On Visibility- A Letter to My Local Cultural Council

Good Morning Mr. Benson,

My name is Jennifer Passios and I am a dancer and arts educator in the Greater Boston Area. Although most of my work takes place in the city, I grew up in Lunenburg and still reside here in town.



Students at the American Dance Festival 2016 engaging with faculty facilitators
in conversations about race and gender disparities

With Arts in Education week upon us beginning September 11, I've been thinking a lot about my role as an artist and how my work relates back to elevating the arts in my own community. Until recently, I was supplementing my dancing with work as a substitute teacher and frequently utilized tools from my performance practice in the classroom. Students, even those who I had previously experienced challenges with, reengaged with the material. They left lessons with a deeper understanding of complex concepts and visibly demonstrated more confidence in their learning.  As an artist, keeping creativity alive on the local level is important to me and that spark begins with the students. I'm curious what the cultural council's role is in keeping the arts alive throughout our community, the schools in particular since they constitute such a large breadth of mental plasticity and imagination.

As you may know, Julie Burrows became the Chief of Arts and Culture for the city of Boston on September 23, 2014. This was an exciting jump for those of us with arts professions because her appointment prompted a series of initiatives that boosted arts funding and more importantly, visibility throughout the city. The landscape is becoming one that is more sustainable for artists and, as a result, is helping to bring the entire city together through dance, visual art, music, poetry, writing, film, spoken word, and conversation. I was on the town of Lunenburg website earlier today and didn't come across a tab for the Cultural Council anywhere on the page. I'm curious as to why. I am not single minded enough to think that the town doesn't have a multitude of committees and initiatives that need to be present and easy to find on the website, but it disheartened me that the Cultural Council isn't represented at all.

The first time I came upon Lunenburg's Cultural Council, I was researching the LCC grant program in conjunction with my own work. However, in reflecting more on arts initiatives, it seems to me that I can contribute more to this community in partnership with the Council rather than as a grant seeker. I was wondering if there were any open seats on the council and if so, if you could provide me with some more information regarding present goals, active projects, and time commitment? It is important to me as a young person to represent my demographic and increase access to career paths that are underfunded and underrepresented, particularly in small town settings.

My goal here is to facilitate dialogue. I am curious about the work of the Cultural Council because its work is important to community growth. Being an artist has given me the opportunity to connect to people of the world, to think quickly, to become a voice for positive social change, to show empathy, to create, to advocate, and to spread awareness.

I look forward to continuing the conversation and hope that there is some way I can contribute to your efforts in town this year.

Cheers,

Jen 

< 501: Verb

I sat beside a hay bale on a farm in Vermont and surveyed an open barn doorway lit by twinkle lights and vibrating with the memory of fiddles. The eves dripped, conjuring thoughts of an evening punctuated by skipping through puddles, whooping with the thunder, and carving paths through the torrents with a blue feather. Across from me as the last of the droplets slid down my eyelashes knelt a fellow weather worshiper. Connected by the rain we talked, simple things mostly-

Where do you live?- A yurt in New York, but I went to school in Boston



Moonshine Music Festival (c) TW Collins

What for?- Electrical Engineering

And the ever difficult,

Why did you choose that?

 “I’ve always been fascinated by making something out of nothing”

Simple, but stupefying.

The poetics left me reeling.

Today it is raining again and as I reflect back on this encounter I have realized a truth about why I have chosen to be an artist.

Hold on to your hats- None of that “It makes me feel free”, “I can let out my emotions”, “I can say the things that words cannot”, Hallmark business.

I dance for the same reason that humans are enthralled by newborn babies.  

Confused?

Understandable.

Let me return to farms. I recently watched FarmHer, a PBS documentary profiling women in agriculture. About halfway through the program, the videographer zooms in on a small tray of verdant potted seedlings as a dirt encrusted hand motions gently, reminiscing on farming and miracles. Ten days prior, these tiny plants were encased in a protective coating underground. Cells negotiated and differentiated. Roots spread out. The reaching fingers soaked up water and made a deal with new shoots- I’ll hydrate you if you nourish me. Gametes battled their way towards the light. Shoots wriggled past soil, fertilizer, perhaps an insect or two, and the lucky ones pumped their fists triumphantly through the Earth. Viola. Plant babies.

We are floored by birth, but it’s not the baby itself that is miraculous. The tiny warm thing squirming around becomes a source of wonder because of the processes that brought it there- conception, pregnancy, growth, cell division, development, turning a thought into a creature. Looking at that baby, we don’t see an object, we see all of the actions that brought the baby here. The miracle is that those actions ultimately manifested as a person that will continue navigating the world through yet more actions.

The baby in a parent’s arms, or pushing up though the soil, or stumbling around on 4 legs is the physical manifestation of millions of processes. It is evidence of verbs.

Life as an artist is about being aware of those processes. It’s difficult to understand because the rewards aren’t often tangible. In being this way though, art is miraculous. As a performer, I get to be that newborn, the result of thought made manifest and brought to fruition, of making something out of nothing.

I dance because I am a verb.

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