Parsons Dance is one of many performing arts organizations exploring the meaning and consequences of gender for our performers, trainees, creative works, and audience. Our nearly 40 years of history on stages around the world means we have a big platform to share Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) values – but, as with any such established organization, we also have a lot of traditions and legacy practices to examine for improvement.
At a time when the very identities of Trans and other gender-non-conforming (GNC) individuals are under greater scrutiny and even attack, we are updating our own cultural practices to be sure our spaces are as inclusive and welcoming as possible for everyone who watches, learns, and works with Parsons Dance. Today, honoring the Trans Week of Visibility & Action, we’d like to share some progress and goals concerning the audition experience of dance performers themselves.
Young dance professionals, as the vanguard of new talent arriving in our industry, have always challenged the rules of engagement with arts institutions; today’s newest artists push boundaries of gender expression onstage and off. In a recent company audition, Parsons Dance explored several new practices meant to engage with and welcome that self-expression instead of suppressing it. The audition experience resulted in many new principles that we’re excited to repeat and improve in our upcoming audition settings. Here are a few of the things we tried:
Onsite, pronoun stickers (he/him, she/her, they/them, and blank) were encouraged to be worn by Parsons dancers and staff, and were made available to participants at the audition check-in station. Participants could choose to wear one or more stickers if they wished, including writing pronouns of their own on blank stickers if we lacked the best terms to represent them.
We set expectations at the beginning of each audition group by reading aloud a one-page, bulleted welcome script before moving from the holding room to the audition studio.
This let us share the challenges and pressures inherent in a competitive evaluation environment like an open audition, including the continued influence of gender on roles maintained by the Company in past, current, and future performances.
We also acknowledged that our own journey with and treatment of inclusion principles remains incomplete, and offered all participants to voice their own opinions about the way we should proceed to address them going forward.
To this end, our staff Director of Inclusion dressed to be visibly present and identifiable in transitional spaces throughout the event, and self-identified as a resource to share feedback, comfort/discomfort, or other non-artistic commentary about the audition experience.
A specific, intentional ‘decompression’ space was held on-premises–with tempting snacks, juice, and water–to encourage organic visitation and discussion.
We also offered a post-audition survey as a compendium to the onsite decompression space for additional, and better anonymized, feedback.
Pre-audition survey questions during the registration process solicited optional self-identification along racial, ethnic, gender, and disability demographics, to help us better understand and accommodate the representation in the room before our auditionees arrived.
For next steps, we intend to repeat and improve the experience in upcoming auditions with still greater intentionality and opportunities for participation in our IDEA efforts. We are also developing a whitepaper about these efforts for our peers in the industry, to welcome their own creative ideas and suggestions going forward.
While the complex decision-making of the audition process makes it difficult to evaluate how successfully we are navigating the issue of gender in a repertory company, we are certain that they have already made and will continue to make Parsons a more welcoming home for young professional performers in our industry.
Of course, the important inclusion work of empowering Trans and other GNC individuals is not limited to the workplace culture at Parsons, or to the arts more generally. Below are some resources from the organization stewarding the national Trans Week of Visibility & Action.
Learn: Trans Week shares the 2021 genesis of its platform and how it aims to support and uplift Trans youth, artists, and more.
Act: The American Civil Liberties Union is tracking the more than 400 bills attacking LGBTQ+ rights in legislatures around the country. Find out which might be under consideration in your area, and contact your elected representatives to voice your objection.
Donate: While many great causes exist to build Trans power and solidarity, we love the three arts organizations suggested by Trans Week and will link them here.
Image description: The eight Company members of Parsons Dance stand grouped together in black, pastel, and jewel-tone rehearsal wear. Their faces gaze outward from a cluster of bodies, with straightened arms outstretched in all directions towards the edge of the frame. Radiating from their fingertips are the pink, blue, and white striped colors of the Transgender flag.
Original photo by Andrew Eccles; image manipulation by Parsons Dance.