Eavesdropping: Dansateliers drop-in session

The last of the drop-in sessions, brief peeks into the studio where a residency is taking place, ended the CROWD programme where it began: with a multitude of questions. It also emphasised how important it is that these drop-in sessions enable not only the other participating artists but also the hosting organisations and funders to find out more about what is being researched. At Dansateliers, artists Bakani Pick-Up and Shaquille George, together with facilitator Merel Heering, explored community and participatory practices particularly through the lens of leadership, digging into different understandings of power and control: issues relevant all the way up the ladder of responsibility for socially engaged work. Written by Maddy Costa.

Drop-in 8: Bakani Pick-Up and Shaquille George at Dansateliers, Rotterdam

Evolution, navigation, leadership

What is the first word that comes to mind when you think about the dialogues we’ve had so far? An invitation from facilitator Merel Heering, to begin the brief sharing with the wider CROWD group.

Evolving (Shaquille): getting deeper into our practice, trying to get to the core. Evolving (through) the importance of self-practice and self-care. We talked a lot about creating safe spaces for sensitive subjects – and how, as queer people of colour, we also need safety for ourselves.

Navigation (Bakani): navigating how the politics of our lived experiences – our histories and identities, and where that sits in us – directs how we hold space. Navigating how we position ourselves as facilitators or makers or teachers or community practitioners between different people, with a full awareness of who we are and how we sit within different communities.

Leadership (Merel): facilitating/holding space is also a position of power – so how do you deal with that position? How do the skills developed in facilitating a group apply to leading an organisation? What is transferable knowledge, and what does that mean? 

A moment of discovery

Merel’s second invitation: to share a moment within the residency that has stayed with you.

Shaquille: after following a class led by Bakani, taking some time with my own practice. We’re so busy with holding space for others that we don’t practise our own practice! This moment reminded me why I do what I do.

Bakani: we started drawing up a list of conditions for engagement, exploring our ways of being and holding space. My conditions were boundaries and unconditional positive regard and the question came up: what is your responsibility to people that don’t like you? How do you acknowledge that dynamic, hold and sustain it, and adhere to your responsibility as facilitator or leader?

Merel: after attending an improvisation night, a conversation about spiritual and energetic boundaries. In facilitation we more frequently discuss the boundaries of touch, so it’s very interesting to think about these dynamics between people.

Four questions and a provocation

What is our relationship to control as facilitators?

What is our responsibility – and what do we feel responsible for?

How do we navigate different boundaries in a group of different people?

How much of ourselves do we bring in?

(Bakani): So many of the labels artists/practitioners carry – teacher, facilitator, producer, dramaturg, etc – don’t fully encompass the human being, or the difference between having responsibility and feeling responsible. How to navigate between the artist and the human? Between the artist who has a responsibility to deliver a project, and the human who feels responsible to the people involved and the conditions in which they come to that work? How, as a human, to account for the humanity of each of those people: the complexity of their lives outside of the encounter or the work? How to account for one’s own complexity and difficulty – should those be present in the room?

The hidden leaders

How do these questions land with the organisation directors in the room? I see the drop-in as a space for them not only to listen but also to reflect on their work. Lisa Reinheimer, director of Dansateliers, and Anita Clark, director of The Work Room, each acknowledge how these questions are central to the thinking they are doing about how to shape and move forward their organisations as spaces for multiplicity and complexity. And Jim Hendley, producer at FABRIC, commits to taking these questions to the rest of the team for further and future discussion.

A final thought

(Bakani): The most dangerous thing that can happen is to have no awareness, as a facilitator or leader, of your relationship to control. These questions are here to remind us to be accountable to ourselves and the decisions we make, have awareness of our privileges, and not to make assumptions.