Art is our response

We began shooting Art Is Our Response in the summer of 2020. By then, we’d been at home for months, passing shuttered theaters and galleries, missing the nourishment of the arts. It was a moment of tremendous collective grief, and I craved a sense of community rooted in physical space. I was hungry for reasons and ways to hope. 

When Angela Harris of Dance Canvas approached us to document a new choreographic residency program, I was thrilled. Because of the pandemic, Angela had had to cancel Dance Canvas’ signature show and halt much of the organization’s programming. And yet, in the midst of COVID-19, the killing of George Floyd and a breathtaking degree of economic uncertainty, artists and audiences alike needed an outlet — a space to create, a place to process all that we were grappling with. 

Dance Canvas and Atlanta Contemporary partnered to offer a summer choreographic residency. They commissioned eight choreographers to create new works in response to the times. For safety reasons, they would create solos or duets in Atlanta Contemporary’s outdoor pavilion, a beautiful space in a former truck repair depot. In late September of 2020, the choreographers would premiere their works at the pavilion before an intimate, distanced audience. 

Photo: Arvin Temkar

We had the wonderful opportunity to film the entire creative process — interviewing the choreographers and program organizers, documenting their rehearsals and struggles (heat, bugs and vicious summer storms!), and, finally, the end-of-summer showcase. There were so many lessons from this project, especially from the artists themselves, about pain, joy, healing and transcendence. To see the audiences so moved by their pieces was a reminder of how essential art is, particularly in difficult times.

It’s been almost a year since the choreographic residency wrapped, and more than six months since we finished editing the short film, Art Is Our Response. Much has changed since then, but as I feel the weight of this moment, I am as hungry for hope as ever, especially the kind of hope that artists bring. I think of the words of science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin: 

"Hard times are coming, when we'll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We'll need writers who can remember freedom—poets, visionaries—realists of a larger reality." 

Hard times are still here, and we want the voices of not only writers but all artists to help us imagine real grounds for hope and the possibility of a larger reality. 

The residency is now in its second year, with a new cohort set to premiere their works this month. I’m looking forward to experiencing the work of a whole new cohort of choreographers and revisiting those from 2020, whose work inspired me during a difficult year. 

As a companion to their pieces, our film will also premiere at Atlanta Contemporary on September 10. If you’re in Atlanta that day, I’d love to share the film with you. Tickets are available here. In the meantime, I’m excited to share the trailer for Art Is Our Response. 

I’d love to hear what’s inspiring you these days, and what’s giving you hope.

-Monica