 Good morning everybody. Welcome to Arizona. My name is Yvonne Montoya. We are here today to speak with you about dance in the desert. But before I get started, I'm gonna ask the panelists, my colegas, to please introduce themselves. So I'll hand this over to Erin. Good morning, everyone. My name is Erin Donahue, and I was one of the funders, and but yeah, that was my role in the desert. I work here at Arizona State University. We're really excited to be here with you this morning. Buenos dias. My name is Gauriela Muñoz. I work at the Arizona Commission on the Arts as the artist programs manager, and I was also a funder of the program. Good morning. My name is Ruby Morales, and I was a participant during the program. I am from here, Arizona. I'm a dancer, choreographer, and I currently work for a nonprofit, and I teach second, third, and fourth graders. I'm Yvonne Montoya. I live in Tucson, Arizona. I'm the founding director of Sophos Dance Theater. I'm also a choreographer, and I was the organizer and visionary behind Dance in the Desert. Good morning, everyone. My name is Reina Montoya. We are not related. I was born in Tijuana, Mexico, but I grew up in Mesa, Arizona, which is about 20, 15 minutes away from here, and I was a participant in Dancing in the Desert. I am also a choreographer, a dancer, and an arts maker, and I am the founder and executive director of Valiento. Hola, buenos dias. Mi nombre es Adriana Jarris, nacida en Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, y residente de Doblas, Arizona, que es frontera. Mi papel en este programa fue participante y soy directora de danza, choreografa, y performer. Her name is Adriana Jarris. She was born in Agua Prieta, Mexico. She's a resident at Doblas, which is a border city. She's a performer, a dancer, director, choreographer, and her role within Dancing in the Desert was a participant. And she's also a performer. So before we get started, I'm going to give a brief overview about what Dance in the Desert was and try to capture everything in a snapshot. It happened April 26th through the 28th here in the Phoenix area. It was a gathering of Latinx dance makers. We had 14 dancers and choreographers from mostly from Arizona, but also from other parts of the nation come together, as well as eight scholars, arts administrators, and funders, Latinx scholars, arts administrators, and funders. We had three communities from Arizona represented at the Phoenix metro area, which is a large metropolitan area. Tucson, I was representing Tucson, which is a small mid-sized city, a mid-sized city, and you all will be there at the end of this weekend enjoying the desert there. And Douglas Agua Prieta, which is a rural border community, about four hours southeast of here. So we had those three communities in Arizona represented. We also had some members from the national community. So Adriana Gallego from NALAC, she's the chief operating officer, came and attended and moderated our community share out. We had Alejandra Duque Sifuentes, who is a interim co-executive director of Dance NYC. And we also had members of the decolonial epistemologies lab come. So Fabiola Toralba from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Mireya Guerra, who is a researcher, she does research and dance. She's in Burlington, Vermont. And Fabian Barba from Quito, Ecuador also skyped into the majority of dance in the desert. I'm also one of the original members of the decolonial epistemologies lab. So it was centered and focused on dance makers from Arizona, but also with connections to national communities. Dance and Desert was an inaugural program. It was a pilot. We began with a master class, some choreography, so the dancers got to move and create together. We also had a choreography workshop where local dancers, Arizona-based dancers, showed work in progress. And they were able to get feedback from a group of peers, of Latinx peers who understood the aesthetics at which they're working in. I'm often pushing my own personal practice towards decolonial methodologies. And so to have a panel, a group of colegas who understand the direction in which I'm going was really important. We had some closed door dancer meetings where we just got together and talked and talked about our assets and our strengths and also some of the challenges we faced. And looked at commonalities across stories and differences because we were all different. We all came from different backgrounds, different immigration statuses, different generation statuses, different countries. And to look at what are some of the similarities, what are some of the differences. We had closed door meetings with our arts administrators, funders and scholars to talk about some of the ways in which they can help us move Latinx art forward, both in Arizona in the Southwest and nationally. We conducted some research. So we did two focus groups. They were about an hour and a half long. They had six people each. These were conducted by my colleague Mireya Guerra. And we're using that data. We're still in the process of transcribing them and that will eventually be used to hopefully create a larger national survey that can be done for Latinx dancers across the state. And this is modeled after a survey of dance makers that was done in Ecuador a few years back. We're going to need to collect more samples to develop that tool, but that's the goal with that. We had a community share out where we had arts administrators from Scottsdale Center from the arts, Dell Web Arts Center, Mesa Arts Center. We had some of the local school districts come and have a dialogue with us about how they can best support emerging Latinx choreographers and dancers in their community. And then we ended with the pachanga. So all of the participants' families got to come. We danced. There was food at all the events. We had happy hours. We had food. And a lot of us traveled with our families and our families and kids and everybody got to come out and celebrate with us. So that is kind of like the overview. In terms of who was there, we had high school students. We had high school seniors. So the age range was from about 16, 17 to about 45. In terms of experience level, again, from high school seniors to dance professionals, we had some of the Latinx dance professionals. We had professors from ASU. Again, Adriana Gallego, Alejandra Duque Sifuentes. They're arts administrators at the executive level. We also had interns that are working with arts organizations and so on and so forth. So we were very robust and different in that regard. The project came together with funding by the Arizona Arts Commission and the AZ Art Worker Program, which Gabriella will talk to you about and how they are supporting Arizona artists. We had funding from Liz Lerman, LLC, which Erin also wears a hat and works for. ASU is specifically the Projecting All Voices Initiative, which is a program of Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. I know it is high enough, but I tried to get the acronym right for you. And ASU Gammage. I was a fellow there last year and so they supported this project through that and through some funding through the Dean's Creativity Council. We also, Sophostan Theater, my organization contributed as well. We had funding from the Western States Arts Federation with monies that came from the NEA. We also had community partnerships. We performed at Grant Street Studios and also at Phoenix Hostel and Cultural Center. That's where we had our pachanga. So yeah, that was, that is, am I missing anything? Is there anything I'm forgetting? Oh, there's one thing I do want to mention. In order to eliminate the financial barriers, barriers to travel that we often see in rural Arizona and even in mid-sized cities like Tucson, the entire thing was paid for. It was free and travel was covered for those that came from out of the city. So yeah, that's another thing I wanted to share. So in the spirit of co-facilitation, because Dance in the Desert was really a learning experience, a peer-to-peer learning experience, where we came together and we talked as colleagues and we learned from each other. So in that spirit, rather than having a panelist ask questions, we are all, all of us up here are going to co-moderate and co-facilitate the panel. So with that, I am going to turn this over to Bebe, who has our first question. Thank you, Yvonne. I have a question. What was the inspiration for Dance in the Desert? Muchas gracias, Bebe. The inspiration for Dance in the Desert came after I did a fellowship with the National Dance Organization and I was asked to be paired with a Latina because I don't have any mentors. I know of an elder in my community in Tucson, Eva Tesler, who has worked and has a really big, robust body of work and is a member of the Latina Dance Theater Project and we have a relationship. But I didn't know of any other elders and I wanted to be connected with someone nationally and they couldn't find anyone for me because they only knew one or two Latina dance makers of an older generation. And I thought to myself, that can't be right, there has to be more of us out there. I know that there are, I think that we're just really disconnected. There's no community. And then as a part of my mentorship, I was mentored by Rosie Seamus, who's an indigenous choreographer who's amazing. I had a wonderful experience getting to know her and learning from her. But she took me to the indigenous choreographers, contemporary choreographers gathering at UC Riverside. And it was amazing to see all these, internationally, coming together of indigenous choreographers to share work, to talk about scholarship. There were dance workshops, so on and so forth. And I thought to myself, why is there anything like this for the Latinx community or even for the dance community in the Southwest? We have our very own unique borderlands aesthetics here. The history is unique here to the space and there isn't anything. So I wanted to bring together, just so we can get to know each other, a group of Latinx dance makers. And another example is I'm the only, that I know of, it could have changed because I'm not working in Tucson a whole lot now. I'm doing a lot of work up here. But at that time it was the only Latina Chicano choreographer working in temporary movements in Tucson. And I didn't have a community of practitioners to work with, to share with. And I knew of people that were doing work up in Phoenix. I knew of Liliana Gomez and I knew of Angie Angelina Ramirez, Susa Flamenca. But I didn't have a really strong relationship with them. And I thought they're only two hours away, which in the Southwest isn't very far, right? Far for us is about a six hour drive, so they're relatively geographically close. Although we're still very isolated, so I said, you know, I need to invest in a relationship with them and reach out. And then unbeknownst to me, two hours southeast from where I live, there's a very robust contemporary dance community in Douglas, Agua Prieta. And so I said, why don't we start by connecting these communities and building these relationships so that we know that we're not alone and let's start there. So that was a desire for kinship, friendship, collaboration and also peers to help me further my work was really the inspiration for this. And also the search for our mentors, for our elders and also again in our peers. So that was the inspiration behind Dance in the Desert. And I did shop this idea around for about two years before ACA bit, so thank you so much for that. Who's next? So this question is for Gabriela and Erin. So I know that you were really essential and part of making Dancing in the Desert happen. So can you tell us a little bit more about how does Dancing in the Desert really use this horizontal leadership and how does it really work? Because I think sometimes we use these words in the vacuum, but it's like horizontal leadership. Can you define it? Can you tell me how it looks in practice? Yeah. And it's basis. So I run an initiative at the Arizona Commission on the Arts called AZ Art Worker. It is generously funded by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation. And we are in our fourth year. We're very fortunate. So the program is really meant to be a peer-to-peer learning professional development training for artists. And it takes many shapes depending on what is needed. We work in four communities. We work in Phoenix. We work in Tucson, which is a mid-sized community. We work in Douglas, Arizona, which is a border rural community. And then we also do some work in cells, which is in Tejana Autumn Nation. And from the very beginning, the program was set up to serve community and to be responsive to every community's need, which means that the programming is all different because the programming is meant to be peer-to-peer, so that if we invite an artist, there is shared learning that happens, rather than an outside artist parachuting in and sort of teaching community members and artists in that community how to be an artist. They often already are doing lots of great work. We also thought that then the structure of the funding should also be peer-to-peer, so that it's as horizontal as possible in nature, acknowledging the fact that if you are a funder, as is my fortune to be, there is always a predetermined asymmetrical power relationship, because if it was truly horizontal, then Yvonne wouldn't have to send me an email and schedule a lunch and then for us to talk, right? Then we would simply speak to each other. But so the program is really, we work really, really hard to try and adhere to as horizontal a structure between the artists that we're working with in community as possible. So really I think my goal is to act as a gopher and as an arts administrator that works for whatever artists or organization it is that we're working with. And we struggle really hard to find partnerships that align in terms of the mission and the vision of what it is that we're trying to do and how it is that we're trying to engage and serve communities. So we actually talked to Erin because of a lot of her practices and her work sort of aligned and I'll let her talk about her experience with that. Thank you. I just have to say too, working with Gabriela and Yvonne is like the most joyful and collaborative experience I've ever had. I've worked with a lot of artists in a lot of different places and these two women are, am I allowed to swear? They're the most badass people. They're just the best. And realizing their vision, I think, much like Gabriela said, when I have my arts administrator hat on, the best thing I get to do is say yes to something that an artist has envisioned. And this was a long relationship, like this was not a quick 10 minute excursion that we thought of driving in the car, which we tend to do sometimes. Like we sort of allowed us to stuff out when we're together. But it's been a long relationship and a long time figuring it out and I think that's also why it worked so well. Because we trusted each other and we're willing to work within the systems that we're in. I work at ASU and I also am a project manager for Liz Lerman and so I'm able to negotiate both the bureaucracy and wonder of a big university because it comes with both. It comes with funding and magic and scary hard financial systems and stuff like that. And also navigating a small LLC organization that's able to be more nimble. And so because I work in both of those spaces, it was easy for us to say yes to a lot of different things in a way that maybe it's not so easy all the time. And also because Liz was Yvonne's mentor last year, there was an ability for us to kind of work through some of those difficult processes in a more quick and nimble way. And so I think also being artists, both Gabrielle and I also have artist practices in our backpockets. I think that also helps us understand in a really clear and visceral way what it means to be an artist and what it means to be looking at your checking account saying, I can't pay for this and for us to say we work at organizations that can and we should. And this is the sort of art that really matters, especially in this region. And I think in a lot of ways that we've seen like in the theater world, the Latinx community has begun to make a network and a name for themselves. And we haven't really seen that in dance. And so this is like a really exciting moment, I think nationally for you guys to be like in on the ground level. I think that this gathering may have been the first of its kind, but I'm not quite sure. I get to ask you a question now. So because this was an all Latinx gathering, which we think may have been one of the first of its kind in dance. How were the cultural values integrated in both the planning process and then also the implementation and execution of the pilot? I think that you started to touch upon that when you said, no, that's fine. I think it's good to say it multiple times when you talked about the relationship. So I have a background in Mexican American studies. And so I taught and learned about Mexican American cultural values. And there's three in particular that I really employed in Dance in the Desert because it's what I do in my company in Tucson, personalismo dignidad and simpatia. And those are fancy words and they have their own definitions, but they basically mean that the most important thing for us is genuine relationships. And relationships that happen over time. So we often times involve food and families, right? So really taking the time to get to know each other. Gabriela and I, when we were talking yesterday, she said, you know, we started this collaboration over breaking bread. We went out to lunch together and hung out for about two hours. And just getting to know each other and investing and continuing to return to those relationships over time. So that personalismo, that one-on-one. Dance in the Desert was by Invite Only and it was very strongly vetted. Everyone who attended, I had at least one one-hour, one-on-one meeting just to talk to them about where they are, what their goals were, what they wanted to get, what they wanted to share from a group of colleagues. And then the choreographers that presented their work, I had an additional one-hour meeting. So that investment upfront I think is really important. We also, we had a lot of families come. Like Mireia Guerra, who came from Vermont, brought her entire family. My family drove up from Tucson for the Pachanga. A lot of us are moms. We have about half the panel up here, or moms. We were trick-or-treating last night, some of us. And to build space for partners and family to also be there. And so they feel comfortable. And to be able to speak, as you can see now, in multiple languages. Those are some of the ways in which we implemented the cultural values, both in the gathering, but also in the planning phases. I think that those three values of simpatia, dignidad, personalismo, and respeto, right, respect, that peer-to-peer respect for each other. And that trust, we have confianza. Like I know that behind the scenes of Aaron and Gabriela, they have my back. And I don't worry about if, you know, something falls through the cracks. I know we got it. And I think that just embedding that throughout is what makes it, what made it culturally competent, culturally relevant for the Latinx crowd here. That was beautiful. I clearly remember, actually when I first met you, it was kind of, it was a very small meeting, and then it was another meeting. And then it was just these encounters that we had together that it just grew into the moment that I ended up getting, like, ended up being there. So that was very true nature. Okay, my question is for Reina Nibon. So it's very clear that the Southwest and the borderlands has its own aesthetic. And so my question would be, how does dance in the desert, and what does it mean in terms of developing that aesthetic for you guys? Thank you, Ruby. So how many of you were yesterday in the place of politics conversation? So a good amount of you. So you kind of get to experience a little bit of honing about, like, what Arizona is and what context and what moment are we in right now. But I think it's really important to just name things that exist. Like, we, Arizona didn't become a state until 1902. So they were indigenous community, 1912, which were indigenous communities living here. Also, at the same time, is that we are becoming a majority minority state, meaning that the largest ethnic group, ethnic or minority group would be the Latinx community. And if you go into a K through 12 educational system, you will start seeing the demographical shift that we have experienced. We're also the sixth largest state with undocumented immigrants in the whole nation. So I think those things are really important to talk about and just understanding about what are the aesthetics that come with it. Because sometimes we see this as statistics in vacuum, but we're talking about people who are living their own experiences and a lot of artists about really looking into what are your experiences and how does that inform your practice and your creation. So that's something that we were able to really hone in and talk and discuss and just share in confianza, like Yvonne said in community, just to talk about what are some of the challenges, but what are also some of the beauties of resiliency that we see that, yes, we might not be uplifted in a specific spaces, but that is pushing us to be more creative and really co-creating new spaces like dancing to the surf for us to really be pushing a new aesthetic that is the colonial, that it's not your typical lines. And I think that that's a beautiful energy because that's where innovation happens. That's where a lot of the new ideas or ideas that come from a very background that comes from the elders, that comes from specific communities that you have implemented or you have been part of, that you're able to really explore and honor. So my critique of Tucson contemporary dance stages and I'll be very specific and say the community that I live and work in is that the movement, its whiteness is very much centered. It's very much a white Eurocentric aesthetic and all the movement looks like it comes from the coast. So I'm very curious about what are our contemporary movement aesthetics for the people that are here and that have been here for centuries and who this is, this is their homelands. And that includes immigrants, right? So that is what I'm interested in and I think that here being on the border we do have a very unique experiences that informs an aesthetic that's different than the Latinx aesthetics that are coming out of New York or the Bay Area. And it's important to support and honor that and also provide the artists that are working in those aesthetics, the resources to continue to work, to create that work. So I have, I actually have a question because of course as arts administrators we do close out surveys and debriefs and because it was such a large sort of convening. And because we, Erin and I sort of took a back step, the debrief which usually happens when we have us, when I'm working with a smaller group of artists happens, tends to happen either in person or over, you know, zoom. But I didn't get to have that moment so I thought I would have that moment now. And I was wondering particularly for Beebe and for Ruby, like what were sort of the biggest takeaways for you for Dance in the Desert? I mean Beebe I know like your investment was fairly great even though like your travel and lodging costs were covered. Like taking that time and making it happen in your schedule and I know it's like a big, it's a big commitment. That was, I was wondering if you would. Bueno voy a hablar en español. Creo que uno de los grandes aprendizajes que yo, que yo tuve con este programa y quiero agradecerles a estas chicas, fue de que en nuestra comunidad fronteriza en donde vivimos es, es una comunidad muy pequeña. Entonces realmente estamos con los ojos vendados, no sabemos que son los recursos que tenemos. Entonces al yo asistir a esta junta con estas personas, yo aprendí que no estamos solos, que las comunidades pequeñas fronterizas no estamos solas. Y que al final esas barreras que tenemos, así como tenemos la barrera fronteriza, literal, todos estamos luchando por una misma causa, por un mismo efecto. Entonces lo que yo aprendí de que todos tenemos diferentes tipos de barreras, pero que al final todas terminan siendo una misma. Entonces yo soy creyente de que la unión hace la fuerza y creo que juntas y con la ayuda de todas estas personas puedo ayudar y representar a nuestra comunidad. Y de que sabemos de que no estamos solos, de que tenemos otras personas con las que podemos aliarnos, unirnos para que lo que queremos que cambie o lo que queremos hacer en grande se pueda realizar. Otra, otra de las cosas fue, fue que fue aprendí, perdón, fue, fue de todas, de todas estas experiencias que tenemos, que tenemos cada quien, no, individualmente. Entonces creo que esto que, que están realizando ustedes va a ayudar, absolutamente va a ayudar a la, a la comunidad que es de doblas de agua preta. Gracias. Oh, también, otra que quiero, otra cosa que quiero comentarles es que gracias después de, de que asistía a este evento, conocía a varias personas y pude, pude conseguirlo de Kennedy Center. Es, es un, es una, es un programa, como le puedo llamar, es un programa que pude conseguir, es una beca que después de asistir a este proyecto fue más fácil para mí de, de conseguirlo y de saber que existe porque realmente en nuestra comunidad estamos ciegos, no sabemos qué es lo que tenemos, las oportunidades, todo lo que podemos conseguir, allá no lo tenemos. Entonces creo que ahorita para mí es, estoy descubriendo, estoy abriendo mis ojos en qué es lo que podemos lograr y conseguir. Gracias. Thank you, Vivi. Gracias. Okay, so I'm just going to translate that. So some of Vivi's couple takeaways was the fact that she comes from a border community but before she talks about her takeaways she wants to thank the panel and the ladies for being here. One of the main things that she mentioned was about how it really opened up her eyes because in doglass specifically there's not a lot of resources that exist. So then she feels that there's not a specific access or opportunities there and by being in Dancing in the Desert she felt that she was not alone and that small border communities do have a lot of barriers but at the same time they're not, they're not alone and there's barriers not only in terms of access but also the physical wall that already exists there and just knowing that she doesn't have to fight this alone and we are moving as a whole community to be fighting these barriers and that we might have different barriers but at the end of the day we are walking to a common purpose and she's a firm believer that unity by us coming together and forming unity we are going to have a lot of strength. She also says that it really going back to this concept of not being alone and feeling that now she has a community where she can be represented that she has allies that are going to be working towards a specific change and more in the individual experience and something that she was able to take away very little from the conference was that through the convening she was able to learn about this opportunity called the Kennedy Center where she was able to find and obtain a scholarship before she didn't even know it existed so by being in Dancing in the Desert she felt that it really gave a vehicle and an access to know about opportunities that she was blinded to and she was able to discover this and she feels that this is a very positive change for communities in the border lands such as Douglas and Agua Plieta. Alright so I actually I ended up going I went to school here for four years and I remember the first time that I met Yvonne she asked me it's back to the mentorship question I was sitting there and I was asking her all these questions and then she goes and asks me a question and she says okay so who in the dance program do you see as your mentor? I sat there and I started thinking and I was like that is a very good question who do I see as my mentor and then I quickly realized that there was really nobody that I looked up to in the dance program in that kind of way nobody that I could have conversations with no one that I was already really seeing as a mentor in that kind of way that she was asking me and so I think the biggest thing that I got from doing dance in the desert was that was being able to know that I can turn to people and ask them questions or not even having to ask them questions but rather than coming to me and inspiring me to continue to push forward and do different things. My parents do the best that they can they're amazing and they're so supportive but my mom is not going to text me and say oh I saw this audition online you should totally audition for it here's the email. She's not you know she's not unfortunately is not going to do that and so from having and being participating in dance in the desert I was able to get that kind of mentorship I got a text message the other day from somebody saying hey Ruby you should really audition for this here's this opportunity same thing with getting grants something right now just happened where she gave me her card and she said hey make sure that you apply for this. And so I think that knowing that these people exist and knowing that I do have a community and feeling that type of community that's growing and getting that gaining that kind of trust. Another another quick example about how that works is I always talk to my dad and I'm like tell him would you go to a party if you saw an invitation on Facebook first of all he doesn't really use Facebook. No he wouldn't receive that invitation and then second of all no he wouldn't it's going to be when he goes to his soccer game and he plays soccer and he sees you know his friend and his friend goes hey make sure that you come to my son's birthday party and then my dad will go okay you come to my son's birthday party and then there's you know there's a it's a different kind of relationship a different kind of trust that we build with one another in community and how we socialize. And that's very very different than just seeing each other one time in a panel and saying hey make sure that you do this or do that it's very much of how we build relationships with one another and how we trust each other and and how I'm willing to be you know to ask you to be the godmother of my future child rather than just you know I'm in passing. So I really that was one of the biggest things that I gained is knowing that I have you know these beautiful women and powerful women that I can turn to and ask questions about things that I'm going to do in the future that I'm currently working on. Thank you Ruby. Yeah I think that was another goal of the dance in the deserts for the younger generation to see themselves in the field and see that being a choreographer is a possibility because a lot of times when we don't see ourselves in those positions we don't think it's a reality especially when we have family members a lot of us are first generation college students when we have our family saying you need to be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer and not that dance thing because you know you're not going to be able to eat. So I want to close out and open it up to you all with some questions but before I do that and do two plugs both Reina and Ruby will be performing tonight. That's in memory of my father and today is Dia de los Muertos. He was a migrant farm worker and so there's a there's a piece in honor of him tonight. And then we are doing dance in the desert 2019, which was directly inspired by the feedback. So I did pre survey post survey and now we're looking at a six month follow up because I like to evaluate. So from the information that I haven't evaluated his background from the information I informed what 2019 is going to be so it will be in Tucson it will be approximately a week long. It's by invite only we're taking 15 artists five choreographers 10 dancers and we are going to invest in incubating and professional development for our local choreographers. So we'll have a series of professional development workshops led by Liz Lerman. We have James and I don't remember his last name right now who's coming a lawyer to talk about copyright. We were asking Anna Maria Alvarez to come so fingers crossed I haven't had a conversation with her yet but I will tomorrow. And we're going to invest in really incubating and supporting the work of those choreographers. So I'm going to open up the floor do any of y'all have questions and then also I don't know if we can get some lights up in the house because you're really hard to see and I want to be able to see you. So yeah any questions for any of us. Great question. Thank you so much for the support as well. So for those of you who do not know Aliento is a community based organization that we are working the intersection between arts, education and immigration. And a lot of people always think about like politics is so abstract is in Washington DC or is so far removed from your daily lives. But for example me as a DACA undocumented immigrant who grew up here in Arizona is something that I can just have the luxury not to think about. That's something that I'm constantly thinking out every single day. So in terms of like the relationship with that is like being a dancer after I graduated from Arizona State University. I actually ended up dancing professional here in Phoenix, Arizona. And I was really thrilled to see that people were kind of like starting to push the envelope but that tied down really quickly. And we started going back to the aesthetics of whiteness and something that I just couldn't relate. And I joke around and I respect all dance forms but I wanted something more. I don't want to be a kitty cat dancing or a vampire which is awesome, right? And like props to the people who want to do that. But I want something more and I was just really disappointed about the lack of depth. And I mean like there's so much more that we can actually value, right? And there's a place for that and I love entertainment. But what is the other spaces and why are they not being created? And why are we not connecting? Why do we have to dance in the desert be the first time that it is intentional for us to connect? So I really appreciate the leadership of Yvonne and the people who supported that. But at the same time it is really sad the fact that it's just happening, right? And now I'm like how about the turn 28? So also thinking about how do I dance and how do I relate and how do I create work but have actually a community that is going to understand the struggle, that is going to understand where I'm coming from and that my vision is going to be red and that I'm going to be pushed and grow not only as a dancer, choreographer, but as a human being. Leadership is really hard because that means you have to listen, which is hard. It's hard to listen without the intention of responding immediately. And so I think it's practice and I think it's also why we choose our partners so carefully because it's also something that's modeled. And if you see it modeled, then it forces you and it allows you to recognize the moments in which there is a misstep. So for me, I really value service. I consider myself a public servant. Like that is how I approach my work. And as an artist, I love learning. It's one of the great privileges of my work that I get to learn in the act of doing my job. And so I think centering those two things has been really important for me and we don't always get it right. And so that's why those relationships are so important, right? Relationships move at the speed of trust. And when you have that trust, then you're able to have a misstep in that process and your partners will meet you with grace if that is returned. And so I think centering reciprocity and also really trying really hard to leave the ego, like once ego to the side, and making sure that the folk that need to be centered are being centered, that those needs are being respected, that you're respecting the expertise and valuing the local expertise. And augmenting that by connecting it to national and international expertise is really wonderful. But it really has to be like for community by community. And it often means like for us because we serve statewide, it means a lot of travel. So I'm actually now like really familiar with Douglas because I travel there quite often. I've like taken my baby there because I was going to be away for like four days. And so like it takes, yeah, it's an investment. I think if you're asking artists to trust you, it's really important to like reciprocate with that trust. And then like partners, for me like partners are key. And Erin is such an amazing collaborator. I mean that is exactly how I would frame it. There is truly collaboration, but it's hard. It's really, really hard and we don't always agree on everything. One thing I want to add that you touched a little bit upon is that she asked me, what are you interested in? What do you think the community needs? And then I went and asked the community, like, well, what do you want? You know, what's next? That their information helps inform dance in the desert. So we have that dialogue and that reciprocity. So it isn't, hey, we have this wonderful program that we're going to do now. So I'm going to get you artists and you go out into the community. So it's a different type of model. It takes longer, but it's much more effective in my opinion. I just have one last thing to add. I think also, yes to everything, I'm like a really deep sense of trust and also the willingness to put in the time. I think we started these conversations many, many years ago, like back when NDP was here a couple of years ago, Yvonne and I like first had a conversation about this idea. And like being willing to spend a lot of time together, like our phone calls are not short, because we spend a bunch of time talking about like what happened with their kids and me having a weird surgery and like also, you know, like the best memory I have of like our relationship was not the best, but one of the best is I was traveling abroad and had scheduled a call with them because I was like, I'm working, it's fine. And these two women are like, get off the phone, go sight see. It's a relationship that we really want to know everything about each other, not just work stuff, it's also like life stuff. And so we really have spent a lot of time developing those sort of relationships, which is hard. Like I think spending the time to make those relationships work is a big investment, but I think it's the only way to make these sort of things really horizontal in a true way because we do each step in and step out of different things and it's okay because we all trust each other. And like we will take each other's calls at 9 p.m. at night or like text each other over the weekends and it's fine because we have that relationship where it's not just work, it's about a deep friendship and a deep collegiality as well. Hi, Kimmy. I can't see you, it's so dark out there. Yes, we recognize, I recognize a lack of scholarship about Latinx dance makers overall, a lack of archival work of Latinx dance makers overall and a lack of those records in the Southwest as well, like the Southwest dance community is under-researched. So there's two kind of things that are not working in our favor here. We are starting the process of documentation. I recently wrote a scholarly article, which I haven't done in 13 years actually, and presented at the Gloria Anzaldua conference El Mundo Sordo with the Declonial Pistemologies Lab. I'll be working with Michelle Teyes, who's a scholar in Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona to co-create and document some of the work that we're doing. And we're very mindful of that and we're in the process of developing that. I also, the other thing that Raina and I were talking about earlier is it is complicated because there's no single Latinx experience and we recognize that the aesthetics are going to come out of this work and practice will be different, very unique and very specific to an individual's experiences. So making sure that we go in intentionally holding space for the multiplicity of voices and that may, so the scholarship may look different. And we also want to work outside of traditional dance paradigms that may not have provided space for Latinx or dance makers of color in the past and work towards creating our own paradigm for documentation and talking about what high aesthetics mean to our community. Yeah, so the first gathering, the Nagla gathering, was just a plactica. So we came together, we did share work and I was pushing for a culturally competent way of giving and receiving feedback because I don't think that the existing models really work for Latinx communities and the way in which we create relationships with each other. So we piloted and tested that and work was shown. I did show some pieces and Ruby showed a piece as well but we didn't have a lot of the dance making practice which is why Dance in the Desert 2020 is solely about the choreography. Yeah, so we had discussions about what we think it meant and where we think it needs to go and we did have the master classes. It was sprinkled in but this next iteration will be a really deep dive into it and I'll be able to better answer that question next year at this time. But thank you. Thank you everyone, thank you panelists. Hi everybody. I guess you met Gabriela? Probably. My name is Jonathan Clark, all the way from Knoxville, Tennessee at the Carverback Theater. We probably didn't expect Gabriela and I to know each other but we do through a little large gathering actually called the Intercultural Leadership Institute. Anybody, are y'all familiar? Anybody? Will the Intercultural Leadership, Gabriela, you want to explain it? Yeah, I mean, I think that Jonathan could have texted me last night to let me know we were going to do this thing today that... Surprise. Surprise. So yeah, I mean I guess I'll start by talking a little bit about my connection to Ely so I've been working with the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture for a long time since I was a grad student, a prank grad student here actually and I reached out because I really needed... Formally I was getting some great feedback content-wise for my work. I really needed more and so I actually reached out and it was amazing. They support in a real way and so I've been working with them for quite a while and they are one of the national funders that have decided to invest and bring together a cohort of 30 art practitioners, cultural practitioners from around the country. So it's a partnership between NALAC, the PAI Foundation in Hawaii. First people's fund based out of the Pine Ridge Reservation and Alternate Roots. Which is an organization that I'm a part of and a member of the Executive Committee. So it's pretty amazing how this connection happened but this is one of the ways that we actually were able to get dancing in the desert here was to understand like hey we know some people in common and maybe we should talk and see how this works. So I definitely, we talked, we actually met by accident again in rural Kentucky in Berea which was amazing. Like to walk into the hotel room or the hotel lobby and see Gabriela sitting at the front lobby just hanging out. I was like what in the world are you doing here? So seeing her come from Arizona and I'm coming from Tennessee and we meet in Kentucky after Ili had ended officially. Right, was that it? For us, I mean there's a new cohort actually that's already convened now. Which Joe Talbert is actually part of. You didn't know that did you? I did not. That's pretty crazy. But we're, it's crazy how this connection happened and we were able to share the work that we both were doing and understand that this work is important enough to bring to you all and this is important enough to be, to spread the word about it but also to understand how interculturality works and how we begin to show up for each other. Like how we take care of each other when some people maybe aren't taking care of us. We have to kind of take care of ourselves but also when we have the privilege of being in a position just like Gabriela putting herself out there I have to fund the work that needs to be shared and the work that needs to be done. These are the kind of things that we can help each other with and how we can continue the work and make it all happen and make sure that you guys are aware of it because everybody's not aware and if you don't know then you don't get to support it. So that's how this works. Yeah, absolutely. I think like the power of what you mentioned like showing up for each other and of showing up for one another even like when that person isn't in the room that being allies for one another is really important. You can see the fruits of it. Every time we do things like this and show up in each other's states I don't get to Arizona a lot but I'm glad I'm here. But also it was kind of interesting. Yvonne talked about the search for leadership and mentorship and I think that's a big thing that we really have to start being more mindful about is to go ahead and start bringing the next generation down the right pathway. And that's kind of what our next session is about as we see what I did there. That's how this works. Thank you so much everyone. So this is Success in Succession and the full title, I don't remember the full title on my head. Putting the Success in Succession. Let's see, let's see what, I forget. So she's ready. So she's ready before you. Success in Succession, next generation leaders sharing stories, struggles and strategies. All of us are leaders within our own separate organizations that are all NET members and we were just going to start off with a little bit of an introduction as to who we are. And since you're sitting here and you talked first, you get to go first. All right. Well hello again. Seems like so long since we've been together. So of course, again, my name is Jonathan Clark. I am the executive support manager at the Carpet Bag Theater. My boss and woman tour I like to call her is Linda Paris Bailey. Right? Yeah, give it up for Linda Paris Bailey. We all kind of realize that we share something fairly similar here. I started with Carpet Bag Theater when I was 13 years old in our youth program. I turned 33 in August. So officially 20 years with the Carpet Bag Theater. So that was something I think that's one of the big things that we all have in common sitting here is that we're all part of organizations that have been around for a very long time. And we're here as people who've been part of those organizations in almost every capacity that we could be part of, right? Like we've been the young kids that have to be babysat. And we've been the young, even the young adults that are trying to perform and be part of the productions and then the adults who could really use more treatment as adults. It's like, oh, you can't make decisions. You're 27. But even in those growing up and it's almost like we just wanted that trust. Are there any by a show of the hands that I can see maybe, or if you're able to let us know, are there organizations that you're working with who are going through kind of the similar struggles of transition? Okay, so fair amount, a fair amount. But this really is supposed to be the conversation that maybe helps and lets you know you're not alone in the struggle. It's a common thing that's going around right now to transition. There's a generation. There's the baby boomers and the boomers kind of have the arts organizations that they started and began with in the 60s and 70s. And then it's like there was not a lot going on with the next generation. And then our generation came along and then it was... It's a joke. It's just kidding. It's just kidding. And then the organizations come along that are like 20-somethings and those organizations come along and even those organizations are looking to transition leadership. So that's kind of where we are now, like the organizations that have maybe 60 or 70-something years old leaders and then the 40-somethings and then the 20-somethings are kind of in that in the same positions now. So we're all looking for ways to better transition and make transition a little bit easier. So that's where we want to put the success and succession as it sounds. So that's what we're here for. I think it's also especially special in this container, in this community, in watching the people that stayed standing yesterday who are from the very original beginnings of the network of ensemble theaters. And we were all talking like, oh, so when did Eric start? When did Linda and Stacey and what are those histories? So to come in as the kind of... And we don't quite have a word for this yet. What that next round is, which is different than coming in with a new company, but what is it to be dropped in the center of something that's already created and had a lifetime and is still... called it a maze when we were talking about it on this phone call that we were thinking about things. So it's like, instead of starting at the beginning of the maze and kind of carving what kind of path one takes, you're dropped in the center and it's been done a certain way for a long period of time and choosing a new path has its issues and has its challenges. Oh, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Shoshana Bass and I was born into the culture of Sandglass Theater that my parents founded in Germany in 82 and then relocated to Vermont in 86. And about seven years ago I moved back to Vermont after finishing school and working with a company in Colorado for a while because I realized that I'd been out in the world looking for exactly what was at home. It was like one of those alchemist stories. And I was... Yeah. And I really wanted to participate and work with my parents directly because they were still actively leading the work and doing the work. At that time there wasn't an assumption of succession there wasn't an assumption that I would come back and take up the family business that seemed kind of an old world idea and nothing that my parents ever pushed on me actually they probably tried to push me in another direction that maybe was a little more secure. Dentistry I think is what they suggested. But my sister and I have both become very much involved with the theater and in the last four years or so this has become a very large topic of conversation and something that I think there was a total openness for my parents I think for sand glass to just close the banjo and walk off into the countryside and move on and let it go and suddenly there's these other conversations happening and people who have stepped forward to say no I see what this is for our community I see the connections on a national level and an international level and why it's important and where I want to be part of it and I think it's exciting, it's scary and the only reason that I myself have we're now looking at my father and I are going to share artistic leadership for the next two years and with that runway kind of transition the organization and the only thing I think that really affirmed that decision for me had to do with these kind of connections and these kind of connections and the communities that have the communities of the puppetry community the communities of the theater ensemble community the mentorship that I've found in that the mentorship that I've found through my friends and allies in my generation that gave me access to the mentors of these other wonderful people all of that I think is really valuable for us to dream that this is even a possibility Hello, my name is Cariel Cariel Klein I am the associate producer at Double Edge Theater I am also the daughter of the founder and artistic director Stacey Klein I did this in an order Jonathan has worked at Carbobag for 20 years you started when you were 13 Shoshana has worked at Sandglass for 7 years for two I'm also the youngest out of the three of us and these two people were mentors to me when I started coming to these conferences of my same age group they were people who were like these are the people you should hang out with I've known Shoshi for quite some time I met Jonathan last year and they're people who I have the three of us I've seen come together in different situations another conference together over the summer at Double Edge and we've sort of been seeing a need in these ensembles for these kind of discussions and for our presence and for our work together I'm slightly a little bit my position is slightly different from Jonathan and Shoshi because I come from Double Edge is quite a bit larger than these two organizations just in terms of the amount of people I've seen I'm not a member of the ensemble I'm a company member the difference is that there's a sort of position of artistic legacy and I come into the producing legacy so I do a lot of the logistical work even though I do perform it's not there are generations of legacies being trained at Double Edge so for instance when Stacy and Carlos who are co-artistic directors retire the next generation will be Jennifer Johnson who will lead artistically at the theater and I am being trained for producing leadership role so that is a little bit different from both of you in that you are both being trained for all of it like you are both artistic and producing whereas I ensemble meetings at Double Edge I attend ensemble meetings even though I'm not part of the ensemble and that is because there is a realization that producing is a role and you can't really separate in these kinds of work you can't really separate one from the other you really need to work together but we sort of do it in a little bit different way it's a little spread out and thus I also have different members sorry different members within my organization that I can ask for different things but it wasn't quite the same and I didn't feel like I had anybody in my organization who was going through the things that I feel like Shoshana and Jonathan are going through I'd just like to say we did yesterday during the opening discussion that if people have things to say in the midst of this we don't need to formally wait until the end and we can't see you very well so a little auditory or something like that excellent thank you yeah so the question was and the the prompt was to hopefully speak a little bit about what this community can do or be to support us or those of you out there who are also dealing with these transitions I have an answer just because I spent some time last night with Lisa Mount talking about this right it's always a good idea to spend some time there when I came to the table I was not supposed to come back to Double Edge there was no plan where I was to be a full-time person at Double Edge I was coming back because someone in the organization was having a baby and they needed someone to produce a show and they called me and said do you have 6 weeks let's do this and then you can leave and that didn't really work out I just stayed when I came back what I I thought of was that nobody I and this was the conversation last night is when you're working in multi-generations I don't have the sort of organizational and general generational wisdom of the people who are much older than me but I work at a very different speed and I see things in a new way and coming to the table knowing that someone is going to be at that table with a completely different perspective and response but treating it with respect and like listening it out and not throwing it out of hand is so important because the first thing you can do to shut down a conversation and sort of to stop a mentorship and someone's role in an organization is to treat them like they don't know and you're trying to sort of foster respect and sort of also ownership in that person so that they can lead you really want to make sure they feel like they can add I think of course the obvious question that is for anyone in these transitions has one of my favorite quotes is there's two things that parents should give their children roots and wings and I always love that and for me it is actually my parents but whether it's your parents or not the organization as it's passed on what is the responsibility in terms of carrying forward what the root missions are of that organization the root aesthetics where are the choices of what is really honored and held on to and what has how to provide the freedom for new voices to come up for new mediums to be explored and you know in conversations with with my parents it's that we have a clear form that we work in but even that is flexible even that is yes but you're a dancer and we aren't so so make it dance and puppetry whatever like make it your own medium what is it you're saying what is the passion behind it as long as you feel you have voice and you are collecting the people with you that you want to work with that you feel can move culture together that's what it should be which I think is a very generous thing to say I think we've been talking about turning the question back around on our elders to say what is it that you need from us in this transition and how can we facilitate that so that all people are feeling honored because it's not always a graceful thing it's there is a lot of attachment there's a lot of this kind of idea of needing to kill the teacher a little bit right and well that's the martial arts term it's not literal thank you sorry I just wrote down a couple of things that that's what Shoshana talked about we one of the things that just asking what you need from us honestly is one of the biggest things I asked I was talking to Carla Perlow a couple of years ago and I told her what was going on in transition and carpet bag we've actually said a fairly long transitional period of three years to make this transition as smooth as possible and it's still a lot of speed and all those good things that slow down the process but it's also a lot quicker to learn and understand and also develop vision in collaboration with our leaders what Carla said that what she would have loved in transition was six things that she could request from transitioning that would be those expectations would be met and she would have felt a more comfortable transition exiting from her position and that just struck me I asked Linda for five to ten things I didn't want to limit her need I didn't want to say you have to tell me six things and put it all in there I said five to ten things that you need from me to feel comfortable to transition whatever role you want to play when the transition is concrete and that's what I need to know those are the things that I'd like to figure out so that I can make sure that this is as graceful as possible and I'm still I didn't give her a time limit I didn't give her a set date to give me these things by which I don't have that power or authority I was like you give me this now but it's a for me it was to really have expectations set and to understand that for the legacy that you should keep I'm going to be taking over a 50 year old organization and I'm 33 so it's not there's a respect and an homage that needs to be paid to the organization for our founders Linda's actually not the founder of Carpet Bay but she's been around for 42 years I don't think she would mind me telling you guys that but also one thing that has been really really amazing is open doors I've I've been privileged enough to sit in on conversations with elders, with people who are doing this work for and have been for decades and just being I'm just being a fly on the wall in those conversations and being able to sit I remember your last gathering sitting in the conversation with Mina DePonker Jerry Stropnicki to come to Paris Bailey and sitting I felt so honored to be sitting in this room with these these people that mean so much to me but also asking what I think about something and at the time I think I was 31 or 32 like just it just blew my mind to be sitting with these people and to to have an opinion that's valued and to not feel like I'm the kid at the kids table at the holiday dinner I think a lot of organizations have that mode of putting young people in their place I guess but it just made me want to work harder it made me want to uphold the values that they have set it just made me really want to pay honor to the people who've done this and the legacy that they've already put forward and I think that's one of the biggest ways to transition but that legacy is honored but to also value the opinions of the young people who are coming next like find out what we can do and let's collaborate and figure out some things together like Jerry's giving me an idea for a play that I'm going to work on and he's just taking it I don't know what I'm going to do with it you do it just for somebody to hand you something like that and to run with it and that's the biggest thing just to give collaboration and guidance when we need it I think that's the those are the biggest things is just to be up front with the expectations and to be there when we need you but also let us give us roots and give us wings so that's the biggest thing for us I think since you mentioned Jerry Strapnicki because we were talking about two parts of this the legacy being sometimes organizational and in the capacity of producing and carrying forward the the events that we do in our own communities in that kind of element and then there's also the artistic legacy and the artistic transference and what that is and for us in my family because we are also a family and things are very close and in the passing of that artistic work it became very important to resource from the wider network you know so it doesn't get to well you can imagine so so at the NET gathering in Maine Jerry was reading letters of love letter correspondences between his parents at the conference and in that moment I was thinking and here I am investigating these stories that have to do with my family and family storytelling and making work out of that and to find my voice my father needs to leave the room and be gone for some of that because I respect his work so much that I would stop listening to myself so that moment was very clear of oh Jerry come live with us for three months and help facilitate these family conversations and be my director for this show and it came directly out of this network it came directly out of the way we witnessed things being honored like that and it was interesting I also want to say like and this is the nature of how this works together is when Jonathan learned this thing from Carla he then shared it with me so and I went and asked my dad so what are the six things you want and so these things get passed along the line and one of the things my father said among many other things was I don't want you to do it for me oh it's going to make me cry because I think of course I'm doing it for him of course wow that's interesting I want to I think this brings up an important point that there's emotion in this like there's a lot of emotion because this isn't like you're taking over a company you're taking over somebody's life's work and this is like a lot to hold both because you want change but you also have a history and I mean I'd say Linda's family I mean this is not like someone you don't see or just a job that you show up nine to five this is what we do and this is what we were raised in and this is what we care about so it doesn't make change or when I rock the boat it's a family rockin' the boat and it ripples not just in our organizations but other organizations and to our friends and so there is emotion yeah Jonathan just said you can't just fire us but I mean there's that but I mean it's true there's so much and love and respect and also anger I see a hand from Claudia I think so the question from Claudia is how were we cultivated to be groomed as leaders for these organizations our respective organizations that will be taken over or not or not honestly for me it was just seeing and being allowed like I said earlier just having those open doors into these conversations it's been a really interesting journey to go from a 13 year old with this world in front of just being placed in front of me to learn that I can create a script out of stories that come from my peers and my friends and then like we started a group that was we were introduced to the Black Law Students Association at the University of Tennessee and what came out of the collaboration as a partnership was we put we turned a mock trial we learned of mock trial from these younger folks in college and then turned a mock trial into a play where we put hip-hop on trial for crimes committed against humanity which was really cool because we talked like just going through this eight of us I think at the time so we got to collaborate with the Law Students Association who was teaching us about law and how these things worked and how trials worked and it was like our leaders just kind of stepped back and pushed us to the partnership and said no these kids are doing this like you're you talk to them you don't talk to us we don't need you to be in that position so it was understanding like how to build partnerships at 13 and 14 years old and how to speak and like when we put hip-hop on trial the young people that we were with brought up song lyrics to there's a song I don't know if y'all are familiar with football University of Tennessee but Rocky Top is my alma mater which the Rocky Top talks about sex and alcohol and moonshine and all these things and it's like okay so you put hip-hop on trial for talking about women and talking about violence and talking about these things but the song that you play before every football game and the song that everybody gets excited about talks about sex on a mountain top and making moonshine which is illegal and you want to tell us that hip-hop is ruining the society it was really interesting we opened a lot of people's eyes to that conversation but that wouldn't have happened if it was just our leaders saying here's what they're going to learn from you it came out of real conversations and it just allowed us to be adults like to be looked at as adults and allowed us to be seen as peers instead of just little kids wanting to put on a production so that was I think with cultivating that seeing how that was done as a 13, 14, 15 year old and still being invited into the room going forward and now with the intercultural leadership institute like Linda has really made it a point to push me into these opportunities and tell me you need to do this and it was like now it's like what do I need to do I wasn't even going to apply for the intercultural leadership institute I honestly just didn't think I was going to be they're picking people from all around the country why in the world would they pick me up 30 people from all around the country and it happened because she pushed me and because she said this is what I should do even for the executive committee at alternate route she pushed me and said you should do this I think it's a good idea I think it's a great opportunity for you and you can learn a lot that we can bring back to the organization so just pushing me to be part of these leadership programs and pushing me out there and letting people know and bringing me grabbing me by the hand and bringing me into the room when I don't want to wake up at 7 30 in the morning but that's like literally dragging me not kicking and screaming but maybe like shuffling and moaning and groaning some things I didn't want to do but really she has the foresight to understand this is what needs to happen and this is how you're going to learn I didn't have a choice I don't know if I was so much helped to know how to be in that role because I wasn't expecting to be involved in double edge I like Shoshana I was sort of pushed to not be in double edge like I'm one of four siblings now still work for double edge I'd like to say that it's a coincidence it's really not it's the culture that you create with your organization will attract people who want to stay with that organization and if you aren't cultivating that I think that's something to look at and to be like okay why aren't people why is it so transient I was raised in a sense by a lot of you in the room my process as an adult is re-meeting people who knew me when I was very small and the people who are laughing are some of the people who knew me when I was small I don't remember them but it's that culture and community that sort of was like letting me be in the room as a child and then also conversations around me and letting me be precocious and sort of out of line but also like giving me guidance and feedback and that was what I think cultivated me to be who I am in my organization I mean one of many many aspects I think that if you are raised in these communities there's something to be said about the raising the long term like I don't think I'm ever going to stop learning I don't think anyone in any of our organizations ever stops learning it's not like you hit artistic director and you're done that's not how this works you still learn every day and as long as you're willing to continue that cultivational process I think that that's what helped me grow and also the people around me grow to accept me I really agree with that it's a village and it takes a village and we had artists coming in and out of our home our private home through my entire childhood from all over the world, from all over the country and as Sandglass got more connected with NET and with NPN and with these organizations that are really working in social movements as well that became a part of the kitchen experience of just sitting around with these people and Linda staying at our house telling me you will find your people and different little bits that have come to make the world both smaller and bigger at the same time and something that I would say is part of that I don't know if grooming is the it makes me feel like a dog but what I've witnessed and what that's taught me has a lot to do with watching the amount of creativity in a changing world and the adaptation that has happened again and again and again to continue to survive and to continue to adapt to a world in which things move at a quicker and quicker pace and become more and more immediate and more in our direct communities and feel like there's a pressure building and situations that change touring in the 80s was a completely different scenario when we were all on the road together than it is now and to watch how specifically sand glasses dealt with all those changes in the creativity of two people's minds and then the community from there instills a sense of bring it on like we can do anything all together and that has to do with these networks and the support that we have in that and so it also brings up like the shifts and changes like we haven't really talked about the challenges and the difficult moments of these transitions and the things that are different situations, different technologies, different all these things that develop that we have a different experience from our elders and have certain opinions about and Claudia was actually thinking about this consensuality and the asking for permission in this particular instance because there is a really difficult balance of how long do you keep asking for permission, how long do you keep needing the approval in order to make the decision and at some point you don't and you just create and something happens and I'm going to swear and say and sometimes you really fuck it up like sometimes you do that make that mistake and then it's about the community supporting you through that and I think you all have to like all of us both the next generation and the newer people to be like yeah it's okay this was bad but we're going to figure it out you made a mistake you forgot to make a program for a show the day before or like because you produced the first time you produced a show you forgot to get a house for a guest that's coming and there's little things that matter but it's how you deal with it together so the question was what is our all's vision for me I've really tried to go that's one thing being a part of these cohorts and the professional development and being able to travel like last year I was on the road for like 110 days out of the year and most of those days I haven't had a vacation till last week since I started with Carpe bag I restarted technically with Carpe bag but for me I really want to invest in young people I've realized that there's a trend where young people don't pay much attention to theater and kind of see it as a maybe a dead art form if it's not on a phone and we're not looking down at it then it can't be cool and I really want to stray away from that like I'm a couple when we were in Seattle we had the conversation about technology and incorporating technology into our performances and I nearly had a panic attack I'm gonna be honest because it just went so far and it just was so disconnected and I think that's really what we're trying to avoid and especially when part comes up later and talks about this connector app we're trying to make sure that we are connecting people again like make sure that we can sit next to people in an audience and still see these shows and this art form that I've been enthralled with since I was well I know definitely at 13 but I was performing since 5 or 6, 7 years old but just being enthralled with this art form and seeing what it can do to change the people who are in the room you can't get that through a screen and I really want to make sure that young people understand that and I really want to invest in our young people and say that we're there's things that you can do if you want to incorporate dance if you want to incorporate poetry I know you like video games but maybe we can figure out a way to put something like that on a stage instead of a screen like I'm not anti-screen I use my phone sometimes it's not it's kind of a necessity for navigating this world that we're in now but I understand when to put my phone away and to be part of what's going on and feel and touch and connect with the people that are around me and really enforcing that and giving young people a way to connect and to be part of to be the future patrons for the work that we're doing if they don't see it then it doesn't matter so it's definitely got to happen and that's really the goal of where I want to go with Carpet Bag is to invest in young people and create the leaders of the future I think connection is the key term for me as well and it has to do with the needs that we have in our own very local community and the roots that go very deeply locally in terms of working with youth and working with demographics in our region and a changing demographic and what it means to be a rural organization which we haven't really gotten into which Cariel and I both have a very strong experience of that and there's a lot of dangers to becoming very isolated both in the way we practice and in just the resources we have and so this these are again the moments that continue to hold us accountable for our work in the world continue to inspire our work in the world and continue to support the work so that these local initiatives become all the stronger with these national networks and even international networks so those kind of connections and we have a very changing demographic in our local region and in our school populations they look very very different than the adult populations and the problem that we face is that the youth in the community don't have the elders that look like them to look up to so it is absolutely essential and it's a big part of our work to be bringing those people into our community that can speak to an experience or give voice to something that the students can see with and so that's a big part of why that connection is so important and and just in a time where truth seems completely irrelevant I mean what else can we do but continue to search for that and continue to be absolutely committed to trying to give space for that speak for ourselves and really do that in a way that is connected and together and continues that path even in the darkest of times so I have an answer for myself and for my plan with Double Edge which is that Double Edge is 36 years old and we're looking at our 40th anniversary coming up and in my role I mean I have a 10 year plan 10 plus year plan which is that I want Double Edge to be a fully sustainable fully we are able to pay our artists a living wage organization in the next 10 years hopefully less but you know 5 to 10 years that's what I want to have happen in the next year I grew up and this is where the theater is in this converted dairy farm there's no cell phone service it's in the middle of western Massachusetts you are isolated when you are there you are doing what you are doing when you head there there's no distractions because you don't really have a choice and what I want to do is to make in my personal interests that I've recently been exploring more is I want to really broaden the ability for artists to come to Double Edge and to have a space to make their own work that is not involved with Double Edge but to be a haven and a place for space and creation and realistically for that to be not a corporate exchange which is what so often happens in this kind of world that we live in and that is my plan and in leadership at Double Edge that's where I focus and want to be involved more and not just for people who aren't from the area but for the First Nations community that has been visualized within our area that doesn't get talked to and we are lucky enough to have partners in the area who are working with us to create those spaces for people we're nearing our time there's one more question oh there's three Tyga Tyga what's that that's a challenge because my parents own the land the question was how long have they been getting and positioning space and decision around space particularly land space in this sort of change would that be a good summary that great I think there's a logistical aspect to that question which is like do you then pay rent how long have they been subsidizing it all out of the passion of that's their work and their company that moves on that's a big thing to figure out logistically and strategically and then there is the association of the audience with the space as well and the association of what is created with the space and with the community and does that move on does that stay local I don't think there's any one way that that happens and I think it's a moving living flexible thing I think maybe you should speak a little bit to that double edge so my parents our house where we grew up into double edge so double edge owns that property the stewardship of that property is a little bit combined because we have to have certain agreements with the neighboring farmers in regards to keeping that farmland but the how do we navigate space and the tenets of the theater the bylaws of the theater and how we operate and work with the space and how we are involved and what will happen so the ensemble will make a decision once and if Stacy retires from making those decisions the ensemble will be deciding together how we operate and if we make changes to those spaces and who's taking care of it you know like my dad will always say where do you find the artistic director oh he's the one mucking out the toilet there's all these things with having land and space that are maintenance in these small organizations that's just part of the keeping it that you're committed to for us at carpet bag the farmland where we are is a literal tooth and nail fight against urban renewal so we're in that base right now of trying to locate a space that we can actually have for ourselves that is used for our community art center that is not going to give into the pressures of developers which are coming they've made it there was even a Zillow that popped up it went viral like in Knoxville they literally said get in early before gentrification so that you can get in on this property it was something to that extent but they literally named it gentrification like they know what they're doing so that's our fight right now we own two properties an artist residency house and our digital story house and then we also own a plot of land next to the Beck cultural art center or what is it called Joe Beck cultural exchange center sorry so but being part of that fight before it happens is really on the forefront of our minds like to find out where we can we put in an offer on a building they said oh wait we put in a cash offer on a building they said somebody was going to buy it and the building still hasn't sold so we're sitting in the same condition it was a year and a half ago so we are very well aware of what's going on so that's kind of our goal is to find somebody who's willing to get in the fight with us and a real estate developer who wants to keep Knoxville, East Knoxville in particular the way that it looks now I know that we need to wrap up here and I just really want to say thank you for including this discussion in this programming because I think that there's many of us that need to be having these discussions right now and they need to happen together and I want to say thank you to my dear friends for the support and for the dreaming together because it just makes everything worth it and rich and abundant and ready indeed okay everyone we're going to get started alright thank you everyone we are so excited to tell you about Connector but before we do that I just want to thank and acknowledge the incredible framing of the conversation this morning and the conversation it just proceeded us as we talk about collaboration and co-creation it's the perfect segue into what we want to share about Connector today also a huge thank you to ASU and their staff for hosting us here today and hello to all of our friends joining us from Hellround so hello excellent so we'll get started for those of you who don't know me I'm Park Cofield I'm the Field Resources Manager here at the Network of Ensemble Theatres and I'm the project manager for this new Connector project and I'd love to introduce my colleague so for those who don't know me my name is Mark Mingoba I'm the Web and Data Manager for Net I've been working under Direction of Park for about nine months on the backend development so it's been great working with the staff the team, the community so really excited to be here Mark and I are both in Los Angeles although we don't see each other much but we work remotely quite a bit like the rest of the Net staff so we're going to be telling you about Connector and answering this burning question what is Connector what has it looked like for this app and where we currently are then we're going to be showing you some screenshots and demo and telling you a little bit about what you'll expect when the app is available to you and then we'll be talking just briefly about what's next and where we're headed so here's the question what is Connector Connector is a digital platform that has been created by all of us by the Net community many of the faces in the audience today have been in rooms with us on phone calls responding to beta testing this is a program and a platform that we're building together so thank you it also is going to change how you interact with the network of ensemble theaters for the first time you'll be moving from a web based experience to one that's in the palm of your hand so we're moving to a more intimate personal interaction with the Net community where you interact I still haven't answered the question what is Connector so I'm going to offer this video Trent can we have the audio please Mark you may need to see if the audio connection is plugged in on the side of the computer it looks like it is Trent are we good? I know try pulling out the audio jack and pause our video so we don't give away our surprises hmm Trent are you in the booth or in the backstage? yeah we got audio hide your eyes hide your eyes okay so we're going to we're going to move forward um I can audio narrate every step of the way for you I'll do that hey I hear it maybe that's good we'll do that we that's true we can play it tonight at the mini performances okay so I'm going to answer the question for us in a different way let's go back to the slides Mark and we'll continue co-creation we've been talking about this a lot this week we will continue to talk about it a lot this week so Connector has been a process we have started we started with a listening and discovery process and went through a lot of rounds of development and prototyping and iteration and change from the net community the listening and discovery process started in 2015 with a listening tour that was in 12 cities around the country many of you maybe were in rooms with Alicia she led these sessions listening to the pressing needs of the net community and one of the questions we asked was other than money what are the ways that a national network can support you in creating your work managing your organization and finding collaborators and we found we had a lot of responses to this question but one of the things that came out of this listening tour was the idea of creating opportunities for ourselves is really exciting we know what we need we have all of the resources that we need to put on the road to tour to go to residencies we know what we have to offer and our value as we're out on the road but we just need help making the connections the listening continued in Seattle last summer many of you were there as well we're in a circle led by our wonderful Lisa Mount where we started asking this question about what does touring look like or what it could look like in the net community we had lots of artists from lots of different disciplines some who were touring some who were not yet touring some who wanted to tour in the space with us and we looked at what what traditional presenting looked like and so we we understand that there's a power situation here where there's a presenter and an artist and a traditional presenting model maybe there's an agent or a manager or a tour coordinator in between but we left that session with another question how do we build a system that's around non-cash based values and resources that equalizes the playing field and removes some of the traditional privilege that exist in these touring systems that exist in the US we had follow up conversations after Seattle with many of you that who are here with us today we got on the phone Alicia met people in coffee shops in New York and throughout her travels and we asked around two different aspects touring and presenting and some of the things we heard about touring were pretty surprising to us any time that we're not in our own space we're touring yeah maybe people agree about this we also heard that touring is a process not just a show and we also heard that people are touring in lots of different ways people comparing themselves to bands and booking gigs and that sometimes we don't even need traditional theater spaces to do the work that we want to do when it came to presenting we the word residency has a lot of different definitions depending on who you speak with one of them one of the definitions was about combining presenting with residencies because there's a financial reality to that that you need to have a workshop attached and so maybe a residency has a workshop and performance at the same time we also heard that one of the reasons people are hosting and presenting is that they want to get as a new energy injected into their companies and so that's a reason to bring artists to your location and then we also heard this idea about flexibility that ensembles as opposed to more traditional presenters can present with more flexibility and urgency which we really like so what do we do with this we started to wonder how do we move from a mindset of scarcity and so we started to look around the net community and figure out what do we have a lot of what are our assets and our opportunities to solve this problem these are the three we landed on shared values there's a sense that generosity and reciprocity is at the heart of what we do as ensemble theater makers we also learned that there's a lot of travel you're on planes and driving and moving around the country quite a bit as well as for conferences and that you're out and about and then y'all are really smart there's a lot of skills and expertise in the net community and a wide range of knowledge that exists that can be shared so we started to put these into opportunity statements and to ask some questions the first was how do we use generosity and reciprocity to drive the user experience of a digital platform and so we started looking at what does that mean it's not a one sided matching system it's a two sided matching system where both parties are involved we heard from members that there's a variety of different currency and exchange when setting up these things up so we wanted to make a system that had opportunity for free exchanges, trades and also cash based exchanges and then also this question about why do you come to an app are you coming because you need something you're going to space finder to find the space you need in that moment or how do we how do we change that experience and build an app that you're wanting to come to because you want to enter the space with generosity and to offer something the next opportunity statement is how might we use geolocation to increase the kinds of connections that net members are having while traveling so the app we started thinking about if we have a cell phone in your pocket what can we learn about geolocation and where ensembles are and how can we use that to our advantage so we looked into how can the app use notifications when you arrive in different zip codes to help you find other net members who are in the cities you're visiting or perhaps even in the city that you currently live in we also have an idea about city guides which I'll talk about more in a second and our final opportunity statement is how might we leverage the non-cash based resources and professional skills to free up funds how do we get the cash that we do have to the things that we need and is there a way to maximize all of the other resources that can help make that system a little bit better so we are talking about this idea of a currency of exchange so trying to help provide ways for you to think about skills and services that you offer that maybe you don't charge for but it's something that you do and so how do we help lift up some of those unacknowledged skills that maybe you have and there are seven different categories of offerings that we'll talk about when we walk through the app as well so then the fun part became we started to look at all of the different things that exist out in the world if we're going to build the perfect dating app for ensemble theaters so who's doing this best we sort of did a matrix benchmarking to see what other systems are out there, how other systems are matching people and then we started prototyping this is a sketch I did after the Seattle gathering starting to think about how do we put these ideas into practice and how do we get experts involved and other developers and we hired GOMA Games who came to us via Mark and I'd love Mark to offer some insight about what that relationship looks like sure so we did an RFP process and I knew I couldn't do this or create the back end by myself so we had to get experts and GOMA Games not just was the best in cost but also a cultural fit for various nonprofits they worked with me in a couple festivals, film festivals that I've done and they've been so great I think some of you have already worked with them through debated testing so we have John who's our coder Kelly who's the project manager, a lot of you have interacted with her already and T who's also one of the software developers especially for the iOS app so they've done a phenomenal job so hi GOMA Games if you're watching here represented in the room with us so they took us through a period of rapid prototyping and agile design so we slowly moved from hand drawn schematics to slightly more professional wireframes to another version that Kelly and her team did that looks much better than this and we realized this is a lot like new play development so you start with a rough draft of something and you get audience feedback and then you continue to change and this iterative design process really matches up with ensemble theater making that also has included a beta testing project a process we've had about 20 members it looks like zero members of the net community should be 20 members of the net community provided feedback on features we have several of our beta testers with us today so if you're one of our testers who have joined us I'd love for you to sort of acknowledge yourself I know we have Jonathan and Matt there and Kerry and Deb Dabora is here with us so if you have questions about what that experience was like please reach out to them it's been really fun to have their feedback and to see how using this app would fit into their lives and their practices with hosting and presenting and touring and residencies some of the things we heard from our testers was oh this is great this is going to cut down on so much of my work I normally do all of this on Facebook and I have to post a message to a friend and then I have to go over here and email and check the revelation was oh well if this is a trusted safe community of peers who get ensemble practice and co-creation this will streamline the work we also heard oh I feel really isolated where I live and sometimes I don't feel included in the larger net conversation this is going to help me feel a part of something bigger this speaks to this idea of a closed community as well it's great that this is a closed community of like-minded artists who will understand what I'm trying to do there's some shorthand here if you say oh I need a space for this and that or you know I just need a couch or you know while I'm there I need a van there's some shorthand there that happens if you're working with people who understand this kind of work alright so we're going to take a look at some screenshots of the app and what it looks like the moment you've all been waiting for the connector experience begins with a login in which you will use your net member username and password and there will be a forget password feature if you forget what you signed up with which will probably happen the next thing you'll encounter is a code of conduct so please read all the fine print there's a lot of fine print and make sure you agree to the code of conduct this is really important to keep our community safe we've worked a lot with our council and you know all the staff making sure we keep our community safe these are in line with the shared values for engaging in the space we had that modeled for us in our opening session by Rebecca Moise the other night we're attempting to share shared values for a digital community in space including ways to self report and to moderate and keep this community safe the next thing you'll do is you'll set up your profile and during your profile you'll be entering a lot of information about yourself but a lot of it will be pre-populated from the information that you've already set up in your member profile you'll be sharing things about your location the kinds of artists you work with the communities you work with and you'll also be able to add a photo smile, there's Mark the next part of your profile and setup is using this asset of travel so we've built in an opportunity for you to be able to list the cities that you know that you're going to be traveling to over the course of the next year and you'll be adding these trips and this data from your trip folder will help customize the search results that you have in Connector and help prompt connections for you when you arrive in these cities the city guide, I promised you we'd talk about that earlier city guide is something that we see happen a lot in the net community where people identify themselves as ambassadors or informal welcoming parties in their cities but in the connector setup you'll be able to identify yourself and say yes, sign me up for that I want to make sure I know when net members I'd love to be contacted when other net members are here so I can show them around you'll be able to opt into this at any point and this is a future feature that we're working on fully implementing into the app then comes the offerings this idea of generosity what are you putting out into the net world there are seven different categories and seven different things you can offer that include performances, performance venues studio spaces a place to stay professional services and equipment and vehicles you'll be able to list lots of information about each offering including where in the world it is able to be used or where you're willing to travel with it as well as the things that you need from in terms of local support is this an offering out to the net community for free is this something that you're willing to trade or is this something that you're only looking for a fee based service for and there are uploaders where you're able to upload photos and videos, tech writers videos so people can see the work and engage with your offerings that's the profile setup once you get into the app there's lots of ways to connect and start to explore the offerings that exist but we've built in one sort of trick in order to actually connect and take advantage of an offer that's in the net system you have to at least offer one thing yourself so you can search but until you've added an offering you won't be able to complete that connection and make that messaging system happen there are lots of different ways to search you can search by offer or by people we have lots of different filters that will help refine your searches based on location the kinds of communities that are served the size of your venue, your space highly customizable but largely driven by the kind of offering the kind of exchange and the location so you're wondering okay how do I actually connect well you can connect with a member through either an offering or the profile and you'll be able to send a message to them through the app that will notify you directly on your phone hey park I'm looking for a couch in Los Angeles I'm staying there for a couple nights to do a performance ding oh man goba wants to stay on my couch for a couple of nights while he comes into Los Angeles awesome thanks mark ding thanks park so the communication through the the net platform you'll be able to customize that how you'd like to receive alerts and notifications it's designed so that it'll push notifications to your phone and you can customize that however you see fit that fits in with your life part of the point is we're taking you to the point of connection and beyond that we're letting you figure out the rest of the details so feel free to take your conversations offline once you make that initial connection whether that's to email or to follow-up phone call we know there are details that can't be captured in an online form and that the true exchange and connection happens over a long period of time we've heard about how long it takes to build relationships and to establish trust so we're taking you to the point of connection and then putting the allowing you to figure out how to proceed on that relationship the ways that we do then still continue to support you is that we will follow up with notifications and offer you opportunities to provide feedback on those resources and individuals within the net community we also will be matching offers with resources we don't want to just send you out into the world blindly without any support so there is a menu of resources that are attached to different kinds of offers so we're talking about rules for homestays these are templates and open source documents that we are collecting from the net community and some of our peer service organizations templates for collaboration agreements tech writer models marketing kit options as well as links to all of the sharebacks from the net 10 grant program that have come out of our funding program with knowledge sharing and resources so all of these will be matched up to offerings in the system will be promoting these and linking these and referring you to use these as you go out into the world to set up homestays and peer presenting and DIY touring models so what's next so we if we think back to the initial timeline and our snake we are in the final testing phase of connector we during this final testing phase we're working really hard on some of the additional features including the resources the city guides some of the notifications and we are planning for a winter pilot launch to the net membership in which you will be able to download the connector app login and to test this in your in your lives it's very likely that after this event we may include some of you in this final testing as we need a few more beta testers to get us to this to this point and to test these features and to see how they work for us further ahead we have big visions of what does this mean to be expansive within the larger ecosystem of people touring and looking at bringing in partner networks like-minded networks of artists maybe from other disciplines who can expand the range of where these tours and residencies and trades exchanges can happen and then it's about measuring impact we've heard this a little bit this morning in our panel it's important that if we want this model to work that we prove that it works and that we quantify and look at what does a quality relationship look like that starts in a digital online space so there's a lot of data that we know from the app itself including all of these factors on the left hand side including race, gender, age, location professional roles, disciplines the kinds of communities you're working with and then there's additional survey data that we're looking to you to help us continue to iterate on and change on after a successful connection is made you'll be encouraged to provide feedback through a survey and you'll be given an opportunity as to whether or not you want to verify a user or an offer in the system so that we can begin building a system of trust and those verified offers will be visible as you scroll and search the connector platform the goal is we want to paint a picture of what does ensemble touring look like in the United States we want to hear the stories we want to identify trends we want to map locations and see what does this look like in the United States geographically and also to consider equity and how this plays an important role in the development of this program we're working with a fantastic data manager to help us look at this and how to quantify this and I can't wait to share some of that data after the first pilot year to see what things look like so before I leave I want to say a huge thank you to our lead funders for the connector and for supporting this iterative design process the support of the Doris Duke foundation charitable foundation and the national endowment for the arts so a huge thank you to them and also a thank you to you as we continue to create this together please use your connector keychains there's a website on it you can go and you can see the explainer video there we'll also try to show it tonight and you can read more and stay up to date with updates so thank you great is it possible to turn up the house lights at all? okay, Sabrina sure, so the location feature in connector has nothing to do with particular cities you'll be able to enter wherever you're based in the US and you'll be able to search components of connector allow you to either search by particular region so if you know you're wanting to tour to a particular region you can search in that capacity or you can drill it down by state or more specifically by city and I think that that location data potentially could also include a field if you're specifically looking to work in a rural space or an urban environment that you could filter results in that way as well, great question thank you so we're planning to actually have it on desktop and mobile so all devices Android, BlackBerry if you really have one and your Apple device so it's heterogeneous could anywhere be export one of the things we learned early in our beta testing process and Jonathan may be able to speak to this but the initial profile setup depending on what you're offering can be fairly intensive if there's particular text you want to offer or the photos or the videos that you want to attach aren't on your phone and are on your desktop so we have the sense that people might start their connector experience through the desktop and then as they travel and are on the go it may be more mobile based yeah we're actually the whole app is API based so when we connect to these different partners that is the way that we're going to kind of frame it oh so API so it's an easy access point for any app to connect to another app so with different security tokens and keys if Dan's USA wanted to connect with us and use connector we could have an API to connect their data to our data of course there's a lot more to that but it's a simple way to connect oh, Lisa Mount that's a good question you can opt out of messages and notifications so if you don't want to have connections you can do that or you can simply not respond it's a good question so in the profile setup you're also able to enter a brief description of yourself that it could be that we need to add a field or to look at that to visually indicate in some way what your level of engagement might be in the system I think that's something we'll figure out as we go and we have test users and people start connecting yes yes so this is a really interesting point because a phone is a really intimate personal device and shifting from a web based where your experience is that there's a primary contact person who's filling out the net profile and is the main point, communication point for your ensemble we wanted to broaden that and so any affiliated member or additional contact that you list within your ensemble membership profile in the net community will be given a welcome and an opportunity to set up their own and log in to function within the net community in the connector community and there will also be an organizational user account so Mug Wumpen would have ensemble user login to connector and all of your members and affiliate contacts and anybody you identify is having access will also have an individual profile in the space and it's up to ensembles to decide if you want to share that organizational login who is the person that can commit an ensemble to a particular exchange or opportunity but it's a thank you for asking that it's an important distinction did that answer it for you okay great yes Conrad yeah start getting into place so we're finishing the final beta testing and so between now and the end of the year we'll be enrolling a couple of additional members to help us test the system and then we're aiming for the pilot launch in winter and what that will mean is there will also be a system put in place where we capture glitches and complaints if you'd like to label them that way and issues so we're crowd we're continuing this idea of crowdsourcing the problems that arise that our development team and Mark and Kelly and Goma games can continue to iterate and design through that pilot launch which will be about a year so to answer your question early winter is what we're aiming for and then the pilot launch will extend for a year in which we're testing this continuing to make small changes and measuring what this first year looks like currently it is US based we've made a distinction to focus on US based touring at the moment we some of that is constrained by legal ramifications of phone and app devices some of that is intentional in terms of focusing around the work that's happening in the US yeah Mark do you want to add anything about the international work yeah so then other obviously in other countries there's like GDPR and different you know rules that we have to follow so maybe someday we'll see where that goes ah such a good question so I believe that everybody has something to offer we've the list of professional services I'd love to show I wish I could do that but the list of professional services is pretty extensive and continues to grow so I wanted to share one example of what an iteration a very recent iteration looked like so I was on the phone with an ensemble based artist who mentioned that they were traveling and touring and one of the biggest sort of pain points was finding equipment for an infant while they were on the road traveling and touring and I said oh we can add that into connector as a piece of professional service so childcare got added to the list within 24 hours and equipment got added in terms of cribs and infant supplies and materials that could be sourced locally when you arrive at a destination for a tour so the professional services and the equipment list is pretty extensive and we're encouraging people to think about those untapped skills that they have whether that's pet sitting, house sitting offering graphic design helping set up a 501C3 or particular knowledge or skills that's particular to the kind of work you do I imagine that as we move forward the ways in which that sort of helps prompt and provoke those oh yeah I do know how to do that we'll become more apparent thanks for asking Thank you Rebecca and thank you to all of you I'm so excited to be modeling ensemble practice in a digital space I think it's pretty cool for the field and excited to have been able to talk with so many of you and grateful I know Mark and Kelly and her team have been really excited about oh yeah wow you guys are great testers and are giving us really good things to think about so thank you all