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.
A Choreography of Healing in Israel
March 10, 2010
Daniel Banks and Adam McKinney, the founders of DNAWORKS, recently spent time in Israel working with two young men – both of whom studied dance – left immobile below the ribs after a gunman opened fire last August on a safe space in Tel Aviv for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender youth. The Jewish Forward recently wrote about Banks and McKinney’s experience and approach, which focuses on utilizing creativity and artistic expression to strengthen the healing process and build personal identity. Here is an excerpt from this inspiring story.
Last August a gunman entered the Aguda building in Tel Aviv and opened fire on the crowd at Bar Noar, a safe space for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth. He killed two and wounded a number of others before escaping without trace or identification.
Two of the wounded, 15-year-old “Alef” and 19-year-old “Yud” (names changed for privacy reasons) had studied dance, concentrating on ballroom and hip-hop, but their gunshot injuries left them without sensation or mobility below their ribs. Confined to wheelchairs, they believed their dancing days were over.
Enter Daniel Banks and Adam McKinney of New York-based DNAWORKS. Banks, originally from Brookline, Mass., and McKinney, a former Alvin Ailey dancer who grew up in Milwaukee, heard about the attack at Bar Noar, and through their friend Avi Blecherman — a social worker with the International Gay Youth Organization in Tel Aviv — they heard about the tragic injuries to the dancers.
DNAWORKS, the organization they founded, creates original dance and theater (plays, multimedia, etc.) with groups around the world, using an innovative organic process designed to draw out creativity and self-expression. A grant from the Jerome Foundation had enabled them to work in Israel with an Ethiopian dance company, Beta Dance Troupe. While working with the troupe, they connected with many different theater and dance groups, Arab and Israeli alike, specifically those that use performance as a way into identity exploration.
…Not wanting the young men to believe they got involved with them for publicity purposes, Banks and McKinney were extremely reluctant to speak of their involvement. Nor did they get involved with them in order to play hero. DNAWORKS is not a therapeutic dance organization and does not go into communities to heal pain. Still, McKinney and Banks cannot deny that their interactions have a nurturing effect. During one of their sessions, they assisted one of the young men in standing up for the first time since the attack.
“We are artists. We feel that the power of art is healing. We didn’t go in thinking about how this would help their rehabilitations from a medical perspective — we know that creativity can help in the healing process,” McKinney said.
In this case, they started by simply trying to be “four people experiencing joy and sharing in the creativity that each person brings to the room,” Banks said. Their lives in the hospital were challenging, with intense, daily rehabilitation, tests and physical therapy. McKinney and Banks tried to give to them a couple of hours a week where they could go back to something that they loved. And although Alef and Yud’s bodies have changed, McKinney explained, they did not work from a perspective of the bodies being “incomplete.”
Live Arts Audiences Decline as Online Audiences Grow
December 10, 2009
Today, the Los Angeles Times culture blog shared some unfortunate findings from a National Endowment for the Arts report: the number of American adults attending arts and cultural events has sunk to its lowest level since 1982. The economic climate is certainly one reason for the decrease, which might explain why adults are attending performances – museum shows, classical music concerts, opera, ballet, theater and jazz concerts – less frequently now than in 2002. Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported that audiences are increasingly relying on new media and the Web to appreciate the arts, according to an NEA survey that polled 18,000 adults. That is, “the mode of delivery is rapidly changing.” Here’s an excerpt from the article:
“It sends a message to us that technology is increasing access to the arts, not only to artmaking, but also arts participation,” said Joan Shigekawa, NEA’s senior deputy chairman. “Now you are no longer geographically bound to see a live performance. Also, there is something about this technology that emboldens people to express themselves.”
Should we celebrate what technology has done for access to the arts, or mourn the impact that technology has had on live audiences? Is sitting alone at home in front of a computer screen while watching a dance performance really the same as experiencing the same performance in a theater with other audience members? Does it matter? What do you think?
The Fall Performance A-List
September 22, 2009
The New York Times dance critic and WNYC Performance Club founder Claudia La Rocco recently invited me and several other performers, critics, and arts enthusiasts to write about what we’re looking forward to seeing this fall in New York City. Check out the post to see what made the list. Then add as many as possible to your ever-growing list of shows to see this season. The fall offerings are diverse, and I was honored to share some thoughts along with several wonderful individuals involved in performance, including Wendy Whelan, Ada Calhoun, Damian Woetzel, and Ishmael Houston-Jones. But there are still plenty of other exciting shows to see this season. Stay tuned to Dancing Perfectly Free for many more previews and reviews in the coming weeks.
Lucinda Childs’ DANCE (1979), coming to The Joyce Theater in October, photo by Nathaniel Tileston
Winners of Dance Films’ What Moves You Challenge
August 13, 2009
Dance Films Association recently held a competition called “What Moves You? 48 Hour Challenge”. The premise was simple: Create a dance film inspired by the news in forty-eight hours. By setting a time limit, the emphasis was on creativity rather than budget. The full list of winners is posted on DFA’s website. David Fishel won the top prize for “And That’s the Way It Is” (above), based on this July 17th New York Post article about the death of Walter Cronkite, ending an “era of trust” in the United States. The second prize went to Alex Springer, Ian Burley, and Xan Burley for “Daylighting” (below), which is based on this New York Times article about the process of “daylighting” rivers and streams that have been buried under pavement.
