As a dancer slipping and sliding my way through performing, making and part-time pub working, I wanted to pop my head above these money-juggling waters to ask how dance artists can understand the market we operate in and claim more ownership over what we produce. The ever-driven dancer and choreographer Adam Linder opens up this discussion, providing an important voice for becoming more aware of how work is disseminated, pushing for creative ways to see around dance as a product and approaching the contemporary dance market with a savvy business sensibility.

I was very struck by what you had brought up in the email leading up to this interview about negotiating the dance market. How do you see the dance market now? How do you negotiate it?

In my context in Berlin, I feel very much a part of a new generation, that is questioning and trying to create alternative formats of the way work is produced, the way it’s programmed, the way it’s written about and the way it’s exchanged in terms of criticality. Also, the way it is exchanged upon, in its methods of being created. Like, what are the avenues of exchange within practice, within process, also what are the elements of exchange after work is made, once it’s being viewed and disseminated? And I see, that according to the economic era we’re in, there is an established market of contemporary dance and an established market of production. In Europe, because you have this confluence of work between France, Germany, Holland and Belgium, and you have a real concentration of a lot of funding and a lot is therefore being produced, I think that there’s definitely this kind of set methodology for production that has been established let’s say in the last 10-15 years. Established with, you know, maybe the generation above or two generations above that really put European contemporary dance on the map. Like Wim Vanderkeybus, Meg Stuart, [les ballets] C de la B. I feel like my contemporaries are saying, “Actually we’ve got a really great context here, and when I go abroad, maybe I show my work and it’s in a great festival and it has a great name but actually, my really critical discursive context is here.” I see that things are certainly changing in relation to how we travel our work – because travelling is so easy and accessible now – but how can we resist that or question that?

Mmmm yes I suppose it’s that thing of resisting. The more you slot into those established modes of production, the more you give a piece of work that you know is going to please...

And most certainly, fit a certain context, a certain discourse, or a certain desire for ‘the new’, ‘the hype’, which may not be the avenue which puts more of an onus on your practice or your fundamental questions.

Also, it’s hard to stay personal when it gets so big. To keep replenishing your own practice, to keep knowing that it’s you who is saying the stuff you are saying without giving into trends or what’s gone before you. A kind of a search for a new way of pushing for the new. Keeping it personal rather than getting too detached from your own practice.

Right. The thing is that the market has to always be negotiated because one has to live and has to make money and we can’t deny that the way to do that is to bring some kind of commercial exchange with what you make. But, there’s a difference between just diving into the market for all that it can give back, and taking a bit more distance from it, to look at what aspects of the market I really need to engage with for sustainability. I really don’t think it’s about how many people you disseminate your work to.

With that in mind then, what was it like when you were making work on Sydney Dance Company? [Adam was commissioned by Rafael Bonachela to make a work on company members in 2010]

Well that was a really interesting experience because it was the first time I was engaged in making work within a commercial exchange because I was commissioned to make the work – it wasn’t self-produced or self- initiated – and that came with very strict parameters. 4-5 weeks to work with dancers that I didn’t know well and do something that fit the brief but also do something that is challenging for me. So that was interesting. I had a really good time actually! Good sides and bad sides. The good side is that you work for a big company and they take care of all the production and you don’t have to deal with the nitty gritty and you have money to bring a certain production value.

Well exactly...

But also, I don’t know if I would do it again to be honest [laughs].

Really?

I had a really good time, but I realised that for me to do that kind of commission again, it would need to be even more on my own terms. And I think time was the biggest factor. I think with more time, I could have got even more out of the performers.

In terms of time and duration, I feel like it has become a trend to somehow emphasise the process over the product. I think you need to approach it with your own agenda, i.e. knowing that it’s not just so you can say “I’m doing a process-led piece”. Maybe it’s about using your time ‘well’ or maybe it’s about being diverse about it. Not settling for one outcome. I think it’s this one outcome outlook that makes me think that sometimes dance is treated like, pressured into, or expected to be, a static product. Whereas, if you take the time over something or if – as you say – people are allowed more than five weeks creation time, maybe we can start to see something... But yes, it is a tough one.

This notion of process has become so hip.

Yes it’s got its own coolness to it. I think process-led emphasis becomes relevant when dance as its own medium is recognised as immaterial. You know, there’s not going to be an iPad at the end of it. There’s no tangible product that our audience can take home. I think all that is very problematic to dance. Dance doesn’t have a product so how do we find ways of treating it as product-like as it can be, without just getting commercial?

I think I have to disagree with you a bit – I mean, it’s a matter of terms. The making of performances can be a product but it’s then what form of a product does it take on? When you talk about product, you talk about desire to attain that product or how can that product satiate the said desire. I think it’s about how to form a product without falling into the commercial trappings of what a product is; one that just delivers exactly what the audience want or delivers something that is very expected. I think it’s how you frame that. How the work is talked about, how it’s written about and where it’s shown. Or who you place your work alongside and who’s in your context. That doesn’t mean showing it everywhere or showing it in the biggest theatres, it’s about being really selective and shaping your product.

[At this point, my computer went into MELTDOWN but in between my cursing, unplugging and re-booting, there was some thinking time...]

I had an idea!!

Yes, me too!

‘Cos, I was then thinking about product. The way to be creative with the product is to think beyond just the direct delivery of the thing, and to think around the thing – about all the different ways to engage with, document, disseminate, picture or relate to the aesthetic of that product.

We can see the potential for being multidirectional about what a product is.

And it doesn’t just play into this one hour hit that every programmer wants to see and then book.

Once we have shown the work or once we have entered this market then, who owns the work? Who are we then obliged to?

Yeah I think authorship is an interesting topic. I mean you’re not asking about authorship in terms of content but authorship in the way that it is shared.

Yes, exchanged...

I think that the work is always the property of the artist. That’s different to the question of who does the market make you feel like the work is obliged to. By making a work on public funds, are you then obliged to show it to as many people as you can? I think that the work is obliged to the context that...

That it’s presented in?

And the context that it is built upon. For example, if you are a well-known reputable artist whose work is being seen quite widely, and you get a lot of money from the government on a yearly basis then yeah okay, I think that if it’s being given so much money then it’s kind of a national or cultural emblem and it has a duty to be shown widely and access a lot of audience. And somehow play into the fact of building your audience as well; so reaching out to people that dance would reach ordinarily because yes, it is being supported so greatly by that country. But, for younger artists who are maybe being funded for very specific projects, I don’t think that just to get funding it needs to be about building or accessing a wide audience base. So I think that that question is really relevant to each specific project. I definitely do think that audience development is important but it’s most certainly not the only factor that has to be taken into account to justify the use of public funds.

Does money add to your drive? Is money a motivating factor?

No. I mean financial stability adds to my drive and in my career I’ve never really had unemployed moments which is really lucky. I think that smart savvy business sensibility is important because work has to be rightly valued and for dance – by it’s nature of being more of an ephemeral art – to be given it’s correct value in relation to other disciplines, the market and the economy. Yeah, I think you need to have the savvy sensibility and know what your work is worth and stick by that. For sure I do that. It’s a juggle because you might get one gig that is really well paid and then a month down the line you get another gig and it’s something you really want to do – for whatever reason - and the money might be a quarter of that, but you balance it out.

It just shows how much more you get from dance than the money.

I think that there is something that I am still quite charmed by in dance which is that I don’t often see this really kind of ulterior motive for being in this discipline – you know that there’s not some grand illusion of being rich and famous. [Laughs] I like that from young choreographers to super established ones, I see the same kind of sensibility, which is very charming. It also has its down points because if you look at visual art there’s something of the economy of it that gives the pace and the sophistication. The complex layers of production, of context, of discourses in visual arts is a much bigger scale.

Maybe it’s because in visual art, you are dealing with objects, which are a lot easier to manage and locate?

And commodify. Again it goes back to what do we regard as a product, how can a product be honored, you know. What is it when a product is commodified beyond necessity or commodified for ulterior motivations? Yeah. As my interest in making dance and for want of a better word, my career gets more serious or more busy, I strive harder... it’s like ah okay, the economy of what I do, the economy of dance production. This is now adult! [Laughs]

This is the business!

And also I really want to just focus on making my own work. I adore working as an interpreter for others but I have spent most my career so far doing that. Now, I am at this place where I would love to set up my own thing to be sustainable. So these things come a bit more to the foreground with my decision.

One final, silly question – in your own dance utopia, is there money?

Yes. In my dance utopia there is money but it is...wait I have to think about this one...

Yeah I had to think about it as well. I’m not sure. I think there’s more bartering in mine like ‘I’ll do this dance if you paint my house’.

I think there is money in mine but I think that there are many ways to navigate that exchange and there would be more complexity and more...

Sensitivity?

I think more savvy-ness with how it’s used and how it’s exchanged than there currently is. Because I think that there can be stronger subjectivities put into place with the use of money. In terms of the way work is pushed or what kind of work is pushed, where it’s pushed and how money is used to produce so that it’s not just an across-the-board political agenda or across-the-board commercial agenda. It becomes more mysterious.