Community Supported Arts (CSA)
April 14, 2010
Buying locally grown food from farmers has become popular through Community Supported Agriculture, where members buy a share of farm-grown produce and receive a box of seasonal items throughout the farming season. Thanks to a post on smArts & Culture, I learned that the brilliant people behind mnartists.org and Springboard for the Arts have adapted the CSA model to create Community Supported Art. This allows community members to purchase an art share, and in turn receive a box of art created by local artists, such as a collection of photos, tickets to an upcoming performance, or small paintings. The best part: participants don’t know in advance what will be in the box of art. They may or may not like what they get (just like with a farm share, where sometimes you end up with produce that you’re not a fan of), but buying an art share demonstrates a commitment to the artists and their creative process.
Community Supported Art is such a smart idea that I wonder why it hasn’t caught on yet here in New York City. Wouldn’t it be great if a bunch of dance companies, artists, and performance venues joined forces to create a CSA? Tickets to upcoming shows, dance classes, artist conversations, and behind-the-scenes rehearsals from a variety of participating arts organizations and artists could be added to a monthly CSA box for a reasonable price, while buyers would include not only existing supporters of the participating arts organizations and artists but also first-time arts attendees (it’s probably less intimidating to have a box of arts handed to you than to navigate NYC’s myriad offerings on your own and settle on one). Additionally, the CSA would be an effective way to pool audiences from a variety of arts organizations by exposing them to new work and new artists, and hopefully increasing their commitment to the participating artists and organizations.
Community Supported Art definitely has the potential to thrive in NYC (all of the shares in Minnesota sold out within a few hours), and hopefully it will one day be as popular and common as community supported agriculture. To all NYC-based artists and arts organizations, we should join forces and make this a reality.
Like this:
National Arts Advocacy Day: What You Can Do
April 13, 2010
Americans for the Arts has declared today the 23rd Annual National Arts Advocacy Day. More than 500 arts, education, entertainment, and policy leaders have gathered at The National Arts Action Summit in Washington to develop strong public policies and support for increased public funding for the arts.
Meanwhile, there are several ways that you can be a part of Arts Advocacy Day without traveling to DC. If you’re on Twitter (I am!), you can make “arts” into one of Twitter’s trending topics today by creating a tweet with the hashtag #arts or joining the Tweet Arts Day campaign. This is a fast and efficient way to spread the message through the constantly growing Twittersphere that the arts vital to our communities.
You can also participate in Why Dance Matters, a virtual event that rallies the online dance community by encouraging everyone to answer the question, Why does dance matter to you, your community, your country, etc? For more information, check out the Facebook event.
While thinking about why dance matters, I remembered Rachel Maddow’s inspiring talk on dance, art, and society last summer at Jacob’s Pillow. She had a lot of smart, witty things to say, but here’s one particularly powerful statement:
“Not just in wartime but especially in wartime, and not just in hard economic times but especially in hard economic times, the arts get dismissed as ‘sissy’. Dance gets dismissed as craft, creativity gets dismissed as inessential, to the detriment of our country. And so when we fight for dance, when we buy art that’s made by living American artists, when we say that even when you cut education to the bone, you do not cut arts and music education, because arts and music education IS bone, it is structural, it is essential; you are, in [Jacob’s Pillow founder] Ted Shawn’s words, you are preserving the way of life that we are supposedly fighting for and it’s worth being proud of.”
I also encourage you to check out Joanna Chin’s post on ARTSblog, which makes a compelling, straightforward argument for the value of the arts. She says, “Arts = Arts; Arts = Humanity; Arts = Health/Quality of Life; Arts = Civic Engagement and Social Change; Arts = Economic Vitality; Arts = Creativity/Innovation = Growth/Vitality; Arts = Cultural Tourism = Economic Vitality; Arts = Jobs & Industry; Arts = Shared Benefit.” Yet, Chin wonders if there are other ways to argue for the arts and communicate them to an audience, and invites readers to share their comments on her post.
Taking action does not – and should not – be limited to today. Arts Advocacy Day is a reminder that advocating for the arts is an ongoing activity, whether by attending a performance, learning how to advocate and influence decision makers, networking with artists and arts leaders in your community, participating in an arts event, or reflecting on how your own arts education (or lack of arts education) has affected your life. No matter how you get involved, Arts Advocacy Day serves as a reminder that being an arts advocate is empowering and crucial to the future of the arts.
Columbia Ballet Collaborative at Miller
April 11, 2010
Dancers in Emery LeCrone’s Five Songs for Piano, photo by Matthew Murphy
In 2007, a group of former professional dancers studying at Columbia University were frustrated by the lack of ballet opportunities on campus. They took matters into their own hands and founded the Columbia Ballet Collaborative (CBC). Each semester the student-run, student-directed group offers free weekly classes to the Columbia community and rehearses for an end-of-semester performance, which was initially held in a studio at Barnard College or City Center. Last year the group made the leap to Columbia’s Miller Theater, where they once again presented their spring performances on Friday and Saturday night. The company has demonstrated technical and artistic growth each semester, and this weekend’s program – featuring six works by as many choreographers – was the most well-rounded to date.
Victoria North in Five Songs for Piano, photo by Matthew Murphy
The pieces were predominantly somber in mood, with brighter moments emerging here and there, but they were so choreographically diverse that it was hardly a depressing evening of dance. Five Songs for Piano, a premiere by CBC’s Resident Choreographer Emery LeCrone, was structurally marvelous as the five women – all excellent – moved through gestures and striking images that indicated an internal struggle. In solos or duets set to a melancholic quintet of piano works by Mendelssohn, the dancers broke free from a horizontal line across the back of the stage. Rapidly switching their legs from turned out to parallel, abruptly slamming their palms and extended arms to the floor, and moving between angular movement and more graceful, balletic lines evoked inner turmoil, while sophisticated costumes and eerie lighting contributed to the fragile ambience. LeCrone might still be considered an emerging choreographer, but superb work like this suggests that she has already emerged, and she’s here to stay.
Craig Hall in Monique Meunier’s Solid Ground, photo by Matthew Murphy
Monique Meunier’s Solid Ground featured a classical rock score and fast-paced movement for five women and one man, Craig Hall of New York City Ballet. Although the work included complex lifts and a continuous morphing of formations, it tended to look formulaic or trite. And unfortunately, it lost momentum as it dragged on for slightly too long. Excursions, a new piece by Claudia Schreier set to a slow piano score by Samuel Barber that evoked summer haze, consisted of three women in a series of duets with guest artist Don Friedewald. The dancers seemed slightly strained by the challenging partnering, but their commitment to the ballet was impressive.
The darkest work on the program – in terms of both mood and lighting – was John-Mark Owen’s Ah, Mio Cor, set to Handel’s score. The five dancers were poorly lit and the unflattering costumes included tuxedo pants and frilly green tops with a high neckline. Owen’s lackluster choreography did not reflect the emotion heard in the music’s opera singing, but Navarasa, created by Lauren Birnbaum, displayed movement that was as varied and nuanced as the global sounds heard in the score by Osso and Sufjan Stevens. Individual dancers stood out among the group of nine, but this work primarily examined the changing collective emotions of a community.
Dancers in Lauren Birnbaum’s Navarasa, photo by Matthew Murphy
Enjoy Your Rabbit, a lovely duet created by Justin Peck for himself and Teresa Reichlen (both are dancers with New York City Ballet who study at Columbia and Barnard, respectively), also featured music by Osso and Sufjan Stevens. The first half was full of heartache and longing, with seemingly endless extensions suddenly broken by sharper, edgier movement. The intricate partnering eased into more lively jumps and brighter individual sections for Reichlen as the piece progressed. Peck’s choreography had wonderful breadth and musicality, and both dancers exhibited remarkable fluidity. This brief duet deserves to be expanded upon, perhaps at CBC’s performances next fall.
Teresa Reichlen and Justin Peck in Enjoy Your Rabbit, photos by Matthew Murphy
Misnomer Performs at Symphony Space
April 9, 2010
Misnomer Dance Theater’s New York season kicked off last weekend at Symphony Space. If you missed it, there are three more chances to see the company tonight and tomorrow night. Misnomer will be performing an exciting new piece, Cellophane, and the program will also feature three early works, including artistic director Chris Elam’s first piece for the company, Misnomer (1998), for which the company was named. Watch a brief preview below, and if you can’t make it this weekend, you can watch a webcast of the April 3rd performance.
Misnomer performs tonight, April 9th, at 8:30 PM and Saturday at 7 and 9:30 PM at Symphony Space. Tickets are available online or by calling the box office at 212.864.5400.
Idan Cohen’s Swan Lake, Sans Swans
April 7, 2010
Idan Cohen’s Swan Lake, photo by Marek Weis
Tonight and tomorrow at 7:30 PM, the Center for Performance Research will present Israeli choreographer Idan Cohen’s intriguing 2009 version of Swan Lake. Though this 21st-century interpretation does away with the fairy tale narrative, the royal court, and the corps of swans, Cohen preserved Tchaikovsky’s heart-wrenching score, only cutting a few sections so that his piece is eighty minutes in length. Additionally, he and his cast of three dancers explored themes in the original story – human nature, good versus evil, and different aspects of beauty – while considering the relevance of these themes in their lives today.
Performances of Idan Cohen’s Swan Lake are free and, most likely, fouette-free. April 7th and 8th at 7:30 PM at the Center for Performance Research, 361 Manhattan Avenue in Brooklyn. Directions to CPR are here.
