"Dancing Democracy"
Welcome to this evening’s panel. I’d like to thank Dr. Farganis for inviting me to organize an event for the List Center. And I’d like to thank our distinguished panelists for agreeing to participate.
I will begin by framing the issues under discussion, and then the panelists will make their introductory remarks. After making a few queries of my own, we’ll open up the panel for comments and questions from the audience.
Our panel, on "Dancing Democracy," was conceived and organized this spring and summer, well before September 11. The New School turns out to be a prime location for the topic, and its unanticipated urgency, given the proximity of the New School to ground zero and its historical connection with the self-consciously democratic endeavor of modern dance. This was a genre that sought to distinguish itself as a democratic art form, in response to the perceived elitism of the European ballet. It was here at the New School in the 1930s that dance classes, recitals, and a now-famous series of lecture-demonstrations helped to cohere the young modern dance community.
Talk of dance and democracy has crystallized again 60-some years later, the result of a convergence of three intellectual and artistic trends.
First, there was the growing concern that a people once known for its civic associations were now, as sociologist Robert Putnam famously put it, "bowling alone." Political philosophers such as Benjamin Barber have been analyzing the theory and practice of civil society as fundamental to the operation of what he terms "strong democracy." We don’t have to make an either-or choice, Barber tells us, between the purely public space of an invasive government and the purely private space of a crassly commercialized market. Civic space is the mediating third sector that fuels strong democracy, because it is where "democratic attitudes are cultivated and democratic behavior is conditioned."
Second, there was the shift in dance discourse from a text-centered approach to an emphasis on space. Where previously we objectified dance as a text to be read and deconstructed, we now can focus on the con/text of the entire performative experience. Dance is a dynamic social and political space defined through constantly changing relationships and practices.
Third, choreographers have expanded beyond purely formal concerns to social concerns. Community-based dance is emerging as a paradigm for the twenty-first century. We hear less about "spectators" and more about "participants."
If dance is, as I would like to suggest, a civic space, then how is that space created?
Space can be designated geographically, on a map. It can be circumscribed by architectural boundaries. The space of dance can be defined by the sociological profile of its community members. Or by the sets of relationships that it cultivates in all directions—before, during, and after performance. Or we can think of the space of dance as its creative process. And we can also consider the space of dance as the nexus of conversations that it provokes, ranging from informal lobby chatter to a newspaper review to over-the-fence gossip.
I don’t think that dance needs to be created as a civic space. It simply needs to be actualized as the civic space it already is. After all, dance is a place where diverse groups of people can and do meet to share a common experience. For German choreographer Pina Bausch, the fact of the theatre as a communal space where feelings can be shared and meaning generated constitutes its very source of strength and beauty.
There are several ways in which this civic space of dance is linked to the democratic process.
The first is one that Professor Barber offers in his book entitled A Place for Us: How to Make Society Civil and Democracy Strong. "Imagination," he writes, and I quote, "is the link to civil society that art and democracy share. . . . It is the faculty by which we stretch ourselves to include others, expand the compass of our interests, and overcome the limits of our parochial selves. Only then do we become fit subjects to live in democratic communities."
In addition to imagination, I’d add several other capacities that dance builds in its citizen-viewers. Close observation and sometimes persistent observation. Meaning-making. Reflective analysis. Deliberative judgement. Tolerance for ambiguity. Aptitude for complexity.
The heart of democracy, as I see it, is dissent. It’s dissent that is implied in the vote: that we will disagree, but that we will disagree intelligently, respectfully, and productively. And that’s where civic dialogue comes in, as a means to intelligent, respectful, and productive dissent. And one of the core requirements of true dialogue, according to pollster Daniel Yankelovich, is empathy: the capacity to identify with another person’s point of view, even if we don’t share that person’s point of view.
Empathy is another link between dance and democracy. At the most basic level, we feel kinaesthetic empathy with the performers. We also may come to feel empathy for the characters being portrayed, even if they are outside of our own private realm of experience.
The empathic power of the arts is an underlying premise of the current experiments in art-based civic dialogue, including, for example, the Animating Democracy Initiative. ADI’s vision is of "the unique capacity of the arts and culture to . . . articulate complex issues in human terms and reframe preconceived notions in ways that reveal new understandings." The arts in general, according to ADI’s report on "The Artistic Imagination as a Force in Civic Dialogue," "can express difficult ideas through metaphor; transcend the obvious to imagine solutions; communicate beyond the limits of language; serve as a herald to raise awareness about an issue; gather diverse publics for interaction at a common physical site; and transcend established social and political boundaries."
I see civic dialogue as an extension of the discursive structures that already exist in the dance field, albeit in an admittedly uninspired and occasionally even degraded form. Dance criticism is contributed online in chat rooms, published in daily newspapers, and practiced during intermission or the trip home. In the past decade, pre-performance lectures and "talk-backs" with the choreographer and dancers have become de rigueur. Liz Lerman has invented her own critical response method, which I hope she’ll tell us about this evening.
Contemporary choreographers articulate dance as a civic space in a myriad of ways. I offer here but a few examples across a long continuum of dance practices.
Twyla Tharp thought of her ill-fated Brooklyn studio as a kind of local hangout, like a pool hall fondly remembered from her youth. "I see dance," she told an interviewer, "as glue for a community. Dance should not just divide people into audience and performers. Everyone should be a participant, whether going to classes or attending special events or rehearsals."
Bill T. Jones sees the connection happening in the choreographic process, with his dancers. "I try to make movement," he has written, "free of my mythology and psychology, so the dancers can speak bravely and deeply of their own truth. My method assumes that everyone, if well prepared, allowed to feel safe and provided with an appropriate form, will speak to the great themes of life, death, fear, love, desire. This idealistic, democratic notion is at the heart of much modern work."
As a choreographer, Leah Kreutzer hopes that her audience will make a visceral empathic connection with her dances. Centered around themes rooted in women’s experience, her work aims to give voice to an audience with shared human experience.
Other companies, like the Urban Bush Women and the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, incorporate the dialogic process with community members directly into the creative process.
For its current project, entitled Hair Stories, the Urban Bush Women is leading a series of dialogues called "hair parties" in hair salons and private homes around Brooklyn. Using a method of cultural sharing that alternates between dance performance and dialogue, Urban Bush Women is exploring how ongoing debates about the politics of hair within the African-American community can lead to deeper dialogue about underlying issues of race, class, economics, and history.
Liz Lerman’s work is an oft-cited exemplar of arts-based civic dialogue that engages community members as part of the creative process and the final performance. She is now in the midst of Hallelujah!, a three-year series of site-specific dances that asks the question: "What are you in praise of?" What particularly interests me about Ms. Lerman’s work is that her model of community-building has developed from a feel-good practice marked by litle moments of "miracles" to a truly dialogic model characterized by moments of what she calls "colliding truth." Her work steers directly into difference and dissent, asking how we can "learn to live together with these colliding truths."
At this point I would like to turn to Ms. Lerman, Ms. Kreutzer, and Dr. Barber. First, the introductions.
Liz Lerman is artistic director of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, a widely touring company based in Takoma Park, Maryland. Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, the company is an acknowledged innovator in community-engaged dance. Ms. Lerman participated in Robert Putnam’s Saguaro Seminar on civic engagement in America. She has also published a book, entitled Teaching Dance to Senior Adults. Combining dance with realistic imagery, Ms. Lerman’s works are defined by the spoken word, drawing from literature, personal experience, philosophy, and political and social commentary.
Leah Kreutzer is artistic director of the LKB Dance Company, based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where she is on faculty at Rutgers University. Ms. Kreutzer was a founding member of Anna Sokolow’s Players Project and a collaborator in the founding of the East Coast Baroque Dance Workshop. She has also worked extensively as a choreographer for off-Broadway theatre. Ms. Kreutzer’s company performed last weekend at the Joyce Soho Theatre.
Benjamin R. Barber is Kekst Professor of Civil Society at the University of Maryland at College Park. He comes from a theater family and was himself a playwright and director off-Broadway. He has written lyrics, too, as well as a novel. He has published more than a dozen academic books on civil society, citizenship, public space and suburbia, virtual civic community on the internet, and global civil society, including Strong Democracy and Jihad vs. McWorld. His newest book, just out this fall, is The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House.