Published by the National Center for Choreography and the University of Akron Press.
Praise for Shifting Cultural Power:
"In gracefully merging memoir and practicum, Mohr has made an invaluable and ingenious contribution to the deep and stubborn work of power and resource redistribution in the world of art and performance."
—Moira Brennan, Executive Director of the MAP Fund, Inc.
"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 and Founding Director, Collegium for African Diaspora Dance
“In an era when many white-founded arts organizations are investigating how to create more equity through antiracism and decolonization, Mohr highlights so many of the complexities that all too often get overlooked. She shares her own experiences at Hope Mohr Dance and The Bridge Project (with remarkable honesty and humility) as well as deeply researched recommendations from experts of color. Offering useful insights and actionable takeaways, she thoughtfully demonstrates how artists can harness their creativity to help reimagine organizational structures in order to redistribute cultural power.”
—Jennifer Stahl, Editor in Chief, Dance Magazine & Content Director, Dance Media
Shifting Cultural Power: Case Studies and Questions in Performance is 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.
Press Coverage of Book