The Relationship Between Perception and Value of Dance

Kennedy Ward: This is Ken, your resident dancer and dance administrator with See Chicago Dance. Craftsmanship, choice and sweat. That's how I see dance in its most earnest. In the untranslatable carriage of the body, in arousing touches of eye contact, and in those poor, tireless sinews hitting that motif for the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th time. I see dance and I am entertained, I am overjoyed, I am moved for the billionth time. I see dance, I take dance, I do dance, so listener please understand I am biased. Your narrator is me, Kennedy; I have been moving and grooving for as long as I can remember, I went to school for it, and by most standards I am a professional. I am also an administrator with See Chicago Dance, your local dance nonprofit. So, as a lifer in the dance community, I’m here to chat with you about major points arising in this study.

So we know, dance is invaluable, it has existed some 10,000 years and may perhaps last another 10 more. The meat of how to see dance last another 10,000 years is in regarding the value of dancers. Specifically, we're looking at the internal and external forces that perceive dancers and then decide their value. As we're about to hear, these perceptions are often grandfathered in and disproportionately affect artists of color and artists without ample resources to decline inappropriate offers.

Please keep in mind that these 5 dancers represent pieces of not only their communities but also the histories they've inherited. We’re starting todays episode with Simone, a company member of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago whose story illuminates a common barrier, and what it takes to deconstruct it, within the already competitive space of seeking sustainable performance opportunities.

Simone Stevens: Hubbard posted auditions in December 2020, and I signed up for those auditions because prior I had auditioned for Hubbard, but there was a whole process of where you have to send your resume and send the videos and all of that. But the year that Linda actually took over, the audition process was different in that you just signed up.

Kennedy Ward: Linda, whom Simone mentions, is Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell, currently Artistic Director of Hubbard and formerly a principal dancer with both Hubbard Street and the Alvin Ailey Dance Company. Linda arrived at Hubbard St in 2021 and within her first year as Artistic Director, Linda used her power to alter the audition process, increasing opportunities of equity to all interested dancers.

Simone Stevens: We auditioned on Zoom, so there wasn't the requirement for your CV and your resume and all of that beforehand. That all came after the fact. So we did the audition on Zoom, then we submitted everything, did our letters of rec, and all of that. And then we had interviews, and then I got into the company in March of 2021.

There are so many elements that go into saying yes to bringing someone into a space. You do want to know who they are, what they're about, maybe what they've studied before and everything. But I think there's something just about the order of seeing someone on paper and deciding if that's something that you want to welcome into this space versus seeing them and being like, oh, maybe I'm interested in this person. And then getting more information. I think that order makes more sense to me and I think is more accessible for a lot of people. I was very excited and very proud of the work that I did in my school, and I think the information that I was given was and still is so useful to who I am today and very much so a part of my artistry.

So even if there is the looking at a paper to determine what someone could be about, I think you're losing a lot of clarity and you're making a lot of assumption also about who a person is just because of where they went—and then sometimes even where they went, you also don't understand how they got there or maybe what opportunities were predisposed them or even, just like, everyones journey is different.

And so just by default seeing a name on paper or seeing a location on paper, and having that be the deciding factor, I think that just limits, for one, diversity, and that also can shy people away from wanting to pursue certain companies or certain areas of work if they're seeing that they're only choosing the same people or they're only viewing people from specific places.

On paper, I was like, not many people know my school. So yeah, I appreciated the order where it was just like, “If you want to audition, we're open to seeing you". And then from there we'll get into more of who you are. The interview also with Linda was very much, “So why do you want to be here? What specifically about being here is it that you want? What brought you to this place in the first place?” And things like that.

So it wasn't even like, “Who have you studied from?” It was less of proving anything, just more like, “Who are you as a person?” And I think that when you show it on paper first, it does feel like you're having to prove why you can get into the room. And then if you don't get into the room, then you feel like you have to add more to that paper in a way. So yeah, the reverse was helpful.

It very much so has to do with who is in the front of the room and who you're bringing into the space. When Linda became the artistic director, having a black female at the front of the room, that changes, that shifts things. That will, by default, just kind of shift what kind of work we're doing. Because she has her own experiences as a professional dancer. She has her own values that are, like, shared within the company, but she also has her own experience within that. And also to bring from her 20 plus years when she was dancing, things that she valued or maybe didn't necessarily appreciate—shifting that now that she's in a different position.

Kennedy Ward: Assurance and security is uniquely untethered to the health of the community as a whole. Here's a bit of data from the survey conducted two years ago.

Of the 144 dancers surveyed in 2022, 41 (just 28%) identified as being a contracted dancer -full or part time- despite 54% of participants identifying as having more than a decade of professional experience.
This experience includes but is not limited to attending a performing arts high school, youth dance studio training, entering a college program or conservatory, taking part in summer dance intensives, studio experience as a professional, professional second company experience, as well as one-on-one training with a master or guru as most of our 54% noted.

To reiterate, this means out of 144 dancers surveyed, 103 were without the security of a contract despite having more than a decade of dense, embodied dance experience.

As we listen to Silvita, Devika and more, I ask you to notice how viable advocating for yourself and your community is? We have perseverance and hardiness in spades, but how could dancers sustain themselves and their work while being the voice, the action, the energy to decline injustice within the institution of inequity?

Silvita Diaz Brown: I've been assertive in letting people know that what I do is valuable, you know? And I feel that through different times in my career and in my journey as a dance artists, I have had different struggles, different teachers who undermined me. I think especially through my younger years as an artist. I believe that if I am supposed to be doing this, my work has value, and something will come out. There is always something that comes out.

Dancers are really hard workers you know?. We work with our bodies every day, so we're accustomed to “do the thing.” I see a lot of people working hard to do their passion. I wish we all could find a way to support each other more and make it more sustainable. We are the community and it has to start with us and how we value each other, how we support each other, how we embrace different types of dance and art and make it thrive.

Devika Dhir: I find that since I came back to dance as an adult and I'm maybe less impressionable, a little more set in my ways, I found it easier to stand up to elders within my own community about, for instance, not dancing for free you know, as an example. I find that some of my younger peers don't talk about that at all, or they would not push back. And I know that it leads to whispers about me sometimes, but it doesn't bother me because I think that it's important to address the fact that, like, in Desi, in Indian culture, a lot of times elders are just like, you don't go against them, or you just kind of go along to get along. And I think that in taking on this mindset of I should be compensated fairly for this talent or this work that I've done, it's really at odds with that mindset. And personally, I try to push back against that. I try to take back that power a little bit or normalize it in front of other dancers. So they'll be like, well, maybe it's okay for me to insist on getting paid to do this, even if it means that they'll be like, no, we don't have a budget for that. And I'll be like, okay, then I'm not signing on.

Kennedy Ward: Dancers like Devika, who are advocating for the equitable reimbursement of money in ratio to performance and skill, challenge the idea that internally, the spectacle of performing alone will feed the eager and devoted-to-the-craft dancer.

This inaccuracy creates a system that values the dance but not the dancer. Separating personhood from the person you want to contract, commission, or pull forward only honors what they can do for your stage.
Honoring the person along with what they can do for your stage can mean many things; food/housing support, designated marketing support, systems of growth and support, or even the ability to rest. Having one without the other, makes the scene unsustainable.

Let’s listen in on Jonathan and Mad Dog, who will share their perspectives on this.

Jonathan Pacheco: Part of my mission as a dancer is I want to raise the awareness and the understanding of what it is that I do as a Spanish dancer and of Spanish dance, and to raise the recognition for dancers like me of non-traditional dance forms, meaning non-traditional in the sense of concert, American dance, not ballet, not contemporary dance, but Spanish dance. I want to make a space for us, to be more recognized, to be more valued, to raise awareness of what it is that we do. And I think there's still a long way to go in that.

Dance is of the people. And again, taking it back to being a Spanish dancer, there's no truer quote than that for Spanish dance because Spanish dance literally was born of marginalized communities in Spain that used dance as a way to express their suffering, to express their religious and political persecution. They used their experiences as a people that were suffering to create Spanish dance and flamenco. So Spanish dance literally comes from the people.

I think we as dancers and choreographers and companies should also question of who it is they create dance for. And I think this is always a question of why do you dance or why do you do what it is that you do? Some people could say they dance for themselves right? They dance because it's their passion. They dance because it makes them happy. They dance because it's their love. They feel free when they dance, they enjoy it. But if I'm going to perform in a theater and charge a ticket price, in my opinion, it cannot just be about myself. It needs to be about the audience. They need to come and feel something, experience something, feel moved. And to me that is theater. It is the exchange between the performer and the audience. That is why it is I perform.

Mad Dog: When the media got that first whiff of it, they just wanted more of it and they kind of created issues within that community that created elitism, which was already there, but not on the level that the media perpetuated it to. The media just wanted more of it. Like, we was on every news channel, we was in all the newspapers. And when Footwork Kings came, it kind of took it even to a higher level where we are dancing at the San Francisco Hip Hop Festival, we are dancing at Ellen, we on Verizon Wireless commercial, we doing Rolling Stones, we doing everything you can imagine. But it's only a few people that's doing this, and it kind of isolated the rest of the community.

I think where it really took its turn was in 2009 when we go to America's Got Talent and we book the Madonna tour. Now the footwork community is even more hungry than ever. So any event that we are promoting or doing or wherever we're at, the whole footwork community because it's an opportunity now, it's almost like getting drafted by the NBA. Now they don't know how much money we're getting. In reality, we are not really getting any money. So all the press, all the magazines, we ain't getting no money for none of this. Going to 106 & Park twice — we paid to be there. We had to pay all flights. We slept in the airport. But how it's being promoted and pushed on the media platform, it looked like we winning. And really we still hungry you know, we still figuring it out. And they don't know that, but they want an opportunity to be in that same position. And so when we was Footwork Kings, what we should have did was shared all the information, shared all the curriculum, shared all the resources that we had at that time, we should have just shared it. And by the time we realized that, we had broken up — half the group moved to LA, another half stayed in Chicago.

Kennedy Ward: I want to remind us that the 5 dancers we’ve heard from today are unique individuals, and masterful of what they do, but their experiences are shared. The disparities, the systems that depreciate and erode are common. And from the vulnerability that they’ve shared with us, we can find strength, commonality, and therefore community.

There is honor and beauty and a deep, richness that can be found in generating pathways outside of traditional value systems; BUT a system that depends on the obfuscation of security, of compensation, of the value of the people doing the work is no system at all. The desire to grow was heard, to be within a community that supports your growth, to be sustained, to have longevity, understanding, clarity, access was heard.

And this future is not far.

Simone Stevens: Even though now I am in primarily a performance-based aspect of the art, this isn't necessarily where I have to stay. I have to continually reassess what it is that I'm valuing and what it is that I hope to carry out. Seeing how they can align or how I can produce those ideas in as many ways as possible so that I'm not just relying on one way to complete the art. That I'm able to make sure that I am constantly reimagining and also constantly invigorated. I guess that I'm not just staying stagnant in what I'm doing because I'm like, “Oh, I made it to the place that I thought I was going to be.” It's very much like, “Okay, so then how are we going to continue evolving from here?”

Kennedy Ward: A question I’ll leave you with is “How can we generate greater space to have all these things, BE all these things while holding accountable the powers that continue to stagnate progress?” In our next episode, we’ll hear firsthand accounts of the barricades dancers face in pursuit of their careers.