To Create a True and Pure Space: Service and Global Social Imagination

I spoke with a fantastic and accomplished dancer, choreographer and teacher here in Phnom Penh today, Yon Davi.   Davi, like so many artists, works several jobs.  In addition to her paid jobs she has set up a teaching program that is unfunded, providing no income or pay.  She teaches dance to the children in her community, in her own home.  These are children whose families could not afford dance instruction and she does this for free.  Some of the students that she has taught for some time now, are being encouraged to do the same for others- opening their homes and reaching more students - passing it down the line.  Davi expressed her concern that children here are being taught to simply obey authority, respect elders, and not ask questions or challenge pre-existing ideas.  She is using the teaching of dance, in her words, to “encourage a different way of thinking and living.”  I am hoping to observe some of these classes and write more about what I see.   How does it compare with aesthetic education? Where, for her, are the connections between physicality and movement and life skills and philosophy.  But till I can report on that, I am left thinking about the idea of “service”.  Davi said that she needed a space without the notion of “working for money” where the teaching can be "true and pure.”  This notion of creating a true and pure space sounds to me like the creation of a place of service. How do we teach in service to ourselves and others? How do we not fall by default into the practice of helping (which implies that those being helped are lesser)  as opposed to the assumption of equality that comes with the notion of being in service?  How do we create and sustain this sort of educational space? And the big question:  Do we really need to eradicate the idea of commerce and compensation in order to create this space and truly do our work with integrity and passion? In many circumstances it seems this is the case - but then what are we able to do to change that, as artists, educators, teachings artists and citizens? 

Hearing about Davi’s initiative, I am reminded of educational philosopher Maxine Greene’s use of the term Social Imagination to describe our innate ability to envision change in society and then to act upon it.  As I slowly absorb information about the field of arts and education here in Cambodia, I am struck as much by similarity as difference.  I am thinking always how one should not jump to too many conclusions about what separates and unites us.  But the notion of a Global Social Imagination intrigues me.  With so much that is rightfully unique to individual cultures, geographies and communities, might there be a Global Social Imagination that comprises a shared capacity to imagine things as we dream they could be and then take the steps to make them happen.  Could this idea of a pure educational space be one of these visions? Could this space be virtual (meaning digital) and exponentially expanding?

“Social imagination is the capacity to invent visions of what should be and what might be in our deficit society, in the streets where we live and our schools. Social imagination not only suggests but also requires that one take action to repair or renew.”

-Maxine Greene, Releasing the Imagination, 1995