Miss Susie had a $: help fund our show!

I am fundraising to produce my show Wolfthicket . The show continues a theme present in nearly all of my work: why do we dance?

Our Philly-based Go Fund Me in August was a huge success! We raised over $3,800. I am continuing to fundraise for the show, using this same Go Fund Me, to help keep the show alive!

 Wolfthicket plays with the traditions, rituals, and fantasies of the 'girls games' we grew up with (or didn’t), and how they hop and skip across time and place. The method and material of this dance come from the hand clapping games, recess activities, make-believe, and satire of intertwining folk traditions. An experiment in citing the omnipresence of Afrodiasporic influence on pop culture, it also includes a playbill turned bibliography. 

From the August 2021 Fundraiser to produce the show in Philly:

The money: where does it go? 76% of the funds ($4,880) are distributed evenly between the eight dancers, including me. It comes out to $80 a show, plus funds for food.* The performers are Amalia Colón-Nava, Maddie Hopfield, Chelsea Murphy, Eva Steinmetz, Dylan Smythe, and Lillian Ransijn (with special guests Elizabeth Weinstein and Johanna Kasimow).The remaining 24% ($1,521) goes to production (venue, lights, costume) with a lot of borrowing, donating, loaning, and volunteering.

All donations over $50 = two tickets to the show or, for far away folks, a copy of my 'zine How to Make a Dance in America mailed to you. Tickets will also be available at the door, on a sliding scale.

Photos from Wolfthicket as a trio at Table Gallery, Feb 2020. Performed by myself and Amalia Colón-Nava and Evelyn Langley. Photo credit: Kim Becker.

Before the pandemic, we were in the final creation stages; I’ve been presenting iterations of Wolfthicket off and on since 2016. In February of 2020, three of us performed a full evening version of the show at the cozy Table Gallery in Chicago. I was like: "This is it! This is the show!" I couldn't wait to do it with the full cast. And then: pandemic. Our crew found ways to train, play, and sweat together. Material from and for the show kept bubbling up, even though we weren't formally rehearsing. Now we are in the narrow window of time after the cast became fully vaccinated (as of June) and before shifts of career, family, and geography make assembling the cast much more challenging. We want to share with you this joyful, mischievous, muscular, generous, tender, sing-song world we have made. But we have to do it soon!

Additionally, Adam Stone is coming to town to help me with the set, sound, and light design. Professional logistics brain Emily Pratt has volunteered to help me keep the ducks in a row.

The show will be in downtown Philly, at the Lutheran Church of the Holy Communion. I am grateful to have this venue as a partner, helping me to create a comfortable, healthy space for the dancers and the audience to share.

The venue: (photo credit JJ Barch)

BUDGET BREAKDOWN:

This is a full length, entirely self-produced, eight-person show. Given the size of the project, the budget is modest. That said, it is way more than I’ve ever spent on a show. Time to level up. I'm also applying for grant funding to help us reach our goal of $6,500. 

My proposed budget is $6,247. All eight dancers will be paid $560 each, based on a flat rate of $80 per show, for seven shows.* Additionally, I’m budgeting $400 to help feed everyone the week of our most intensive work. This is based on allocating $10/day/per dancer for five days. So that's $4,880 for the dancers.

The remaining 24% ( $1,521) goes to production. Venue rental for six weeks ($550, venue + help pay the church pay its staff for staying after hours), building/set/sound/light supplies ($300), the videographer ($175), costumes ($160), a small honorarium for my lifelong friend Adam Stone, helping to design set/sound/light ($100), printing the program and promo materials ($50), and a miscellaneous purse for the unexpected ($183). In each category of production, there’s already resources (stuff/time/expertise) being donated, loaned, discounted, or volunteered.

*Ooof. $80 a show per dancer? It's not enough. It doesn't account for the rehearsal time. And it doesn't account for the training and expertise each performer brings to the table. There's no way to account for the friendship, belief in me, and creative collaborative spirit each dancer brings.

Whatever I, as the ‘owner’ of this dance, ‘produce’ I will attempt to distribute equally back to the dancers, as the ‘laborers'. I attempt to do this by 1) the dancers are welcome to do whatever they want with the material we’ve made as they go about their lives; I hope they will continue to play, teach, and share our games beyond this show. I hope that when they do, they tell the story of our work together. 2) I’m hiring a good dance videographer so that the dancers have excellent footage of the show to help them secure other resources for their own artistic endeavors. 3) If we fundraise enough money to cover all the costs, ticket sales will be distributed evenly between the dancers (including me), and Adam (helping with set).

I think that working artists, any independent contractor, and, in fact, all humans, especially those living in the richest country in the world, should have free healthcare, college debt forgiven, guaranteed healthcare, maternity/paternity leave, and a guaranteed livable wage. I have been welcomed in dance communities all over the globe; it is abundantly clear that the lack of social welfare systems in the USA creates a particularly high barrier to making performance art, to making a living, to being an audience/consumer of the arts. These systemic failures hurt everyone, but they disproportionately harm black and brown people. 

I think many of us have been conditioned to believe, like good capitalists, that individualism is the answer. If you’re looking for somewhere else to put those dollars that would directly and indirectly improve the lives of the working class, and particularly people of color in the USA and Philly, here are my orgs of choice. 

Reclaim Philadelphia (Philly based)

Peoples Policy Project (Crowdfunded ‘think tank’ for social equity policies)

Amistad Law (Philly based)

Community Bail Fund (Philly based)

Shout Outs:
The show has benefitted from the previous participation of Johanna Kasimow, Evelyn Langley, and Elizabeth Weinstein who, the time of this writing, aren’t able to perform with us this coming August. Additionally, Kelsey Lanceta and Mary-Carmen Webb contributed to the 2016 version. Thank you!

Thank you to Leymis Bolaños Wilmott and all the  dancers of the Sarasota Contemporary Dance Company for trusting me with the earliest inklings of this show. Thanks to the Chase Pond Cottage Association for the barn rehearsal space, and to Janet and John Schwartz for letting us borrow your house.  Thanks to Kyle Bellucci Johanson of Table Projects for housing, feeding, and presenting the trio version of Wolfthicket in 2020! Appreciation eternal to Vince Johnson and Urban Movement Arts for the ongoing work space.