or all-gender bathrooms. I call upon Bay Area dance venues and spaces to use the shutdown period of the pan- demic to fix this—AND PUT NEW SIGNS ON YOUR BATHROOMS, DARNIT! I will mail you the sharpies if you don’t have any. SB: And not everybody sees them- selves in the new equity, “everybody is welcome” statements. SD: Right. When white cisgender non-disabled people say something generic like “everybody is welcome,” it often means “you’re welcome in theory but our facility, staff, and prac- tices might still be harmful or exclud- ing.”Welcoming needs to be a verb , not a passive value. We white people in leadership don’t get to claim to be “anti-racist” or say we care about white supremacy unless we can back it up with daily, concrete, meaningful and accountable action. At FMP, when we have any kind of public event we always list a bunch of information right on our web- site, ticketing page, and social media that we hope is helpful for people to feel that they are thought of ahead of time and welcomed into that space. For example, we will share that the entrance, bathrooms, and seating are wheelchair accessible, the front row seats are all armless for fat or super- fat folks, we only ever use venues with all gender bathrooms, we provide a monitored scent-free seating area, we never require “legal ID” to purchase or pick up tickets. This is to say, I’m specifically thinking of you , I want you to feel like you are welcome, and here are the loving accommodations we’re providing. I’d like to see those statements on a venue’s ticketing page. Z Space is our artistic home for a reason—they’ve always been awe- some. Part of their leadership staff team includes a trans person. After years of temporarily allowing us to make their bathrooms all-gender during our events, they permanently and lovingly made all their bathrooms all gender.
LeahAnn Mitchell
fresh meat,” and there was this col- lective gasp of excitement. So saucy at the time! SB: Jesse is the sauciest! SD: Absolutely! He had already long been bringing BIPOC queer dance-theater to theaters and to the streets across the Bay with his com-
BIPOC, trans, queer, and GNC artists including disabled artists. It was about reclaiming ourselves, our bodies, and our creative expression as powerful, sexy, and worthy of taking up the space that had hitherto been denied to our communities. Elizabeth Gorelik did our first photo shoot at ODC: there were lots of
proud that from the beginning, all our artists and crew were paid well. We’re so proud of really changing that landscape, of breaking down so many barriers for trans and GNC performing artists. I have so much love, gratitude, and awe for our tiny but mighty core staff, Shawna Virago, Eric Garcia, and StormMi- guel Florez, the “Fresh Meat Fam- ily”–and it really is a family. SB: Reflecting on the last twenty years, what has changed about the Bay Area performance landscape in terms of both trans representation and influence? SD: It’s painful to witness the contin- ued refusal of most Bay Area dance leadership and spaces to take any actual action around trans equity. There are a lot of trans supportive “values” but almost no action or pol- icies and procedures put in place. It’s absolutely unacceptable that most of our dance spaces don’t have any trans/non-binary faculty, trans pro- gramming, all-gender changing rooms
IT'S PAINFUL TO WITNESS THE CONTINUED REFUSAL OF MOST BAY AREA DANCE LEADERSHIP AND SPACES TO TAKE ANY ACTUAL ACTION AROUND TRANS EQUITY.
pany STEAMROLLER Dance. This was when we founded Fresh Meat Productions. At that time (2002), there was an amazing groundswell of trans performance and artists, but nobody was programming, presenting, or curating trans and gender-noncon- forming artists. Nobody would touch us. There were queer events, but most were majority white cis non-disabled artists. So we came together—dance peers, trans artist activists, friends—to put on a festival that centered majority
chaps and leather harnesses and tighty whities and wigs. So good! Andrew Wood rented us the theater for super cheap on Tuesday and Wednesday night, and we were sold out, standing room only, packed like sardines. And there was an immediate tor- rent of love, an extraordinary response from the community, that YES there was a clear hunger for this in the Bay. It became clear shortly after that first festival that this needed to be an organization. I’m
Randy Ford
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n amp l i f y u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n a p l i f y
44 Gough Street, Suite 201 San Francisco, CA 94103 www.dancersgroup.org
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