Brought to
you by
the New
York manufacturer of fine dance apparel for women and girls. Click
here to see a sample of our products and a list of web sites
for purchasing.
With Body Wrappers it's always performance
at its best.
Go back to Flash Reviews
Go
Home
Flash View, 3-8: This
Year's Space Odyssey
You've Been Dot.commed. What Now?
By Veronica Dittman
Copyright 2001 Veronica Dittman
Let's review. In the
past 18 months, at least ten dance studios available for rental
at $10-$15 per hour have closed their doors. Many of them (Soundance,
Free Range Arts, Pentacle, Context, Dance Space Center, and 550
Broadway Dance) were located in tony downtown Manhattan neighborhoods
and were forced to close because their rents were raised out of
range or they just plain lost their leases. Only Dance Space has
been able to reopen a studio. As it was so pithily stated at 550
Broadway, "We've been dot-commed."
Ideally, the mayor would
have been aware of this trend and understood its broad implications
for the dance world and the cultural stock of New York. He would
have recognized how crucial this affordable rehearsal space is to
dancemaking. To create a dance you need at the very least dancers,
space, and time (don't start with cyber or virtual anything, please);
a lack of space effectively chokes the creative process. To make
matter worse, everyone (from mid-size companies with budgets and
touring to self-producing newcomers) is competing for the same limited
space; only the Cunninghams, Taylors, and Limons of the world have
their own studios. The loss of more than ten sources of this vital
commodity creates nothing short of a crisis in New York's dance
world.
This hypothetical arts-savvy
mayor would have been particularly sensitive to the smallest fish
in the modern dance pond, those still paying their production bills
one at a time out-of-pocket and auditioning for showcases, trying
to get noticed. These dancers and choreographers are trying to make
work in addition to holding down jobs that will both pay an astronomic
New York rent and allow time for training ($12-$15 per class) and
rehearsal.
Why pay attention to
the small fry? This mayor would recognize that modern choreographers
are not incubated in an academy; they're the dance equivalent of
garage bands, not string quartets (this is a limited analogy, and
there is no disrespect intended). Trisha Brown, Mark Morris, and
Twyla Tharp all came up from this environment of creating new structures
and rules, of invention from the ground up; they were the small
fry of the '60s and '70s. As such, the mayor would want to make
sure that the next Brown, Morris, and Tharp have, at the very least,
a garage -- the space necessary to explore and develop their choreographic
voices. This fictional mayor needn't even appreciate what they're
doing or give a damn about dance. He need only recognize that Brown,
Morris, and Tharp are New York City cultural resources and tourist
attractions in the same way the Yankees, the Guggenheim, and the
Empire State Building are. Even if he had only mercenary interests,
he would bend over backwards to ensure their creative well-being
and that of their heirs in this city.
So Rudy Guiliani is not
our ideal mayor. If he were, he would have fought like hell to help
the Joffrey Ballet resolve their financial difficulties and stay
in New York. But the contrast between an ideal and the actual climate
for the arts here in the "dance capital of the U.S." reveals how
dancers have been placed in a lose-lose situation with respect to
our physical environment, the city. On the one hand, we are so strapped
for resources that we are unable to secure homes for ourselves.
But then, we are culturally aligned with our generally educated
and upper-class audience to the extent that when we seek work-space
in unfashionable neighborhoods we can actually afford, we create
tremendous potential for culture-clash.
****** Consider first
that we've been pretty much priced out of lower Manhattan, an actual
place so important to our field that "downtown modern dance" refers
to a recognizable aesthetic. So what? we say defiantly. We're creative
by definition; with the loss of so much arts funding in the past
decade we've learned to survive on pennies and good wishes. The
world is full of spaces big enough to dance in, and we are innovative
and hard-working enough to make them danceable. Given the New York
real estate market, this means decentralization. Brown has found
a place in midtown, but this decentralization is leading most dancers
to Brooklyn. To name only a few, Tharp is taking up residence at
the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Fort Greene, Brooklyn
and Morris is building a home a half-mile down the road. Morris,
quoted in the Winter 2000 issue of The Hill, says, "We want to subsidize
our operation so we can rent our studios out for a dirt-cheap cost
so other people can use them. Maybe up to $15 an hour, not the $60
we pay in Manhattan." (He also posits that "Pina Bausch may rehearse
there, or Donald Byrd, and I'm happy to help." Presumably he's also
happy to help those without an international reputation.) The Brooklyn
Arts Exchange (BAX) is now offering $9/hour rehearsal space in the
BAX Annex, formerly the American Can Factory. The big success story
is Williamsburg Art Nexus (WAX), the performance space where Marisa
Beatty, Brian Brooks, Melissa Rodnon, and David Tirosh, all performers,
have spent close to $80,000 saved and borrowed dollars on renting
and renovating the space. In case anyone needs statistical evidence
of the space crisis in New York, WAX is booked for rehearsals twelve
hours a day, seven days a week, with performances every weekend,
through July, having expended zero advertising to promote the space.
All of these are examples
of smart dance people finding alternative spaces. The second part
of the challenge is securing the space against the possibility of
being dot-commed out of your home ten years from now. Part of the
trauma of the spaces lost in the past year was the feeling of being
uprooted; we who danced at 550 Broadway harbored the unconscious
illusion that it was a home, a safe place. The jolt into consciousness
was the realization that it was just a fragile lease. In order not
to suffer that ordeal again, the clearest solution is to own the
place. Are you laughing bitterly? Sure, Mark Morris can do it, but
to most everyone else struggling with daily expenses, buying property
is out of the question. Worse than that, because most dancers and
choreographers require all their energy just to handle day-to-day
expenses, we don't even IMAGINE planning for the long-term.
That would probably be
a good first step, to at least have it somewhere in our brains that
although rehearsal scheduling and medical expenses and grant deadlines
and the crappy day job and that amazing dance consume our thoughts,
all of that yields only short-term results. Without even broaching
the topic of retirement (ha ha again), we must find a few brain
cells we can devote to long-term planning. And if we can imagine
something long-term and stable in our dancing lives, can we make
it happen? I think it's possible. We have all poured so much money
into space rental; we could possibly save a little ahead. We could
possibly borrow. Like-minded dancers and choreographers could possibly
pool together and invest in a space. The gang at WAX has a five-year
lease; imagine what they could do with an option to buy.
It's also helpful to
know that most of us are categorized as low- to moderate-income,
which makes us eligible for programs designed to help. It takes
a little research and requires thinking like an entrepreneur, but
neither is really so painful. For instance, microloans of up to
$25,000 are available to start up small businesses, but you must
have a business plan and a decent credit history. There are small
trickle-up grants available for low-income entrepreneurs. In areas
that are trying to encourage economic development, local credit
unions and banks sometimes have programs that will match your savings
with a grant toward your business if you live or locate your business
in the area.
It's futile to point
out that if the city had subsidized space for dance, this wouldn't
be so incredibly difficult, but it is worth noting that subsidized
space could help prevent the clashes that occur when we are forced
to scout for unconventional spaces. Traditionally, artists have
been the "pioneers" of gentrification, the improvement of a neighborhood
to the extent that it becomes so desirable that long-term residents
are priced out of their homes. By positioning artists as beggars
on the fringe of normal, hard-working America in a way that no other
self-respecting developed nation does, society gives us a unique
dilemma. We need space to make work the way most people need water
to drink and we can't afford it in "nice" neighborhoods, so we create
homes for ourselves in neighborhoods considered less desirable.
The trouble is, our presence in these less desirable neighborhoods
illuminates their potential; others see what they COULD be (hipper!
whiter!) and come like settlers heading west to tame the wilderness.
And the settlers have the financial means to displace the neighborhoods'
existing residents, including us. While our arrival in a neighborhood
heralds an era of displacement for the low-income residents there,
we are vulnerable to that same displacement as long as we remain
unable to own property outright. Our challenge is incredibly tricky:
We must both struggle for survival in an arts-hostile environment
and remain mindful of the population that has even less than we
do. Although we may feel like paupers in the new economy, by virtue
of our education and creativity we have choices and power that many
people in the U.S. don't.
True, we didn't cause
the decline in manufacturing in Brooklyn that resulted in a vacant
American Can Factory, and Williamsburg and Fort Greene residents
have been experiencing displacement pressures for years. However,
it's a nasty companion truth that many owners of industrial spaces
(read: mouthwateringly spacious lofts) in Williamsburg and adjacent
neighborhoods will sooner rent to artists (for living or working,
legally or otherwise) than to actual manufacturers because we will
pay more per square foot and cause less wear on the building. And
here's another unpleasant rock and hard place: the BAM Local Development
Corporation (LDC) seeks to create a cultural district around the
Brooklyn Academy of Music including live- and work-spaces for artists.
It is actually garnering support from the city and state for the
project. However, now it must contend with outcry from local, primarily
minority artists who feel themselves frozen out of a funding mother
lode that favors an avant-garde, white, Manhattan aesthetic. For
the most part we embody that aesthetic and when we go to non-white,
non-Manhattan neighborhoods, discord follows.
On a small scale, immediate
level we can be conscious of and responsible about how our presence
affects the neighborhood. For instance, Mark Morris, again in the
Winter 2000 issue of The Hill, says that he wants his space to have
a dancing school that offers "ballroom dancing, folk dancing, or
Afro-Haitian. I want a big, wide variety of classes..." and acknowledges
the "very interesting and lively Caribbean population" in the neighborhood.
Tharp's residency at the Lafayette Presbyterian Church is being
sponsored by the BAM LDC, which allows Tharp to rent the space for
a relative pittance, but in turn the BAM LDC will make urgently
needed repairs to the Church.
These are small steps
we can take to begin to address the inequalities that exist here,
but the big picture looks bleak. In a recent e-mail commentary,
Paul Ben-Itzak linked dance and politics almost apologetically,
but I think it's necessary and maybe even urgent that dancers and
choreographers become involved in the political. On one level this
means informing ourselves, participating in every election and hearing
where decisions are being made, but it ultimately may mean "questioning
the system." I'm out of my league here (what am I questioning? The
Republican party? Capitalism?) but the deck seems so hopelessly
stacked against so many people, I can't help but suspect that something
is rotten about the game itself.
Veronica Dittman is a
dancer who lives in Brooklyn. She also teaches, produces "The Industrial
Valley Celebrity Hour" with Faith Pilger, and is attempting to home-school
herself in urban planning.
Go
back to Flash Reviews
Go Home
|