Times are tough. Times are tougher for artists, especially when their livelihoods depend on the ability to perform in public. The Milwaukee Dance Theatre Network (MDTN) is an organization with the goal of supporting and elevating the field of dance and physical theater by fostering collaborative relationships, developing regional audiences and engaging in advocacy through dialogue and action.
In an effort to help support local artists during the COVID-19 pandemic, MDTN produced a video with 40 dancers to original music by two local musicians, producer Q the Sun and percussionist Paul Westfahl.
The video follows the directions of the Exquisite Corpse game. If you’re not familiar with that, it’s based on a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. The 40 dancers were tasked to create seven-second dance clips. The first second is supposed to mimic the efforts of the previous dancer’s steps in the last second of their video, so the whole flows as one. The idea for the video was brought together by local dancer and artist, Christal Wagner.
“It took up quite a bit of time, I’d say probably three eight-hour days to edit down,” says Wagner. “I was thinking from a very logical standpoint: all you have to do is figure out a method and a system of directions for people to easily follow so that they feel they can contribute to the project easily.”
It took an afternoon for Wagner to come up with the grand plan for the video to start coming together. She admits she was inspired by a similar video she found from a NYC-based dance group, but the Exquisite Corpse concept has been around for a long time.
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“With the support of my colleagues and the support of MDTN I was able to spearhead this project,” says Wagner. “If I can help those artists pay their rent for one more month and bridge the gap between the last time we saw each other and the next, then I know my colleagues and my friends are going to be there when we come back. I get nervous about people not being there.”
Wagner doesn’t have another contract to work until September, so she’s obviously a little uneasy. Having something to do during this downtime really helped her continue on. She feels like she’s riding right at the top of a rollercoaster, since she completed the video project and she’s trying to ride that emotional high throughout the rest of the quarantine, however long that will take.
There is a GoFundMe set up to raise funds for those who participated in this effort and Wagner encourages any and all that would either go to one dance performance or play a year, to donate even as little as the cost of a single ticket. A small amount can go a long way to help those in need.
