Please Join Us at Human Resources Tuesday, February 27, 2024 to celebrate the release of Being Work!
In celebration of the launch of the book, Dubrule and fellow contributing authors Jessica Emmanuel and Mireya Lucio will read excerpts from their essays, and, in a community conversation moderated by Ajani Brannum, co-envision an expansive future for performance labor in galleries, museums, and art fairs.
Being Work is a collection of essays by dance and theater artists, edited by Dorothy Dubrule and published by Insert Press, which offers access to varied experiences of performing in live exhibitions. The authors capture a spectrum of mundane and profound moments that arise within performance gig work in visual arts contexts such as museums, galleries, and art fairs, detailing the day-to-day practice of inhabiting art work as well as reflecting on broader questions of how they got there and the impact it has had on their outside lives. While providing very personal, human perspectives on what it feels like to perform in visual arts spaces, Being Work asks its audience how a performer’s labor is perceived and valued in these spaces, and what new possibilities might unfurl within the, at times fraught, coexistence of the two mediums.
Dorothy Dubrule is a choreographer and performer based in Los Angeles. Her choreography is often made in collaboration with people who do not identify as dancers and has been performed in theaters as well as bars, clubs, galleries, sound stages and sports arenas. The content of her choreography draws inspiration from film and community theater. Prior to moving to LA, she danced with DIY performance art collective Club Lyfestile and comedic fly girl crew Body Dreamz in Philadelphia. She has worked with visual artists, musicians, comedians, choreographers and directors such as Emily Mast, Jon Daly, Kate Watson-Wallace, Lea Anderson, Lisel, Melinda Ring, Milka Djordjevich, Narcissister, Tino Sehgal, Trulee Hall and Zoe Aja Moore, among others.
Dorothy was the Executive Director of Pieter Performance Space, a non-profit platform for movement artists, healers and activists based in LA from 2017 to 2022. From arts non-profit leadership she transitioned to organizational operations with a focus on the care and resourcing of humans in the workplace.