Photo: Almudena Ortiz
Hometown: New York City
Current city: Oakland, CA
Age: 50
College and degree: Swarthmore College, BA (majored in religion)
Graduate school and degree: University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. MFA in Dance and Choreography, ages 38-41.
Websites: www.ninahaftandcompany.com and www.ninahaftandcompany.wordpress.com
How you pay the bills: Teaching dance – I am full time, tenured faculty at California State University, East Bay and I also teach as modern dance faculty at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center.
All of the dance hats you wear: Choreographer, teacher, administrator, fundraiser, PR and marketing drone, observer and commentator on other people’s work, grateful audience member
Non-dance work you have done in the past: This is going to be a long list! Until 6 years ago, I typically worked 2-5 part-time jobs. This helped me keep a flexible schedule, but I always was looking for a job….
Waitress, bartender
Canvasser (door to door fundraising for a women’s political action group)
Free lance data entry worker
Part-time legal secretary
Temporary office worker
Freelance self-defense instructor
Metal crafts worker (my nickname was Nina Patina)
Delivered boxes of vegetables for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture Project)
Nanny
Administrative worker for several different arts and/or activist organizations (many times, this was my day job)
Freelance corporate trainer (violence prevention, workplace communication, sexual harassment prevention, conflict resolution)
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Describe your dance life in your….
20s: I followed a dancer/choreographer (who has ever since been my role model) out to the San Francisco Bay Area to take a summer choreography workshop. I was soon asked to join that company, but I was really shy and naïve, and just wasn’t ready for the intense interpersonal dynamics that company sported, so I turned it down. But I had found an artistic ecosystem that really suited my interest in art and activism, and I made the Bay Area my home. I took class, was part of a women’s political dance theater collective, got absorbed in martial arts and earned my black belt. Took a hiatus from dance for a couple of years in the middle of all this, then became one of the first members of AXIS Dance Company (a company of dancers with and without disabilities).
30s: I left AXIS after a great 10 year run. Kept dancing and choreographing my own work and committed more seriously to being an artist. I began teaching dance technique and that radically infused my own dancing and performing and choreography with new questions, energy. I started Nina Haft & Company when I was 37. The next year, I went back to graduate school. It was the only way I could think of to spend more time choreographing.
40s: Building my company, and realizing more fully what it means to commit to being an artist, have shaped this decade for me. I started making dances as a child, and am now coming full circle to embrace letting go of everything I know. This decade has seen my company grow to include national and international touring, including an ongoing Middle East choreography exchange. I am humbled though by how much each project can feel like starting from scratch. I want more than ever from dance, and am not sure how that’ll work out. I’ve been very lucky though so far, and so I keep at it.
Each time I feel like I am growing stale, I have found great rejuvenation in taking on a new movement practice. My newest miracle is Feldenkrais – who knew I could feel this good after 35 years of mileage on my chassis?
Photo: Marty Sohl
Can you talk about your experience in martial arts, and its influence on your dance classes and movement vocabulary?
If it were not for my time as a martial artist, I would never have stayed in dance. Martial arts helped me find my voice as a mover and performer, while giving me training and leadership skills. It also inspired me to integrate movement with activism. As a mover and performer, martial arts has given me a zest for grounded, explosive and also fluid, attentive movement. As a choreographer, I am particularly attuned to distance between dancers as an activated space – perhaps this came from years of full contact sparring! My martial arts training has given me a great tolerance for not having the answers to everything at the beginning of a rehearsal or a new piece. Rehearsal is a lot like sparring – the quality of engagement is set by who our partners are and our ability to listen with our whole selves to what each person brings. Some things I love about martial arts training is the value placed on mixed-level training. I think my teaching works for dancers at many levels. I am not shy about grouping students in my classes according to unorthodox commonalities (i.e. how they move through space, or the speed at which they work best when tackling new challenges). Somehow the overt nature of martial arts ranking was a relief to me after years of unspoken pecking order in ballet class and other dance settings. It validates what each person brings to the encounter. I also love how martial artists revere their elders and recognize the subtlety of their skill.
As a choreographer, when did you know it was time to take the leap and form a company?
I thought it was time to call what we did a company when I premiered my first evening-length work. I had also been working, at that point, with a steady core group of dancers for 2-3 years. Becoming a company honored that mutual commitment.
Site specific work and performances in non-traditional venues. Can you talk about these two ideas and projects you have done over the years?
I am fascinated by space and how it shapes what we do and
see and feel, especially how we experience movement. It seems natural then to
take dance performance out of the strictly rectangular stages and layer it into
real life. Everything we take for granted (angle of view, focus, scale, speed,
predictability, etc.) is called into question by working this way! Some of my
most rewarding artistic experiences have taken this on. Highlights include our
site-specific performance installation in a cemetery (Mountain Views); a
performance on the docks of the Port of Oakland (Geographies of Memory); and
our annual Park[ing] Day Dances, a community dance event which we do in the
middle of a busy boulevard in downtown Berkeley each year. I love the
unexpected nature of rehearsing and performing out of the box.
Mountain Views; photo by Jeff Lindeman
What do you look for in a dancer?
Trust, candor and humor. An insatiable appetite for inquiry. Patience and kindness. Movement-wise, I am drawn to dancers with clear, fluid and sensual head-tail connections and spatial intelligence. I work best with dancers who enjoy improvisation as a significant part of the rehearsal (and at times, performance) process. As a director I work a lot more from the questions than the answers. Technical ease and strong partnering skills are very important to me too.
Photo: Pak Han
Resources and resourcefulness being a choreographer….how do you stretch dollars, prioritize, and budget?
I now have access to studio space as an artist in residence, which helps with some but not all of my rehearsal needs. I feel it is really important to pay dancers for their time and expertise, but my resources are not yet large enough for me to offer a salary. So, I pay an extremely modest stipend for rehearsals, which I like to offer in forms that support dancers’ training and health: dance classes and/or bodywork. This gives the stretched dollar a bit more meaning. There have been times that I have focused on site-work and non-traditional spaces when it became expensive to self-produce in a theater, or there were precious few available. I have had to limit what pieces I tour sometimes because of travel expenses. But my first priority is always to prioritize artistic risk above other needs. This way the value of any project stays long after the dollars are gone.
What are 3 pieces of advice you want to give to aspiring choreographers?
Give yourself over to whatever feeds you. This will feed your art.
Be patient and gentle with your body.
Habits are hard to change. Start a new one instead.
Current passions and curiosities:
Urban farming and food justice, cooking from my garden, graphic novels
What are the key skills a “modern dancer” needs in 2013?
Time management skills – life is hectic and expensive, and dance will always take more time than anything. Thank God.
Versatility – make it a habit to train in things that are new to you. You might find you have a special affinity for something that you misjudged.
Self-care – sleeping and eating well, having fun and cross-training are key to longevity in our art form.
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