Hometown: Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey
Current city: Los Angeles, California
Age: 58
College and degree: Sarah Lawrence College - a BA degree with an emphasis in dance
Website: www.victoriamarks.com
How you pay the bills: Professor at UCLA
All of the dance hats you wear: Choreographer, collaborator, teacher, producer/curator, mentor, occasional dance writer
Non-dance work you do: University administration, parenting
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After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1978, I went straight to New York City, hoping to become a part of the dance community. I did not know how my future would unfold. Wanting to be near dancers and dancing, I got the only job I could find: janitor at Dance Theater Workshop. So my early brilliant career took the form of cleaning bathrooms and emptying trash. Besides counseling myself that I was cleaning up after some of my favorite dancers, the great thing about this job was that there was real mobility: I moved from janitor to bulk mailer, to rehearsal space rental coordinator, to theater electrician. As the house electrician (I hung lights and ran the two scene preset board by pushing a dimmer up and down) I watched at least five or six performances each week of artist’s work. The theater produced approximately 48 artists during the course of a year. While I was grateful for my education at Sarah Lawrence, it was the opportunity to study new dances many times over while I slid that dimmer back and forth that gave me a sense of my chosen field.
At that time, (late 1970s, early 1980s) DTW was presenting artists, many of whose work came out of a modern dance tradition. As well, a group of artists who identified with the recent events of the Judson Dance Theater came to present their work. These dances, modern and post-modern, were completely different from one another. As a young person trained in modern dance, I was puzzled and also fascinated with their molecular differences. I wondered at the organizing principles for the new fangled post-modern dances, and at their lack of virtuosic moves and of expressive gesture. Rather than giving up on them, I was drawn to them. If anything, I felt critical of the dances I had previously loved, frustrated by narrative, by allegiance to music or conventional portrayals of men and women. Yet, I was also a child of modern dance. I found the post-Judson choreographers so cold and aloof.
A collection of important moments in my 20s: I stopped dancing. I started dancing again after a workshop with Sara Rudner. I began dancing in small performances with friends. I joined the work of Arnie Zane, partner of Bill T. Jones. I left DTW and began working as a grant writer for Pentacle Management. I went to see more dances at Danspace, St. Mark’s Church and Performance Art at PS 122. I was mesmerized by the conceptual clarity and liquid transparence of Trisha Brown’s work while simultaneously caught precariously off guard by Performance Art that was educating me about privilege and oppression and death. I wondered if dance could have as much at stake, and what that would look like. I danced for several years in the company of Rosalind Newman and observed the way she made dances. I began choreographing. I ruptured a disc in my spine. I stopped dancing. I continued making dances with a group of dancers, often collaborating with composers and visual artists. I incorporated as a non-profit dance company. I bought a computer. I went to see performances nearly every night. Except for the pain in my lower back and hip, except for my lack of any kind of substantial income, except for my messed up love life, life was good.
In 1987-88 I received a Fulbright Fellowship to work and research choreography in London. As the Resident Choreographer at The Place, I once again had the opportunity to see many performances. Along the way I met new colleagues and was attracted to dance makers who were using dance to address gender and challenge heterosexual conventions. These ideas became foremost in my own work. Returning to New York City, I worked with my company for a few more years but I was troubled by dancers’ desire to “dance” and by my own interest in pairing movement down.
In 1992 I returned to London and to a job as the Head of Choreography at London Contemporary Dance School. I really had no pedigree to teach dance composition, but the opportunity to take on that task was enormously stimulating and as a result I grew as a teacher and as an artist. I learned from incredible colleagues, worked with exquisitely trained dancers, and spent time with an incredible group of women who challenged my artistic sensibilities as they also invited me to think about the political implications of personal decisions. I began collaborating with the filmmaker Margaret Williams, with whom I have since made a number of dance films (and hope to continue to do so)! Before I leave this paragraph, I want to mention that this period of time in London was the first time I received a living wage and the experience of being solvent was unbelievable. I felt like an adult! I also missed home.
I think I should mention that in all the years that I have recounted to you, though I had relationships, I never considered settling down with anyone. I never considered having a family. I was consumed by dance. So when I left London, I was thinking that I would return to NYC to pick up my life there. Two things happened: I “hooked up” with Dan Froot and decided that I would like to be with him and that we might have a family together, and I was offered a job at UCLA.
Here in Los Angeles, I am presently the mother of a pair of 13-year old boys. I teach full time and continue to create dance projects, both for stage and film.
Victoria Marks's film Mothers & Daughters; image by Deborah May
What are you exploring in your artistic work over the next year?
There are a few things that I am exploring over the next year:
- I have been developing a choreographic process I call “Action Conversations” which takes my interest in arts and activism into the construction of movement dialogues between two groups of people that would otherwise not be in conversation. Recent Action Conversations have occurred between military veterans and civilians, between young, at-risk women and an older generation of women from the same rural community, and upcoming, conversations between college age women and men on the subject of sexual assault. I hope to lead a workshop for other choreographers and activists, to share the methodologies of the Action Conversation practice.
- I am working with a small group of dancers to hone my choreographic process, and we will present primarily duet work in LA in late May 2014. I am viewing this as a way to practice knowing and unknowing. For this work, I began intuitively and then tried to understand what was happening well enough to shape what seems to be at work.
- I hope to work on a dance film with my dear friend and collaborator, Margaret Williams.
- I am interested in thinking about ways of “decentering” and “destabilizing” my own conventions of dance and dancing.
Current inspiration and curiosities:
At UCLA, because of my interests in disability… did I tell you that? I have become chair of the Disability Studies minor at UCLA. In this capacity, I am leading a course called “Perspectives on Disability.” In this role, I am becoming familiar with some of the literature in the field, and am SO excited!! For an example: I have been learning about the historical origins of the concept of “normal.” “Normal” and of course her cousin, “deviant,” arrived out of a triangulation of the development of statistics (mapping groups of people and people’s behaviors or characteristics), Darwin’s theories of evolution (an idea about the continuous progress of each species toward more adaptive characteristics that ensures survival) and industrialization (the need for bodies to be interchangeable and adaptable for mass production). Considering the ways in which identity is constructed, and the connections between the oppressions endured by members of different identity groups, is deepening my understanding of my tendency toward “choreo-portaiture” and as well, the potential for “Action Conversations.”
Judith Smith (Artistic Director of AXIS Dance Company) and Victoria Marks
Describe the modern dance scene in LA. Do you regularly present work in LA? Do you still travel to share your work? What is your connection with the NYC dance scene?
The concert dance scene in LA is complex and varied. There are many artists who have lived and worked here for a long time. Additionally, the city is deeply impacted by artists who settle here after attending university programs. I would say there is a vibrant grass roots, nearly under the radar, dance community who are doing amazing things. This said, there are very few venues that produce local dance artists, so most choreographers self-produce. I have not presented work in LA for a few years, and it has been even longer since I have been to NYC.
Do you still take classes? How do you train and care for your body?
After years of working with an injury that troubles me intermittently, I have been focused on building core strength through cross training. I love getting strong.
One piece of financial advice you would pass onto young dancers and choreographers:
Take care of your health.
Last performance you saw that really inspired you:
The last performance I saw that inspired me was Jerome Bel’s “The Show Must Go On.” I was fascinated and moved by the way he worked with popular music, found ways to be playful and also terribly serious. He turned the theater, audience and performers, into one big room with different but connected jobs to do.
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