Artist in Residence for Dialogue-Building, Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives

Poster design by Brandin Monson, with watercolor by Eryn Rosenthal

Artist in Residence for Dialogue-Building,

Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives

Diversity and arts-based advocacy and program-building

As a King-Chávez-Parks Visiting Professor and the first Artist in Residence for Dialogue-Building, Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives at the University of Michigan (U-M) in 2016-18, I designed and implemented arts-based initiatives that ask what the body can bring to larger discussions of diversity, empowerment, and inclusion. After a period of contextual analysis, consultation and discussion with stakeholders across diverse communities on campus, I tailored this work to particular diversity-based challenges at U-M. Based in on-the-ground research I had begun years earlier with anti-Apartheid activists in South Africa, as well as democracy and economic justice activists and artists in Spain, I integrated this research with recent campus activism at U-M as well as throughout South Africa, in conversation with aspects of the Modern Civil Rights Movement in the US and the Black Lives Matter movement. I then brought together a coalition of 13 departments to support the experiential, body-based work of this artist residency across U-M’s Ann Arbor campus. Drawing upon my ongoing research on the connections and discrepancies between Contact Improvisation and democratic activism in South Africa, Spain and the US, the residency brought together diverse intergenerational and cross-disciplinary participants during a politically challenging time to build cross-campus relationships, meaningful dialogue, and collaborative research on larger questions of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Press:

RC Visiting Artist and Student Present at

Convening of Campus DEI Leaders

Photo of Ali Charfauros ’19 by Eric Bronson; photo of Eryn Rosenthal, MFA’15 by Shelby Polisuk

I was honored for my original, arts-based contributions to diversity at U-M by the President and Provost’s Office, and curated the powerful performance of one of my students, Aly Charfauros. I gave an address to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) leaders highlighting the role of the arts in building substantive reflection and multi-layered discussion on complex socio-political questions (for more info on Aly’s performance and my address, see press article). I also collaborated with social justice educator Kevin Goodman on Intergroup Relations (IGR) applications of this body-based diversity research, and spoke on an alumni panel at Yale at the height of the 2018 “sleeping while Black” crisis.

Yale University Panel on Bias and Inclusion: Alumni panel discussing recent bias-related incidents at Yale, and proposed actions for the university. In armchairs, from left: with Thiru Vignarajah, myself, Jaime Harrison, and Raheemah Abdulaleem. Moderated by DeVon Nolt, National Urban League, at right (Yale University, May 2018). Photo by Tiffany McKinney Gardner

Poster designs 1-4 by Karly Schafer Gibson, featuring collage by Sam Dubin ’20 and Amanda Kuo ’20 and drawing by William Kentridge; poster design 5 by Brandin Monson with watercolor by Eryn Rosenthal

In conjunction with Personal, Present and Immediate: Making Performance on Socio-Political Questions (a previous iteration of the course I teach at Yale, Making Performance on Socio-Political Questions), the U-M residency also included a public film series I curated and facilitated; professional development trainings; interdisciplinary workshops and a working group. It also culminated in Root Vegetables, an interdisciplinary diversity and resilience initiative I developed in the Dance Department on groundedness, growth and expanding definitions of beauty. The project came out of reflection on larger questions of institutional and departmental culture, and ways of productively shifting micro-environments toward being more inclusive and welcoming for people from diverse backgrounds. The performance, made in collaboration with first year dancers at U-M and first grade sculptors at a local elementary school, toured throughout Detroit and Ann Arbor, MI, and garnered several awards. More information at links above, as well as a sampling of photos, below.

While these programs were custom built in response to diversity and inclusion-related challenges and particularities of micro-environments on U-M’s campus at that time, I would be delighted to discuss potential adaptations or creation of similar programs for your college or organization. Be in touch here.

Dance and Dialogue workshops

Photos from Dance and Dialogue workshops by Kevin Goodman and Eryn Rosenthal

Root Vegetables:

Sense-making of marginality, positive identity construction, and expanding definitions of beauty

The centre does not necessarily
have to be located at the imperial centre,
the centre can be shifted
ideologically through imagination
and this shifting can recreate history.
— Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies

The Root Vegetables Project was one of the culminations of my residency on dialogue building, diversity and inclusion initiatives on the University of Michigan’s campus. It comes out of reflection on larger questions of institutional and departmental culture, and ways of productively shifting micro-environments toward being more inclusive and welcoming for people from diverse backgrounds.

The actual performance of Root Vegetables is a joyful repertory piece for 18 first year university dancers. Because the work toured to hospitals, senior centers, high schools and elementary schools in central and southeastern Michigan, the performance was designed to be inviting and legible for audiences new to dance and contemporary performance.

Before our process began, first year dance students brought me photos they liked of themselves in first grade, which I blew up and taped across the studio mirror at eye level before every rehearsal. As new college students in a conservatory dance program, students undergo intense social and academic scrutiny under exposure to other people’s conceptions of beauty and body image, at a moment when they are newly uprooted from their family and familiar surroundings. I wanted to give the dancers a deeper soil-level experience to examine diversity in their own field: seeding agency, groundedness and other creative tools to examine and expand their own aesthetic understandings, and build space for future growth and inquiry in their careers. As part of the project, first year dancers reconnect with their remembered and recorded senses of self, and reflect on their own received and developing notions of beauty. The rehearsal process involved written reflection, drawing activities, a heightened sense of play, and physical, movement-based creation as part of an interdisciplinary, “centre-shifting” work. You can see videos of the work, below. The performance ends with the students approaching the audience with one arm extended, sharing the younger photos of themselves. The project also involved collaboration with local first grade sculptors from Haisley Elementary School, and root vegetables research with local farmers market Argus Farm Stop.

For more information on the project, including videos, further photos, and credits, please see https://erynrosenthal.com/2018/04/root-vegetables/