Photo courtesy of Kate Weare Company; photo by Keira Heu-Jwyn Chang
Hometown: Chattanooga, TN
Current city: Brooklyn, NY
Age: 34
Attended an arts high school? Yes - Chattanooga Center for the Creative and Performing Arts (Middle & High School)
College and degree: University of Oregon, B.S. Dance
How you pay the bills: Managing Director, Spoke the Hub, Non-Profit Community Art Center in Brooklyn
Non-dance work you have done in the past:
Like most dancers who were willing to do whatever it took to find a way to dance I’ve done it.
I’ve…
waited tables in a pickle bar in Stillwater, OK and slung hummus in an amazing little Mediterranean restaurant in Brooklyn, NY;
worked in a campus ticket office booth to help put myself through college;
worked in a dancewear store;
and my favorite non-dance work, was caring for two beautiful little boys for many years.
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Photo courtesy of Kate Weare Company; photo by Keira Heu-Jwyn Chang
Describe your dance life….
Five years post-college: Five years post-college I was enjoying a very fulfilling teaching and dancing career in the SF Bay Area. Luckily, it didn’t take long to get it going. I started taking class, talking to people outside of class, seeing shows, networking, making connections, and things just started to happen. I taught for a while in Bay Area public schools as a Dance Teaching Artist in the Lincoln Center Institute Program, and in other public schools in various capacities, which was by far the hardest work I’ve ever done. I also enjoyed a fruitful teaching career teaching teens and adults at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley, CA and founded a pre-professional modern dance ensemble for teens. I balanced that teaching work, as I’ve done most of my life, with non-profit arts administrative work. I was so grateful for the time that I had there to develop my administrative and teaching voice. I had amazing mentors who gave me so much space to be creative and really develop myself not only in the studio but out in the world as well. It was all like a dream. I was living, breathing, eating dance!
I worked tirelessly those first five years out of college to “make a home” for myself in the Bay Area. I can remember, going years with almost no day off - no day without some sort of rehearsal, performance, class, or class planning to prep for. I can remember long stretches of time where I ate almost every meal in my little green Honda and took naps in the car while I waited to go to my next job. It was exhausting but I loved it. Could I do it now? No, but that’s what five-years post-college is for!
Ten years post-college: Pretty much the opposite as the previous five years but that’s what life is all about, right? Surprises.
I left a great job dancing with Kate Weare Company, and dancing completely, in 2011 to reinvestigate what my connection to dance was. Was there still a connection? Did I still WANT this – I mean REALLY want this or was I doing it because I had always done it or because people kept saying that this is what I should be doing? Was I doing it for everyone else or was I doing it for myself? For the first time, I was unsure and unsure if I wanted to keep doing it. I wanted to know what was next for me and I wasn’t sure if dancing was a part of it any longer.
I also saw my friends begin to start families, set down roots, and have things, be they material or ephemeral, that I felt very far from obtaining or experiencing but that I desired, or so I thought. I was on a quest to understand what the other side of life was like – not calling myself a dancer, what a scary thing that was! It was like ripping off my skin and claiming a new identity. It was a strange time. I went on a “dance ban." It was stupid, the “dance ban," but I needed to do that for a little while.
What I missed in the studio those couple of years, I gained light years in the administrative world and in my own understanding of what I wanted, and what was important to me. I threw myself into my Managing Director role at Spoke the Hub, even more full-time than before. Being in the driver’s seat of a thriving non-profit arts organization was/is one of the most invigorating and challenging roles of my career.
Now: I’m thoroughly enjoying my administrative life and taking class when I can. Appreciating the value the work has to offer not only the field at large but to those that it touches every day – the teachers, the students, the families, and the community. Much to my surprise, being at the center of community-oriented arts organization has given me the same kind of rewards that I sought after as a dancer, just with a bit of a focus-shift. I still try to take class when I can and try to understand and appreciate how my dancing body feels different from the way it felt a few years ago. I try not to compare my dancing body/self now to what it was then, which is easier said than done. I am, however, still asking myself “What’s next?” and “What’s my next move?” I guess that will never go away.
Photo courtesy of Kate Weare Company; photo by Keira Heu-Jwyn Chang
Would you be willing to share the story of how you got into Kate’s company? Speaking of Kate’s company, what were some of the highlights of working for her?
Absolutely! It’s actually still hard for me to believe that it happened the way that it did.
After enjoying a fruitful life in the SF Bay Area for many years, I was feeling the itch to try something else. I had no idea what it was but I knew where it was. So, I woke my partner, Ryan, up in the middle of the night in the fall of 2007 and said, “I know what we have to do. We have to move to New York!” To which he replied, “Ok dear, can we talk about it in the morning?” Talk about it we did, and many thanks to him for leaving our rich life in California for this gut feeling that I had. We saved like mad and in January of 2009, we packed up a 17’ truck and drove from Oakland, CA to Brooklyn, NY and arrived on Valentine’s Day to a snowstorm and just hoped that this crazy idea was going to pan out.
New York WAS, IS, and ALWAYS WILL BE, HARD – I now understand THAT is part of its beauty. The problem with us as new New Yorkers was that we didn’t quite understand how sharp the curve of “hard” would be. Ryan had a hard time finding work, I had a hard time affording dance class, and when I could afford to go I was so tired from working (waiting tables & admin. work) that I couldn’t imagine going to class. It was the classic endless loop that I saw so many of my friends end up in - the one that I said would never happen to me. Somewhere in mid-August, after only 6 months in New York, Ryan decided he wanted to move back to California. I felt, however, that there was still something here for me.
He moved back to California, into the same apartment we left (believe it or not), while I stayed with a great friend of mine from college and slept on an air mattress in her living room for the next couple of months trying to figure out what I was doing. Finally, one night, I decided that it wasn’t going to work out in New York and that I needed to go back to California. That night I bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco. The next morning I woke up early with this weird urge to go take class one last time before I left. I walked into Andy Clark’s (former dancer and Rehearsal Director, Kate Weare Co.) class at DNA who just happened to be guest teaching that week. It was a fantastic class and I adored Andy from the moment I met him. I must have told him my name at some point in the class or afterward because that night I received a Facebook message from him saying something along the lines of “Great work in class today...Are you interested in joining a company…Kate Weare is looking for a woman to bring into the company and I think you would be a great fit.” I think I almost died at that moment. It was everything that I had been hoping for, hoping would happen, the reason that I woke up in the middle of the night with a wild idea and moved us 3,000 miles across the country and just about moved 3,000 miles back.
I had a private company audition the following week and I came down with a wretched flu, a 102 degree fever, chills, dizziness and nausea with every step I took but I knew that I wasn’t going to miss this moment. As soon as I walked into the room, my adrenaline kicked in and all of the sickness disappeared. The next 2.5 hours of learning company repertory, intense bits of partnering work, and solo work was so magical I almost don’t remember it. It seemed to happen so fast. I left that audition and actually threw up on my way to the train but it was all worth it. I got the job, forfeited my one-way ticket, and waited another seven months before Ryan was able to move back to New York.
Working with Kate was one of the most phenomenal experiences of my life. She has this unbelievable ability to see what makes a person’s voice unique and has a way of unearthing that out of you physically and emotionally - it can also make the process grueling at times - every cell of you has to be available to dig deeper to discover/rediscover/uncover where the meaning is and why. The process of making her work demands vulnerability – a bearing of your true self. The act of doing that unearths a lot of emotional “muck” but when done with care it can produce quite profound and truly honest work, of which I think Kate does tremendously well. The dancers she chooses to put in the room are a key part of the process. The amount of trust and intimacy that is required to make that kind of work is vital; the kind of trust that obliterates all feelings of nervousness before you walk out on stage. I remember always feeling so excited to perform with Doug Gillespie, Andy Clark, and Leslie Kraus. I had never felt more “at home” and in such good hands than when we took the stage together. You trusted the work, each other in the work, and knew that – no matter what – you would take care of each other out there. You were never alone. I am so thankful for the depths that we all went to together, the work we made, the places we traveled, the time we spent together, and the bonds that we still share. It was a truly wonderful experience and one that I look back on fondly.
Photo courtesy of Kate Weare Company; photo by Keira Heu-Jwyn Chang
The role of teaching in your dance career:
Teaching was one of the main ways that I supported my career in California. I taught a range of styles from teaching creative dance in public school cafeterias where I literally had to clean Cheerios and milk off lunch tables, fold them up and move them before we could even start dancing; to teaching passionate, talented teens where I saw them off to college dance programs; to teaching college and professional level adults in beautiful studios where it seemed that I had every resource available to me. I was ready and willing to do it all, and in the beginning, you have to be.
While I’m no longer teaching, I don’t think that kind of teaching-mind ever leaves you. It takes a very thoughtful, methodical approach to plan and teach a very good, not to mention, fun class. That beginning-middle-end methodical approach is great training for so many things. The confidence and, for lack of a better word “sales skills," that it takes to walk into a room of people and convince them to do this thing with you (and keep coming back!) is a powerful thing. That is an awesome power and one to be taken with great care. While I’m no longer inside the classroom, I use my “inside the classroom” skills to program and devise curriculum and mentor teachers and I hope that I’m passing on the same sense of care, respect, and pride for, not only, the art of dance but for the fine art of teaching it.
Advice to young dancers on teaching, the role of teaching in their dance lives ahead, and becoming a well-prepared teacher:
Here are my thoughts on this: Teaching is hard, really hard, but it is also extremely rewarding. If you want to maximize your opportunities and enjoy a fruitful dance career, I think it pays it start developing your voice as a teacher sooner rather than later. Investigating your teaching voice also serves you in that as you investigate what is important for you to convey to your students in the classroom, you start to understand what is important to you – what YOUR stamp is…what makes YOU unique and special. Digging deeper only makes you a better teacher, a smarter dancer, more powerful performer, a multi-dimensional human.
I also learned a lot about what kind of teacher I wanted to become by knowing what kind of teacher I didn’t want to become. Knowing where you land on both sides of the line is important. I would suggest jotting things down after taking class:
- What did you love about that class? Was it the energy the teacher provided? The structure? The technique? The aesthetic?
- What was successful? Why?
- What wasn’t successful? Why?
- What was the progression of class like? Did it work for your body and why?
- How does the teacher use the space/facings/etc?
- How did the teacher utilize music?
- What kind of language did the teacher use? Dynamic anatomical language? Technical vocabulary?
How do you get there: Most of us start teaching by young students. Talk to someone who is a master Creative Dance teacher and start watching him or her teach. Work with them, observe them, and absorb them. I became a much better adult technique teacher after I started teaching creative dance to young children. The amount of planning and detailed creative thought that went into crafting those classes was, without a doubt, the hardest thing I’d ever done. And, I’ll tell you, sometimes the scariest thing to me was walking into a room of 3-4 year olds who were ready to dance! There were times that I would have rather faced a cage full of lions than a room full of 4 year olds in leotards and tights! Facing that fear, and planning so fastidiously only makes you a better, stronger teacher.
Find a teacher or two that you admire or enjoy taking class from; introduce yourself if they don’t already know you; take them out for tea, coffee, pick their brains, talk to them about their process. Where/how did they get their start as a teacher? What was most difficult? What was most rewarding? Where did they pool their resources? Can you set-up an exchange with them? Just start talking with them. You’ll be surprised how open people are to your ideas. I still do this even though I’m not teaching anymore. Just this month, I’ve had 10+ coffee dates with teachers/dancers/choreographers – picking their brains about where THEY are, what THEY want out of dance/out of their careers, where do they think the conversation in dance (teaching, making work, the role and voice of the dancer, the dancers role in getting credited for work, etc) needs to go. This kind of open dialogue has been helpful for me about where we’re at, where we want to be, and how we might get there.
On becoming well prepared and learning from others: Take notes, takes notes, take notes! I was looking through my teaching notebooks from five/six years ago and I could still, believe it or not, teach those classes! I still have the songs that each phrase was set to, the breakdown of counts, which wall/direction/facing things were/positions, if there was a ritard on a particular count, etc. Kind of sick, meticulous note taking…maybe that’s why I never had a day off! Moral of the story: take good notes – you might need them some day when you want to revisit material or look at the how the arc of your teaching has evolved or remember the moments that were created in the room with those people doing something that you initiated and help to create! I see those notebooks as time capsules and I love every one of them.
An idea from your college years that you still think about/apply:
Where is your voice? My college dance mentor, Sherrie Barr, continually asked this of me/us. Until then, I hadn’t thought too terribly much about what I brought to the studio, to the stage, probably to my life. She was the first person to get under my skin, to make me uncomfortable. She would push me sometimes to the edge so that I could investigate myself and so that I could begin to investigate things that were OUTSIDE of myself. Hearing your voice from the inside is a powerful and sometimes unsettling thing but she knew how to harness that power for good. She is brilliant and kind and so smart and I am so thankful she gave me the space to start developing my voice. I think about that almost every day. I wonder if she knows that? That is the power of teaching. We plant these seeds that change peoples lives and we often never hear about it. When I was teaching I often thought, if I could be ¼ as good at this as Sherrie was then I’ve done something right. Every day I ask myself “Where is my voice?” in this. Thank you Sherrie.
College course that made the most impact on your career path:
All of my college courses significantly impacted my career path. I still reference my Dance Kinesiology books quite often, read through my college teaching notebooks, and even sit down and revisit my dance history books a couple of times each year. However, I think the one single course that made the greatest impact on me was my Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis class taught, again, by mentor Sherrie Barr. This class opened up a new world of understanding on a functional and experiential level for me. Analyzing and approaching movement with an LMA lens almost literally rocked my world: awareness of total-body connectivity, effort, shape, space, mobility/stability, inner/outer, function/expression I found applicable everywhere inside the studio as well as outside of it.
Resources/resourcefulness/frugality:
I’m certainly not going to shed new light on this subject. You don’t choose a career in dance because you want to make a ton of money. You do it because it’s in your bones and your blood and it’s wound in your DNA. For some of us there is no escaping it. It doesn’t afford luxury but what it does afford is real, intimate, meaningful connections with other human beings that care about what you care about. You can’t afford to be excessive. I guess that’s a good life lesson. Your people and friends are your greatest resource so treat them with care. Also, you must know when it’s important to treat yourself to a nice dinner now and again – it goes a long way!
The role family, friends, and significant others have played in your dance life:
I shudder to think where I would be without my patient and gracious partner of fifteen years and our devoted network of family and friends who have supported us to the ends of the Earth in all of the, sometimes wild, decisions that we’ve made. Having a fellow performer as a partner has made this journey/our journey incredibly rich with experience and understanding. It has been important for me to surround myself with smart, positive people, who I can continually learn from and those who believe in and encourage risk, encourage me to shake things up and not get too comfortable. This has pushed me to become a better dancer, teacher, administrator, friend, partner, and - I hope - a better person.
“Paying it forward”
I love that you asked this question! I think this is such an important concept and idea to practice especially as we become more “personal device” driven and “me-focused." We can apply this idea in the studio, in teaching, and out in the world. I know that I’ve been the recipient of many of my teachers “paying it forward” through their mentorship and sharing of ideas and I hope I’ve passed on the same to the students and teachers that I have mentored. Those who are the recipients will be grateful and always remember being on the receiving end of that interaction.
Speaking of “paying it forward” - In the summer of 2009 my partner and I were having dinner at a restaurant discussing whether or not we should move back to California. We were still contemplating this heavy decision when we asked for the check. The waiter then kind of oddly stumbled over his words and said “You see that lady over there? She paid for your meal.” We couldn’t believe it! Who does that?? Afterward, we went up to the woman to thank her and all she said was, “Someone did it for me and now I’m passing it on. Just promise that you’ll do it for someone else someday.” That was an inspiring and hopeful moment for us. We have returned the favor in many forms over the last five years. It feels good to pass it on and pay it forward.
The role of “taking class” in your life – past and present:
Taking class has almost always been the closest thing that I can relate to a religious experience. It was where I felt most at home and in my skin and where things just made sense. I desire the experience of community that is built in a technique class. I’ve always felt like what happens and culminates inside of a class is somewhat akin to making a site-specific work. You’ve almost always got different people in the room giving life to movement in a different way every time. Even if the room doesn’t change and the material stays the same, the nature of how it is taught, experienced, shared, and viewed is always a little bit different. I love that! It’s an open dialogue that you get to change and affect just by being in the room. It sounds simple and silly but I think it’s a powerful thing.
From the time I was six years old nothing was more important to me than taking class. Early on I happily forfeited friends’ parties, sleepovers, and then later, boyfriends and dates, and all the other things that busy your life in your teens and twenties so that I could take class or get a good nights’ sleep so that I would be ready and fresh for class in the morning. When I moved to New York that shifted for me for various reasons, mostly economical, but also because I felt like I couldn’t quite find the right experience inside the room. My relationship to taking class has changed a bit over the years. I still try to take ballet and modern class when I can because it still feels like the “most right” thing I do in my day but I also really enjoy taking getting my gym-time (cross-training, and strength-training) in these days. I’m realizing that what’s most important to me, and I guess maybe always has been, is for me to keep my body in motion. I think my mind needs it sometimes more than my body. I’m enjoying the evolution of my class-taking journey.
Affording and prioritizing bodywork:
My number one word of advice to young dancers: take care of your body NOW so that it will be good to you LATER. I took my body completely for granted until I was 25 and began getting debilitating neck spasms and other painful physical problems that I couldn’t ignore. My body was screaming for me to pay attention to it until I finally had to and have been ever since. Is it costly – yes – but so is losing work or training because you can’t get out of bed. Figure out what modality works best for YOUR body. Is it massage, acupuncture, chiropractic, pilates, gyrotonic, alexander, etc? Figure out the frequency of these modalities discover what you need to keep your whole body in balance. If you can’t afford the costs out-of-pocket, search for other ways to make it happen:
- Find practitioners that offer community acupuncture/massage rates
- Teaching schools often offer free or highly reduced rates for bodywork to have students work on you under the supervision of a teacher
- Find a practitioner that will let you barter, set up work exchange, office help, etc.
Pose 2 questions you would love young dancers to consider.
What makes you/your voice different from other dancers in the room?
Where do you want to be in 5, 10, 20 years? What does that like look like and how do you achieve it? What do you want your story to be?
Arts administration. What do you love about it? What skills do you bring to the table? Advice to young dancers curious about arts administration….
Arts administration has always been a part of my life. My brain has always needed to balance the creative, experiential, and physical outlet that I experienced in the studio with the logistical, operational, and directorial desires that I felt outside of it.
I think my particular arts administrative skill set lies not only in my deep desire for clean, efficient processes (of which I attribute to dance training – learning how to be clean, efficient, and precise) but also in that I understand, and have experienced, many of the roles that comprise what it takes to run a dance organization. I have been the student in training who (very thankfully) was able to dance on scholarship while growing up, the dancer taking endless classes trying to meet people and look for work, the teacher trying to patch together a career, and the one “behind the curtain”, so to speak, trying to keep all the balls balanced in the air…all while (hopefully) making everyone feel understood, respected, and taken care of. That 360-degree experience allows you to understand and empathize with the plight of all the players in the game and understand things from the inside-out.
To young dancers interested in administration I would say, find an organization or company that interests you – reach out to them, express your interest, and take them up on the opportunity to do whatever is needed. Non-profit arts administration, especially, is about doing whatever it takes to get the job done – from archiving materials, to writing copy for PR, to working at the front desk, to helping with grants, taking photos, ordering lunches to cleaning the floors and taking out the trash. It’s all valuable learning experience. You want to get inside a few organizations and see how every facet of it works, runs, and supports itself; then when that little administrative voice inside you starts whispering about how things can be done more efficiently or effectively listen to it until it starts shouting at you – that’s when you know it’s time to throw your hat into the admin. ring and figure out when/where/how you can make the biggest impact.
Final advice for young dancers:
Above all, I would encourage young dancers to continually ask questions inside and outside of the studio – not just about technique, or material they are trying to digest, but about what their role is in that room, where their voice lies within that process and how that translates to the rest of their lives. Yes, you love to dance and love the grueling, hard-working life of a dancer but do you have other interests? How do those interests inform you in and outside of the studio?
I would also encourage young dancers to think about the full breadth that a life within dance can offer. What do you want to be doing with your life 2-5-10-20 years from now? Is dance a part of it, all of it – maybe, maybe not? Do you have interest in making your own work, starting your own company, becoming a dance photographer, writer, critic, historian, body worker, teacher, administrator, etc. Listen, honor, and explore those desires and interests that lie within you as they can feed and inform your career in the dance world or they can take you on another path entirely.
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