By Lisa Traiger
Christopher K. Morgan, photo Brianne Bland
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to keep us at home away for theaters and dance communities, Washington, D.C., dance artists, studio directors, company directors and presenters have been as nimble in this time of crisis as one would expect from swift-footed dancers. With its $2.25 million annual budget, a full-time staff of 15, plus seven part-time, a nationally acclaimed performance series of 30-weeks for the 2019-20 season, and a cadre of community and youth programs serving the Northeast Washington neighborhood, there’s no larger nor more influential player on the local D.C.-area dance scene than Dance Place.
Executive and artistic director Christopher K. Morgan, who took the helm at Dance Place in 2017, continues to direct and choreograph for Christopher K. Morgan & Artists (CKM&A), an independent touring company. Born in Orange County, Calif., Christopher draws on his Native Hawaiian ancestry and diverse, international dance career in his work as a choreographer, educator, facilitator, curator and performer. His work has been called “Transcendent and entrancing” by The Washington Post and, in 2011, the year he founded CKM&A, Dance Magazine profiled him as one of six breakout choreographers in the United States.
This spring, Morgan was readying his newest work, Native Intelligence / Innate Intelligence, for its world premiere. Touching on charged issues of what it means to be native in a nation where immigration, race and identity are politicized, the piece draws on Morgan’s multiple embodied languages, incorporating modern dance, hula, Hawaiian chant, and live music. The work asks viewers to ponder nature versus nurture: how does what we inherit genetically influence who we become, and how much is shaped by our environment.
When not in the studio, Morgan is in demand as a speaker, panelist and grants reviewer for his informed and balanced perspective, and has been invited to participate in national and international discussions on cultural appropriation and equity. At Dance Place he oversees the curation of performances by national and international choreographers annually, a school for youth and adults, youth enrichment programs, and continues Dance Place’s leadership in creative placemaking. In the summer, Christopher directs Art Omi: Dance, an annual collaborative residency for international choreographers in Ghent, N.Y., and has taught at dozens of institutions of higher learning. He and his husband, opera director Kyle Lang, reside in the Takoma neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
You are a dancer, choreographer and artistic director of your own company and you serve as the artistic and executive director of Dance Place, the region’s most prolific presenter of dance. You’re a teacher, a public speaker and arts advocate. So you’re seeing ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic across multiple venues and ventures. How has the pandemic has affected your company? CKM&A was scheduled to premiere Native Intelligence / Innate Intelligence at Dance Place May 2-3, 2020.
Our new evening-length work received National Performance Network Creation and Development funding and was co-commissioned by the Maui Arts and Cultural Center and Dance Place. Then it was to be immediately followed by a performance at Reston CenterStage. The Dance Place performance was postponed while the Reston Center Stage performance had to be cancelled.
Morgan moderating a panel at The REACH at The Kennedy Center, photo courtesy Dance Place
I’m super bummed about that. Yet, I also feel very fortunate that we have engagements that are going to happen with that same work next year. The Dance Place premiere can be rescheduled for the fall; it’s better to have something delayed than fully cancelled. I feel fortunate that the funding we have in place is allowing us to help care for the collaborators of the work during this postponement. I actually sent them all paychecks in early April, some of that was cancellation fees. Reston (Va.) CenterStage was incredibly generous and left the full fee intact, even though they had to fully cancel the performance, I'm so grateful to them. Dance Place is covering 50 percent of the fee now, and 50 percent when we perform, as originally contracted for all artists on our season.
Where were you in the creation process?
Rehearsals have, of course, stopped. In late February, we had just finished a residency to create and fabricate the set at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, for a week. We were just starting to hit our stride having wrapped up the design issues. We were ready to rehearse more frequently and really build the work, then it all ground to a halt. But I feel so fortunate that we have funding in place. We can care for the artists and we can reschedule.
Did you consider rehearsing via Zoom?
We do a weekly meeting with the whole collaborative team to do personal check-ins and I share work-related updates, but I don't have the capacity to add virtual rehearsals at this time with my administrative workload.
I started a small relief fund from the CKM&A operating budget and anybody who’s worked with us can apply for some relief funding. I sent out two relief checks in April, that’s a little bit to help the artists.
Beyond your own work, as a curator do you expect artists to deal with some of the themes we are facing during this pandemic – isolation, uncertainty, perseverance, loneliness?
I think we’re definitely going to see that. What will be the most interesting and perhaps connect with people the most will be themes of isolation and separation. That’s going to be huge and important: How do we navigate that? There will be so many repercussions from this time, health and financial, but also socially. We’re going to feel such a difference and when we get back to not practicing social distancing; it’s going to take a while for people to reacclimate to public spaces. I noticed how quickly I acclimated to circling away from people in the grocery store. And I’m someone who gravitates towards people. I can only imagine how that repatterning of our social behavior is going to affect everything moving forward. An artistic response to that is going to be needed. This will be a huge subject matter for a lot of our artists moving forward.
Christopher K. Morgan & Artists, featuring Tiffanie Carson, Abby Farina and Ashley Rivette, photo Jonathan Hsu
We might also see a lot of dances for small living-room-sized spaces. We’ll be able to exactly imagine where the couch was.
With all public events closed for the near future, tell us about Dance Place’s Virtual Programming and its commitment to artists.
We wanted our virtual programming [to be] a gift to the community. Though we do rely on earned income from classes, they’re also equally part of building and strengthening our community. The warmth and goodwill that have come with [free online classes] have felt important. We had about $2,500 in donations come in through the Virtual Class series in just the first couple of weeks. We thought, if we’re willing to offer something, [our students] will come back, respond and support it.
We’re also offering a Virtual Presentation Series to fill the gap in performances, which is also free. We’re asking hard questions about the virtual presentations and how they will work. We have talked about what happens if this goes on for a longer period of time. Perhaps there will be a limit on the number who can publicly gather, so we could get a choreographer, some artists and some tech with lighting in the theater, but can’t gather an audience. [Perhaps Dance Place] could do a really beautifully produced conversation and that might be a point where we look at online ticketed events. Right now, we want to find the right balance of live events for our community, but also recognize the production values we’re able to put into it.
Christopher K. Morgan & Artists in “On Defen(c)e,” photo by Jonathan Hsu
How does this bode for the longer term for Dance Place and the field at large?
We are still paying our full-time staff at 100 percent and will be able to through the summer from our general operating budget without drawing on our reserves. From a larger perspective, this [situation] is making us think about what happens after this. All programming, not just Dance Place, but dance in general, is going to be changed. This is the tipping point that pushes us as a field to more thoughtfully engage in and design virtual programming.
While this is a very serious health and financial crisis, something like this always creates change and change can be opportunity. How can we … really start to transform the ways that we’re working? Everyone at Dance Place values the importance of live performance and gathering together. And I hope we can do that soon. But if this is part of our new reality, we need to really think carefully about how can we look at what we’re learning from this period and really start to transform the ways that we’re working.