Dance Town Hall Meeting

Artists' Bloc & Dance/MetroDC joined to host a Dance Town Hall Meeting, to close out a week of Artists' Bloc events, in one of Woolly Mammoth Theatre's rehearsal rooms.

Peter DiMuro, Director of Dance/MetroDC, and one of three on my thesis committee kicked off the meeting with an open invite for attendees to wander around the rehearsal room and go to large sheets of paper against the well, addressed with different topics, to fill in what they knew, to ask questions about what they didn't know.

Overall, a very good crowd representing a veritable who's who of the local dance community.

Names I caught included Carla Perlo Founder & Director of Dance Place; Sarah Levitt, old classmate from UMD's Dance Program and Company member with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange; Aysha Upchurch, Founder and Director of life, rhythm, move project; Nancy Havlik with her Nancy Havlik Performance Group; Sylvana Sandoz, member of the Glade Dance Collective; and Kate Jordan, one of the cofounders of the Eureka Dance Festival, who (incidentally) just joined the teacher roster with me at the National Cathedral School for Girls.

Other organizations present (represented by individuals whose names I did not catch) included Clancy Works, Dissonance Dance Theatre (whose Founder/Artistic Director, Shawn Short, I met while he was at Howard University, taking a choreography class at UMD), and the various board and committee members from Dance/MetroDC as well as Dance/USA.

I won't attempt to recap EVERYTHING that was discussed, but it was energizing to see the discussion happening.

One of the other exciting things that was highlighted, included a new partnership between Dance/MetroDC and Dance Place, which will move DMDC from its offices on 14th St, to across the street from Dance Place, pretty much the hub of Dance in DC, with programming just about every weekend of the year. And then joining the neighborhood will be a whole slew of artists, moving into the Brookland Artspace Lofts opening in June.

The Town Hall Meeting really emphasized for me how sometimes half of the battle is just showing up. The other half, particularly with regard to Dance/MetroDC as a service organization, is that as artists, we have to be engaged, meaning we have to be involved and vocal. Otherwise how do we expect an organization like Dance/MetroDC to effectively support us, in our art, and in the business of our art.

That being said, I thought the Town Hall was a great success and I'm looking forward to seeing what we make happen :-)