From: Northeast – New Jersey, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts
Current city: Iowa City, IA
Age: 40-something
College and degree: Middlebury College, BA Dance/Sociology
Graduate school and degree: Smith College (graduated at 30)
Website: http://www.architectsdance.org/
How you pay the bills: Associate Professor, University of Iowa
All of the dance hats you wear:
- At UI - Co-Director MFA Program, Undergraduate Honors Director. Co-Founder of collaborative improvisational company “The Architects”
- Co-director and teacher of “MICI: Movement Intensive in Compositional Improvisation”
- Independent choreographer producing work for “Kayle + Company” and on commission for Universities and regional companies/artists
- Independent performance improviser working with various dance and music colleagues
Non-dance work you have done in the past: Word processor, secretary, “temp”
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My journey in dance is non-traditional and zig-zag. As a young person, I was a competitive gymnast, sang in the choir and small groups, did musical theatre, and participated in sports such as field hockey and diving. I discovered dance in college in a program that focused on original creative work through improvisation and choreography, and bridging creative work with research across the liberal arts. I had a sense that I needed to play “catch-up,” with my technique, (which I did at summer festivals such as ADF, Bates, and White Mountain), but over time, realized that I had been given all the skills I needed to learn whatever was in front of me. I wasn’t as familiar with the technical forms and routines as other dancers, but from my improvisational training, and education about “performance,” I knew better how to see the movement, and how to make sense of the dancing in my own being.
I spent my 20s learning how to teach and direct a dance program at Northfield Mt. Hermon School, a wonderful, interesting, and progressive place for secondary school education. After I went to Grad School, I spent my 30s figuring out college-level teaching, first being somewhat happily under-employed as Sabbatical Replacement Faculty, Visiting Artist, and adjunct at places like Hampshire College, Amherst College, Keene State College, and even some regional private studios, teaching and also choreographing. I eventually got hired for my first tenure-track position at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA. I spent 3 years there cutting my teeth as a teacher in higher-ed with many wonderful and open-minded students, but also many moments of realizing I needed to hone my “spiels” about why we were doing what we were doing. I then took a chance on a Visiting Professor position at University of Iowa, not knowing if I would be there for 9 months, or thereafter. When a tenure-line was re-opened, I applied and was invited to join the faculty. Here I am almost 10 years later!!! It seems both inevitable and a shock that I am a tenured, Associate Professor, and suddenly, the person who says in faculty meetings, “how we came to this decision back in XXXX, and what we have done in the past,” and other such sayings of those who have been around a while.
Throughout my discovery of a life in dance, my passion has been in creative work, both improvised and choreographed. There’s really nothing that wakes me up more than making a dance, and I am endlessly curious about how it works, both for me and for others. Early on, I knew it was something I needed to have in my life, but in the beginning, I never imagined it could be at the core of a “career.” In every stage of life, I’ve figured out how to create and produce my work. Local arts council grants, a national grant, money from academia, experimenting on students of all ages, gathering peers and colleagues to learn from one another, professional workshops, self-created laboratories - all passionately created spaces for learning in and through the body how to compose something.
It’s hard to define why I never focused on “performance” as an artist. My experiences as a performer have been fraught, and I suppose, the particular struggle or anxiety associated with making work, as opposed to performing work, has always better suited me. I think it partly has to do with notions (real or imagined, personal or cultural) about the way my body looks. I don’t have what could be called in old-school terms “a dancer's body,” in its external form, but I DO have a “dancer's body” in terms of my passion for moving and for embodying deeply each moment, finding meaning in what I’m doing, looking at dancing as an act of communion. For this reason, I’ve always felt more authority as a performer of improvisation, where the standardized “should” about how things look is not so strong, but it is more a question of peculiar presence, creative acumen, intelligent response, and physical/artistic specificity regardless of pre-determined forms.
I suppose I raise this question of performance because many young dancers assume that their entrance to “the dance world” must first be through performance, by reaching the heights as a chosen one, and by first embodying someone else’s (sanctified) vision. For me, this was not the way, and I know I’m not the only one. As a young woman of 22, my mother died, and my father was not in my life, and I knew I had nowhere safe to go if the “starving artist” routine (ie trying to dance in New York) didn’t happen for me. I focused on teaching as a way to also teach myself, to pay my bills, to create a home life, to be assured that I could survive and also do what I loved. But I’ve always enjoyed it! And I’ve been successful in conducting my creative research and performance simultaneous to teaching. I was drawn to teaching for practical reasons, but also for reasons of the heart. Please don’t look to teaching as some kind of escape or a “back-up,” because teaching in itself is extremely challenging, and also extremely important. If you are drawn to it, notice which of your teachers inspired you and moved you forward both as an artist and very important: as a HUMAN. Study your teachers and learn from the ones who injured you, as well as the ones who gave you back to yourself. It is one of the most important things you can do if you enter the field. Notice also, how your teaching and your artistic research can feed one another. Question the forms that were passed down to you. Make a conscious decision about what you want to see in the world, and use your classroom or studio as a space of possibility to promote those values. Be on the lookout for ways that your teaching methods are accidentally producing the experiences and forms you wish would disappear in dance and in life.
I will close by saying a few words about the powerful force that improvisation has been in my life. I was initially exposed to improvisation by Penny Campbell, student of Judy Dunn (Judson Church Movement, Cunningham Company), and Bill Dixon (free jazz pioneer), at Bennington College. I also learned the practice of Authentic Movement from Andrea Olsen, and from Daphne Lowell. And from another formative teacher, Peter Schmitz, I absorbed a distinct perspective on improvisation as creative process, and as performance through multiple media, especially “text.” I’ve studied Contact Improvisation with excellent teachers, but it has not been my main love. Later, in my collaborative research with “The Architects,” Katherine Ferrier, Lisa Gonzales, Pamela Vail, and our circle of associates in music and design, I have been able to continue growing in unexpected directions. What I have learned through the practice of improvisation has been without boundary. Here are a few phrases that point toward some of the wealth I’ve received: the ability to arrive to the moment exactly as it is, and to be “moved” by what I perceived there; to look at a complicated scenario and make a conscious choice without fear; what is TRUST in action; stamina of attention, how to remain with whatever is happening without running away either mentally or physically; a sense of the poetic, and the vast expanse of poetic experience that is provoked by living through a moment in the body, either directly or vicariously; the materiality of intent, and of attention, that what we notice and what we intend is a powerful materializing force that goes way beyond our little selves; the capacity of a group to pay attention to one another with simultaneous respect for individual necessity and communal integrity; the limitless field of possibility; the huge leaps that are possible in one’s most important capacities; that building a dance and building a life are both spontaneous structuring processes that draw on every intelligence we can muster, and in that process, to have your expectations and assumptions dashed is perhaps the most important “teacher” on the journey.
Let me also say that I understand there are many un-inspired or questionable improvisation teachers and methods out there, in studios and workshops and other spheres. If you have had negative, painful, or frustrating experiences, I apologize on behalf of improvisation as a phenomenon, and I urge you to keep looking for a teacher or a method or a place where you can finally experience the depth and richness that improvisational practice can bring. You’ll know it when you’ve found it. A sophisticated improvisational method/practice can propel you to new territory, new heights, or new constructs for yourself, and will cause a creative stance that is both focused and expansive. If you feel that your oeuvre or output is getting smaller – then that’s not it. If you feel the possibilities exploding, and find you have means to contend with those possibilities in a state of curiosity and productivity – then YES.
In conclusion, be honest with yourself – about what you love – about what you can and can’t live with. Learn to listen deeply (inside and outside). And if you feel called: KEEP GOING. What unfolds for you probably won’t be what you’re able to envision from this point in space in time. But it will be something as meaningful as you make it, and your life in dance will be an equal gift to yourself and to those you touch if you are paying attention with a strong heart.
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