The group included active PAP curators Vallejo Gantner, Janella Sellars, George Lugg, Jennifer Mefford, and Erin Boberg Doughton, plus NPN staff, and we joined members of La RED from El Salvador, Argentina, Colombia and Ecuador and Peru, among others, for their annual convening that occurred this same week.

Parallel to the dance festival, there was a city-wide month-long theater festival taking place, as well as the annual Choreographer’s Prize showcase, and our already extended 10 day stay wasn’t long enough to see the range of offerings in contemporary performance available.   

Mexico City is one of the world’s most densely populated and largest urban areas, and we traversed miles and miles of highways to see work in many diverse spaces, from the city’s turn of the 20th Century Teatro de la Ciudad all the way to the modern spaces of the National Institute of Fine Arts’ Centro Cultural del Bosque, a sprawling seven-theater cultural complex.   

Barreling through the endless transit of the city, it feels like Mexico City—also known as D.F. (the abbreviation for the Spanish ‘Distrito Federal’)—is on is on the verge of breaking off from earth and becoming its own planet.

Our host, Cuauhtémoc Nájera Ruiz, is the Director of the Division of Dance at the UNAM in D.F., and has a long history himself in the Mexican dance scene, having formerly directed Mexico’s national company, El Ballet Nacional de México.  Interestingly, there is not a Department of Dance at UNAM, but the Division of Dance exists as a producing and presenting entity that commissions work and produces artists’ work within the extensive cultural complex of the university, which includes a symphony hall, and two other 500-1500 seat theaters and a cinema, plus several smaller black box performances spaces.

George Lugg and MK Wegmann entering the MUAC for meeting with La RED  photo:  E. Doud

The newest addition to the Centro Cultural of the university is the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC), which is the work of the renowned Mexican architect Teodoro González de León.  The museum’s interplay with nature, the use of light in wide spaces is breathtaking, and despite its clearly modern feel, it resonates with the energy of a temple built in reverence of the art it houses.  We had most of our daytime meetings in this building.

While UNAM has a visual arts and music program, it remains a mystery as to why they don’t have an equally established dance and theater departments.  The good news is that their Centro Cultural actively supports local artists and opens up rehearsal and theater space for their work, commissioning new contemporary dance by established and emerging choreographers.  UNAM has pledged support in partnership with PAP for UNAM commissioned artists who travel to NPN Partners sites as part of our Creative Exchange project.  If you would like to know more about hosting an UNAM artist in residence through the Creative Exchange, please contact Elizabeth Doud at edoud@npnweb.org.

Our visit also coincided with the annual convening of México’s National Network of Dance Festivals (Red Nacional de Festivales de Danza), which is a network of 39 different festivals across México.  We were able to attend a presentation about their extensive network and diverse dance communities, and the sheer number of annual events offered by their members was surprising.  According to the presenters, they are interested in knowing more about U.S. based dance artists and companies.

We saw dance and theater mostly by artists from Mexico City, including choreographer Alicia Sanchez and her site specific work Migrantes, which took place on a bus parked off of a plaza in one of the city’s neighborhoods. Twenty five audience members got loaded onto the bus as would-be passengers in an illegal border crossing from Mexico to the U.S.  Some of company is staked out among the passengers playing fellow ‘migrants’ in transit who get pushed around and yelled at by the ‘coyotes’ organizing the suffocating and dangerous crossing, as many of the dancer/passengers tell their individual stories.  The work was excellent and well measured, touching on many subtle and not so subtle contradictions, injustices and unanswered dilemmas around the ever relevant topic of immigration to the U.S. by Mexicans.

We also saw the latest work of Mexico’s Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes, El Gallo. (photo courtesy of the company)

This piece is described as an ‘opera for actors’ that is performed, sung, howled and gyrated in a completely invented language.  The company’s director, Claudio Vales Kuri, was one of the artists hosted at REDCAT in PAP’s 2009 round of Creative Exchange projects, which was also supported through NPN’s partnership with the City of Los Angeles.

CalArts School of Theater/PAP Creative Exchange workshop with Mexico’s Claudio Valdes Kuri and collaborator Claudia Mader in Los Angeles, November 2009.  Photos by: Scott Groller

Their remarkable ensemble has toured some in the U.S. with NPN Partners, and because of these ties with NPN, specifically MCA Chicago and REDCAT, they invited the NPN and La RED delegations to lunch at a donor’s home in La Condessa, which is a beautiful area of the city.  It’s hard to be in Mexico and not get treated to amazing food, and we were served an elegant traditional lunch of potzole and tostadas, and free flowing tequila.  

One of the interesting things about Teatro Ciertos Habitantes, besides their outrageous and quality performance work, is their plan to construct a creative arts center on land they purchased outside of Mexico City.  As they tell it, this land was purchased with prize money they won to support the company’s production for the year.  With this tidy sum, they collectively decided not to receive salaries, but instead to apply the monies to the purchase of the land that is the location of the future center.  According to them, the Ecocentro “is a model cultural project of artistic inspiration, low-impact technologies, and the preservation of natural resources through the theatrical arts.”  To learn more about the company and their projects, visit their website: http://www.ciertoshabitantes.com

Our trip to Mexico City was intense, informative, and served to deepen our knowledge of contemporary performance in Mexico and our relationships within our partner network, La RED. We welcome all NPN Partners to join any of the PAP trips to Latin America and the Caribbean.  Please contact staff to find out how you can participate.  Coming soon:  reports from PAP travel to Chile and Trinidad-Tobago.  

News Flash:  Deadline for PAP Creative Exchange applications is fast approaching.  Follow this link for more details on how to apply.

"What a great bunch of people to be around. It was JUST AMAZING!!!"
These days, with the insane number of communication choices we have, how often do we actually connect with each other, face-to-face and in real time? The NPN Annual Meeting is one of those rare moments, and the success of the meeting in Knoxville raised the bar for future gatherings. Of special note was the buzz around NPN’s 25th Anniversary. With special events and feature articles scheduled for the coming year, NPN kicked off the celebration with a fashion statement: a rainbow set of bracelets featuring the seven disciplines supported by NPN, augmented by a special silver 25th Anniversary bracelet. (Sets of 8 are available for $5 + shipping from the NPN office.)

"I had such an amazing time and felt so totally nurtured as an artist."
The Knoxville AM played host to a total of 300 artists (visual and performing), presenters, co-commissioners, funders and and field-related friends from national, local and international arenas. Nearly 95 artists attended, a record number, in equal complement to the number of NPN and VAN Partners, encouraging deeper conversations among peers. This year’s meeting featured the Visual Artists Network’s first full integration into the content of the Meeting. To celebrate, VAN commissioned provocative hotel room installations, commandeering the hotel’s 3rd floor. The five juried artists were given (nearly) free reign in transforming the rooms, which were available for viewing throughout the weekend. <IMAGES> [The rooms were safely returned to their previous condition at the end of the Meeting.]

"The meeting has empowered me to exceed expectations at my organization."
Forums for dialogue and shared learning experiences abounded, including nine Idea Forums that addressed topics culled from NPN’s constituencies over the months prior to the Meeting:
o    Artists Pioneering Hybrid Careers
o    Giving Voice to Community: 2 NPN Community Fund Case Studies
o    Everything You Wanted to Know About International Tax
o    Women of Calypso and the New Performing Americas Program Creation Fund
o    Sharing Process with Audiences
o    Creative Ways to Commission During Tough Times
o    Measuring Transformation: Evaluating Arts and Social Impact Projects
o    The Enterprising Artist:  Rethinking Professional Arts Education for a New Global Cultural Workforce
o    Fundraising Challenges, Opportunities and Strategies During a Recession

"I loved the energy! I think the fact that we had more sessions as an overall group made the atmosphere more congenial or something."
Opportunities for sharing work (past, present and future) took place during “In the Works” sessions, the “Media Showcase,” the Visual Artists Salon, and in ArtBursts—short performances throughout the plenary sessions which kept audiences on their toes and artists’ work in the forefront. Artists were invited to a half-day professional development workshop, focusing on entering, building and exiting community, facilitated by Urban Bush Women.

"The time together away from workspace is essential whether in seminars or in bars."
"It inspires me and holds me together for the whole year."
Both scheduled and informal invitations to explore Knoxville, meet local residents and see artwork in the community kept attendees awake and alert well into the night. “Live & On Stage” showcases were presented for two nights at the historic Bijou Theatre, just around the corner from the hotel. AC Entertainment, manager of the Bijou and the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, lent a promotions team to NPN for the showcases, ensuring that Knoxville audiences came in force. The 3-1/2 day conference reached its crescendo on Sunday evening at the Knoxville Museum of Art, when Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Urban Bush Women’s Founder and Artistic Director, presented an inspirational keynote that brought NPN and UBW full circle over the course of both organizations’ first 25 years in the field. Knoxville’s Streamliners rocked the house with their 17-piece swing band and wild dancing ensued, as colleagues bade farewell until the Annual Meeting in Dallas in early December 2010.

ArtSpot Productions/Mondo Bizarro

Performances: 1/10/2010 6:00 p.m. | 1/10/2010 9:00 p.m. | The Brecht Forum, 451 West St, NYC Reservations: nickslie1@gmail.com, (212) 875-7476

 

Bridgman/Packer Dance

Performances: “Double Expose” 1/8/2010 8:00 p.m. |  Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 W. 55th Street,

“Under The Skin” 1/9/2010 5:00 p.m. | 1/9/2010 8:30 p.m. Dance New Amsterdam: 280 Broadway, 2nd Floor Reservations: michellec@pentacle.org, (212) 278-8111

 

Donna Uchizono Company

Performances: 1/10/2010 5:30 p.m. | Baryshnikov Arts Center Howard Gilman Space, 450 West 37th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10018 (between 9th and 10th Aves) Reservations: ladonnadance@mindspring.com, (212) 982-1227

 

DAVID NEUMANN
1/9/2010 5:30 p.m. | Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 West 37^th Street
1/10/2010 5:00 p.m.  | Hunter College, Frederick Loewe Theatre, 695 Park Avenue Reservations:ivans@pentacle.org

 

Doug Varone and Dancers

Performances: 1/9/2010 5:00 p.m. | 1/10/2010 5:00 p.m. | City Center Studio # 4, 130 West 56th St. NYC

 

EMILY JOHNSON

Performances: 1/8/2010 6:30 p.m. | 1/9/2010 9:30 p.m. |  1/10/2010 7:00 p.m. | 1/12/2010 4:30 p.m. | PS122, 150 First Avenue @ E. 9^th St Reservations: (212) 352-3101

 

ELIO VILLAFRANCA

Performances: 1/9/2010 7:30 p.m. | HARLEM SUITE, 4TH FLOOR, HILTON NEW YORK Reservations: eliojazz@gmail.com, (718) 644-8638

 

Gesel Mason Performance Projects

Performances: 1/10/2010 7:45 p.m. | The Ailey Studios (Studio 5A/5B) / Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, 405 W. 55th Street (at 9th Avenue)

 

Helanius J. Wilkins/EDGEWORKS Dance Theater

Performances: 1/10/2010 7:15 PM |  Alvin Ailey Studios, 405 W. 55th St. (at 9th Avenue), NYC, NY 10019 Reservations:  (212) 405-9000

 

Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People

Performances: 1/8/2010 7:00 p.m. | 1/9/2010 9:30 p.m. | 1/10/2010 1:00 p.m. | Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand StreetReservations: miguel@miguelgutierrez.org, benpryor.nyc@gmail.com, (646) 265.8226

 

maria hassabi

Performances: 1/11/2010 4:30 p.m. | 1/12/2010 4:30 p.m. | 1/12/2010 9:30 p.m. | PS122 @ private studio, West 27^th btw 6^th & 7^th Reservations: (212) 352-3101

 

Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak

Performances: 1/8/2010 8:15 p.m. | 

Alvin Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 West 55th St, NYC

 

Morgan Thorson

Performances:  1/7/2010 5:00 p.m. | 1/9/2010 5:00 p.m. |  1/10/2010 5:00 p.m | 1/11/2010 7:30 p.m. | 1/12/2010 7:30 p.m.

PS 122, 150 First Ave Reservations: www.ps122.org, (212) 477-4829

 

ZOE|JUNIPER

Performances: 1/9/2010 1:00 p.m. | 1/10/2010 5:00 p.m. |

Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street Reservations: benpryor.nyc@gmail.com, (646) 265.8226

 

NPN received more applications than we could fund.   Many of the applications were very strong; and if you did not get funded in this round, we strongly encourage you to apply again.  Winter FY10 application deadlines will be in February 2010. Stay tuned!

Follow the links below for a description of the projects: 

Summer FY10 Community Fund Awards
Summer FY10 Creation Fund Awards
Summer FY10 Mentorship and Leadership Initiatives Awards 

Last month we highlighted  the work Bebe Miller did in Montana through a Community Fund award to Myrna Loy Center.

This month we take a look at a Mentorship & Leadership project.  Members of El Centro Su Teatro’s junior programming staff and Artistic Director Tony Garcia engaged in a six-month project which was designed to build the programming skills of junior staff members, by teaching them the fundamentals of the Chicano aesthetic and training them in rigorous curatorial methods.  In a key component of the project, junior staff members visited El Teatro Campesino, a bilingual (Spanish/English) theater group based in the historic Mission San Juan Bautista, near San Jose.  During the summer of 2008, the junior staff put their new skills to use.  Read more about the project.

The Community Fund is made possible by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency), the MetLife Foundation, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.

Community Fund
Creation Fund
Mentorship and Leadership Projects

Navigate to those pages and see the exciting work our NPN Partners have planned.

The Performing Americas Program (PAP) staff and U.S.-based curatorial team traveled to Quito, Ecuador from September 11-16, 2008 to convene with our counterparts in La RED (The Network of Cultural Promoters of Latin America and the Caribbean) for their 16th annual meeting, to see work by local and festival artists and to gain a greater understanding of the culture and artistic climate in Ecuador. Our host was Nelson Diaz, the protagonist and Artistic Director of Humanizarte, a 17-year-old arts organization dedicated to social and cultural transformation through the arts. Our visit coincided with the Spondylus Festival, which Humanizarte organizes each year as part of a three-city, three week festival organized in conjunction with RET, the Ecuadorian Network of Theaters.

Purpose of La RED
La RED functions much like NPN, with the added complexity of it being a network of organizations from different countries, which greatly increases the challenges of travel logistics, language and fundraising. PAP has been a joint venture between La RED and NPN since it began in 2002, and the PAP staff and curators attend La RED’s annual meetings, and vice versa.

Our delegation of nine U.S.-based PAP curators and staff spent five days convening, attending performances and discussing work and the state of the arts with colleagues from all over Latin America and the Caribbean, some of whom have been Latin American-based curators of PAP or have presented U.S. artists over the years. The meetings allow each member to talk about their respective areas of focus and expertise; NPN was able to share the work that we do as a network and discuss our mission and values, as well as learn about current festivals, arts funding trends and projects in other countries of the Americas.

The international travel component of PAP is one of the most important ways that we can build and share peer knowledge between the two networks. We are able, as U.S.-based arts professionals, not only to learn through these face-to-face meetings, but to use this important international platform as a way to give a voice to our Partners and many artists who would not have a voice outside of the United States, and who represent an important sector of the true contemporary arts practice of our nation. 

On the Ground in Quito
At over 9,000 feet altitude, the city of Quito is surrounded by mountains and often unexpectedly swallowed by clouds; it is a UNESCO world heritage site reputed to be the largest colonial center in all of Latin America. The Old City has undergone a substantial restoration, and is crowded with magnificent churches from every epoch of the conquest; there is even a Gothic Basilica, which one La RED colleague noted was "absolutely vulgar in its riches." This astounding architectural and religious presence is juxtaposed with the rich indigenous culture that is very much alive in the faces, clothing, food, politics and energy of the people of Quito and Ecuador.

The recent history of Ecuador is also fascinating and has included much political unrest including the ousting of two presidents since 2000 due to a very polemic "dollarization" policy and its devastating economic and social after effects, and the government is now in a phase of recovery and greater tolerance for liberal policies. The current arts scene in Quito mirrors that of many of the communities throughout Latin America and even the United States. The organizations that support, produce and advocate for the performing arts—traditional and contemporary—do so as independent, mostly non-profit enterprises that form local alliances and find support from private sponsors to survive, often in the manner of an arts collective. Humanizarte, which hosted a residency with D-Projects in 2006 as part of a PAP residency, occupies an old house that has a large enclosure built on to the back, which functions as a café-theater at night. Their company regularly performs contemporary adaptations of traditional Ecuadorian and Andean dance and music, has regular shows there; they also hold classes and community meetings in the ample and welcoming space.

Nelson and his staff have entered into a partnership with an Ecuadorian chef, Edgar León, who has transformed the cafe into an indigenous eating experience where he “revives the lost culture of Ecuador through gastronomy” by cooking with only Ecuadorian-grown and produced ingredients. Can you say blended boiled green plantain, lime and coconut milk soup with a buttery chunk of fresh avocado on top?How about hand-turned passion fruit sorbet with fresh minced basil confidently swirled in?

We visited other artist spaces such as the Casa Grupo de Teatro Malayerba, El Patio de Comedias and a local art house cinema/café called OchoyMedio, where we watched a screening of an experimental film called Blak Mama. All of these organizations began as independent projects or collectives and have survived tenaciously over the years, building audiences and programming in different ways.

Ministry of Culture?
In the last year and a half, the federal government of Ecuador has created its first Ministry of Culture. This has meant unprecedented support for many arts industries such as film, opera and other disciplines, and many of the artists are relieved and grateful for this support. Others observed that while the funding is better than it’s been, it still seems to go to the larger more ‘established’ groups (the National Theater for example), and experimental or smaller groups get left out of the distribution. No one denies, however, that things seem to be improving.

Artists abroad are always surprised to learn that the United States doesn’t itself have a Ministry of Culture. The perception that we have inexhaustible wealth and resources extends to our arts and culture infrastructure, and the assumption mostly is that the arts in the U.S. can’t possibly be struggling like they are in other places.

The Minister of Culture, Dr. Galo Mora Witt, graced a luncheon held at Humanizarte in honor of the 16th La RED meeting. He was definitely a celebrity presence and spoke eloquently about how an artist’s gratitude is “not expected from a government that has as its basic responsibility the support of the arts.” He added that “artists drive the process of what needs support, and the government’s job is to listen and provide.” When I heard that, I thought there was something wrong with the microphone, but then I noticed that he had conspicuously long fingernails on his right hand. Later I asked, “Ministro, are you an artist?” He confirmed that he is a guitarist and writer. During his speech, in a nod to our delegation, he mentioned a world folk music festival that had been held in Quito years back where two of the featured artists were Pete Seeger and Sweet Honey in the Rock whose performances clarified for him who were the real ‘people’ of the United States.

Quito Landmark:  Lost and Recovered
Among several magnificent theater spaces we visited was the Teatro Bolivar, which is an old theater palace built in 1933 by an American firm in the grand style of the show, using neoclassic shapes, mixed with Moorish influences. The building seated originally 2400 and hosted ballet, symphony, zarzuelas, opera and film for the elite Quito citizenry. After a slow and depressing deterioration and loss of audiences over the years due to the advent of television, urban sprawl and lack of municipal infrastructure, it turned into an ill-frequented movie house from 1988-1997. In 1998 it was slated for restoration and a return to live performance, coinciding with the overall restoration of the Old City of Quito. Then, suddenly, on a fateful day in 1999, a fire that apparently started as a gas leak in a neighboring Pizza Hut ignited the old building. The theater was almost lost. Now, under the management and restoration of the Teatro Bolivar Foundation (led by the third generation of the theater’s original owners), the theater is coming back as an amazing performance space as well as a movie theater. 

When the owners approached Pizza Hut for some recompense, the multi-national refused to take responsibility and never paid a cent towards the millions of dollars of damage. During our tour of the space, we saw how glamorous the palace must have once been.  After we climbed a set of back stairs to a second floor where you could once see stars through the charred remains of the roof, we stood firmly on a rebuilt floor looking out over the proscenium which itself was miraculously undamaged. At the end of the tour, we were lead to a dark corridor that lit slowly as double doors at its end opened to reveal an elderly man seated in a red usher’s uniform. He stood and announced that he was a 50-year veteran usher at the palace, and hoped that we enjoyed the show. I’m never eating at Pizza Hut again.

Journey’s End
For our closing dinner, we sat as a group in Humanizarte, savoring some of Chef Edgar’s amazing dishes and enjoying the performances by Ballet Humanizarte and local musicians. After midnight we said goodbye to Nelson who was leaving the next morning for rural Argentina to release a group of rescued condors into the wild, a project he’s been dedicated to for years. (The Andean Condor is considered a symbol
of power and health by many Andean cultures, and is endangered in many countries of South America.) An artistic director’s work is never done.

In the past, PAP has traveled to Caracas, Venezuela; Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Brazil; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Bogotá, Colombia; Santiago, Chile; Montevideo, Uruguay and San Jose, Costa Rica. This year’s trip to Quito, Ecuador was important to our PAP planning process as we are implementing the second phase of the PAP Creative Exchange and welcoming new curators from La RED to participate in selecting U.S. artists for future tours in Latin America. We are fortunate that these two new curators, Cuautehmoc Najero from Mexico City, and Marianella Protti from San Jose, Costa Rica, along with other La RED representatives will be attending the NPN Annual Meeting this year.

Upcoming Performing Americas Trip
The next Performing Americas trip will be to Mexico City from March 12-15, 2009 to attend the Puerta de las Americas festival for a four day cultural extravaganza featuring dance, combined with curated studio visits with artists and convenings with members of La RED and other cultural promoters from Mexico. For more information, check out the following websites:

Performing Americas Program:  www.npnweb.org/programs/strategic-partnerships/initiatives/
La RED:  www.redlatinoamericana.com
Humanizarte: www.humanizarte.com
Fundacion Teatro Bolivar:  www.teatrobolivar.org/
Website of the film Blak Mama:  www.blak-mama.com