Related Features
DAY IN THE LIFE OF DANCE: Works & Process Presents Martha Graham Dance Company with Baye & Asa
THE DANCE ENTHUSIAST ASKS: “Gather Round” Collaborators about Free Street and Club Dance at Manhattan West Plaza
THE DANCE ENTHUSIAST ASKS: Duke Dang on the Exciting Evolution of Works and Process at the Guggenheim
By Theo Boguszewski
View Profile |
More From This Author
Published on January 6, 2025
Ladies of Hip Hop at Works & Process. Photo by Erick Munari
Underground Uptown Dance Festival: January 9 - 13, 2025
Works & Process at the Guggenheim was founded on the ethos that the finished product of a piece of dance is only a small portion of its value. Duke Dang, executive director of Works & Process, refers to performance as “the tip of the iceberg” and says that the organization “has always been grounded in the parts [of dance work] that are less visible...”
The 40th season of Works & Process begins on January 9th with the Underground Uptown Dance Festival. This festival is one of the latest examples of the vibrant artistic partnerships that have been cultivated and nurtured by Works & Process over the years.
The Dance Enthusiast’s Theo Boguszewski spoke with Dang about the evolution of Works & Process and the organization's continued investment in supporting artists, challenging boundaries between artists and audiences, and presenting dance that is relevant, spontaneous, and constantly evolving.
More info about the 2025 Underground Uptown Dance Festival: CLICK HERE
Theo Boguszewski for The Dance Enthusiast: To start, how did Works & Process come to be and how did you become involved?
Duke Dang: The series was founded in 1984 by Mary Sharp Cronson. Mrs.Cronson grew up in an incredibly privileged family in New York City, one of these old New York, philanthropic families.In the early eighties, the Guggenheim approached her and said, “We know that you love the performing arts. We're cutting our performing arts program. Would you consider underwriting it?” And she said, “well, I don't want to see the performing arts component to the museum go away, but I want to make sure that my support of the program goes directly to paying artists, rather than paying the museum's bills.”
Process at the Guggenheim LaunchPAD “Process as Destination” at The Church, Sag Harbor
in collaboration with Guild Hall of East Hampton, January 8, 2022. Featuring (from left) Eva
Bust A’ Move, Shireen Rahimi, Milerka Rodriguez, Craig Washington, Omari Wiles, Yuki
Sukezane, Alora Martinez, Algin Ford-St
She appreciated the performing arts because she’d always been invited to patron events that allowed her to go into the studio to see the process, to see how work is created. And she wanted to give others that same experience. And that's why Works & Process is what it is. We are a separate 501c3, to ensure that artists are paid and to make sure that the creative process is resourced and shared.
21 years ago, I became Mrs. Cronson's intern. I was at NYU doing my grad work in performing arts administration. We couldn't be more different. I was born in a refugee camp and grew up in an incredibly poor family – section eight housing, vouchers, food stamps, I went to school full-ride. I couldn't afford the chance to work in the arts unless it was as a paid intern. And this is part of the ethos; Mrs. Cronson always made sure that not only the artists were paid, but the interns as well.
Over the course of the past twenty-one years, we've professionalized the organization, built a board, put systems in place, and have expanded upon the mission of sharing the creative process to now include resourcing it.
11, 2024. Featuring Taylor Stanley and Gabrielle Hamilton. Photo: Works & Process / Titus Ogilvie-
Laing
You’ve nurtured so many artists through residency programs. Can you tell us how your artist residency programs work?
We have a network of over fourteen residency partners in five states and we partner with them to provide a living wage to artists: $1050 per artist per week, plus transportation. Often residency centers offer artists housing and space, but rarely are there significant stipends attached.
So that they can create uninterrupted, artists have access to studio space, 24/7. And the vast majority of the projects and the artists that we support have access to multiple cycles of these fully-funded launchpad residencies. Plus, if they don’t have healthcare, we enroll artists on Obamacare.
in collaboration with Guild Hall of East Hampton, January 8, 2022. Featuring (in front, from
left) Yuki Sukezane, Algin Ford-Sterling, and Yuhee Yang. Photo: Joe Brondo for Guild Hall
of East Hampton
We're always asking our artists, “What do you need right now?” so that we can respond to them in a made-to-measure way. If you're working with street dance and, say, a residency center only has marley floors, that's not going to work. Or if an artist is at a point where they're ready to go on stage, we want to make sure to place them into a residency center that has a theater with maybe even some tech support. So that's why we have all these residency partners.
Works & Process has always been grounded in the parts that are less visible, the creative process. The ecosystem that we're in has been so oriented to the product, which is the tip of the iceberg. But, we all know; for example, you're a writer: how many iterations of writing and drafting and redrafting before it's published. And that work is what we try to recognize and support.
I notice that Works & Process extends beyond the Guggenheim’s Peter B Lewis Theater, how did it evolve to the point of having many different “homes”?
This was before my time, but in 1993, the Peter B. Lewis Theater got flooded and had to be renovated. So for eighteen months, Mrs. Cronson actually took Works & Process on the road. Rather than saying, “oh, we'll just take a pause for 18 months,” she took advantage of the opportunity to present the program all over the city.
Mrs. Cronson actually passed away last year, and we have been telling a lot of these stories lately. She was the one who set the precedent that Works & Process doesn't need to exclusively be at the Guggenheim.
While our main presenting partner in New York City is the Guggenheim, we partner with Lincoln Center and the New York Public Library, Manhattan West and Summer Stage
When did you start presenting work in the Guggenheim rotunda, as opposed to the stage?
About six years ago, Mrs. Cronson started to experience dementia and couldn't be as involved, so I took on a more substantial leadership role. I realized that not only should we be building the residency initiative, but we had an opportunity to support works created in and for the rotunda of the Guggenheim. The arts ecosystem traditionally prioritizes proscenium work, not social, cipher-oriented traditions, and, there are performing art traditions that come from the circle or the cipher, rather than the proscenium.
We commissioned a piece from dorrance dance. Out of that camee Ephrat Asherie’s “Underscored,” which was celebrating club culture. And from there, we started to work with Caleb Teicher and Lindy Hop. And then we started to work with The Missing Element, which was beatboxing, breaking, prompting, flexing, then The Ladies of Hip Hop, then Latasha Barnes, The Jazz Continuum, and so on and so forth into Omari Wiles and LES BALLET AFRIK, which was celebrating ball culture, then Princess Lockerooo and Waacking – recognizing that there are SO many performing art traditions that come from the circle.
in collaboration with Guild Hall of East Hampton, January 8, 2022. Featuring (from left) Kya
Azeen, Yuki Sukezane, Yuhee Yang, Eva Bust A’ Move, Craig Washington, Alora Martinez,
Omari Wiles, Shireen Rahimi, and Milerka Rodriguez. Photo: Joe Brondo for Guild Hall of
East Hampton
Recently, we’ve hit this magical sweet spot of leveraging the resources that we have and amalgamating all these resources to support street and social dance communities in the spaces that we have access to.
Instead of pausing work during the Corona-virus pandemic, you innovated and evolved during the pandemic. Can you speak about that?
Similar to the flood in 1993, we were presented with a moment of crisis during the pandemic in 2020. Clearly I've inherited Mrs. Cronston’s values because we were not going to give up on artists. Creative process can happen anywhere. And that's why immediately we launched our virtual commissions. In a matter of weeks, we had dispersed virtual commission fees to hundreds of artists and ended up with a body of work of 84 virtual commissions in the one year of the pandemic.
Even then we knew it wasn't enough, that’s why we created the bubble residency model in summer of 2020, supporting street and social dance. Our first bubble residency was happening in August of 2020. Many of the works that are now touring, and that eventually premiered at Works & Process, were created in these bubble residencies.
Guggenheim on January 13, 2024. Photo: Works & Process / Erick Munari
And as it turned out, as things started to reopen after the pandemic, first outdoors, then indoors, the street and social dance arts were actually the most nimble forms with their ability to respond to the circumstances of that time.
The reality was that we were in the midst a crisis of isolation. Yet in the arts, we inherited these proscenium stages that actually distanced artists and audiences. Our question was, how do we utilize the arts to build community, to bring people together, and to transform spectating into participating? This is not an either or, it’s an AND. When you look at the rest of our season, we still are working with the Met Opera and ABT and New York City Ballet and Martha Graham and so on. It's important for us to platform all of these traditions on the same stage, but allocate resources in a different way. New York City Ballet doesn't need us to support them with fully funded residencies, whereas any of the artists that are part of “breaking, ball culture, waacking – they don't have endowments and boards.
What’s coming up for Works & Process in 2025? What programs or partnerships are you particularly excited about?
I’m most excited about the Works & Process Underground Uptown Dance Festival happening January ninth through the thirteenth. This will be the third year. Over the course of five days we will feature fifteen companies all of whom have received Works & Process LaunchPAD residency support. Many are actually coming directly from their Works & Process residencies so the work will look GREAT!
at the Guggenheim on January 14, 2024. Written and performed by Lloyd Knight,
choreographed by Jack Ferver, and video by Jeremy Jacob. Photo: Works & Process / Erick
Munari - THE DRAMA will be part of 2025's Works & Process Underground Uptown Dance Festival
The festival is timed to coincide with the annual APAP conference so that presenters in town for the conference can see the works we are championing and hopefully join us in co-commissioning and presenting these works.
What is exciting this year is all of the performances in the subterranean theater of the Guggenheim will sequence into social dances in the rotunda, so that everyone can spectate and participate and so that audiences and artists all dance together!
