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#Post#: 7--------------------------------------------------
Jasper's 3-5 year vision
DIR By: Jasper
Date: February 7, 2017, 7:17 pm
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[center]Freestyle Dancing in Western MA[/center]
[center]Jasper’s 3-5 year vision[/center]
I have been dancing in the freestyle community in Northampton
for about 15 years. I have been to the past 11 DNE Summer Camps
as well as weekends in Boston, New Paltz, and Nine Mountain
Retreat. I have danced at Drum & Dance under the old Ritual Arts
Collective, Mandala Dance, Dance Spirit, and Pollinate, as well
as at Freestyle Frolic, Dance Friday, and at DNE Summer Camps in
Maine and New Hampshire.
And of course, I have danced at Dance Spree. Shortly after my
parents’ divorce, in early 2002, I went with my father to Dance
Spree. I was 11 years old. Many of us remember what it was like
in those days – deejay, wood floor, friends. That was all it
took. The levels of absurdity that have cropped up since then –
colored laser lights, raging bass, covering walls with tapestry
– not to mention the splintering of what we once understood to
be a name we could trust, Dance Spree, into Pollinate, Infusion,
ABCD Jam, Ecstatic Dance, and more has robbed us of that thing
we loved, and added nothing to our lives in return.
Around 125 people came to Drum and Dance on the 13th. There
were no lasers, no special effects – just good music and crappy
floors. And good old fashioned community values.
…oh yeah, that.
Growing up into Dance Spree and Dance New England has certainly
shaped my values and way of being, though I obviously have my
differences with DNE’s current group of so-called “leadership.”
The values of loving people because they exist, decrying and
name-calling social and environmental toxicity rather than the
bodies and brains exposed to it, pride in one’s own
imperfection, and an organized lack of control – these are what
the freestyle boogie offers us. Dance is forbidden in many
cultures because it is associated with courtship. If that
objective limits dance, then what we do is something else.
This vision, written for and premiering at these meetings,
represents a desire not to create something new, but to restore
what we had and lost. A deejay, a wood floor, friends, and if
not shared values, then at least a sense that we can coexist and
share love and healing through the freedom of body and mind.
Blah blah. More hippie shit could go here.
[center]YEAR ONE – RESTORATION[/center]
[center]Return the dance to the community, and the community to
the dance.[/center]



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floor, friends, values
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England
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and Drum & Dance
Our community – that thing we keep talking about – is an idea.
It isn’t a group of people. But the group of people in question,
those who already know that they like to dance (because nearly
everyone else would if they tried it with a positive attitude),
is larger in number locally than it was 10 years ago, when we
had easily 150 people per week at our no-frills Dance Spree, not
one of them clamoring for laser lights, bass, or cool new-age
catchphrases.
All that it will take for us to succeed in the short term is to
bring them back in, which has already been done with Drum and
Dance. It’s important not to get caught in the trap of constant
outreach to new populations – we already have what we need.
Dayenu. (I’ll be doing a shit ton of outreach too).
The focus of the first year is therefore not creation but
restoration – restoring the community’s confidence in the dance
that gave birth to that community; restoring the rhythms that
made both Dance Spree and Drum & Dance flourish for so many
years. Move the needle upwards on the population count,
establish a strong fiscal position, make connections throughout
the various branches of the local freestyle scene, from
Earthdance to Sirius.
Aside from existence, the one other big ambition for this year
is the history project. Drum & Dance and Dance Spree both have
long and complicated histories, and I will seek to interview
just about everyone who has ever been involved. The product will
be a user-friendly guide to who we’ve been, made of first-person
perspectives, and offered to the community in paper and video
formats.
[center]YEAR TWO – EXPANSION[/center]
[center]Extend the dance to meet the needs of the community.
Invigorate the community to meet the needs of the
dance.[/center]


hold elections
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


…what, too ambitious? If something like 200 different
individuals in total attended the first three freestyle
gatherings I ever organized, imagine the thousands that would
come over the course of the 38-40 dances we expect to have over
the course of the first year. Dancing is not a chore. We don’t
hate it, we don’t ration it – not consciously, anyway. Our
bodies and our beings want more, and all we have to do is get
out of our own way.
I never wanted to be in this position, but I have this knack
for being the only one in a room willing to take on the easiest
challenge imaginable (like getting dancers to dance). Despite my
reservations about the effectiveness of consensus governance, it
is my belief that Dance Spree should ultimately be
self-governing; organized and led by a diverse group of
stakeholders and accountable to the community. By setting pen to
paper and establishing rules of governance and a regular
schedule of decision-making community meetings, we can free
ourselves from the chaos of the past and the emergency
management of today (that’s me).
There are three ways to reclaim the every-Friday norm:
eliminate Pollinate or force it to move, move Dance Spree, or
adopt Pollinate as a Dance Spree project as I’ve done with Drum
& Dance. The last of these I dislike because I have a
fundamental difference of opinion with Brando regarding how much
profit is appropriate.
Dance Spirit Wednesday coexisted successfully for many years
side-by-side with Dance Spree, Dance Spirit Sunday, Drum and
Dance, VIDAM, and other things. In 2009-2010 it wasn’t uncommon
to have six dances in a week. Wednesdays are not the only option
– San Francisco does well with three Saturday dances (morning,
afternoon, & night) in addition to Friday night and Sunday
morning. But we really should be dancing more than once a week
for health reasons, and Dance Spree should endeavor to offer as
much of that as possible.
This reduced scarcity will allow more opportunities to have
Drum & Dance. Eventually I would like to mirror Concord’s
revival and peg them to a week of the month, rather than the
Solstice & the Equinox.
Finally, since freestyle dance is comprised of many intentions
and component activities, I believe that Dance Spree should
begin offering workshops that expand our capacity to participate
in and benefit from the dances we attend – in short, to get more
for our $5.
Beginning next winter, I would like to offer workshops in these
and more categories:
•
•
•
•
•
•
[center]YEAR THREE AND BEYOND – PERMANENCE[/center]
[center]Dance Spree. All day, every day, forever.[/center]
I don’t have a very specific list for this time frame because
the time frame itself is not very specific, and the vision may
overlap enough with those of other organizations, including
Dance New England, that some of the work may be collaborative or
unnecessary.
Three, four, and five years from now, I would like to see Dance
Spree and Drum & Dance take on a much larger and more constant
role in all of our lives. This is the point at which we can
start to move from a volunteer-run event creation group to a
365-day-per-year full-service not for profit organization that
owns a building and hosts not only its own dances and workshops
but retreats, birthday parties, homeschooling clubs – really
anything that shares the values of the organization.
This building should be on the map – not out in the boonies
like so many intentional communities, but in Amherst or Hadley,
walking distance from most daily needs and major bus stops. A
drum circle outside, communication with historically local
Native American tribes, and permanent housing for leadership in
the basement would all be priorities for me in establishing
this.
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