established, easier-to-reach venues?  And, if you are an artist who is concerned about your participation in such a festival, why would you sign that contract?

Last, and most important, I’m sick of hearing artists ask, “where is our power?” as another choreographer is quoted as doing in this same article.  As an artist myself, as well as an administrator who has worked for several arts presenters, this drives me most insane.  Artists have all the power we choose to take, and if we choose to give it away by signing contracts we don’t read, or trusting that by simply aligning ourselves with a presenter that our magical, financially-successful career will follow, or complaining about the state of dance criticism without once picking up a pen (or a keyboard) to write about the field ourselves, then we choose to give that power away.

Take charge, artists.  Self-produce.  Read your contracts.  Realize that dance is never going to pay your bills, and make your choices.  You have a lot more power than any of the venues, but it’s up to you to use it.

That’s absurd.

I’ve been heartily enjoying a read of Martin Esslin’s landmark book The Theatre of the Absurd.  It’s a bit embarrassing that I haven’t read it before, actually.  (Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that when I was studying theater in college, my theater history professor believed that the only post-Shakespearean theater worth mentioning was described in the diary of Samuel Pepys; we barely made it to the end of the 17th Century.)  In any case, Esslin’s book, first published in 1961,  is a surprisingly fresh investigation of the trends in theater he observed (and coined) as “Absurd,” including the works of Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter, and Genet.

In many ways, reading this book is like finding a long-lost, annotated family tree.  My own searching, investigative approach to performance seems to fit squarely within this lineage of “the absurd.”  I am at once comforted by a sense of belonging and challenged to aspire to the greatness of these artists.  Yet, at the same time, there is a nagging question: Where are the women?

I’m not suggesting that all of these men (and there are many discussed in the book, not just the headline names) don’t deserve as much attention as they receive.  I’m just curious if there were ANY women exploring similar work.  Did the social structures of the ’40s and ’50s mean that the women were overlooked, or did the social structures keep them out of the game entirely?  To stretch my family tree metaphor, I feel like I’m missing an important piece of my own lineage.  Forefathers are important, but foremothers are too.  (Is “foremothers” even a word?)

Build-up

In my little corner of the NY performing arts community there has been much consternation over an article, which finally appeared in yesterday’s NY Times.  The article exposes to the general public (or at least to the general public which includes readers of the Times Arts Section) that NYC’s massive capital boom ate a few arts organizations alive, and those same organizations are struggling with large burdens of debt.  As someone who has intimate knowledge of these organizations and projects, I only wish that the article had gone further to implicate the lack of foresight on behalf of the City and show more clearly how it dangled the carrot of “a permanent home” in front of eviction-weary arts organizations that none dared refuse.  Perhaps it can all be blamed on misguided expectations from both sides: arts organizations expecting the City to assist them with these new ventures more thoroughly, and the City expecting the arts organizations to have more infrastructure in place.  Indeed, the arts organizations had some naivete working against them, but for the City to claim no culpability here is truly infuriating.  In these cases, as with so many in this economic disaster, we are all responsible, and we must all work together to find solutions, or risk losing important pieces of our culture.

Making Good

This owl has been focusing all of her inquisitiveness into a new production, which opens at the Chocolate Factory Theater on March 25th.  Hence, the relative lack of posts lately.  I do hope that you will come and see my effort to spin the theory into practice:

[          ]
Created by Red Metal Mailbox
Presented by the Chocolate Factory Theater
March 25-28, 2009 at 8PM
$15

This is not a contest.

The very-frustrating Amendment introduced by Senator Coburn to exclude the arts from government stimulus has sparked much heated conversation and activity in the arts community, as it should.  However, I’ve been discouraged to see so many of us playing into frameworks of ranking and hierarchies.  Isn’t it precisely art’s influence that can lead us to other models of thinking and organizing ideas?  This is not an “America’s Top Stimulus Priority” game show; this is about strengthening the complex infrastructure of American life that includes myriad choices, priorities, and methods regarding survival and fulfillment.  We in the arts community need to work harder at changing the conversation so that when we say, “We need to fund the arts,” those currently less involved in the arts stop hearing us say, “I need you to fund my art because it is more important than what you do.”  We need to relate what we know about the value of the arts to more people’s everyday lives – without condescension – and we need to do it not just when we’re asking for checks.

 

 

Sweet Sensation

I watch a little too much Food Network.  This past weekend, while most people were watching the Superbowl, I was glued to a mini-marathon of the Oklahoma State Sugar Art Show.  Yup, I spent an evening watching people alternately cheer and cry over gum paste flowers.  While it is quite amazing what some of these folks can do with sugar, I was struck by how important this niche subculture is to those who populate it.  That’s when it hit me: “downtown performance” is just like sugar art.

Both groups are entirely caught up in a self-created drama that most of the world is entirely unaware of.  Both groups have their celebrities who cause butterflies in the stomachs of their peers, yet would be unrecognizable to the average citizen.  That is, until Food Network swooped in an brought the Sugar Celebrities into my living room.  Thanks to Food Network, I know that Kerry Vincent is the Anna Wintour of cakes, and that Bronwen Weber is always going to do something unexpected.  (I told you that I watch too much of this stuff.)

Anyway, my point is, that experimental performance needs a cable network.  We need a way to sneak into people’s living rooms and hook them into our world at 3 in the morning, when they least expect it.  Or at least we need to find some way of connecting to folks outside of our tiny community, while maintaining the specialization that makes our craft, well, special.

Making It

Lately I’ve been having some trouble focusing on art-making. Several artists I know are having the same struggle. Over the past few months, I’ve been struck by how many artists have said to me (unprompted) in conversation, “I’m just not sure what to make anymore. I feel like I’m re-thinking what’s important in my life,” or something along those lines.

I’ve been similarly confused. Is it just because we’re getting older and more tired or is there something more to it? What work is actually necessary to make – for ourselves and our audiences? What is the best way for each of us to spend our increasingly limited time? These big questions are (perhaps too heavily) weighing on me as I continue to work with my performance company Red Metal Mailbox on a piece for The Chocolate Factory this March.

Flocking with the Crowd

APAP is upon us!  The yearly festival of performance gluttony has arrived in all its schedule-busting glory.  For its out-of-town target audience, it might be a great time, and a useful way to grab a Cliff’s Notes version of the New York performance season, but for those of us who work in the NY performance community, APAP becomes a bizarre competition of who can see the most and get the least amount of sleep during the ever-expanding “weekend” festival. 

It’s an amped-up version of the status quo in the NY performance world, come to think of it.  Consume, consume!  Don’t be the only person who hasn’t seen THAT show!  If you miss THIS one, you might as well hide in your room for the next month!  The quantity of performance work presented in this town is the reason we’re all here, but it can also be self-defeating.  How much can a person actually engage with a work, if s/he is headed to the theater again the next night?  The experience of watching performance has become practically disposable. 

What is to be done?  Every year around this time, I think about making a New Year’s resolution to see less, and engage more.  Every year, by the first weekend of January, my resolution has gone belly-up, because I just don’t want to miss anything.  Yet, I couldn’t tell you what I saw at APAP last year.  Perhaps the only thing to do is to keep going and hope for that rare performance event that stops you in your tracks.

 

 

Stop, Look, and Listen

As the New York fall performance season gets gets underway, I can’t help but notice (again) that most of the folks watching so-called “downtown” (nee “experimental”) dance and performance are the same folks who make the stuff.

As the political campaigns reach a fever pitch, I can’t help but notice that the people most interested in watching either candidate are those who have already fervently made up their minds to support the one they are watching.

How is it that so many of us end up only preaching to our respective choirs? Is it because we’ve lost our ability to listen that we all end up just talking at people who are talking at us about the same things – leaving anyone without knowledge of the conversation (be it performance-related or political) to scratch their heads and walk away?

Leaving the political arena to other blogs, how can we as performance-makers find ways to interest those mythical “general audience” members without stooping to pandering? Do we even know what its like anymore to watch something without secretly thinking, “Well, I would have done THIS instead of THAT?” Are we even in touch with our experience outside of mental critique when watching performance?

Recently, as part of the discussion portion of THROW, the works-in-progress series I curate at the Chocolate Factory Theater, one of the artists showing work asked the audience to tell her what they FELT when watching the work she had shown. The responses were nearly all things like “I felt like you were trying to…” or “I felt like you were saying that…” When pushed to use emotional descriptions, only one person could respond in kind.

So, here’s my challenge to you (and myself): The next performance you see, focus on your emotional and physical response without immediately judging it mentally. Just like a meditation when you notice your thoughts and let them go, notice your mental comments and let them go. See what’s underneath. Are we capable of feeling anything? Are we capable of making things that inspire feeling beyond understanding? Until we can do both, I think we’ll have a hard time enticing anyone from the “outside” back into our audiences.

A little fun goes a long way.

On Saturday, my company Red Metal Mailbox performed as part of a showcase of work created in part at the Dragon’s Egg, an artist residency space near Mystic, CT.  There were many different kinds of performing artists on the program, presenting a lot of different types of work.  It was a great reminder that some people make things simply because it’s fun, and that that’s what making performance used to be about for me (before it go so pressured and professional.)  Perhaps I can bring some elements of the fun back, without losing the rigour of professionalism.

On Monday, I helped to produce the 24th Annual New York Dance and Performance Awards (aka “The Bessies.”)  Shifted from the formal awards ceremony of years past to an informal party with awards, this event also had me thinking about fun, as well as the incomparable magic of a full moon on a clear night.