The First Thousand
When I last wrote to this space, it was to promote and invite you all to Encoreganized, a fundraiser-performance I hosted in Chicago during the March 2024 primary election cycle. While that moment is now fully in the past – with results both encouraging and otherwise – there was a feature of it I wanted to return to: the money part.
This year I was awarded $25,000 from Chicago Dancemakers Forum as one of their 2024 Lab Artists. (I don’t have all the money yet, it comes in chunks over the year, but it’s happening.) This was and is a very big deal in my career and my creative practice. The impact and investment, symbolically and in literal dollars, is going to ripple out and support aspects of my work in ways I still cannot fully see but can already feel, and I’m just incredibly grateful for it. I’ve also felt oddly embarrassed and full of impostor syndrome about the whole thing, partly because of the lottery nature of the final selection round and partly just because. But I’ve had a few months to let that settle (not to mention limitless counsel with loved ones – shoutout to the tireless processers in the house), and am resolved to work with the fears that drive those feelings by doing right by this cash and the communities it is connected to.
Which brings me to my purpose in writing today, which is that I thought it might be worthwhile to share publicly about how I’m spending the CDF funding. My interest in doing so is toward a greater connectedness with fellow artists, and a sense that sharing cash stories with each other might be a way of modeling the clearer information we often wish we had from those who hold the resources. When I look at institutions, events, and fellow artists’ projects, I’m always curious what budgets really look like, what money goes toward, where it comes from, and whether or not I agree with the choices that shape all of the above. And I know I’m not alone in this curiosity – I’m thinking of efforts like Mariah Eastman’s Chicago Dancer Pay Transparency Project, Tuli Bera’s pay transparency posts for Ballet Unboxed, Miguel Gutierrez’s Are You For Sale? podcast, and many other artists’ choices and projects that speak to our collective desire for more openness about what’s really good when it comes to arts cash. So I thought I’d add to that swell by sharing how I spent the first thousand dollars of this CDF money, which was – you guessed it – to produce Encoreganized.
Both as an applicant and once I found out I was receiving it, my intent with the CDF award was to not only use the funds in alignment with my (granted somewhat overly earnestly leftist) values in general, but also to redistribute a portion of it in some explicit way. Meanwhile, last fall I’d committed throwing a fundraiser for the combined electoral efforts of two powerful people rooted in Chicago's movements for justice and liberation – Rossana Rodríguez’s committeeperson race and Graciela Guzmán’s state senate race. And while some of the production costs of such an event would be covered by the funds raised themselves, I wanted to be able to pay the artists reasonably and cover other costs that round out an event and make it feel supported and cared for, without drawing too heavily from hard-won donations in the first place.
So I decided to use CDF funds to cover some of these costs. And as I put in the significant energy it took over several months to make Encoreganized happen, this sequence of choices became an opportunity to embrace an aspect of my creative practice that I have sometimes seen as a sidebar: hosting events where artists share their work in a facilitated, intentional environment that manages to be mutually rewarding both for the performers and for a broader community that shows up as audience. A lot of this practice has taken place in the work-in-progress performance nights I’ve coordinated and hosted over the years – Research Project at OuterSpace (RIP), Sharp Tank at bim bom studios – but it also shows up in how I interact with folks in the performance of my own work as well, in how I greet and talk to people, how I contextualize the experience and invite people in.
All that’s to say – it was for my values, and it was part of my practice, and those things do link up.
So here’s how I spent the first thousand dollars (or $975.71, to be exact) of the $25k:
Artist fees for 4 guest performers: $500 ($125 each)
Documentation: $125
Co-host fee: $160
Childcare stipend for 1 artist: $50
Lyft home for 1 artist who lived a bit far from the venue: $26.30
Bar tab for performers and myself and a couple friends the night of: $110
Shirt I thrifted to complete my host outfit: $4.41
Feeling in right relationship to the world: priceless
You might be wondering about a couple of other factors, so just in case these are them: The candidates who we fundraised for donated their performances. Food was donated by the incredibly generous folks at Al Basha Mediterranean Restaurant in Palos Heights. Please patronize them! The venue costs were $400, which came out of the funds raised. And even with that cost, we netted just over our fundraising goal of $5000. Enormous thanks to Sabha Abour who facilitated a key live fundraising moment to help make that happen, and to all the people who donated; I know so many of you personally, and your support means the world. Graciela and Rossana did win their races on March 19, and I am trusting that their service will be concretely impactful to so many lives.
Earlier I mentioned a notion of “doing right by this cash and the communities it is connected to.” Depending on your perspectives on this grant or on dance in Chicago, you might be curious how funding this event ties into that. For me, it is straightforward: elected officials like Rossana and Graciela and the political movements they come from represent everything artists need to thrive. Artists, including those in dance and performance, need affordable housing; artists need access to sustainable income whether from their creative practice or their day jobs; artists need freedom from violent systems of policing; artists need civil rights whether they live in Chicago, Tucson, Tennessee, or Palestine. It only makes sense that I would throw my own money, time, energy, and care toward pieces of that collective puzzle. (Tbh I’m guessing this is all pretty yeah-yeah-yeah-we-get-it-bro for most of the people reading this, but on the off chance someone stumbles my way feeling cranky or skeptical or simply not knowing me personally, I figured I’d spell it out.)
Anyway, I’m thinking about sharing future Next Thousand updates as I spend down this cash over the year(s) ahead. If you like that idea, feel free to let me know! (I of course reserve the right to change my mind about this for whatever reason, low stakes or high.) If you’d like to keep up with those potential updates, as well as with my other brain dumps and happenings – and if perhaps you got forwarded this newsletter or read it online – you can subscribe here to get the next missives straight to your inbox.
Last but not least: thank you, thank you, thank you to the guest artists who performed at Encoreganized – Benji, Bindu, Dave, and Rich, as well as Rossana and Graciela themselves and my fabulous co-host Candy – and to each and every person who not only came to the show but is out there doing your own version of this long project of activating toward the world we want to see.
And thanks to people making good ass art. There was a lot of it in the past couple months in Chicago and elsewhere, and it filled me up.
Til next time,
Nora
P.S. A special thanks to Grace McCants, reader and and thought partner on so much of what I end up putting out in the world, including today. Your gut checks are gold and your sense of what's missing never misses.