wage theft in the Flirt Lounge
I was traveling last week, so here are a few items of interest that caught my attention over the last couple of weeks. Hope you are enjoying the full swing of fall wherever you are...
A quick history of Philadelphia dance
Megan Bridge is going to be writing about dance for Artblog and offers a grounding essay with some Philadelphia dance history as an entry point into future coverage. She carefully explains terms for anyone who might be coming in new to the field, but the quick and accessible history lesson connects some dots for people who have been here for a while too. With interview material from David Brick, Terry Fox, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Zornitsa Stoyanova, Lois Welk, and Rennie Harris, the essay identifies some threads running through that history: multivalence, multidisciplinarity, and collective collaboration. The essay is titled "Lines of flight: Experimental Dance in Philadelphia, 1968-2000; the first chapter of a biased history," and I hope there are more chapters to read soon.
Chippendales unionizing
Philadelphia labor journalist Kim Kelly has this important story about the Chippendales unionizing in Las Vegas. Kelly reports that they get paid about $100 per show, which is uhh.... not great, but then it gets so much worse:
The show itself lasts 80 minutes, and then the performers are required to take photos with audience members afterward. Since the Rio is a casino, tips are not allowed, but guests are charged $35 a photo and encouraged to view it as a token of appreciation for the workers. Of the $35, the performers receive 50 cents. Then, after all that, the Chippendales must spend at least 15 minutes in the theater’s Flirt Lounge bar interacting with guests — "that means signing photos, talking and hugging, photos" — for no additional pay.
The performers receive 50 cents of the $35 fee!? No additional pay for mandatory hang outs in the Flirt Lounge?! Unpaid rehearsals unless they exceed 15 hours a week?! Oh hell yes these workers need a union. Hopefully Actors' Equity can help them get some better conditions.
Double book drop
Excited to check out two new books centered on dance critic and lesbian feminist Jill Johnston, both out from Duke University Press later this month. Jill Johnston in Motion: Dance, Writing, and Lesbian Life is a biography written by Clare Croft, who I always find to be wonderfully readable. The other is a reader edited by Croft, The Essential Jill Johnston Reader, after she realized that much of Johnston's writing was out of print and inaccessible. Johnston covered dance for the Village Voice in the '60s and this is dance criticism that gleefully sprawls into other genres and never pretends that it doesn't include the writer and her own body. Croft explains in a recent interview with the Brooklyn Rail:
She is offering us a pathway to a lesbian feminist and queer future, and to note that the roadmap for that radical aesthetic and political agenda showed up in a newspaper in the late sixties and early seventies is just unbelievably exciting to me.
Sign me up for that roadmap and let's go!
Sisterly Affection
Spotted this handsome friend in South Philly. Love the way he is sticking out his adorable tongue and the simultaneous advocacy for voter registration - vote.pa.gov.
I'm heading to the Edges of Ailey exhibit at the Whitney Museum, so I'll have a little report back next week...
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