Latest / Arts Unscripted with Monica Holt / Jane Raleigh on Curatorial Vision and Bridging Tradition with Innovation

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Jane Raleigh on Curatorial Vision and Bridging Tradition with Innovation · Arts Unscripted with Monica Holt

0:08
Welcome back to CI to Eye. I'm Monica Holt.
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Today I'm talking with Jane Raleigh,
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who spent the past several years transforming how the Kennedy Center thought
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about dance.
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She worked to break down artificial barriers between ballet and contemporary
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forms, championed local artists, and slowly,
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methodically brought audiences along on a journey from the classical to the
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cutting edge. When everything shifted this past February,
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Jane took the difficult choice to stay at the institution in an effort to
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protect the platform and the artists who depended on it. But in August,
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that choice was taken from her and she and her entire team were let go
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anyway.
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Now Jane's the picture of resilience and she's doubling down on her firm
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commitment to community. She launched DC Dance Network,
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a grassroots support model that asks,
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what if we stopped waiting for institutions to save us and started building
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community infrastructure ourselves? Jane and I go way back,
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but there was nothing quite like working together through those uncertain
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February weeks trying to figure out how to lead when everything around us was
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falling apart.
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Today we talk a bit about that experience and what it teaches us about
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resilience, values-driven leadership,
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and when it's time to build something new. Let's dive in.
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Jane Raleigh, welcome to CI to Eye. Thank you so much for being here.
1:44
Thank you for having me. So good to be together.
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It's good to be together always, and especially now.
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We've worked together at the Kennedy Center for many years,
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but what a lot of folks don't know is that I've known Jane since her college
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days.
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We both went to William and Mary and even though I graduated before you got
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there,
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we were tied together through the eternal bonds of our college a cappella group,
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The Christopher Wren Singers.
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Yeah.
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What I think is funny is I know that singing is integral to my entire life,
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but most people who know me in the dance world know me after I stopped singing.
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So the big reveal,
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singing was a huge part of my life until I graduated college.
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Jane can sing. She's pretty great at it actually. So in school,
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you chose to study Hispanic studies and dance.
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Did you have a sense coming out of college that arts administration was for you
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and that was where you were headed because of those studies?
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No, not at all.
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I don't think I knew what arts administration was and actually when I
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graduated I was fully intending to become a UN interpreter
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for Spanish. That was the path I had myself on.
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Listen, you would've been great.
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And sometimes I think there's still an alternate universe where I just have to
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pick up one of the other five major languages of the UN. So, easy task.
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Totally.
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I didn't understand that arts administration was a career path.
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I thought you could be an artist,
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and I had done a series of internships in college and volunteering doing
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backstage work, hanging lights, doing minimal lighting design,
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things like that and really enjoyed that.
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But I didn't know there were computer people in the arts.
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Oh, completely. I feel like this is a theme with so many folks we talked to,
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that it's just, how did arts administration become so opaque?
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Yeah.
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But then this gorgeous thing happened,
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which is you joined the Kennedy Center and you actually did not join
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immediately in programming.
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No. What's funny is I was an intern, technically in programming.
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So it was the Performing Arts For Everyone team,
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and I did millennium stage work and made over a hundred
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programs for artists on millennium stage in that one semester internship and
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then basically decided the only thing I wanted was to stay in the building
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and get any job that was available in the building and ended up in group sales
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in the marketing team where you were.
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Group sales at the center, I will say, is crucial,
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particularly given the amount of four to six to eight week engagements we have.
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You can imagine the business model for that.
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You are reliant upon groups and schools and tourists who
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want to come through and organize that way.
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What perspective on the arts did you get being in that department?
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Yeah. At the time, the group sales department was divided by market,
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so I was the associate for the tour and travel market,
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so I was mostly dealing with buses of middle schoolers
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coming from middle America to their DC trips,
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and the tour companies would call and book.
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'Let's bring them to a show at the Kennedy Center.' And I do think that my time
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in group sales opened my mind to the power of data.
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I remember taking it upon myself to look at the sales I had done
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and just practice modeling them, like putting them into pie charts,
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putting them into bar charts,
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which I'm sure now it was probably laughably rudimentary what I was doing,
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but it was the first time that I was trying to model what my emails
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were into a visual thing and then trying to take a decision from that or
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suggest something from that.
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A data self starter. We love that. And frankly,
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a good little nugget for a lot of us who when we don't know where to start,
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just use the numbers you have and see how you can start understanding better
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what's happening. That's fabulous.
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You've talked a little bit about how in school you were dancing,
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you grew up dancing,
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so when an opportunity opened on the dance team at the center,
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how did you pitch yourself?
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How did you find your way back over to the programming department?
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Yeah,
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I think there was a lot of luck in that because as anyone in the arts
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knows,
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those programming jobs in your specialized field are so few and far between,
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and I know that so many talented people were applying for that job.
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I used to always tell interns when they would ask, how did you get that job?
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Interviewing for dance programming was the first interview.
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I never lied in at all, where people are just like,
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what's your favorite part about making copies? And you're like, Ugh.
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The smell of the Xerox machine keeps me going.
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And it was really the first moment in my career where I was like, wow.
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Every answer I gave was just pulling from my own
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nerdy love of what dancers I thought were amazing and
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who I was looking at on Instagram. And I did realize for the first time,
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the thing I just cared about was useful all of a sudden.
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That's a great way to describe it. For me, I loved marketing,
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but when I was talking about moving to the theater department,
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it's the same thing. It's these very nerdy,
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detailed things you remember back through childhood,
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which are actually going to serve you when you're casting a show or choosing a
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company or looking at what the season looks like.
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Yeah.
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You then stayed in dance programming. You worked your way up,
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but I would also say you worked your way out.
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It wasn't about what is the next job or what is the next promotion,
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but you were also really seeding relationships across the building and
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throughout the community.
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You found yourself as the director of dance programming at the Kennedy Center,
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and when you had arrived,
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dance at the center was more traditionally siloed.
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There was a ballet track, a contemporary dance track,
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and I think it was clear from kind of the moment you stepped into the director
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of dance seat that you understood and honored the tradition and the
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foundation that was built,
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but that you really wanted to transform the way both the institution and
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audiences were thinking about dance.
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I think you expressed it to me as a continuum is how we talked about it a lot.
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So talk a little bit about your vision for that evolution and your programming
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philosophy.
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Yeah.
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The Kennedy Center had always traditionally separated its ballet
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season from its dance season,
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and the dance season had been called the modern dance season.
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Then it became the contemporary dance season.
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Then we just called a dance because of course dance was also,
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tap was also classical Indian dance was also hip hop was also everything
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else.
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I think it's also important to name those two series were
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curated by two different people.
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There was a ballet curator then that was the role I stepped into,
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but Alicia Adams had been curating the dance season for multiple decades
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and doing so incredibly with this amazing international view and all of that.
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What I have come to articulate about it is that
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an audience only knows what you teach them.
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And in the 50 years of the Kennedy Center,
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I believe we spent the entire time teaching our audience that ballet is
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separate from all other dance forms and that traditional
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classical ballet is the only ballet that exists,
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which just isn't true. And no other venues in the world
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separate ballet from dance,
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no other venues in the United States have two separate series.
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The beauty of that and the incredible platform of it is that the Kennedy Center
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presents more dance than basically any other venue in the United States.
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So for that, we are tremendously lucky,
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but this separation always felt artificial to me,
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and right when I stepped into the director role,
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I was also hearing that from external voices,
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leaders in the field who were challenging, why were these two things separated?
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So I think about it now as a spectrum of bringing the two sides
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together. It's not only bridging the gap between ballet and dance,
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but also there's so many other sub
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aesthetics or flavors of each of these dance forms that the Kennedy Center just
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never presented on the full end of the contemporary dance
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spectrum.
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There's postmodern performance art that our audience just never quite had a
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tolerance for yet. And even in the classical ballet side of things,
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this more contemporary ballet aesthetic where the point shoe isn't as
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necessary where it's more abstracted.
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We didn't see a lot of that at the Kennedy Center,
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and so I saw that there were a lot of gaps that could be filled if we just
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worked to bring our audience along. But again,
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you're fighting against that.
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We have told our audiences for 50 years that these things are binary and
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they are separate from each other.
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So how did you think about bringing audiences along?
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Folks who are the traditionalists who want Swan Lake,
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but also the adventurous audience members who maybe wouldn't have opted into
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what they saw as classical ballet,
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and how do you start to commingle those ideas?
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Yeah, most importantly,
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I think I had to come to terms with the thought that the
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transformation had to be very slow and that you can't
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just make all the changes you want to make and expect that the audience is going
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to come along with you. So I would frequently ask myself,
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what are the incremental steps that if in five years I would like the
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audience to be excited about something,
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what are the intermediary steps to get them there?
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One sort of tangible way I used to to think about it is we have in the
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ballet cannon,
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these really well-known titles that basically will always sell:
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Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote.
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And so I used to think about how could we do a Swan Lake
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that introduces a company the audiences have never seen,
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where the company name doesn't have recognition, and then how does that
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guarantee us a certain load-in of people who are just going to buy the ticket
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because it's Swan Lake, no matter what. A great example in this past season,
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American Ballet Theater has been coming to the Kennedy Center since 1971 for the
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center's entire existence, usually doing these big classics.
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Our audiences know the dancers by name. They know the company so well,
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and Crime and Punishment, which they brought this year,
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was wildly contemporary for what they normally do at the Kennedy Center.
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A contemporary choreographer, Helen Pickett. News story.
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Some people are going to buy a ticket to ABT no matter what,
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and then you've encouraged them into taking a risk that maybe they didn't
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realize they were taking.
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Encourage them to trust the company and the curation.
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Yeah, I have such a strong memory.
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I was at a ballet show standing in the lobby of the opera house during an
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intermission, and I had a longtime subscriber come up to me and they were like,
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I hate your season next year. And I said, okay.
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I was practicing receiving feedback from anyone who wanted to give it,
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so I was just like, great, tell me more. Thank you for your honesty.
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Tell me more. Why do you hate the season? And they said, it's all new.
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There's nothing traditional that I can hold onto,
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and I just feel totally out of my depth. I hate it. I said,
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thank you so much for that feedback. Literally not 10 minutes later,
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another subscriber came up and was like, I hate your season. And I was like, oh,
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okay, tell me why. And they were like, it's so traditional.
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It's the same stuff you always do. It's so boring. There's nothing new.
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And I was like, thank you so much for that feedback.
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And then I just left that conversation like, I'm doing it.
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You did it. Well, I mean you did it.
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You were always so good about being very in touch
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with the folks who were coming to the shows and you were always there and
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talking to audiences. And I think that's such an important piece of it too.
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And I remember early days when you were in the role,
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you were navigating,
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how much do I respond to If you get a letter that's passed along to you from a
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subscriber,
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but I think ultimately you took the position of I'll respond to anything that's
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feedback or that's constructive or where it's clear someone wants to engage.
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Definitely that's a beautiful thing that not everyone does.
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So I really commend you for your approach with that.
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Thank you. I really think that that dancer mentality on my team,
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we would talk a lot about that,
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that it's always a joy to hire dancers because dancers are trained to take
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corrections.
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And so giving small amounts of feedback about people's administrative
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work, dancers are just like, why thank you for that feedback.
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And then they just make the correction in a way that non-dancers don't always
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receive feedback.
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That's fantastic to think about it that way. So as you were making this change,
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obviously that comes with internal change management too,
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that comes with its own set of challenges both day to day and also personal wear
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and tear.
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How did you manage as you were embarking on what the future of the
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dance program was going to be?
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What was the Jane take to manage the internal changes?
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Yeah, I think the Kennedy Center, like any historic institution,
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is full of traditions and history and
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people who just believe that we need to keep doing things that way because we,
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it took me a long time to start to understand
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how different people wanted to receive information,
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and I think that was the thing that opened the door for me to be more
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successful at bringing people along or starting to align people to the vision
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for the changes I was trying to make.
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You start to learn that different people want to see the data or different
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people want to understand the story behind your reasoning for
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making that choice,
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or certain people just want to understand it as a comparator to another
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thing that they understand better than the dance thing you're talking about.
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And once I was able to realize what they were looking for,
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then I could change my presentation to be more successful to bring people along.
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And as you say, you were working across so many different programmatic areas,
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even just in ballet, ballet and dance,
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but you were also quite a champion for local commissioning projects.
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How did you think about the importance of the local dance community in your time
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at the center?
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And also how did you make that commitment work both artistically and
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financially?
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I have always felt a commitment to the local community because I'm part of it.
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I think the uniqueness of growing up in
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this region is that at the same time that I was working in group sales fresh out
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of college, I was also performing in a local dance company.
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Eventually I stopped being on stage as much,
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but from the very beginning I always could see that there was a lot of room for
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opportunity for the Kennedy Center to engage with the community.
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I have to shout out Garth Ross,
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the leader of PAFE when I was an intern there,
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who taught me about the creative ecosystem,
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which then I later learned is a Marc Bamuthi Joseph-ism,
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who then came and led social impact.
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So that way of thinking and way of engaging with the community
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has been foundational to my understanding of arts administration going
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into community group,
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gathering people that you trust and being the curator of the questions that you
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ask them to help guide where you go and in what direction you go.
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I've just seen firsthand how powerful that feels to be inside.
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And because I learned that approach so early in my career,
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that has informed the way that I have worked with the dance community locally
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ever since then.
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That makes complete sense.
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And also you allude to the fact that you're still a practicing dancer yourself,
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and so keeping that connection being so fundamental, you also,
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when you were engaging with particularly the local commissioning projects,
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you didn't feel tied to just using the theaters in a traditional format. I mean,
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the number of site specific works you did really across the season,
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but also with new commissions was a beautiful thing for other folks
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who have campuses, have theaters,
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but maybe want to explore how they bring art outside of those spaces.
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Can you talk a little bit about how you had those conversations and where those
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projects came from and where you found success?
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Yeah. I talk a lot with a local colleague here named SarahBeth Oppenheim,
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who is -- in 2016 she won the local dance commissioning project.
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She really taught me how to do site-specific well as the
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artist because she just was not afraid to ask for
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everything she actually wanted.
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And then the Kennedy Center said no to 99% of the things that she originally
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asked for.
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But then I sort of saw it as a challenge of how many of these
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nos can I turn to yeses as the administrator?
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And then that became a theme for me throughout in the Kennedy Center.
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And so that was a really great experience for
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me to have an artist who was truly honest about what they wanted,
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and it helped me develop a rapport internally as an administrator to say,
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I'm here representing the artist. If we can't do this, can we do 80% of it?
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If we can't do it in blue, can we do it in red?
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And trying to find out what the compromises were, but in retrospect,
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I think that also helped me develop the way that I have a relationship with most
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artists, which is I will always try to get to the yes for you.
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So when I give you a no, it's real.
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That's the whole ball game that,
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and artists don't need to edit what the ask is,
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let the institution let the administrators work with you to figure out how much
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of that dream can be a reality.
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I think both of those are such important pieces of advice.
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What are a couple of programs from your time at the center that you are most
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proud of?
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I think the program that I'm the most proud of is Reframing the Narrative,
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which was a festival that we did in the spring of 2022,
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and then it led to offshoots called Pathways to Performance that
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happened in 2024 and were supposed to happen in 2026.
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It was a one week ballet festival in the Opera House,
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started as an idea of needing to shed light or shine
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a bigger spotlight on black contributions in the classical ballet realm.
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And back to what we were saying about creative ecosystem,
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I started by bringing in two guest curators,
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Theresa Ruth Howard, who's the leader of the Memoirs of Blacks and Ballet,
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and Denise Saunders Thompson,
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who at the time was the leader of the International Association of Blacks in
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Dance.
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And just let them lead what they felt as
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experts in their sector of the field,
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what they felt it should be. Denise led the curation of a shared program of
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the three historically black ballet companies in America that all come out of
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the Arthur Mitchell lineage. So that was Dance Theater of Harlem from New York,
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Collage Dance Collective from Memphis, and Ballethnic from Atlanta.
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And then Theresa wanted to do an experiment where we
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created a pickup company of black identifying dancers who
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performed in predominantly white ballet companies where they were the only one
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or one of a few black dancers in their home companies,
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bringing them all together in an all black company. We commissioned Donald Byrd,
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a black choreographer to create a work,
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and then we hired a black composer, a black conductor,
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a black lighting designer, a black stage manager,
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and brought all of these people together to create a world's premiere.
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And it was sort of a ballet experiment,
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but also a social experiment to see how the dancers could be affected
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by being in an all black space. For most of them,
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it was for the first time in their lives,
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and it turned out to be this
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uplifting, incredible piece of art.
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The world premiere was amazing,
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having all of these dancers together from these four different companies taking
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class together on a daily basis.
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It was just amazing and I'm very proud of that.
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It was amazing. You all have so much to be proud of.
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You mentioned that it's supposed to also happen in this upcoming season.
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Obviously amidst all of this momentum that we were building,
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I don't think either of us foresaw the events of
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February 2025. You were really, for me,
23:00
a key partner as we were trying to figure out how to protect artists,
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how to preserve relationships that we'd all spent so many years building.
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Can you just take me back in time for a minute to your
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February and what that moment was like for you and your team?
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I see most of that first few weeks from a removed
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perspective, almost like behind myself --
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Like floating above and watching it all happen. Totally.
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Yeah.
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And I have a lot of memories of our colleagues being
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on incredible emotional rollercoasters, people crying in the office,
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just that nervous energy and unknowingness
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of what would happen in the next hour.
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The first few weeks were really marked with a horrible sense of
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uncertainty and chaos. We didn't know what was going on.
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As we have both worked at the center long enough to know what institutional
24:01
change looks and feels like this was not that.
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And while we were doing a lot in that time to protect the
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staff,
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there's also the artists that are the soul of the mission of the building.
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And I'm sure you had a lot of artists asking you directly,
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should we still trust the Kennedy Center? Is our engagement safe?
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Is our contract valid?
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These are relationships you and others had spent so many years cultivating.
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How did you answer those questions when you and I were not getting those
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answers ourselves?
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I think the approach I ended up taking was trying to remain as honest as
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possible and really not trying to convince anybody of
24:44
anything, not convincing them to come, not convincing them not to come,
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but just laying out what we knew, laying out what we did not know.
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That's what we had seen, what we hadn't yet seen.
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And I will say in retrospect, a lot of the things we were really,
25:01
really worried about at the beginning didn't happen or didn't happen in the way
25:05
that we thought they would.
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No, I mean the leadership that came in,
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they didn't know what a performing arts center was in a lot of ways.
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And so it took them quite a bit of time to really
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understand where they might want to affect
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change as propaganda in a cultural space. You and I were a team,
25:27
but also we had kind of different approaches and outlooks on the situation.
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I felt pretty strongly, pretty quickly that I needed to leave.
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I was in conversations with the new leadership constantly,
25:38
and it was clear to me that if I stayed too long,
25:41
I'd be demonstrating somehow that what had happened was normal and okay.
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But you definitely had an approach of wanting to
25:51
stay as long as you could, as long as you were allowed to.
25:55
I am curious a little bit since I left at the beginning of May,
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if that calculus changed or shifted over time and what that experience felt
26:05
like over the past several months.
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Yes,
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A few things about why I felt I really had to stay.
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One is something fundamental about the business of the
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dance field and how it is different than some of these
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other genres that get presented at the Kennedy Center.
26:27
As we were talking about way at the beginning,
26:29
the Kennedy Center presents more dance than basically any other presenter.
26:34
And dance companies, especially larger dance companies,
26:38
really don't tour that much.
26:40
It's not the same model as a national touring Broadway show.
26:43
I felt very strongly that if I were to leave,
26:47
it would be very easy for the new leadership to just erase the whole
26:52
season that we had programmed.
26:55
And if we gave up the platform,
26:59
the platform may never be the same.
27:01
And so there was a certain part of it for me about preserving the stage
27:06
for the artists to have it whether they wanted it or not. And I really tried to
27:10
never have judgment of if the artists wanted to leave or if the artists wanted
27:15
to stay,
27:16
but very conscious of international artists coming in and
27:21
if they have booked two years in advance,
27:24
a four stop tour in the US and one of those stops pulls out.
27:28
They don't have the finances to just fill a gap of a week
27:33
in touring.
27:34
So that was one really clear piece of it to me that as long as I can protect the
27:38
platform, it's worth it. I do want to also own that.
27:43
The dance field was very supportive of me and our team,
27:48
and there definitely was a turning point for me personally in June
27:53
when our whole team went to the Dance USA conference in Chicago,
27:57
and we were in Chicago for four days with a huge swath of our
28:02
national colleagues. And much of what I did at that meeting was like,
28:06
do you hate me? Am I crazy? Am I doing something wrong to the field for staying?
28:10
Should I leave? Should I stay? Should I leave? And pretty universally,
28:15
we heard from people in the field,
28:18
if you can stand it to be there,
28:20
it's valuable to the field for you to be there. And I know that
28:26
other programming colleagues at the center did not receive that same reaction
28:30
from their fields.
28:32
And so knowing that the dance field was behind us
28:36
theoretically was a huge reason to continue doing the work.
28:41
And so important.
28:42
The notion of being of service in these roles is really critical.
28:47
But then we get to August 21st. In case anyone doesn't know,
28:51
Jane and the dance programming team were fired from the Kennedy Center.
28:55
I want to kind of understand the human experience of that. So you get,
28:59
I assume five minutes notice, you're pulled into hr.
29:04
What was going through your mind as you walked into the office?
29:10
It was definitely one of those moments where logically what's
29:14
happening, but the emotions of it having caught up to you and you're just like,
29:18
this can't really be happening.
29:20
But I know that it's happening because as soon as you walk in and you see who's
29:24
sitting from HR at the table, you're like, oh,
29:27
we're definitely getting fired right now.
29:29
I think long term expected that this would happen at some point
29:34
short term,
29:35
it happening on that day came totally out of left field to me.
29:39
So that element of certainly never left leadership's
29:44
toolbox.
29:45
Openly, the discussion has been around,
29:48
you were told to make programming more commercial.
29:51
All these quotes about maybe So You Think You Can Dance at the Kennedy Center
29:55
was the direction you wanted to go.
29:56
I think those of us in the field know that that's all pretty much bullshit
29:59
because your programming, as we've talked about,
30:03
always included a balance of very mainstream traditional
30:08
ballet in the mix of contemporary,
30:11
but also these are New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, Alvin Alley,
30:16
these aren't obscure companies. These aren't obscure ideas.
30:19
This is about as mainstream as American dance gets.
30:23
What do you think was really being asked when they said more
30:28
commercial dance programming?
30:32
Listen, I think,
30:36
and I stand by,
30:38
if my season as it existed was going to be able to go on without
30:43
cancellation, sure, let's get a little Dancing with the Stars.
30:47
Let's get a little So You Think You Can Dance.
30:49
I think I had budgeted that two or three years ago to try to find --
30:52
Yeah, that's what I was -- we even talked about it from an and perspective.
30:56
Yeah.
30:57
Sure. What would it be like if we also brought something fun, right? Yeah.
31:01
More commercially popular.
31:05
There we go.
31:05
Not necessarily that the style is commercial, but that
31:10
people who are not dance people off the streets might buy a ticket. Yeah,
31:14
I don't really think that that's what they were looking for.
31:17
I think they were looking for more money.
31:20
And so I think that we would never have been successful because the
31:25
new leadership fundamentally lacks an understanding of the business of the arts,
31:30
and especially the business of dance.
31:32
There are dance shows I can count on one hand that are
31:37
financially profitable in the way that a Broadway show can be.
31:42
Right. To your point,
31:43
it's about that fundamental misunderstanding of a business model, right?
31:46
Nonprofit art exists because ticket revenue
31:51
against the expense of creating art does not always net zero or net
31:56
positive. And that's why there is support from donors, from foundations,
32:00
from corporations that is all part of the business model.
32:03
So if you're not looking at that support function,
32:07
then you're not understanding the business as a whole,
32:09
and therefore you're not evaluating success adequately.
32:13
Yes,
32:14
and I think it's critically important to note that
32:20
the Kennedy Center in this moment is not functioning in a
32:25
successfully normal nonprofit business model either
32:29
because all the reports that are in the news about subscribers pulling out their
32:34
subscriptions, ticket sales being lower than what they normally are,
32:38
donors pulling their donations, those things are all true.
32:42
And so even if we were to model something that
32:47
would be net positive in a normal Kennedy Center environment,
32:51
we're not functioning in a normal Kennedy Center environment.
32:54
It no longer exists.
32:56
I would estimate that we're at around a hundred people who have either left or
33:00
been fired from the center since February.
33:03
I think we've both been watching our colleagues, our friends,
33:07
navigate the upheaval. How are you processing,
33:11
watching an institution you love and certainly one that you've called
33:16
home for over a decade go through this kind of transformation,
33:20
particularly now that you're on the outside?
33:25
Yeah. For me it is.
33:29
I don't know that I have processed what's happening to the
33:34
building or the institution as an idea That might come
33:38
later, but for me,
33:41
I think it is about the people who have called it home and also the
33:46
artists who have considered it and counted it home.
33:50
I think one of the most personally challenging days for me was actually when
33:54
Alvin Ailey decided they would not be coming.
33:57
That was a blow to the institutional history that I felt
34:02
-- continue to feel deeply. But there has been,
34:06
if there's any silver lining to be taken,
34:10
the way that the takeover of the Kennedy Center
34:15
brought staff together and reconnected,
34:19
former staff who had chosen to leave years ago with current staff in the
34:22
building, that has been incredible.
34:24
It's been absolutely remarkable.
34:27
People reaching out,
34:29
but also gathering in Washington to be together, getting food,
34:33
getting drinks, and a lot of them are government workers now.
34:36
People have gone to the NEA,
34:38
now they're also leaving these other federal institutions that has been
34:42
amazing and that they cannot take ever from us.
34:46
No, no, they can't. I mean,
34:48
I don't go a couple weeks without seeing folks talking to them, gathering.
34:52
I would shout out to former colleagues who very quickly after this happened,
34:56
started a group online to help folks who were getting fired,
35:01
frankly, find jobs in the arts.
35:03
And those were folks who had left the institution a couple years ago.
35:06
So it's been a really beautiful thing.
35:08
And truly this idea that community knits us together always,
35:12
and that's what we have to protect the most right now,
35:14
whether that's in our personal or professional lives or where those intersect is
35:19
so true. I think in that vein,
35:21
your response to being fired has been so gracious.
35:23
You've encouraged people to keep supporting Kennedy Center artists and staff,
35:28
but even further,
35:30
your commitment to the DC dance community is completely unwavering,
35:35
which of course I would, but it's also brilliant to see,
35:38
and you've launched DC Dance Network. So tell me a little bit about the vision.
35:43
What is the gap you're trying to fill that didn't exist before?
35:48
Yes. I'm so proud to have launched DC Dance Network.
35:52
The concept really comes out of looking at and experiencing the DC dance
35:57
field for the last decade that I've been here as a professional,
36:01
I made a map about six to eight months ago of a timeline of resources that
36:06
used to exist specifically for local artists and then put in
36:10
green new resources that got added over time and in red resources that went away
36:15
over time. And basically starting six years ago,
36:19
it's all red. Things have only gone away.
36:23
There hasn't been anyone putting new resource into the community.
36:27
So that's really the nascency of the idea.
36:31
But then the reason that it's called DC Dance Network is this notion
36:36
of everyone in DC who works in the DC dance
36:41
field.
36:42
I would say 80% of them all have day jobs doing other professional skills where
36:47
they make their money and then their dance is like at a professional level,
36:51
but it is a side gig that they do or a hustle where they have to raise their own
36:54
money to do the thing.
36:56
And so our dance network is also filled with graphic designers and stage
37:00
managers and costume seamstresses and administrators and
37:05
accountants and lawyers who are dancers,
37:09
but don't get recognized in the dance room for all those other professional
37:14
skills that they have and don't get monetary resource for
37:18
their dance work.
37:19
This is excellent, really excellent.
37:21
Thinking about supporting a community on so many different fronts,
37:25
how do you see this type of grassroots organizing,
37:28
complimenting or perhaps replacing institutional support,
37:33
particularly in a time like this?
37:36
I feel there's been a mantra circulating lately as all the changes across the
37:41
country have been happening around really like, do you know your neighbor?
37:46
If you needed help get driving to the hospital,
37:50
could you knock on your neighbor's door and they would drive you? How many,
37:54
if you got arrested at a protest,
37:57
whose phone number could you call that would actually help you?
38:00
And so while that's sort of a macro thing,
38:03
thinking about it in the arts field has really been driving the
38:08
approach to the DC Dance Network.
38:10
And I think it's something that can replace institutions because in
38:14
institutional world, you're relying on resource that you don't control.
38:19
Whereas in a community network, we are all stewards of the resource,
38:23
and it's all about actually trusting that the person with the money or the
38:28
space or whatever the resource is,
38:31
that the person who has that resource will steward it honestly and steward it
38:35
well and divvy it up in an equitable way.
38:39
So first you have to build that trust in relationships with.
38:42
That's very, very well put. I would imagine knowing you,
38:45
this is something that's been on your mind for some time.
38:48
When did you start really thinking about DC Dance Network and how has that
38:53
evolved and what do you hope it grows into in the future?
38:57
Yeah. I found my notebook that I'd been using to plan DC Dance Network stuff,
39:02
and the first page I had dated September of 2024.
39:05
Oh, wow.
39:05
So it's been about a year of real true planning.
39:10
And I think one of the main things I've been trying to encourage myself to
39:15
do is to not be so precious about having everything tied up in a beautiful
39:20
bow.
39:21
That's definitely a institutional thing that's
39:25
ingrained in me is like we can't do a thing unless it's definitely confirmed at
39:30
a certain level. And so that has been freeing,
39:33
but also powerful for me to see, let me just experiment and do this thing.
39:38
And then the amount that people are actually responding to it encourages me to
39:42
keep going. As I think about further future,
39:46
I'm also trying not to be too precious about it.
39:48
I'm really trying to take the approach of we can
39:53
experiment. We can do something for one year or two years or three years,
39:58
and then if the community feedback is no longer serving us,
40:03
we can stop doing that thing and we can do a different thing and we can follow
40:06
what the community needs really are.
40:08
We can follow where the excitement really is and we don't have to be bound
40:13
to a certain vision.
40:16
How can folks who want to learn more or support DC Dance Network get involved?
40:21
Yes, there is at this point an Instagram,
40:24
which is just DC Dance Network on Instagram.
40:28
You can sign up to be on my email list,
40:31
so you will get updates. And then our first project has been launched.
40:36
So any choreographers who live in the DMV, please look.
40:40
We have launched a new small commission. Applications are due October 5th,
40:44
and that will culminate into performances at Dance Place.
40:47
So local choreographers should dive right in and apply.
40:50
Love it. Looking ahead,
40:53
what gives you hope about the future of dance and arts programming in this
40:57
moment?
41:01
The way that people have responded to each other in the moment gives
41:05
me hope. The day I got fired,
41:08
I spoke to half of the field dance with people
41:13
calling and texting and reaching out on social media,
41:15
and I really did not expect that.
41:18
And we say a lot that the field is really small,
41:22
and sometimes that can be frustrating because it feels like opportunities are
41:27
limited, but in this moment, that feels important and powerful.
41:31
We can actually step up to help each other and that we actually want to,
41:36
that people care enough to reach out, says a lot.
41:38
Absolutely.
41:40
For other arts administrators listening who might be facing their own
41:43
institutional pressures, whether that's political, financial, otherwise,
41:48
what advice might you share about navigating with integrity?
41:52
Integrity while still taking risks and innovating?
41:57
What I have really come to believe is that if you know your own
42:02
integrity and you are true and loud about your own
42:06
values, other people will see that.
42:09
And if you have been honest in building the relationships that you have,
42:15
that will only remain true if people will know you in a
42:20
way that you know yourself.
42:21
Very, very well put. Very well said. Okay,
42:25
we're going to move to our quickfire culture questions.
42:28
I'm ready.
42:29
What is one piece of culture that you are currently obsessing over?
42:35
It is a Netflix original anime called Aggretsuko.
42:39
She's a little red panda who works in a terrifying office environment with
42:44
bad bosses and bad colleagues,
42:47
and she tries to be a really upright citizen and worker,
42:50
and every time she's about to lose her mind,
42:53
she goes to karaoke and she sings Death Metal about 'down with the
42:57
bosses,' and then she goes back to the office and she's like a perfect employee.
43:02
15 minute episodes, it's on Netflix. It's amazing.
43:06
Okay. This could be life changing. Thank you so much for sharing that.
43:08
I cannot wait to go explore. If you could go back in time,
43:12
what is one performance event or concert that you would like to be present at?
43:19
Today that feels like the original Diaghilev's Right of Spring where
43:24
people set the theater on fire and totally shut it down because they were so
43:28
outraged by the arts.
43:30
The power of the arts to create explosive reactions.
43:34
What is one free resource that everyone should check out?
43:38
It's a blog and Substack run by Andrew Taylor,
43:42
who is the director of the Arts Management program at American University.
43:46
It's called Arts Managed, and he sends out once a week,
43:50
there's lots of stuff on his blog,
43:52
but sends out once weekly dispatches from the arts management world
43:57
about just little nuggets of things to think about.
43:59
Okay, amazing. Arts managed. Got it. And then finally,
44:02
your CI to Eye moment.
44:04
If you could broadcast one message to executive directors, leadership teams,
44:09
staff, and boards of thousands of arts organizations,
44:13
what would that message be?
44:17
I would challenge all of those people to have
44:21
one additional one-on-one conversation today with a staff
44:26
member who works on your team with a community member, with an artist.
44:31
Just check in with them, ask how they're doing,
44:34
listen to what they need and really listen to what they tell you.
44:38
A wonderful piece of advice and something we all can do today.
44:42
Jane, thank you so much for being here.
44:45
It is always just wonderful to see you and catch up,
44:49
but I really appreciate you taking the time right now.
44:51
We are all cheering you on.
44:53
We are all going to go follow DC Dance Network on Instagram,
44:57
and we cannot wait to see what you're up to over the next several months.
45:02
Thank you.
45:12
Thank you for listening to CI to Eye with Monica Holt.
45:15
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45:17
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45:40
McConarty and myself, Monica Holt.
45:43
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