 Welcome. I'm Colleen Jennings-Rogensock, Vice President of Cultural Affairs at Arizona State University and Executive Director of ASU Gammage. And it's my pleasure to moderate live streaming a conversation, how did we get here, the history and future of international presenting the U.S. perspective. First of all, I want to thank HowlAround for their commitment to this work. The International Presenting Commons is a group that is dedicated to international presenting, particularly at this time when we are suffering through two pandemics, the pandemic of COVID-19 and the pandemic of systemic racism. Given the last previous four years of the White House administration, international touring has taken a back seat. While we remain very much committed to our American artist, we also know and value the importance of international presenting. This is but one of several conversations we will be having because this is a conversation about the history of how we got here and the future of where we're going. You will meet today a panelist of distinguished presenters and producers who have not only made a career of working in terms of international touring, but have also educated many of us along the way. They will each be representing the portions of the country where the bulk of their work has taken place. First, I would like to introduce Baraka Saleh, and Baraka defines herself as a cultural warrior and a revolutionary. Baraka will be focusing on the continent of Africa. Next, I would like to introduce Christina Miranda King. Christina will be focusing on Mexico and Puerto Rico. She is based in Mexico City, raised in DC. She's a transnational consultant, producer and curator of performing arts and music events, and she's the co-director and founder of a whole day travel and cultural experiences. Our next panelist will be Joe Malillo, will be focusing on Europe. Joe is the executive producer emeritus of Brooklyn Academy of Music, BAM, and after 35 years of experience, he completed his full time work at BAM on January 2019, and he's maintaining an advisory position to date at BAM. Our next panelist, Olga Garay English, her focus will be Latin America and the Caribbean, and also as a former funder of cultural exchanges. Olga Garay English is an independent arts consultant. Previously, she was the founding program director for the Arts of Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the executive director of the City of Los Angeles Department of Affairs, Cultural Affairs. Also on our panel, you'll be hearing from Philip Arnaud, who will be focusing on his work in Eastern Europe. He founded the theater project in 1971 and the Center for International Theater Development in 1991, and Philip has done decade long projects in East Africa and the Netherlands. His work is in Central and Eastern Europe, and he has began that work 45 years ago and continues to today. And our last panelist will be Rachel Cooper. Her focus will be Asia. Rachel Cooper has been at the Asia Society for over 25 years and has worked with performing artists in Asia and the US as a producer, presenter, researcher and advocate, and is a proud member of our large arts ecosystem. Each of our panelists will speak for seven to eight minutes, and then our responders will respond to the panelists comments. These two are individuals who have had a long history in international and global exchange. Our first responder will be John Kalaki, who worked with Trisha Brown, PepsiCo Summer Fair, Walker Arts Center, Yoruba Buena Center and the film, the Flynn Center, as well as the Pew Charitable Trust and the San Francisco Foundation Charitable Trust. He has now serving is serving his second term in the Vermont House of Representatives. Your Honor, we're glad to have you here. Our next responder will be Linda Bromberg. She founded Pomegranate Arts in 1998, an independent production company dedicated to development and touring of international performing arts project. And our next responder will be Claudia Norman, an independent creative producer based in New York City. She is the founder and director of Mexico Now Festival, producer of multicultural festivals in the US and Latin America. And recently co-founder of the New Generators, a new arts and entertainment company dedicated to create and produce programs with a global perspective. She's also a proud member of CIPA and a member of the Mexico Committee at Napama. And our last responder will be David White, former artistic director of the Yard, executive director of Dance Theater Workshop, creator of the National Performance Network and Suitcase Fund. Each of the responders will have four minutes to respond, and then we will open up our question and answers as soon as they are done. So we'd like to go ahead and begin. So the questions we are asking of each panelist are this, what is your value proposition as it relates to international presenting. Please examine your practice and share one story about how your practice open doors or enlightened audiences. And you must understand each of these individuals, not only could spend the next two hours talking about their practice and the importance it has played for us in this country, as well as globally. And finding it to eight minutes is going to be a challenge. So we'd like to first start off and kick it off with Baraka Sele. Baraka will have a picture up as we have some internet connectivity things going on. Baraka. Well, thank you, Colleen. Can everyone hear me? Yes. So first of all, I want to thank Colleen for inviting me to participate. I want to, of course, thank international presenting commons for this opportunity and making this conversation possible. I also want to thank my fellow panelists, and I would even say esteemed panelists, many of whom I've known for decades and even traveled with them to different parts of the world, including Africa, Asia, South America. I want to give a special shout out to Olga Garay. During her tenure at Doris Duke, she made it possible for presenters to not only meet artists and other presenters, but our peers around the world and to engage in their work. I also would just like to acknowledge a person who could not be with us that Colleen invited, and that is Christopher Hunt. For those of you who have been in the field as long as we have, some of you may know his name. And unfortunately, he's very ill and living in France and could not be with us. I want to be clear that when we say I'm talking about or representing Africa, I do not speak for Africa. I do not represent Africa. I can only represent and speak for my own experience, both personal and professional. And I could be wrong, but I think my experience was probably a bit different than my colleagues on this panel. If I can give you just a couple of examples. In the 1980s, I was working at the Houston International Festival. It was a festival that focused on the culture of a different country or region each year. And when we started having the conversation about Africa, one of the board members said, what if we send you to Africa, Baraka? And all you find is a bunch of jungle dancers. And then she was shocked when the only black board member got up and walked out. In the 1990s, while working at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts at a reception, a woman said to me, how does a black woman get a job like this? In the early 21st century, Stephanie Hewley and I, we're one of my colleagues, were working with the National Song and Dance Company of Mozambique. And someone asked, why are you spending so much time on little third world dance companies? Of course, until that little third world dance company ended up on the front page of the New York Times Art and Cultural Section. So these misperceptions that we have about Africa are very critical and a reason why I've been doing this work for over three decades. In 1995, when Mickey Shepard and Stephanie Hewley invited me to come to New York, I was still in San Francisco, to discuss a possible project of cultural exchange among artists of the African continent and their peers in the U.S. I was too eager and too excited. Let me just remind you that this was at a time when there was no widespread use of the Internet. People were communicating by email and fax machines, and if you were working internationally, it was either FedEx or DHL. So most people's knowledge of Africa came from TV, meaning Tarzan, or the National Geographic, Pictures of Women with Exposed Breast, or movies about the great white hunter like Hemingway and Teddy Roosevelt. Very few folks knew the reality of Africa. So Mickey Shepard, Baraka Saleh, Stephanie Hewley, Laura Greer, Linda Walton, we crafted and designed a program funded by the Ford Foundation that we hoped would debunk some of the myths, inaccuracies, and outright lies about the African continent. Specifically, it's art and culture. So we were very much interested in both contemporary and traditional art and artists of Africa, especially after an official at the NEA told me that Africa does not have contemporary art. So just to give you an idea of a few examples of the projects we worked on. Alonso King with Lines Ballet worked with the Baka people of the Central African Republic. And the Baka came, he actually sailed down to Congo and went and met with them, and some of them came and toured here in the United States as well. And Ronald K. Brown worked with Rakia Kone, choreographer from the Ivory Coast, and her company also came here. Urban Bush Women worked with that little third world dance company, the National Song and Dance Company of Mozambique. Again, these are just a few examples. So communities and cultures throughout the U.S. were able to engage with artists intimately with Africa and its artists. Yes, there were challenges. Yes, there were difficulties, especially visas, cultural context, language translation, especially with technical terms, disparities regarding compensation. For example, a major art institution that will remain unnamed. When we were talking about working together and collaborating with an African artist, they inquired, well, we're not going to pay the same to the African artists that we would pay to the U.S. artists, are we? And I inquired, why wouldn't we? And they said, because, well, those Africans aren't used to receiving and handling that kind of money. There were also, in addition to the challenges and difficulties, misunderstandings and missteps. Suleiman Kohli from Ensemble Cotiba in the Ivory Coast said, I don't need to work with American artists. What I need is a piano. But in addition to these missteps and misunderstandings or challenges, there were also incredible rewards. We created an international advisory committee, a network of artists, presenters, scholars, humanities and subject matter experts. Some of those relationships continue today. Some of those folks, including Colleen and Joe Malillo, were on those panels and part of the international advisory committee. As mentioned, some of the things that happened were commissioning and presenting and touring, new work. Two international conferences regarding cultural exchange in Africa and the USA. I want to conclude with a point that I feel is very important. I've worked throughout the United States, in Detroit, in Atlanta, in Houston, in San Francisco, in New York, and in New Jersey. Each of those locations have always been challenged by artists of so-called local communities. And I just would like to emphasize that first and foremost, I teach, I preach, I advocate that all artists are international artists. For me, international presenting is not synonymous with importing artists from other countries. International presenting is positioning all artists within a global curatorial context and framework. That requires the same level of representation, consideration, compensation, opportunity, and respect. Part of my mantra and methodology throughout the beginning of my work since I first went to Africa is Read Research Study. So I do have resources about current and historical presenting regarding working with Africa and the African diaspora. If you would like to receive those resources, you can perhaps in the Q&A ask for my email and I will give my email address. Thank you. Thank you, Baraka. That was wonderful. And two things. One, if you have questions as our panelists are speaking and our responders are speaking, please put them in the chat. Also, know that each of these panelists as well as the responders have written a two-page paper, which we're going to work with HowlAround and with AppApp, the Association of Performing Arts Professionals, and ISPA to have those papers ready for you to look at sometime this summer. So next, I would, it's my pleasure to introduce Christina Miranda Keen. Hi, Colleen. Can you hear me? Thank you so much. I can hear you. Your video doesn't appear to be on Christina. Right. I'm trying probably not going to do the video right now because I'm having some internet connection. Great. All right. Thank you. I'll go Sans video. But I also just really want to thank you, Colleen, for bringing us together, colleagues that I haven't seen in a long time. And I'm very excited, very excited about being able to share some time with you and talk a little bit about Mexico and my work and my perspectives. And I'm going to kind of repeat what Baraka said. Again, I'm not representing the entire 32 states and 101 million Mexico is a huge place and it's extremely diverse. So I'm really going to talk about kind of a bit about what I encountered and why I wanted to go to Mexico from Washington Performing Arts Society where I had been working as director of Latino programming, which is really a title at that time in the in the 90s that said everything and said nothing. Because, you know, director of Latino programming, I was being asked all the time, well, what do you think about, you know, Colombian contemporary dance or, or traditional. Well, I'm not Colombian, you know, we're not a monolith. I am a bicultural product of a Puerto Rican mother and a Scotch Irish Texan father. And I got into this work, I will call it cultural entrepreneurship, because I was really curious about exploring identity. I was curious about getting away from culture as this this theme culture as entertainment or amusement. I was really interested in converting that conversation and that entertainment that that perspective into a theme, a conversation about identity and cultural rights. And most of my work over the past 2025 years has been about that and it's been about applying working in three dimensions, whether it's Mexico whether it's Puerto Rico. Whether it's, you know, when I was in Washington DC three dimensions, personal relational and contextual. I was always in Mexico, this was been very important, because there's so many projects cultural entertainment projects not not about necessarily beyond the university cultural centers and context about collaborations with master artists or commissioning of new work by performance creators across disciplines. I wanted to be involved to do more of this work from what I had been doing in Washington to translate that to Mexico so, and to learn, you know, because we're talking about, you know, I really wanted to learn about the artist who are working in the contemporary art and how presenters or how cultural workers in Mexico were curating and putting context and dealing with the massive historical migrations the immigration issues and and the symbiotic good and bad relationship between the United States and Mexico. I mean, we are, it's a little saying there in Spanish, we're in bed together, we're working together because that is what we are interconnected. So I really wanted to dedicate a lot of my work in Mexico to building a cultural corridor between you know my colleagues in the United States, and Mexico, you know what I was doing to really understand what was going on with performance with the new work with with ultimately how I could help support the work of artists in distribution and experiencing work in as Baraka well said debunking myths dismantling the fervent stereotypes that are still vibrant in the world around Mexico, you know, and we are in Mexico is really in every aspect of everybody's life from the food in the US to everything it's it's symbiotic ingrained. So I get to Mexico. And, you know, I was really interested in learning about you, you know, addressing communal needs and that creative place making, and how to enhance the quality of life and build communities in rich communities and that experience. And I found that in Mexico, our creativity really represented represents a mix of like local ingenuity and effervescence, a cosmopolitan flair, a whole plethora just thousands of just incredibly, incredible community initiated projects dealing with issues of social justice, human rights, and equity, combined, you know, combining your work with a really sophisticated digital presence to project work around the world animation. You know, I saw I was learning over the past, you know, years I've seen in Mexico that festivals and cultural spaces in Mexico and I would say the same for Puerto Rico but I'll get to that in a moment, work with really few resources. I mean they receive there's government support. There's some adventurous backing from a few company and philanthropists, but the artist run independent spaces are vital to that ecosystem in Mexico, and the creative work. So I think like for one example that I would say from from Mexico and really getting involved in seeing the deep roots that we have indigenous I mean, I got to say it you know we're we're home to over 6 million indigenous language speakers. We are there are 68 indigenous recognize languages, but there are hundreds more that are dying out, you know beyond Maya or now until hundreds more that are dying out. The work has to be there as well. You have to work to focus right now on on on what we're doing with our diversity in Mexico how we're supporting the independence faces. And I remember just a really great moment in my experience in Mexico and one of the day of the dead parades, where you know we got the gig to do the day of the parade because of the movie specter and James Bond and because they used, they filmed a small part of, you know, this, a small part of the, our main plus of the Zocalo for their movie, using the day of the dead tradition and launching it as as if it was this new thing. You know this great Cosmo this this big production and frankly the day of the dead in Mexico has been on has been occurring. It's a right from from from pre Hispanic times from going into the inframundo from cross. I mean it's got all this, all of our lore tradition are, you know, we basically eat our death in a bizarre way, ironic touch on death with skulls and what with the with the breads that we make that are made for that time. So they gave the dead parade, they gave us the chance to not do a Disney World type of parade, or something they really gave us a chance to study to go through the regions to go through the customs from different regions from different epochs and eras like the Revolution, or Posada, all of the engravings of those very famous kalakas that the skulls and the skeletons that are now all over. And a million people were out on that street and reforma pushing together from all walks of life it was the biggest, most important expression of art in public space at a time when Mexico was going through the 43 dead. And it's the corruption that the dead bodies, not the bodies of children and families not being able to be found in unknown graves I mean it was a time and it still is of violence of corruption of political and social strife and the tragedy that we've always been living with that Mexico's always been living with it. And yet, here we were with this incredible display of in an honest, an honest sensitive way of what these traditions launched to the world of the day of the UNESCO World Heritage patrimony. So, you know, I think that for me working in Mexico and seeing this connection and really being able to link artists from Mexico with my presenter colleagues in the US I mean at that time, a lot of us were looking at the US. What can we do. What's being done in Mexico Latin America and the three we want to bring, we want to bring Latino artists, but you know, you have to think about how you bringing Latino artists you have to bring the work, not the stereotype not yet to bring the vision there are so much contemporary work being done that is impressive so I don't know how much time I have left. I think I don't have any more time left. I think you're right on right on time Christina. Okay, so I think we'll just probably leave it with Mexico out all I can say really and I really did want to talk about Puerto Rico, because Puerto Rico is pretty you know known for the music the lush tropical forest the breathtaking skies and they're all well documented but our history is nurtured by 500 years of a melting pot and counting of multicultural influence of heritage in addition to our colonial and that colonial status is something that needs to be addressed in a in a place in a country now where 57% of our children live in poverty. In 2019, we're a US territory. We have nothing to do with a Stadio Estado asociado libre, a free, a free territory so I want to put out that we have a vibrant cultural scene. I'm working right now on a project called transform Arte where we're bringing together the methodology of the theater of the oppressed by a ghost of while, and we're bringing it. We're working with community leaders and eight communities throughout the, throughout the island to bring together theater and community organization and developing community leaders through theater, and having them see their, their, their scenes, themselves on stage so. Thank you Christina. Thank you so much. This is so wonderful. I want to remind everyone that you can put your questions in the Facebook chat with howl around, or the Facebook chat at as you damage. And also I just want to take an opportunity for those of you who weren't with us at the top of the hour that this conversation came as a result of a number of individuals involved with presenting international artists global artists and wondering where we are today in this country, dealing with COVID, dealing with US policies, dealing with systemic racism, dealing with things that make us seem more insular. And so the concern is that we look forward, and we look outside of the US for this discussion. Also, as I said earlier we will have other discussions with our global partners and with artists. Right now, it's my pleasure to introduce Joe Malillo, and Joe you will start with your focus on Europe. And I want to thank everyone for trying to be mindful of our eight minute time limit. Thank you. Okay, so what I want to contextualize is that my presentation comes out of an urban performing arts center. The urbanness is defined by a place called New York City. But I want to address my job as a performing arts presenter was to be the person who is responsible for making a judgment, making a choice. So, what does that mean. It means that I am for my community as complicated as New York City is. And for my institution, I was making a decision as to which artist or artist company was going to be represented within the second structure of my institution. So, let's parse what I'm saying, my job is to service. I'm servicing my institution. That's where the paycheck came from. My other job was to service my community, and in a place like New York City is plural, it's communities that I am servicing. So not only am I servicing them with art and culture. I'm also advancing their understanding of art and culture with an contemporary context. So, I mean, that is the reality of an urban identity that we honor with great reverence traditions. And remember, it's a performing arts center. So, it's, there are multiple traditions that are held in the diaspora of the citizens of New York City, and in the country of origin. The tradition is a living tradition. And there is a relationship between our endeavor in servicing our communities of ethnicity or racial identity with the intrinsic life of tradition that's being held in their communities. So that could be Africa, Asia, that it can be in Eastern Europe and as much as my responsibility in this presentation to talk to talk about the European community. So, I mean, this is what fundamentally is operating when you have the job. We had jobs in order to do this assignment to program and service our institution in my identity as the Brooklyn Academy of Music or BAM as it was actually known. And that's what my endeavor was about. So, because I didn't create the institution, I stand on the shoulders of another man, 20 years older than me, who actually made the institution a profound part of the cultural and artistic life of New York City and that's our reluctance time. And so, when I entered the game, he hired me in 1983 was to create a contemporary performing arts festival. And I'm here to say to anyone who's watching this, that the performing arts is not a static art. It's an ever growing, organically evolving art. So there is a contemporary artistic reservoir and simultaneously there's a traditional reservoir. And you're speaking about global artists. I think we have got to change our language and use global and not international, because we still are living with an age disparity where an older generation than us thinks of internationalism solely about the European community. Global interest is a global understanding. We're one planet. We're very complicated in terms of our muscle multiplicity of our identities. And so, I think we're better service by saying global, rather than international. It doesn't matter. But I want to be able to ask what the charge was just saying, you know, when I talk about being someone who's responsible for servicing my communities. One of the important communities that are in my lexicon of community definition of communities plural is the artistic communities of the five boroughs of New York City. And we happen to be one of the great cities that has been responsive to the art form of dance. She took up the Brooklyn Academy Music Band to introduce a German artist who fashioned in the 20th century, a new art form in the realm of the genre of dance. She created a hybrid in German tons theater in English dance theater, but in 1984. BAM presented and introduced to New York City, the work of peanut boush tons theater of up or tall Germany. One had ever in this country, seen the live work of this artist, and she created crafted a hybrid art form of great validity that was being toured throughout the European community. And what the presentation of peanut boush at BAM have created was a extraordinary major change in the understanding of the possibility of an art form called dance, that the American artistic community needed to see that it was possible to do something other and be extraordinarily successful. She is a German citizen, not an American. We, an American arts presenting organization took on the responsibility of introducing her to the dance capital of the United States New York City. And what we're talking about arts in front of people. Part of those people are artists, and artists need this inspiration, and a great artists named peanut boush made it possible for them to absolutely extraordinarily consider the possibilities of their own art. Thank you Joe. That was extraordinary. Thank you so much. And now next up Olga garay English will Olga will not only focus on Latin American the Caribbean, but Olga has been an important funder in making international work possible Olga. Hello everybody. Thank you for inviting me to be here with you all today. I think that amongst the people who are presenting as well as the responders and the people who are going to be asking questions we have well over, well over 100 years of shared history. I mean, we have been in the trenches for so many many years and so it's particularly meaningful for me to be part of this conversation. But two things. One is I was born in Cuba and have been in this country since 1961. So I think that part of my allegiance to understanding of passion for creating international cultural engagement, which I think goes beyond just touring and performing arts but it really is about an engagement activity comes from a very deep seated side of me. I have been a presenter and I have collaborated with with many of the folks who are on this panel. And yet, unlike most of the folks on this panel, I have been a funder as Colleen said, and I think that I will dedicate most of my thoughts and comments to that side of the equation. We started being a presenter in Miami at Miami Dade College. We were, you know, Miami Dade College back then it was Miami Dade Community College is a very large is probably the largest community college in the country, extremely diverse, but extremely made up of working class people who are just there to get, you know, a license that will maybe increase their wages a little bit. It is not a an Ivy League school by any stretch of the imagination. However, we were able to create a whole cultural affairs department that challenged itself to present produce and exhibit the best and most compelling contemporary performing and visual arts being created in this country and abroad, with a particular emphasis on Latin and the Caribbean because of obviously the, the population of Miami. I say all of this because it really fed my work as a presenter, I was very privileged and you will hear from David White later to this evening to become engaged with the national performance that were very early in its, in its beginnings, and it completely changed the way that I thought about art. It was, you know, Miami back then is not the Miami we know now. It was still privileging what we used to call the SOB, the symphony orchestras and ballets, and not paying attention to the work that was being created by our extremely diverse communities and that ability to learn about the National Performance Network and learn about contemporary art and learn about the, the connectivity between places of origin and being able to speak to audience members who perhaps had not had the privilege of being exposed to the arts before. Really, just was such a learning curve for me as I became a funder first at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, where I was the founding director of the performing arts program, and later here in Los Angeles as the executive director of the city of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. And the reason that I want to emphasize my role as the funder is because the difference from the philanthropic, the philanthropic universe that used to be in place when I was at Miami with funding and encouraging international or global cultural exchange has diminished so much that I really just want to call that out. When I was at Miami Dade, we got funding support from the Rockefeller Foundation, from the Ford Foundation, from the Pew Charitable Trust, from the Wallace Fund. All of these national organizations that provided vital philanthropic support, they can just fund us to do national work. They funded us to do work. They funded us to do work that made sense in our communities. And in the case of Miami, as in the case of New York where I later moved and in the case of Los Angeles where I am now, internationalism and global perspectives are so baked into our DNA that I think that I would like to use my time here talking to you to set out a plea for both the public and the private sector in terms of philanthropy to rethink why we're not encouraging that type of work anymore. Now that we have a new administration that is ready to take take back our seat at a global table at a global conversation and everything from nuclear armaments to, you know, reduction of the pandemic. The arts need to have that same kind of forum and relevancy, because we are really part of what's going to make not only our own country, the United States of America, but the world as a whole, a better place, a more just place, a more equitable place. And the arts have a major, major role to play in that. So thank you so much for inviting me tonight and I look forward to our discussion. Thank you Olga and I underscore what you have just said, so important. Next we have with us, Philip Arnaud. Philip will be speaking about his work in Eastern Europe. Am I there? Yes. Yes. I mean, this is not an easy task. Particularly for me because about eight years ago I had open heart surgery, and in a incredible hallucination. As I was dying and people were just walking away from me I pulled out my breathing tube. I'm talking to you all with one vocal cord that doesn't like the late day time, but let me try this. The value proposition. It's always been about the work. What I founded the theater project in 1971, I had a black box theater, flexible, small 150 folks, but I also had a resident company that first year. The ultra bond a company. Americans, for sure. Later on, went to make all sorts of different history. But with me, they started right after they had spent a year with the Belgian Flemish director tone Berlin and tone was spoken in the 60s. In the same set in the 70s in the same breath as Grotowski, and he hammered together this really extraordinary company. It was, I started the theater as a free theater. Early on I presented along with the resident companies downtown theater from New York. A large artist audience when Joe talked about that artistic community. That's where I heard about every new turn bam was taking not from anything they sent me but from artists in New York, who said, look, what's coming. Anyhow, so that's where it all began in 1971. In 73. I got to see the work after reading a lot about it. The work of grotowski in Philadelphia my friend Richard men and brought grotowski there he'd left the theater but he was still performing up. I saw it twice in Philadelphia. Once when Richard and I, Richard gave me the whole house and we invited about 50 artists and presenters. One man drove from North Dakota to come see this one performance of apocalypse. Before the grotowski analogy. The Iowa theater lab that was making a lot of noise in this country and abroad left Iowa city and became my second resident company. Rick Sank's company. What I said was in residence teaching creating when I got a call from Tony Abison, who was then the director of a lab company in Washington, Washington theater lab saying he was traveling secretly in the country with grotowski, trying to find a partner for a project called the pillar of flame. And they were finishing up and they wanted to come see me. I might be the partner. And sure enough grotowski came unknown to anybody and spent three days of meetings. I agreed to move forward with this incredible project that I could take the rest of the night talking about. But grotowski also saw the lab. Labs production of dancer without arms. There's a three hour meeting in my office with grotowski that again, I'd love to share with you, but we don't have the time. It's 76 grotowski invited me to Poland and this was my first visit. I was in Europe. I'm sorry, it was 75. So I'm now looking at 46 years ago. And with theater lab had a strong connection then with the International Theater Institute and that's when I hooked up with the ITI and Martha Quanye, who really became my mentor for the rest of my her life. And I traveled a lot. I was looking at this work that was stunning to me that was increasing my understanding of what theater could be. And I found it traveling about a 100 days a year while I was still running the theater project. I left the theater project and started CITD. It was about 200 days a year. Not just in Eastern Europe, but all over. And I kept going back looking at new work to bring to that quirky audience. So it all was rooted in the work and rooted in those unbelievable relationships that I was so honored to have with the people that made that work. The one story. I'm trying to do this real quickly November, 2018. I was probably then making my hundred visit to Hungary. And a lot was happening in this country. We were all looking at this tectonic change of artists leadership. I've got the one minute warning and I'm going to land it. So I was so excited about that. But deeply concerned about where I'd seen Hungary go. And the right wing or bond government was taking over. He was and the week that I was there, along with Howard shallow it's later. And Margaret Lawrence, the Central European University was kicked out. And it was there where the notion of trying to seed relationships that could last 20 years, 30 years. I just come from lunch in four days with four people who I had more than 100 years of history with. So we've now I'm staring 80 down the next month. And I'm still working and launching two projects one in Hungary, and one in Poland, four years, linking new leadership in this country, and abroad. And I'm glad to be sitting here talking to you all. Thank you Phillip and we're honored that you're sitting here talking with us. Next, it's my pleasure to introduce Rachel Cooper will talk to us about Asia big topic Rachel. I can't possibly talk about all Asia, but we are in this together we live together we are live together, whether we're in the room or we're in the zoom. And how we engage not only to hear but to really listen is really I think the work that we are all engaged in today two thirds of the global population live in Asia. So China and India of course counting for the largest proportion and the world's fourth most populous nation being Indonesia. By the turn of the next century. 90% of the people on this planet are expected to live outside Europe and North America. Even say the arts are transformative and create empathy and discovery and expansiveness, but what do we really mean and how does that really connect us in ways that that our governments really can't and that I think is so important. The world has changed during this global pandemic and it underscores our interdependence and I think, as Joe said earlier about being global. It's also about being a part of a larger whole. So I would say it is not a local versus international choice that is sometimes grown out to us in the arts. It's a false equivalency to say that it's not an either or it's how are we together in this world, both global and local at the same time. America first, a former president said, not seeing that the air the water the planet are an interdependent relationship, and that it is our shared humanity that we've got to bring together. Asia has been part of the American performing arts and just the fabric of our, our community for at least 150 years, whether in the formal or informal sector. The Cantonese opera, for example, came 150 years ago during the time of the transcontinental railroad, or the vibrant Filipino jazz musicians in New Orleans, also in the 19th century, or the incredible Arab musicians that were in New York in the 1930s. There are so many other artists that we could talk about many of whom have been presented by many of you, whether that's contemporary popular traditional some hybrid mix. I want to share three experiences from my time at the Asian society, where I have been really honored to work with some incredible artists, and to be a cog in the ecology, I don't know if you have cogs and ecologies that's definitely mixed metaphor. I'm thinking about Iran. So Shahram Naziri and the path of roomy. So, I'm picking specifically some countries where I think I'm generalizing but many Americans do not understand and don't think art first when they think about Iran. Shahram Naziri was a profoundly powerful musician and brought the path of roomy. And, and again, as many of us would say, this was part of a 20 year relationship because I believe that we in the arts are really about process and relationship and not just interaction. I know there's a market out there. But really, so many of us have long term relationships and those interactions are really important. The second one I want to talk about with Pakistan's of the Parveen of the Parveen is an incredible soupy superstar in South Asia. After the Times Square bombing attempt, the ambassador Hassan Hussein decided that the best way to try to reach Americans and change their view of Pakistan wasn't a diatribe at the UN, but to bring their greatest artists. And he brought up the Parveen and she performed at Union Square where we got 5000 people. But one of the moments that was really touching was when a audience member wrote to me about three months after this performance, and said, I just heard about a flood in Pakistan. And I've contributed. And I wanted you to know the reason I contributed was because I saw that concert. And Pakistan was no longer the place where there were bombings. Pakistan was the home of this incredible artist and therefore I had felt he had a connection. And finally, I wanted to say something about Myanmar, Burma, particularly right now. The Society has had a connection with artists from Burma. And I'm using the word Burma right now as a decision. Starting in 1976 and they brought very traditional artists and they toured them all over the US and had all the contextual materials and in fact that's where I first saw them when I was a student at UCLA in the World Arts and Arts program. But then in 2003, I wanted to bring a group because I had really fallen in love with this art form and the people and had had started a relationship. So, I tried to bring a group, it took several attempts because that was the time of a military regime. And, and even the Minister of Culture said, I'm not sure we believe in cultural exchange. But I was encouraged to keep going and keep trying and we brought this extraordinary group. That was in 2003 2015. We brought another group as a play by that time the country had opened up. It was a whole different feeling there was a sense of not only the traditional culture but the pop culture there was heavy metal there was hip hop. And now, at this moment, we're in a very different and very sad and upsetting time. And, of course, because as I said, we're all about relationships, those of us working in this area, we have relationships, these are the lifetime relationships. And, and therefore, the artists that I'm hearing from our hip hop artists, because of course, this is not a one way street we're talking about art to go back and forth and part of a larger ecology, in which American is so often seen there. And then it's the hip hop artists who are creating the work about this horrific who that is taking place and the violence that's going on right now. But what I wanted to emphasize is that it's, it's the artists who have the voice, who are bringing this to a global audience. And if we're going to keep this on the radar, beyond the, you know, CNN saying, well that was last week. I think it's going to be from artists. And I think it's that that passion. And, and so I feel very honored to be a part of this group and to be able to share just a little bit and I put some links in to the, that will be shared on how around later. But thank you very much. Thank you so much Rachel, and you're right. There's so much to talk about. Thank you for bringing that those things to light and there's much more to come to light. Now it is time for our responders. And again, we have chosen for responders who have long histories in terms of international and global presenting and we're going to begin with Claudia Norman, Claudia. Hola, gracias a todos. Thank you Colleen and thank you everyone for, for this amazing stories. And, and as we revisit in the history of performing arts, I mean with the panelists. I would like us to, to travel to the time and travel to the future. And to remember this moment as the time when the pandemic has show us how interconnected, we are, but also the time when we saw again that migration colonization, slavery, displacement, as Barack and Christina had mentioned, was being part of a human history, but part of our common present. I want us to remember this as the time of renaissance. When we had the chance to establish collaborations code and quote between artists communities, independent producers, cultural organizations foundations as Philip work has shown us. And when instead of negotiations. When we wanted to establish conversations and non negotiations when we were talking about reciprocity locally and globally like Rachel and Olga have mentioned. In the future generations to look at this day today as the day when a group of global citizens as Joe has mentioned, we're in the middle of a cultural quest and working very hard to finding better practices to keep connected and to keep our relationships long term relationship with the rest of the world. Thank you. Thank you, Claudia. Just gracias. And now, next with us will be john Kalaki, the honorable representative from the great state of Vermont. Hello, what an honor to be here with all of you and you know, this group gathered today calling is my cool off my intentional community. We learned together for decades. I remember meeting Joe Malo in 1983 when he first went to bam I was at Trisha Brown and after that performance I would press kids in the backpack and got a URL pass and went over to Europe because there. There wasn't even email then and we just I just knocked on doors opening up. European market because we didn't know how to do it. We just helped each other. So our cost fee for most kind of gave me a list of presenters I use that, you know, and then David why are you going to hear from the National Performance Network really made it a priority for us to be a community to learn from each other to kind of argue with each other and challenge each other support each other, and also really travel together. This group we've traveled all over the world together, and as important I've seen work by artists in their communities. We also were able to be together, having dinners with artists having drinks with artists, going to bars with the art of having a good time and understanding this context. Christina said about the personal relational and contextual, because we really did that, as many of you we taught all over the world as well. And sometimes our marketing fundraising ideas, you really translate very well, and we learned more from the artists in Eastern Europe and other places that we had the opportunity to teach together so I think that's really something that wasn't very much. We kind of built it we made mistakes together we grew it. It became professionalized. And now that it's collapsed again in this implosion. I think it's important for us to realize that it's again about artists and our role part, wonderful composer I love. I think that said something that says this tiny coronavirus has shown us in a painful way that humanity is a single organism, and that human existence. It's possible, only relation to other living beings. So, we have to open up. We have to get the funders again over thank you for that because it really was capitalized these curatorial trips or research intensive, our own government federal government put in money, other foreign governments put in money, we have to really change this thing to welcome people. I have the security of the last four years. So I'm really hoping that in administration that there's going to be open borders, and I cannot wait for the next decade of working with all of you on these issues and I feel very blessed to be among my cool. Thank you. Thank you john. Thank you john. That's beautiful. And now it's my pleasure to introduce Linda Brumbach Linda. Thank you so much. And it's so amazing to be here with all of you and, and john Colacchi to speak after john who actually taught me to ask artists had a dream, and I learned so much from him over the years. I just want to acknowledge and I'm looking down on notes as everyone was speaking I took some notes and I'm just so inspired and continue to be inspired by this group. And there are some some women in the field that that are my heroes who actually think so much about the connective tissue of the artist and as we bring international artists and the global community to America, and outward into other countries to support American artists. Women like Lisa Booth and Deirdre Valentin and Rosenthal and Kathy Zimmerman who have spent their lives, really thinking about how these artists move from region to region, institution to institution and and care for them and I'm not really just you know talking about the travel and the visas and the freight and the obvious methods that it takes to support international work but really unpacking and understanding and researching and deepening the understanding of different methodologies and ways of the way in our structures in America when we invite and bring artists to our country and want to support them to come to America and really think about what America is and the different regions and perspectives that we have when we are inviting artists from abroad to come here. It's really impossible for me not to think about what Baraka said. I think about artists as global artists all artists as international artists and thinking about international presenting on our care of how we bring artists and invite them to our country as well as how we support artists. We want to bring in artists who desire and really want to have an opportunity to share their voice and their craft abroad. So that's a constant circle and thought for me. There are so many topics that came up with our speakers and I just want to want to focus on a few of them Baraka you mentioned also you know how things were and I often think about the idea of flexibility and every opportunity we have to work with an artist from the first time they come to America and how we structure things in America are very different from other countries and our openness and heart and mind to be flexible. And to work with them within their structures and this is goes back to you know memory is a bringing Virginia Rodriguez from Bahia Brazil here for the first time and Zabuki move from Russia at a time when things were changing in their country there were very vulnerable issues to share their voices here in America and that care and understanding of how they needed to work here was very important for those communities so I want to acknowledge that and thank you Baraka for bringing that up. Christina you, you spoke so beautifully and I know the work you do is so deep in the community of the communities that you work in and one of the points that really resonated with me was the depth. And how we reach and understand the communities and not just coming in and out and you do that so well and I just want to amplify that whenever we have a way to support that structure. And it is extremely valuable I had the opportunity this summer to go to the Greg festival in Barcelona and look at some work there and there were many presenters there but what was interesting and incredible about the experience was that we were given the opportunity to visit artists working in their own spaces in different mediums outside of the city, and really have time to learn about their craft, learn about their work, eat with them have time with them and have a deeper understanding so I just want to acknowledge that and thank you Christina. Joe. I think my time might be up. Go ahead, go ahead with that thought. I had something to say about everyone's called and please go right go right ahead. I'm going to end up I you know I'll stop with Joe but I just you know Joe you were talking about the care. The care and the responsibility and one thing I just want to mention when this topic came up is, is, you know, there was also a lot of work that that was happening with the State Department and the cultural diplomacy and, and, you know I just want to bring up, you know the program. This motion USA and the impact that it have for American artists to really educate on a mass level and, and you know, as we have this conversation as we think about this conversation together going forward. There is so much to learn from the intrinsic value and change that those programs had on an impactful level for American artists and from artists abroad and I just hope that we can really look and and start this conversation with some of the impact that Olga had on and Rachel, and, and this is just a beginning because it's just very important work for the healing of America and as we are reckoning with our own divide I think there's nothing more essential than investing in that place of innovation. Thank you. Thank you Linda. That was beautiful. Thank you so much. It's now time for David white to wrap up the responders. David. David unmute yourself please. Okay, rarely do people ask me to unmute myself but here I am. I just wanted to speak a little bit to I've learned so much and have loved so deeply people, many of the people in this room, and, and hope to continue to do so in the future. But I also wanted to talk a little bit at least from my point of view which had to do with a lot of the build up of international work came from individual artists who wanted to explore elements of their heritages that were the international or global flip, flip of the coin from their own heritages immigration expenses, you know, experiences, etc. And that was something that began back in the mid 80s. And during the time of identity politics, I mean that we're seeing echoes if not huge, you know, Tiffany of them now and so being able to make sure that people had money immediately that they could essentially ATM the suitcase fund and pursue some of this curiosity some of this intrinsic interest some of this just trying to get to know who they were and blend it back into the work that they were doing. One of the things that has become clear over time and I have to thank your everybody at the Rockefeller Foundation, Suzanne Sato and Alberta Arthurs and Thomas Ibarra Fausto and oh well, there were others Steve Levine for putting money into a pot for which they would never know the outcomes this was similar to the NPN no one knew what the outcome would be of funding these various artists getting into place and get that being supported. And so in terms of international work, artists began to really want to I mean we supported also Ron Brown going to the Ivory Coast we supported Reggie Wilson going to Zimbabwe working in the school there at Harari, and, and so many so many more kinds of things and one of the things we realized was that we needed to keep supporting things so that that the work would have a lasting component I often said that we go when we're not in the kind of work we do we we create an event we present an event okay. But then there's if we bring something back again and do it deeper there becomes this kind of familiarity that's something that was missing with the event and then, finally, bring back again and then you have this kind of solid relationship in the community and I'll just say that that has happened in the last five years we presented Mel Paso from Cuba four times. We presented the patent Libra the rogue ice skaters from Quebec. You know three out of four years and what the next one was just canceled because of coven. But all of this was a sign of the kind of work that we wanted to do to make sure that artists were remembered that they could dig in, and that they could find communities, both at home but certainly away from home. And in which they would also identify with other working artists. So I just wanted to bring those two things up and then finally just to say that. Besides those long term structures the idea of creating long term structures of support I mean in a way I think I often saw myself as a feral systems designer I didn't know what I was doing. But it seemed to have a systemic part to it. And so like with the NPN and seeing how these kind of individual activities morphed into, as John Clacky alluded to, you know, a community of of of not necessarily always like minded but sort of likely like the most individual and then that began when the suitcase fund began shortly thereafter even though it wasn't meant to be modeled on that. It turned out to be a way of building that idea of community into this larger framework of inviting work of getting to build relationships with international producers, etc. Thank you. David, you know, for the panelists you've heard from the responders you've heard from there is such a deep conversation that thank you howl around an IPC that we're going to need to explore this further, because there's such richness from those lessons we've learned and lessons we are still yet to learn. I want to ask for our first question to come from Mark Murphy, and Mark we know of your international work both on the boards and red cat. Could you ask your first question of the panelists please, and of our responders. And maybe have all of us on the screen. Thank you, Pauline. I'm inspired by this panel and I'm having flashbacks to memories of times when working with so many of you to invent a way of working internationally in the US there was no one who taught it to us, and all of you taught it to me and invented ways to make it work. That leads to how that quasi infrastructure gets passed on. Most of the memorable moments and the worst war stories from the international presenting were presenters functioning as managers and agents dividing up the responsibilities to make a tour happen, because it was not a profitable venture for management, especially with artists from Latin America and from Asia, which were even more complicated in terms of the logistics. Is there. Is there expertise there to reemerge, especially post COVID and post Trump. And what can we do to make that that possible, because there are many agents I know of and managers who are risk averse at this moment, especially when it comes to international work, and especially non European work. Linda, do you want to start with that. Yes, I mean I think that we have to build variables and together, whether you know artists are working with managers agents creative producers to plan I think you know we're doing that right now mark with American artists traveling abroad of really in this time building in when we've gone through this after 911 where so many tours were planned and then canceled because artists couldn't get their visas we had a situation with some artists coming in from Pakistan. I think transparency at this moment is essential and collaboration in terms of variables and we need to make sure we're protecting the artists but not only the lead artists. The, the infrastructure of people that support and hold the art that are part of that company are need to be thought of in terms of that planning and risk factors so I think we do need to do it together. And my and it's happening right now in many different countries. New rules and regulations are coming through and I think as we think about presenting. We're thinking about it as engagements of the phases it takes and the year long planning to actually commit to presenting international work, and what that means if something goes wrong. Yeah, I think when I was talking about reciprocity. It's it's it's basically when you are you are committed to present international work. You have to be committed to have to establish long term relationships. And also, you have to, like Baraka says you have to research you have to study. And then you enter into a room into a conversation, not a negotiation, you enter into a conversation, and you build, and you listen, and you learn what are the needs, or their needs at the artist coming to the US. And what are you needs to present that artist, and that is like, do you really need translation. Do you need really need can can can can something coming from Latin America can be spoken in Spanish, and Spanish is almost a universal language in the US or in some areas in the US. So really need translation is really that something that is going to not give you the chance to present that work. So I think it has to do with going beyond just the surface, you know, and requires like a full commitment. I think you froze up a little on us Claudia. Yeah, so and and when when you talk. When you talk about the roles that we play. I think this is the time when I talk about Renaissance is is the time to rethink our roles. And we all have to be involved at the same level. So we all have to have a certain participation in, in, in translating in, in doing, as I call myself cultural translator is not about terminology. It's about what really needs to be understand and and see that as a part of the community, not the other, but is part of your community and how you welcome in that community so those cultural nuances are going to give you the chance to successfully reach out to your local communities. But also is going, you're going to give the artist to really have and have and have your final evaluation and it's not about quantity, but about quality of that cultural experience. So, thank you, Claudia. Well said. I'm going to ask Mark Russell, who just presented us with under the radar virtually to ask the next question mark. And you can unmute and un-visualize yourself I guess or re-visualize yourself. You have the question on the chat. Abigail, can you read the question? Sure, yes, there's two questions in the chat. Mark says such a necessary and powerful conversation. Thank you to everyone on the panel and for those responding I am interested in what each of the panelists feels about the future. Where do we go now? What does a US fresh cultural policy look like? For instance, would you want a cabinet level cultures are? And we have a total of four minutes. So Joe, go for it. Listen, in an ideal world, I believe it would be possible with a democratic president and that it would be possible to engage them in a conversation about having a minister of culture, a secretary of culture in a cabinet position. I think the conversation could be had. Okay, that's the positive side. All right. The other side of this is you have to recognize that we, you know, the United States of America are 50 United States and agreed to be collectively under that rubric. Each state is through states rights versus federal. And, you know, we as cultural producers presenters. We are not recognized within many cities, not even the state of having agency responsibility. So I actually think it's important that this happens sometime in the future. There's a lot of work to be able to make that happen. That's all. All right. Thank you, Joe. And I think it was very well said. We believe it or not at or at the end of the session and this session could have gone on for another hour or more. It's my distinct honor to thank our panelists, our responders, those of you who've answered questions, those of you who are continuing to do the work, those of you who are just beginning to do the work. This is the beginning of a conversation that we will have again and again. I want to thank the international presenting comments. I want to thank the work done by Jamie Abigail and Fia with howl around. David Dower I want to thank you for jump starting us in this conversation. So important. Christy Edmonds. I always hear your voice in my head so shout out to you, and to everyone. Again, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for being.