BRENTWOOD, Calif. — Around 50 members of the Los Angeles performance art community gathered at the Getty Center’s Tram Arrival Plaza on Sunday, July 14, in a show of support for performers enacting Joan Jonas’s “Mirror Piece I & II” (1969, 1970/2024) this weekend. In addition to allegations of insufficient payment and late contracts, performers claim that their requests for transparency regarding budget, costumes, and transportation accommodations were not only dismissed but met with pushback from the institution.
First performed in 1969, Jonas’s “Mirror Piece” involves multiple heavy sheets of mirror and glass carried and maneuvered by performers for roughly 30 minutes. For both weekend performances on July 13 and 14, dancers endured 80-degree temperatures under direct sunlight for a crowd of over 100 guests, who were provided shade and umbrellas.
The Getty has not yet responded to Hyperallergic’s request for comment.
Toward the conclusion of the 4pm performance this Sunday, three audience members unfolded signs that read: “GETTY WE C U PAYING PERFORMERS POORLY.” As performers moved along the audience while wielding the heavy full-length mirrors, a third sign reading “FAIR PAY 4 DANCERS” held by a sitting audience member reflected the message back to the audience. During a vocalization, one of the performers refused to sing and later turned his back to the audience during the applause at the end of the piece.
Members of the museum’s security staff moved through the crowd. The performance ended by 4:32pm, with no arrests or disturbances.
“I’m here today because I know that the Getty is paying their dancers poorly,” 29-year-old Dante Matero, an audience member in attendance from Studio City, told Hyperallergic. “If the Getty, which we know has a lot of money, wants to put on Joan Jonas, they should be able to pay their dancers fairly — comparably with other performances.”
One of the performers, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, described the work environment at the Getty as “disorganized and hostile.” Some artists received contracts the day of the performance on Saturday despite a week of rehearsals, no day rate, and a $1,000 flat rate per performer for the entire week of rehearsals and two weekend performance days, they said.
The performer further alleged that when requests were made for additional day rates based on the conditions of the performance, in addition to reimbursement for travel and costumes and transparency regarding pay fee structure, they were told that they had already agreed to payment.
In contrast, for example, the Museum of Modern Art published a call for dancers to perform the same Jonas piece in New York in February of this year and quoted almost three times the Getty’s pay — $150 to $200 a day for rehearsals and $750 to $1,500 a day for performances.
According to Dorothy Dubrule, a member of the LA performance community, former director of Pieter Performance Space, and editor of Being Work, a new book on labor and institutions in the field, performers should have a contract in hand before stepping foot in an institution, as well as day rates and higher flat rates for performances, and organizers should know better.
“If you are a person who is attempting to organize performance, if you are an advocate, part of your work is ensuring there is fair pay for your workers,” Dubrule told Hyperallergic. “It is the most important part of a performance budget and yet it’s the most likely to get squeezed.”
“I would like to see public commitments from the Getty so that this doesn’t happen again,” Dubrule continued. “We are on the same side in wanting to support performance in LA, so why aren’t we on the same side of this?”
