Dance/USA seeks a visionary energetic communicator and manager as executive director to lead its next decade of development. Read a detailed job description at www.danceusa.org/jobsatdanceusa.

Beginning in 2009, Home, New Orleans? participants took a breath to reflect on the work thus far and produced a booklet that is a selective retrospective on HNO?, including the principles embodied by the projects, some challenges encountered in the work, and some lessons learned from the partners’ experiences. This document is intended to serve as a resource for artists, educators, and community leaders seeking a model for employing art as a strategy to build community; and/or for those networking community-based organizations across oft-aligned divides of geography, race, age, and/or class

by Wesley Montgomery, Chief Operating Office, National Performance Network

This past spring (April 14-18), staff, board and Partners of the National Performance Network (NPN) had the privilege and pleasure to attend the National Conference of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC), held in San Jose, CA. This opportunity emerged as key component of the partnership between NALAC and NPN. The partnership, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, creates learning exchange opportunities for members of both networks to gain valuable insights into some of the inner workings of how the other network operates. NPN Partners received scholarships to attend the convening, which supported their registration, hotel and travel to San Jose. This is the first reflection on the NALAC/NPN partnership, which has been a couple of years in the planning. As this partnership continues through the year, look for additional reflective missives from other NPN Partners and staff.

First, it is important to acknowledge the incredible coordinating and hosting job facilitated by Maria de Leon, executive director, Victor Payan, program director, the NALAC Board, staff and San Jose Host Committee. The warmth of the experience other NPN representatives and I had throughout the entire conference was particularly notable. In conversations I have had across the country since the National Conference, I am sure to underscore the deft way NALAC honors elders and emerging leaders at the event. Among those honored: Tomas Yberra-Frausto, Roberta Uno, Christine Ortega and Janet Rodriguez. The grace and sincerity with which these groups are celebrated is matched only by the breadth and depth of the artist showcases (I think I fell in love with Susana Baca!). My humble reflection is only a small slice of the overall experience. For more information, please visit NALAC’s website (www.nalac.org) for photos, a full conference schedule, and more on the National Conference (special congrats to NALAC on its commendation from the city of San Jose!).

A key component of the NALAC National Conference experience was the opening plenary sessions, which presented white (or, rather brown) papers by Latino professionals and scholars on the state of the arts. These sessions offered attendees the opportunity to engage in conversation with one another about pressing issues and trends, and provided a strong frame for the day’s sessions. In addition to the plenary sessions, there were several workshops layered throughout the schedule to help build the knowledge base and informational exchange among attendees.

NPN presented a special workshop focused on the basics of performing arts touring for presenters and artists, called Doin’ It on the Road, as part of the professional development workshop series NALAC offered attendees. More than 50 artists, presenters and colleagues attended the session (special thanks to Alec de Leon and Yolanda Cesta Cursach for their leadership in this session). The lively discussion through the session and afterward underscores the significant need for ongoing education and information sharing about current practices and expectations in the field of performing arts presenting.

I also had the privilege of adding some insights while sitting on a panel focused on professional development opportunities, coordinated by Tamara Alvarez (1st Act, Silicon Valley), and including Carlos Velazquez (Teatro Vision) and Sarah Guerra (La Peña). This conversation continued the tradition of peer-to-peer exchange. I was reminded that the information we collect through our careers (for me…now marching toward 30 years in the field!) is valuable and helpful to others as they look for inspiration in their own lives and careers.

Ultimately, I left San Jose recharged and energized, and with a deeper respect and appreciation for such a beautiful conference experience. If you haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing the NALAC National Conference personally, I strongly encourage you to do so. You’re in for an informative, enjoyable experience… oh, and the parties are quite a joy as well. Thank you NALAC! As we plan for the NPN Annual Meeting in Dallas, TX (hosted by NPN Partner South Dallas Cultural Center), we are pleased to be able to return the gracious hospitality to NALAC staff, board and members.

Visual Arts Program Manager

Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia, PA

The Asian Arts Initiative is a multi-disciplinary community-based arts center offering performances, exhibitions, workshops, and training for artists, youth, and adults of all racial backgrounds to explore the diversity of Asian American experience and our social context and to pursue the vision for a just and joyous world. The Asian Arts Initiative recently moved to a new facility on the edge of the Chinatown neighborhood, and is seeking a Visual Arts Program Manager to develop and implement Gallery and visual arts programming that engages with our local community and broad social concerns.

Currently, we support approximately 5 exhibitions per year in a 1200 square foot multi-use Gallery space, as well as our periodic Chinatown In/flux exhibition series with teams of artists working with local community members to create site-specific installations in and about the neighborhood. In addition, we have other areas within our facility that can be developed as exhibition spaces. We invite guest curators through our Community Curators program and often use open call processes to create exhibitions. We are also members of the Visual Artists Network which allows us to host at least one community residency with a visiting artist each year.

General Job Description: The Visual Arts Program Manager serves as a chief curator and lead installer and coordinates all preparation, planning, logistics, and communication related to the activities of the Gallery and visual arts programming at the Asian Arts Initiative. The Visual Arts Program Manager reports to the Executive Director and is a part-time consulting position estimated to require between 10 and 20 hours per week.

Please download the full job description for key responsibilities and qualifications.

TO APPLY: E-mail a cover letter addressing your interest and qualifications for the position, your resume, salary requirements, and 3 work-related references to jobs@asianartsinitiative.org. The Asian Arts Initiative is an equal opportunity employer. Asian Americans and other people of color are strongly encouraged to apply.

Asian Arts Initiative
1219 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215)557-0455 or www.asianartsinitiative.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Stanlyn Brevé
Tel. 504/595-8008 x204
Email: stanlyn@npnweb.org

NEW ORLEANS, LA (June 11, 2010) – The National Performance Network (NPN) has selected six Creation Fund projects to receive further developmental support through the NPN Forth Fund pilot, an additional production phase designed to transition new works from the studio to the stage. NPN chose projects that will premiere during the program implementation and evaluation period of March 1 and December 1, 2010. Decisions were based on a variety of factors such as the work’s stage of development, artistic discipline, geographic location, and cultural diversity in order to test and evaluate a broad range of projects.

NPN will subsidize $15,000 ($10,000 NPN Subsidy and $5,000 cash or in-kind match from the commissioning partner) to each project towards helping each piece realize its full potential. Funds will be disbursed directly to Creation Fund artists and commissioners, and will provide access to critical managerial, artistic and technical resources necessary to produce a new work for touring.

The Forth Fund process is driven by the artist, encouraging artists to be proactive in identifying and articulating the needs of their work and brokering relationships with commissioners. In the pilot phase each Creation Fund artist identified which NPN Partner commissioner they wanted to work with based on the current developmental needs of their work. The outcome of the Forth Fund will be excellent new work that has enough resources and time to fully realize its potential in order to have a long productive touring life, while providing communities with richer cultural experiences.

Forth Fund Pilot Projects 2010:
The Crazy Cloud Collection
Artist: InkBoat (San Francisco, CA)
Commissioner: Highways Performance Space (Los Angeles, CA)
Forth Fund Support: Music development, set design and fabrication, documentation costs, development of residency activities and community engagement component

Let us think of these things always. Let us speak of them never.
Artist: Every House Has a Door (Chicago, IL)
Commissioner: Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL)
Forth Fund Support: Artistic and technical development through a 3-week residency, work-in-progress show, rehearsal fees, rehearsal space lighting designer fees, documentation costs

World Headquarters
Artist: Charles Anderson/Dance Theatre X (Philadelphia, PA)
Commissioner: Painted Bride Art Center (Philadelphia, PA)
Forth Fund Support: Development of residency activities and community engagement component, rehearsal fees, rehearsal space, creative development residency costs, documentation costs

Gloria’s Cause
Artist: Dayna Hanson (Seattle, WA)
Commissioner: On the Boards (Seattle, WA)
Forth Fund Support: Production coordinator fees, sound designer fees, rehearsal assistant fees, documentation, rehearsal space, technical staff fees, project management, rehearsal stipends, dramaturgical support

Women of Calypso
Artists: “Singing Sandra,” Shereen Caesar, and Kizzie Ruiz (Trinidad)
Commissioner: Cultural Odyssey (San Francisco, CA)
Forth Fund Support: Creative development residency costs, rehearsal fees, technical costs, work-in-progress performance, production management, rehearsal space

Go Ye Therefore
Artist: Artspot Productions (New Orleans, LA)
Commissioner: 7 Stages (Atlanta, GA)
Forth Fund Support: Redesign of work post premiere- artists fees for redesign, rehearsals, research, development and travel to future performance site, rehearsal space, fundraising activities, artistic guidance, technical staff fees, developing community engagement component.

All Forth Fund artists and commissioners will participate in an evaluation of the program which will culminate in a half-day meeting at the NPN Annual Meeting in Dallas, TX in December of 2010. The pilot phase of the Forth Fund is generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

About the National Performance Network (NPN)
The National Performance Network (NPN) is a group of diverse cultural organizers, including artists, working to create meaningful partnerships and to provide leadership that enables the practice and public experience of the arts in the United States. NPN annually leverages nearly $3,000,000 in financial support for the creation and touring of contemporary performance work. NPN is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency), the Ford Foundation, the MetLife Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Lambent Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation builds, strengthens and sustains institutions and their core capacities; develops thoughtful, long-term collaborations with grant recipients; and invests sufficient funds for an extended period to accomplish the purpose at hand and achieve meaningful results. Mellon grants in five core program areas: Higher Education and Scholarship, Scholarly Communications, Museums and Art Conservation, Performing Arts, and Conservation and the Environment. For more information, visit www.mellon.org.

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Mentorship and Leadership Initiative: Sustaining Latino Performing Arts Administrators – a Limited Number of First Come, First Serve Subsidies Still Available!

The Mentorship and Leadership Initiative (MLI): Sustaining Latino Performing Arts Administrators is a partnership between the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) and the National Performance Network (NPN). The MLI strengthens Latino performing arts administrators by supporting professional development exchanges between NALAC Members and NPN Partners. Seven awards of $2,000 will be made to NALAC members that focus on performing arts.

Contact Stanlyn for more information.

The National Performance Network Awards $79,000 towards the Remounting and Touring Of Five Seminal Performance Works in Celebration of its 25th Anniversary

In celebration of its 25th Anniversary, the National Performance Network (NPN) is supporting the remounting and touring of five works by artists who have been active in the Network during its 25-year history. By supporting the restaging of these significant works, NPN aims to preserve, reinvigorate and bring a contemporary interpretation to each piece while introducing them to a new generation of audiences.

Each work will receive a minimum of $15,000 towards the remounting of the work, be presented at a minimum of three “sponsor” sites with NPN Residency support, and be featured at NPN’s 2010 Annual Meeting in Dallas December 9 – 13, 2010. The five awarded projects include:

First Woman on The Moon by Elia Arce (Houston), sponsored by MACLA (San Jose CA), DiverseWorks (Houston) and Links Hall (Chicago) leads the audience through a series of places both physical and emotional, from the dark, lush jungles of her Costa Rican roots to the barren, lunar landscape of her adopted desert home, using body, language, sound and visual images. First Woman, originally commissioned in 1991 by Highways Performance Space (Los Angeles), is historically important because it was one of the earliest performance pieces to give a different voice to the Latino identity movement, focusing more on issues of class and spirituality rather than race and ethnicity. 

Faith Triptych: Faith, Sleep, and Tattoo by Pat Graney Company (Seattle), sponsored by On the Boards (Seattle), Myrna Loy Center (Helena MT), and Flynn Center for the Performing Arts (Burlington VT) involves the remounting of three works that helped establish the contemporary dance scene in Seattle in the mid-‘90s. Triptych explores the female sensibility in contemporary culture. The re-mounting of Triptych also celebrates a 30-year partnership between Pat Graney Company and On the Boards.

Word Becomes Flesh by Marc Bamuthi Joseph (Oakland CA), sponsored by La Peña Cultural Center (Berkeley CA), Youth Speaks (San Francisco), Painted Bride Art Center (Philadelphia) and Dance Place (Washington DC) is considered the seminal work of Marc Bamuthi Joseph and The Living Word Project. Word Becomes Flesh, originally  commissioned by La Peña in 2003 and recently published by the Theatre Communications Group, is an evening-length choreopoem presented as a series of performed letters to Bamuthi’s unborn son. The piece uses poetry, dance, live music and visual art to document nine months of pregnancy from a young single father’s perspective.

Fierce Love: Stories from Black Gay Life by Pomo Afro Homos (San Francisco), sponsored by Theater Offensive (Cambridge MA), Flynn Center for the Performing Arts (Burlington, VT), REDCAT (Los Angeles), and Dance Place  (Washington DC) is a jazzy mix of wicked humor and personal narratives exploring the joys, conflicts, pleasures, pains and contradictions of African-American gay life in the United States. The work was first performed at the Theatre Offensive in 1991. The published scripts of the Pomos are regularly taught in African-American, LGBT, and American theatre history classes in colleges across the US, Canada and Europe.

Faith Healing by Jane Comfort Company (New York City), sponsored by Flynn Center fort he Performing Arts (Burlington VT), Florida Dance Association (Miami), and North Carolina State University Center Stage (Raleigh NC) is a deconstruction of Tennessee Williams’ classic American work, The Glass Menagerie. Faith Healing embodies Comfort’s long history of using dance theater to make social commentary, in this case on the cultural fabric of the American South. The issues of nostalgia, regret, fantasy, hope, anger and unrequited love addressed in Williams’ play are given form in movement and performance theater. Originally produced at Performance Space 122 (New York City) in 1993, Faith Healing “stretched the limits of what was customarily meant by dance or drama to achieve a truly new form: a physicalized version of a play,” (Washington Post).

Arnie Malina, artistic director of The Flynn Theatre in Burlington VT which serves as commissioning partner on three of the five pieces, was a particular champion for this ambitious program of remounting historical works. Malina remarked, “The five works are a reflection of the artistic strength and diversity that the NPN has nurtured over the past 25 years. The artists are socially and artistically provocative. They create multidisciplinary work that makes you think and feel, that stays with you long after.”

The remounting and presentation of these works is made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts American Masterpieces in Dance Program. Additional support comes from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

The National Performance Network (NPN), a diverse network of 61 artist-centered presenting organizations, integrates the arts into public experience, furthers artistic pluralism, and acts as an advocate for cultural equity and social justice by supporting artistic activities that demonstrate its values. NPN annually leverages nearly $3,000,000 in financial support to the creation and touring of contemporary performance work. NPN is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency), the Ford Foundation, the MetLife Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The Dallas Annual Meeting (December 9-13, 2010) is cooking up to be an amazing event, filled with celebrations, creative activities and intelligent conversations. For more than a year, host Vicki Meek (of NPN Partner South Dallas Cultural Center) has been planning how to best showcase her city, and she has rolled up her sleeves to develop a recipe for a tasty conference. An enticing entrée is the presentation of five historically important performances remounted by artists who have been active in the Network over its 25-year history (see related story).

The Annual Meeting is always an invitation-only event for a number of strategic reasons. First: we want to keep the attendance numbers manageable so that real, authentic exchange and networking can take place. Secondly: we are intentional in maintaining a balance between the numbers of artists and presenters present—we provide one of the few occasions when artists and presenters are brought together on equitable terms. Finally: we subsidize NPN Partner and artist attendance while keeping registration fees reasonable.

This December’s meeting will mark NPN’s 25th anniversary, and activities will be centered around the Dallas Arts District. Advance planning has included trips to the new Koolhaas-designed Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, the Latino Cultural Center and the Dallas Museum of Art. Rumor has it that karaoke and open mic nights are in the works, as well as expanded professional development opportunities. And the weekend will close out with dinner, dancing and celebration at Gilley’s Dance Hall.

Additional information will be posted once it is available.

by VAN Program Director Ann Kaufman

This past May in Philadelphia, the Visual Artists Network (VAN) convened a two-day gathering of the VAN Partner organizations. This was the third national meeting of VAN Partners since the program’s inception in 2008 when the newly selected VAN Partner organizations gathered in Seattle for the NPN Annual Meeting. Modeled after NPN’s performing arts program, VAN is intended to create a national model for visual artist residency practices that nurture under-recognized contemporary visual artists. Networking is key but uncommon in the field of visual arts, outside of market-driven arenas. VAN explores the possibilities of such a network – inspired by curatorial practices and experimental work, where artists and curators alike have the opportunity to come together.

Just as the NPN Partners gather regionally at four Mid-Year Meetings in late spring, VAN held their Mid-Year Meeting in May.  Attended by the 15 VAN Partner organizations, which hail from all regions of the United States — from Birmingham, Alabama to Portland, Oregon, the meeting was hosted by NPN/VAN Partner Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia. Over the course of two days, May 20-May 21st, the VAN Partners embarked on an intense itinerary, including policy discussions, the presentation of artists’ work, art excursions, and evening festivities. VAN leadership organized a forum where the curators and directors of the VAN Partners could engage in conversations about the work of their organizations and overarching issues in the field. Each of the VAN Partners presented the work of the artists they had hosted through the VAN Exhibition Residency Program, thus introducing artists to the national network. Culminating the discussion forums was a joint meeting of the VAN Partners and the NPN Partners of the northeast region. Of the thirty or so organizations present, each Partner representative spoke about the state of their institution – from fiscal health and core stability to creative endeavors. Through these conversations, VAN looks to build peer support across geographic divides, helping organizations overcome isolation and share insights about their challenges and accomplishments.

To introduce the visiting VAN Partners to Philadelphia’s cultural community, Asian Arts Initiative’s Executive Director Gayle Isa planned an art excursion, woven together with a cross-city driving tour hosted by the Mural Arts Program to see the city’s urban mural landscape. The first stop was Taller Puertorriqueño, known as el Corazón Cultural del Barrio, where youth and adults participate in studio workshops and gallery exhibitions. The next stop was the Village of Arts & Humanities, a sprawling, eclectic collection of buildings and lots that are connected through public art works, edible gardens, writers’ workshops, and other programs serving the community of North Philadelphia. The last stop on the tour was the Crane Arts Building, a warehouse in an industrial redevelopment corridor transformed through commercial enterprise to house artist studios and vast gallery spaces. Although incredibly varied in their practices, each of the three sites are imbued with a purpose uniquely defined by their surrounding communities, a quality shared by the VAN Partners. In addition to the guided tour, Gayle Isa mapped a walking tour of Philadelphia’s downtown independent galleries, which the VAN Partners explored on foot – a veritable treasure hunt of cutting-edge arts spaces from Vox Populi Gallery to Space 1026.

To further welcome the VAN and NPN Partners into their cultural and artistic community, Asian Arts Initiative hosted a reception on the evening of May 20th – inviting local artists and arts organizers to mingle with the national visitors in a relaxed and festive environment.