Post-Sandy recovery in the NYC dance community

AFTER SANDY: RECOVERY, PREPAREDNESS, AND NYC DANCE

Tuesday, October 29, 6:30-8pm

The Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance
Graham Studio Theater
55 Bethune Street, Manhattan

(map/directions)

RSVP here

Join Dance/NYC at The Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance on the evening of October 29, the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy's arrival in New York, for an action-oriented discussion about the hurricane's impact on the dance community and its efforts to rebuild. What were the primary areas of damage and loss incurred by the field, and what progress has it made towards recovery? In the aftermath of the storm, how have dance makers strengthened their business practices, artistic development, and relationships with peers and the public? Led by Shirley Levy of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the panel will address these and other questions, and explore strategies for advancing the field's resilience to future disasters.

Featured Speakers:

Shirley Levy, Chief of Staff, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (moderator)

LaRue Allen, Executive Director, Martha Graham Dance Center
Barbara Bryan, Executive Director, Movement Research
Meredith (Max) Hodges, Executive Director, Gallim Dance
Tim Griffin, Executive Director and Chief Curator, The Kitchen
Carlota Santana, Founder/Artistic Director, Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana
Luanne Sorrentino, Co-Owner, Mrs. Rosemary's Dance Studio and St. George Theatre

Lucy Sexton responds to Gia Kourlas' Bessie Awards criticism

The Bessies are not only back but in boldface--and drawing some heat. See the recent critique by Gia Kourlas in The New York Times here.

Lucy Sexton, Director, NY Dance and Performance Awards (Bessies), replies here:

I’m writing in response to Gia Kourlas’s recent article on the changes in The NY Dance and Peformance Awards, The Bessies (Aug 11, 2012). Ms. Kourlas says the awards “absolutely” matter, and that they are engaged in a mission not only to recognize outstanding dance and performance, but to “make the world care about dance.” But she takes issue with the creation of subcommittees within the Bessies Selection Committee, which are charged with looking at work in different areas of NYC’s large and diverse dance landscape. She rather inexplicably concludes that the changes mean the awards are “focused on raising the profile of the Bessies rather than on artistic achievement.”

The total number of the Bessie Selection Committee was raised from 15-20 to a total of 41, so there are more eyes looking at more work. The members work in subcommittees so there can be more rigorous considerations of specific areas of dance. The intent, and indeed the result, of the new structure is that artistic achievement is more central to the discussions. And to state the obvious, raising the profile of The Bessies is critical to ensuring the artistic achievement recognized gets broader visibility.

Ms. Kourlas is rightly concerned with how to define the purview of the subcommittee considering more performance-oriented work. As she noted, we have recently changed the wording so it does not define the work recognized as “not dance.” The Judson movement opened up what could be considered dance. The club and performance scene in the 80s created a stew where dancers were mixing it up with people in different disciplines, from drag queens to visual artists doing performances. This is precisely why the awards are called the NY Dance and Performance Awards.

The subcommittee categories are certainly imperfect, but they are adaptive to a wide, ongoing community dialogue and a changing creative environment. The Bessies’ partnership with Dance/NYC, a branch of the national service organization, Dance/USA, has helped to extend and deepen the dialogue with a broad range of dance artists.

Our opportunity is to make clear to a non-dance-insider audience the wide spectrum of dance and performance work being considered. Making what The Bessies do more transparent and understandable to a wider audience is a step in our efforts to “make the world care about dance.”

We welcome feedback and ideas on how best to accomplish that goal.

Lucy Sexton
Director, NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies
Produced in partnership with Dance/NYC
thebessies@gmail.com

More ways to share: dancers bartering

Connect the Blocks: Resource Sharing in NYC Dance
Monday, June 11 (6-8:30pm)

at Performance Space 122 (Downstairs Theater)
150 1st Avenue (entrance on East 9th Street), Manhattan
(directions)

RSVP: https://dancenyc.secure.force.com/ticket

Join Dance/NYC, Fourth Arts Block, OurGoods, and the wider dance community to discuss resource sharing in NYC dance. Money for dance making is scarce. What happens when we make dance using resources other than dollars? What are our opportunities for creating economies of collaboration and combination? New Yorkers are responding to these questions with innovative models for identifying, leveraging and sharing resources to make their work and achieve their missions. This Town Hall will showcase some of those solutions, instigate a larger conversation about strategies and tactics for sharing, and close with a live barter meetup, including a crash course on the fundamentals of bartering and a mapping of the needs and haves in the room.

Intended to advance economies of collaboration and combination in NYC dance, the Town Hall will launch Connect the Blocks, a joint Fourth Arts Block and OurGoods initiative to strengthen the resource sharing culture for independent dance makers across the City. Made possible with leadership support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Connect the Blocks will offer a suite of workshops, events and online resources to advance resource- and capacity-sharing as a replicable and sustainable model for cultural production.

Featured Speakers

Jen Abrams, Co-Founder, OurGoods
Tamara Greenfield, Executive Director, Fourth Arts Block
Alexa Bradley, Program Director, On the Commons
Rob Handel, Managing Director, 13P

Please share your thoughts on resource sharing on DanceNYC.org. What happens when we make dance using resources other than dollars?

Fourth Arts Block (FABnyc) was founded in 2001 as the nonprofit leadership organization for the East 4th Street Cultural District, a historic and vibrant arts corridor in Manhattan between Second Avenue and Bowery. Now a neighborhood-wide coalition of 26 arts and community groups, FABnyc drives cultural and community development, while preserving the Lower East Side's rich heritage and creative energy.

OurGoods.org is a barter network for creative people. Online and in person, we facilitate the barter of skills, space, labor, and objects. The site matches barter partners, provides accountability tools, and offers technical assistance resources. It is an instigator for generosity, a locus of empowerment, and an innovative model for supporting the work of artists.

On the Commons (OTC) is a commons movement strategy center founded in 2001. Our purpose is to activate the emergence of a commons-based society by: building and bringing visibility to the commons movement; initiating and catalyzing commons work that focuses on Commons-based solutions; and developing and encouraging commons leadership.

13P (Thirteen Playwrights, Inc.) is a collective of playwrights that realizes full productions of new plays. The resources of the company are placed at the disposal of the playwright at work, who serves as the company's artistic director during the production of her play. The mission calls for the company to produce 13 plays, one by each founding member, before the organization's planned implosion in 2012. The production model created by 13P has been replicated around the world with its encouragement.

Dance/NYC is a branch of Dance/USA, the national service organization for professional dance. Dance/NYC's mission is to sustain and advance the professional dance field in New York City-serving as the voice, guide and infrastructure architect for all local dance artists and managers. The organization achieves this mission through: advocacy, research and convening.

Zip the snark

To snark or not to snark? Why is that still the question?

I must respectfully disagree with my colleague, dance critic Robert Johnson, whose recent article--see "Shall we dance: in defense of 'snarky' reviews", NJ.com, March 2--seems to dignify the terms snark and snarky, as appropriate and helpful modes of critique, while sometimes sealing them away in quote marks of inconsistent ambivalence.

Johnson wrote:

In my opinion, snark is an especially appropriate gift for the High-and-mighty. It’s the pin-prick that makes over-inflated reputations shrivel and sputter. Dance is the most wonderful thing, ever, but let’s be clear about this: dances that are boring, derivative, tasteless, badly rehearsed, pretentious and/or willfully opaque do nothing to strengthen the dance community. They do not enhance its reputation, or win converts for the art form. If we say everything is good then nothing is good, depriving truly brilliant artists of the honor they deserve. Great dancers and choreographers, and not critics, set the standards; and without pruning, mediocrity will rise up to choke us.

Snark is not a dance critic's defense against mediocrity in choreography and performance; it is the weapon of the petulant.

If a critic sees something that displeases, he or she can say something without indulging the temptation to lash out and throttle.

Yes, part of the critic's role is to be a smart and reliable Consumer Reporter, especially if the critic is writing for the mainstream press and the general reader. But effective questioning--or even outright negative critique--rarely, if ever, requires snark. And deliberate snark in dance writing does nothing to correct the marginalization and underclass status of dance and dancers in American society. Nor does it further communication between artists and dance journalists to treat artists as if they are nothing more than hypersensitive children pleading for special protection from reality.

Johnson's article derived from a thread of discussion at the recent Dance/NYC State of Dance symposium where a panel--including Johnson, Dance Magazine Editor-in-Chief Wendy Perron, New York Times critic Brian Seibert and dancer-choreographer-critic/blogger Gus Solomons jr--took up the topic, among others. "Among others" becomes necessary here because, as far as I can tell, talk of snark and its worth was the only splash that created a ripple of continued discussion beyond that panel. That happened, probably, because whenever the dance community talks about mainstream dance critics, the Curse of Snark is the primary focus of complaint.

So, I want to know, at this late date, don't we all have something better to talk about? If talk about why snark is good is the only way to give sizzle to a panel on dance criticism--and that might still be the case--we all have huge amount of work to do.

Theresa Ruth Howard reflects on Dance/NYC Race and Dance Forum

Dancer, dance teacher and writer Theresa Ruth Howard (most recently noted for her work with Armitage Gone! Dance) has written a report on Dance/NYC's community forum on Race and Dance, and you can read it now on Apollinaire Scherr's dance blog, Foot in Mouth.

Report on a census of dance makers

from The New York Times

ARTS / DANCE | May 24, 2007
Dance Thrives Precariously in New York
By CLAUDIA LA ROCCO
A new report highlights how fragile New York City’s status is as the center of modern dance in the United States.

from The New York Times

ARTS / DANCE | May 24, 2007
Dance Thrives Precariously in New York
By CLAUDIA LA ROCCO
A new report highlights how fragile New York City’s status is as the center of modern dance in the United States.