Notes from Community Dance Discussion on Jan 19, 2020

Sunday January 19, 2020

Discussion Topics:

What is the purpose of our ongoing meetings?

-Communication between artists.

-Opportunity to hear all voices within the community about what’s happening in the community.

A Need for Transparency

New Artist Space in Central Square

-Can we team up with musicians and recording artists in a new space?

-“Peer Space”?

Percussion in Dance Class

-Counting for live musicians in dance class, understanding counting, or translating counts for live accompaniment. Going through the process of learning how to do this. How much (as dancers) are we counting on our musicians to do the translating? Can we speak their language for a smoother transition during classes.

Dance Floors

-Are we being honest with our dancers about the floors we’re asking them to dance on? Is there transparency when it comes to this in performance space, class space, rehearsal space?

-How do we support/we need to, support and care for the bodies, not just share any space because it’s available. Doing our due dilligence to make sure the space we share is healthy and supportive of dancing bodies.

-We can advocate for each other in this, by raising awareness and being transparent about the space available for dance/movement. If we have experience with a certain space and we’ve found the floors are not supportive, we need to tell each other.

Loss of Space in Central Square, out of this topic we found…

-Need for unity in negotiating dance/movement space.

-Who are our allies outside of the dance community?

-Grieving the loss of materials from Green Street. How can we avoid this in the future?

-Logistics of Green Street closing, as far as where materials are going, who had/has ownership, how is the community responding?

-Where there is emotion/anger attached to the situation, how can we navigate…. for avoidance of a similar situation in the future, and support each other through the process in the now.

-If construction at Green Street doesn’t start for another two years, can the space be used in the interim? What are the opportunities there? Or, is it time to band together and move towards a new space, functioning as a unified community with transparency?

-In response to the loss of space, is there a need for a performance strike in Cambridge? Can we unify for Dark Weekends?