VAULT

What strategies and experiences can you share related to digital or analog archiving and your current practice?

Knee-jerk response: I have no strategies—only doing!!! As many things as quickly as possible.

With a little more reflection, that is not absolutely true:

I keep programs from every performance that I attend. I rarely refer to them but I have them if I need them. And I can fantasize that maybe one day I will impeccably organize them and visit them often.

My inbox (both personal and professional) and sent boxes serve as important archives for me.

Much of my writing is on thinkingdance.net where it is easily accessible and easy for me to find and refer to. I also try to keep my own website updated, as much a resource and reminder for myself as for anyone else.

I find it very helpful to have the Dance Center’s seasons and complete performance record available on our website. I visit it often and am amazed every time.

I have lots and lots of notebooks that are not organized, but have been saved.

How has (your) dance making been affected (or not) by the virtual/digital availability of your work?

As a curator, I find it very helpful to have video available on artist websites. Not a highlight reel or pastiche, but several minutes of uninterrupted work. And an email address to get in touch, rather than a form or no contact information. I am also curious how Facebook/social media presences for artists influence or inform their work being programmed or booked.

What do you assume (in the best sense of the word) about audience and your practice?

I assume that our audiences are curious, open, game, adventurous. I hope that my practice is thoughtful, informed, careful, considered, expansive, and that some of this carries through into the visible realm of the work.

What are some changes imaginable regarding company/independent artist strategies, audiences, funding and presenting structures?

Whoooo wow, this is a big one…. I like to imagine a contraption that is somehow simultaneously both lighter and more stable and solid. Like it’s made of a material that is more lightweight but stronger. I feel discouraged when I think of engagements that I know are a huge stretch on the artist side to make it work on the financial side and also, at the same time, a huge stretch on the presenting side. It feels like at least one side should not have to be stretching quite so much for every gig! I like to imagine artists getting paid at an amount that they are building healthy, sustainable lives, with burgeoning retirement accounts and home equity and children if they want them. I like to imagine dance artists well-known and respected and they never have to pay for a drink when they go out in their hometown. I like to imagine overhearing in the bathroom of a theater, ooh, I’ve never heard of this artist, I can’t wait to see what this is going to be like. I like to imagine multi-year general operating support grants from funders who really get it. Funders are like, tell me your biggest, wildest idea. I like to imagine audience members’ dreams running wild and tripping over themselves and going places they’ve never been before because they see something on a stage that connects different synapses than have been in touch before. I think we could practice breathing together and being together more, and figuring out how to get more people into that breath. No one goes to see The Nutcracker anymore, but it is popular to take children to the theater to see dance so they can practice non-linear thinking.