That upcoming APAP theme is what again?

Have you heard? The theme of the 2018 Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) Conference in New York City (January 12-16) is...

trans.ACT.

Kind of makes your heart beat faster, doesn't it?

But hold on!

Not surprisingly, APAP's call for proposals for trans.ACT. caught the attention of trans dance and performance artist Ashley R.T. Yergens who noticed a curious absence of any mention of trans artists and their work.

Yergens took his questions about all this to Facebook:

The Association of Performing Arts Professionals, formerly known as the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, or more commonly known as APAP is calling for Professional Development Program proposals using the theme "trans.ACT."

They define the theme as the following:

"This year’s theme, trans.ACT, focuses on the transformative power of the arts and the multiple ways - 'trans' meaning across, beyond, and through – in which we 'act' upon our commitment to bring the full meaning, impact and experience of the arts to communities across the country and around the world."

While I understand the etymology of the prefix "trans," I can't help but notice that the theme reads as transact as in transaction. Also, it reads as Trans Act like an act that serves to protect trans people like me. This particular reading of the theme leaves me completely baffled.

There's zero mention of trans people - trans dance and performance artists - like me, which seems like a hugely missed opportunity and evidence of who was in the room to finalize this year's APAP theme for Professional Development Program proposals.

Again, I understand the etymology of the prefix "trans." I'm not here to police language. Words evolve. However, I question and I hold APAP accountable to how they're using the word at this point in the evolution of "trans." The word has finally entered the mainstream to describe people like me who don't identify with their assigned genders at birth. It's a word that empowers me and allows me to find other people who share similar experiences and hardships.

Honestly, this is like APAP naming the theme "Gay.ACT" and defining "gay" simply as happy and distancing the term from its loaded history pertaining to gay people.

Perhaps this theme wouldn't be so unsettling if it weren't for the fact that dance and live performance lacks history, documentation, and consistent opportunities for dancing and performing bodies of trans experiences. If you want proof of what this field is lacking, then 1) send money to my Venmo account, and I'll do the labor of sharing my research and personal experiences with you or 2) Google.

So, I'm holding APAP accountable to answering the following questions: 

1.) Did you consult any trans people when you selected this theme?

2.) Are there any trans people on your staff or board?

3.) How have you supported trans dance artists and performers in the past? How do you plan on supporting trans dance artists and performers in the future?

4.) While I understand the etymology of "trans," I find it odd that you chose to use a word that is currently used to describe identities that I and so many other people fight for on a daily basis. Why don't you mention trans people in your description? Was any of this discussed when selecting "trans.ACT" as a theme?

I look forward to APAP's thorough responses, and I am eager to see how they will transcend their faux pas with action.

I encourage you to contact APAP as well: https://www.apap365.org/About/Staff

Ashley R.T. Yergens

YERGEN'S QUERY

Yergens also sent the following email to APAP:

Hello,

My name is Ashley R.T. Yergens. I'm a trans dance artist and performer based in Brooklyn, NY.

I was reading your description about this year's PDP theme for proposals.

A few questions come to mind:

1.) Did you consult any trans people when you selected this theme?
2.) Are there any trans people on your staff or board?
3.) How have you supported trans dance artists and performers in the past? How do you plan on supporting trans dance artists and performers in the future?
4.) While I understand the etymology of "trans," I find it odd that you chose to use a word that is currently used to describe identities that I and so many other people fight for on a daily basis. Why don't you mention trans people in your description? Was any of this discussed when selecting "trans.ACT" as a theme?

I look forward to reading your responses and discussing this further.

Best,

Ash

APAP'S REPLY

Minutes later, Yergens received the following reply:

Dear Ash,

Thank you for reaching out with your questions about this year's APAP|NYC conference theme.  Given that we are heading into a holiday weekend, I wanted to be sure to reach out to you.

Our conference committee of artists, agents, presenters and producers spent a considerable amount of time discussing the multiple meanings of "trans" in creating the theme.  We hope to bring together a wide range of professionals, including transgender artists, next January to explore how we can collectively advance the role and value of the performing arts in today’s complicated world.
 
We invite you to submit a conference proposal or otherwise happy to touch base following the upcoming holiday.

Best regards,

Scott

Scott D. Stoner
Vice President, Programs and Resources
Association of Performing Arts Professionals
1211 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 200
Washington, DC 20036
202-331-1890 | APAP365.org

YERGEN'S REPLY

Dear Scott,

Thank you for touching base. I look forward to hearing your responses to my questions, learning more about the considerable time spent discussing the multiple meanings of "trans," how you arrived at the copy on the proposal form, and learning more about how you will include transgender artists at this year's conference.

Best,

Ash

Yes, I think it will be good to hear some direct, meaningful responses to Yergen's reasonable questions, and I welcome him to keep InfiniteBody's readers posted.

*****

Ashley R.T. Yergens is a 2016 boo-koo artist-in-residence at Gibney Dance, and a 2016-17 Fresh Tracks Artist at New York Live Arts. He's a former project coordinator for DanceMotion USA, a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State, produced by BAM. Currently, he works at New York Live Arts as a development associate.

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Fire & Ink IV conference requests your witness

Fire & Ink IV: Witness (October 8-11, 2015) will address the urgent question of what it means to bear witness as LGBTQ and SGL writers of African descent and heritage in the 21st century.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS (deadline for abstracts: February 15)

If you're interested in being part of the conversation at Fire & Ink IV: Witness, submit an abstract not exceeding 1,000 words by Sunday, February 15 to let us know what you're thinking and ensure priority consideration.

For complete information, click here to download the Call for Proposals.

ABOUT FIRE & INK

Fire & Ink, Incorporated is devoted to increasing the understanding, visibility and awareness of works of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and same gender loving writers of African descent and heritage. As part of our mission, Fire & Ink sponsors a writers' conference and we invite proposals for workshops and panel discussions from our communities' writers, teachers, thinkers and critics.

Are the Gods Afraid of Black Sexuality?

Are The Gods Afraid of Black Sexuality?

Religion and the Burdens of Black Sexual Politics

A Conference

co-sponsored by

Barnard Center for Research on Women

and 

Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University

Thursday-Friday, October 23-24

We are living through a moment of tremendous change at the intersection of race, religion, and sexuality.This conference will bring together scholars, activists, and religious leaders to unearth and engage with the often-unstated claims about the African Diaspora in relation to gender and sexuality, exploring a range of historical and contemporary phenomena in both scholarship and lived experience.

Speakers include Anthea Butler, Kenyon Farrow, Darnell Moore, Alondra Nelson, Emilie Townes and more.

For complete information and registration, click here.

Discount on Dance/USA conference fee available now

Register for the 2013 Dance/USA Conference (Philadelphia, June 12-15) by this Friday, May 10, at 5pm, and you'll save $50. Don't miss the opportunity to engage in four days of networking, creative conversation and enriching training sessions at the largest national gathering of dance professionals.

Click here for details.

Also, register now and save 10% on Amtrak!
Discount code: 2013NYC

If you have any difficulty in registering, please contact the Dance/USA office at 202-833-1717, M-F 9:30am to 5:30pm ET or at annualconference@danceusa.org.

Freedom to MOVE: Dance and Alexander Technique

Freedom to MOVE: 2013

A conference on Dance and the Alexander Technique

developed by Ann Rodiger

presented by Balance Arts Center

May 17-19

***

Presenters:

Joan Arnold

Tom Baird

Rebecca Brooks

Nada Diachenko

Daria Fain

Emily Faulkner

Eva Karczag

Juliette Mapp

Katherine Mitchell

Rebecca Nettl-Fiol

Cynthia Reynolds

Ann Rodiger

Shelley Senter

Jennifer Sielicki

Erin Thompson

Luc Vanier

Deborah Weitzman

                             

Come join us for the third Freedom to Move Dance and Alexander Technique conference.

We will continue to explore how the Alexander Technique supports and complements dance technique and performance.

Movement freedom, ease, and coordination can be enhanced and taught through concepts and principles of Alexander Technique.  The conference provides experiences and exploration of many ways the Alexander Technique can be applied to dance – from tango to composition to research to performance.

You will also have time to share and exchange ideas as we work together.

All the conference presenters have had extensive experience both in teaching the Alexander Technique and in dance. The Alexander Technique has greatly influenced their thinking and approach to movement, how they teach, and how they create work. The variety of workshops speaks to the fundamental all-encompassing nature of the Alexander Technique and how the concepts are permeating many corners of the dance world.
Come join us and explore!

Pearl Studios
500 8th Avenue, 12th Floor (between 35th and 36th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Full conference schedule HERE
Register HERE
Registration by May 1st: $225
Registration after May 1st $250
Student rates and Single sessions available

Welcome to Ntozake Shange's worlds

The Worlds of Shange

presented by

Barnard Center for Research on Women

February 14-15

Performing Shange
Thursday, February 14 (6-8pm)
Free and open to the public
Event Oval, The Diana Center, Barnard College

a conversation between Obie-award winning playwright and poet Ntozake Shange and dance artist Dianne McIntyre followed by student performances of Shange's work

Worlds of Shange
A conference
Friday, February 15 (10am-6pm)
Free and open to the public
Event Oval, The Diana Center, Barnard College

Featured speakers include scholars and artists shaping scholarly and popular conversations about African-American arts and letters as well as gender in the African Diaspora.

For complete details on this and other programs of the Barnard Center for Research on Women (Barnard College), click here.

Injured Cities, Urban Afterlives: a conference

Injured Cities, Urban Afterlives

Barnard Center for Research on Women presents a conference on the effects of catastrophe on cities, their inhabitants, and the larger world, and how we can address the politics of terror with which states react to their vulnerability.

Friday-Saturday, October 14-15

Miller Theater and Wood Auditorium, Columbia University

This conference, convened ten years after September 11, 2001, aims to explore the effects of catastrophe and to imagine more life-affirming modes of redress and reinvention. In a series of presentations and conversations, an international group of artists, writers, and activists will imagine creative responses to disaster and initiate a new collective memory of the events of September 11.

Speakers include Ariella Azoulay, Nina Bernstein, Hazel Carby, Teddy Cruz, Ann Jones, Dinh Q. Lê, Shirin Neshat, Walid Raad, Saskia Sassen, Karen Till, Clive van den Berg, Eyal Weizman, and narrators from the September 11, 2001 Oral History Project at Columbia. Co-sponsored with the Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference at Columbia University.

To register, click here.

Also notable from BCRW this fall...

Five courses on culture and creativity, including:
 
Storytelling Life (Elizabeth Whitney)

Women's Cultures/Women's Lives (Leslie Calman)

Seeking Your Voice: A Poetry Workshop (Patricia Brody & Eva Miodownik Oppenheim)

Multicultural Memoirs: Personal Histories of Family, Politics, and Identity (Lori Rotskoff)

Self/Portraits: Women Artists in Modern America (Lori Rotskoff)

All courses take place in Barnard Center for Research on Women, 101 Barnard Hall. For complete information schedule, fees and registration, call 212-854-2067.

Feminist activism and the academy

Conference: Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action

September 23-24

Registration in Barnard Hall lobby

Barnard College
Broadway at 116th Street, Manhattan

Forty years ago, the Barnard Center for Research on Women began its mission of using research and knowledge to advance feminist scholarship and long-term partnerships with activist groups. Inspired by the new women’s movement, BCRW became part of an historic moment that witnessed the proliferation of feminist activism, the establishment of women’s studies programs and women’s centers, and the founding of women’s bookstores and other cultural projects. This fall, we bring together our past, present and future collaborators as well as kindred institutions, scholars and activists engaged in social justice feminism to consider what kinds of collaborative projects are possible when scholarship and activism are joined.

The anniversary conference will also include a special reception with a performance by Suzanne Vega ’81 and remarks from Janet Axelrod ’73, as well as keynote lectures by Sonia Alvarez and Mamphela Ramphele.

For a list of speakers and all program information, click here.

For directions to Barnard College, click here.

My DCA conference appearance next Saturday

I will be making my first-ever Skype video call appearance (!!!) at the 2011 Dance Critics Association Conference in Seattle, June 9-12.

On Saturday, June 11, I'm joining Theodore "Tedd" Bale and Marcie Sillman and moderator Marcia B. Siegel (dance critic of The Boston Phoenix) for Critical Practice Now--a roundtable discussion on the continual shift in dance writing practice.

For information on DCA and its conference, click here or email.

Feel free to move!

Balance Arts Center invites you to a conference: 

Freedom to Move 2011: Dance and the Alexander Technique

Movement freedom, ease, and coordination can be enhanced and taught through concepts and principles of Alexander Technique. The conference provides experiences and exploration of many ways the Alexander Technique can be applied to dance – from tango to composition to research to performance.

May 20-22
Pearl Studios, New York City

Registration still open. Click here for complete details.

Balance Arts Center on Facebook

War dance

In ‘Into Sunlight,’ Horrors of War, Depicted in Dance
by Karin Lipson, The New York Times, April 8, 2011

Movements: Politics, Performance, and Disability

Movements: Politics, Performance, and Disability

The Scholar & Feminist Conference XXXVI

Barnard College

Saturday, 2/26 (9-5pm)

This year's Scholar & Feminist conference brings together feminism and disability studies, two fields that have contributed to the interrogation of the public/private divide, and when brought together, radically contest and amplify the ways in which this split has produced extremely thin understandings and practices of accessibility, participation, livelihood, visibility and integration. Movements: Politics, Performance, and Disability will look closely at the ways in which political action and cultural production contribute to new ways of imagining what an inclusive society might look like for all. Through dance, film, political engagement and dialogue, we will make our way from Barnard College to New York City to the larger world and back again, exploring the ways in which artistic endeavors, scholarship, and politics have all led to mobilizations for feminist and disability activism. The conference features a series of workshops on topics including parenting and disability, alternatives to creating community in the face of privitization and state budget cuts, films on disability, and a new project on oral histories with Barnard and Columbia alumnae who identify as disabled. The day concludes with a special performance by the Heidi Latsky Dance Company, a fully integrated dance group.

Panelists include Nirmala Erevelles, Carrie Sandahl, Susan Schweik, Alice Sheppard, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Rachel Adams, Pam Cobrin, Faye Ginsburg, Ansel Lurio, Kate Schaub, Penny Wolfson, Mary Marshall Clark, Ynestra King, Julie Maury, Stacey Milbern, and Akemi Nishida. ReelAbilities Film Festival will present a series of groundbreaking short films made by and about different deaf communities from around the world.

A conference website and online registration will be available online in late January. Please join our email list or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Apollinaire Scherr to speak on dance criticism

Critic, journalist and blogger Apollinaire Scherr invites you to her keynote address at the Dance Critics Association Conference this Friday, July 16 (9:30am) at NYU Kimmel Center at 60 Washington Square South. Get directions and more nifty details at Scherr's own blog post here.

Scherr's topic?

"How to write criticism that leaves room for dance's future"

She promises answers that are "provisional, hopeful and possibly cause for debate and fuming."

So, if you're up for some fuming, but you're not registered for the DCA conference, Scherr has a deal for you. You can get into the keynote event for a mere $8. But you absolutely must click here to pay in advance, okay?

BTW, if you do go to the DCA conference, you'll find me--your friendly grassroots blogger--on a panel at Dance Theater Workshop with Eiko of Eiko & Koma, writer Valerie Gladstone, presenter Baraka Sele, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar of Urban Bush Woman, and writer Lori Ortiz (moderator). We're talking Cultural Exchange in 2010. I hope to see you there!

2010 International Association of Blacks in Dance conference

at The Doubletree-Center City, Philadelphia, PA — January 14 -18, 2010

The 22nd Annual International Association of Blacks in Dance, co-hosted by PHILADANCO and University of the Arts, is a meeting of African American artists, educators, historians, videographers and students interested in dance of the Diaspora, and the future and success of this art form.It will include four full days of classes, lectures and workshops; dance market place; luncheons and receptions; liturgical showcases; and other events. The conference welcomes people from diverse backgrounds.

Nightly performances will feature over 30 dance groups, including Duke Ellington School for the Arts, Cleveland School for the Arts, Baltimore School for the Arts, William and Mary College, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Lula Washington, LA Creative Outlet, Camille Brown, Urban Bush Women and Ailey II.

Awards banquet, Saturday, January 16: Maurice Hines, keynote speaker; awardees: Mary Hinkson, Mary Barnett, Caroline Adams, and Delores Browne

Registration information and other conference details: Kim Bears Bailey at 215-387-8200

Silvers and friends advance feminism

For the closing performance event of the Advancing Feminist Poetics and Activism Conference at CUNY, Sally Silvers will be improvising, creating a live choreography event and collaborating with very special guests:

Alejandra Martorell (dancer)

Peter Sciscioli (dancer)

Julie Patton (poet/vocalist/performance artist)

Marina Rosenfeld (live electronics)

Silvers writes:

"I will be choreographing/directing Alejandra and Peter in a gender focused phrase that I will make live and on the spot as if we are meeting in the rehearsal studio for the first time.

"Marina and Julie will be commenting--musically, vocally--to the development of the choreography as well as interacting with me improvising while the dancers are working things out.

"There are three other poetry, theater, music groups on the program and our group will be going second."

Friday, September 25, 6:30-8:30pm
All events are free and open to the public.

CUNY Graduate Center, Elebash Recital Hall
365 Fifth Avenue (34-35 Streets)

For full conference details, visit the following sites:

http://www.belladonnaseries.org/adfempobios.html
http://www.belladonnaseries.org/adfemposchedule.html

Imperiled ground, imperiled body

Belladonna and CUNY Graduate Center present

a free panel discussion

Is Ground as to Figure as Ambience is to Body? Ec(h)opoetics of the Disfigured 'Land'scape

Fri, Sept 25, 10am

Room 1, Panel 1
CUNY Graduate Center
365 5th Ave, Manhattan

Discussion Organizer and Moderator: Jennifer Scappettone. Panel Members: Marcella Durand, Brenda Lijima, Kathy Westwater, Rita Wong and Linda Sormin

This discussion will sound reciprocal interference between the environment and marked (raced/gendered/polluted) corporeality in the face of landscape's harm-mediation-digitization-withdrawal. Presentations will address a poetics of systemic crisis, stalking solutions, obliging recognition of ambient relations of authority and compromise as compass through a stupefying enormity of damage: Marcella Durand on race and ecological disaster; Brenda Lijima on Agnes Denes's reclamation art; Kathy Westwater on bodily organization within transmogrifying 'nature'; Rita Wong and Linda Sormin on ongoing toxicities.

This discussion is part of the Advancing Feminist Poetics and Activism Conference and is sponsored by Belladonna and CUNY Graduate Center: Center For Humanities, Poetics Group, the PhD Program in English and the Center for the Study of Women and Society. For more info: belladonna

Dance artists wanted for feminist collaboration

[Please note: The deadline for proposals for this conference has been extended to January 15, 2009.]

Belladonna* Announces
Advancing Feminist Poetics and Activism: A Gathering

CUNY Graduate Center, September 24-25, 2009

In celebration of its tenth year, Belladonna*/** will join with The CUNY Graduate Center's Women's Studies Certificate Program, Center for Research on Women and Society, Center for Humanities, English Department, and Poetics Group to present a conference aimed at advancing and broadcasting the life of Feminist Avant-Garde Poetics and Activism Today. The conference will take place at the CUNY Graduate Center on September 24 and 25, 2009.

Our goals for this conference are the following:

• To support the study of the Feminist Avant-Garde
• To encourage collaboration between radical feminist artists/thinkers/activists.
• To provide a space to think about relevant activism in these times, in this place.

We at Belladonna* are particularly interested in what's immediate, present, and happening now. We would like this call to encourageconversations and new designs for work between genres, into activist communities, and among academic and non-academic discourse. We are looking for evolving modes of knowing, acting, and resisting.

Papers and presentations might focus on (but are not limited to) the following topics:

• Collaborations between poets and artists, poets and dancers, poetry theater, poets and
  scientists (or science), teachers and students, poets and community
  activists.
• Critical consideration of women writers who for whatever reason have not yet received it—we welcome non-traditional and cross-genre approaches.
• Race, gender, class: working within and across affinities.
• AgitProp that incorporates poetic thinking and expression.
• Calls for Action. Organizing sessions.
  

Send panel proposals and/or paper abstracts (350 words maximum, or send a dvd of performance/visual /sound work) to belladonnaseries@gmail.com by January 15, 2009.

** Founded as a reading series at a women's radical bookstore in 1999, Belladonna* is a feminist avant-garde event (Belladonna Series) and publication project (Belladonna Books) that promotes the work of women writers who are adventurous, politically involved, multi-form, multicultural, multi-gendered, unpredictable, dangerous with language (to the death machinery). In its nine year history, Belladonna* has featured over 150 experimental and hybrid writers. The curators promote work that is explicitly innovative, connects with other art forms, and is political/critical in content.

Congress on Research in Dance (CORD) 40th Anniversary Conference

November 8-11
Barnard College, New York City

An interdisciplinary gathering of scholars and artists to explore dance's past, present and future through the critical prism of migration

Keynote Address • José Moya, Professor of History and Director of the Forum on Migration, Barnard College , Columbia University

Awards Luncheon • Honoring 2007 CORD Awardees Robert Farris Thompson (Outstanding Contribution to Dance Research), Susan Leigh Foster (Outstanding Leadership in Dance Research), George Dorris (Outstanding Service to Dance Research), and Outstanding Graduate Student Research Awardee

Performance • Choreographies of Migration Dance Concert featuring the José Limón Dance Company; Dana Tai Soon Burgess & Co.'s Tracings , an homage to the first Korean Americans, commissioned by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program and the Kennedy Center; and a performance by New York-based choreographer and performance artist Sita Frederick.

Plenary • Dancing Diaspora in Brooklyn: Folk Feet Traditional Dancers discuss and demonstrate transnational dance forms, presented by Brooklyn Arts Council, Folk Arts

Film Screenings • Including Meredith Monk's Ellis Island

Over 100 Presentations • Papers, workshops, and lecture-demonstrations focused on the relationship between dance and im/migration.

Membership Meeting

Book & Media Exhibit

Click here for complete information.