Leaders of the St. Louis Art Fair in Clayton said the Palestinian dance troupe Canaan Wellspring will not perform at this weekend’s annual event in part because art fair organizers feared the dancers would make a political statement.
Members of the dance troupe said they were left out because art fair organizers view the simple expression of Palestinian culture as controversial.
“It's like they're asking us to not exist. That's what I'm hearing. It's just as simple as that. I think it's just a way to erase a culture and erase its people,” said Hanan Hamed, Canaan Wellspring’s manager and dance coach. “I really would love people to know that we are Palestinians, we love life. We love to dance. We are people. It's not really good to feel dehumanized.”
The St. Louis Art Fair called the dance troupe’s account of events “misinformation” in a statement posted to social media.
“I think it's a classic case of miscommunication,” Suzanne Dalton Kearins, chair of St. Louis Art Fair’s board of directors, said of the dispute in an interview Monday.
“The group was absolutely not targeted in any way because they're Palestinian. There was definitely a question about the nature of the group — whether its focus was political or artistic,” said Kearins. She noted that Canaan Wellspring is a new group without a long track record, and said that the art fair had limited information about the troupe and chose to be cautious. “We have a responsibility to our audience, to our artists, to our sponsors, to all of our stakeholders, to make sure we ensure a very family-friendly event,” she added.
Executive Director Sarah Umlauff acknowledged to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that she expressed concerns to her coworkers that the troupe’s performance “could be viewed as a political stance” and might “negatively impact sponsor relations.”
Canaan Wellspring formed a few months ago and had not performed in public before its discussions with the art fair. It has more than a dozen members, including children as young as 11, who perform the folk style popular in Palestine known as dabke. Canaan Wellspring gave its first public performance at the Festival of Nations late last month.
The dance troupe is a project of St. Louis Friends of Bethlehem, a nonprofit organization that describes itself on its website as “dedicated to creating a climate for community through dialogue and the sharing of cultural values. … We seek to promote genuine peace and harmony by increasing our understanding and appreciation of each other’s cultures.”
The St. Louis Friends of Bethlehem website does not reference Canaan Wellspring, though the troupe has a dedicated Instagram account. This was a key source of the art fair organizers’ confusion, Kearins said.
With deadlines looming, art fair organizers were unable to immediately determine that Canaan Wellspring’s primary focus is artistic rather than political, said Kearins.
“Ordinarily, when we have an application to perform a dance performance, it's all about the dancing, and that's what [our executive director] wasn't seeing. So when we don't see that the focal point of the group is the performance, the dance, then that's when it does not seem to comport with our requirements for a performing group on our dance stage.”
'We would still love to have you'
The dance troupe and the art fair differ about how far the mutual planning for their appearance at St. Louis Art Fair had gone and how much information Canaan Wellspring provided about its programming.
The art fair made the initial contact, said St. Louis Friends of Bethlehem co-founder Lea Koesterer, after seeing Canaan Wellspring listed on the program schedule of this year’s Festival of Nations.
Kearins said Canaan Wellspring simply hadn’t provided enough information in time to be included before the arrival of a deadline related to the event’s program guide.
Yet according to a series of emails provided by the dance group, Koesterer emailed a video of the group in rehearsal to an art fair intern on July 22.
The art fair intern emailed the group on July 31 to ask for its preference among available performance times. “We would still love to have you but are trying to have everything finalized by the end of this week,” the email reads.
Koesterer emailed an answer within two hours. After not receiving confirmation and a contract, she followed up on Aug. 9 to ask for the final agreement.
St. Louis Art Fair Executive Director Sarah Umlauf entered the conversation at that point, replying to say that the time slots had already been filled in order to meet an impending deadline for the program guide.
“I apologize, but I will take responsibility for this one,” Umlauf wrote, adding that the intern who’d been in touch with Canaan Wellspring “mentioned [they were] waiting to hear back from you but I made the decision to fill the time slot.”
The controversy comes months after the Craft Alliance removed an already-installed exhibition by artists-in-residence Dani Collette and Allora McCullough that included references to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. Bryan Knicely, executive director of the Craft Alliance, asserted that some of the content was antisemitic.
“The songs and the music and the expression is all about beauty, joy, love, strength and community,” Koesterer said of Canaan Wellspring’s performances. “How they can construe that as being anything else is pure projection on their part, and it's not valid. They just don’t know.”
