A few reflections on Choreographers Connecting Across Cities

 

I got into this field because I fell in love with dance and with live performance. I love seeing performances, as many as I can fit in the schedule; I love meeting new people; I love talking to artists about their work and ideas and projects. Small wonder then that I got into a pandemic funk-slump, as there were no more live performances and I realized most of my social life revolved around seeing shows.

I was still talking to artists and other presenters and curators on Zoom and some of us were lamenting that there were no spaces like the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) or the National Performance Network (NPN) to talk to each other during this time. Before the pandemic, a few of us were regularly kvetching about the demise of SCUBA, a relatively small-scale national touring network, and that nothing had grown to replace it. I’ve also been inspired by projects like The Philadelphia Thing, which links two cities in a reciprocal exchange and festival.

When the Walder Foundation invited us to apply for a round of grants designed to meet the pandemic moment, I took these rumblings and crafted a networking platform that would involve six cities and six institutions and curators. Each of those curators would be tasked with inviting eight artists from their cities, and Chicago would have eight artists to be paired with each city, for a total of 40 artists from Chicago and 40 artists from other cities.

The participating curators were invited because of their connection with both their local dance/performance scene and the national conversation, and expressed interest in creating opportunities for local artists. The following presenters/curators were up for the experiment and participated in the project:

Sarah Bishop-Stone – Philadelphia Thing
Ellen Chenoweth – Dance Center, Columbia College Chicago
Liliana Gomez - BlakTinx Dance Festival, Phoenix (and LA)
Sarah Greenbaum, Christopher K. Morgan – Dance Place, Washington DC
Erin Johnson, Fox Whitney – Velocity Dance, Seattle
Edgar Miramontes – REDCAT, Los Angeles

I invited a handful of colleagues in Chicago to submit nominations for the participating artists based here. The invitation was to nominate dance or dance-adjacent artists who would be interested in potentially touring their work to other cities at some point in the future, artists who should be more widely known or celebrated, and who are making really interesting or exciting work.

We ended up holding 12 Zoom encounters:

  • one for participating curators

  • two for Philadelphia – Chicago artists

  • two for LA – Chicago artists

  • two for Phoenix – Chicago artists

  • two for DC – Chicago artists

  • two for Seattle – Chicago artists

  • one grand finale for all artists, all cities

The encounters felt fueling and reinvigorating for me, even over Zoom. It felt ok to be ragged and vulnerable. Each meeting was lightly facilitated, but it felt unusual and wonderful to not have a project or a specific goal other than gathering and talking. I remember hearing Edgar talk about the artists he wanted to invited from LA and feeling so invigorated and eager to see their work and learn more about them. I remember Nejla Yatkin leading us in passing movement from each zoom square, and Fox leading us in eye stretches to rejuvenate our eyes from so much staring at screens. I remember discussing time and the weird things it was doing. Bravemonk sharing poetry from his journal. I suggested a prompt of “How do we take care of each other? How do we make sure artists can keep going? How can we build from the wreckage when some of us are still wrecked?,” and worried that it was too dark, but similar questions were already in the air. The meetings felt like spaces for processing.

The first encounter between Phoenix and Chicago artists happened on a Saturday morning, and people were zooming in from a wide variety of places on a Saturday morning: one artist about to open a retail store, one about to teach a workshop, one even participating from a doctor’s office. The encounters took place between April and October 2021. It was a marked moment of coming out, of restarting, a particular flavor of uncertainty. We can’t go back to the way things were before; we need dialogue and space and time to collectively craft what comes next.

As one artist put it, “This was a truly wonderful opportunity to learn, listen, have time to be with one another and to connect with strangers and create space for conversation, connections and to know we are all doing the good work by being in and within our communities and knowing what is happening both in Chicago and Los Angeles - this is RARE, as in RARE for all us to be in a room together and just connect. Human to Human.”

I hope we can nurture more spaces where we can relax together, in the digital space or physical spaces. Less frenzy, more breathing. Another artist wrote that after the last meeting, “I am mostly just craving more — more chances to connect with folks, to see their work, to hear about their concerns, to relate, to dream, to brainstorm.” I am curious what spaces we will build together, to nourish and encourage and support.