Curious suspensions: Reflections on starting “Study Hall”

I shake off the cobwebs in between my joints, stretch sideways on a diagonal line long dormant, and remember the feeling of dust coating the bottoms of my feet. I find warm, sunny studio hours luxurious and I savor the moments of curious suspension inherent to the creative process that do not necessitate an immediate answer for a grant application. I enjoy the physical connections made between the four dancer-choreographers Emily gathered for this project. I relish the break from my desk. 

Rebecca Fitton, Jocelyn Reyes, and Erin Yen in rehearsal | Image description: In a dance studio, there are three dancers, one laying on their back, one upright, and the other leaning to one side. A reflection of their images is also visible in the studio’s mirror.

For the majority of the past seven years of my creative career, my body has been hinged at two stationary points. More literally, I sit down for a living. I am an administrator who works as a producer, grant writer, and occasional bookkeeper. Until recently, much of this work was freelance but now, thankfully, it has stabilized into two part-time positions plus a tiny handful of seasonal freelance gigs. Supposedly I am also a researcher, specifically on how the financial infrastructures of the nonprofit dance field support or impede movements toward equity for artists of color. But that’s on the back burner right now. 

When Emily first shared her driving questions behind “Study Hall,” I was immediately invested. Emily and I first met when we were seventeen and have since moved along somewhat similar career trajectories. When I called them in 2021 and shared the news I’d be relocating to San Francisco in August 2023, after eight years on the East Coast and three years in Texas, there was a mutual excitement around the potential for future collaborations. I didn’t anticipate it would happen quite so quickly.

As a dancers’ rights advocate in the field, I do not hesitate to state that the Community Study Hall events are instrumental to making change in our field. Perhaps unsurprisingly I found each conversation to be stimulating, thought-provoking, and essential in building trust networks to enact change. Of course, I had a personal investment in the conversations as a dancer hired by Emily to develop a creative response. 

What I realized last week during a moment of reflection in rehearsal, was that the Community Study Halls (and subsequent rehearsals) are a rare opportunity to gather folks who hold dual roles as dancer-choreographers and therefore grapple with a unique set of questions around wages, labor, and credit in collaborative processes. So often in my administrative labor, I ask questions like, what is the best workers' compensation policy for dance projects (it seems like most folks use State Fund) or payroll platform (Gusto is winning by far, ask anyone in the group for their referral code, it's a sweet deal), or whether to pay dancers hourly or a flat rate for performances (differing opinions, I’ve recently been swayed by Emily to compensate hourly to indicate that I value process as equal to product). Rehearsals were the first time I received a response with excitement and curiosity. It has been a joy to be with like-minded creatives. “Study Hall” provided the time and space to gather and ask these questions, not necessarily to reach a consensus or a ‘best practice,’ but instead to share the mutual experience of investigating and changing how and why our field moves.