On January 7, one day after Georgia’s runoff election resulted in its first Black senator and a white supremacist insurrection disrupted the presidential confirmation at the U.S. Capitol, dancers, dancemakers, presenters, and arts organizations convened at “Dance in Chicago 2021: Collecting. Hibernating. Emerging.,” a citywide virtual gathering and information session peer-produced by Chicago Dancemakers Forum, Chicago Dancers United, The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, Harris Theater for Music and Dance, High Concept Labs, Links Hall, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Pivot Arts, and See Chicago Dance. Each organization presented resources to the community, including grants, residencies, rehearsal spaces, and relief funds (these and other opportunities can be found on an open, editable document). A keynote speech was given by Christy Bolingbroke, founding executive/artistic director for the National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron, and a national perspective was offered by Kellee Edusei, newly appointed executive director of Dance/USA, advisory council member of Women of Color in the Arts (WOCA), former member of See Chicago Dance’s board of directors, and recent selectee for artEquity‘s 2020 BIPOC Leadership Circle.
Bolingbroke acknowledged, “Mentors, predecessors, and other respected elders often tell me that our questions are not new. The challenges we name are chronic—the waning of arts journalism and dedicated dance presenters over decades, navigating the alternatives of being an incorporated 501(c)(3) organization, and the associated trappings of nonprofit management as it seemingly conflicts with the artistic process—we’ve long needed to seek and find new questions if we are ever to change the narrative for dance in this country.”
The ensuing discussion included private comments in the chat suggestive of unresolved divisions (“I would feel better about this visioning if the group wasn’t so totally white,” wrote one anonymous commenter. “I am white, and circles I dance in are white, so I can’t help,” wrote another).
