Cynthia Oliver, Abby Zbikowski, Ollie Watts Davi... (Completed 10/09/20)
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Tamara:I really want to open this conversation by talking about, as we all know, the pandemic has had a devastating impact on the arts. It's been, as Ollie will talk about, there's been a double pandemic going on that I know that Ollie will discuss to with us. I want to invite each of you to talk to us a little bit about, first, the pragmatics of how that has affected you. How this current state of affairs has affected you so if you can bring us from where you were at the outset through the summer to how your functioning now both as artists and [inaudible 00:00:53]. I think that would be really wonderful as a way for us to start this conversation. So Abby, let me ask you to speak first and then we can take it from there.
Abby:
Okay, cool. How I tell this varies from day to day because my emotions really vary from day to day because information varies from day to day and that has continued to shade how I feel about everything that's going on. I was supposed to premier a new work with 10 dancers and a bunch of collaborators the week that New York City went into lockdown at New York Live Arts in New York. After that we were supposed to tour to Chicago and then Princeton and then D.C. and then the American Dance Festival and then OSU and then Europe and none of that happened.
Abby:
Hopefully it will all happen at some point but we were literally going into tech week so we put all of our eggs in that basket of like, we're going to have a show and the show never happened so we are on pause and it was like the light switch got stuck on because going into a show that you worked like 3 or 4 years to make and research, you're like is this going to work? And I'm still in that question, is this going to actually work because it hasn't seen it's day in front of people. It is quite rigorous and the more that we know about the virus, the more it's like, yes, it's surfaces but it's so much respiratory droplets are the issue. The question is... Plans are changing week to week because presenters are on an upswing of optimism and then they're defeated again and we're all defeated. And then there's another upswing of optimism with contingency plans and then it's on the low end.
Abby:
I've tried to make a lot of contingency plans of having the works. I originally wanted to have the work performed not in a theater but that's too expensive, typically, but that was going to be possibly the only way for the work to be performed in New York or elsewhere. Right now people are saying it's actually going to be too expensive to do it outside even so there's a lot of questions about the future of this work or any work that has a real big ensemble cast to it in terms of the live ness. Even right now I'm trying to plan a residency with my company at New York Live Arts and they have really strict rules that if you're coming from any of the cities on New York City's travel list you have to quarantine for two weeks before they let you in the building regardless of having a negative COVID test. I don't have three weeks and Illinois is on the list of people who need to quarantine in New York City and I don't think that's going to go away any time soon.
Abby:
So right now it's the contingency of I really don't want to work on Zoom anymore. I've tried to keep my company connected and together on Zoom and use it as an opportunity to get inside the work in a different way but I think I'm fatigued and the work is going to need to be restructured and I need to start doing that with bodies. Nobody has canceled. It's actually like some days you just laugh on the phone with presenters to not cry because it's just like I don't know. At first, I didn't have any feelings
Cynthia Oliver, Abby Zbikowski, Ollie Watts Davi... (Completed 10/09/20)
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because it was like nobody I know is dying, nobody I know has been affected and the world is inshambles with everything happening with all the uncovering of the racial injustice and everything on top of COVID that's been happening.
Abby:
I think I was numb to everything until recently I realized I don't know if I have enough money to keep this piece going. Once we can get back together it's going to be like fundraising from scratch. I guess there's potential an opportunity to rediscover but I feel different from day to day about what the future is really going to be for this work or any live work. It's about community and my process and so, there's a larger cast intentionally. It's unclear when things will pick up again.
Tamara:
Abby, could you speak briefly to your role in the classroom as a instructor. What you're doing with your students. How this has impacted what's happened here.
Abby:
Yeah, I feel like I've had to restructure how I teach and then also what I teach like taking the energy that would go outward through space because when we're indoors we're not supposed to travel and so, how do you take that same effort and labor and physicality into a 6 foot square. I feel like I'm learning how to teach again and it is daunting. I'm in a place where I feel like the last couple weeks have been better but I felt on a low. I'm very depressed today I guess. I'm just being very realistic about I felt not good about teaching, what I was doing. The intention of it, I was always behind the intention of it, we have to persevere but at a certain point with dance teaching hybrid, that is a thing that I am still trying to... How do I teach people in person and on the screen at the same time? That is a technique that I am continuing to refine and figure out for the first time.
Tamara:
Maybe, Ollie, I'm going to throw up an image of you teaching... Thank you Abby... your students because I think this question of how do we continue this work, not just of the performance part of it, but also the instruction part of it, for all of these young people who want to be performers, artists, dancers, singers. Maybe you can address that as well, Ollie. I'm going to share my screen here with an image of Ollie. Here we go. You guys can see that? Yeah? So Ollie, talk to us a little bit.
Ollie:
Okay, good afternoon everyone. I'm so glad you're here. This is a very important conversation. I'm really delighted to be a part of it. I just wanted to say before I start speaking about my work, I just want to say to Abby, I am convinced that you're making a great impact. Your heart comes through when you talk about your work. The clip that we saw was very inspiring and even though we're sheltered in and we're in COVID-19 pandemic, the true you is still there and it's coming through. I'm convinced. Take some time, take some rest and come back replenished and just be the Abby that you are.
Ollie:
Having said that, Wednesday March 11th I found myself in front of my favorite choir in the universe, the University of Illinois Black Chorus, and I had attended several meetings that day as a [inaudible 00:08:55] and we were talking about the pandemic and different initiatives that we would need to engage in for
Cynthia Oliver, Abby Zbikowski, Ollie Watts Davi... (Completed 10/09/20)
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the health and safety of our students and faculty. There were a lot of scenarios presented and being privy to some of those I felt tremendously privileged to have my students that night, those students in Black Chorus to basically prepare them in some way about what was to come.Ollie:
It's Wednesday, March 11th, it's our last rehearsal before the spring break. We're preparing for the Mom's Day concert and I have to at some point in the evening share with them that the Mom's Day concert, which is an annual event may not happen. So I elect to go into the rehearsal unlike I usually go in at this point in the semester. I decided that I would let them sing, sing their hearts out, enjoy
themselves, enjoy their music, their art. This music of Black Americans which is our navigational system that helps us deal with our existence in every plane so I elected to let them just sing. I had a student to videotape it because knowing a little but about what might happen, I thought that I would need this resource to roll out to them at pivotal moments when I thought they would need it. So I recorded them singing about 5 or 6 pieces.
Ollie:
After we get the videotape, I then had them sit and I began to tell them what was to come, how they should read the emails, every line, they're very important, important information would be shared with them. During this time, the emails started to come in, one student said, "Dr. Davis, the email is here on my phone" so we experienced that time together. Again, I'm so appreciative that I had those moments with them, so that we could live in this moment together. As a professor, I believe that my teaching is a performance art and I'm sure my colleagues agree and our performances are teaching arts. We are performing but we're teaching, so I had to really be enthusiastic and energetic, keep the energy in the room up while this email was being read.
Ollie:
I tell you the air just left the room and the questions started to come. I told them that they were prepared for this and while being sheltered in they would use this anchor that this music and this community experience had provided fOr them for them to learn new things and for them to be strengthened by the music and allow it to be strength for those who will need it in their families et cetera. Well, they believed me and I was happy about that and as the summer ensued... We finished the semester online with me doing synchronous lectures and I got to really know my students. Those of us who are conductors or choreographers or whatever, I'm so busy delivering the content, that sometimes I can't use the time to just have that conversation, but I got to know them. I was trying to find every silver lining in this new platform of delivering my content so I was like, this is great, I'm getting to know the students.
Ollie:
So that takes us up into the summer. I participated in the Online Teaching Academy because I wanted to be ready coming into the fall should we have to remain online. Those in my trade national organizations, the National Association of Teachers of Singing, the American Choral Directors Association, we were doing all kinds of tests to see just how aerosolization would affect us. Can we do our work when we return? Some really dismal information was given to us but I just knew that some way, some how we were going to make it and we were going to make it work. I want to also give kudos to a couple of my colleagues who were on some of those national panels and bought back information for us that we
Cynthia Oliver, Abby Zbikowski, Ollie Watts Davi... (Completed 10/09/20)
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could use. Then I was trying to learn every platform I could where we could have low latency so that we could sing together. I still haven't been effective there but we're making it happen.Ollie:
The picture that you saw is Black Chorus in person. I also have Black Chorus online because we are limited with the number of students that I can have in the space. We're there, not singing because I could only have a certain amount of students when we start singing. There's a specific number for when you're not singing and then there's another number when you start singing so it's been challenging. But I tell you what has informed me and inspired me, I guess, is trying to maintain what I call the signature of the work that I do and that is my relationship with the students. That's a signature piece. If I can
maintain the signature as my relationship with the students then I can effectively present the content. Ollie:
In addition to my teaching being affected by COVID, my own personal performances were affected. I had concerts canceled from March through the summer, conferences postponed. I've done several
presentations at festivals online, but as Abby has eluded to, it's very different than being in the space where you feel the rhythm and you're able to either affect the temperature, at least you know what the temperature is. It's been challenging to say the least. As Tamara eluded to earlier, I had a moment in June when we had all of this unrest happening in our country, these yet to be United States, and I was reminded that the pandemic that were experiencing with COVID, the novel Coronavirus, is one stream of challenge, but also there's a stream of challenge in my own personal community with this racism and different things that's happening there. So I think the pandemic has garnered the worlds attention casting light on inequity, further marginalization, and things like that.
Ollie:
And I know I had to personally, as an artist, pivot a little bit. I was planning a recording project of [inaudible 00:15:22], I wanted for my grandchildren. I have 3 beautiful grandchildren. I want them to know my work when they can really understand it even more so than now, but I had to pivot and not only use the music of Black Americans as a navigational tool and an anchor, but also the poetry. I had to go back and pull out some James Welden Johnson, and Langston Hughes and listen to James Baldwin over and over again to get some further understanding of where I was and where we are as a country. Ollie:
I will stop my comments by saying as we move forward, I am meeting with the students again, some in person, others online and we're preparing a project that will document our experience during this time, this pandemic. We have been invited to participate on the PBS special, American Portrait, so we have a producer who's following us around and students are keeping video diaries and they're talking about their experience during this time. We're excited about that and I'm excited that that'll be broadcast here locally on our WILL station and hopefully picked up by other affiliates. So thank you, I'll stop there. Tamara:
Thank you so much Ollie, and thank you so much for speaking so importantly to the value, the recourse to music, to poetry, to the arts as a practice and a place that sustains us and the importance of that at a time when we are collectively under so much devastation on a daily basis. I think that that's one of the challenges that you have as artists is the need both to be sustained by that but also to produce that
Cynthia Oliver, Abby Zbikowski, Ollie Watts Davi... (Completed 10/09/20)
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which is sustaining for others at the same time. Cynthia, let me turn to you and give you some time to speak.Cynthia:
Thank you, Tamara. There's so much to say and to respond to with both what Abby and Ollie had to offer. I am thinking about the key to my practice, a physical practice and to being a dancer. One of the questions, the ongoing conundrum for me is how do you reckon with a moment when we are supposed to be separate in a field where we are dependent on body to body contact? We are dependent on a relationship with an audience. How do we proceed? It's antithetical to my personal practice to be in a position where I can't have a room full of people moving together. I can't move in the community in the way that I have developed a practice over tens of years. So there's a fundamental conundrum that is at play there that I've been negotiating since this all started and I'll go back to early March.
Cynthia:
I was in North Carolina at Duke giving a talk for a conference with the Collegiate of African Diaspora Dance and ironically enough, I was questioning my belief in the whole diversity equity and inclusion movement in the academy, whether or not I believe it. There were a number of reasons that I was putting forward as to a reason for doubt about it, so I was in that community. It's a great community. I go there every other year, having a beautiful time. I'm so glad that happened before the pandemic hit. I left there, I went to the University of Maryland as a guest artist. I was setting a piece, actually a piece that I created on students here at the University of Illinois, Tether, that we performed in February Dance of 2019 and I was resetting it. It's always fun to reset something because you get a chance to look at it again, fiddle with it, make it better, anything that you didn't care for you can change, you can amplify and I had these amazing young women who were killing it. They brought a vibrancy, and energy and power and it was really exciting. And I left there. I actually had gotten sick while I was there. One of the dancers was ill and I did everything I possibly could to stay well and I got sick anyway. Who knew about aerosols then. That's probably why I got sick.
Cynthia:
I flew home and I was teaching... because I'm 50/50 with dance and Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation. I teach one course a semester in the dance department and my one course, in the spring, oddly enough, usually it's a physical practice course in the studio, this year it was a dance history course for the undergrads which I don't usually do but our head suggested I do that just to mic things up and to get the undergrads to know me a little better. We were having a great time.
Cynthia:
Half the course is online, so with the need to make that shift, it wasn't tremendously upsetting because we already had some mechanisms in ploce. But it was upsetting in the sense that the students suddenly were thrust into situations where they couldn't necessarily focus in the way they can on campus. They were at home. Some had to take care of siblings, some didn't have a private place to work, some had spotty internet, some only had their telephones to work on so inequity then really started to appear significantly. Negotiating that and the intimacy that this screen and this situation both presents and puts at a distance was something that I was grappling with.
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Then like my peers and colleagues were discussing I had keynote I was supposed to deliver in the U.K. There were other events that were supposed to happen that suddenly... At first people were saying, let's just hold on, we can do it maybe in October. And then on a weekly basis the things are changing.Cynthia:
So where I am now. I have retired from dancing. Retired from dancing, multiple times. And each of those times, something about dance has brought me back in a very different and more informed way. Now granted, in my 50's, I don't know that I want to imagine my body doing this in another way at this moment but I have challenged myself to try to figure out, as Abby is trying to do, what this means in a 10 by 10 foot square.How do I translate my values, my investment in community, my need to be in relationship with other people in a 10 by 10 foot square with a Madonna head mic and technology? I don't know. I don't know. I am faithful that something will come, a transition will happen, some kind of new discovery, but I don't yet know what it is and I do feel a bit distant from my practice in a way that I don't know that I've felt in a long time. I still feel physical. I walk every day miles but my relationship to my practice is something that I haven't yet calibrated.
Tamara:
Thank you so much Cynthia and all of you for sharing that. I think one of the things I'd like to ask you to think a little bit about, it's so important for us to hear your personal stories, your personal experience and that's where I asked you to start. I wondered if anyone would like speak to the politics of the support for the arts. Where that is now. Where we see it moving forward. What your hopes or concerns are about what the larger affect of this is going to be. Abby, you spoke briefly about running out of money, right? So when we talk about art, we talk about it as something which nourishes us, the creative aspect of it, how it functions for us as individuals, how it functions for our students, for our audiences, but there's a whole pragmatic part to it which is also really, really important and significant that has to do with economics. What makes it possible to be an artist in a public fashion and the political support that's required to make that possible and I wondered whether any of you might want to speak to that. Briefly.
Cynthia:
I could say a little bit. First of all, I am, and many of us are extraordinarily lucky to have an academic job at this particular moment. There were moments in my career when my peers who do not have positions in the academy thought I was crazy for making this move 20 years ago. I feel not justified, but reinforced by having made that decision. I'm grateful for it.
Tamara:
Uh oh. We've lost you. Are you all still there? We've lost Cynthia. Ollie:
I'm still here. Can you here me? Abby:
She tends to freeze.From faculty meetings, I know this. Tamara:
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Well, we'll hope that we can get Cynthia back. Abby would you like to speak to this or any other issue? Ollie:Well let me just speak this. I'll pick up a little bit with what Cynthia was saying. Having an academic appointment has been a gift because then I can really focus on my art and my contribution as an artist and not necessarily worry about where I'm going to lay my head or how I'm going to support my children or family. I'm really blessed to have a wonderful husband who has really promoted my art and supported me as well But the academy has been a blessing.
Ollie:
I would like to see the academy invest more in our young artists, our students and our young faculty. I think that we have a tremendous opportunity and I think this pandemic is as opportune as any
opportunity could be for us to pivot and focus on really our values, what we say is important, and really put support behind what's important. I think that the future generations are going to look back and see and evaluate what we did and what we found important during this time. I think that we have the opportunity to put first things first and I think the arts should be right up in front because we're the soul of the world. We're the spirit of the world. We nurture the health of the whole individual and I think it would be a wonderful thing if we could just find organizations but we have to start with what we can affect. We have to start with the university. We have to start with where we are and come together and encourage them in a way that is convincing that this is a time to really focus on what we offer.
Tamara:
Thank you. Thank you. Cynthia you made it back but now you're Jason. Nice to see you. Cynthia:
There are a few benefits to being married to the composer/sound guy. I'm sorry about that. I'm not sure what happened, but what I was about to relate to you all was that part of my job here that I've taken on has been advocating. I have always advocated when I had a chance to have a voice. Many year ago I taught at Bates Dance Festival in Maine and one of the things that they provided an advisory person there to offer advice about politics of the field, negotiating your relationships with various folks, how to think about finances and one of the things that this advisor at the time told me was that you have a Rolodex that people would die for. You've been in the field for many years, you have access to all of these people, movers and shakers in the field. Don't be shy about using it and at the time, as a young artist, I was shy about using it. I didn't want my relationships to be what these people who I really respected and loved could do for me. So I was hesitant to reach out to them for the gig, so to speak. But what it's provided for me at this particular moment was an opportunity for me to reach out an advocate for other people.
Cynthia:
From a position of security, temporary or not, because nothing is guaranteed, right, I reach out to all of those individuals that I am connected to who have positions of power at foundations who work through philanthropy and I advocated for them to consider what I thought was a reasonable grant for artists directly to the artist. There were many people who were jumping up and saying. let's offer a few thousand dollars through fiscal conduit. I was advocating for the foundations to offer $10000 grants directly to an artist. Some people wrote me back. Some people were proud of themselves that they had come up with a $5000 grant that would have to go through a fiscal conduit and then others listened to
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that and said to me, "This is an idea that I think might merit some consideration. We are in the process of thinking about this with other philanthropists. Maybe there is something that can come."Cynthia:
Now I'm not saying that I am the reason for some of this to have happened but I thought that if they heard from enough artists who were telling them to have a middle person, to have a middle
organization between the artist and the money was not helping a lot of people. There are now some funds that are direct to artists but there are also a number of situations that have materialized recently where folks are starting to slowly, but regularly funnel money to the artist through whatever conduits are necessary. There were some philanthropists who were clapping themselves on the back because they were giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to cultural institutions. That's fine, however, the cultural institutions often are populated by folks who don't necessarily live in those communities. They don't necessarily reflect that population of people. And again, it's another barrier between the artist that's making the work and the people who receive it. There are a number of things happening around the finances of actually making it work.
Tamara:
In response to COVID, was that initiated by your concerns about artists well being and their capacity to continue to create during this-
Cynthia:
Yes. Yes, and even the folks that I have worked with, if an organization offered to stream an older production of mine, great. I welcome the exposure, welcome folks remembering that I'm still out here making work, but what I then wanted to do was to make sure that those artists who worked with me on that production were compensated. So, it was really interesting because some of those places behaved as though it were a favor to me and never once said, well, how about we pay you for streaming your work, even if we don't necessarily get compensated for that. Like I said, I don't need the payment but I want to make sure that those Independent artists that work with me are compensated. So what I would do, for example, is I would offer a donation tab. Folks could donate, should they choose to and then I decided that I would match the donation funds and hand it over to the artists who was working with me because I want to make sure that they can eat and pay their rent next month.
Tamara:
Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. We are heading into the last 15 minutes of our time together and I want to make sure that we have space for those of you who are in the audience to ask questions. And I'd like to invite you to do that. We had talked about asking people to write questions in the chat but we're not a particularly large group. You could raise hands, those of you who... Are people able to make themselves visible? I'm not sure if [Destiny 00:35:52] organized this in such a way that we can't see people's faces but, it's great to actually see peoples faces if they want to make themselves visible. And if anyone has a specific question that they would like to ask or a comment that they would like to make. We would love to hear from you. So let me give all of you a moment. I can tell that we definitely have some artists, performers, dancers, poets, people in our audience. Feel free to turn on your cameras if you feel comfortable. Feel free to post a question in the chat if you want to. Any reflections on this? We're taking this time to think about what does it mean to be and artist in this time of pandemic. What does it mean to not be able to come together in community. [Bryson 00:37:00]? Yeah, please.
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Bryson:I just had one question. Dr. Davis mentioned something. She said when people look back on the
pandemic, she wants people to reflect on what they drew from it and what they were able to learn and overcome curing this time. So what specifically do you guys want your students to learn during this pandemic when they look back on it in the future?
Tamara:
Abby, do you want to answer that? Abby:
It's not that I'm not thinking about my students but for this chat I was more focused on my professional company and that has taken up a lot of space but I guess for my students... another perseverance. Some people have to endure it longer than others unfortunately because of inequity in the world but anything worth doing is worth doing not well. It's worth doing even under crappy circumstances. So reinforcing, as Cynthia said, your relationship to the thing that you think you're committing to because its bumpy road, COVID or not in the arts and this is really boot camp for the future.
Ollie:
And I would add that you have not been given a pass from stewardship. It's important how you manage yourself and how you manage your life at all times and that's just to echo much of what Abby has said as far as this is life right now. I want for the students to know that they are strong, and they have agency, and this is their moment and how they are responding during the pandemic to all that's confronting them in life, this is their moment, and they must seize this moment and advocate and have responsible stewardship for how they are living through this moment, even though the situation isn't ideal. It's not what anyone has experienced in my lifetime before but it's really for me exciting to see students who are holding onto their own sense of purpose and direction and they're doing it with a sense of agency and urgency. So that's what I would want them to do and you also, you know what I say.
Tamara:
I think that that notion of stewardship that you're gesturing towards Ollie is so important and also just the way in which, even if we aren't in a moment of performance, remembering the ways in which the arts nourish us at times when we really need that. I know that in the talk that we had when we were preparing for this conversation, on of the things that I raised was the passage from Primo Levi's book Survival in Auschwitz which I teach in my history class in which he recounts reciting Dante's Inferno. And he's in a concentration camp and he feels like human being because he has this capacity to do this. It makes me think of my colleague, maybe some of you knew or know, Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, who was here in the history department and who was incarcerated during the Iranian Revolution and he talks in a book that he wrote about that experience about actually replaying symphonies to himself in his head when he was in isolation inside of a prison and the nourishment that he got from that capacity to do that. The way in which that kept him alive. And so, remembering that just because we can't perform doesn't mean that that doesn't exist for us. That that's something that we can continue to take tremendous strength from, I think, even in the moments when we can't come together. Tamara:
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It's also fascinating, Cynthia, what you were talking about in terms of the importance of community and the way that that's so apparent in a practice like dance or like music but that what were seeing is how deeply human that is for all of us and how distressing this is. It's just an amplification of that in your own practices but something that we're all really, really struggling with and trying to find those ways to find solace in really difficult times.Cynthia:
And this is not forever. Tamara:
This is not forever, yes. Cynthia:
This is not forever. This is a moment. We don't know how long the moment is but it's not forever. A number of months ago, I was looking for inspiration. I had to write a piece for the organization that I was supposed to have given that keynote at in Europe and I discovered, I don't have the name of the author in mind at the moment but one of the things that they had researched and discovered was that the Renaissance came after The Black Death. So, if we think about this as another one of those moments, that it is incredibly restrictive, it is terrifying, many people have lost their lives, but something is going to come out of this. Our creativity is going to propel us. It will explode into something that we can't yet imagine and that's something that we have to look forward to. We have to be hopeful. Hope is the biggest resistance possible.
Abby:
It's just so disheartening to see the foundations that have always had the most money are getting the most money to keep going in terms of being rescued at this moment. So, really, what is it going to look like? Who's going to emerge from the dust after this? It's bleak for me right now in really looking at the money and where it's going. The government, the big businesses are siphoning off all the funds and what is everyone else supposed to do? Sorry.
Ollie:
Let me just help you, Abby. Speaking as a Black American woman, we have always made it with broken pieces and you're going to get there if you can put those pieces together. Our culture has not been tomato soup with one ingredient. We've had a lot of different ingredients. Oftentimes not having enough of one thing and that's why we have the delicacy of gumbo because we haven't had enough of one individual item, right? If you think of it that way, you're going to make it even though the pieces may be fragmented and they may be broken, but if your heart is there and your promoting truth and justice and integrity, you're going to make it. You have to talk to yourself. We'll have to send her some music. [crosstalk 00:45:15]
Abby:
The reality of there's the sheen of oh, this is the moment where were going to solve problems of inequity and I'm not even talking about myself. It's already starting to feel like a façade very much like what Cynthia was like, with the middle man and what that does. When is it going to be-
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Cynthia:Abby, Ollie and I come from a long line of people who have made a way out of no way. There was never an expectation that this particular government foundation was looking after us. The fact that we survived is a miracle in and of itself. So, I am not worried about necessarily where the money is coming from. The creativity is going to come with or without the money. There are foundations, not
foundations, there are organizations that are getting a significant amount of money that have never had any money or have never received a reasonable amount of money. They are receiving money now. There are incremental ways that things have shifted. There's no major radical shift that's taking place but I think that the work is going to happen no matter what. We can't depend on the money.
Tamara:
I think that making a way out of no way. It's a beautiful perspective. Yes. We see a hand up. You want to ask a question? You want to open your mic? [Terry 00:47:06]
Terry:
Hi. I just wanted to say something about teaching. Thank you everybody for all this amazing information. That I had the experience when I was young of learning Italian by myself because I knew I was going to go live in Italy so I took it in, in my mind. And then when I got to Italy it became embodied and I think this is a really important time to say to people, don't look at your sexy little young body, get that head lifted. Get a lot of diverse information. Right now, I'm a film buff, there is so much available in diverse film. The Asian Film Festival is coming up, the African Film Festival in New York and you can go online for all of these and then our good friend literature. There are so many amazing books coming out right now from Black Lives Matter to anything and to old books, new books. Get stuff in your head and it will find embodiment in your work and we need to tell them that's a truth. Not just say, it's difficult, but I want you to read these things. It's amazing. Read these things and your work will flourish and you won't be thinking about how thin you look in the mirror anymore. I think it's really important to promote that and to let people know that's what happens to one, you take something in and then it becomes embodied which is crucial to dance. Thank you.
Tamara:
Thank you. D. Fairchild Ruggles, unmute yourself please. D. Fairchild Ruggles:
Sorry. It's when I can see myself I assume I'm also sounding. I'm conscious of something, and this has been inspiring, yes and it's so good to see you guys and that's what I think I miss most. I'm going to start crying. I just miss being in [inaudible 00:49:04] and being a community that knows how to get there, that knows at halftime to go get the drink, and that knows when to applaud and to deal with each other in that space and you guys call that into being. Sorry, I'm just overwhelmed right now by it. I just realized how much I'm missing you. Ollie I just miss...
Cynthia:
I went to Jennifer Monson's house yesterday, I'm sorry Sunday because she had an invitation to a socially distant, sitting in the driveway and watching her process a new work that she's thinking about with [Val Olivera 00:49:58]. It was so moving to see something happen live. I felt like you do, D.D. I felt moved to tears. There were other people that were 6, 10 feet away but were looking at live people
Cynthia Oliver, Abby Zbikowski, Ollie Watts Davi... (Completed 10/09/20)
Transcript by Rev.com
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moving. I think if there's anything that comes out of this for those of us who also view performance, it is that we will never take that for granted again. It will never be something that's like oh well, yeah. Cynthia:And I think to Terry's point, it's interesting how dance moves through the body over time so when you're young, one of the hardest things about it is, as an aging dancer is, the diminished capacity, right? Because when you're in you're 20's, you're a machine. You can do everything. I watched a video of myself the other day and it was like oh my god I can't believe I could do that but the intellectual food really starts to deepen your practice so as you age physically, you have all this other information that offers a texture to the work and that was what I was excited about seeing on stage from Jennifer in her garage the other day but also, I think Terry's absolutely right that this is the time to feed yourself in other ways so that when that moment arrives, it will be embodied in a way that, as I said earlier, we cannot yet imagine.
Ollie:
I encourage my students to use the time to prepare themselves for what's on the other side. We're coming through this. We don't know when, but we know we are coming through this and to be prepared for the need that's on the other side and to be prepared to share what you have nurtured in yourself and in your work while you have been sheltered in. Thank yo everybody, this has been delightful. Tamara:
Thank you everyone. We are over time. Let me thank everyone who tuned in for this. We really appreciate your presence and my special thanks to Ollie and Abby and Cynthia for inviting me to moderate this conversation. Let me invite you to tune in to the Center for Advanced Study for the next conversations in arts in the time of pandemic. Go to the website, check it out if you're not sure who's doing what when. But thank you so much and I wish you all a wonderful rest of your day and to continue to making a way out of no way because we will get there. Bye.
Speaker 8:
Thank you everybody. Tamara:
