Last Updated
April 10, 2020
Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Christy Bolingbroke, Executive & Artistic Director, National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron. [Live show recorded: April 9, 2020.]
Guest: Christy Bolingbroke
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Guest
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE Following a national search, Christy Bolingbroke was named the first Executive & Artistic Director of the National Center for Choreography located at The University of Akron. In this role, she provides both artistic and administrative leadership for NCCAkron, building upon her extensive experience in curatorial programs and external relations.
Christy came to NCCAkron from the San Francisco-based ODC (founded at Oberlin College in Ohio in 1971 as the Oberlin Dance Collective), where she served as the Deputy Director for Advancement. In that position she oversaw curation and performance programming, managed marketing and development campus-wide, directed a unique three-year artist in residence program for dance artists, and mentored emerging arts administrators.
Christy was formerly the Director of Marketing for the Mark Morris Dance Group in Brooklyn where she increased touring ticket sales worldwide and activated Access/MMDG events in major hub cities nationally. The Access/MMDG program uses custom-tailored arts and humanities-based activities to deepen and enhance the audience experience.
Bolingbroke has a B.A. in Dance from the University of California, Los Angeles, is a graduate of the DeVos Institute for Arts Management Fellowships Program (previously at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC), Arts & Business Council of New York’s Arts Leadership Institute, and holds a Master's Degree from the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck. Live, the morning-ish show. On today's episode, Lauren Ruffin and I are joined by Christy Bolingbroke. Christy is currently serving as the first executive and artistic director of the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron. Before landing in Akron, she held roles as the deputy director for advancement at San Francisco Base ODC. She was the director of marketing for the Mark Morris Dance Group in Brooklyn. She holds multiple degrees including a master's degree from the Institute for Curatorial Practice and Performance at Wesleyan University.
Tim Cynova:
She has her finger on the pulse of dance like few people I know and fun fact... Christy appeared on the very first livestream show many years ago, vintage livestream, if you will, when I co-hosted a show with Sydney Skybetter called #SYNOVA. Without further ado, Christy, welcome to the show.
Christy Bolingbroke:
Thanks, Tim. Hi, Lauren. Thanks so much y'all for having me.
Lauren Ruffin:
Hey, it's good to meet you. I'm going to stick to our script since I don't have anything to go off-topic with you because this is our first time meeting.
Christy Bolingbroke:
We'll find something. Don't worry.
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm pretty sure. I'll wait to talk about basketball since you're from Akron. So our first question for our guests as always, "How are you and how's your community doing right now?"
Christy Bolingbroke:
Doing okay. As best as we possibly can. I think what I'm really appreciating in my community here in Akron always has been strong in supporting hyper-local, but really supporting the local businesses and how they're stepping up above and beyond to find creative ways of getting things out to us, whether that's moving to online subscriptions or only being open for select holidays and then selling out, which is something we think about all the time in the performing arts, but I don't know that the restaurant industry had thought of previously. So I'm really appreciating that about my immediate community.
Tim Cynova:
Can you talk to us a little about NCC and your work and how do you usually describe yourself?
Christy Bolingbroke:
I identify as a recovering marketer, turned curator and executive leader. So I often think about audience experience and the bridge between communities and artists, and NCC Akron was something that didn't exist when I entered the workforce. Even the first National Center for Choreography, MANCC, down at Florida State University in Tallahassee didn't exist when I entered the workforce. So what excited me about coming to this position was the opportunity to build something from scratch but also to have a platform that I can support as many artists as possible.
Tim Cynova:
Well, Christy, one of the really interesting things that we've talked about over the years was in being the first leader of this organization, you got to set it up how you wanted, or largely how you wanted. What was important to you as you were crafting what the organization looks like, its values, its culture? How did you go about that? And then what might be changing or how might you be rethinking that in light of what's going on in the world?
Christy Bolingbroke:
I moved to Akron and started in my position in the fall of 2016 and a lot of the heavy lifting was done before I got here. We have a three-way founding partnership including the University of Akron, DANCECleveland, the premier dance presenter across Northeast Ohio and much of the Rust Belt. It's just 45 minutes from here. And the John S. And James L. Knight Foundation. And it was through their feasibility studies, Could a national center for choreography exist in Ohio? What would that look like? And then a very unique seeding of a $5 million endowment that they set up through the Miami Foundation and incorporated NCC Akron as a discreet nonprofit that operates in donated space on the university's campus.
Christy Bolingbroke:
That complexity alone, that's what I inherited and I am so grateful and recognize [inaudible 00:03:56] that opportunity. I know. There'll be follow up questions.
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm trying to figure out what they might be. I don't even know where to start.
Christy Bolingbroke:
And then, when I'd arrived, my board, which included appointees from each of the founding partners, said, "You're never going to have this opportunity again. So you have almost a year before we have front-loaded a residency or program to come in, so this is your opportunity to figure out what do you want to do."
Christy Bolingbroke:
We started with bi-monthly meetings and discussions about our curatorial values. What does it mean to be a national center that is not in the physical center of the country or in the perceived center of a field? And I also think a lot about what does it mean to be in residence that is not in a transactional way. In the same like, "I'm giving you a gig, I'm paying you to do something," but rather that spirit of reciprocity that comes from really living somewhere or being somewhere. How are you contributing to a community? And vice versa, that community is supporting you.
Christy Bolingbroke:
And then also just having come out of the dance field, and Tim, you and I were on lots of early conversations with emerging leaders for New York Arts, and [inaudible 00:05:13] shout about the 501c3 model. Is it dead? Is it not? It's dying a slow death, I think, if anything. People are still asking that question now. Was really mindful and still continue that seems to be the third wire to build something, but how do you not become too normalized or institutionalized that you no longer can pivot? You no longer can be responsive to the people you're trying to serve.
Lauren Ruffin:
In terms of your work right now, I still can't figure out one question that's succinct enough to even respond to that because that's so juicy. How has your work changed in the last month or so and has your view on the mission changed? And you did mention when we were in the green room that you were in the process of a strategic plan. Are you [inaudible 00:06:00] a strategic plan right now? So feel free to throw anything about that in, as well.
Christy Bolingbroke:
I was the sole full-time employee up until this past fall and we would strategically bring in consultants or project managers to scale up when we had larger projects coming in. And, in some ways, this moment doesn't feel alien to me for that reason because the first year we didn't have an office and I worked from home. I often travel two or three times a month to see artists all over the country, so I used to say, "Wherever I am, that is the center."
Christy Bolingbroke:
And so we were just starting to expand our staff, and we had built out a six month staffing experiment, including a graduate assistant and three part-time individuals that we were already asking, "So how much time do we need additional staff in labor? How much is that when we have artists on the ground? How much of that is in between and what are those roles? So in trying not to be too institutionalized, I didn't want to just hire a development director. It's really about, especially starting from this kernel, it's about how do you build out a team where it's not their first job, but they also aren't so seasoned that they have rightfully accrued a moment where they can say, "You know what? I want to work at this level. I want to make this much money and I'll take a couple of meetings. I'll write a couple of grants."
Christy Bolingbroke:
So how do you cultivate a middle management team and [inaudible 00:07:35] flat landscape from a structural standpoint so that it's not as hierarchical. I'm not the one running all meetings. There's a lot of cross and peer learning, too.
Christy Bolingbroke:
So we were in the middle of that experiment. And based on when we came in, we already had some individuals who work remotely. Now we're all working remotely but we're also having to deal with daily things. There were huge thunderstorms and crazy weather in Ohio [inaudible 00:07:59]. It was actually snowing 30 minutes ago out of nowhere, and one of our team members is out of electricity. So, okay. Great. We're like, "We're going to take this a day at a time. Keep us posted when you go out and recharge your phone in your car."
Lauren Ruffin:
Crank up the generator.
Christy Bolingbroke:
Yeah. Exactly. And so I would say if anyone's been consistent is that we have created a porous structure. So I try not to set up an environment where it's going to be an all hands on deck and we all can't, whatever latest modern dance emergency comes through, because that certainly wouldn't be sustainable right now in this moment. But everyone has ideas of what can they work on longterm that maybe now they have more time to fit into. And what are the things that they can actually anchor, whether that's our weekly team meeting. We have a weekly-one-on one with each team member and myself that we can continue to sort of feed the machine without letting it run away with us or completely be stuck now that it's held back.
Christy Bolingbroke:
And then from a programmatic standpoint, we were in the middle of a large collaboration, the first phase with the university where we identify NCC Akron as a discreet 501c3, can work more nimbly and quickly, especially, then institutions when they're trying to hire up staff.
Christy Bolingbroke:
We've been partnering with the School of Dance Theater and Arts Administration and had launched a capsule series called 21st Century Dance Practices, where we had guest artists that would come in for a week. They would teach, basically a takeover of the three intermediate-advanced modern classes, and they didn't have to fit in modern technique. It was also about disrupting the binary idea of aesthetic is ballet or modern, but to illuminate the spectrum.
Christy Bolingbroke:
And we were halfway through that and then face-to-face classes were suspended. And I really appreciate as my colleague Valerie Ifill, who is the faculty of record, she was like, "Okay, we're trying to still move forward. Everyone's been asked to move their instruction online and that's going to look different for each of us." And I said, "Well, what would be your minimum? Can we still hire these artists? Can we still create jobs and pay them?"
Christy Bolingbroke:
Most of them work outside of an academic institution, so we identified every Friday for the five remaining weeks in this semester, they have a guest virtual class. And I can't think of anything more 21st century than adapting your dance class to be on the internet. And what actually worked for us was the opportunity we were able to add two more spots than we had originally had lined up because we had changed the structure of what our partnership would be. Originally we would just have had a couple remaining, but now we're able to work with all five and still provide that experience for the students and provide an opportunity for artists, as well.
Tim Cynova:
Christy, you're one of the most well-connected people that I know in the dance field. Working at the Parsons Dance Company. You were working at Mark Morris when we first met, and since then I don't work directly for a dance company. And you know everyone and you see everything, and usually I just nod along when you mention names and what you're seeing. I'm like, "That sounds great."
Tim Cynova:
What are you hearing from the field? What are you hearing from friends and colleagues in the dance field right now? You've talked about some experiments and shifting things online. When you're talking to this meeting, where are they? What's on their mind?
Christy Bolingbroke:
I'll try not to generalize but point out a couple of things and then maybe ask some rhetorical questions where I hope the field is thinking. I think everyone came at this and needed to be given the space to process or mourn where they are in that moment.
Christy Bolingbroke:
When we first went into a suspension of face-to-face instruction, we actually had Stephen Petronio Dance Company coming to Akron. And we had a conversation, "Do you still want to come? Instruction has been suspended, but we have seven studios. If you want to work in them, you can spread the dancers out even. And there were less than 10 of them, so at that moment in time we did make the decision and they came. They stayed as long as they could until it felt like they needed to go back home to make sure while they still could really, because that's the uncertainty is knowing what is going on in one part of the country might not be the same experience somewhere else and things were starting to escalate in New York. I'm really proud that we were able to still fully pay them regardless if they stayed for the whole week or not because that's the position that we're in.
Christy Bolingbroke:
What I have heard from other artists and presenters is that this moment, not only mourning the performance that would have been, but the moment also, it tends to highlight the cracks that we already knew were in our system [inaudible 00:12:59] pushed on.
Christy Bolingbroke:
And one of those in particular has been, a presenter or venue may pay a certain fee and that fee includes maybe it's hotel and travel and then something to pay the dancers for that. And the presenter in the moment, if they're canceling two weeks out or a month out, they were like, "Okay, so sorry. We're going to have to cancel. We'll try and reschedule." But the artist then would take that moment, "Well, I've already incurred expenses and I wouldn't have rehearsed for that gig if we didn't have your gig on the docket."
Christy Bolingbroke:
And I think it truly was illuminating our presenters, that's how tightly budgeted our artist presenter relationship is. And there's no one answer out of that because I'm empathetic for both parties because they come from different financial realities, and some may not be able to be as generous immediately as others because they're also tightly budgeted. But I think that little aha and that realization, I hope that we carry that forward and come up with better solutions. So recognizing that the normal was, in fact, broken and that's not maybe everything we're trying to return to.
Christy Bolingbroke:
The other question that came up with some independent artists who were maybe going to have big breaks. They had received major grants this year and now they're still hopeful and want to postpone, but from a cashflow position, because they just incorporated in the last year after being fiscally sponsored for a decade, they're wondering, what's best practice for my artists.
Christy Bolingbroke:
And I was like, "Well, that's the reality. There is no best practice, so you have a choice and what do you want to do?" So I'm hearing artists that were talking about, like, "I want to take care of my cast and collaborators." So they're actually thinking about advancing them for work that they might not do until July or August. And that's a unique position to be in if you can think about from a cashflow for them.
Christy Bolingbroke:
I also find it interesting I'm hearing also that for some dance companies they maybe kept the dancers at arms-length from the administrative day to day, and now, and I saw this a little bit in the 2008 great recession, too. Now it's like, "Oh, you really want to understand, we need to raise $30,000 in order to pay you through this time." And the dancers have been more active. Some colleagues have said it feels like the dancers are working for marketing, or the dancers are working for the development department because the dancers are really doing a lot of the labor to put out those crowd-funding opportunities and engaging their friends and family, and to some great success. I don't know if that's sustainable moving forward, but those are some of the things that I'm seeing right now in the moment.
Christy Bolingbroke:
And then from a performance standpoint, the thing that I worry about is, what was also in our field, is everybody had a different decision-making timeline. I often would tell artists it might be 15 to 18 months from when you and I have a discussion to when you may actually hit the ground in Akron. There are some entities that they're doing 40 or 50 weeks a year of programming, and so for them it's much faster. It's much tighter. And if we can't be decisive to move forward so they can't... If they're only canceling shows month by month, it's like they're reliving the trauma of cancellation over and over again. And I worry that that'll hold some of us back in the field from being able to think about rebounding or re-imagining the next step.
Tim Cynova:
I think it's worth reimagining. Last week, we had Laura Zabel, executive director of Springboard for the Arts on, another great guest, and we talked about very quickly after South by Southwest was canceled and conferences started to cancel, that Springboard put out ethical cancellation principles for people to consider as they're wrestling with these very challenging times and challenging decisions, or difficult decisions, I should say.
Christy Bolingbroke:
Whether it's the ethical recommendations or some of the small micro-victories as CARES Act and different things get passed both federally and at the state level, the inclusion finally of self-employed and contractors. I hope that's something else that we don't let go because already the gig economy was here. It was the majority of our workforce, not just in the arts, but growing more broadly across sectors, and so those are some of the shifts that I think that we should hold on to as far as, okay, at least we got that into the conversation because that would not have been part of the discussion 10 years ago.
Lauren Ruffin:
I feel like we succumb to the concept of gig economy work in a way that we never really had a national conversation about that because that transition from that work being someone's side gig, that's how it was always designed. And then all of a sudden we had people fall into that as full-time work without any of the safety-net apparatus. It was never intended to be that. And yet, I feel like in the arts sector, everyone I talked to you as an artist is doing side gig work, whether it's the majority of their income comes from working in a restaurant or driving Uber or whatever. I just feel like this is a time for us to stop and pause and really think about, is this really what we want our workforce to look like? Although organizations that did a lot of work to get the freelancers and gig economy workers in that bill, really big deal, and now we're starting to see states augment that. So New Mexico is doing... I think the first 2000 people who apply get 750 bucks if they're self-employed. So we're starting to see states augment that money, as well.
Lauren Ruffin:
I keep thinking about Aretha Franklin in terms of cashflow because she didn't sing unless she got paid. She got her cash up front and I keep wondering when artists are going to start moving back into that paradigm that so many singers for years and years, it's just a best practice. Don't invest any rehearsal time until you've got some sort of capital to cover that time and your efforts. So I think your piece around contracting, it'd be interesting to think about what does new contracting agreement for performing artists, what would that look like? And I know that makes it hard for presenters, but I feel like... My knowledge is limited, but I feel like presenters are often in a better position financially than the creatives that are working with them.
Christy Bolingbroke:
They're just in a different flow. Part of my work that started when I got here and I've tried to continue this, is to do a listing tour around the country, which is a focus group to test everything I think I know about what it takes to make work, and is that the same in Charlotte, North Carolina, as it is in New York City or Chicago. And what struck me as I've been in some rooms, I usually partner with a presenting institution and I invite up to six to eight artists and we go around the room. Okay, what's your average budget size? And if you're project-based, include that, and if you're incorporated include your org budget. And I've been in the room where the range was $34,000 to $2 million. And then if I try to insert what is the average budget size for a lot of our presenting institutions, it might only be $700,000.
Christy Bolingbroke:
So I thought then, would a $2 million arts organization realize that they may have more power when they go to a presenter? Would they ask that question? So it's not just the transactional, I'm trying to get these expenses covered. I think the shorthand and is that the presenting institutions, they have a different kind of stability, but what they give us sometimes is flexibility. And that's what I'm excited to nurture in artists is to really own their flexibility to do what we've been doing, NCC Akron's experiment quickly and fail fast. We don't have to do again if it's not really satisfactory and beneficial on the other side of it. And a lot of times our larger institutions can't take those kinds of risks.
Lauren Ruffin:
I love that you brought up power in that conversation. Are you having explicit conversations about money and time and the power dynamic that those things create?
Christy Bolingbroke:
I'm really mindful of my role and relationship to artists is what I can speak to. So when we set up something or have a conversation start to say, "We're going to build something together," we will start to have a monthly discussion and it's very generative. And I'm sure artists may think I'm losing my marbles and repeating myself over and over again, but I always start it by saying, "Anything I suggest is merely a suggestion, not an expectation. So it is your discretion to say I'm not interested in that. Or what about this instead. Or run with it if it really is satisfying to you."
Christy Bolingbroke:
The other thing, just from an operational standpoint, that we've achieved... So in going into our strategic planning process, we did do an assessment of what have we achieved in the last four plus years. And one of the things is that almost all of our programs are somehow shared, whether that is an artist-directed grant. They've gotten a grant from someone else and NCC Akron matches it to make a program happen. Or we have another partner that has a vested interest in exploring dance on film.
Christy Bolingbroke:
I'm trying to also dissipate the idea that NCC Akron has all the money and we just are the bank, but rather how can we aggregate resources is one of our core values. And to me that's a different kind of way to share power and be able to live that through. So we're looking for those opportunities. I think if... That's what I worry about artists right now, feeling the immediate squeeze. They were already pushing against institutions. And so then to have this sort of backlash and feel... It's like you lost your grip while you're already climbing up against the hill.
Tim Cynova:
We're going to take a little bit of a turn here before we close our show today because a number of years ago I also co-hosted a livestream and Christy was one of the first guests on that livestream. And it was something that I co-hosted with my friend, Sydney Skybetter. We called it #SKYNOVA because we just made up a name.
Tim Cynova:
And Christy, I don't know if you took this photo, but you certainly were right there in the room as we interviewed Robert Battle, artistic director of Alvin Ailey. This was maybe a day after it was announced that he was being appointed-
Christy Bolingbroke:
The new AD.
Tim Cynova:
... the new AD. And how far we've come. Also, this was actually recorded in my hotel room at the Dance USA conference, I think in DC, and we just invited all of our friends to be on this show, and we put it online, and-
Christy Bolingbroke:
There's about 25 of us behind whoever took that picture.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, it's all crowded in and then yeah. Robert Sidney and I are there and I'm fairly confident that the first question that we asked Robert, this might've been one of the first interviews that he did after being appointed, was, "What color are unicorns?" So clearly that didn't last.
Christy Bolingbroke:
Can I offer up this perspective because I think it's relevant now with that, Tim.
Tim Cynova:
Please.
Christy Bolingbroke:
We were doing that in a hotel room because the existing structure, I'm not throwing shade, but the existing structure of the conference couldn't envision space for this wacky, what do you mean you're going to film this and it's not going to come from our institutional voice. And that was the days of social media where any institution was trying to really grip onto their methods and they were not willing to experiment with it. Obviously, we've evolved as a field with social media and then when I think about the moment and how many people are offering free classes online and doing different things. And I was within five years that Sky Nova became a more central part, at least publicly, as part of the Dance USA conference, too. So these things, just because there isn't institutional space for it, can you try it and then how will it morph? I'm really curious, how will online classes continue after this moment when people can actually record them in a studio?
Christy Bolingbroke:
I'm really interested, too, in how it's challenging our field to think about capacity. I've logged into a meditation class, which I normally would be a little wary of, if I'm to be honest, because I'm more [inaudible 00:25:23] , less "om." Because then there's 12 of us in a room and you're really self-conscious. There were 600 people logged on. That's a totally different idea.
Christy Bolingbroke:
Dance Church out of Seattle. They've been doing livestreams on Wednesdays and Sundays. Thousands of people. It's changing our ideas of what capacity could be. It's not going to work for everyone to move all of their shows online or all of their classes online, but new opportunities and avenues are being availed to us and it just takes one person to film it in their living room or hotel room. You got to get started somewhere.
Lauren Ruffin:
There's a power struggle happening right now about that because institutions, and we're all affiliated with large educational institutions, they are not going to let that go easily.
Christy Bolingbroke:
No.
Lauren Ruffin:
They are not going to let legitimacy enter the online space until they're ready for it. And so the question for me becomes how do we organize and how are we savvy enough to form new virtual institutions that carry the same sort of legitimacy and offer the same educational value as the ones that we've acceded power to already. And it's happening right now. I think we were talking about it. It might have been with Laura Zabel again around real estate and educational institutions, how they need those physical spaces. There's a lot actually of capital invested in creating physical spaces.
Christy Bolingbroke:
It's a lot easier to raise a capital campaign and build out a building, and you wish that they would raise a line item for a faculty position.
Lauren Ruffin:
Exactly, so I think this is a really interesting time to be thinking about those power dynamics.
Tim Cynova:
As we land the plane, Christy, what are your parting thoughts for us?
Christy Bolingbroke:
The same both personally as well as professionally. This opportunity of resetting, of trying new things and really thinking about what do I want to carry with me to the other side of this, and what do I want to let go during this period, and I would offer that up for everyone.
Tim Cynova:
Christy, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for being a friend for all these years. Have a great rest of the week.
Christy Bolingbroke:
Thanks. You all, too.
Tim Cynova:
Continue the Work. Shouldn't. Suck. Live adventure with us on our next episode when we're joined by Mara Walker, chief operating officer at Americans for the Arts. Miss us in the meantime? You can download more Work. Shouldn't. Suck. Episodes from your favorite podcasting platform of choice and rewatch Work. Shouldn't. Suck. Live episodes over on Workshouldntsuck.co.
Tim Cynova:
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