Maize & BLUEprint: Creating Innovative and Health-Informed Performance Spaces

In this episode of Michigan Minds, Anita Gonzalez, associate dean in the U-M School of Music, Theater & Dance, explains how SMTD is innovating performance spaces for public health-informed courses and preparing for virtual productions.

Gonzalez is a part of a core operations group researching public health procedures for performance fields so students are able to form a community through embodied performance while maintaining safe distances and virtual participation.

“We’re learning how singers sing together, and how dancers can shape space, both indoors and outdoors. I’ve been personally taking a lot of courses, including one with the movement studio, to learn how to use Zoom frames or multiple cameras to record activities so that it becomes creative and fun,” Gonzalez says.

She also talks about the benefits of creating new forms of productions for the entire industry, emphasizing that U-M can be at the cutting-edge of the future of live performances.

“I think that we can create new ways of video production and new models of performance, if we are on campus and able to collaborate. And I think that once we do that, the university, because we have the young minds here, is capable of setting trends for the field that can propel the entire industry into the future,” Gonzalez says.

She adds that this is an important time for collective problem-solving around many areas, including how people think about social justice within the performing arts.

“I’m personally hoping that our faculty and students collectively can begin to support activities that will advance that cause,” she says.

Hear more from Gonzalez in this episode of Michigan Minds.

Learn more about taking care of Maize & Blue at campusblueprint.umich.edu/care