Periodically, I have the pleasure of writing about the work of my friend, choreographer Allison Orr, and her company, Forklift Danceworks. (Most notably in The Trash Project.) For the purposes of this blog, she is highly . . . bloggable. Ms. Orr has built a career on seeing "ordinary" people and creating dance inspired and performed (!) by them–gondoliers, Japanese women professional baseball players, power company workers, urban foresters, … [Read more...]
Co-Creation in Dance
by Clara Pinsky, Program Coordinator; Krissie Marty, Associate Choreographer; Allison Orr, Artistic Director Forklift Danceworks This post is part of a series in conjunction with TRG Arts on developing relationships with both new communities and existing stakeholders through artistic programming, marketing and fundraising, community engagement and public policy. (Cross-post can be found at Analysis from TRG Arts.) The need to deepen … [Read more...]
Heard NY
Some time ago I commented [Engaged Mission: I], in response to a NY Times article, that social practice art–art with an explicit social service intent, while admirable, is not the only way to approach community engagement. It's a good and valuable way to engage, but it is not the sole means to do so. When I discuss community engagement I talk about the "issue" being addressed by a project, but an issue need not be a problem or something in need … [Read more...]
The Trash Project
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6ZBlYdyoeQ One of the joys of all the traveling and speaking I am undertaking is the opportunity to find out about cool examples of engagement work going on around the country. I am going to Austin for the Texas Commission on the Arts & Texans for the Arts conference, Strategies for Success. As part of the preparation, I asked the organizers to send me examples of interesting projects. The subject of this … [Read more...]
Bonus Post
I said I was going to only do one post a week through August, but here are two things that might be of interest. First, Julia Levy of CultureCraver (kind of an interesting concept: GoodReads for culture is the way I think of it) contacted me when she heard about Building Communities, Not Audiences and wanted to do an interview. Here is the result: www.culturecraver.com/craveable/entry/443233. And I just heard from Dorothy Gunther Pugh at … [Read more...]