Support for an Arts Champion
Dance Theater Workshop sends our support to New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. We know her to be an inspired leader for culture in New York City. She has championed the arts and brought valuable funding to Dance Theater Workshop and the Chelsea Cultural Partnership.
As current allegations concerning the City Council are sorted out, we wish her well, and hope Speaker Quinn and her staff head into a Mayoral campaign that will continue promoting the importance of arts advocacy.
Mana Allen (April 25th, 2008 at 11:46 pm)
Ever since DTW announced their plans for a “new direction” for Ellen Robbins, I have been interested in the DTW blog. I am convinced that no one at DTW actually has read all of the heartfelt and passionate responses their post/decision. If they were truly interested in our “wanted opinons”, I think they may have re-considered it in a more serious way. That being said, I find it interesting that the subjects of the majority of the other DTW editorial blog posts are about the relevance of dance in our society and the crisis in the dance community – the disappearance of dance writing, lack of dance awareness and fading reverence for the value of the arts in general.
David Sheingold calls upon Obama, Clinton and McCain to take the arts seriously - for a commitment to arts education, the DTW blogger community is outraged that someone calls dance increasingly “culturally irrelevant” and is dismayed that one of its revered critics has been removed from her post at The Village Voice. Another post pleads for ideas on how to build new audiences for dance performance. The post about Carla Peterson’s schedule and philosophy as an artistic director is fascinating. When she took over as artistic director at DTW she said she was interested in supporting the work of artists in their fifties and sixties, in supporting them in the “arc” of their lives.
This is a post supporting our wonderful City Council Speaker Christine Quinn in this crucial moment of her political life. She, as I understand it, helped get DTW funding for educational outreach and is a firm supporter of arts education.
I can’t help but feel a huge disconnect between DTW’s concerns and their actions. DTW has suddenly chosen to disconnect itself from one of its most valuable resources: Ellen Robbins, her tribe of devoted families and a unique new generation of dance makers. The most obvious way to build new audiences, new respect for dance, new fund-raising for dance, to revive the relevance of dance, is to raise a new generation of dance-builders, of dance-lovers, dance supporters. How can we ask Obama, Clinton and McCain to take commitment to dance education seriously when we allow a “valued colleague” to be uprooted and displaced; to treat her 34 years of service to the DTW community and dance education as so easily expendable; to alienate a large community ready to organize and help thrust DTW into a new era of “relevance”.
By her own admission, Christine Quinn made a big mistake by hastily making an announcement about the problems in her budget without consulting the members of the council first. She has been willing to take responsibility for her mistakes, for which I admire her. I wish DTW could do the same. I wish DTW could have consulted with its community at-large before making this rash decision.
Actions speak louder than blogs.