I started a Patreon page this month, and while I’m still trying to figure out how to make a more streamlined button for it, you can visit it here
I decided to move away from the kickstarter or indiegogo model of fundraising for a couple of reasons, and I wanted to share those reasons and some thoughts I’m having about fundraising as an individual artist.
I started this year asking what it is I want to be growing in my artistic practices, where I wanted my work to go or to take me. It’s been the focus of 2019. One of the first things that came up for me was that I no longer wanted to define myself as only a dance artist. I wanted to acknowledge my other practices involving text, embroidery, sound and slide-shows as equally important to my dances, and as choreographic practices in themselves.
The second thing that came up for me was that I needed to acknowledge the way I work in sets, collections or archives. I look at dances as collections of movements, the same way I see a zine as a collection of images. This way of thinking and making begs a necessity of scale to work effectively. Its not so much of a thing to imagine, catalogue and perform 100 Moves for Back Up Dancers, but something interesting begins when you ask for a possibly impossible 1000.
Planning for large format, or for longer processes, or for scope has often felt like a non-starter for me as an independent artist. Many opportunities to present work necessitate that the work be under 20 minutes, or that it already be in process before it will receive any funding. I have tried to fit my performance work into these models, and I often end up proposing something I’m not really interested in as a result. I swore up and down to myself this February that I would make a 20 minute duet that could easily travel around to different performance opportunities, festivals, etc. And instead I have spent the year creating the first 140 of 1000 “moves” with a trio (myself, Elanor Bock, and Kirsten Michelle Schnittker) starting a process that I imagine taking place over multiple states, many more collaborators, existing in many different iterations and documented in innumerable ways. My work has sprawl, which could indicate chaos…or ambition.
So how do you fund that ambition? How do you pay the people helping you to give shape to it, to create the thing you imagined, because now that you’ve imagined it - you can’t not make it, and you can’t make it alone? In the past I have used project specific crowdfunding and to good effect. Last fall when I did an indiegogo campaign it raised almost 130% of the goal amount. But I have also had my own issues with this kind of fundraising. The times I see campaigns for artists who’s work I care deeply about, but cannot fund that particular month or week come to mind. Creating rewards gifts that eventually take up more time than the project your funding.
I want to fund my work in a way that feeds the processes, reflects my larger constellation of practices, and honors the on-going nature of making larger scale work. I want the people supporting it it feel continuously engaged, and I want to cultivate a sense of accountability to them as I continue to create.
I came into contact with Patreon as a platform where meme accounts and twitch gamers could get paid. There was something a little “pay me on youtube” about it for me, initially. But when I noticed that people were starting to use it to offer tutorials in their mediums, or to offer additional content I realized that it could be manipulated into a platform that would answer the wants I named above.
The sprawl I’m making currently is 1000 Moves for Back Up Dancers. 1000 Moves for Back Up Dancers is a multi-part project that is a laboratory, archive and performance. My goal is to compile 1000 Moves in four different cities over the next three years, presenting this archive in a series of performances in each city with varying casts and conditions. 1000 Moves for Back Up Dancers addresses the conditions of dance in America, the different values we assign to minimalism and movement, and a desire to acknowledge and reinvest in the dance work happening in geographies other than NYC.
At my first goal of $250 a month I can compensate my collaborators, Elanor Bock and Kirsten Michelle Schnittker appropriately and continue to develop 1000 Moves for Back Up Dancers in New York City. This means at least 50 people would need to donate at the $1/month tier ( $1! ) and 80 would need to give at the $3/mo. tier.
Go check out the patreon page I made some videos with words coming out of my mouth, and one is the Warm Up for Life 1000 Moves Special Edition Workout Video available only to Patrons, at all tiers.