Surinder Martignetti and Zachary Whittenburg

Recorded November 20, 2020 Archived November 20, 2020 40:06 minutes
0:00 / 0:00
Id: chi003414

Description

Surinder Martignetti (45) and her friend and colleague, Zachary Whittenburg (40), talk about where they grew up, places they've lived, their dance education, and their work today for Chicago arts organizations during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Subject Log / Time Code

SM talks about growing up in rural New South Wales, Australia in a town of about 500 people about 40 minutes from Sydney. ZW shares that he grew up in a small mountain town about 40 minutes from Boulder, Colorado.
SM talks about the farm in Australia and ZW talks about dog sled racing in Colorado.
SM talks about her family and extended family and traveling back and forth from Australia to Malaysia when she was growing up and the languages spoken by her family, sometimes all at the same time.
SM talks about feeling like an outsider, being seen as the brown girl in Australia and as the white girl in Malaysia.
ZW talks about the African American dance school he attended as a child. SM talks about the many different forms of dance she studied growing up and as a young adult.
ZW talks about being a boy dancer and the attention he got because of it. He talks about moving to Seattle at 16 to study dance.
SM talks about working from home during COVID-19 and the ways she stays connected to friends and family.
ZW talks about how he had just begun his work at the Chicago Architecture Center when COVID-19 hit. He talks about the skills he has picked up since March and the process of closing again due to spike in COVID rates again.
SM talks about figuring out how to support Chicago Dance studios, venues, and communities.

Participants

  • Surinder Martignetti
  • Zachary Whittenburg

Venue / Recording Kit

Partnership Type

Outreach

Transcript

StoryCorps uses Google Cloud Speech-to-Text and Natural Language API to provide machine-generated transcripts. Transcripts have not been checked for accuracy and may contain errors. Learn more about our FAQs through our Help Center or do not hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any questions.

00:00 My name is surinder martignetti, and I am 45 years old. Today's date is November 20th 2020. My location is Evanston, Illinois. The name of my partner is Zac wouldn't bug and we are friends and colleagues.

00:19 My name is Zach Wittenberg 40 years old. It is today Friday, November 20th, 2020. I am in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. The name of my partner is surinder martignetti and surrender and I have been colleagues and friends over multiple years and multiple multiple projects.

00:54 Surinder, where did you grow up? I'll answer this question to you. But I'd love to hear a little bit from you about that. I grew up a different countries. I was born in Australia and partly grew up in Australia. And I also grew up in Malaysia just outside of Kuala Lumpur parole Australia in rural New South Wales pretty in a very small Country Town population of about 500 people so very small, but I lived a long time in the country before moving. I had to move to Sydney for my University education. How about you?

01:40 Sydney New South Wales as well. I like you in front of small community of rural area. Originally. I'm from sort of the Borderlands between Boulder County and killed and Gilpin County in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. The closest city to people have heard of near where I'm from is Boulder, Colorado, but about 45 minutes away by car from Boulder where I grew up and

02:18 Spent most of my childhood around that sort of Rocking Out The Front Range a little bit of time down on the Great Plains, but also a lot of time in the mountains of Colorado so lots of hiking and outdoor activities.

02:35 Lots of hiking and outdoor activities for sure my my school in Colorado Nederland Elementary School

02:47 Was rebuilt when I was attending school there. So I was one of the inauguration the inaugural graduates of the new school and we had cross country ski trails that literally begin at the door of the gymnasium. So you can put we had skis for all the students in the school and we would put our skis on in the gymnasium and then to see out the door, and then go on trails that were they were groomed that were all around the school property. So it's been a lot of time skiing for gym class and a few times they are they would load it onto a bust. We would go to a downhill Resort a very small one called Eldora Mountain Resort and we can spend the day downhill ski school and then go back.

03:39 That's really different from how I grew up since I grew up in a into very hot country. So I didn't see snow until I moved here to the US. So for us we spend our time swimming. We I lived by a river. So we are two ways go to the river to swim. We're also very close to the coast. So for our outdoor activity is a way to get us on the bus and we go to the beach about 45 minutes from from my elementary school when I was in high school it when we all went to high school in a larger town, which way is about 19 minutes from where I lived, but you know when you're taking a bus that's a couple of hours. So I would spend in a growing up in a in a town on a farm out school started later than it does here in the US for high school. So, you know we get on the bus.

04:39 At around 7:30 and not get to class until after 9, cuz we have to get up in the morning and do our chores around the farm. So how old were you when you saw snow for the first time? I was 25 different sides of the same coin when I saw snow for the first time. It was really just a flowery and I remember I was really cold cuz I've never experienced anything so cold and I ran outside and I was jumping up and down and and their couple of people that I was with for like what is she doing? It's so weird and I will literally just you know, like those first few flurries, but I was so excited. Where is that?

05:31 I was actually with some friends and I'm just outside of Columbus Ohio summer programs in the mountains near where I grew up and some of the programs had had participants from around the country and so in the summer time, sometimes I would spend a few weeks with kids from Puerto Rico or Florida who has never seen snow before and so it shall to me as one of the locals. I got to I had the privilege of introducing some some kids that were my age to their first snow experience been explaining to them that like it. Yes, it's very pretty but it's all so cold. So I'm a little bit more about what the what the small town in New South Wales that you're from would like describe the community little bit.

06:31 100 we had a school. That was kindergarten through 6th grade. It was about three other children my age in in my grade. We only had two teaches for the whole school. So our grades are split up in like kindergarten first and second and then a second and third and then for 5th & 6th another teacher wheat so high up in a really small town like that. You literally know everyone and one of my favorite memories is like birthday parties whenever someone had a birthday everybody was invited so you just have all of the kids from the whole school, which is somewhere between like, you know, it's 3260 kids all show up at your house for like one big party. It was great.

07:18 We raise goats. So we generally had like 15 to 20, so I crop, you know having to feed the goats, and I know how to milk a goat and make cheese.

07:36 And the area that I grew up in with dairy cattle and sugarcane and fishing.

07:43 Well, there's a lot of animals around where I grew up as well at my community outside of Netherland Netherlands a little bit bigger than what you're talking about. I think the official wrestling count when I was growing up was about two thousand but that we actually lived in a much smaller town and kind class about 15 miles away. And the population of that town was under a hundred and a lot of people who had addressed in Pinecrest Colorado access roads, and we weren't there was no streets or blocks. Our neighbors are the closest house to where I was a mile away.

08:32 And so I wrote.

08:35 Walk a mile from my house to

08:41 Go hang out and wear my babysitter waves example until my parents got home from work, but everything is very spread out and Weasley race sled dogs. We had almost 20 dogs. I think almost all Alaskan Malamute and Siberian huskies, and we raced the Rocky Mountain circuit. So a lot of our family friends and people that we knew and hung out with also had $1,000 or more and we were in the subculture. We're basically from November to March every year on the weekends. We would pack up the trailer and drive sometimes seven or eight hours to go to a race in Wyoming or Montana or Utah or New Mexico and because it's a small community.

09:41 A people sound when you all the same families and leave it to the Circuit every year of races my dad and my mom both raced they were a different divisions. Oh my bad. I think waste $10 and $12 teams with my mom racist 6 dog and a top teams and then I am I and my siblings would occasionally racing the Juniors where you just have one dog on a slab and you go on a Yukon an oval track. So I guess that would be that would be one tradition. That was that was passed out of my family that dick was kind of given to me is something that I was raised on. I personally have not advanced in My Generation by both my brother and my sister are both

10:35 Cowboy involved Miami dad continues to be heavily involved in animal rights and work organizations like the Humane Society and my sister Fosters a lot of dogs that were still so very much. Drake dog centered animal friendly family.

10:56 Oh, that's so cool.

10:58 I guess since I grew up between a couple of different countries and different cultural Traditions. The traditions in my family are a little bit mixed. I guess we celebrated Christmas, but then we also celebrate a Diwali. So this year since Diwali just finished. It's a little bit hard to be a way in and not to do some of those things that we normally do around this time of year is when I'd be packing up and going over to Australia to to spend time with my family or acting up and you know, when I was a kid would be packing up and going to Malaysia to see our extended family. So it's strange to not be thinking about that and not be doing that at this time of year.

11:47 All about family traditions really revolved around Gathering of extended family and lots and lots of food it was you always fly back and forth between Australia and Malaysia or did you take did you take both their back and forth at all?

12:07 We took a boat once but I was pretty small. I just have photos of of the boat trip, but most of the time we would fly and

12:19 Since we came from sensing in Australia, we're in a very small rule area. We were always very strange because we traveled a lot and none of my other friends from Australia really traveled as much as my family cuz every couple of years would spend six months omole in Malaysia and I would come back as a totally different person as you when you're a young person.

12:43 Totally different how you know, I'd I come back in Malaysia is also so hot. So I'd be very tender. I'd have a different sounding accent. I have different clothes. Should I be wearing and just you know, when you're a young person your personality as you grow and learn and change you no changes. So rapidly that you know, I would come back and have to make friends with my old friends again all of my family my family speak Punjabi Bahasa Malay and English as well as usually some Mandarin or Cantonese.

13:28 Play growing up conversations were really strange because they would use whatever would and whatever language fit best. And so I could follow along full of a long and then some other would be coming in blank. No completely lost. So I speak a lot of lots of lots of lots of different languages but not really anything fluently. I had a much more monolingual childhood in the communities that I grew up in a predominantly predominantly white family is English speaking when I got older I went to high school in folder proper. So it was there was a local mountain high school, but it was not the highest quality.

14:21 School, so my family decided that it was worth the effort kind of bring us into folder for high school. And as I'm sure you know, it's much more City and particularly has a large Mexican American population. So when I got to high school, you know, it's just a lot of my classmates were by Bangalore Spanish speaking. So I think it was when I started going to high school and you know my

14:56 Cultural experiences beginning verse which was switches in it.

15:03 I'm curious as to if you if you want to reflect on any life lessons that that your your incredible experiences has provided to you. I think that you can learn something from everyone that you encounter.

15:25 I think I've always felt like an outsider wherever I go because in Australia, I was always you know, the brown person who spoke strangely and ate weed food and went strange places and when we went to Malaysia, I was always the the wico never really fitting in to any place that I went. I feel like I'm very accepting of others and want to be as open when I meet new people. And so I think that's that's the lesson I've learned is to you know.

16:04 You can learn something from everyone. So give everyone a chance. Did you find yourself in the position either explicitly or implicitly like needing to to be an ambassador ditch people expect you or did you get a lot of questions from people that they were looking for you to answer on behalf of community blunted as you have to play that role a lot.

16:28 Yes, I think so. There was one really memorable moment when I was 17 and I was living with my grandparents in Kuala Lumpur just that thought of KL actually and my grandfather was very well respected in the community. So we would go to a lot of weddings and I think they are at the time there was a lot of young women or young girls really getting married, you know, what they might have been only a year or two older than me. But as the Westin raise person, I was more knowledgeable about let's just say it what happens in the bedroom.

17:06 So that was more than one instance where it was. I was put to the full front and be like, okay so into you have to explain what happens at the time was super weird for me. Like I'm okay, but you have the sex talk with someone else birds and bees that you were tasked with explaining a 17 year old was very strange at the time. I would say that I had a similar experience sort of on a smaller scale.

17:46 As you know in similar ways us would have moved among a lot of disparate communities and translated things back and forth. So there's there's my family. You know mountain mountain people dog sled skiing hiking we didn't have Sweden have centralized heat in our home. We had a cabin with a pot belly stove that we built fires in to stay warm and you know, so I would talk to my classmates about like sure we will be have a conversation. Shores and I would have been one of my chores this to chop firewood. Even when I was 19 years old.

18:28 Every I would come up in the rotation and you know, he handed an Axe and I would have to split logs for the fire is just about have to wash dishes or fold laundry inside. So that was sort of 1/2 that I wore but then because I was a dance student the dance school that I attended in Denver where my mom play piano as an accompanist for his classes was one of the one of the major African American dance companies in the United States extend its therapy on Parker Robinson dance school and Cleo Parker Robinson dance Ensemble, and they had a studio facility and a theater that were built as an Adaptive reuse of an old AME Church in a neighborhood Denver called Five Points and almost all of my class.

19:28 Dance program there were African American girls. And in addition to valet. We took a variety of West African and afro-caribbean dance forms hip hop, which was still quite new as a cultural Forum hip-hop dance classes in around 1989-1990 music. I like Rob Base and stuff like that. And then when I would go back to my Mountain School, I would get questions about our people will be curious about like going all the way into the big city in to Denver.

20:10 And taking ballet classes in hip hop classes. And so I was always going to be any questions about all these things and my dance class mates wanted to hear all about the mountains. I wanted to hear all about dog sled racing in we hosted some slumber parties at our house. So some of my dance class mates from Denver who had never been to the mountain since you know an hour away and they had never kind of been off the grid and end in into like real mountain communities. And so I showed them around we had them over and we made a campfire and s'mores and stop Wichita News to them. So and I got a little bit older and I was more forthcoming about being gay. There was also that piece in at 2 and you know. Questions about being gay or being a dancer and that's where things go.

21:05 You know, my my Kristen spend the hundreds of miles that years. Did you going to be coming internationally and overseas, but but certainly I do try try not what you said resonated with me as the sort of a much more local scale.

21:22 That's so interesting that you had like those really.

21:28 Dance experiences that was so integrated and lots of different types of Styles when I started dancing. They weren't actually dance classes available to me because I wanted to dance and it wasn't until we moved to actually this where we lived in when I was really young we're living like nowhere near a town that had anything I thought was until I was about four or five that we moved to this mullet on Lawrence and about 90 minutes away with this other town where I could actually take dance classes, but the only thing available to me within our ballet and tap in a little bit of jazz.

22:09 But as punjabis, you know when my family in my Malay Malaysian family, like whenever we would get together and all the weddings, it would be all the fun Gaara the music and the Indian dance thing. So there was always these two very different types of dance styles, which was you know, my very strict Royal Academy ballet training and then the the free-for-all crazy dancing with with my family and I didn't really learn about the other cultural forms Indian cultural form 2C and cut the collie and kept talking all of those phones until I was probably a teenager.

22:55 And I actually like after I finish high school. I went to live with my grandparents in Malaysia specifically so I could study Indian classical dance. And the end. Did you have anyone in front of your parents generation in your family and that was involved in South Asian dance at all over that started with a little bit puzzled as to where I got the interest in Talent from but it was just it was it was in me and I needed to to move and I needed to do it and everyone was just sort of puzzled look like what why do you want to do this? That's a thing and then when I went to University, you know, I specifically or dishion for does a couple I mean just less universities in Australia just because there's less population. So I didn't really have terribly many options of what I wanted to do. So there was a couple of programs around the country that have dance

23:55 Programs that I had to audition full and I was able to get into one in Sydney and then that really opened up my Styles, you know, letting modern and contemporary in Cunningham and limone and all of that sort of Weston contemporary dances. Well looks like where it's like when I do this classical I take his classical classes, but what I really love to do is like hip hop and there's this tug-of-war between you know, what what technique is right for me and you know, there's always a lot of like this young dancer is caught between the more structured more traditional dance forms in the freezer. The freezer looser fun stuff. Did you have trouble started navigating which path to explore or was it more about holding them simultaneously insert of having multiple experiences at the same time.

24:54 I think it was a multiple experiences at the same time. I mean, I was in university in the mid to early nineties and there was certainly a lot of things at what I didn't don't really disagree with in in my University education was the very eurocentric nature of dance education at the time and that really conflicted with all of my traditional dance experiences, and I didn't have the language to describe.

25:26 Cultural appropriation that wasn't a thing in the 90s or I didn't learn about it then and it's really only been now that I've been able to like

25:35 Integrate some of those two pots of the knowledge that their traditional and the and the contemporary

25:42 Heading in various ways like learning / not the end was just as structured and codified as learning ballet.

25:51 Can I stay in a different way but I really felt like a tug-of-war either partially because of where I was headed in my dance career.

26:08 Ballet was the technique that I took the most frequently but it became apparent fairly early on that. I had two things going for me in terms of making something of myself as a dancer one of which was I was a boy and so it was much less competitive for me and I got a lot more attention because especially when I was younger I was the only boy in my dad's password. It was me and my brother were the only boys have a dance class so you can you get a level of attention, you know.

26:44 The 30 girls in your class. I start to get that sort of individualized attention and it was an asset. I'd like learned that it was an asset that I had taken hip hop classes and afro-caribbean dance forms in some Modern and Grandma turn and other things and not also set me apart. So I had all this positive reinforcement like all the other stuff is good and you don't have to turn on Valley and actually at all if the same thing about straight A students with no extracurricular activities is like you learned that it's not just the academic work. It's important you have to have skills and hobbies in relationships and doing other things so I never really felt pressured to

27:31 Let go of anything that was in the white western dance Traditions that I was involved in and I was if anything encouraged all the time when I moved away from home I moved away from home when I was sixteen to focus on my dance training and went to Seattle and our curriculum. They're included classical Spanish dance with classical Spanish Master teacher performer. I'm sorry that lease was from Spain to play castanets faster than I've ever heard and she taught my class all these classical Spanish forms and and we have modern class and you know all sorts of other things over time. And so that all just what if it was negative number frame this negatives that I was trying different things.

28:25 I think I would suggest that we saved the remembrance question for later and pivot now to some of these code questions. So I would like to hear how your priorities have shifted since covid-19 internship what you do how to do it.

28:49 I think moving from working in an office to working at home mole was not terribly hard to me the last few years. I've been a freelancer so I've worked a lot from harm, but I really value the time that I went downtown and work with people but now being at home 24/7.

29:12 Feels very isolating at time. So I have to make sure that I'm you know, you know me. I'm an extrovert. I'm out there. I'm seeing lots of showers. I'm talking to lots of people so I really crave that connection and I'm not getting that anymore. So I have to find other ways to do it my best friend and I have the weekly Zoom date that will you know

29:38 Have dinner together one night a week playing with my my mom in Australia. She's having breakfast on having dinner because if the time difference and then just you know, texting people in and checking in and just kind of like having those phone trays what I really, you know up until about two months ago. I was working full-time as interim executive director of see Chicago dance. And so that really took up a lot of my focus and I was working a lot of hours. But since I finished I really tried to balance my life a little bit more and take more time for myself, you know do more yoga again and get my body moving by taking a couple of online dance classes and just having a little more time to rest because everything feels really difficult these days and exhausting. How about you what has changed?

30:35 I'm on the same page with you. I wouldn't say that my priorities have shifted but all the methodology all the methodologies and tools have changed and and how how I get things done is much more different than what I'm getting. And because I'm because I'm in nonprofit Communications. There has been so much communication so much stuff to communicate over the last few months. There was the first wave of communicating how when and why we were closing everything and then there was a second wave of communicating how when we were restarting certain things and welcoming people package for facility and starting the process of having events. And now as of last week, we are again communicating closing things down suspending operations, and so it's been a real

31:35 Crash course in crisis Communications and from which I've learned a ton is how to sort of gathering information from across a large institution in a centralized and clarify it and get it out the door in a timely fashion so that all the stakeholders are on the same page and there's Clarity from the general public about what we're doing and what they can expect from us in the near future and and I had only begun at the Chicago architecture Center in

32:10 My first day was early December 2019. So I only had the benefit of three months working at the Chicago architecture Center in a normal capacity before we started to close to call Dad at the trial by fire right now in the process of building relationships and learning familiarizing myself with work clothes. As I was also charged with rapid response crisis Communications to this big broad set of stakeholders. And so to do one alone in the challenge, but then to do both simultaneously is even more challenging.

32:56 But on the flip side, I was able to navigate it off very successfully and now I have the school new skill set and which specifically has made the last week a lot easier announcing over the past few days that we were closing and suspending operations. Again was a piece of cake compared to what it was in March because we already done it and so I knew that I can return to not just about covered related things but about any kind of unexpected unforeseen large shift in what organizations doing. All the methodologies. Can I still apply to all the prophecies can still be leveraged Tori doing whatever so my organization's capacity to pit a quickly and a communicate clearly

33:55 So that's what I find really interesting is, you know, when we were talking earlier just the gigantic impact that car that has had on the architectural Foundation. Can you talk a little bit about that? Cuz I think that's really important that a lot of learning on our end or the fact that in the normal environment. We did almost everything we do in person and we had very little virtual presence on my presence and we had little need to print of Optimizer maximize our online presence in tourism visitation boat tours bus tours walking tours the people in our galleries, everything was like in physical space in a way that makes perfect sense because

34:55 Is is is play Space? So everything goes play space and everything was concrete and we moved all of that first and we had a lot of interesting conversation. What does it mean to talk about architecture? If you're not there, what does it mean to talk about space if you're not into space and how do you communicate those sorts of things through or over video or email or whatever and the other thing is that we were joining the staff Chicago architecture Center in the first place is that in Intercultural nonprofit organization, but if earned 80% of its Revenue

35:43 And so I had a very comfortably Light Lift in terms of securing individual donations grants Foundation support corporate sponsorship. We didn't have to do it because we

35:57 Had so much earned income through ticket sales and I enjoyed that gravy training for and and and and in a very short time. We committed to an environment where we are down 70% contributed revenue and 30% earned income through ticket sales. So on the plus side, that's an environment with which I'm much more familiar because every other place that I've worked until this point has been predominantly funded by contributions and grants it. So I'm kind of back in a mode. I know quite well, but the organization more broadly speaking isn't it is very much a fish out of water, right? So the conversations we've been having specifically since the summer have been how do we go about a short-term thing anymore as this medium term environment that

36:57 Work projecting will continue to have an impact on and what we do and how we do it through 2024. So it's about strategic funding strategy in a good model and all the pieces and all the work that goes along with that and then again,

37:18 Thank heavens. I I know how that works. Haven't been in it before but it wasn't the plan from the beginning.

37:26 Yeah, I think it was a little with see Chicago dance, you know, we do a lot of stuff online and a lot of what we do is supporting the dance community. So it was you know, we're fairly small organization. So we're pretty able to nimbly change what we were doing and I think the hottest pot was everything was so up in the air that we didn't know how best to help the community at all of these various stages. So it was really a time of talking to the community and seeing what they needed and being very fast in in how we changed our programs to suit those needs, you know, really keeping everyone updated with information. I served on a panel to write those reopening guidelines for the city for both stage 3 and stage pull, you know, I was lucky to be in those conversations to say. Hey Studios venues we need to talk with

38:26 What that means and how we keep, you know, not just audiences safe. But the the backstage work is the dances that pushes that people who work in box office and ticketing, you know, it's not just about the public. It's also about everybody that works in the odds and ends that service industry and how do we keep you know, everybody safe and trying to walk so is really lucky to be no part of those conversations and to help write those guidelines and then it's just, you know, we continue to to work on how best we serve the community during this time since yeah, it is going to be wearing it for the long haul and our strategy was to have the signs have two columns and set one one side says what we're doing and the other side said what you're doing.

39:25 So we were able to kind of not to the fact that wasn't us facilitating visitor safety wasn't just about the visitor safety. It was about SAS safety to and just making sure that everyone clarifying the terms of the agreement that everyone was entering into by entering our space. So I think we're just about out of time to thoroughly enjoyed this conversation.

39:55 I've learned some new things about you Zac and I really enjoy this conversation as well.