We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Peter G. Kalivas a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Peter G., thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
WHAT is risk? It’s about being different and owning it, in support of your mission, purpose and vision.
My 20 year San Diego based company, The PGK DANCE Project’s mission, purpose, vision is:
• To be a platform that works to produce and present diverse professional dance that is representative of the world around us in ways that enhance our quality of life.
• Where dance is more affordable and made more easily available to all through partnerships with community places, spaces and technology.
• To create paid opportunities for a wide variety of dance artists that help sustain our mission, purpose, vision.
So, to that end I use creative placemaking as my strategy to accomplish my goals.
What is creative placemaking and how is this different and therefore risky?
Generally, audiences are accustomed to witnessing dance on a stage in a theater with certain production elements including but not limited to certain types of sound production, lighting, box office sales support, on site marketing/promotion, house management, professional concession services (beverages/snacks), parking and so on. Although, this can most certainly create a great framed experience for dance, all of these elements accumulate into something costly to the producing dance company where those expenses are often passed onto the audience. This is why it can seem common that a ticket to a professional dance performance can start close to $45 and creep as high as $100 with a variety of seating restrictions. Add certain very important person (VIP) add on options such as a champagne meet & greet with the artists, and other “buy ins”, now the dance experience is even more expensive. Then add, the cost of parking which is often times not Free near or around theaters and not only has this dance experience become even more expensive; prompting it to then become reserved only for special occasions, rather than a more commonplace engagement with art but also, now prohibitive for people who may appreciate dance yet on a fixed income and other access limitations.
Artists rely on the public to witness, experience and appreciate our work and therefore justify the need for it to continue, therefore it also becomes part of the artists role to work to resolve the social, economic barriers of entry to dance. This also includes, curating more relevant, inclusive programming which has been something relatively easy to accomplish through my company thanks to the diverse array of artists I have worked with over the years who believe in my mission, purpose and vision and my use of creative placemaking to create more relevant experiences which has made the risks I’ve taken worth it.
Creative placemaking is in many ways what it sounds like – “being creative with (space) a place” however, in my case it is more about using (space) the place in a way it is not normally used and only temporarily. For example, over the life of my San Diego based dance company, The PGK DANCE Project this has included but certainly not limited to, producing PGK DANCE shows in: a Hair Salon, a 45,000 square foot multi-use warehouse, the Lobby of a theater versus its stage, the outdoor atrium of a former gas station converted into a work/live complex among so many other locations.
WHY?
As I wrote earlier producing my work in theaters can be remarkably expensive and even with funding support and fundraising to cover the cost of renting the theater, contracting production staff, the artists, marketing/promotion, and on it can be extremely challenging not to charge a ticket price that then makes your work less easily available and accessible to many people going counter to my mission.
Creative placemaking became a wonderful intriguing solution to solve this problem. Working alternatively we have been able to barter with these places and spaces to produce our shows there at no rental cost or discounted rent which almost immediately translates into the ability to charge a more accessible ticket price to the public overall. Historically, we have charged as low as $10 and never more than $25 to enjoy any of our fully produced, hour and a half long shows featuring our phenomenal dancers performing works by a wide variety of excellent choreographers we commission to create dances of varied styles, perspectives and points of view.
Members of the public have showed their appreciation of who we are and what we do by making donations at their will year round to the company. Even before, during and after our shows people have made inspired unsolicited donations so that with their support we can continue to ensure our work remains economically available to all.
So, what is “risky” then, about Creative placemaking – EVERYTHING!
When you work in alternative spaces ironically you find your self “alienating” in a way traditionalists; those who adamantly believe dance belongs in a theater AND on a stage – The End, and so they often didn’t show up to our shows we learned and some even told us that was why. Some stated, they had no interest in seeing us in these places however, they did appreciate our art and would gladly see us in a theater. So, over time and with focused fundraising, we returned once a year to a theater space to ensure we could figure out how to “serve” them; the traditionalists as well. With this focused investment of time and funds we would be in a theater one weekend each Fall where we still never charge more than $25 thanks to donations and underwriting geared towards this specific annual venture.
WHAT are the OTHER RISKS presenting our work in alternative spaces? Way More Things CAN and DO go Not as planned in alternative places. Here we must BRING IN everything we need to produce a show – sound, lighting, flooring, seating. Ultimately, this creates the need for more assistance from volunteer helpers and our dancers, some of whom might be more accustomed to dancing in a theater on a stage and then have more factors to negotiate. For example, the audience is most often much closer than they are accustomed to them being – almost immersive is a common quality at a PGK DANCE show. The Choreographers we work with have to embrace our concept and be on board with this vision. Our audiences, have new and interesting things to negotiate as well which either excites some, while turning others off – and that’s the risk. For example, at one or more of my PGK DANCE shows in alternative spaces – the lights or the sound simply stopped working because of a power issue or rental equipment malfunction which is less common in a year round maintained theater. On one occasion when this happened and we could not immediately resolve it – I simply invited the audience to go to our self-produced concession to enjoy a beverage of their choice on me personally as a consolation. Then, once we fixed the issue everyone came back and we finished the show. Once, the flooring under part of the section where the audience was sitting in a multi-use space wasn’t quite settled yet from recent construction and the audience began to very slowly “sink” who we re-seated elsewhere and continued the show. Needless to say, I have seen a fair share of things “go wrong” in theaters as well – sets won’t shift, lights go out, sound stops working or not good for some reason. I even saw a production of Peter Pan who that day the production team just couldn’t get Peter to fly. We do what we can to reduce the odds for things to go NOT SO AWESOME and provide a great experience.
Clarification:
Site-specific and Creative placemaking ARE NOT the same thing. There should not be any real debate about this. I have already defined Creative placemaking which is more clinically using a place in a way it was not necessarily intended for either temporarily or permanent. This can totally include, which it always does for me, “dropping in” a show you created elsewhere. Yes, do you ultimately make some spatial adjustments and so forth – however, this is still not site-specific. Site-specificity really relies on the theory that work is created “because” of the space and deeply inspired by it; the space it also inhabits in its performance. In fact, I can easily describe work that for whatever absolutely must occur on a stage and never imaginably anywhere else as “site-specific”. Ultimately, it is best when work that is intended to be “site-specific” also be created where it will be performed/presented which again, is NOT AT ALL what I am doing with regards to creative placemaking. I am merely temporarily borrowing places in order to accomplish my mission’s goal towards accessibility and inclusion. What I am doing has nothing to do with the creation or the creative process of the work we do or even the way in which it gets presented despite spatial adjustments that don’t ever change the intention or essence of the work.
Peter G., before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I originally came to dance culturally through my Greek roots. Starting at the age of 12 I was in the Greek folk dance troupe at my church near where I grew up on Long Island, New York. In High School I started dancing and singing in the Musicals and then at 16 I saw the movie FAME and realized being a performer was a career; a career I wanted to pursue. I gave up my original aspirations to become an architect and the full academic scholarship I received to go to college and instead went to a conservatory program at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia to Major in Dance and Minor in music, which I had to pay for on my own through odd jobs I then got.
That was 38 years ago and I am deeply proud of the extensive career I have created for myself despite obstacles, hurdles and burdens.
Now, I am an experienced, inventive, award winning expert in the field as a choreographer, performer, producer, presenter, lecturer, and dance coordinator.
My performance career includes being a member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater second company – Ailey II in New York City, soloist and faculty with both The Bavarian State Opera Ballet and The Iwanson Contemporary Dance Company – 2 of Germany’s leading companies and subsequently the Iwanson School. I was an original member and company teacher for Sean Curran’s Company/NYC (Sean Curran is a former original dancer of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company) where I performed over 5 seasons at the Joyce Theater, Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival and every National, International Tour 1998-2002. Additionally, I was Sean’s understudy for his Bessie Schoenberg award winning solos of which I had the honor of performing on tour as well as at The New Victory Theater/NYC where The NEW YORK TIMES called my performance “witty and sublime”. Also, as an original member of David Storey Danceworks performing athletic dynamic works on 5 New York seasons.
Choreographically, I have created 75 Contemporary/Modern to Contemporary Ballet driven works since 1994 across a wide variety of contexts including for my own contemporary repertory company, The PGK DANCE Project, and commissioned by a wide variety of companies, presented by theaters and festivals around the world including: Jacobs Pillow American Dance Festival, The Public Art Festival St. Petersburg Russia (2021), The Hong Kong Dance Festival (2021), The Colony Theater/Miami, The Conrad Prebys Center for the Performing Arts (La Jolla, California), The Stamping Ground Dance Festival/Australia, REDCAT/Los Angeles, the California Institute of the Arts/CalARTS, Boston Conservatory. Also, as the first American choreographer to create and stage work for The Belize National Dance Company, The State Opera Ballet of Almaty, Kazakhstan and Ballet Nacional Lima de Peru.
Philosophically, I have always employed the same equitable approaches afforded to me despite my entering the field in my late teens in the 1980’s, and also considered “short” for a dancer, among other perceived limitations I dispelled. So, as a director/mentor I am deeply invested in serving and supporting everyone and anyone who wants to dance, as was done for me.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
My resilience comes from my “hope”. My hope for the message of my mission to be heard and truly and authentically appreciated. I am known for being a thorn in the side of systemic inequality across the field of dance pretty much from the moment I entered it. This role and responsibility I take on, is something I most certainly learned from one of my first mentors, Mr. Alvin Ailey whose mission, purpose and vision to lift up those and that which is underrepresented and unappreciated in line with everything else is what I adopted for myself since 1994 when I started the first iteration of my dance company. To strive is to achieve, to give up is to surrender. If you convince or inspire or provoke just one person at a time you are creating change, making a difference and being true to your purpose.
A story that illustrates my resilience is me becoming a fixture in the public comment portion at City of San Diego Commission for Arts & Culture meetings, San Diego City Council meetings, and eventually the floor of the California State assembly on behalf of funding for the arts and gross disparities in the ways funding for the arts is distributed. These places and spaces represent a version of the “gatekeepers” that either help with or prevent change leading to equity, equality and inclusion. Despite all good intentions and practices, once again it is the systems under which these places operate that remain archaic from periods of time we must seek to evolve away from and move beyond FINALLY in order to achieve these goals for the arts. There remain glaring disparities even now despite remarkable efforts, due to inherent and sustained politics, historic yet irrelevant relations that tilt influence and power and strategies and methods that will only ever continue to maintain the “status quo”, no matter the optical illusionary changes we see made. The pandering and the patronizing that occurs is flawed, temporal and insincere and my resilience comes from using the very system I work to dismantle, to bring it down. Public commentary in an open forum is the space and time to shed light on the real internal barriers that plague the pathway to the civil human liberty (the equal treatment) we all deserve. Just because the arts as we know it in the United States for example, was born under unequal circumstances, does not mean it needs to remain this way given the (legal) evolution; albeit slow process of this country. Voting, marriage, occupational, gender, ethnic, racial rights and on have occurred because of the resilience of people that demand the change the must occur in order to accomplish true equality for all.
My own organization; my dance company has historically operated at a budget that is 75% and less to that of similar regional dance companies. This speaks nothing to our amount of programming or impact but more to us not having access to certain funding streams, methods and models including but not limited to: endowments, foundations, entrusted funds. Nevertheless, the lesser funds we have, we earned rightly and competed for and won. Access to more funds and structures of sustainable support other companies have access to, enables them to maintain infrastructure we cannot: a separate Artistic and Executive Director, a stand alone Director of Development, Community Enrichment and so on. Instead often times smaller budgeted organizations like mine, have only myself and a few others who take on all these necessary roles. Since everything is relative, this scenario can be perceived either as a burden or that which makes you resilient while working to break the system down.
Historically, my company has reflected our mission, purpose and vision through our artists, the work they perform, the people that support and help us and the composition of our audience. The arts can entertain thru reflective telling and sharing but without diversity in the arts we can never find common ground – that place where we all meet through the universality the arts hopes to bring and THAT is WHY I speak up and out with resilient hope in my heart, because it is still the work that must continue to be done. To undo the systems that prevent the arts from being truly reflective of our world as it really exists today in service of everyone who seeks it; whether as a part of the audience or as an artist.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
Tell us what you think and or want from us – the artist. Be in conversation – although art may very well be the artists reflection of their world around them – how then does or can their work resonate with more persons than just themselves. For me Art is meant to at the very least, be entertaining yet inspiring. Still, I think the relationship between artist and audience can be far more cultivated and intertwined to include: commentary, feedback, requests of work audiences think is missing from what is being programmed or created. I think it is completely fair and thoughtfully constructive for audiences to express to an artist what they like or don’t like about someones work. I think this moment is a tremendous opportunity for an artist to reflect on how they can fulfill their mission, purpose, vision that much better.
Artists generally “self-produce” their work, meaning they often; not always but most often choose what they are going to make and why and they choose to make it publicly available generally at a cost to the public to then engage with it. If the public is expected to make an investment towards the artist’s work by purchasing a entrance ticket to it, then the public has also purchased the license to have an opinion about it. It is not about always criticizing the artist or their work however, perhaps you loved something the artist did and you never tell them which becomes a missed opportunity for you to share your joy with them and them not to receive more motivation from you. This level of feedback is essential in fact and can lead to a prosperous relationship for both where the artist feels inclined to continue and the audience feels inclined to support the artist in all the ways they wish. The final thing I will encourage audiences, the public, society to do is to SHARE your joy of an artist’s work with others. Tell family and friends about our work and BRING THEM WITH YOU to our next show and become an AMBASSADOR of the Art you appreciate. AND, let the artist know you are coming so they can acknowledge and thank you in their own way. Bridge and build that direct relationship with us – don’t be shy, and together we can prosper in service to each other.
My next show is on May 22nd @ 3pm at the outdoor Amphitheater in Cavita Park Mission Vally San Diego and FREE to ALL to attend THANKS to our SPONSORS – and features a wide variety of different AWESOME regional dance companies of diverse styles and points of view I have brought together.
Go to my website: www.ThePGKDANCEProject.org to see the FULL LIST of companies that will be performing AND make sure you come to me and say “HEY!”, as I will be be hosting the show.
Opa!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ThePGKDANCEProject.org
Image Credits
Photo of me posed in theater by: Gary Payne Photo of me jumping off table by: TEO Photo of 3 females on Outdoor stage by: Sue Brenner Photo of different dancers over grass by: Maximos Koukos