EDITOR’S NOTE: As previously mentioned, recent events in the Seattle dance world have generated interesting conversation about the art-form. Reviews and audience talk-backs during The A.W.A.R.D. Show!, aggressively questioning the inclusion of some artists whose work ranges outside the standard dance vocabulary, caused consternation and generated stong responses. TSB invited Jody Kuehner and Ricki Mason, whose The Cherdonna and Lou Show is a gender-bending postmodern duo, to respond to those who questioned whether their work fits the definition of “dance.”
Guest post by Jody Kuehner & Ricki Mason
Last month we participated in The A.W.A.R.D. Show! at On the Boards. This program gave the audience the opportunity to vote on which of twelve choreographers would receive $10,000 in funding for their next project. Essentially, it’s a dance contest for contemporary dance artists. The weekend sparked a lot of conversations, including a debate about what dance is, how we categorize art, and what effect those categories have on artists and audiences. Jeremy Barker asked us to write a little bit about our experience as artists and how our work fits into this debate.
Our background and process roots our work firmly in the lineage of contemporary dance. As contemporary dance artists, we are shaped by the world we live in, conscientiously appropriating aspects of culture and art. The nature of contemporary art is to engage with what’s current. In addition to being a hub for contemporary dance, Seattle is home to vibrant burlesque, cabaret, drag, and theater scenes. Seattle also has one of the largest LBGTQ identifying communities in the US. The majority of dance artists in Seattle reference these cultural elements, blurring the lines between genres of performance.
We are queer, gender-bending dance artists working in an abstract medium. The most literal elements of our work are those that are borrowed from other genres, like our drag aesthetic and the theatrical premises of our work. As a result, audiences and critics tend to identify these literal elements before absorbing the abstracted content, categorizing it as drag or cabaret and NOT dance. We are excited to discuss how our work fits into the history of any and all of these categories, but we are unwilling to be excluded from our true form and first language of dance. George Balanchine, Miguel Guiterrez, Steve Paxton, Twyla Tharp, Eiko and Koma, Anna Halprin, Merce Cunningham, Yvonne Rainer, and Pina Bausch are all dance artists whose work looks vastly different. Dance also looks like The Cherdonna and Lou Show.
Dance will never evolve if we stunt it with semantics. If every time a dance artist forges into new territory we kick it out of the club, then dance ceases to be a living, changing form. When work is dismissed because it doesn’t fit neatly into an existing genre, an opportunity is missed. The conversation becomes only about the category. The work itself is not looked at, talked about, or digested. It is simply ignored and thus devalued. The repercussions for artists are huge. Grants are designated for specific genres of art. If an artist’s work isn’t fitting neatly into a genre, it often slips through the cracks, reinforcing a limited definition of that genre.
Presenters, critics, funders, and educators hold a great responsibility to cultivate in audiences a more fluid notion of what any given category may look like. Artists are responsible for continuing to authentically create work. Dance artist Tonya Lockyer shared the following on the subject: “In a talk between Charles Reinhart (ADF) and Anna Halprin, Reinhart said that whenever someone’s work was called ‘not dance’ he knew they were onto something. I don’t think anyone questions Halprin as a dance artist anymore. But so often, when dance moves forward, it gets disowned by its own.
Artists’ Note: Jody Kuehner (Cherdonna Shinatra) and Ricki Mason (Lou Henry Hoover) are contemporary dance artists who began working together in Seattle in 2004. They soon discovered a synergy of comedic timing and a shared passion for character driven movement. Jody and Ricki invented The Cherdonna and Lou Show in 2009 to combine their choreographic backgrounds with their desire to create comedic politicized and personal performance. The Cherdonna and Lou Show has been supported by 4Culture, Artist Trust, and The Mayor’s Office for Arts and Cultural Affairs.
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it’s true that we have a responsibility to consider this blurring, to sit with it, and let go of what we think we know, as artists we have to be brave, both as the viewer and the maker.
Unable to leave due to computer wonkiness, so submitted thru Jeremy Barker:
here’s my note:
Hi Jody & Ricki & Jeremy,
It’s about time we had a talk about what is dance.
I know this topic arrives in Seattle in a different way then other places, but there was a super juicy conversation about what is dance when Tinho Segal and Marina Abramovic were in New York showing work in museums. These are two well regarded (read paid) artists who make what might traditionally be called dance or performance art with the body and who regard their work as visual art. Visual artist get paid and are often written about in books and in general appear in the culture in a more legitimate way then any performance medium. Not only is their work legitimized these two artists are highly paid. Ricki and Jody you guys should aim to be considered visual artists!!! Find your way into the museum, that way you’ll get paid AND taken seriously. I’m not sure throwing your hand in with the most marginalized of artforms, dance, is helpful to your future success (read paid) Jody and Ricki, you guys might make a more lucrative career being considered Cabaret, Burlesque or Drag. So I guess a part of the question is why would an artist want their work to be perceived as dance? Why is the critical dialog around dance so essential? What would happen if all performance forms became PERFORMANCE FORMS, without the distinctions of dance, theater, drag, cabaret….etc? I’m a huge advocate for dance as you both well know, and I consider what I do dance (laughter behind my back). I think the issues of category are intriguing but only if these questions and topics have power in the intellectual realm, in the cultural dialog. What do you put on your poster? What elists do you post your announcement in? Are your audiences folks who want to see dance? It might not be what you do in your work but more how you want to be perceived that makes this topic important. If there were the drag olympics at the century ballroom, I imagine you guys would be in gold-medal contention, and that possibly the award would be $10,000.00….but would that not be so legitimate to you? If you were presented in the Guest Artist Series at Velocity would you feel more legitimate though you got paid $300? I don’t know that presenters are making these big distinctions, certainly Lane at OTB programs all kinds of performance.
I’m trying to be provocative, but I’m also genuinely interested in why we so want our work to be identified as dance.
love
vd
In some ways this is a retrograde conversation. But perhaps it needs to be had again and again and again. … It is dance because they say it is dance, that’s the perspective through which they want their work to be considered (that’s my take on it). … It never even occurred to me that someone would think that The Cherdonna and Lou Show was not dance. It certainly looked like dance to me… I’m a ‘dancey dance’ person but i certainly know that ‘dance’ is broad enough to include dance that is not just like what I do. Thank God!… I am grateful for all the different ways of thinking about and doing ‘dance’. Seattle is feeling like a richer and more engaged place at the moment (all this dance talk) and I couldn’t be happier.
Location, location, location!