SALTA Collective
Interview by Maya Muñoz-Tobón
What is SALTA? Can you tell us a little about how the collective came to be?
SALTA is a collective of seven dancers based in Oakland, CA. We prefer to speak as a group and don’t use our individual names in interviews.
Responding to the precariousness of being working artists, we formed the collective in 2012 with a goal of starting our own space for rehearsal and performance. Since that time, our vision has expanded to include projects that make space for dance to happen more broadly.
What type of events does SALTA organize?
For the past two years, we have curated a monthly performance series that takes place in a different venue each month. Admission is always a nonmonetary donation to the free bar and boutique, where everyone eats, drinks, and shops for free. This alternative economy and context frees us to be radically inclusive, experimental, and eccentric in our curation. We invite a mix of established and emerging choreographers, bridging generations of Bay Area dance makers.
In addition to our monthly series, SALTA is engaged in collaboration with other dance makers and curators locally and nationally. We have co-curated an event with Brooklyn-based collective AUNTS, taken part in a curatorial symposium in Montreal, and we have begun to build a national network of venues and curators in support of experimental performers organizing their own tours.
How is a typical performance planned?
SALTA events are curated to offer a different way of interfacing with performance. The structure of our events are loose and the aesthetic is DIY. As working artists in the field ourselves, we want to offer a platform that we ourselves would want to participate in. One way that we decided to start researching how to be curators was by adopting the “yes policy” to anyone who approached us interested in performing, volunteering, hosting, etc. We find it is satisfying to be in the same risk situation as the artist. For us, risk means consent to not being in total control of content. It means not putting constraints on artists’ work. It means a constant learning from doing. It means a constant research into new forms and proposals, which directly mirrors our personal artistic practices.
Over the past two years we have employed various curatorial methods for our events. Some shows are closer to a party, while others are more formal presentations of work. We have experimented with chain curation in which we invite an artist who invites another artist who invites another. We have organized evenings around spatial constraints (such as dances performed only in the round) and thematic constraints (only task-based dance). We have used guest curators to bring in artists we do not know. Two of our favorite formats we call “3/3/3” and “SALTA throws down.” 3/3/3 is 3 performers/groups that receive full support and attention from all seven of us. At a “SALTA throws down” event, 20+ performers show work in a large open warehouse or ballroom, with simultaneous and overlapping performances.
Did you notice a need in the Bay Area dance community? Did you feel as a collective the need for other dance opportunities?
At the heart of our process is a reworking and redefining of what it means to be a dancer. With the traditional company model increasingly more difficult to maintain and sustain, we are holding a unique kind of space for the freelance dancer. As artist curators / dancer-curators, part of our project as SALTA is figuring out what it means to dance (and to be a dancer) at this historical juncture in which dance artists are facing a scarcity of gigs, funds and community.
In our area, the Bay Area, this juncture is compounded by a tech boom that is rapidly shifting the economics of our environment. San Francisco has become too costly to live in. The service class, artists, and queers are moving in droves to Oakland. We are daily faced with the realities of gentrification and the responsibility to integrate ourselves into an area largely composed of communities of color.
What is next for SALTA?
Since our first evening of performance in June of 2012 we have hosted/facilitated/curated 18 more performances, all held in spaces donated to us. This has allowed us to offer free dance events and has provided a financial accessibility to audience members. It has also provided us with the opportunity to envision our performances and collective as having a slightly different relationship to a capitalist framework: where we rely less on funding and corporate/capital sponsorship, and more on connections and relationships within our surrounding communities and the resources they can comfortably provide.
After two years of organizing and curating together, SALTA is currently in the process of obtaining a huge building in Oakland with agroup of like-minded collectives including a free school, a printing press, a radical bookstore and more. If successful, the project will provide SALTA with a platform and permanent home to host workshops and performances, and provide affordable rehearsal space to Bay Area dancers. Coming together with this grassroots collective is a natural movement forward for us as we invest our time and resources in expanding our collaborative process in a way that feels true to our politics and our role as artists in the ever-changing Bay Area.
