Sweating Infrastructure: Cultures of Support in Dance and Live Performance

Catalog description

As the income gap in the US has grown, the possibility of a career in the performing arts has become increasingly less viable for a significant percentage of the population. Issues of arts funding, labor, and professionalization have been debated across academic disciplines and by arts organizers who experience these instabilities firsthand. Researching infrastructure through a dance studies lens, this course reframes the role of embodied action, interaction and assembly in sustaining enabling environments for the arts. By reviewing literature and interviewing arts professionals, this project evidences how people “sweat” the problem of sustaining art work differently on sociocultural grounds.