Kate Mattingly on Gender and Performance in Dancer's Group
DE Kate Mattingly (TDPS) interviewed six performers on gender and performance for Dancer's Group, which serves San Francisco Bay Area artists, the dance community, and audiences through the promotion of the visibility and viability of dance. After January comments by Akram Kham about women in the dance world, the organization sought to examine the topic further, particularly through questions over access and opportunity for women in dance in the Bay area. By speaking to six artists about opportunities and obstacles they’ve experienced in their careers as choreographers, dancers, and directors, Kate's publication sheds light on this important issue.
From the article:
This article also seeks productive dialogue by asking questions about access to opportunities for Bay Area artists. In March I interviewed six people, then transcribed our conversations and sent this writing to each artist to select a “statement,” which is printed below. By retaining the artists’ voices I aim to dismantle a pattern of writers speaking for dancers and choreographers. Each artist exposes how overlapping identity-markers inflect artists’ creations as well as access to funding and commissions. They draw examples from dance worlds, presidential campaigns, and entertainment sectors to show the importance of recognizing women’s work. The Bay Area, with its history of presenting socially conscious work, is also home to major matriarchs of dance: Ruth Beckford, Blanche Brown, Lily Cai, Naomi Diouf, Joanna Haigood, Anna Halprin, Margaret Jenkins, Krissy Keefer, Mythili Kumar, Sara Shelton Mann, Micaya, Rosa Montoya, Judy Smith, Deborah Vaughn, and Brenda Way, to name a few. The artists’ statements that follow describe how a next generation is negotiating ways to make work in the Bay Area.
Read the full article here: http://dancersgroup.org/2016/05/on-gender-and-performance-6-statements/
Photo credit: By Lambtron (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons