On April 19, 2014, the Arts Research Center hosted Valuing Labor in the Arts: A Practicum. This daylong event included a series of artist-led workshops that developed exercises, prompts, or actions that engage questions of art, labor, and economics. We have asked participants to send us their reflections on keywords, puzzles, or recurring themes that came up throughout the day. This post is by Sarah Wilbur, choreographer and PhD candidate in World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA.
Let’s Ask Ourselves…
[A Dance-based Addendum to the
“Grey Matter” Quiz]
April 23, 2014
Sarah Wilbur
As a cross-sector dance maker
and scholar who writes about dance makers and institutional dependency, I
appreciate how Helena and Lauren’s slippery “Grey Matter” quiz resists tidy
“yes-no” answers. The very structure of a quiz mandates self-reflection. By
hailing artists who attempt to fashion careers through the nomadic practice of
“gig dependency”, the Grey Matter quiz should constantly be retaken. It
institutes a practice of looking before we step and stepping with a sense of what a steadier foothold feels like,
when confronted with an invitation to depend. “Gig dependency” might be a crude
characterization for some, but within the hyper-dependent field of dance, “gig
dependency” behaves as a kind of
institutional dependency, one requiring local strategies of belonging and
engagement. The institutional attachment of certain dance makers to the
contemporary museum or biennial circuit, while unexceptional historically given
the longstanding co-operation of dance artists with non-dance institutions,
begs us to consider how the institutional promiscuity of US live dance
performance might score in this inspiring quest for advocacy and reflexivity.
To start this thread, I’ve remade the quiz from a dance perspective. LET’S ASK
OURSELVES… [201]
GAUGING the GREY AREA: Standards for
Artistic Labor
[DANCE
BASED ADDENDUM]
QUESTION No. 1: Does this opportunity align with your
creative strengths, experiences, and goals as a dance maker?
ANSWERS:
A: This idea inspires me
creatively to become involved. While its scope does not align perfectly with my
experience/training, the invitation provides an occasion to research and learn
from the organizers, context, and collaborating artists. I think that my
collaborators would probably want to work with me on translating my work within
this context. [10]
B. I find this work interesting,
but not well aligned with my present investments as a dance maker. The project
of adapting my work may contort its general scope and intentions, and would
require a great deal of rehearsal time for my dancers to learn and master the
task at hand. I’m torn. [5]
C. I cringed when I saw the
scope of this project. My values do not align with those of the presenting organization.
I cannot participate in this project without a deep sense of personal conflict
and a deep loss of time that I should be working on other things. My
dancers/collaborators do not value this kind of work or approach. [0]
D. I’m eager to take advantage
of this unique and exciting opportunity. The experience and working
relationships are excellent and the support structures are strong. The timing
and resourcing available for this opportunity converges with the availability
of my closest artistic collaborators. It’s as if I dreamt this. [15]
QUESTION No. 2: What is the potential financial gain/impact
of this project? (same
question)
ANSWERS:
A: MEAGER. I get a small performance honorarium, one free parking space, and
reception food/drinks the night of the performance, and networking
opportunities on the night of the performance. [5]
B: STOKED. This commission
includes space, designer fees, rehearsal and performance pay for the dancers, a
design budget, and choreographic stipend. [15]
C: NADA. I’m subsidizing the
entire cost of rehearsing, designing, and producing this work, which is largely
irreproducible due to the context of this production. This subsidization
includes [0]
D: INCOMENSURABLE. They are
paying an artist fee that does not include ancillary costs of production. [10]
QUESTION No. 3: How does
my acceptance of this opportunity condition or constrain the future
exploitation of dance artists by sponsoring organization/institution?
A: Production conditions are
inadequate, but there is room to negotiate on behalf of myself, and my
collaborators, which could set a good precedent for future projects and other
artists interested in working with this sponsoring organization. [10]
B: This opportunity is suboptimal,
but presents an opportunity to bring attention to the issue of exploitation by
communicating areas of disconnect to this partner to contextualize the
affiliated expenses at play in my dance making. [5]
C: This opportunity is so fair
and so transparent that it benefits all involved and sets an ethical standard
for future collaborations in this type of production context. [15]
D: Even if I benefit (minimally)
from this project, I will be complicit in the system of artist exploitation and
will subject my collaborators to exploitive conditions. [0]
QUESTION No. 4: What are the personal, financial, embodied,
and relational risks and rewards of this project?
A: There is financial support
but a relatively high degree of risk via poor working conditions, low
production values, and insufficient time in the performance space, minimal publicity
and exposure, or other kinds of heavy contingencies. [5]
B: This opportunity involves
suboptimal conditions that pose physical hazards to my dancers and myself and
that incur debt and strain my working relationships. Why am I even considering
this? [0]
C: I am excited about the
possibilities opened up by this opportunity and reassured by institution’s
willingness to mitigate potential risks for all participants. [10]
D: This project puts me and my
collaborators in a good position financially, physically, and professionally
through heightened networking and exposure to new/important constituencies. I’m
optimistic that the benefits outweigh the risks. [15]
QUESTION No. 5: What kinds of communication labor does this
project demand and how does this work affect the impact of my dance making?
A: Project targets a narrow but
committed constituency. There is little room for exposure beyond immediate
participants, and little budget/desire to reach beyond current targets, but the
quality of interaction is strong for those involved. [10]
B: Project marketing falls on me
with the provision of materials fees but no mailing list. The time to fashion
and distribute publicity takes time away from the creative labor of dancemaking
and institutional rationale for presenting is minimal or at least suspect. [5]
C: The institution has minimal
experience working with dance and little capital has been invested in
contextualizing this work for potential audiences. Audience demand/interest is questionable,
time and resources to promote the work nonexistent, and risk of
misrepresentation for artists is high [0].
D: The institution has broad
reach and an excellent reputation within the communities that I work in or desire
to connect with. Past publicity by the institution resonates with my own value
system, and the possibility of national press exposure is high [15].
RATIONALE:
*(Addendum to No. 3) Here I account for
the intermediary function of the choreographer as a frequent subcontractor of designers,
performers, and third party collaborators as a significant distinction for
dance and live performance. The risks to secondary and tertiary collaborators
in dance contracting frequently fly under the radar if/when presenters do not
know to look for these details (or feign ignorance, as the case may be).
Conversely, sub-exploitation of dancers and support personnel by choreographers
remains a relatively closeted discourse in dance.
To mitigate this, this question asks the negotiating dance artist to account
for these sub-dependencies and interpersonal ethics.
*(Addendum to No. 4) A general account for
time outside of the event and adequate working conditions in dance, is of paramount
importance in any booking situation. Most of the preparatory work of dance
making costs time beyond the space of public presentation, and time in
rehearsal does not generally equate with the time on stage yield of a particular work.
*(Addendum to No. 5) Helena and Lauren’s
concern with ‘exposure’ is replaced here with communication as a responsibility
of all parties engaged in the dance making process. Again, I think that the
social practice of dance making demands this, and demands a reciprocal exchange
that , in my experience, suffers when discourse gets collapsed into a “my” vs. “their”
turf war. Perhaps I’m softening too much
for some, but mobilizing communication as a co-researching and mutually
supportive project promises more mutually agreed-upon results. Just as
institutional intermediaries conduct various levels of research during their
selection of artists, selected artists should come clean and recognize when a
reluctance to study the history of a presenting organization and/or the value
systems and spreadsheets at play in the institution’s commissioning process
stands in the way of a more productive working relationship. Here is where I
appreciate W.A.G.E.’s charge to artists to research the history and culture of
funding and presenting institutions as part of the production negotiation. This
kind of critical literacy trumps gut instincts by revealing deeper practical
and material disjunctures that might evidence why an artist may or may not
“like” a presenters approach.
These suggested expansions of
Helena and Lauren’s “Grey Matter” have attempted to foreground the intermediary
role of the choreographer as labor subcontractor, the secondary constituencies
who are doubly vulnerable to sub-exploitation as a concern, and the
co-researching required to sustain productive equilibrium as key issues worth
considering when navigating the ‘grey matter’ of artistic standards in dance.
This quiz should constantly be retaken. By challenging choreographers to
recognize the interdependent relationships embedded in the question: “What do you need in order to feel
supported?”, I shift the “what” to the “who”, in part, to honor the many
“makers” whose support contributes to the resultant dance “work”. I imagine
that an extension of these logics to the institution-side of the contract would
yield dizzying numbers as well. To Helena, Lauren, ARC, and Art Practical: Thank you for the quiz
and the quandaries. I depart from this exercise of quiz making as an even more
robust advocate for a critical practice of reflection through interpersonal
re-collection (re-collectivization?). While the temporal, spatial, material,
and “human” contingencies at hand in making dance (within and beyond the
Museum) remain un-standardizeable, Helena and Lauren’s quiz amplifies the
stakes and energizes the discourse. Sometimes the wheels do not need
reinventing, but we need to notice when they stop spinning.
Let’s ask ourselves…
Author’s note: The
bolded letters in the latter sentence refer to a self-fashioned term invented
(albeit facetiously) in the early 2000s with a colleague/collaborator Ben
Munisteri to refer to a well-known and little-reported rehearsal circumstance
in dance, wherein an artist and dancers work on a particularly thorny part of a
dance for hours, days even, only to
have the belabored moment last for very short amount of time in the resultant
dance product. The audience, viewing the dance in performance, will never be
aware of the hours spent to refine a particular choreographic moment or
subsection. On the rehearsal side, Ben and I decided to jokingly institute the
use of the term TOSY –Time On Stage Yield-with dancers at the start of a rehearsal to
let them know in advance whether
we anticipated the day’s work to be low-yielding or high-yielding. By these
temporal and physical ‘standards’, a dancer hearing our intention to work on a low TOSY section should put his
thinking cap on and warm up, because the amount of repetition, adaptation, and
confusion is likely to be high. In contrast, a high TOSY rehearsal could involve reviewing a large unison section
with reliable timings, zero tactile contact, and simple spatial patterns.
Different outcomes require different amounts of time, risk and corporeal
preparation. Thus the disregard for the offstage time of dance making by
commissioning or presenting institutions
stands here as a potentially highly exploitive dimension of production
negotiation.
