Photos by Miss T.
Issue 4
Issue 4
The Money Issue
Summer 2011
In this issue, BELLYFLOP takes on the root of all evil that allegedly makes our world go round… you guessed it, Money! With contributions tackling the thorny subject of performance funding and featuring interviews with London-based performance artist Brian Lobel and Berlin-based choreographer Adam Linder, as well as some fruity photographs from the mysterious Miss T.
Issue PDF:
A Coffee Morning was held at Chisenhale Dance Space, London, on 4 February 2011. Ten independent artists, from dance, theatre and live art, discussed what ‘postfundingism’ might be and do.
I want to thank Phoebe Collings-James for her reply to my text The Virgin’s Release: Women Sex and Live Art (BELLYFLOP Virginity Issue). To provoke such a petulant riposte is deeply gratifying, but it’s a shame that so many of her arguments were oversimplified, ill-considered and had dangerous implications for women who wish to think critically about art, sex and the media.
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 am decadent when I drink Courvoisier; my friend is cool when he drinks Lambrini.
Can we save performance, or rather, can performance save itself?
The impact of recent financial cuts to the cultural sector has left many organisations reconfiguring their working models so as to carry on regardless. Considering the situation from a positive perspective this sudden (but not unexpected) shock to our economic system presents interesting challenges and change. The flip side to this rusty coin is that survival is contingent; only some of us will work out how to re-source and re-deploy our skills effectively in order to remain afloat.
What happens when all of the commission money is spent, our stages are full and we are not the ones toeing the boards? What happens when performance is not given space under the lights? What happens when performance doesn’t even want to be under the lights? It goes elsewhere, of course! Performance always goes hitchhiking.
