On October 1st 2015, Hollins Dance hosted a talk titled “Where Do We Go From Here” with New York choreographer John Josperse. The talk was guided by Dance professor Jeffery Bullock asking questions about dance culture in academia. The talk began with simple questions like, what does it mean to be a dance artist? How does dance sit in academia? What is dance culture? Does dance affect the system we live in? John described his journey of becoming a well-known choreographer and how from the very beginning he was breaking boundaries in dance. Being a upper class white man, growing up in suburban Maryland, he acknowledge that he had privilege as far as him “making it” in society. Attending Sarah Lawrence College (one of the top most expensive schools
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For one the audience is a reflection of society. Especially at Hollins, not many people show up dance events because it is believed to be “to much” or people don’t understand the message of the movement. This specific conversation is a catalyst of social justice engagement because we discussed queer theory, race, and social class in response to how dancers choreograph and who is able to attend performances. John discussed that growing up being a dancer meant that he would live a life being economically unstable. But because he was a white upper class male, his access into the dance world was different than say a black woman attending Hollins. In college he practiced queer theory before the word queer was even in his vocabulary. Telling the audience that he was a gay male invited another conversation of him growing up in the New York at the time of the AIDS crisis in 1982. Choreographers were creating art in response to how they felt about AIDS. John said, “The queer movement wouldn’t have happen if it hadn’t been for the AIDS crisis. Words like multiculturalism were being thrown around at that time, and no one knew how to deal with it. He encountered people who passed away from HIV/AIDS and as a young choreographer he noticed that the only way to understand what was happening, was to make …show more content…
Conversations such as these allow non-dancers to understand how artists cope and attempt to break systems. From the dancers you choose to be in your project to the people who come to see your work, it all shows up in the system. John gave an example of what he considered “Coming Out the Closet”. Politically, dance is known not to make money, and in a capitalist society if you have no money you have no value. So in result, dance has no value (i.e. why people don’t show up to dance events). Dance spaces are not a capitalist product so why waste your energy? John’s closet theory addresses two sides of the closet, clean and trash. Clean is an example of professional concert dance, ballet, lack of diversity in dance companies or exploitation of bodies. Clean is nationalism. In certain dance forms, such as ballet or commercial dance, the focus is to appeal and to entertain the audience. Many dancers are trained to believe that they must appeal to the primary, meaning they have to join a company; they have to look and show up a certain way (white, skinny, and clean looking). But this is obviously not the case for all dancers or people in general. The other side of the closet in John’s theory is, trash. Trash is disorganized, falling apart, and controlled chaos. For years modern dance has been considered the complete opposite of ballet. The trash side of dance is what he
For one the audience is a reflection of society. Especially at Hollins, not many people show up dance events because it is believed to be “to much” or people don’t understand the message of the movement. This specific conversation is a catalyst of social justice engagement because we discussed queer theory, race, and social class in response to how dancers choreograph and who is able to attend performances. John discussed that growing up being a dancer meant that he would live a life being economically unstable. But because he was a white upper class male, his access into the dance world was different than say a black woman attending Hollins. In college he practiced queer theory before the word queer was even in his vocabulary. Telling the audience that he was a gay male invited another conversation of him growing up in the New York at the time of the AIDS crisis in 1982. Choreographers were creating art in response to how they felt about AIDS. John said, “The queer movement wouldn’t have happen if it hadn’t been for the AIDS crisis. Words like multiculturalism were being thrown around at that time, and no one knew how to deal with it. He encountered people who passed away from HIV/AIDS and as a young choreographer he noticed that the only way to understand what was happening, was to make …show more content…
Conversations such as these allow non-dancers to understand how artists cope and attempt to break systems. From the dancers you choose to be in your project to the people who come to see your work, it all shows up in the system. John gave an example of what he considered “Coming Out the Closet”. Politically, dance is known not to make money, and in a capitalist society if you have no money you have no value. So in result, dance has no value (i.e. why people don’t show up to dance events). Dance spaces are not a capitalist product so why waste your energy? John’s closet theory addresses two sides of the closet, clean and trash. Clean is an example of professional concert dance, ballet, lack of diversity in dance companies or exploitation of bodies. Clean is nationalism. In certain dance forms, such as ballet or commercial dance, the focus is to appeal and to entertain the audience. Many dancers are trained to believe that they must appeal to the primary, meaning they have to join a company; they have to look and show up a certain way (white, skinny, and clean looking). But this is obviously not the case for all dancers or people in general. The other side of the closet in John’s theory is, trash. Trash is disorganized, falling apart, and controlled chaos. For years modern dance has been considered the complete opposite of ballet. The trash side of dance is what he