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Lane CzaplinskiDance in the Wind: Producing Performance When No One Cares This image of two unitard-clad Merce Cunningham dancers at the center of the Wexner Center’s Jan/Feb 2020 calendar provides an interesting point of departure for considering how performance operates within different institutional contexts.In October 1996, a few years into my first arts gig working for a university performance series in Lawrence, KS, we presented a mixed rep featuring this same company of unitard dancers. The audience response was somewhat ambivalent about the choreography but the Cage and Cage-like sound compositions—literally amplified popcorn kernels falling into a can—drove everyone batty.A recent documentary film, Cunningham (Alla Kovgan, 2019), which the calendar image promotes, considers how touring for the company in the U.S. was mostly limited to universities, where critics and audiences were aware of Merce’s reputation and his collaborations with prominent visual artists but mostly had disdain for the work. I think this is why I cringed when I saw the calendar image. As someone who has spent the better part of 25 years working within performing arts organizations with collective histories that are all tied to Merce, I understand that those unitards can be a modern dance nightmare for many people. They symbolize something quintessentially performative that has largely been created for and experienced in concert halls and theaters, and as a result, it’s a pursuit that is often taken less seriously by the visual art world even as it’s being included there more than ever before. My concern is what this sentiment means for systems of support that allow performative works to be created and produced, especially inside of visual art contexts. Curation has a way of overemphasizing choice making and explicating frameworks that sometimes seem contrary to embracing the unknown and the possibility of failure that is inherent when creating something new. One of the main reasons I chose to work at the Wexner Center almost three years ago was to learn more about such dynamics and to better challenge them from within a multidisciplinary institutional context. As a non-collecting, kunsthalle style, contemporary organization operating in a university setting, the center already has an impressive legacy of supporting the creation and development of new performance works. It has given substantial commissions and technical residencies to choreographers and theater directors before this was the norm for performance organizations. It even awarded the Wexner Prize to both Cunningham and Cage in 1993. Still, I think there is a tremendous opportunity to rethink the life cycle of artworks, performative and otherwise, to both create a culture more conducive to supporting the development of new works and ways of providing better access to them. Cultural spaces—galleries and theaters alike—are really just kinds of technologies that allow artists to transmit their creative expressions so they can be received by others. But even as an ecosystem of institutions, there are not enough nodes to provide inclusive access, something that is only exacerbated by other systemic barriers to participation. This is one of the reasons in 2010 I helped found , an online platform for the distribution and study of contemporary performance. In this regard, I’m excited to be working with my colleagues at the center to evolve how relationships with artists are formed and developed over time; how the full resources of an institution can support and animate the creative process; how art can be facilitated, championed and critiqued through multiple perspectives; and how sensual, in-person experiences can be augmented through digital technologies. I’m interested in how producing can be a kind of acquisition strategy and how curating can expand and decentralize to provide greater access and understanding. Our work with the artist Jaamil Olawale Kosoko provides an example of how we’re grappling with these strategies. Our relationship with Jaamil started with a presentation of Seancers in 2018 that included performances for the public as well as teenagers through the center’s Education Department. Over the past year we’ve provided commissioning support and residencies in our Film/Video Studio towards the development of his next project, Chameleon: A Biomythography. The work will include an album, short film, podcast and a book of critical writing as well as a presentation of the performance next season, when Jaamil will be a featured artist-in-residence. Our intention is to create a suite of digital content around these different facets of the project that will be available on our website. Finally, during Fall of 2021, Jaamil will curate a festival entitled Between Starshine and Clay featuring solo artists of color whose work centers on race, sexuality and gender.When I worked at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a colleague asked a question about Philip Glass. If he were to drive up to the steps of the Opera House in his taxi (Philip famously worked as a cab driver) in the present moment, would the institution welcome him inside the same way it had at an earlier time? It’s a good question and gets at why I’m interested in providing support to artists like Jaamil, who are working in an interdisciplinary, experimental fashion. I wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for Merce, who basically defined the field. The test remains—would I be of much use if Merce showed up in his unitard today? ................
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