Preparation: Think about the society you live in. Does it feel supportive for you as an artist? Do you believe you are seen as someone who contributes to society? Do you believe you are seen as essential?
The author prepares: I know I live in a capitalist society that holds up industries that create the most profit as being the most useful and worthy. I have witnessed creatives around me, from dancers to hair stylists, decide that the struggle of trying to maintain a career as an artist is no longer worth the pain, and acquire skills that have allowed them to gain employment with Big Tech.
I know I feel diminished, not only because my work is not seen as wholly important to our forward momentum as a people, but also because my financial worth is less. What a shame to be an artist, living all these years without ever knowing a yearly salary. What a pity she doesn’t have a 401(k). What will happen when we don’t have artists to hold a mirror up to society, when we are all just trained to write algorithms that collect human data?
Step 1: Inhale. Gather all of the potential energy you hold. Really stir it up. Feel its power. Use it to create a tornado around yourself.
Step 2: Inside of the tornado, watch a movie in your mind: you take a Big Tech Job with a Big Salary. You collect larger paychecks than you’ve ever received. You are given a stock bonus. You tell people at parties you work for Big Tech Company. They praise you. You tell the mortgage company you have Big Tech Job. You get approved to purchase a 3-bedroom home. Turn the movie off. Listen to your heart.
What will happen when we don’t have artists to hold a mirror up to society, when we are all just trained to write algorithms that collect human data?
Step 3: Allow the tornado to begin to swirl. Allow it to swirl the complicated emotions in your heart and mind. Allow feelings of inadequacy, jealousy and rage to swirl with feelings of longing, sadness, and unimportance. Let the swirl woosh woosh woosh all around.
Step 4: Take in a new fact: Big Tech companies pay for oocyte cryopreservation (egg freezing) of uterus-having employees and their uterus-having spouses. Allow your tornado to accumulate. It is no longer a Category 2 (strong), it is now a Category 4 (violent). Allow the thought of an army of embryos waiting in freezers across Silicon Valley, ready to power the next generation of knowledge workers, to accelerate your tornado to swirl faster and faster.
Step 5: You are moving toward a new level of understanding of the hierarchy of wealth in our society. You understand now when we talk about “millionaires and billionaires,” we aren’t just talking about Warren Buffet, we are talking about the dude who lives across the hall, sitting on a pile of Big Tech Stock from his Big Tech Job. He actually got richer in 2020.
You understand now when we talk about “millionaires and billionaires,” we are talking about the dude who lives across the hall, sitting on a pile of Big Tech Stock from his Big Tech Job. He actually got richer in 2020.
They say tornadoes and trains sound a lot alike. Notice people poking their heads out of their windows as they think they hear a train coming. You plow down their street and rip up a row of trees.
Category 5. (violent)
Category 6 (extremely violent)
Category 7, 8, 9 (you are becoming something no one has ever heard of.)
You’re a tornado. You can disrupt, too.
Exhale.
Sarah Dahnke makes large-scale dance work that is centered around community and pushes audiences to view individual identity through a new lens. She is a go-to artist for creating collaborative work in diverse mediums (live performance, film, digital, television, and more), using dance as both advocacy and as an expression of our collective humanity. She uses dance in its most visceral, human-centric form, encouraging all people to tap into the body, get in touch with our deepest selves, and show those selves to the world. Her work has existed everywhere from downtown New York theaters, to international contemporary art galleries, to music videos and short films. Sarah is a MAP Fund awardee, a Target Margin Institute Fellow, a New Victory LabWorks artist and the artistic director of Dances for Solidarity. More at sarahdahnke.com and @sarahrosedahnke.