Hail to the Chief - New - editorial, more political support of the arts

Dance Magazine, Dec, 2000 by Janice Berman

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT-ELECT:

Well, it's over and you've won it. Congratulations. Now (you're probably asking yourself) what?

Here are a few ideas. You may notice that they have nothing to do with oil or the environment or the national defense. However, as you constantly insisted during the campaign, education is a priority, and from where I sit, it's a priority here as well. It is my mission, in this missive, to focus the attention of your administration on a very specific aspect of education. And a couple of other things. I hope you'll hear me out. After all, I sat through your debates. It's only fair.

Last month, Richard Philp, our able executive editor, was hard-pressed to extract from your campaign team information about where you stood on the arts. At the time, I found it remarkable that neither of the two parties had any discernible arts policy, though we have all heard from time to time from both major candidates about how strongly you feel about art that is objectionable or Internet sites that are obscene or music that promotes violence.

It's ironic that in a time of unparalleled prosperity, with technology that can be harnessed toward doing a remarkable job of stimulating and educating us all, you have established no dialogues, suggested no possibilities as to how these developments might be directed toward deepening and enhancing the nation's most underused resource, its arts. If, as more than one candidate suggested, we are a deeply spiritual nation, how remarkable that amid all the rhetoric nobody once attempted to suggest any links between spirituality and creativity, or spirituality and the kind of energy and perseverance against all odds--surely a hallmark of the American character--that it takes to make art. What's missing here?

It's great, for instance, that a president takes the time to congratulate a star tennis player like Venus Williams when she wins the U.S. Open, but where was the phone call from the president of the United States to Charles and Stephanie Reinhart, who put together the Balanchine Celebration? (Charlie turns 70 on December 5, by the way, and it would be a nice gesture if as president-elect you'd send him a birthday card.) Wouldn't it have set a certain tone to congratulate them on their feat at the Kennedy Center, just blocks from the White House? There, performances by American companies (pace Bolshoi) spoke eloquently of the gifts and resources of the nation's dancers and their teachers in honoring one of the country's great (naturalized) citizen geniuses.

Do I sound patriotic here? Well, good. Watching the great companies assembled there made me feel ridiculously proud to be an American. So did the celebration marking the 20th anniversary of Dance Place in northeast Washington, where director Carla Perlo and a gifted group of teachers, students, performers and neighbors of various races and choreographic persuasions have enriched the art form and demonstrated, beautifully, how the arts help American communities thrive.

Maybe you didn't grow up with the arts. Maybe your parents were just too busy keeping up with all the other duties and obligations of a family with an intense public life. But you can catch up and move the nation ahead.

As you settle into the White House, your predecessors will provide you with plenty of role models: Harry Truman and his piano. His fierce letter to the Washington Post's music critic in defense of his daughter Margaret. The Kennedys, via the First Lady, bringing high art to the national consciousness with ballet in the East Room. (I wonder if, as he was struggling into his boiled shirtfront, JFK said to Jackie, "Oh, honey, do we have to go?" But he always looked as if he was having a good time.) Reagan and Clinton, through respective offspring Ron and Chelsea, contributing at least one ballet-loving family member apiece. President Lyndon Johnson, who created the National Endowment for the Arts. "It is in our works of art that we reveal ourselves," he said. Whatever happened to the NEA, and what, Mr. President-Elect, will you make of it?

The most innovative venture in the arts, though, by any of your predecessors was the Works Progress Administration. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's efforts to create meaningful work had measurable accomplishments, still in evidence in the nation's architecture, libraries, galleries, theaters and concert halls. Should it take a Great Depression, Mr. President-Elect, to make us value our artists? Another question: In a time of such prosperity, is there any excuse for allowing places where art is made to go under? How can three studios for dance shut down in a single week in San Francisco, the capital of the new economy? How can any administration permit that to happen? Can we blame this on the evicted dancemakers? Do they lack the requisite sense of personal responsibility, when their landlord raises their rent by 500 percent, or are there questions of public policy to deal with?

I suppose that if we let people beg in the streets, and punish drug addicts by imprisoning them instead of treating them for their addiction, and let millions of children abroad die of AIDS, we should not be surprised that there's no place to make art. But sometimes I wonder: If we made art an important part of our schools and by extension our national spirit by teaching our children that it has a history and a present, that participating in the arts will make them happier than they've ever been before, and that art counts whether we see it, or do it, or teach it, might we see some changes in the way we look at our world? Might we begin thinking of ourselves and our common humanity in a different way?