 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage Conference Co-Chairs Rachel Cohen and Daniel Bernard Romain. Welcome everyone to our Saturday morning plenary session and this includes a welcome to those of you joining us online courtesy of the HowlRound TV streaming service. Our committee and the APAP staff refer to today's event as the Pasha Kasha session which has fast become a well-known format for making presentations. A traditional Pasha Kasha format means the presenter uses 20 slides that automatically advance every 20 seconds so the presentation is exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds. But here at APAP NYC we have invited artists to make the presentations and allow for a creative approach that can include video and or live performance but each presentation is still timed out to be not more than 7 minutes and we have quite an exciting lineup for you. Here is Daniel to introduce today's moderator so we can get started. Welcome. Thank you Rachel and I also thank you for all being with us at today's plenary. Our moderator for today's event is both an artist and a presenter. He is a national poetry slam champion, Broadway veteran and artistic director including the seven part HBO documentary Russell Simmons Presents Brave New Voices. He is an inaugural recipient of the United States artist Rockefeller Fellowship which annually recognizes 50 of our country's greatest living artists. He is the 2011 Alpert award winner in theater and named to the inaugural class of Doris Duke artist in 2012. He has just completed a Balinese style shadow play that examines global economies and sexual identities through the lens of soccer's world cup. As you can see he is certainly a multitasker while at the same time serving as director of programming and performing arts at Yorba Buena Center for the arts. Ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming today's moderator Mr. Mark Bomuti Joseph. How we doing? This is Jerry. Hey Jerry, the reason why Jerry is up here is because we're live streaming and my daughter is watching. So see Jerry is with me. Jerry is not going to be sitting here the whole time but maybe just we'll kick it right here. All right cool. Yeah Jerry rolls with me everywhere we go. So it is a pleasure to be here in your extraordinary presence. You are about to meet some incredible artists as Rachel indicated each of the speakers has prepared a presentation to focus on the arc of their journey as an artist. What they draw upon for inspiration and how they think about their creative work in terms of audience engagement. And their story does indeed need to be told within seven minutes. As you might suspect this is not an easy task but fortunately each has had the benefit of guidance from Alicia Anstead. Give it up for her. Alicia is an arts and culture reporter educator and happens to be the long time editor of APAP's Inside Arts Magazine. Thank you again Alicia for your invaluable assistance. So now we'll hear from each of our five speakers if that's cool with y'all. Cool with y'all. Great. Following hearing from the speakers I'll moderate a conversation among the speakers and you the audience. So please be thinking about questions, thoughts, ideas that you might like to share during our discussion period following the presentations. Cool? Cool? Sweet. Our first speaker has enjoyed a varied career as both an actor and a musician. His Broadway credits include Inherit the Wind, Ring of Fire, The Civil War and the Will Rogers Follies plus appearances at Carnegie Hall and many other venues in the U.K. and Europe. Born and raised in Texas he drew upon his interest in American history and folk music to create the touring show Woody Says based on the life and songs of Woody Guthrie. Ladies and gentlemen please welcome David Lutkin to the stage. Howdy. I'm David Lutkin, thank you all for coming. Let's go. Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born on the 14th of July 1912 and he grew up in Oklahoma and he became America's greatest ballad song maker according to John Steinbeck and I began 12 years ago to develop a couple of shows about him with my wonderful collaborators there Helen Russell, Andy Tierstein, Nick Corley and Darcy DeVille and in the process of doing these shows over the last 12 years we debuted in London in 2011 but before that we had done many children's shows and grown up shows all over the world and one of the things that we always do is where we go after the show is over we have a hootenanny and that's the togetherness part of our show I guess to the nth degree trying to teach and to encourage activity and engagement from our audience here we are in Harlem a few years back we've been to with various casts we've been to Florida and Oklahoma and as I say we've been all over Europe as well and the hootenanny aspect of the show and the teaching aspect has become a very important part of this for me moving from the children's show which came first to the grown up show what he says which has been touring for the last seven years in teaching the children about the music and in listening to what they have to say about what they've learned and in teaching them to use some of these instruments and where the instruments come from now we certainly run into our problems just like you do here in New York we were stuck in Snowdrift in Austria for quite some time but we got out of it and managed to finish up there and had a great time we've this is a great example of of some of the places we've played 89 cities in over 10 countries if you include Oklahoma and teaching these students particularly in Europe was fascinating teaching that young fellow to play the banjo a little bit at the hootenanny afterwards one of his teachers walked up and said young man are you responsible for this and I said yes sir and he said I want you to know you've done more for your country in the last 45 minutes than your government has done in the last 45 years I was very flattered by that I appreciated it very much and we do our best to continue with that and it's not only the material in the show which of course Woody Guthrie was the great famous balladier for the common man as we all know but it's also what happens in the show outside the show because of our efforts to engage people for the Woody Centennial we went to Germany and played over there did the show over there we also played with several other bands in celebration of Woody's life and his music played there with with Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine and he was at that time of course very important in the in the Occupy movement which I'm sure Woody would have participated in as well the Occupy movement was a little more subdued for the Festival of Music and Politics in what used to be East Berlin this was a panel for that but at our concert in a festival in Rudolfstadt we had done the show and we got up to play in front of a huge crowd of 2,000 people and they listened very sweetly until the very end we sang this land is your land and they all stood up to sing along with us we sang in the streets of Belfast on both sides of the peace wall and had a great time there both with the show and with our hootenannies and we've been to all kinds of interesting places and sometimes we don't even play we just listen when we went to to Israel in 2013 I tried to arrange with several theaters in the West Bank and the Palestinian territories to play there but because of the BDS movement we were not allowed and so instead of a boycott I decided to become involved in what I'm calling an Epcot which is that we went there to listen to them and we went to Al-Rawad which is a school in a refugee camp in Bethlehem and we listened to them play and we had our hootenannies there and Woody Guthrie said I'll give you a little bit here he said I hate a song that makes you think you're not any good I hate a song that makes you think you're just born to lose bound to lose no good to nobody no good for nothing because you're too old or too young or too fat or too thin or too this or too that songs that run you down because of your hard luck and your hard travel and I'm out to fight those kind of songs to my very last breath and my last drop of blood I'm not seeing songs that will make you believe that this is your world make you take pride in yourself and in your work and the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you we played in the tent city and Tel Aviv that was being dismantled by the Israeli government and then with rabbis for human rights we went to the Negev desert and played at a protest at a crossroads that had a stoplight where the cars would drive up and we would play we shall not be moved and that was and then they drove on but shake sayah there was our our ally in that and we had a wonderful time there playing and listening just as we did in China when we met with Jennifer Tarlin who was a wonderful organizer from the American Culture Center at the University of Shanghai and we played Shanghai men Jing and at East China Normal University each of our programs there was a three-day affair we would have a show and then in the shadow of the statue of Mao Tse Tung there we had a hootenanny and then where they you can see they played our instruments we played their instruments and it was fascinating and fabulous they even got in the dance for us it was great to you are my sunshine it was pretty special I think I'm a little jet lagged in in that picture there but our performances there were were fabulous and our question-and-answer periods were amazing when we started talking in the show about World War two and they asked after the show was over what was World War two and we had an opportunity to talk about that and to listen to what they had to say about the period between 1932 and 1952 when China was engaged in what it was engaged in what he says has been all over the world and we continue I hope to participate together with our audiences all over the world we're headed for back to the West Bank as a matter of fact in two weeks and we'll be doing the show there for children and I bought 200 harmonicas the other day to take over there to to hand out during the hootenannies and as long as we can keep hooting then we'll keep going and this is a shot in London where our hootenannies became almost as big as the show every week and we had a wonderful time and I'm having a great time here today listening to what everybody else is gonna have to say thank y'all very very much for coming Wow just off top so when I was a wee lad playing soccer you know I on my way to the game I put my headphones on I'd listen to public enemy or NWA I'd be mad I'd be ready to thrash and you know just hyper but I wish I'd been listening to David because I'm just as inspired and just as wild up I want to you know do more for my country seriously and the planet thank you thank you so this is what we'll be hearing and experiencing all afternoon long our next speaker is an award-winning artist from our neighbor to the north that is not Connecticut that is Canada she is from this the south coast of Victoria Island Tanya to Galka Gillis is usually described as an Inuit throat singer a style which well matches her talent with her commitment to protect and value the cultural roots of her native land ladies and gentlemen please welcome the winner of Canada's 2014 Polaris music prize for the album animism this is Tanya to God okay let's let her rip this is my mother and her sister she was born and raised in an igloo about 300 miles from the magnetic North Pole she now has a degree from McGill University her be dead that is how quickly our culture has managed to change in one generation this is my daughter and I hanging out in minus 55 degrees Celsius so I don't want to hear any more complaining about the cold yes where I'm from Nunavut is a land mass of around 92 million square kilometers with only 34,000 people living there we're completely isolated this is a comedy this is one of our traditional ways of traveling originally it was made by a whale whale bones and pulled by dog team so being so isolated up there we can only get southern foods flown in by jet and quite often that means that you're buying wilted brown sixteen dollar batches of grapes so we are very accustomed to getting our food off of the land which was of course meat-based diet this is lunch and the intimacy and love between hunter and hunted the ability to survive in such a harsh environment the closeness with nature often makes me wonder about how the survival skills in a place like New York City and the survivors survival skills in a place like Nunavut how they coincide how do we become begin to work together in our ideas on how we live together on this planet when in in such a beautiful earth it's so many different cultures that are expected to be brought together this is what it looks like in the summertime up there it's a way it's very far past the tree line this is my father and my little daughter we have animals that migrate all the way from Mexico to come up to for the summertime I know this image might seem disgusting to you guys but to me it's beautiful absolutely beautiful the way that life can be taken and can be given and the respect between the two I hope that the relationship you have between your meat is maybe as respectful this is my child I posted this picture because we were at an elders camp and I thought how beautiful to show that it's okay to touch your meat it's okay to understand where it comes from and this is the hate that came from it animal rights activists attacked our family for about three months straight including photoshopping my baby being killed including death threats and this is what I'm interested in and why I'm speaking how do we build a bridge in the likes of togetherness how do we look at each other and respect each other when our values are so different I think one of the things we can look at as humans with common denominators breath our will to survive our ability to feel anger pain you know our joy our love our heartbreak and most importantly our empathy how we all give birth how we all came from her from a womb how we all came from a woman how we all work together to become who we are this is a painting I did this is a young enough girl throwing up Christianity Christianity was forced upon us a long time ago by colonialists and this is what's very important that I'm trying to discuss when it comes to genocide human rights and how we become together this is an old legend we had about shape-shifting and this is part of why there is a disconnect with where you get your luncheon meat we as humans have decided we're more important than other creatures on the planet we're supposedly more important than the land which isn't true the earth owns us we go back into her this is a list of the missing and murdered women in Canada indigenous women since 1980 there's been almost 1200 our prime minister is refusing an inquiry into looking into the social phenomenon that is a direct result of colonialization this is what I'm singing about this is what I'm hoping for I'm hoping that with this bridge I make that we can take empathy and we can work together to take these statistics down my daughters are four times more likely to be murdered than any other racial demographic in Canada this is a crisis as far as I'm concerned this is why I'm singing this is very important for us that we learn how to communicate in a positive way sorry it's so important to me it's a little it's a little overwhelming so thank you I realize that this occurs everywhere how do we build these bridges how do we not be afraid of each other anymore it's through breath it's through opening and it's through understanding and it's through love so I'm hoping that listening to this little talk you can understand that your luncheon meet used to walk around and that we have plights in humanity that are desperate for attention and can be addressed in a completely open and loving way this is a caribou and I want to eat it have a good day awesome you can eat anything you want you just can't touch Jerry FYI yeah it's a good thing these people aren't passionate because we will now hear from a fellow presenter and curator who began his career in radio in Istanbul and after moving to New York has become quite well known for his creative and customized skills as a festival curator and tour producer he is co-founder of the New York Gypsy Festival and is also on the faculty of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts ladies and gentlemen and everyone in between please welcome Mehmet Dede good afternoon let's roll good afternoon everyone I'm a my name is Mehmet Dede I'm an art presenter tour producer and educator living in New York City in the past ten years I've had the pleasure of presenting literally hundreds of shows with artists from Africa to Europe from South America to the American South and beyond to say that I truly love music is probably an understatement I try to live it every day I started out in the business as an independent promoter of putting on shows that music venues as well as non-traditional places like rooftops and parking lots and sailboats this is a picture from our club drone on the lower east side where I do most of my presenting nowadays and a lot of the pictures you will see are actually pictures from the show that I've had the pleasure of presenting in the past ten years in 2008 I had a profound experience when I did my yoga training with an Indian school and that training really was a large impact in the sense that I met a tantric priest and he said that my experience in life would be to connect people this is a picture from those days when I was doing my training and he said that my mission in life my purpose in life is really to connect people and I took that really to heart and I try to apply that to my work every single day the following picture is a picture from South by Southwest you can feel the energy in this picture I really love this picture because it was open air hundreds of people at a small venue in Austin Texas with a rock band the energy was high and I was driving for something that had that kind of like connection that had the ability to really transcend people especially creative artists and the audience that they engaged in this is a picture from Marjan that and the secret tribe show that I did last year at the World Financial Center to me that connection is spiritual and this picture really explains it also the juxtaposition of spiritual music in the heart of Wall Street was an interesting one and I strive to create those kind of themes in my art when I present music so exactly do I present this music I pay special attention to the environment the environment is extremely important for me is this show open air is it indoors is it seated is a standing room what kind of audiences are coming to this show these are all important themes that I look at before booking the artist and sometimes vice versa I booked the venue based on the artist so it can go either way I look for creative conversations in my shows I try to make sure that the artist creates the conversation that they engage with the audience and the audience also create that are part of that conversation and is actually discussing amongst themselves the themes that the artist is presenting what can artists do in this sort of like set up well they have a lot of commitment and they have a lot of responsibilities already on their shoulders not on not to mention their heads and for me it's quite important that the artist understands that touring and performing is a physically straining job and that they are committed to what they're doing because I certainly am as a presenter team building is important I work with many different presenters colleagues labels agents managers over the course of my career and I'm really indebted to all of them because I'm here today because of their help and because what we created together this is the next slide is a collaboration from a show that I did in 2009 in Brooklyn between Indian bonga artists Red Bharat and Brazilian band nation beat in 2012 I started to teach at NYU and that really had a big impact on me as well because I started to listen in a different way for me the most important thing is really engagement collaboration connection these things start because it's a two-way street it's never a one-way street this is my graduating students from last year and the NYU experience really taught me to understand language and to listen and also enhanced my skills in presenting art listening to fans and community engagement is a big part of what I do as part of my job and I want to make sure that the artists that I work with are engaged in their communities this is Delhi from Delhi to Dublin from Canada doing a show at drum 10 years ago for this reason I started a festival called the New York Gypsy Festival my goal was to introduce artists with draw money roots and present them in the American market especially America and Canada North American market because I felt that those genres were underrepresented and there was a need to actually understand them and listen to them I was able to work with over a hundred artists in the past 10 years from Eastern Europe India North Africa the Middle East artists who weren't necessarily Romani themselves but were inspired by the Romani culture this is a show from 2010 that I did that Central Park summer stage with this band is from Ukraine called Tays Shubhanda the Black Sea Roma Festival brought together different artists from the Black Sea region and put them together on one bill and in fact the headliner that night was Selim Cessler who is known as the Coltrane of the clarinet from Turkey passed away a few months after this performance and I felt that musical connection that I created that I had lost it for a minute but later on as I reflected on to it it was actually there and it will be there because of that kind of connection that we had created that day three years ago I got involved with 12 crazy gypsies from a small tiny village in Romania called from Father Show Carlia extremely humorous and fun band to work with imagine myself being on tour with these guys for three weeks 12 crazy gypsies who little speak English but our connection was so deep and I feel that we are part of a larger family now this was our routing starting a Montreal going down to the Midwest East Coast West Coast and up back to Canada 20 shows in 21 days during July to say there was an intense tour is would be probably an understatement we were able to create this project because we had funding from the Romanian Cultural Institute we ran a Kickstarter campaign we had amazing support from the community and this tour came together because of the involvement of the fans and this is precisely what I'm talking about this shot is from last year's Pace University show after the show ended on the main stage the band didn't really care they wanted to continue the party in the lounge area the band has become my family really I truly have become a better person and matured because of them and this is probably the best example that anyone can give when we talk about the the potential of being together thank you so much for your attention today so good 20 shows in 21 days in July sometimes I just want July to have 15 days you have probably noticed in your program that one of today's speakers was to have been Dr. Ahmad Sarmaz Dr. Sarmaz was invited to share with us his incredible journey as founder and director of the Afghanistan School of Music unfortunately Dr. Sarmaz was injured in Kabul last month during a suicide bombing in the auditorium where his students were performing we at APAP our police report that although he suffered severe injuries none are life-threatening and he's receiving good care by medical professionals and family we've extended our best wishes for a full recovery and we know that we'll have him at next year's conference in the place of Dr. Sarmaz we have with us today an extraordinary actor and playwright who shares his vision to affirm the positive cultural identity and contributions of our global neighbors in and from the Middle East she is best known as the solo performer and writer of the award-winning off-Broadway hit nine parts of desire which details the lives of nine Iraqi women she currently appears in the film Vino Veritas which had its premiere at the Soho International Film Festival and she wrote the libretto for a new opera in development entitled Fallujah the first opera on the Iraq war my friends please welcome Heather Raffo to the stage thank you let's roll I carry a story of a six-year-old Iraqi girl sold as a bride for ISIS a story told to me by a young Iraqi doctor who buys as many girls as she can hoping to smuggle them out of the country I asked her how can people be so violent she asked me after violence how are people still so capable of love this genocide is personal to me I'm a blonde American born and raised in Michigan my father is Iraqi Christian born and raised in Musil and every church his grandfather's car for marble every house graffitied with the Christian letter N communities thousands of years old are being wiped out as we speak so the story I'm writing is the story of a young Iraqi girl adept at the only thing her parents believed in quantum physics like an acrobat her mind flees through parallel worlds through ancient caliphates and tolerant empires because if you're an Iraqi girl today the only escape is another universe I grew up in Michigan but spent my time dreaming of other worlds being an artist an actress studied at Radha got my MFA from the old globe knowing only Shakespeare would satisfy a strong willed girl born to be 50 and fierce but when another war broke out with Iraq and Shakespeare's plays spoke for this universal war experience I knew they didn't speak for me I searched for any contemporary drama with the Middle Eastern female voice it did not exist so I began to write my inspiration the Iraqi artist Laila Attar nine parts of desire was the first play in the English language with an Iraqi female protagonist it catapulted me into conversations from the Kennedy Center to the US Islamic World Forum after a show in DC a six foot tall man from the Pentagon sobbed in my arms behind him an Iraqi immigrant with her daughter the play exposes boldly the passions and pursuits of nine ordinary and very extraordinary Iraqi women their context is war but their desire is their need for life I have the joy of telling Iraqi women a play about them was a commercial success running off Broadway for nine months performed at nearly every major regional theater and beginning a global conversation that has not slowed down for 10 years it's currently on stage in Hungary in India and in Virginia when Arab women find it they read it aloud to their mothers soldiers share it with fellow soldiers college and high school students write me unburdening themselves of thoughts they didn't even know could be settled out the New Yorker called it an example of how art can remake the world and eloquently name pain so what is our artistic and social responsibility to catharsis where else but in the performing arts can we still have a transformative experience sitting next to a stranger a stranger different in political and spiritual beliefs to have been a bridge for the Middle Eastern female voice to come on to main stages and into conversations I'm reminded the theater is probably the only world where I can exist when I was four years old I slept on the roof of my grandmother's house in Baghdad I rode roller coasters in the park I have spent every decade of my life bridging Iraq and America transforming the unfathomable conversations into Arias I've written an opera inspired by a marine who's had five suicide attempts since returning from Fallujah after a performance at Kennedy Center marines stayed long after to share experiences even their families had never heard a woman from the Department of Defense was hungry to bring the opera to her workplace now why wouldn't opera be needed by a military community can song move those spaces created by violence and loss and how necessary is catharsis are the performing arts the only place it's happening I'm working with a group of Arab American women in Queens who like Nora in a dolls house are waking up to find they aren't being themselves even at home so embedded with them I'm adapting a dolls house telling the story of Nora living in post-revolutionary Egypt she's been awakened as her country has with a new voice of self-awareness but her day-to-day is an increasingly repressive reality from the Middle East to Queens in risking giving voice to a community I find I'm actually creating a community full of people hungry to be part of a movement against what would believe make us believe we're not all in this together I believe art holds our cultural memory but in this last decade I've begun to wonder if it might be one of those last institutions able to hold inclusiveness and uplift the human condition see I need the theater to address the magical and the unspeakable through the many women of nine parts through a marine singing in the arms of his brothers through Nora a revolutionary mother and wife through an Iraqi girl dancing in a parallel universe through a genocide that has now come home to me I ask how can we be so violent how are we still so capable of love and how can we bridge these deeply human divides thank you has anybody ever used this format anybody in this room it's fucking hard right yeah I mean I cannot believe sorry Narnia it's hard it's very hard it's mad hard it's hella hard it's heck of hard but these incredible artists my lord have attacked it with such passion and intellect and tenderness around the inquiry so thank all of you truly our final speaker with our final speaker we return to the world of dance a director choreographer performer originally from Montreal she first received recognition as a celebrated principal dancer for the Bill T. Jones Arnie Zane Dance Company over the length of her career to date she has choreographed for stage theater and film and developed a reputation for her deep sensitivity and approach to working with unconventional dancers her Gimp project has toured internationally since 2001 she and her company Heidi Latsky Dance are credited by critics and audiences as innovators pioneers and visionaries whose work does not ask why but rather why not friends please welcome Heidi Latsky okay we can begin Heidi Latsky's Gimp which includes dancers who are disabled is one of those ideas that arrive as visionary only to soon inspire the question why not I love this quote from Sid Smith's review from the Chicago Tribune of my first evening lengths physically integrated work Gimp but it's the why not that resonates with me particularly and it has throughout my life because of the seemingly counterintuitive choices I've made along the way like why not take up dance when I just graduated with a psychology degree at the age of 19 fell in love with disco saw the movie Turning Point and realized that I didn't want to regret not doing something that I really wanted to do so then why not go to New York City from Canada to pursue a career even though I'd been told that I was too old and too short why not audition for Broadway only to find myself in the Bill T. Jones Arnie Zane Dance Company because I was so not a triple threat and then why not as I stand here in front of you today continue dancing at the age of 56 when I started dancing my ideal dancer was tall thin and had legs that went on forever thankfully this misguided belief was under the influence of Bill and Arnie was dispelled at my first rehearsal I encountered Lawrence Goldhuber who because of his large size I immediately assumed was the stage manager until Bill instructed me to literally climb all over him I couldn't wrap my head around Larry as a dancer and then came my aha moment when I really recognized the true beauty in the power of his presence in the company so much so that years later Larry and I formed there we are our own duet company and we were considered quote unquote the Laurel and Hardy of modern dance Bill would often say that something was too beautiful too easy to conventional and I started to understand the beauty of the unconventional visual artist Lisa Buffano as Lisa was one such influence in my life Jeremy Allager founder of the Boston Dance Umbrella introduced us after years of telling me about his wheelchair festivals and years of being me being not interested at all Lisa was not your typical dancer she was not a trained dancer she was a bilateral amputee whose fierceness and vulnerability permeated her entire being I still can't believe that at our first meeting which was for lunch that it wasn't until I was just about to enter the restaurant that it dawned on me that I was having lunch with somebody without fingers and I had questions what do I say to her do I look at her hands do I talk about her disability and then in rehearsal there were even more questions how to be politically correct how to not offend her what's the right thing to say how do I push her hard but not too hard I had never been around people with disabilities before and I was really curious but really terrified and specifically afraid of saying the right wrong things and also not being able to honor her uniqueness and her beauty on the other hand it was really easy to do that when I wasn't second-guessing myself and when we were in the rehearsal studio together I really I found myself I saw what she had not what she didn't have to the point where with Lisa I said please remove your prosthetics because I felt that I could more easily access and more fully access her full movement potential what I didn't know was that months later she told me that that was in a very emotionally challenging act for her I had found my muse in the most unlikely of places and it changed me profoundly after the Judson Church premiere of my solo for Lisa titled five open mouths Lisa looked at us she got a standing ovation a well deserved standing ovation and she looked at Jeremy and I and questioned are they applauding me because I'm disabled or are they applauding me because I dance beautifully Jeremy in his infinite wisdom replied both so where is beauty reside is it truly in the eyes of the beholder and what is true virtuosity and artists responsibility is to reframe these questions as often as possible and to do so from an unexpected perspective like Jeremy encountered with me when he first spoke to me about his festivals I encountered the same resistance about the concept of disabled dancers my work has been seen as community work as therapeutic with an immediate assumption that my dancers are wheelchair users but in actuality like a painter I had found another color to add to my palate but to the outside world there were many misunderstandings so much so that at times just like when I first started dancing the battle was kind of steep they were also misunderstandings within the company culture clashes between the disabled dancers and the non-disabled dancers and here I was a non-disabled choreographer calling her show gimp it's amazing to me that only once was I openly questioned about this title and this young man likened it to me calling my work the n-word we did ironically get pushed back from many disability organizations who did not quite understand why we were using the word but gimp also aroused a curiosity that drew people to the work it is a word we are taught not to use just as we are taught not to look at people who look or move differently but gimp also is defined as fighting spirit and interwoven fabric and it is those qualities that are at the core of the work people often tell me that I have changed my dancers lives but they have changed mine and together we have moved out of our comfort zones embraced a wider and more human aesthetic and redefined for ourselves and others what dance is when I started dancing at the age of 20 only one person in my life supported my radical choice he gave me this Gerta quote on this really tiny little piece of paper whatever you can do or dream you can do begin it boldness has genius power and magic in it I taped it to my bathroom mirror and read it every day my dancers now embody this quote for me they are powerful they are bold and they are magical from the fifth graders who saw Lawrence Carter long a dancer with cerebral palsy as a superhero to those who claimed they were initially shocked seeing an aerialist without legs and a dancer with Parkinson's but then leaving the theater awestruck by the beauty of those same dancers there is a shift in perception this year is the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act and significant progress has and is being made but there are so many misunderstandings as well and they need to be addressed viscerally as only we artists can do why not take a moment now to consider the unexpected perspective and not see it as purely visionary but as simply art and to bring the magic of it into the world just like you see now with Lisa Bufano thank you please welcome me or join me in rewelcoming to the stage all of want to just welcome me join me in welcoming all of the artists to the stage and while you're at it please give them a huge round of applause come on back up folks please I will remind you that in this next half hour or so we want to open up to the entire audience if you're tweeting or using social media of any kind the hashtag is apapnyc there are microphones yonder in over har so please get at them but before you ask questions I get at them first yeah cool so guys I'm taking notes I have a question for you about togetherness the conference's theme and a little bit about rule breaking so I don't necessarily want to hear from each of you but whoever feels so moved to respond that's me letting everybody off the hook but you get more than 20 seconds each what is the unwritten rule that you are most likely to uphold or the unwritten rule you are most likely to break in the name of togetherness what is the unwritten rule you are most likely to uphold or the unwritten rule you are most likely to break in the name of togetherness can you hear me yes I think I'm going to answer that the way you're asking it so there is a term that people use for the kind of work that I do mixed abilities and mixed abilities is when you think about it it kind of says there are people there who have different abilities some are better than others so maybe the unwritten rule that I have done or I've appropriated with my work is that every single person in that studio with me has to abide by my rules and we work really really hard and it's very rigorous and there's no distinction being made so together we are actually operating under the same rigorous standard yeah please I'll say that I think one rule in writing I don't think my I write political theater but I think one one rule that people assume is that the audience doesn't know and the writer and the people on stage do know this thing and I think that I flip that on its head and I said if I'm a solo show artist and the audience is my scene partner I love them they're in the room with me they may all be an American that may be an Iraqi woman but great we're having tea and not so it's it's not a history lesson it's not all these things you did or should have known or this that it's I'm so glad you're here I love you can I now spill my guts you know and I think that that that as an energy has taken over all my work how excited I am to have a conversation a loving conversation with an audience about themes that are not being talked about so it's the love in the room anybody else want to have at it well uh hootenannies are have no rules so uh means far as I know well actually there is there's one rule which if you know the words you have to sing so but the the rules that we have and the rules that we break I guess have to do with with people's abilities I would you know there's kind of an unwritten rule that everybody's got to be able to play or sing and I I don't think that's true at all just come on in sit down do whatever and the unwritten rule that that I'm most likely to adhere to I guess is that is kind of the the obverse of that is that everybody gets a voice and that's the sort of the purpose of not only doing the show but then at the curtain call saying everybody stick around let's play awesome for me the unwritten rule is um has is deeply connected with commitment if I'm committed to presenting an artist then um I would like the artist to be committed to saying whatever he or she would like to say last year we actually presented Tanya Tagak and I knew Tanya's involvement and how open she was about the things that she actually talked today and for me that was a good opportunity to actually be a facilitator to what she wanted to express so the unwritten rule is that um as long as there's commitment that whatever the artist has to say that us as facilitators we just you know make it happen we give her a stage we give her an audience we kind of like do it together but we don't censor each other I never asked her what are you going to sing about what are you going to you know perform about and whatever image she wanted to display at that moment whether it was gross or not it was the whatever way she thought was needed to be you know out there and we just facilitated that you can tell that there's immediate and deep camaraderie here which strikes me because you guys are all so epic so I I want to ask you guys about intimacy and the scale of it for you what are the emotional logistical aesthetic curatorial elements any one of those four or all or all of the above what are the elements that enable you to scale intimacy what do I mean by scale intimacy great question all of you guys are so big and managed to draw us all in in a way that feels very close I'm struck by the intimacy of the images that you shown the that you showed Heidi the the closeness of one person to another the shared breath that's that you talked about so there's a you know you talked about you know traversing several different countries playing for 2000 people but that intimate moment of everyone standing up to saying this land is your land right so I guess I'm asking you is creative chemists what are the elements that you use to scale intimacy um I think for me the number one thing that occurs is vulnerability and trust if I give my trust to the audience to accept the very very worst parts of me and the very best and hope that in the very hopes that they can relate so the the emotional capability to open to vulnerability in the face of such a harsh world creates a trust after the show that gives me hope for people it's beautiful thank you for me I I guess I would say one of the main things that creates that sense of intimacy I guess is is music I did as you said this is a known little story that has a little bit of that to it I did the Will Rogers file is long time ago on Broadway I was understudy for Mac Davis uh who's a great guy and I gave me a guitar which I still have but the first time I ever went on um I called my mother in Texas well actually I called my father and I said get my mother up here because I'm going on on Broadway and so my mother flew up and came to the show and it was a matinee and I went down for the I had to come down a rope you know and I was scared to death and I and I forgot a little bit but I did all right I guess and then I I left and they were hollering at me to take this off put this shirt on put you over here and then the next time I came back I had my guitar and my mother poked the lady next to her and said he'll be all right now so that to me that it's um it has to do with not only what you're singing and and what you're saying but the for me there is a musical element to to all of it that is I guess a little like choreography it's that you you know what's coming but it's still a surprise and that's that's part of it guys I I know that this is inherent in many of the talks that you gave but I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit um about where you're from and specifically how um your personal histories or your sense of place impacts your sense of accountability right like not all of us choose to work in the context of um either social justice or even global reaching so so how does where you're from impact what you're doing right now for me it very much informs what I do as an art presenter especially presenting music like literally from all over the world um I grew up in Germany uh to Turkish parents and um came to the US came to New York really in 99 and I've lived in the US longer than I've lived actually in Turkey or Germany and um you know just being an international person um being accustomed to other cultures listening to them especially just having sort of like um this understanding of east meets west especially as I was living in in Istanbul um informs a lot of my um a lot of my work really is based on that I want to go into art presenting because I really truly love music for many different parts of the world including commercial music non-commercial music and to be you know in a position now to actually do this for a living while enjoying um it's so much you know and being in this sort of like you know you talked about intimacy a minute ago you know for me being intimate to an artist is it is it's an emotional relationship you set up with the artist when you commit to an event that you're producing and that you're presenting and the thing that breaks my heart most is really when an artist has to cancel for whatever reason it may be because I'm already so much engaged as soon as the booking happens that I want to come to you know to see come to full fruition so for me you know where I'm coming from is very much um what I'm doing now and where are we going in the future I'll say for myself a lot has come from my own privilege because it was it's not that I so identified with my Iraqi roots versus my American German Irish roots it was that we could have we I could have grown up there like it was the decision to stay in Michigan versus go back to Iraq was just that one decision in the 70s that could have not you know could have gone the other way so to have over 100 cousins in Baghdad living through various things even before this current war just it was a it was a it was a pressure on me for of privilege but to answer sort of the last question within this question I think one element of deep intimacy for me is the speaking of truths but the speaking of contradictory truths so one thing I gained from my privilege was being able to say two or 20 or a thousand contradictory truths about Iraq and Iraqis and Iraqis relationships with Americans and Americans so much so that when they tried to do the play in Iraq they had to cut over half the play because you cannot say that out loud let alone on stage and the actresses would have been you know like all these horrible things right and it that's when I sort of realized what a privilege I had in being able to carry what is really their story on American stages because it couldn't happen over there not yet right you know to to take that maybe another step further and my final question before I welcome folks to the microphone to ask your own questions you know we learned yesterday or we learned a couple of days ago in the wake of the attacks in Paris that the Associated Press had removed the image of Piss Christ from their digital archive and so I wonder about self-censorship and institutional self-censorship specifically how do you combat the fear of saying the wrong thing and maybe relevant to folks in here how do you work with presenters to urge them or nudge them out of the fear of being culturally offensive I know but so relevant I think particularly now how do we combat a culture of fear and the fear of saying the wrong thing I've come up with a solution in my shows okay um I've removed language genius so uh people can interpret it whatever way they want that's awesome um I'm just I'm totally going to use that I'm a poet who radiates just feel my energy yeah please well I in the in the program about Woody Guthrie I have the uh the advantage of about 75 percent of the the script that I put together is direct quotes of Woody Guthrie and so I I suppose I'm able to hide behind that a little bit um particularly with uh some of our more far flung uh places when we went when we got ready to go to China they asked me if the word revolution was in the script and I said well uh there's one time when it's in the lyrics of one song when it's referring to the American Revolution and I didn't ever do anything about it we went right ahead but I just thought that was a very interesting question that they you know wanted to know before I got there and uh on the other hand we've we've been to uh Israel and to the West Bank and and there and in in some other places I've I've as I say I kind of have the advantage of of being able to say well this is that you have to remember the context of what Mr Guthrie said was the 1930s and the 1940s in the United States and the drought the dust bull the depression and all these kinds of things so even though it sounds exactly like he's talking about the Arab-Israeli conflict or whatever it is he really was not that's not what he was talking about when he said this land is your land this land is my land from California you know yeah you know because if you get ready to to say something or sing something like that over there that in specific places in Belfast and places like you know all kinds of things it means something different right in the context that they find themselves their audience and in the present so I I guess that's avoiding the question I think what I did with Gimp was take the word and and and we use that word and embrace that word and when when there when the incident that I talked about when somebody actually questioned me about me being non-disabled and calling my show Gimp you know I spoke to my dancers about it and you know the joy of the work that I do is that it's so collaborative and so they said but we decided that Heidi I mean we we took that language with a disabled dance so disability in dance is very very tricky and we're always redefining and figuring at what that language will be and also how to like you were saying entice presenters to even come and take a look at it when there's such a preconceived notion of what it what it is even though that's often the case it's not what they think it is I don't really have a solution except that we just keep trying thank you for that guys I'm so impressed with all of you and I really could just keep you to myself but that would be irresponsible greedy mean and hyper capitalist things that I don't want to do so I'm wondering if any of the brilliant minds in our assembled body have any questions for our esteemed presenters and if you do if you wouldn't mind there are two microphones one down this aisle right here and one down this aisle to my left um maraca please start us off my question is actually for tanya um I grew up also in michigan I was a colored country girl raised on a chicken farm I you I'm very proud of being able to say that once I was able to out ride out hunt out shoot any man I knew so my question for you is when you are hunting my father taught me a particular ritual for hunting do you have a particular method or ritual for hunting what weapons do you use when you're hunting and do you ever sing to the animals that you hunt um I'll answer them in reverse no singing usually but um there were a lot of traditional ways of respecting the spirit of which animal you killed or you harvested like um seals if you melt snow in your mouth and pour it into their mouth so that their spirit isn't thirsty in the afterlife like where it depends where you would skin an animal like you shouldn't skin a land animal on the ocean or an ocean animal on the land so you leave their spirit in the appropriate area right you it's it was all our our religions are believed beliefs were all based directly on how to respect the earth right and it's the disconnect from that that I believe has led to the destruction of the planet but uh traditionally we had a many many different uh inventions and ways of hunting but typically now it's rifle because it's so much easier and sorry I forgot the very first question oh yeah the yeah typically yeah typically rifle and it's uh when I go home before the ice all breaks away which typically all the ice goes away in July the ocean ice that's about 10 feet thick my one of my favorite ways to fish is uh we used to grow up jumping from piece of ice to piece of ice and we'd have a stick with a string around it and you're you're jigging like this for arctic char and they're so close to you like torpedoes under the water and you pull them out it's lovely I'm I'm really happy you grew up knowing where your food comes from right on my kids know that their food comes from Trader Joe's um questions comments I'm a student at crane school of music and I'm looking at this from a strictly student very little hands-on experience kind of perspective my question for you all is your work is bold and your job is to be bold but the audience right now is is looking at things from kind of a place of reservation towards being pandered to um how do we make them feel that they are bold too that they can challenge themselves to be bold with you no y'all go ahead I think that the if if the work is not pandering to them then hopefully they'll rise up to that standard um you're not spoon feeding anybody then you're actually asking more of your audience and so maybe the demands that we put on the audience has that kind of intimate relationship with the audience and then uh allows them whether they get it or not to hopefully rise to that place of boldness hi um I think you personally as a performer I don't really give a shit if they feel like they're being pandered to like because it's up to them I'm not going to spoon feed them a way to think I'm just going to trust them to be open-minded thoughtful people and if they want to take it in they show up at the show and if they don't like it there there's the door why don't audiences want something bold why aren't audiences out in the street demanding bold more boldness because it's not safe it's very safe it's safer because it's true and once you're true thing about then you're in a much more reality place and reality is safer than comatose so I don't I've had the pleasure of meeting a lot of bold audiences in America in groups of card carrying republicans you know so I mean with my work that's interesting right you know so it's I I've had the pleasure of meeting a lot of bold audiences but I do wonder why we don't we're not absolutely demanding at all the time well I won't interject please there was someone over here oh yes please okay hi first let me congratulate apap for this convening it's very exciting and and as a disabled woman I I need to acknowledge that uh the inclusion of physically integrated dance and the idea of disability as a social cultural and political it as something that has social and cultural and political meaning within the context of what you're all talking about is very exciting and um Heidi I I know because I know you and have traced this with you how has it been to not only convince presenters to take the work seriously and not to dismiss it as therapeutic work for the benefit of those poor disabled dancers who finally get give the chance to be on stage but rather as exciting work how has it been to convince them that this has cultural meaning beyond what is happening there on stage but is happening as you're all talking about in interaction with the audience what is you know that's been a challenge for you it has and I don't know that I have I think there's some presenters who have um brought us in and then have also wanted me to do community engagement and post performance talk backs and conversations and bringing the disability community into that residency and then there are some presenters who they just you know want the dance for what it is that's rare because I think that the presenters who are open to this kind of work they want to engage community on a wider scale they they see that there is something more than just a dance another dance performance that it it is its entity that it has those ramifications and that perhaps can create a difference or more dialogue within their communities is that answering your question oh yeah yeah please here my questions for David I'm an early boomer who grew up singing the songs of Woody Guthrie and the other then contemporary songwriters who created songs that we all sang on the streets as we were protesting a war and urging change in public policy and my kids generation and my grandkids generation don't have songs like that they're not creating songs these days and I'm wondering if you've had any conversations with your audiences as you travel talking about or asking and finding even songs that might be more that are contemporary and that are addressing issues of today that's a very good question and I people ask that question quite often is who is the Woody Guthrie of today and the the shorter the short answer is that I really don't know the longer answer is that I think that there are plenty of Woody Guthrie's today I as Alicia can tell you I'm not much of an internet person but I do know that it exists and I can tell you that that what one of the main differences between now and then is that then there were a lot of people out there singing protest songs like Woody Guthrie and songs that had to do with specific situations or specific injustices or specific events and they their outlet was either a barn dance or or church or radio and Woody was lucky enough to make it to the radio and became relatively popular before he was blacklisted and all that other kind of stuff a lot of people knew who he was relatively speaking but I think now that with the proliferation of of the the interweb net that that there are thousands of people who write and try to observe in the same way but because there is so much of it it's very very difficult to find the people who are skilled and creative and they they still exist and they're still there and they're and they're one of the main comparisons that people often make is with rap music which quite often has to do with with social issues today but even that of course as as even I know kind of gets diluted away with there's so much rap music and and that has to do with other things that are that are not so pop you know people don't want to hear about that a lot of very creative stuff gets buried underneath so I think it just has to do with the different methods of communication that that Woody was a was a lucky fellow who who did a great job and people realized it and today there are still people doing a great job it's just harder to find them do you remember the shaming of the Dixie Chicks in 2003 right so so perhaps um the question is why don't more of us galvanize towards the edge we're singing happy maybe that's a great point no and when I every time I have a hootenanny I try to uh to sing the songs that that everybody can sing that's that's sort of my raison d'etre and and as you properly point out an awful lot of those songs are are pre 1960 and but they're they still exist and they're but music and and audience's ability to discern and all of those things they they are living things as well and and cultural uh what shall I say approaches or or the the aim of of the to get with the rifles here of the the where everybody wants to go uh is more fractured I believe today took the music of a rap artist and put it into Selma so that the next the previous generation and the next generation are listening to each other's films and each other's music that's what we're not doing how about we pick up that music and listen to it and sing along to what young people are recording today we have time for one more question hi guys Heidi it's Melissa Riker congratulations on everything um a quick about the bravery and the boldness of our audiences there's something that I learned and perhaps you guys can speak to this I had an audience member come to a show where the first half of the show is very dancy the second half of the show we asked the audience to be very brave with us and there was one man in the audience who said if I had known this was interactive I wouldn't have come but I'm so glad I'm here and I feel like that speaks to that question of bravery that they're way more brave than we give them credit for they're they're even bolder and braver than they know and I wonder if you can speak to that a little bit me me I thought it was for everybody um well I have to say that we have a lot of post performance talk backs after our shows and I would say that in general I'm more impressed with the audience than not impressed and we've had incredible discussions and um there seems to be that kind of boldness I mean what we get sometimes which I have to fix right away is oh your dancers are so brave and that's not our point right they're not so brave they're professional dancers dancing in my company but that's a perception that we get from the audience and then we have to reflect it back in a different way that's specific to my world right now um I have to say I'd probably be one of those audience members who would say oh I don't want to be in an interactive show so I understand that but I think what we were talking about before is that the more we stay true to our vision and what and be bold with that that we are asking the audience then to come along for the ride whether they buy the tickets and actually come to the show that's a whole other thing like how do you get them in so one of the things we're trying to do is because of the ADA celebration in July we're going to be all over New York City outside in public spaces so that people don't have to buy a ticket to see an unconventional body moving you know you know can we do more of that to encourage other people to see that what we're doing maybe is not so scary um we are at time um please join me in affirming this really incredible battery of thinkers culture makers visionaries and experts in togetherness in bringing people together thank you for moving our world forward I'd like to welcome back Daniel and Rachel to the stage thank you guys oh please please stay please stay because again I want us all together to thank you mark and thank each of you speakers I am from California so I just have to say awesome it was just awesome thank you so much for thoughtful and inspiring session and thanks to you all for coming friend for your participation thank you so much and I want to echo that please give them another hand they have so wonderful so innovative uh tomorrow's plenary is with ira glass so you don't want to miss that please be here at 11 o'clock right now please go to the bathroom get something to eat get something to drink call your mom your dad your children and the expo hall is open at two o'clock see you there thank you