1. Tomorrow is about being in listening mode …
This was one of the actions at the front of my mind, identified in our Future Ecologies network group meeting the day before joining the invited freelance dance artists, working at the coalface of dance practice in West Yorkshire.
Vida, Chris and Steffi created a structure where they facilitated the recalling, mapping, reflection, conversation and an exchange of experience and ideas that lived under the focus of eco-systems – Vida’s blog post below clearly articulates the intention, structure and questions/method used on the day. In the first half of the day, the Future Ecologies team, in a way, test ran the tasks. It was no surprise to me when mapping our team’s eco-system, that the vast web of our professional and personal lives of course intersected and interwove, regardless of the many roles we have inhabited – let’s be honest, the contemporary dance world isn’t super huge – but it set a base for the conversation that followed. What was most interesting for me, was the notion that arose of ‘eco-system-engineering’ – that organisms can create their environments, such as an earthworm enriching their soil. It was an attractive metaphor. Could we begin to think that ‘engineering’ the environment of dance practice/production through (a more expanded understanding or version of) producing, was possible? a potential option? And how might that look/operate/be?
As a co-investigator on this project, at this point in full time employment at Leeds Beckett University, I had many questions that the project brief had provoked on the area of producing in relation to sustainability. Questions that for me had to also include broader economic and political consideration. At this early point in the day, I was reminded of what I often feel when I am with my students. I recognise that 32 years ago, even though I had always struggled financially, as an always employed, freelance dance artist (this drove me to seek a job in Higher Education), I knew that these early years in the 1990’s were halcyon days compared to now. Though it was enjoyable to reminisce about our interweaving professional and personal lives, most of us were speaking right now from the privileged positions of being salaried – we are ‘professional researchers’, which in some respects means that we are paid to conceptualise.
2. It is important to be transparent about what the actual lived ecology is, rather than what, a conceptual (often idealised) ecology is …
So, what is this lived ecology, right now, in post-covid, cost-of-living, Brexit Britain?
The guest freelance artists could easily respond to the eco-system mapping task – picking up a marker pen and making visible on paper diagrams of webs of personal and professional connections, artistic practices, roles, geographical locations, buildings, institutions, organisations, dance jobs and side hustles. Many are self-producing. They were honest, open, caring, invested, pragmatic, generous .. … and humorous …
‘Life is a funding bid’
kicked off the laughter as well as the discussion. And so, in the interests of transparency about lived experience, the following, extracted from the whole group conversation after the exercise of putting marker pen to paper, has particularly stayed with me:
‘I spend a lot of time looking for resources rather than actually doing the art’
‘I am overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things that I have to do’
‘Choice has been replaced with survival’
‘My geographical area has become my eco-system – geographical proximity makes my artistic practice viable but, I do not make a living out of making art’
‘Maybe my art should be a hobby – the utopian ideal, because it is artmaking without conditions’
‘Imagine if we stopped’
Still?
And I repeat – I recognise that 32 years ago, even though I had always struggled financially, as an always employed, freelance dance artist …… these were halcyon days compared to now.
I shall admit here that I felt utterly sad and depressed about the state that we (our sector), are still in. A surefire solution in my mind would be another utopian ideal – UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME.
But, what really broke my heart was the following:
‘I know that ‘art’ is at the bottom of broader societal concerns. And dance is at the bottom of ‘art’. And community dance – what I practice – well, that is at the bottom of dance.’
This was then countered with something along the lines of:
‘But I start the day thinking this, then I go and spend 2 hours in the evening with my community group and return home feeling fulfilled and inspired and in love with what I do and in no doubt that it matters’
It was clear that an ecology exists and that these artists lived their current ecologies. And that these lived ecologies also involved positioning within a field of perceived respect, as well as different power structures that dictate the circumstances of their lives, their bank balance, their housing, their health and their mental health more broadly. Therefore, how can we create the conditions to ‘engineer’ a different, more equitable, more sustainable eco-system? What might that look like and how can we do it? What is sustainability in action? Can ‘recovery’ be built into this? How can producing develop and support this? What form does/can producing take to develop and support this?
3. Ecological adaptation …
Building stronger relationships between Higher Education, seen as a secure and robust area, and the professional, freelance sector of dance practice, was a prominent feature that I understood to be underpinning this Future Ecologies Project when it was written – hence my involvement as co-investigator, because I was also tied to a university. But at the time of this first forum, notions of resilience from ‘joining forces’, were already beginning to seriously wobble in my own experience. Although at that time still under wraps, dance was literally beginning to be dismantled at my own institution. We were not the only ones. Dance provision in HE was (and is) toppling like dominoes around the country. The part we play, our ‘producing’ role in the web of providing both a broad dance education and the side-hustle, part-time jobs for dance artists, is fast disappearing. The irony of the timing of this project has not escaped me as I take Voluntary Severance.
My own professional history has included 18 years of freelance practice prior to being registered on an institution’s payroll. Even after 15 years in HE, I never once, in all that time, presumed my future was safe or assured – the freelance experience leaves a deep, ingrained, psychological mark. Perhaps the mark is actually one of resilience anyway, after all, I did manage to somehow get this far. I leave this project as the representative of Leeds Beckett University, but I remain with this project as an independent artist. The job of thinking about re-creating or re-engineering our producing environment, in order to help figure out what a future dance ecology might be, is no doubt timely. Doing it comes next. Ecological thinking and a resulting evolving ecology, in communication with its environment, fundamentally involves adaptation … which of course we do well … and is always about movement.
