Once, years ago, I was on a panel with my fellow choreographer Bella Lewitzky, one of the great exponents of modern dance on the West Coast. We got to talking about our shared concerns. She told me that she loved teaching and leading educational residencies but that she never put those activities on the same resume as her theatrical work. She was of the opinion that the concert promoters would think less of her performance work if they knew about her passions and successes as a teacher.
Once, I was talking to a research scientist who was also a practicing physician. We were discussing the idea of legislating limits on how discoveries in genetics are applied. He said that scientists needed to be involved in designing that legislation. I asked him if scientists had incentives to encourage them to play active roles in drafting laws and influencing public policy. He said the opposite is true. Scientists who serve in such capacities lose time, salary, research funds, and status. Their peers perceive them as less committed to research, and more willing to compromise the standards of science.
Once, I was in a meeting with some fishermen on the coast of Maine. (My dance company was there to hear their stories in order to make a piece about their lives.) They talked about how they wanted to be involved in regulating themselves in relation to the environmental issues facing the industry. But they said that it was politically impossible to do so because their fellow fishermen would consider it akin to defection.
Once, I was talking with Stephen Palumbi, a geneticist who works in the marine biology department at Stanford. I was learning about the ocean, about marine ecology, and about his driving passion, the biology of great whales. Others had already told me about Steve’s remarkable work with the whaling industry and how he has used genetic markers to demonstrate the severe depletion of the whale population in the last hundred years. In passing, he told me that while he believes that activism and research need each other, he tries to keep the two activities separate, because otherwise his research would be suspect.
All of these encounters had particular resonance for me… I have always believed that we needed to keep one foot in the community world and one in the concert world. We know that these activities inform each other constantly, allowing us to challenge ourselves to ever higher standards, as well as to meet the particular needs of each project. But over the years I have seen how this very exciting and dynamic way of working can be perceived by my colleagues in the wider dance profession as a compromise to quality. Some would preserve the idea of artistic purity as practiced in the studio and on stage as the epitome and high point of an artist’s existence. When I see this orthodoxy echoed in diverse fields, be it art, science, or fishing, I have to wonder: how much does this purist ideal of professionalism limit our possibilities? How are we leaving the world at large bereft of connection, skills, and actual tools?… Perhaps we can imagine, by extension, that in each of our professions we will be profoundly affected by participating in the democratic process, ready to return to our studios, laboratories, and fishing trawlers with our work and our lives the better for it.
