Rehearsal for shock

Hello! I know we're all up in arms about nonsense at the Kennedy Center and changes at the National Endowment for the Arts, and I have a few opinions too, but for this week, just keeping it mostly local.

BigKid spotlight

Last week I got to drop by a dance intensive led by movement collective BigKid Dance. Founded in 2021 by Mark Caserta, BigKid’s mission is to “to create mindful, thoughtful, queer dance works.” The week was marked by chaos and uncertainty, but when I dipped into a dance studio at Bok (usually a home for Amy Novinski and her body-positive ballet classes), it felt like a calm, green oasis in the storm. Another part of the group’s mission is “to create a safe, healing space for artists to flourish,” and that was the vibe emanating from the room. Mark explained that they are creating a “non-competitive, safe place to try things.” The intensive started over zoom during the pandemic, and the one this winter was the sixth for the group.

Mark was formerly an artist-in-residence at UArts and many of the group members are recent graduates of UArts or have other ties to the program. When the intensive moved from zoom to in-person, they were able to use space at UArts. While these facile and gorgeous young dancers are adapting and finding new opportunities and spaces, I couldn’t help but think that UArts closing in the abrupt way it did was kind of an early, local rehearsal in shock for those of us in the Philly arts world. Something previously unimaginable happened and no one was able to stop it. Something we thought relatively stable and solid turns out to be as ephemeral as a dance. UArts closed in the blink of an eye last year, USAID and its 10,000 jobs gone this week, who knows what institutions will be shuttered next week?

But let’s go back to the oasis for a bit, live plants lining one wall of the studio, the dancers adept as thieves in the night, stealthy in oversized sweatshirts and socks, precise and casual at the same time. I watched a series of duets, Mark gently coaching the dancers, his own long limbs expertly deployed, a knee or an elbow suddenly emerging out of the blue. There was a sense of rightness and ease, even as corrections were offered, like every dancer was in the exact right place for the moment, and no one wanted to be anywhere else. As chaos continues and queer and trans rights come under fire, I hope we can build and hold strength from green spaces of renewal that BigKid Dance and their friends are creating.

UArts faculty update

In other UArts-related news, I was glad to see this reporting from Billy Penn, "Where are UArts staff members eight months later?," particularly because it includes an update from Donna Faye Burchfield and the School of Dance. The UArts program has partially relocated to Bennington College in Vermont, and it sounds like it's sort of working, for some students and faculty. I appreciate the lack of sugar-coating from Donna Faye about the situation, "Despite these adaptations, she said the situation was still 'horrible' and left many without answers. 'Resilience is so necessary,' she said. 'We live in a world that kind of demands that we figure out how to keep going and I’m just thankful to the faculty who’ve joined in on this effort to try to hold something together that we believed in so deeply.'

UArts property update

And despite a bid from the Lantern Theater Company to buy the Arts Bank at auction and keep that important venue in the arts community, the property was sold to a developer. As the Lantern put it in a lawsuit to try to block the sale, “The loss of the Arts Bank will be a blow to the performing arts in Philadelphia and for the Avenue of the Arts,” the nonprofit said. Basic and true.

This article from WHYY explains that, "The attorney general argued that because the acquisition and development of the Arts Bank was funded by grants from the William Penn Foundation totaling $6.3 million in the 1990s and that the venue was supported for charitable purposes then it should not be sold to a for-profit developer. But the bankruptcy court judge overruled the state." Seems like a solid line of argument to me, and it's a crying shame that we'll lose a venue in the heart of the city.

Dance Studies Association webinars

The Dance Studies Association is hosting a series of three webinars that look to be extremely timely and potentially helpful. You can drop in to one for $20 each, or become a DSA member for the year for $35 and then all sessions are free. Registration seems most straightforward via DSA's instagram. (I'll be going to "Arts Presenters as Allies"; if you go to either of the other two, let me know how it is! h/t to Jaamil Kosoko for sharing this info.)

Sisterly Affection (a bit of Philadelphia appreciation)

Overalls are complete! Let's go Birds! When my great-grandfather was sewing this quilt in Louisiana when he was 8 or 9, could he have guessed that his future great-granddaughter would be cutting it up and repurposing so that she could wear it to watch a football game? It seems unlikely. We don't know where our efforts will end up or what consequences they'll lead to. Let's try a bunch of things! Let's throw some sand in the machine! Let's fight some good fights even if they seem like lost causes! We don't know what could be found if we don't try.