An Act of Whose God? with Yanira Castro

Transcript

Alexis Clements  

Hello, and welcome to the first ever episode of The Answer is No. My name is Alexis Clements and I’ll be your host. Today I’ll be speaking with interdisciplinary artist and choreographer, Yanira Castro.

[opening music]

On this podcast, our goal is to have conversations with artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers, focused on some of the things we talk about with our close friends and partners, but that we rarely speak about in public — bad gigs; terrible opportunities. 

People throw the word “opportunity” around a lot in the arts. But anyone who’s been trying to make a go of it for any period of time knows that these so-called “opportunities” often fall short. And yet, so much of the time we’re also very hesitant to say no. So our goal is to dig into what it means to evaluate these quote-unquote opportunities in order to make sure they’re actually benefiting our art practice in some way. The real point of all of this is a humble attempt at mutual aid through storytelling, because we have to say no to the bad gigs in order to build a better field for everyone. 

[music introducing “Statistically Speaking” section] 

I love data, particularly when it comes to the arts, because so much about the arts is opaque and incredibly difficult to discern. So at the start of every episode, I’ll be throwing in one or two relevant statistics to help offer some perspective.

For this episode, I’m going to start with a doozy. According to the advocacy group Americans for the Arts, 95% of all artists across fields have lost at least some of their income since the pandemic started. And two thirds of artists have experienced some period of unemployment, even if it was only temporary.  

Given those statistics, you might be wondering why on earth we would start a podcast about saying no to bad gigs, when so many people have lost so much work during the pandemic. Add in the pre existing and ongoing pandemic of white supremacy, and its twin, economic inequality, and things can appear pretty bleak. But what’s particularly noteworthy about this moment is that so many people have responded to the circumstances they find themselves in by demanding a better future, demanding an arts ecosystem that doesn’t exploit, that is not riven by structural bias, but instead is grounded in building a more sustainable and equitable model for everyone involved.

My guest today, Yanira Castro, is a co-author of the document “Creating New Futures: Phase One.” It’s one of the first group-compiled documents that I read early in the pandemic that took the anger and fear, lost income and lost opportunities that so many were experiencing in the arts, and channeled them into a passionate call for change. Yanira, along with Laura Colby, Sarah Greenbaum, Emily Johnson, jumatatu poe, Brian Rogers, Michael Sakamoto, Karen Sherman, Amy Smith, and Tara Aisha Willis, as well as numerous contributors, compiled a nearly 200-page document focused on bringing equity and a new ethical framework to the world of live performance, with a particular emphasis on the field of dance.

While the creation of the document was sparked by the losses brought on by the pandemic, it quickly evolved into a much broader first step in challenging the structures in which dance and live performance are created and supported.

Maybe because my own background touches on live performance and theater, I was particularly struck by the subject and scope of the “Creating New Futures” document. And having had the chance to see some of Yanira’s work in the past, I was also excited to get to know more about her practice and her pathway into the arts.

[music]

So one of the ways I like to start is to ask people what they imagined they would be when they grew up.

Yanira Castro  

All I knew was that I did not want to be any of the labels that were thrown out at me at that time. And I will also just say that this is when I moved to the US from Puerto Rico. What were the expectations, or how did you feel the expectations about what your life might look like before you moved to the US?

Well, I will just say that I was in an extended giant family of cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, and I was as often in other people’s homes as I was in mine. I was never asked what I wanted to be or I don’t remember. Or if it was, it was an a much more dreamlike space, because we moved, and our family was still in Puerto Rico. So we didn’t bring our extended family with us, right? So we de facto walked into an American nuclear family situation, which is, I mean, we can go on and on about that dysfunction. But that’s not what this podcast is about. [laughter]

What happened that year, or if it was not that first year, it was the second year, so it was either second or third grade, was being in a library and being asked by your teacher directly, what do you want to be when you grow up? And everybody had an answer and tey were quick — teacher fire man, ba-pa-pa ba-pa-pa-pa. You know? Because of course, back then they would have set fireman instead of firefighter, right? And I was completely like — I was overwhelmed with like, what? Like, I don’t want to be — like, why would I want to be a teacher? Why would I want to like — I’m like in this dream space. So I remember just saying, I’m going to just say the next the thing that the person next to me says. So I don’t know what I said. But all I knew was that none of those things sounded like things that had a future, like that I could imagine a future, for myself. 

Alexis Clements  

When did the idea of becoming an artist start to feel like a possibility for you?

Yanira Castro  

The first time I heard the word artist, I had the same feeling as I had at that library, which is, what does that mean? So because that didn’t mean a specific thing, I immediately latched on to that. And I don’t know when that happened, but it was early on — like at some point — 12, 11, 13, somewhere around there. I was like, I want to be that thing because it doesn’t have boundaries around what I can do.

Alexis Clements  

So you’ve got this idea as a young person, and then you have to encounter adult life at a certain point. So, this beautiful, boundless notion of artist meets up with real life at a certain point. Did you go to school? 

Yanira Castro  

I went to school wanting to be a novelist. I wanted to write books. I wrote my first novel when I was like 14. And so I was deeply invested in those worlds, and in those emotional scapes. I did love dance and performance. The way that I had come into contact with that was through musicals, because the way that in which I learned English was really through watching television. And HBO was a saving grace, because you could watch the same movie over and over and over again. And when you can do that, then you can figure out the nuance of language, right? So I think there are several movies that I’ve seen, like 30 times. [laughter] And one of them is “The Legend of Billie Jean.” [laughter]

When I got to college, I went to school at Amherst, and I went there because of Emily Dickinson. And, you know, again, not having a sense of the college environment, because my family didn’t have that sense of like, liberal arts colleges and state universities — we just didn’t have that language. So we didn’t talk about it that way. I was like Emily Dickinson lived there.

Alexis Clements  

That’s where I’m going.

Yanira Castro  

I’m going there. [laughter] I’m going where a woman can be solitary. [laughter] But at the same time that I went there, at that time, [the University of Massachsetts,] Amherst had a fine arts center, still has a fine arts center, but back then, had a really robust one that was showing a lot of experimental work. And so we’re talking early 90s. And I’ll just never forget sitting in that theater and having this feeling of like, what is this world? It looks boundless — the definition. Someone told me, this is a dance, but what Bill T. Jones was doing was sitting across from a local preacher and talking about God, across a long wooden table. And he was describing that as a dance. And to me, that was, yes, yes, that’s a dance. And I understood that somehow at 18 or 19.

And so, again, it’s, it’s the same exact thing. It’s the idea of like these boundaries not existing, and the boundlessness of what one could do. So that was my first interaction with a performance that wasn’t a musical. Within a year of that program, I was like, I better go and figure out what that life looks like. So the last part of that story is that I interned with Ping Chong, here in New York. It was his 20th anniversary and so there was a big tour that they were doing with several pieces. And my favorite… I have several favorite stories about Ping, but one of them was when he invited us into his home to feed us a meal, which was amazing. And it was a small, efficiency-type of apartment. During that dinner, someone said that he had just recently quit his day job. And so there was, at this time 20, and going like, oh, so in my 50s, if I become a choreographer, I can expect that I won’t quit my day job until my 50s. And that I won’t have a giant spacious home. 

Alexis Clements 

I love that you bring that up, because that is ultimately one of the things that I think is so missing and so unavailable, at least to the people, many of the people I’ve spoken to over the course of my career, is that concrete role model, where you get to see beneath the surface. Because there is so much opacity, and so much difficulty in understanding how people keep the lights on at home, separate from how they’re trying and hustling to keep the lights on on their shows. And having that role model is very unique. It sounds like that actually set a very, let’s say, realistic expectation. How did that then inform you as you stepped off of school and moved into your working life?

Yanira Castro  

Getting to work with paying in that way, was a total gift. I had always worked summers and had done everything from waitressing — I was terrible, got fired twice. But what I found that I was really good at was data entry. Basically, I figured out that I was really good at systems, that I could walk into almost any work environment, and I could figure out their computer systems and work that situation.

But that did mean that basically from nine to five, I couldn’t go take class. When other artists asked me about that, especially when they’re first coming to New York, I say, well, the detriment to that was that I really didn’t get to meet my peers until way later in life. You know, those people that were going to Movement Research daily, and taking class from 10 to 12, and then afterwards, having a coffee — that wasn’t me. I sometimes was able to get out of work and work later, like I would work those arrangements. I was like, I’ll come in at eight, and then I’ll run and take class and then I’ll come back and I’ll work later. I was able to work those arrangements. But what it meant was like I literally walked in right at the second, and then I had to run to get back out. That just didn’t set up for the most conducive, like, creating-a-community experience.

So I was very siloed for the first, I’d say, 10 years of my life in New York, in terms of getting to know the community. And that, that was a detriment. The way that it was positive, was, you know, within like maybe four or five months of being in New York, the place I was temping at said, would you like a position here? And I said, sure, as long as I can go to class from 10 to 12. And that’s how I was able to manage it for 14 years. 

Alexis Clements 

But in terms of how your labor was valued in the different spaces and different kinds of things that you’re doing as an artist who also has a day job, wow in your brain, were you thinking about that — in terms of, my labor is valued this way here; my labor is valued this way here. 

Yanira Castro  

I don’t think I started to really understand my work as an artist as labor until I had to quit my day job because I had a child. And they wouldn’t let me work part time. And I’d had the same job for 14 years. And then I was like, wait, I don’t, what am I going to do? Oh, wait, I actually need to make a living doing this thing. [laughter] I gave myself a five year plan to make a living out of my career. And I’ll just say that that’s still not worked out. [laughter] 

Alexis Clements 

So one of the big reasons that I wanted to speak with you is because of this document that you co-created with a group of people early in the pandemic called “Creating New Futures: Phase One.” Can you tell me what the beginning of the pandemic was like for you in your artistic work? 

Yanira Castro  

I was, quote-unquote fortunate in that I had just finished a giant project. And I was intentionally taking the spring off, meaning I wasn’t building anything new, I wasn’t going into rehearsals, I wasn’t planning to show anything. So I didn’t immediately experience the cancellations. I had a bunch of performances and tours in the summer. But in March and April, those cancellations hadn’t happened yet. 

Alexis Clements 

People were still hopeful that the summer might come back. Yeah.  

Yanira Castro  

I wasn’t yet thinking about the summer. But what I was seeing was people who I highly respected on social media, describing these massive cancellations. I knew what that meant. I knew what that meant to them. I knew what that meant to the artists that they were supporting. I knew what that meant to the entire field, and to the entire freelance field. And I am in a very different situation than I was in the first 14 years that I came to New York, in that I’m, I’m married, and my partner has a job and it’s steady, and it’s, you know, whatever. But most people don’t necessarily have that. And also a career should not depend on that, right? This has been a problem for a long time. It’s obviously made apparent by the current situation. But really, what we’re talking about is systemic. And so if we’re going to deal with a systemic problem, then we have to, in some way, detail it out — like say, what is the issue, and not just these particular cancellations right now, but how that whole system has set us up for this to happen. And so my suggestion was, could we create a document that is talking about the freelance artist, and those institutions that hire us. We need to have a conversation, and we need to talk about equitable risk.

Alexis Clements  

Dance works can take years to create and cost ten of thousands of dollars to produce. What does it mean for a choreographer like you, when you’ve built a show, arranged for it to tour, and then it gets cancelled. 

Yanira Castro  

Usually, the way that that is formulated, is looking at the dance as a product which you pay for afterwards. Sometimes, many times, there’s a deposit that’s paid in advance of the tour, let just say it’s like $10,000, and you’re going to come and do a piece for two days, at some event. You might receive $5,000, six weeks in advance, and it’s seen as a deposit for the eventual work. And of course, the dancers, you know, get the worst part of the deal, because they’re not involved in those contract negotiations often. So what happened during COVID is that if you had a contract, and you were going to go somewhere and perform, they could call force majeure, and what that means is, there’s been an act of God — [laughter] that’s a legal term, “an act of God” — and the performance cannot take place. And so therefore, we the institution, is going to take the risk, is going to take the loss, of obviously not having to show which, means no box office, and you’re going to take the loss of not receiving the second half of your deposit. And in many instances, they wanted their deposit back. Why? Because the fee is construed around just the two performances.

This has been a giant issue and a giant problem, because artists really start working on that tour years in advance. All the time that you’re having conversations, all the time that you’re planning for this event to happen — none of that is considered as being paid for by that sum of money. Or all the rehearsals that you’re having beforehand, because oftentimes, the work has to change — none of that is accounted for.

So what needed to start being discussed is like these contracts need to change so that all the labor that actually goes into that tour is seen and accounted for, because individual artists don’t have by and large companies, right, that like give us a salary. Our time is only paid for by these kinds of contracts.

But what became really apparent to us is this is a freelance issue. And when all of this happened, the US government hadn’t made the determination to support freelance workers with unemployment, as they would a salaried employee — that hadn’t happened yet. It placed people in this extremely precarious position, where at least for a month, nobody knew if there was any income that was going to come at all, and no access to government support potentially. So it put us in this real dire need of, we have to have this conversation, we have to be able to share risk. And when force majeure happens, especially in this widespread way, the harm that that does to artists, and freelance artists, as workers, is far and beyond how it affects the institution that has access to a board that has access to government officials in a way that as an individual is you just don’t have. 

Alexis Clements  

This is always this thing, you know, this — the lie that freelancing is somehow, like you’re your own boss, you’re like — you have no protections in this country, by and large, there are almost none. 

Yanira Castro 

There really is almost none. And so that was always known by freelance artists, it didn’t come as a shock. But when there was this massive, mutual experience, across the nation — I mean, you can just imagine the harm that was being felt. And that’s why all the urgency around the document, I mean, it’s almost 200 pages, it was written in three weeks. 

Alexis Clements 

I’ll include links to everything in the show notes for this episode, so people can access all of that. But yeah, I think anybody who’s curious about artistic labor, but also particularly anybody who’s working in dance or performance, or anything, time-based art, should definitely look through it. It’s a fascinating, heartbreaking, but also hopeful document. And it’s clear that you were able to engage institutions, you were able to engage some of the presenters. But to what extent have you seen any kind of shift? Like just tell me a little bit about what has happened as part of that process? 

Yanira Castro 

We received, I would say, really generous support from presenters. Well, there were three presenters that were in conversation, right? So, Brian Rogers and Tara Willis and Sarah Greenbaum. And I would say that both Brian and Tara are also artists. So, even though they are inside presenting institutions and working as presenters or curators, they knew intimately what that would mean for them. Right? But other than that institution, there were no other institutions that we could have conversations with at that level. So that was very deeply frustrating.

Many of these issues are especially with university environments. They have legal departments, they have all this legalese around like how artists can be viewed and not viewed, what you’re, you know, you’re a vendor sometimes — it just drives me nuts. It’s like, I’m not here to sell you pencils. These are people we’re talking about. We were able to have, you know, wonderful conversations with folks. As much as that did happen, I think there also were a lot of people that did not come to the table.

I think some of the hopeful things is that there are presenters coming together in different organizations, through Dance USA, through NPN, the National Performance Network, and through “Creating New Futures,” who are looking — and this is in Phase Two — who are looking at contracts, who are looking at riders, and trying to reconstruct the terms. So that, for instance, a university cannot say, we want our deposit back because the product was the show. That they instead come to understand that actually, this is a three part contract. First, you’re paying for this artist’s time, to be in conversation with you. And this is what I think is really important. If, then, this doesn’t come to fruition, you’re still paying for that artist’s time to be in conversation with you. And what that means, then, is that artists have to be willing to not have that conversation until there’s a contract on the table. Like we’re not gonna sit here and talk about the show that you might want to have, until there’s a contract that says that that conversation will be supported financially. 

Alexis Clements 

This collective refusal is a key point. And what I mean by that, in this specific context would be a critical mass of dance artists and choreographers refusing to present work at places where there isn’t a new contract that starts to move in the direction that documents like “Creating New Futures” are asking which is respecting the artist’s time, paying for the labor to prepare the work, paying for the risk that the art is undertaking in building a show. 

Yanira Castro 

I think what I’m about to say is not something that we necessarily talked about together. But is maybe the way that I feel, I think putting the onus on artists will never work. Artists have to do what they have to do to survive, and if that means that I’m going to talk for three months to somebody without getting paid, because I really need that gig, because I have artists to support, I have myself to support — I can’t blame them. So I’m not going to put the onus on them. I think really, the onus is on institutions to do the right thing. And to say, like, you know, what, we’re not going to take advantage of this situation and we are going to support artists in this way. And that has to be done through through a contracting process that’s super clear. 

Alexis Clements 

I hear your point, and I like that challenge, about who bears the weight of solving some of these problems. But I guess ultimately, I’m trying to understand, what are potential levers that artists have, right? Because, you know, labor history in the United States teaches us that workers refusing is one of the most powerful ways to get management or institutions or those people with capital to, let’s say, acquiesce. The arts pushes people to perceive themselves as alone, and it is you sitting alone in a room negotiating with somebody, and you have no idea what other deals people are cutting, you have no idea what’s going on below the surface. So you have, you’re in this, like, false negotiation, where you have very, very little power. Have you seen any forms of, sort of creating newer power structures for artists? 

Yanira Castro 

I feel like that, what happened as a result of that particular document, is that we received invitations to share our concerns with institutions. In my experience, the ones that I was involved in, have yet to come to clear fruition. And one of the things that I think we tried to get at, in the document, was one of the groups that we wanted to be in conversation with, that we could not find ways to be in conversation with, was the philanthropists — the foundations that support this entire structure, right? It was very hard to find people that were willing to talk to us in the document, to give testimony, essentially. We were asking them to give testimony. That was very hard to find. They were, they were very willing to be in conversation in a closed off room. And it was just very disappointing that at least in two situations that I was involved in, the response is, we’re going to rewrite our mission statement. I really just I was like, wow, okay. I just don’t even know what to say. 

I should also address one very important thing. Shortly after “Creating New Futures” came out, George Floyd was murdered. And that drastically changed our focus a lot. When we redid our edits for the document, my big thing was, how are we going to support the community. And this idea of community over individuals — we have had a field that puts us in competition with one another, that glamorizes and/or puts up certain individuals as like, exceptional. For the health of a field that’s in dire need, we need to focus on that as opposed to like, you know, the $50,000 that goes to, you know, one person.

So those are the kinds of discussions I was really interested in. I was like, what would have a UBI [universal basic income] system for artists look like? What would it look like if we funded artists thinking about their livelihood, as opposed to the product that they’re trying to work out? 

And I’ll just finish off that part by also talking about reparations, and, you know, paying, you know, rent on stolen land. You know, it’s like how are you as a philanthropic institution, how are you as a presenting institution, really living the values? So like, are you giving reparations? What does that look like inside your organization? Are you talking about that? Are you thinking about that? I haven’t seen significant movement yet, I feel, in these kinds, in these real issues of seeing the field differently.

Alexis Clements  

So before wrapping up, I’d like to take a minute to talk about the yeses; about the opportunities that look good; the ones that you want to take.

Yanira Castro  

Even with all the yes situations — I have had wonderful yes situations, where like, where I am invited to like really, you know, try to develop something as fully as I can. But of course, even in those situations, there’s compromises that have to be made. Usually, mostly because there’s not really the financial structure to do what it is that you would all really like to see happen.

So I feel like the real scenario is the one where you’re weighing the positives and the negatives of every circumstance, and willingly and with eyes open walking into something and saying, These are the ways in which I’m compromising something. And these are the ways in which this is a gift, you know? But most situations come with lots of like, gray. Lots of gray. 

Alexis Clements  

Do you find any way to get transparency about the field, specifically around questions of money?

Yanira Castro  

I will ask, when I’m given a commission, I will try to find an artist who’s also been given a commission by that same organization and be like, what was your number? Just to see. You’d be surprised, they’re not often the same.  

One of the things that’s really difficult about the field is that fees haven’t changed, you know, over decades. I mean, just an example that anyone can look up is the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for Artists has been $7,000, since I don’t know when, but at least since the 90s. And so just think about that. What did $7,000 mean in 1994? What does $7,000 mean today? — very different, very different. And that is also true across like festivals, who are paying teaching artists, the same exact fee that they’ve been paying teaching artists for, like, a decade or more. And so you know, that money doesn’t stretch in the same way. So I mean, that’s one call for the field at least is like, how long have you been paying artists the same amount of money? And then reconsider that. 

The thing I will leave it off with is that real, honest, transparent, difficult conversations that will take years need to take place on a real consistent basis for change, real change to really happen. They don’t come about because one document is written. And they don’t come about because of one or two meetings that a foundation does with a bunch of artists. It happens through consistent desire for change, and, you know, meetings that happen every month over months, to like really have those deep, deep, deep conversations.

[music]

Alexis Clements  

Links to the “Creating New Futures: Phase One”  document, along with a recording of a live discussion about it that took place in May of 2020 will be included in the show notes. There, you’ll also be able to find links to Yanria’s website and her work, please be sure to check those out.  

Also, we’d love to hear from you. Send us your stories of saying no to bad gigs, from crooked gallerists to organizations that have asked for the moon and offered nothing in return, to curators or programmers who want to exploit your work or tokenize your identity. We want it all. You can email us or record a voice memo and send it to theanswerisnoshow AT gmail DOT com. 

You can also find us on social media at The Answer is No Show on Facebook or Instagram, or on our website at theanswerisnoshow.com.

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Thanks so much! We’ll be back with you soon. And remember collectively saying no to bad gigs can help us all get to a better yes.

[closing music]