Description
Shifting Cultural Poweris a reckoning with white cultural power and a call to action. The book locates the work of curating performance in conversations about social change, with a special focus on advancing racial equity in the live arts. Based on the author’s journey as a dancer, choreographer, and activist, as well as on her ten years of leading The Bridge Project, a performing arts presenting platform in the Bay Area, Shifting Cultural Power invites us to imagine new models of relationship among artists and within arts organizations—models that transform our approach, rather than simply re-cast who holds power. Mohr covers such subjects as transitioning a hierarchical nonprofit to a model of distributed leadership; expanding the canon; having difficult conversations about race; and reckoning with aesthetic bias. “When we reckon with and de-center whiteness, we open imaginative space for decolonized models of artmaking and art community,” Mohr writes. “We create possibilities for shifting cultural power.” Featuring case studies of socially engaged projects in the performing arts; a workbook for embodied research; an archive of The Bridge Project’s ten-year history; and transcripts of landmark performance events.
About the author
Hope Mohr has woven art and activism for decades as a choreographer, curator, and advocate. She founded Hope Mohr Dance (HMD) to create, present and foster outstanding art at the intersection of the body and the brain. The Bridge Project, HMD’s signature presenting platform, creates and supports equity-driven live art that builds community and centers artists as agents of change. In 2020, Mohr co-stewarded HMD’s transition to an equity-driven model of distributed leadership. As a dancer, Mohr trained at San Francisco Ballet School and the Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown Studios. She performed in the companies of dance pioneers Lucinda Childs and Trisha Brown. While dancing professionally, Mohr earned a JD from Columbia Law School. As an attorney, she provides counsel and support for artists and culture workers. www.hopemohr.org
Advance Praise for Shifting Cultural Power
Filled with exquisite insights, Shifting Cultural Power demonstrates what we can do to transform curatorial practices toward our shared destinies. Hope Mohr explores the uneven terrain of dance presenting to take on white privilege and attest to the life-affirming rewards of artivism. Written with a smart, raw, confessional tone, this book includes practical strategies for reshaping the terms of live art presenting. Essential reading, and affirmation that how we move through the world matters, onstage and off.
—Thomas F. DeFrantz, Director, SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology, Founding Director, Collegium for African Diaspora Dance
—Jennifer Stahl, editor in chief of Dance Magazine and content director for Dance Media.
Media
[Shifting Cultural Power] offers a starting point for curating in harmony with social change, and examines how dance leaders can use their privilege to, as the title suggests, shift cultural power from where it has historically been monopolized—namely, away from whiteness.
—Courtney Escoyne, Dance Magazine
Article about the NCCAkron Series in Dance and Shifting Cultural Power: https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwbooks/article/New-Book-Shifting-Cultural-Power-Out-September-1-From-Choreographer-Hope-Mohr-NCCAkron-20210806
Mohr’s book targets arts organizations hoping to create more equitable and transparent governance structures. —Nicole Gluckstern, KQED
The book demonstrates broad erudition, citing in its copious endnotes both academic tomes and provocative Medium posts. Mohr, a San Francisco native, elegantly weaves intellectual argument with artistic how-to guide in her own provocations and admissions. —Lily Janiak, Datebook
The book locates the work of curating performance in conversations about social change, with a special focus on advancing racial equity in the live arts. —Dance Enthusiast
