 Welcome to the 2017 DanceUSA Conference. Please welcome to the stage Bob Middleton, Director and Owner of the Arts Insurance Program. Good morning. What a great event last night. Just phenomenal. The recipients were just fantastic. I have a new personal hero in Billy Mahoney. 89. 89 years old and moving like that on stage. I can't move like that. I don't think I ever have been able to move like that, but I mean that was just fantastic. This is my ninth DanceUSA convention that I've been able to attend and the second year of the Arts Insurance Program being the Platinum sponsor. The primary reason is due to the constant state of awe in the commitment, the enthusiasm and the dedication of the members of DanceUSA, Amy and her staff, the trustees and the funders that attend and are involved in this organization. Faced with such inspiration, I believe sponsorship is the least thing we can do. I also encourage anyone who can, during these turbulent political times, to invest locally, regionally and nationally in the arts in all levels. Please continue your continued dedication to this forum and thank you all. Please welcome Amy Fitterer, Executive Director of DanceUSA. Good morning. Good morning. So how are you all feeling? All right, good, good. So it is just amazing to be in this gorgeous concert hall and so the very first thing I want to do is thank the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts and the Kansas City Symphony, who is going to be performing here later tonight, as you can see. So thank you. I would also like to start by acknowledging the Kansas City Host Committee. I mentioned them last night, but they're a wonderful group of people to help us pull off this conference and you're going to continue to see their special touch throughout the next several days. If you got some of that pulled pork last night or pretzels and cheese or an ice cream bar, that's all Kansas City style. So thank you so much to the Kansas City Host Committee. As you know, it takes so many organizations and individuals to come together to make these conferences possible. So I would like to begin by acknowledging our national foundations, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Schubert Foundation, and the Knight Foundation. Thank you. In addition, working with the host committee, numerous partners have to come in at the local level. So as you can see here, we've had to work and bring in local funders, which have been just wonderful in helping to make this event possible. We also are very happy to be working with Kansas City Ballet, specifically as a host partner. Many of you already had an opportunity to be in their space the other day. So we'll be continuing to take over their entire building over the next couple of days. So thank you to the Kansas City Ballet. But as you can see, we don't stay in a conference hotel for this conference. We move around. And this is something we've done now for about six years. And so you're going to get to be in a lot of these different host venues, some of them like Union Station last night. And this afternoon, you're going to be in the World War I Museum, which is next to the Western Hotel. So getting an opportunity for you to experience the different arts venues in different places in Kansas City that makes it special. We also, as you saw, have some wonderful corporate sponsors with us. And these are individuals and businesses that work closely with our membership. So you have heard from Bob from the Arts Insurance Program and Dewitt Stern, which is also a wonderful insurance group that supports many of you. We also have with us the Silver Sponsors, Freed of London, Harlequin, and Capacity Interactive. Thank you so much for your support and for being here. And then, of course, numerous Bronze Sponsors. And I'd like to give a shout-out to Runaway Productions. They're doing the live streaming right now. They're also our photography crew for the next several days. And they've been working with us for several years now. So if you see them, give them a hug, be really friendly. They're wonderful people and they're big fans of dance. Thank you. And as you continue to go through the conference, you'll be in shuttles, you'll be eating different types of food. These are all things that come together as welcome sponsors. So let's have a round of applause for our welcome sponsors. So this year's conference, I wanted to give you a little bit of information about it by the numbers. We have just about 500 attendees all together, which is great. It's a wonderful turnout here in Kansas City, Missouri. We have 19 breakout sessions. So those will be starting this afternoon, running all day tomorrow, all day Friday, and then on Saturday morning. We also have 12-day long member meetings. So these are our councils and our affinity groups. We'll start this afternoon and run through the end of the conference. As you've been experiencing, we're working with nine host venues and some of you have already had a chance to see these pop-up performances that are taking place, featuring local area dance artists. So we have six pop-ups and then tonight there will be one main stage performance and that will be in the theater next to us this evening. So I hope that you do come back for that. So you've heard me over the past few years talking about dance HOSA's core values and what that means. And this is something that is very much a commitment of this organization and we're continuing to learn and understand what does it mean to have equity inclusion embedded throughout our organization and what does it mean for dance organizations to embrace these values? How does it impact what we're putting on our stages, who is working behind the scenes, even the funders and organizations that we work with? So we've begun a strategic planning process and just earlier this week 16 dance HOSA trustees came together for a two-day retreat on strategic planning and we're working with Ebony Noelle Golden of BDAC Arts who many of you may know, she's a cultural strategist based in New York and also a dance artist and we've also engaged Kim Andra Karim, formerly the CFO of San Francisco Ballet and the two of them are going to be working with us to help us figure out how dance HOSA can push ourselves even further to operationalize putting equity inclusion and justice into everything that this organization does. This is something that we want to see change the way the organization operates for the rest of time and it's about making sure that we understand what barriers we create and try to unbreak down those barriers because we are meant to serve dance in America. We really push ourselves to continue to do that better. So we're really in the beginning of this planning process we've really at this point just started to turn things up get uncomfortable which is really good but the board is very committed and so is the staff so I look forward to continuing to keep you updated on this process and if we're lucky we will have a plan completed by this fall so stay tuned You may have also seen earlier this year we sent out an announcement that Dance Heritage Coalition which is a national 501C3 is going to integrate into DanceUSA so actually I'd just like to begin by asking for a round of applause for the board members and members of Dance Heritage Coalition who are here at the conference for the very first time these are experts in archiving these are library science professionals whose focus is in the performing arts this organization has some of the most leading performing arts collections in their membership and DanceUSA greatly values the importance of preserving the story of American dance and we wanted to make sure that the archivist still had a network a way that they could be meeting and connecting and that is something as you know that DanceUSA can do we can convene people, we can network people and we wanted to make sure the archivist could continue to come together share information which is in the performing arts and dance archiving and then even further as we continue down this path of the integration understand how we can take these skills and resources and knowledge that these archivists have and share them with the membership so we're taking our time and doing a very thoughtful integration it's been going very smoothly so far but I'm personally very excited and I know that as I'm talking with some of the dance organizations who are just yes we've been trying to archive, we've been needing to do this this is really great so you can actually meet with some of the archivists at Smart Bar during our conference and they are going to be leading a couple of breakout sessions so this will continue to be something that you'll see showing up on our website and in our programming over the coming years so advocacy it is an interesting time some of you may know that before I became the executive director of government affairs for Dance USA and Opera America and actually what got me into arts administration and out of being a ballet dancer and a piano teacher was advocacy and public policy and you know every year we've had our challenges there's always members of congress that want to eliminate the endowment it continues to be in many ways a philosophical argument if this is what government is supposed to support but it is challenging that we now have an administration that is being so vocal in wanting to see the elimination of our cultural agencies the interesting place that we're also in though and I know that you're all how could we not be hearing everything that's going on is that though the administration is coming out with statements congress is not just doing what the administration wants and so that still means that advocates are all the more important because members of congress are really trying to figure out what to do their responsibility has risen up because now they understand that the pressure is on them to make decisions so we need you contacting your legislators we need you making those phone calls those letters when we send out action alerts responding to those action alerts they count those they pay attention to those and they need to know your personal stories we have a government affairs director on our staff brandon gride who is a registered lobbyist and he is frequently up on the hill in coalition and what they're doing right now is meeting with the republican staffers in the interior appropriations in the house to make sure that those members of congress are aware of the power of the arts in that district something else that people forget sometimes about the endowment is that let's face it not everybody gets a grant and when you do get a grant it might be $10,000 or less and so sometimes I've had people say to me well I don't know what the impact is on the NEA in my life and I'm here to tell you that it's not about you it is not about whether you got that grant 40% of the national endowments budget goes to the state arts agencies in the six regionals the state arts agencies can give out general operating support they can fund individual artists they get matching grants from their general aid funds because they're getting federal money if this federal money goes away we lose that decentralized process which is how the NEA truly gets into the rural communities and cities of America so if you've ever been touched by a state arts agency if you've ever engaged on their resources, looked through their jobs or maybe gotten funding from them then that helps you understand the pervasive and sometimes quiet impact that the endowment is having across this country the last thing I do want to say is just to point out these numbers that are up here again that interesting place that we're in so the FY17 budget, the one we're in right now as you know Trump did come out with a blueprint that had called for it to be eliminated and Congress did not pay attention to that and so in the end they actually have given the endowment for this year a $2 million increase okay can't get complacent though but we do need to like take that into account so now we're busy working on the FY18 budget and Trump's office has come out with proposals for that and it does include $29 million to close the NEA it also includes similar kinds of proposals for the National Endowment for the Humanities and for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting so this is what we're focused on now is the federal budget that would begin this fall and run into next year so we need you to pay attention to the advocacy that is going on responding to Action Alerts invite members of Congress to your events they need to come their staffers need to come the staffers have a lot more power than you may realize so moving on from the advocacy some fun reminders is the conference mobile app please please please keep using it to engage with people and as you start going through the breakout sessions over the next several days you'll see people are posting quotes and debating and photos of what's going on in those breakout sessions so even if you're not in that session you can actually get a sense of what's going on so I do encourage you to do that and the staff do update that so that can also be the best way to get the most accurate information registration table is at every venue where we have programming the staff is there to help you so please go to the registration to ask your questions and seek support and then the staff they wear badges that have blue ribbons so that's how you can find them so now it is my pleasure to introduce the chairman Jane Chu of the National Endowment for the Arts she is actually from the Midwest she was born in Oklahoma to Chinese immigrants which is a very important part of her personal story she has degrees in music and piano pedagogy and actually a PhD in philanthropic studies from Indiana University the chairman while she's been at the NEA one of her major focuses has been on a program called Creativity Connects where she's been looking at taking the arts and finding how it connects with non-art sectors this has been a very successful program and she's been doing a lot of work with the military which is actually really helping I think with some of our advocacy work in addition chairman Jane Chu has been traveling around this country non-stop since she's been in this job she goes to some of the most rural and unexpected places and just meets and talks with the working artists in America I truly believe that she's really gained an understanding of what the arts are in this country and even though I know that she's not always in DC it makes her have wonderful insight into what is going on and then lastly the really fun part of all of this is if you don't know she was the president and CEO of this entire center when it got built she oversaw the yeah I believe it was something like 412 million dollar capital campaign so she oversaw all of that while she was the president and CEO it was my wonderful pleasure to introduce to you chairman Jane Chu of the National Endowment for the Arts thank you so much thank you thank you so much good morning I'm so honored to be able to join you today I want to thank the team at Dance USA your work to bring us all together and congratulations on your 35th anniversary we're so appreciative of the way that you have you serve the field of dance educators and advocates and the National Endowment for the Arts is so proud to have worked with you together for over the past 35 years to help America have opportunities to engage with your work in so many ways I also want to acknowledge and congratulate Doug Sontag I'm busy here today y'all good there's that there's that voice and three of our wonderful staff as well but I want to congratulate Doug for receiving the Dance USA Trustees Award yesterday evening so Doug retired from the National Endowment for the Arts a few months ago back in March where he led our dance division he started at the NEA in 1986 when Martha Graham and Robert Joffrey were members of the NEA's National Council on the Arts and it was the year before Axis Dance Company was founded it was when the Mark Morris Dance Company was six years old when Misty Copeland was four years old and Doug's leadership and vision has helped to shape the world of dance in America we're so gratified to be able to see his contributions recognized by the field of dance Doug congratulations we miss seeing you around the office the conference is kind of a homecoming for me as Amy mentioned since I was here at the Kaufman Center for the performing arts joining the National Endowment for the Arts and was particularly here during construction so I had hard hat hair for five years but during my time here I would occasionally think what's that one single production that we could bring to the Kaufman Center that everybody would love after all it would be so much more efficient to be able to identify that single work and just present it over and over again but of course there isn't one and thank goodness there is not a production that I might enjoy personally might not be the same production you would enjoy and that's the great thing about the arts not everybody participates in the arts in the same way but there is something for everybody and that is certainly true for dance from ballet to hip-hop to jazz and modern and baritannatium and step dancing and flamenco and rain dance and we are seeing across the nation that dance forms are intersecting with one another and they are creating even hybrids that highlight the fields innovation and creativity and I know from many of you that one of the approaches that you focus on is finding ways to allow individuals to discover their interests feel connected to dance and understand that dance belongs to them so it's not just a matter of bringing people in the door to see a performance it's about creating that experience that's relevant to their lives and providing opportunities for people to become moved and inspired or even transformed and this is the type of approach that the national endowment for the arts takes to be able to broaden and deepen participation and to support those conditions where dance can be created and performed more optimally and since 1966 the national endowment for the arts has awarded over $270 million through our dance program and in 1967 the NEA provided funding for the Association of American Dance Companies that was the predecessor to DanceUSA and these NEA grants have helped launch careers of choreographers such as Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham and Jose Limon Mark Morris, Merce Cunningham and Taylor and our grants continue to support the next generation of choreographers across the country they've helped high quality professional dance companies expand beyond major cities in the NEA's early years it launched the dance touring program which lasted a total of 400 weeks and by 1974 94 dance companies had reached audiences in 48 states and two US jurisdictions and it sent out the message that all Americans no matter where they live can have access to dance and it is important and we've seen the ways that Americans participate in the arts and they're expanding so we used to look mostly at participation in the traditional art forms but now we're seeing participation in a wider range of art forms and dance is one of the most diverse forms there's been an increase in making dance lessons in 2012 about 17% of all American adults took dance lessons or dance classes and that's compared with 12% of adults in 2008 five years earlier and of all the art forms dance learning experienced the largest jump in increased participation levels across America we know that social dancing was one of the most important ways to participate in any art form and nearly one third of all Americans participated in some form of social dancing and this affirms what we know intuitively that dance is an essential part of everyday life and an innate part of human expression I also want to thank you for your dedication to empowering dance creativity for the future and so in addition to honoring the repertoire, the known repertoire dancers and choreographers also need to keep creating whether this is related to new work or new varieties of the classics many of you are also finding ways to build into your programs this environment that supports creativity through dance at Ballet Austin choreographers can use Ballet Austin dancers to experiment with their choreographic ideas as part of a mentorship program and Hubbard Street Dance and the Nashville Ballet you are also supporting emerging choreographers to create new work we also have an opportunity to improve participation in dance from all walks of life because we want to be able to invite more people into our performance spaces and ensure that they feel comfortable and welcome in the world of dance and we've seen you leading the way when it comes to removing barriers to expand the ways people participate in dance supporting dance makers to have the time and the space and the energy needed to be able to create and to prepare young artists entering the dance field to navigate challenges that might remain in place and to nurture all dancers and choreographer voices including artists of color artists of varying abilities emerging voices because we know that this will be a benefit to all of us whether we participate as performers or patrons or as a resident of the community because we know that when the arts thrive society also thrives so consider the economic impact of dance we know that the arts and culture sector makes up 4.2% of the nation's GDP so that's nearly $730 billion so creating dance generates incomes for performers and choreographers that come for performance venues and the businesses nearby tell us that their own anecdotes that they benefit from people stopping by before or after performance but dance is as you know far more than a contributor to economics we know that the arts can serve as another vocabulary set to express ourselves beyond the use of linear everyday conversations and that makes dance so very special instead of dance serving just as an appendage to the use of words dance takes front and center to express the message with no words often with no words so what about expanding the diversity of our audiences and artistic voices to be able to provide a window into new ways of seeing and thinking and by having a variety of perspectives on stage and behind the scenes and a wider range of people from all walks of life we're seeing how dance can not only honor these differences but celebrate them and we're seeing an increase in how the arts, including dance connects with subjects from other non-arts areas to take that same creativity and help others think out of the box and to forge those innovative approaches to solve persistent challenges in new ways even when those challenges might initially appear to be related to the arts so we can look at companies like the Kun Yang Lin dancers in Philadelphia and their work with immigrant communities where dancers meet with immigrant families near the performance space on South Ninth Street in Philadelphia and they learn and share the stories about coming to the United States and discussing what it means to be American and then these same narratives shape the final dance production about immigration and assimilation and what about the Milwaukee ballet companies new work to deal with the subject of male depression and what about the collage dance theater in Los Angeles in their production of fish eyes to call attention to ecology and water preservation in Los Angeles and then for years Stuart Pimpsler Dance and Theater in Minneapolis has turned to the power of dance to work with stroke survivors and their caregivers and health care providers military veterans, homeless populations to strengthen the physical and the emotional processes and in working with these populations the Stuart Pimpsler Company has also created community-based performances that feature program participants themselves so what this shows us and there are many more examples that you're doing but it shows us that dance and the arts are not isolated in some ivory tower or separate from the rest of society they touch every aspect of our lives and they have a very special ability to illuminate new approaches and develop new solutions to old and tired problems the arts are going to help us advance as a society and I want to thank you here today for expanding the limits of our world through dance we are so much richer and we have a more meaningful life because of your work thank you into what's going on wow, that was just very moving and inspiring and actually touched on a lot of the things that we're wrestling with at our board level about the future directions and purpose and role of DanceUSA so let's have one more round of applause for Chairman Jane Chu so now we're going to move in to hearing from our keynote speaker Dawn Frazier Dawn is a performer and an educator who is originally from California she founded the Barbershop Stories which I think sounds really fun I haven't yet had a chance to see it but it's working with New Yorkers to tell their live stories while chopping off their hair she also is the co-founder of the Oakland based nonprofit Arts in Action and she has worked on performance and cultural advocacy programs in several countries including Brazil Jamaica and Ghana Dawn believes in the power of storytelling to help people better understand their lives and to advocate for themselves a fun fact is that she has trained in Capoeira for the past 10 years so maybe you'll get a little taste of that or you should ask her for a little taste of it when she's out here she has a BA in political science from UCLA a master's in public policy from Harvard and while she was at Harvard she was the recipient of the Barbara Jordan Award for Women's Leadership and the last really fun fact that I only learned about backstage briefly is that she really tried to be a vegetarian she thought that it would be the most important thing for her and her addiction to chicken wings prevented her from becoming a vegetarian so there you go I know you're gonna have a lot of fun with Dawn she's a warm and wonderful person and hearing about storytelling and leadership so enjoy Good morning Dance USA how are you guys doing today? Wow this is a beautiful audience wow I'm not so sure what I expected of dancers and those who are part of it but this is beautiful you're gonna hear a little bit about my story today but before I get started I wanted to get a sense of who here is in the audience because I know that Dance USA brings the people together who are performers those who are administrators those who are funders so give yourselves a round of applause if you consider yourself to be a performer beautiful beautiful how about those who are supporting the arts through administration management business development awesome and how about the funders are there any other funders out here aside from Bob awesome I see people looking around trying to figure out who the funders are very cool and round of applause if you think that Dance is inspiring, engaging and builds communities like no other form of artistic expression awesome beautiful if you're not clapping I'm not sure why you're here but that's a whole other thing but it's awesome to hear all that to see who's part of this audience because at one point in time I was all of you I was a performer I was a practitioner I was an administrator trying to find the funders as we all do right and one of the things that I learned about this process of connecting is despite our differences and disciplines or who we may be geographically in the United States or internationally was one key thing it all came down to a story but in order to get you into why storytelling is so important in leadership and advocacy I have to first take you back to when I was about 14 years old in San Jose, California I'm walking around the park and I see these people that are wearing all white they have different color belts blue, green, yellow and whites and their bodies are just glistening and I am enamored they're doing these kicks and these cartwheels and these stunts I mean their legs are just going in an ebb and a flow like barely barely missing each other and I don't know what it is and so I walk up to one of the participants and I say excuse me is this a dance? Is this a martial art? and they said yes it's both I was looking for the first time at Capoeira from Brazil I had never seen it but it was enamoring to me I didn't know how this thing existed I had never seen it before but I knew that from this day forward I needed to become a Capoeirista and so I joined and I started learning all the dance moves and learning to play the instruments and in order to advance in Capoeira you not only have to do the movements but you have to sing the songs and not only sing the songs but play the instruments so you can imagine me singing this was not my forte definitely not my forte and playing instruments like the Atabaki and the Bidambao instruments I had never even heard of before but all of a sudden over the years I started learning a little bit more about myself as an African American and learning how Capoeira was teaching me about Portuguese it was teaching me about the African diaspora it was teaching me how to connect with people from all around the world in ways that I didn't even know in ways that I didn't even imagine so when I continued training for many many years I decided after graduating from graduate school that this is what I wanted to do I needed to find a way to continue to learn how the arts could inform my advocacy how the arts Capoeira could inform community building international development and so that's what I did I studied this for many many years my first job right out of graduate school was at an organization in Brooklyn New York City called EFE Taio a Yoruba word meaning love brings happiness and at EFE Taio this was my perfect dream job because everybody was connected to the arts in a different way we were learning about West African dance from West Africa, we were learning about hip hop dance from New York City, we were learning about Capoeira from Brazil teaching youth from the age of about 4 to 12 how they could use their bodies and use their momentum to understand about their selves to understand their legacies it was a perfect job for me, I loved it and so about 6 months into it my boss comes up to me and she says Dawn we really need some help with getting more funding as we often do and she says can you become our new development director and I said do I have to and she said yes and I was like okay well then let's get started I guess so we started going to different funding meetings I remember one of my first funding meetings in Brooklyn New York City with a major funder and then my executive director was a director of arts of the arts and advocacy and of this organization existing but there was somebody sitting next to me also from the foundation and they turned to me and they started asking me about my role and what I believed in and my stories and I didn't know what to say because I wasn't there I was just in a new position I was like don't talk to me about this I'm just getting new into this development stuff but she was asking me and so I had to say something so I started telling the story about one of our students Vujela who was an artist a West African dancer who just had this light in her and that I knew one day through this training, through knowing her history through knowing her legacy from traveling to South Africa one day I knew that she was going to be going to Harvard I just knew it and the story of Bakr one of our more rougher teenagers more rougher on the edge school could not not handle school whatsoever teachers had no control of him but when he was at Ife Tayo and he was dancing there was something in him that just kept him calm kept him at peace and as I was telling these stories I realized that it was working like something about this was actually working in terms of the way that I was communicating the way that I was telling the story and little did I know I was engaging in one of the oldest forms of communication out there that was inspiring engaging and leading to a change that I didn't even realize was happening at the time it was a story it was a story of myself it was a story of us as a community and it was a story of now the story of vision, where were we going how things were going to change but to even understand how I got to understanding the role and the power of storytelling I had to take it even further back to when I was a baby June 29th of an undisclosed year I come out of the womb myself and my twin brother Duane right away I was I was there I wanted to be first out as my mom says you know I trust her judgment she says I was just going really fast I was like really into just you know just being there but something was a little bit different about my twin brother he wasn't like responding as quickly as I was he was becoming a little slower and they weren't so sure what was going on with my twin brother so at a very young age couple months old they took us in to get a couple of tests and the doctors had an interesting conclusion they noticed that I was fine a healthy baby girl and they noticed that my twin brother Duane had down syndrome a case that happens in one in every million births my twin brother Duane and I are one in a million and so my parents were like well wow there's no guidebook of what to do when you have twins when one has special needs and one doesn't so with all their power and their ability they decided as much as possible in this lifetime we are going to treat these two as equals thank you I'm assuming that clap is for my parents not for me and so growing up I started getting really involved before I wanted to get into dance in the capoeira I wanted to become a runner and my dream was to go one day to UCLA the field in my opinion of dreams now growing up it was wonderful because on Saturdays I would go to my track and field meet run, compete, do the best I could on Sundays we would go to Duane's special Olympic meet he would run, compete, do the best that he could and it was awesome I loved our weekends I loved our connection and I loved that the two of us were the runners of the family growing up every single Saturday morning we would have our oatmeal, we would have our bananas, our protein shakes and this was the ebb and flow my mom would put cornrows in my hair pick up Duane's in a fro and we were on our way and this was beautiful until one day when we were about 14 years old and we're at a track and field meet in Morgan Hill, California right outside of San Jose and this particular meet was Duane's meet, it was a special Olympics but I was getting better and we lived in a very small town Morgan Hill only had one high school and so a lot of times when we were in the area people knew who I was and they knew that I was a runner and they knew that I was really doing really well in athletics and so there was a reporter this particular day that we were at Morgan Hill High School Live Oak High School and the reporter turns to me and he's like Dawn what are you doing here today there's no track and field meet and I told him that actually I was there for my twin brother Duane and he looked at me and he's like you have a twin brother like are you guys like both runners do you guys think alike, do you look alike do you speak alike, can you read each other's minds you know all the questions that you typically get as a twin right and I was like yeah we're both runners we both have the same mom and dad so we kind of look alike you know my twin brother he's in the special Olympics that's what's going on today and I looked over and I saw that the meet was about to start so I excused myself and I said okay excuse me we have to go and we have to go you know check out this race and so he was just kind of like nodding his head like wow I had no idea about this woman's story so I ran off and there we all were in the stands at Live Oak High School it was my older sister my older brother, my mom and my dad and Dwayne's race was the 200 yard dash so he lines up and I hear them say runners on your mark get set go and Dwayne is gone I am rising up out of my seat I am so excited I can't wait to see what's happening he's coming around the bed he is winning this race I am sharing him on like go Dwayne go go Dwayne go go go go and he is like at the 100 the 90, the 80, the 50 the 40, the 30, the 20, the 10 Dwayne is going to crush it he's going to win this race and right before he crosses the finish line he stops short and he pauses right before the line and he starts like looking back at the at the other runners behind them and I am like Dwayne just go just cross the finish line forget about the other runners which probably isn't the most appropriate thing for a special Olympics but he eventually does after not two not four but seven runners have passed him and so he comes in last and I am in the stands and I am like Dwayne and he looks up and he is like oh hey Don and I was like what happened there I have no idea what just happened I wasn't so sure if he got confused about the line or if he didn't know he had to pass it and so from this day forward I decided that that I was going to help Dwayne I was going to teach Dwayne that we are we are winners, we finish first and so that became part of my mission we were always runners but now I had a little bit more of a mission to make sure that he knew how to finish strong and so time went on we both turned 17 years old and I was ecstatic because I was going to be going to UCLA I could not believe it it was a dream come true and Dwayne for the first time we were going to be separated Dwayne was going to be going to a program called the Transition to Independent Living in Burbank, California where he would learn how to cook for himself and clean and you know pick up on ladies as you do in college and so here we were I was at my own Transition to Independent Living Dwayne was at his Transition to Independent Living and we were on our way and my freshman year there I am won the track, Field of Dreams but I'm running one day and things aren't quite feeling right something's wrong with my body there's like a tension that I'm feeling in my leg and I'm working on a sprint one day but it's really yeah I know it's crazy right it's a crazy story it's just hot outside though it's really really hot on the UCLA UCLA stadium and I can't figure out what's wrong with me I feel like I can't get enough oxygen I can't breathe, something's not quite right and so I'm panting as I'm doing these 50 yard dashes like over and over and over again but I'm not feeling right this isn't seeming like it's good all of a sudden I'm just face down on the track and I've pulled my hamstring again for the second time in my track and field career and unfortunately this was it my body wasn't going to be able to recover I was no longer going to be a division one athlete it just my dreams of going to the Olympics in Atlanta everything was just shattered and I didn't want to be at UCLA anymore it didn't make any sense that was the reason why I was there it was the entire purpose of my existence was to become a runner I mean if I had to draw a picture of what I was going to do with my life I was a skinny little black girl with like cornrows you know running at the Olympics and if I had to draw another picture of my life I would have drawn a blank so I just wanted to go home and so I started packing up the stuff in my dorm room it was appropriate because it was wrapping up the end of the year and I was prepared to never come back until about two weeks later Dwayne calls me up on the phone and I'm thinking he's just going to call and say you know just come visit come hang out but instead he says Dawn guess what I was like guess what he says I'm coming to UCLA and I said what are you talking about get this Dwayne had qualified for the national championships and the special Olympics in track and field and out of all the places in the nation where this particular meet could take place it was happening at UCLA I was like this is a miracle I mean it was like you know like one twin was down the other one was coming to save the day it was like a twin ninja move right I was like this is awesome because if I can't win gold Dwayne definitely can he knows routine he knows how to take care of business and so there we all were once again my mom, my dad my older brother, my older sister they all came from Northern California down to Southern California Dwayne and I were already there so we just walked across the street and his race was a 200 yard dash he lines up runners on your mark get set go Dwayne is gone there are thousands of people in these stands I'm yelling at the top of my lungs go Dwayne go trying to like just cheer him on he comes around the bench, he's doing okay he's not doing too bad but at the 90 he's starting to lag at the 70, the 50, the 40 unfortunately he comes in seventh and so this is going to be the end of his journey and I'm happy for him that he's participated but I'm also bummed because this really now is the end of our journey there's not going to be any more papers any more articles about the one in a million twin runners it was just the end and so I pick up my crutch I'm walking with a crutch at the time and I'm hobbling down the steps of Drake Stadium and I'm looking out to see if I can see Dwayne out in the audience and I spot him finally and he is having a good old time he's given high fives to the other runners he's hugging the volunteers he is just like so so happy and all of a sudden it hit me that Dwayne just wanted to be included he didn't have to win he didn't have to be first I mean my entire life I had focused so much on winning on being the first I was even obsessed with being born first Dwayne just just wanted to have a good time and for the first time I realized that somebody had learned the lesson of sportsmanship and it wasn't me but I started realizing that this one particular moment this one particular moment started to change everything about the way that I saw inclusion and everything that I saw about myself and so little by little I started kind of sharing this story just because I thought it was such a unique and different experience but the more that I started to tear it apart and actually like look I started realizing that my words and this particular story had power which brings me back to the present because this particular moment had many different impacts on me the first thing that it did for my own understanding was it changed the way that I saw myself I understood that I needed to be a better sport and that this particular moment changed the way that I saw myself internally aside from that I saw that I could tell the story in a different way this one particular story also affected the way that I saw my relationship with my twin brother Dwayne and for the first time I had always thought that although being twins I would need to like help him out now all of a sudden I was seeing that actually he was helping me out I always thought that it would be a one-way street but now I was starting to see that it was much more of a two-way street and I also started realizing that this one particular incident changed the way that I thought about inclusion and those who are those who have special needs and I'd never realized that this one particular moment in life could be told as a story in so many different ways and so when I started actually unpacking the way that stories are told and the way that we all tell our stories it came back to the same principle that each one of us here today we all have a story but how do we tell our stories do we have one common narrative do we have many stories the answer is yes we do when you think about a moment a moment from your life that particular moment can be told in so many different ways you could tell that one moment of change for you from your own internal angle how did this one event affect you personally what was the change in your own lifestyle or your own body what was the change in terms of your us your us meaning your community or how did this one particular moment change you in terms of your own world view and your own world perspective one event many different stories so this helped me understand that not only was I becoming better at telling my own story but this was actually helping me become a better leader because I started realizing that to be a leader there's certain things that you need to do you need to be able to take responsibility to enable others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty that is what I understood that I was doing all of a sudden by understanding how to tell my story I was understanding that there is a power in being able to take responsibility to enable others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty so I have a couple of things that I would like to share with you in terms of why tell your story well one of the main reasons why I think that it's crucial as part of the Dance USA 2017 community why we should be telling our stories one of the first reasons is because the story is one of the best and most empowering ways to communicate your values now of course you can go out there and say I believe in inclusion or I believe in diversity or I believe that we all should have access regardless of our race or religion or able-bodiedness but it's different if you share your story because then people will really truly understand why why do you care about this why are you telling me this story they'll have such much more significant take away and they'll understand your values and you'll be communicating your values in a way like no other form of communication the second reason why I think it's critical vital for this community to understand the importance of your story and because stories are authentic right it's one of the most authentic forms of communication if you're looking to connect with others inspire others they don't want to know about other people they want to know about you they want to know why should I listen to you why should I listen to you it's a way for you to connect authentically to engage to inspire and to persuade authentically but more so than any other reason stories we remember them we remember stories I can't tell you what I learned in calculus in college I don't remember any of those facts I don't remember any of those stats but I remember the stories of my teachers my professors the ones that shared memories with me the lessons that they taught me it was the life lessons that we remembered it wasn't the facts so when I go out on the road nowadays I engage in a different type of dance the dance with my words but I've realized in coaching others and working with communities across the world that there are many different kinds of leadership stories but I want to leave you with three main stories to think about when you are out there talking about why dance is important to your own selves to your community and as part of the world the first one is I want you to think about stories as a way to build relationships now I want you to clap if you think that relationship building is key, crucial to your leadership to your leadership potential when you think about what you can do in terms of building relationships we're all going to have different stories right now part of the thing that people ask me is like well how do I build a relationship if I'm just talking about my own story what story telling is that when you're telling your story there are a million other stories that are happening to the listeners that are overlapping at the same time and you have no idea what part of that story people might latch onto I've told my story about my twin brother before and people have come up to me saying oh my gosh Don thank you so much I also have a brother with special needs and I just have never thought about it from a different perspective I've had other people come up to me and say you know what Don I'm also a runner and I've just never really thought about the value of sportsmanship in this way you have no idea what somebody else's story might be but if you just allow the story to live you can build a relationship in a way that you probably will never even realize until it's out there in the world one of the second things I want you to think about when you usually tell your story is because it defines your purpose it defines what you stand for going back to the idea that we all are here for a particular purpose clap if you think that you need that part of your leadership challenge is to define the purpose of why you even exist why your organization exists wonderful it's amazing once you start to see that your story the story of you, the story of your us your story of now it kind of lets people understand why it is that you exist why do you want to advocate for inclusion what is your purpose it's truly just one of the most amazing ways to understand and to articulate what your purpose is for communities whoever that listener might be be it a funder, be it a colleague just to understand why we even exist and clap last but not least if you need stories as part of your vision in order to project where are we going in the future awesome those are clapping a lot this is wonderful but that's truly it if you think back to some of the most famous speeches of all time Martin Luther King I have a dream speech it's a story, it's a speech about vision we're here today and where we're going to in the future where we're at today in 2017 and where we need to be what is the change that we're looking for how are we trying to actually get people to to support the arts why do we need to support the arts what is our vision so when you think about your story think about why what are the main reasons that you need to tell the story the purpose story is a story about a relationship a collaboration that you might need to build or is it a story of vision perhaps it's all three I thought it was very timing very timely excuse me a couple of months ago did people hear about Jimmy Kimmel's story for those of you who haven't I was flipping through the channels and caught this caught this particular experience live but Jimmy Kimmel a couple of months ago he had a newborn son, Billy and during his monologue at the top of the show he started getting really kind of choked up because something was wrong with Billy and automatically I started connecting with him because I have a twin brother and my parents knew that something was different about him and Jimmy Kimmel comes on on the air and he starts talking about his baby little boy but right away there was complications and his baby boy Billy needed to have brain surgery and heart surgery heart surgery heart surgery thank you thank you for that clarification and so here he was like with his baby boy Billy and he shared this picture which was just so gripping at the time of his little baby boy and only a couple of days old and mind you this is in light of everything that was going on currently in congress with everything that we're talking about with healthcare and pre-existing conditions and for the first time he started understanding how important it was for him and for the nation to understand the implications if we don't have access to affordable healthcare for those with pre-existing conditions he went on to share that his little baby boys now happy healthy so currently healthy but he has a pre-existing condition he's going to need a lot of a lot of love a lot of support a lot of medical care and he was able to use his story to advocate for certain changes and certain procedures and for certain realities to exist in congress and I found it so timely that here he was sharing this story about his son sharing the story of his fear that he may not be able to live but he is living but now the story of vision that we need to be able to support this initiative in order to make sure that those who do have pre-existing conditions are supported in a lifelong manner now regardless of if you support or if you don't support you know these particular bills one thing that you can't deny is his story and that's one thing that nobody can deny of any of you one of the things you have one of the things that you must embrace is your story but as dancers I know that sometimes when you get on to a stage and you're trying something out for the first time it may not quite work you might feel a little clumsy like I was in capoeira or as I currently am in salsa still learning the steps but step by step you'll learn you'll step by step your story will get better you'll be able to manipulate it little by little and little by little you'll be able to see what's working how are we engaging with each other how are we defining what our us is how am I talking about myself and my own story and why is it important and so now when I'm out in the world and I'm speaking to audiences I listen because I know that there are so many different stories out there so many powerful amazing stories with those who are part of the institute for leadership training the DILT program will you clap if you're part of the DILT program out there awesome awesome I know there's more of you probably but it was beautiful just to hear some of the stories that were coming out from the training program that we have here amongst your own leaders and your own training initiatives and so I encourage you to start telling your stories because think about this if you don't tell your story who will if you don't tell your story who will so as we continue to take this day and to take all the energy and to take all the love that we're bringing together as a community as a Dance USA 2017 I want you to tell your stories to share your stories try them out get a little sloppy with them if they're not feeling right, it's okay it'll get better and little by little you'll see that your words the words, the dancing that you're doing with the stories that you tell they'll engage, they'll inspire and they'll persuade like in no other form of communication so I want to leave you with a little quote that I've come for that a true leader will help to create a narrative of the future that they envision if you see yourselves as leaders in this community tell your story tell that story of vision tell that story of purpose because if you don't tell your story who will thank you once again, it's been a wonderful audience I believe that they've given me about about 10 minutes for Q&A which is awesome this is such a privilege so I know that we do not have microphones being passed in the audience but the acoustics in this beautiful theater are actually really quite awesome so as I mentioned before I coach people to tell their stories traveling the world just listening and trying to make sure that the stories that we're telling are making sense so if anyone has any questions at all as it relates to leadership, storytelling capoeira, my own journey Duane anything at all you can go ahead and just shout them out and I'll take questions and answers yes, over here thank you could everyone hear the comment so the comment was from what's your name? Morciano so Morciano was mentioned that he's from Brazil and that he was thankful that I mentioned capoeira capoeira not only as a martial art but as a dance because in Brazil it is one of the most empowering ways that youth are learning about themselves about their cultures and you're from Brazil, correct? from which part? Espírito Santo I also speak Portuguese because I was playing so I was just saying that I also speak Portuguese because I started learning it through capoeira I mean imagine just speaking Portuguese for example, you never know somebody's story how would you know that there's a Brazilian standing right here in the audience, right? but yeah, and that's exactly what it is that capoeira is definitely a way that youth have been learning about themselves not only in Brazil but also here in the United States and all across the African diaspora thank you yes, over here oh really, so the question was what group do I train with because she does capoeira as well I train with Abadá do you know Ms. Trada Echinalima? yeah Batuqui, oh cool, another capoeirista if people start referring to me as Kallelu, that's my capoeira name so Kallelu, yeah it's one of those things where people don't know yes, in the back over here so the question is what do I think about leadership and telling other people stories I think that there is a great opportunity as well as a great challenge in telling other people stories part of the challenge in telling other people stories is that we don't always know the full version of their story and so as much as possible I like to be able to advocate for people to tell their own stories as it relates to those who are inspiring us or those stories of others who are inspiring us so for example if it's a person, do you have somebody in mind or something in mind that right, so part of the question was part of the dance world, sometimes you might be telling somebody else's story as opposed to your own and it's true, a lot of times when we're doing advocacy work it is the story of somebody who has learned because of dance or somebody who we've trained in the dance process but the nice thing about it is if you're able to turn it back onto yourself and to show like how this person has affected you, what you've learned from them, how you've seen them grow and how you didn't even know about perhaps their potential or their opportunity it's a yin yang that you can play with both the other person's story and your story as long as you have a good sense that you're not telling their story but your relationship to their story and why it's important that those two exist because they're not necessarily mutually exclusive so if you feel like you know somebody else's story and how you can articulate it as part of your own then I think it only helps to lift both parties equally if that makes sense, yeah right here cool so the question was about barbershop stories which is the show that I host in New York City and how people get involved with it essentially what happens is I work for myself as well as a whole bunch of different organizations so I often put out just pitches to the world so if people are in New York City or I also have a hotline where people can call and this is now I recently received funding from Brooklyn Arts Council to turn the stories that we've been sharing in the barbershop into a podcast so now I'm actually starting to expand the opportunities for people to share their stories so if people are interested definitely check out barbershopstories.com or you can also go to my website donjaffrazer.com which I believe is on the screen and pitch because I would love to hear so many more stories and I should also note that barbershop stories is about ideas of culture of identity doesn't matter race, demographic, where you are the idea behind it is historically the barbershop in black communities was a place where people came together after the church to actually get our hair done but also talk politics, talk community so I wanted to create a space where people regardless of ethnic or racial background came together for at least one night a month to kind of share stories that are kind of overlapped there's so many different stories that we are all connected to so that's the whole premise of the show so if any of you have any ideas of things that you would like to pitch check out barbershopstories.com and I'll make sure to update it with the phone line because it's not on there yet but there is a contact form great yeah so the question was after my injury, after I tore my hamstring I also didn't mention that my back went out on me at the same time so the question was how did I recover from that injury going back into school and to be honest with you at first I didn't know how to manage it I didn't know how to navigate it and I was just distraught an additional part of the story is at the same time about a couple months later my father had passed away from kidney cancer so my father had passed, I couldn't run I definitely did not need to be at UCLA and I remember I went to one of my professors I told her I'm out of here bye and she sat me down and she said you know Don when I think she was I think she was in her mid-twenties she shared a story with me about how she had lost her mother from a heart attack and her parents had been very very close very very tight and within a month of her losing her mother her dad passed of broken heart and I she, both of us were just like bawling and crying and and I had no idea about this from my teacher and so as she was sharing this with me I I realized that she was sharing this with me as a way to encourage me to stay on that things get hard that life is not fair and then she insisted that I roll in her class so it wasn't me it was really the people that were around me and my parent and my mom as well my sisters and brothers that were all like no you need to keep on going so if it were up to me by myself I didn't know what to do I wasn't in therapy I wasn't doing anything for myself but God willing I just so happened to have a mentor that put me back on my feet and got me re-enrolled in school but I know that it happens a lot within the dance community that there are injuries that things that will tear you down and I think that a lot of time was just connecting with other people who see the beauty of you and that can see your potential to perhaps do something different I later on became more of an organizer and activist I realized I could do different things so I started biking a lot more I started swimming doing other activities and that's when I really started to see that there was other opportunities but it took some time yeah, right here in the middle sure, so the question was sometimes it's uncomfortable for people to tell stories which is very very true so how do you like break the ice how do you actually like allow people to tell those stories one of the things that I've noticed is that if you actually it's funny because I live in New York City and people often just kind of like talk only to wait till they can talk again you know, they're not really listening but one of the things that I've noticed is that if you actually like sit down with somebody, like yesterday for example I gave the group of Institute Leadership Training participants five minutes and I told them you can talk for five minutes you can talk for three minutes you know, in the pair if you stop before the two minutes the other person that's listening they can't start talking about their story they have to give you comments like fill in the blank a little bit I'm not so sure, I understand this part I'm not so sure, can you tell me more about this or X, Y and Z so they have to keep on talking and they have to continue telling their story and the more that people feel like they're actually being listened to the more that they'll actually start to talk and actually open up and sometimes it's a lot easier even with the stranger so we don't know why that is but sometimes it's just easier to talk to somebody who you may not necessarily know because you just have there's no barrier there's no preconceived notions of who you are so if you're trying to create that community allow people to actually just to talk in any way shape or form but also get them in their bodies one of the things that's unique about storytelling is that it comes from the heart a lot of times we think that we have to think strategically about how do I tell the story what's the important parts of it what am I trying to get across but if you just let people get away from structuring and just kind of talk from the heart about the things that were hard the things that were not easy in their lives if you kind of ask them what were moments that they felt that they were up against the odds every story that we tell there doesn't have to be but what makes the most compelling stories are those that have the element of change if you haven't changed your story is going to suck if you haven't dealt with some type of crisis or some type of issue that story is going to just lay flat but you have to let people into those moments that were hard those moments that were challenging before they can actually get there so it has to be a moment that changed them either internally or changed their world view and then let them go and little by little you'll start to see that those stories will naturally start to come out yeah, right over here in the front psychoanalysts yeah, great question so the question was like we're a community of dancers we're not necessarily trained to tell our stories so what kind of safety mechanisms can you put into place when people are yeah, and so what happens when it's something that's really deep hurt I'm glad that you asked this question because there's actually an anecdote that I give people that are trying to deal with stories that are really hard and that anecdote is that you want to tell stories from your scars not your wounds you want to tell stories from your scars not your wounds, so for example you know, if you're running down the street and you've busted up your leg and you have this big hole huge scar or something really traumatizing has happened in your life and if you're trying to talk to other people about it they're not going to feel comfortable if you haven't dealt with it if you haven't healed from it so typically you know, if you're talking about divorce for example give it time, give it a year if you're talking about death, give it time give it more than a year if you're able to talk to somebody and they're able to tell that story in a way where there it's now a scar and they've healed from it they're recovering from it then that story is at a place where it can be empowering but if it's not quite there yet it's not ready to be shared it needs to be in a different venue it needs to be in therapy or it needs to be in a different format because the objective of telling your story is not to make others feel uncomfortable the objective of the story is to see how we can kind of build these communities so tell stories from your scars not your wounds and if it feels like it's too raw it's not ready to be shared yeah over there yeah yeah so the question is can I talk a little bit more about storytelling as it related to funding goals and how those two kind of overlapped one of the things that I realized with storytelling especially when it relates to funders is a lot of times those connections come in the room as opposed to actually like on a grant or paper right but one of the things that I noticed is that there are different types of stories that we can tell what you need to do and what I've noticed really works effectively is if you have the story but you're able to like back it up with the data right so if you're able to tell the story of a certain of a certain person or of a youth or somebody who's moved you or has moved the organization or has pushed the dial and if you're able to understand exactly what that story does for the listener a lot of times a funder will tell you exactly what it is that they're looking for they'll say that we're looking to support inclusion for example and so if you find the story that exemplifies that use that story as a way to propel exactly what it is that you're trying to do so not every story is going to work not every case is going to work it's going to be something that will work ideally and then it's kind of similar to what USAID does or like other organizations you know they'll talk about one youth that is in a country who doesn't have potable water who doesn't have shoes who doesn't have access to education and then they'll note that this one youth represents 100,000 people on the island for example I'm not so sure if that's accurate but you know and so it's a way of looking at both the individual story and amplifying it as a way to show that this is not just one person this is an entire community of people and what I've noticed is that if you're able to play that yin and yang between the personal story and the facts then the funders will help to tell you exactly why it is that you need to exist who it is that you're serving they actually feel the person if you can feel the energy of somebody that you're actually working with or somebody that you're actually advocating for it just brings their heart and their soul so much more into that advocacy process so it's a hard challenge though I do know that writing grants and actually writing is a different a whole other angle to storytelling but once again it is a little bit of that yin and yang that you have to kind of play with other questions? I think I might be oh the clock has reset how much more time do I have? none? thank you all thank you so I just have a couple quick logistics this won't take long at all there is a two hour window now for lunch on your own there is a movement class at 12.30 at Quixotic which is right across from the Kauffman if you want to take the movement class smart bar begins at 1.30 at the World War I Museum this shuttle transportation starts at the west end at 1.30 and we'll be looping to the World War I Museum to the Ladin Hotel and back to the west end so if you're at the Ladin Hotel you probably want to take the street car to get to the World War I but leaving the World War I there is shuttle service until 5.45 this afternoon and so that applies for if you're at the Ladin Hotel or if you're at the west end if you've seen the World War I you know that it's beautiful but it's at the top of a very steep hill so we wanted to make sure that you had shuttle transportation the program begins at 2pm for breakout sessions and council meetings and otherwise you're free Good afternoon