Photo by Steven Schreiber
Hometown: Madison, FL
Current city: Brooklyn, NY
Age: 38
Attended an arts high school? No, I went to a rather unimpressive public high school in a very small north Florida town, but I took dance classes (ballet, tap, jazz) at my local dance studio from the age of 5 until I left for college at 17. My parents were really my source of an art education – my father is a visual artist and my mother runs a local community theater group. When I was a kid, they would drive me to the nearby college in Valdosta, GA that had theater, dance, and visual art departments to see all their shows. I also participated, alongside my mom, in the local community college theater productions for many years. These productions were mostly musicals, like South Pacific, Music Man, and The King and I.
College and degree: I graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts with a BFA in Modern Dance in 1997.
Graduate school and degree: I graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts with an MFA in Contemporary Dance & Choreography in 1999. I was 24.
Website: ivybaldwindance.org
How you pay the bills: I pay the bills by teaching, choreographing new work for university/college dance programs, and currently, from my Guggenheim fellowship.
All of the dance hats you wear: I’m a choreographer, dancer, teacher, and administrative everything.
Non-dance work you have done in the past: I’ve worked in restaurants, taught Pilates mat and creative movement, and been an administrative assistant, nanny, cater-waiter, and artist model.
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Photo by Nafis Azad
Describe your dance life in your….
20s: I moved to NYC when I was 21 and immediately began graduate school at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. I met some amazing people, including Tere O’Connor, a choreographer and teacher I deeply admire. Upon graduating, my life was an insane mix of trying to figure out how to make a living while beginning to present my own work and dancing for/with my NYU friends (Netta Yerushalmy, Jeanne Schickler, among others) who were doing the same. In addition to taking lots of dance classes, I took improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade, voice lessons, and in general, was gone from 7am-10pm every day. Ivy Baldwin Dance’s first official concert was at The Cunningham Studio in December 1999 for two nights only. In 2000, I remember very clearly coming home to a message on my answering machine from David White congratulating me on getting into DTW’s Fresh Tracks.
30s: My 30s have been a decade of truly focusing on my own work as a choreographer and establishing myself, and Ivy Baldwin Dance, in New York City. In 2004, I began making longer, evening-length dances and focusing on the development and premiere of one work every year or so. My 30s have also fortunately been marked by an increase in commissions for new work, residency opportunities, support from foundations, teaching, and fellowships. We went on our first international tour in 2007 to Berlin for the Tanz im August dance festival with Danceoff!, followed by some incredible opportunities to work in Romania and Italy.
Can you write a little about your work as artistic director of your own company? What is a typical day’s schedule (or a typical week)? How do you balance the artistic side of the job and the business side of the job?
Balancing the artistic and business sides of running your own dance company is an enormous challenge, and frequently, a real struggle. This past year, I was able to hire a part-time manager/producer, Meredith Boggia, to help with the administrative needs associated with the BAM premiere, and that has been incredibly helpful. We meet a minimum of once a week for 4-5 hours or so, and then there are many, many emails that go between us the rest of the week. Otherwise, I often spend 3-4 hours minimum every day on administrative activities. In addition to my weekly times in the rehearsal studio, I try to carve time out each day to just sit and think about my current work, write in my journal, watch video from rehearsal, read, listen to the score – whatever feels inspiring or helpful to the process.
Do you still perform?
Yes, but only in my own work, and not in Oxbow. The last time I performed in another choreographer’s work was Katie Workum’s Carlisle at Dance New Amsterdam and Karinne Keithley’s play Do Not Do This Ever Again at the Ohio Theater, both in New York City in 2008.
Describe your latest project, Oxbow. What’s on your calendar with Oxbow for the rest of 2014?
Oxbow is a new dance commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) for the 2014 Next Wave Festival and is a quintet for Anna Carapetyan, Lawrence Cassella, Eleanor Smith, Ryan Tracy, and Katie Workum. The sound is by Justin Jones, with additional music for piano composed and performed by Ryan Tracy and Eleanor Smith. There is a set by installation artists Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen, lighting design by Michael O’Connor, and costumes by fashion designer Alice Ritter. We’ve just finished a month-long residency at BAM, thanks to my 2014 BAM Fisher Artist-in-Residence position, and now we’re preparing for the world premiere of Oxbow at the American Dance Institute (ADI) in Rockville, MD, October 17th & 18th, followed by the NY premiere in BAM’s Next Wave Festival November 13-16, 2014.
The title, Oxbow, is in reference to oxbow lakes. An oxbow lake starts out as a curve, or meander, in a river. A lake forms as the river finds a different, shorter, course. The meander becomes an oxbow lake along the side of the river.
What do you look for in a dancer? How do you find dancers?
I value individuality. I’m drawn to performers who strike me emotionally, people who are willing to be vulnerable both in the studio and on stage. I’m interested in working with people who are smart, strong willed, have a wicked sense of humor, and are interested in collaborating, creating, and discussing the work together.
Although I’ve chosen many dancers from auditions for student work, I’ve never held an audition for my company. I see a lot of dance in NY and have often asked people I’ve seen perform in other work to come into rehearsal, or I’ve ended up working with someone who was recommended to me by a trusted friend. Building a history with artists has been important to me and I tend to work with the same dancers and designers for many years. All of my performers are currently New York City-based dance artists.
What are 3 pieces of advice you want to give to aspiring choreographers?
1. Stay true to what you’re interested in making, even when it is not what the current “cool kids” are making.
2. Be patient, but really go for the opportunities that you want.
3. Surround yourself with kind, supportive, and inspiring people.
How do you receive feedback about your work? Do you have a mentor?
It is important to me to receive feedback from trusted friends who know me and have context for my work, so I invite them to rehearsal periodically/throughout the process. I also ask a choreographer whose work I admire, but who is relatively unfamiliar with my work, to come in and give feedback, too. This year I asked Neil Greenberg to come to rehearsal for the first time.
Photo by Steven Schreiber: L to R: Katie Workum, Mindy Nelson, Anna Carapetyan, Lawrence Cassella
At the risk of sounding cliché, I love traveling, cooking, reading, films, and going to museums. I’m currently reading a book about Dianna Vreeland and Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers. I’m also interested in early collage from the 30’s-40’s and recently discovered a beautiful book, The Age of Collage – Contemporary Collage in Modern Art. Oh, and I’ve been reading Pablo Neruda’s poem Stones of the Sky, number XIX, over and over again ever since my collaborator, Wade Kavanaugh, suggested it to me because it reminded him of Oxbow.
What is your relationship with technology? How do dance and tech intersect for you – whether in your actual artwork or with making your work happen (arts administration, marketing, etc)?
Dance and tech intersect for me primarily at the administrative level. I have a rather fraught relationship with my smart phone and laptop because I despise how much more time I spend with them instead of in a dance studio. I spend a significant amount of my time during the week emailing, managing budgets and schedules, grant writing, etc..
In my own work, I’m deeply drawn to humans and human emotion and physicality. I have really only pursued bringing “technology” into performance once – a set design by visual artist Anna Schuleit for Ambient Cowboy that consisted of her drawings, created live on a tablet, being projected onto the stage while we danced. That said, I do utilize video, to varying degrees depending on the work/process, to document rehearsals, improvisations.
Your own training and care for the body:
I wish I could say I made it to dance classes more often, but I’m recovering from a severe shoulder injury so my current care includes primarily physical therapy, Pilates, massage, and acupuncture.
Photo by Andy Romer: Eleanor Smith
Advice to young dancers about moving to NYC:
Find an affordable apartment and a job that won’t kill you and allows you time to dance and see lots of dance. If you discover someone’s work that truly inspires you, tell them you’re interested. Spend lots of time at Movement Research. Take advantage of the museums, galleries, shows, film, interesting classes, food…..it’s an amazing city.
To read Ivy's updated profile from Fall 2017, please click here.
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