Since Monday, demonstrators spanning the school’s three divisions of dance, drama, and music have gathered outside to play jazz, sing protest songs, dance, and chalk; despite the heat, one dancer mustered the energy to unfurl a mid-air split. Within the building, students have tabled, posted signs, and picketed in the face of pending disciplinary investigations.
Protestors and their allies argue that a sea change in Juilliard’s receptivity towards economic and political change is long overdue, and that the school’s response after their occupation has been far from satisfactory.
All students interviewed mentioned that the idea of the “artist as citizen” — the school’s oft-touted notion, coined by former Juilliard president Joseph Polisi, illustrating the relationship between artmaking and social consciousness — has come to seem ironic amidst the protests. “That phrase, as it’s been taught to us, means that we have to be engaged in our art as citizens,” says Jacob Melsha, a fourth-year jazz trombone student in the five-year BA/MM program and a Penguins member.
Some students expressed frustration with the school’s response to the pandemic as a whole. Ryan Jung, a first-year master’s student in piano performance and a member of The Socialist Penguins, says that the school’s branding over the past year has failed to sufficiently acknowledge the concessions students have had to make in order to make art during Covid — whether bags over wind instruments that forced adjustments in sound production or masks for actors that limited their range of expression.
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