Life as a Modern Dancer

A Home for Improvisation at "Never Before Never Again"

The Leftovers. Pictured: Hannah Wendel, Mei Yamanaka, Sarah Chien, and Donnell Oakley. Photo credit: Yechiel Husarsky.

 

A Home for Improvisation at "Never Before Never Again"

By Sarah Chien

"Never Before Never Again," or “NBNA,” is an annual 3-week festival in January at Triskelion Arts in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood. This year was guest curated by performing collective The Lovelies, who programmed mixed-bills of 10-20 minute performances, split bills, weekend workshops, and an open-mic style event called “Stage Dive.” I participated as part of The Leftovers, a collective created by the curators for this event consisting of Mei Yamanaka, Hannah Wendel, Donnell Oakley, and myself.

I’ve been struggling with how to succinctly capture the 3-week festival in this written form. Although I attended or performed in at least one show from each week, I’m still only one person amongst the many who bought tickets, taught workshops, performed work, hosted evenings, served drinks and played music at Triskelion Arts.

But as many improvisers know, sometimes you just need to start, propose something, and then follow the thread. I can hear my mentor David Zambrano saying, “If you feel like you’re waiting, then change something.” 

So let’s begin with the festival’s closing night. My overwhelming feeling, walking into Triskelion’s main theater space, was one of “home.” They’d offered all artists in the festival a free ticket for that night, and the audience was full. As I walked up the tiered seating towards an open spot, there were people I knew in every row - my collaborators, friends, fellow improvisers from this festival and from other spaces, even some Triskelion regulars. For me, this sense of belonging is exceedingly rare in the dance world --- with most institutions I feel like I’m on the fringes looking in, wondering how someone got curated or what the people in charge really care about. At Triskelion, I feel like a peer - my work has been curated in the space, and I in turn have invited Triskelion folks to perform in events I host. It feels less transactional, and more mutual - and a lot of that has to do with the space’s willingness to center my chosen craft, improvisation as a performance, throughout their programming.

Of course, I’m also acutely aware that what I feel at Triskelion, is what others feel when they walk into Movement Research at Judson, or Gibney’s theater, I’m sure. When I’m feeling embraced at Triskelion, someone else is wondering how I got there. There is a familiar cast of characters at Triskelion - and I am one of them. I want to recognize that privilege even as I revel in it.

On Saturday, before the show started, I talked to the people sitting beside me in the audience and found that indeed they both had different relationships to the space. On my left was a lighting director who had advised on the various iterations of Triskelion’s spaces, and on my right was a new student of improvisation who’d enjoyed the weekend workshops that the festival offered. “So do you do compositional improvisation?” he asked me. I laughed, because the assumption in that question (that this specific phrase was a common dance vernacular) made it obvious that his entry into improvisation was through this year’s festival curators, The Lovelies. Following their mentors, the Architects, The Lovelies have defined their work in this lineage, teaching and performing under that term. 

I wish we had somewhere a catalogue of all of the different improvisation performer-teachers out there….David Zambrano, Katie Duck, Ruth Zaporah, Juleyn Hamilton, and Bebe Miller to name the few that are top of my mind from talking to other festival artists and my current frame of reference. There’s also a rich New York network of improvisers performing and teaching in ways that center African American experiences and lineages: the many members of the Skeleton Architecture Collective, mayfield brooks (whose recent show at JACK, I just missed!) just to name a few. I wish, for the sake of more cross-pollination within our communities, we NBNA performers had shared a list of mentors and schools of thought that inspired our own work. Most of the time when I see improvisation in the curriculum of dance studios or festivals here in the US, the class descriptions tend to center Contact Improvisation. And while I love this form, there is so much more improvising out there.

So what kind of improvisation happens at Never Before Never Again? Triskelion’s festival features improvisation as a performance practice, preferring long form, live-music collaborations, and (usually) performers who marry expansive contemporary dance movements with their own charisma. The festival’s success lies in the community of improvisers it nurtures throughout the year (not only for this festival); its incredible lighting designers Dave Glista and Andy Dickerson before him, who aren’t afraid to improvise lights alongside the performers; and its welcoming, casual environment created by friendly staff, who maintain the intimate but well-kept space. A strength this year was also The Lovelies’ curation of a multi-generational line-up of performers. As I’m dancing into my early-thirties, I find it a pleasure to share the bill with artists older than me -- it reminds me that our art form, which always feels so ephemeral, is an endeavor that endures and transforms.

Here are some themes I enjoyed across the performances I saw, and participated in:

Luxurious watching - sifting through the noise.

NBNA is one of the few places I know that I can see multiple 20+ minute open scores presented on the same bill. Longform improvisation invites the audience to let the experience wash over them and then choose their own adventure. We aren’t told explicitly what we should be looking at, and at times we can feel there are multiple focuses. But the beauty of the relative chaos of improvisation, is that audience members are invited to find their own path, just as the improvisers are finding theirs. Agency all around! The Lovelies, as a collective, have performed in different configurations, but their trio Settling Dust, was their ideal form - we could see each performer’s individuality and contributions to the work, clearly delineated in space by boldy placing cellist Kirin McElwain at center stage.

Collaborators who are equal participants.

Improvisation gives choice-making back to the performers, which eliminates some of the hierarchy inherent in choreographer/dancer, or musician as accompanist structures. Those surely existed in some of the performers works (for example Troy Ogilve was billed with just one name, but there were many other bodies on stage), but many groups chose to place musicians squarely in the space, or perform as a collective, as I did with The Leftovers. For me, the most profound example of this trend was Andy Dickerson and Rachel Mckinstry’s collaboration, cotton candy machine. With no overhead lighting, Dickerson calmly walked the edges of the stage, employing a series of handheld battery-power lights whose changing focuses and colors would rest on the different gauze-covered tableaus that Mckinstry was exploring. Although Mckinstry was the visual focus, both she and Dickerson had equal presence onstage, with Dickerson even taking a “solo” when he turned on a disco-strobe light during one choice moment. 

Humor as a reward for breaking expectations.

Performing improvisation is a practice of self-awareness. Performers must be both present and permeable with not only their own movements, but also the space, the audience and any expectations that already exist in the social contract between the two. I noticed frequently in the festival that audience members would laugh when a performer took a risk that surprised them, acknowledging the shared joy in playfully testing unspoken rules that we didn’t know we were obeying. In The Leftovers’ Saturday night performance, Donnell Oakley wryly placed a microphone continually out of the reach of Mei Yamanaka as the two reconfigured their intertwined bodies in a comedic yet elegant tumble. In This Time, the Architects established a game of searching out similar sounding words, eliciting a chuckle when they stumbled on a word that not only matched the sound, but also served as commentary on the action. Humor is evidence of the audience and the performer experiencing surprise at the same moment.

Trust between performers.

In set work, the choreographer carefully crafts a series of interactions, and each performer plays their part. But in improvisation, supportive confluences result not from carefully rehearsed steps, but from a carefully nurtured understanding between individuals. It’s a pleasure to watch longtime collaborators like Nicole Wolcott and Omar Zubair together, as their close creative relationship allows them to react seamlessly to each other’s proposals in real-time. We could watch these two play all day.

DIY aesthetic and diegetic stagecraft.

Improvisation empowers performers to take control of their own expression, and perhaps as an extension of this, many artists chose to manipulate their own sound, light and props in front of the audience. Jesse Zaritt walked on stage and opened a curtain blocking light from the lobby. Jennifer Nugent placed her laptop in a corner to trigger her sound from the stage. And both Zaritt and Nugent, in separate performances, read text from a sheet of paper they brought into the audience. The Leftovers, my group, placed a microphone, a cell phone and a clip light onstage, for performers to play with throughout the performance. Seeing multiple performers include these types of choices, I wondered if our own felt trite. But I know that when used well they highlight the magic of stagecraft and choice-making in the moment.

The Lovelies. Pictured: Lena Lauer, Joanna Futral, and Katie Vason. Photo: Anthony Collins.

I want to commend Triskelion for its commitment to elevating improvisation as a performance practice. I want both dancers and audiences alike to appreciate improvisation as something more than a dance you do in your living room, or a task you do to generate movement ideas for a choreographer, or as a jam in a dance festival. All of those ways are valid, but the community of improvising performers still needs nurturing. Some of the artists in NBNA are dedicated improvisers, and for some it's a chance to bring a different part of their practice center stage. As festival artist Ani Javian noted, “I'm always surprised at how it shifts in performance - there's more to listen to, to take in, and to make sense of...NBNA was a great opportunity to practice with an audience.” 

Contemporary presenting institutions often espouse “artistic risk-taking” as one of their curatorial values. Watching the improvisers at Never Before Never Again, I realized that when you curate improvisation you create space for real-time risk-taking. There’s no need to ask performers, “How does your work embrace risk?” when it's a given that every performer is entering the stage ready to make choices live in front of an audience. “Improvisation is such a vulnerable practice, and performing can put that on the spot,” explained festival performer Wendell Gray II.That vulnerability, to reveal and react to what’s really happening, is a risk that I wish more institutions would acknowledge. 

“This is so fun,” exclaimed my seat companion from Saturday night. “You get to see something that nobody else will!” In improvisation, performers trade repeatability for honesty. It's hard to sell this work as a “product.” Can you imagine where our art form could go if audiences and presenters approached performances like that? 

---

Sarah Chien is always a dance improviser and sometimes a dance writer. She is based in Brooklyn, New York, where she creates, teaches and produces work with collaborators from dance, music, circus and theater. 

www.sarahchien.com @dancepostcard on Instagram

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One Good Quote: MidCentury Blue(s) with the Wax Poet(s)

In Fall 2017, Life as a Modern Dancer launched a new concept for post-performance discussion and writing. The goals are multi-fold:

• What are new ways to invite post-performance writing (since so few publications now print dance reviews, and there are fewer and fewer dance critics in the United States)?
• How can choreographers hear and read more from audience members about their impressions and experiences of dance events?
• Can we offer new mechanisms for choreographers to gather language about their work, to further their work and to promote their work? 

The premise is simple. If you experienced the Wax Poet(s)' production of MidCentury Blue(s) at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center (February 8 and 9, 2020), please take a few minutes to leave a comment. Write down images, impressions, appreciations, and questions from the performance. These can be words, phrases, or a few sentences. 

We thank you for your time, support, and thoughtfulness. Here's to more dialogue, more reflection, and more writing on the dance performance experience. As choreographer Mariah Steele noted, we are "democratizing dance criticism."

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Check out MidCentury Blue(s) This Weekend in Berkeley

The Wax Poet(s) - Garth Grimball and Heather Stockton - premiere their latest project today and tomorrow in Berkeley at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. Check out the trailer here, filmed and edited by Heather Stockton, with music by Rhae Royal. A dance and lighting installation, the event runs about 30 minutes in length each iteration. Dancers include Frankie Lee Peterson III, Julie Crothers, and the Shawl-Anderson Youth Ensemble.

By looking back at how iconic mid-century artists used the color blue in paint and performance lighting, they, with lighting designer Jessi Barber, take a deep dive into creative lineage and question how historic choices inform today's work.                     Heather Desaulniers, SF Arts Monthly.

Tickets are available online through Brown Paper Tickets.

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Breaking Down with KWENTO

Catherine Liu. Photo by Andy Strong.

Breaking Down with KWENTO

By Garth Grimball

KWENTO’s Break, a premiere directed and danced by Catherine Liu, artistic director, with an ensemble cast, opened at PianoFight on Jan 31. Break is dance theater. A medium of synthesis that few can get to show and not tell, rather than show and tell and tell and tell. Break explores the “most traumatic experience with [Liu’s] own mental health” in a mostly linear format of scenes progressing through introduction, climax, and resolution.

In Break the dance, theater, pantomime, and monologues are additive without being associative. The parts do not alchemize into a new whole but connect to each other like train cars heading in the same direction. What does an attitude turn have to do with a knife? How do we connect acrobatic lifts from a gurney to fear of abandonment? Each form of artistic expression seems to share a conceptual basis but not connective tissue. The moments of dancing are brief and used as relationship building between characters or as scenario like a scene of Liu attending an audition.

Liu has a director’s eye and sense of timing. No scene outstays its welcome. Whatever the mode of expression the plot moves forward at an even pace. She is a committed performer. In a monologue as internal dialogue Liu acts out a conversation with her inner depressive voice navigating self-worth. There is no shying away. It’s uncomfortable and it’s supposed to be. This is Liu’s story so it’s difficult to get a sense of the ensemble cast as more than collective supporting characters.

The most successful moments are the simplest. In a hospital visit scene Liu and Melanie Harvengt play the hand-slap game. Liu goes through a variety of emotions each time her hands are slapped. The brief moment communicates so well the incredible weight and energy of performing “normalcy” for others when you’re feeling anything but yourself. Later the ensemble wears lab coats and pelts an endless supply of prescription bottles at Liu as she stands in disbelief. I cannot think of a more perfect representation of searching for a doctor who will hear you and finding a medicine that will work for you.

We put a lot of pressure on art to give meaning, to transcend, to speak truth. Creating honest work is often most memorable. Liu’s honesty stays with me. An honesty that will hearten others on their mental health journeys.

 

Garth Grimball is a writer and dance artist based in Oakland, California. He is the co-director of Wax Poet(s), company member of Dana Lawton Dances, and performs regularly with Oakland Ballet.

Catch Break at PianoFight February 7 and 8, 2020 at 7:30pm. Get tickets here.

Still Lingering: Reflections on “Action Potential," Six Months Later

Shira Yaziv and Megan Lowe. Photo by Sebastian Arrua.

Still Lingering: Reflections on “Action Potential,” Six Months Later

By Molly Rose-Williams

On August 27, 2019, I saw Megan Lowe Dances’ production of “Action Potential” at the Athletic Playground in Emeryville, CA. The site-specific work was directed by Megan Lowe, and created and performed in collaboration with Shira Yaziv and Sonsherée Giles. The evening featured live music by Girl Swallows Nightingale (Marica Petrey, Mogli Maureal, and Travis Kindrid) with lighting design by Dylan Feldman. 

I found out after watching the show that it had been created largely in response to a life-threatening assault and home invasion that Megan, her partner, and roommate had experienced months earlier while saving two strangers’ lives from an enraged attacker. The program notes described the creation process as an opportunity for Megan to continue to “process the trauma [of the event] and move forward.”

In the months since seeing “Action Potential,” I have found that moments from the show continue to resonate for me. In this piece, I take a cue from the origin story behind the “Action Potential” itself to reflect on what sticks with me 6 months later.

 

Megan is on one side, Shira and Sonsherée on the other. A rectangular slab of hard foam the size of a small refrigerator groans between them as they pitch their bodies towards one another. Their feet rip along the floor as they fight for purchase, legs like tree trunks with roots that seek the Earth’s iron core. Hands and forearms slap the mat as breaths wrack their bodies with ragged heaves. Over and over they careen at the mat. 

Until this moment, the show has felt predominantly playful to me. At times curious, joyful, sentimental, and tender, they have painted the space with sweeping acrobatics, bounced off the walls, swung between monkey bars, and flown through the air from dizzying heights. Now I feel my body tight, unnamed emotion welling up my throat.

Flashback twenty minutes before, I was squirming with delight and the excruciating discipline of staying seated while Megan, Sonsherée and Shira flew between monkey bars. From the monkey bars, they slithered up to a loft above the door where we came in, and began jumping off the 15-foot drop onto a giant squishy mat, their bodies hitting the foam with satisfying, muffled smacks.

Before that, I remember glimpses of hidden bodies under a rolling door, just the legs and calves sticking out as the metal slowly folded upwards until three whole humans were revealed. I remember the band throughout, filling the space with sound so textured and robust I almost felt I could eat it, lead singer warbling soulfully. The musicians seemed attentive to every movement on stage. The energy between dancers and musicians was contagious.

There are moments I think I remember but can’t be sure of: Did Megan scale the 2x4’s bolted to the wall above us only by her fingers? Were Sonsherée’s legs sticking out of a cubby when we passed through the changing room from one room to another? Did the bass player do a front flip off a mini trampoline at the end?

I know there was a mini-trampoline--more satisfying thumps made by squishy mats well-used. I remember bodies running to launch off the trampoline and fly through the air with a sense of saliva-worthy weightlessness. I remember the empathetic urges zipping through my body, craving to fly with them.

I also remember Megan alone on the stall bars (a set of vertical bars like a wide wooden ladder attached to the wall), a rare solo in what was otherwise a solidly ensemble show. In my memory, it came just after Megan, Shira, and Sonsherée fought tooth-and-nail to hold their ground on either side of the refrigerator-size foam block. Like a balloon inflating and deflating at the same time, Megan climbed the stall bars with the weariness, grace, and intensity of someone who doesn’t know what to do except to keep going. In pinky-red light, she wound in and out of the wooden slats to arrive hanging upside down, and then continued to move, as if feats of such athleticism were quotidienne, as if her body might unwind something the rest of her was not yet able to. 

Eventually she jumped. Another matted landing. She looked at us for what felt like a long time, as if we were only just beginning to scratch the surface; as if the entire show had been the prologue to the real story. 

In the months that followed, I have remembered mostly the intensely-physical, curiously-playful, delightfully-weighty rigor of the physicality that formed the heart of this show. The moments above are the ones that stuck most strongly in my memory. Learning the story that prompted the show’s creation has made me wonder what I might remember were I to see the show again, and undoubtedly has shaped the light by which I regard my memories of my first viewing. But for now, I am content simply to recall how good it felt to see Megan, Shira, and Sonsherée fly around the Athletic Playground with all the weight, spirit and power of real-life superheroes. 

 

Molly Rose-Williams is a Bay Area artist and writer. mollyrosewilliams.com

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Let us eat cake, consensually, that is: A Reflection on TALK.DANCE.CAKE

Let us eat cake, consensually, that is: A Reflection on TALK.DANCE.CAKE

By Bhumi B. Patel

Contributor Note: In order to honor and be respectful of folks who are participating, I am intentionally not speaking about any participants by name and am not including any images from the event.

It’s impossible to write as an objective witness to an event because I come in with my own ideas, notions, experiences, and ideals. So instead of steam-rolling forward in the way of a mediocre white man, assuming that my position is the universal position, I’m going to take a moment to position myself: I am a queer, millenial, child of Indian immigrants, who happens to also be a performer and choreographer in the Bay Area. I have participated in contact improvisation in a moderate way since my early 20s, and so, I have a stake in this. 

And as humans with bodies, so do we all.

For as long as contact improvisation has existed, we have seen and heard and known about issues of non-consensual touch, sexual harassment, and predatory behavior in jam culture. A year and a half ago, with the forward motion of the #metoo movement, we saw folks in our contact improvisation communities coming forward with their stories. And never has it been more relevant, more salient, more pertinent to continue this conversation.

On the evening of Sunday, January 19, as we gathered together in a circle at ODC, I felt a certain tension, a buzzing contradiction of feelings in the room. I tried to settle into this and allow it to be. This evening was an offering from Jo Kreiter, Nhu Nguyen, and Devin Pastika, supported by FRESH Festival, Flyaway Productions, and ODC, for women-identified and queer, trans, and non-binary folks to process and unpack contact improvisation (also called CI) culture. In this circle, we were asked why we had arrived at this gathering and where we are with CI. As I listened and watched each person in the room introduce themself, I began to uncover the tension in the room.

There is desire for change from marginalized folks in CI. Folks who have been practicing CI for a long time want to support younger generations coming into the practice in a way that is safe and nourishing. We’re all craving a sense of camaraderie to combat discomfort created by those in power in CI spaces. We need an accessible toolbox of ways to create accountability and empowerment in CI and a shift in the culture toward self-awareness, mindfulness, and intentionality. We all want to bring the liberatory intention from the origins of CI back while uncovering the inequity, white supremacy, and patriarchy that has been buried in the practice.

More than one person shared that they had come because they wanted to keep their practice and study of improvisation and that as marginalized voices in the community we must refuse to get pushed out. Most shared that they had come to find community through shared experience in order to cultivate change together. 

Folks in our big introductory circle were welcomed to create a second, inner circle, to further and more deeply discuss things that were brought up by introductions. Each inner circle would have 8 minutes and then a call for a reset would be issued: everyone would leave the inner circle, have a breath in the bigger circle, and then repeat the inner circle process.

I was simultaneously surprised and unphased by what was brought up in the inner circle. First, that many are struggling with an internal tension between feeling defensive of the jam (because it does feel liberatory) and understanding that it doesn’t exist in that way for everyone and that as a community we need to change. 

But then questions arose. Folks were asking questions like, “What happens in the situations that are uncomfortable? What actually plays out?” and an urge for marginalized folks in the room to practice saying no when appropriate. It was questioned why so many folks use the word “attack,” and suggested that that sort of language prevents folks who are new to CI from wanting to participate. 

Of course, words matter, and of course, it is important to be clear, but to me, this sort of questioning feels like an invalidation of the harm caused by harassment and predatory behavior in CI. I appreciated the calling into the room that so much of the labor of being sensitive is put onto people who have been traumatized, sexually harassed, attacked, and victimized when we are the very same people who have endless experience of walking into a room and being sensitive to the space to know how to best protect ourselves. How do we put pressure on our allies to gather and have conversations like this one to become better people? 

From the inner circle discussions, the room shifted into a jam. For those without experience in Contact Improvisation, a jam is usually an open gathering to practice, normally unfacilitated, with a shared curiosity to investigate making contact with other movers in the room. I moved myself to the side of the room to take in the space, to listen, and to be available to what this group of people wanted and needed.

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a jam from the outside like this, and it’s an interesting experience to see folks transition from being inside of their bodies, thinking and feeling a lot really heavily, into seeing how folks connect. In this room, there is a certain gentleness, lightness, humor that I haven’t had the opportunity to see in a contact space before. For me, walking into a contact space has always sparked an internal tension and hypervigilance, but seeing this shift is incredibly moving. 

A dancer asks “Would anyone like to be in contact with me?” A dancer asks “What works better for you?” while shifting into weight-bearing contact with another dancer. These moments exemplify both the importance of the use of voice in the space and a reaffirmation that in CI we can co-create and we can dismantle power structures.

As I continued to observe, occasionally stand to stretch and move a little myself, and stay available, I began to think about how we often talk about dismantling power structures with the term “decolonization” (which I heard more than once during the evening). Because of the popularity of the term, I think it’s worth unpacking for a moment. 

When I talk about decolonization in this instance, I am talking about three goals in particular:

Access

Liberation

Collective safety

So when I look to decolonizing CI, what I mean is:

Every person has access to the space (physically, emotionally, etc)

All people are welcome and encouraged to participate as who they are in that moment (with the understanding that if you are a shitty person in that moment, take a second and get yourself together because the third one is…)

We are all here to create a safe environment for everyone involved. We are all here to co-create this decolonized space where our primary, unified goal is to create a safe space. 

I genuinely believe in the power of community organizing and the importance of moving together to create change. We can work together to decolonize CI.

I’ll add this: I wish there had been more people of color in the room. I wish for that in most dance spaces that I am in where the course of study is within the lineage of modern/post-modern/contemporary dance. We need to continue to deepen the conversation about power in CI as it relates to race. We can do it, but that requires that our allies (yes that’s you, cis, het, white men) also participate in having these difficult conversations. Solidarity requires motion, mobilization, intention.

So I put this call out to you, dear allies, find one another, and do the work of antiracism and dismantling the power that you hold in CI spaces to be a better participant, and frankly, a better human.

For all who were able to be in the room, I am grateful for you. I am looking toward when we get to meet again. 

 

Bhumi B. Patel is a queer, desi artist/activist creating multidisciplinary dancetheater with an intersectional feminist lens to unpack her inner landscape where she is brown, queer, working class, and a woman. As a dancer, choreographer, curator, educator, writer, and historian, she works from a trauma informed, social justice oriented perspective. Patel teaches at West Valley College, Lone Mountain Children’s Center, and Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. Patel’s work has been presented at SAFEhouse Arts, LEVYsalon, Shawl-Anderson Salon, max10, Summer Performance Festival, RAWdance's Concept Series, and the Queering Dance Festival. Patel has curated “fem(me)” since 2017 and has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle and Life as a Modern Dancer.

The Year in Review: 12 Projects + Posts

From Blog Director Jill Randall:

First off, I want to start from a place of gratitude. Thank you to all of the readers of Life as a Modern Dancer; thank you to all of the contributors throughout 2019. The site brings a lot of personal joy and satisfaction in my own life, and I hope that each year it continues to support and inspire dancers near and far.

I love a "recap," and today I wanted to highlight 12 ideas from Life as a Modern Dancer in 2019.

Dancers Virginia Broyles and Lydia Clinton rehearsing for Lauren Simpson's Dance Exhibit, which premiered at the Minnesota Street Project SF May 9-19, 2019. Photo by Robbie Sweeny. Read an interview with Lauren Simpson about the project here.

Artist Profiles

Did you know that the "artist profile" is how the whole site began, publishing interviews with artists? To date we have published 168 profiles. Check out two of them here with Tanya Chianese and Lauren Simpson, from 2019.

Artist Profile #167: Lauren Simpson (San Francisco, CA)

Artist Profile #168: Tanya Chianese (Oakland, CA)

Blog Series: Studio Time

Eight artists offered a window into their studio practice. How do you use time and space?

Blog Series: Studio Practice/Studio Time (Rebecca Stenn)

Blog Series: Studio Practice/Studio Time (Wendy Jones and Pamela Shoebottom)

Blog Series: Studio Practice/Studio Time (Leah Cox)

Blog Series: Studio Practice/Studio Time (Nina Haft)

Blog Series: Studio Practice/Studio Time (Randee Paufve)

Blog Series: Studio Practice/Studio Time (Jodi Melnick)

Blog Series: Studio Practice/Studio Time (Jess Humphrey)

 

A Modern Dancer's Guide to....Pittsburgh, PA

Thank you to Shana Simmons for writing this latest guide. This now makes for 17 on the site. Find out more about cities throughout the country in terms of where to train, festivals, how to get teaching and performing gigs, and much more. Whether you are visiting or considering a move, read more here.

A New List: MA and PhD Programs

2019 seemed like a great year to make another program list - this time about MA and PhD programs. (View the MFA list here.) You will see a variety of areas of emphasis (dance, dance education, arts administration, performance studies) as well as options for full-time and part-time study. There are even a few fully online options to pursue an MA or MAAA in Arts Administration.

New Dance Books in 2019

One of my favorite activities each year is to compile this list of books about dance, movement, arts education, and somatics. I am a longtime dance book lover and collector. I also now have the privilege of writing book write-ups/short reviews for Dance Teacher Magazine each issue.

I hope you find a title or two here to purchase for yourself or to add to your course's reading list.

Reading Lists for Undergraduate and Graduate Level Courses

I updated 4 of the lists this year - free and fresh content for your course (pulling material from the Life as a Modern Dancer site):

For a Dance Education Course

For a Senior Seminar Course

For an Undergraduate Composition Course

For a Graduate Level Choreography Class

45 Questions and Prompts for Post-Performance Discussions (For an Undergraduate Course)

Here's a fun, robust list of ideas to try out with your students this coming semester - for small and large group discussions, writing prompts, and more.

Dancing Around Race Public Gathering (February 28, 2019)

Thank you to Bhumi B. Patel for her reflection after the February gathering in San Francisco.

21 Performance Reviews

Back in 2012 when I began Life as a Modern Dancer, I did not initially envision it being a site for dance reviews and dance criticism. But as the site grew and changed each year, the need arose for a new platform for dance criticism in the Bay Area. I am thrilled to be able to host this, and I am so grateful for my incredible roster of writers, including: Sima Belmar, Bhumi B. Patel, Todd Courage, Molly Rose-Williams, Garth Grimball, Sarah JG Chenoweth, and Michelle LaVigne. 2019 was a big year, with 21 performance reviews/reflections/responses of performances in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Divining by Katie Faulkner. Photo by Stephen Texeira. Check out the 16 audience responses through One Good Quote here.

One Good Quote

Still going strong, One Good Quote is a platform on Life as a Modern Dancer for audience members to share feedback and impressions after a performance. Ten artists engaged with One Good Quote this calendar year. 

Teaching Tip - For Subbing

There is a whole series on the site about Becoming a Teaching Artist. Here is a recent post I wrote, dedicated to a young colleague, about Subbing Teen and Adult Technique Classes (10 tips).

Juilliard's New Dances 2019

To round out the year, I was excited to launch another small project....writing and reflecting about Juilliard's New Dances concert each December. I have heard about it for years and was happy to have Phoebe Ballard attend a performance and share about her experience. One of my areas of interest is artmaking going on at the college and high school levels - true teaching artistry in action.

This Juilliard's New Dances 2019. This Great Wilderness by Jamar Roberts. © Todd Rosenberg Photography

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Plus, 4 other highlights from other publications and sites:

Honoring Frank Shawl

We lost a very special dancer in October of this year - my longtime friend, mentor, colleague, and boss Frank Shawl. Thank you to dance-teacher.com for publishing my tribute to Frank - 5 Lessons I Learned from Frank Shawl.

kNOwBOX Dance Podcast

Have you checked out the awesome work that kNOwBOX Dance is doing - podcasts, Evolving Laboratories, film festivals, and more? I was honored to be featured on a podcast this fall about Life as a Modern Dancer and the role of social media in the dance field.

DIY Dancer - Magazine and Website

The folks at DIY Dancer are publishing beautiful pieces both online and in print. Check out issue 03 - Seen Unseen - right now (hot off the press). I am thrilled to have an interview with Eva Yaa Asantewaa in it; Eva is the Senior Curatorial Director at Gibney.

DIY Dancer also regularly publishes work on their site. This year I had 3 interviews shared on diydancer.com:

Molly Heller + Molly Rose-Williams

Tanya Chianese + Heather Arnett

Maurya Kerr + Dazaun Soleyn

Dance Teacher Magazine

Last, I wanted to give a shout out about Dance Teacher Magazine. This publication has a lot to offer in each issue - practical resources and stories from the field. I am honored to be a Contributing Editor and to write the 4 pages of news content each issue. I hope that you will subscribe in 2020! 

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Modern Dance in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2019, as Captured Through 21 Dance Performance Reviews

From Blog Director Jill Randall:

Back in 2012 when I began Life as a Modern Dancer, I did not initially envision it being a site for dance reviews and dance criticism. But as the site grew and changed each year, the need arose for a new platform for dance criticism in the Bay Area. I am thrilled to be able to host this, and I am so grateful for my incredible roster of writers, including: Sima Belmar, Bhumi B. Patel, Todd Courage, Molly Rose-Williams, Garth Grimball, Sarah JG Chenoweth, and Michelle LaVigne.

Please note that we are toggling between various words here on the site: dance criticism, dance reviews, reflection, and response. 

I thought it would be fun to review each of the 21 dance reflections published in 2019 and to pull one section from each. I hope that you will click on the links to read some of the pieces in their entirety. My heart is full reflecting on all of this beautiful work that was made and shared throughout the year in the Bay Area.

With these segments of writing, as with all dance reviews and criticism, the goals are many fold: some words offer a recap, some phrases paint a picture of the project for those who did not witness it, and other sentences pose larger questions about the field and artmaking. 

And, if you are a college professor teaching a composition/choreography course, here's an idea to consider. What if you used these 21 reviews as reading material in a course? What can we learn about the choreographic process, and the audience experience, through reading these essays? How do we describe what we are making? Let me know if you give it a try. 

Thanks for reading!

Dazaun Soleyn and Hien Huynh. Photo by Hans Holtan. Photo courtesy of Paufve Dance and its event 8x8x8.

Paufve Dance's 8x8x8 (Jan 24, 2019 at The Uptown, Oakland)

This is an unusual review, as it has 8 writers responding to the 8 dances. A section from Aviva Rose-Williams' writing:

I receive this performance as a gift. It is planned, ordered, well-thought out. Hours of studio time weave themselves through the performers’ physicality. Thoughts emerge as momentum. Sound. The environment and its audience are wrapped around these delights, coveting them, witnessing them, giving them reason to exist. Creating a space in which they can resonate. Finally.

Though the presentations hold their own valuable wonders, I experienced 8x8x8 this year like most 1 year olds experience birthdays. Nothing could snag my attention and get me more reeling in excitement than the colorful, crunchy wrapping. An audience practically humming with energy, I was taken with how powerful the simple presence of witnessing can be in terms of justifying a piece of art’s existence. How the mass of people ironically adds to the intimacy, how the exposure in-the-round can create such a feeling of shared experience.

I leave in deep question within my own practice about the strength and necessity of others to create a framework in which my work can resonate, in this top-secret collaboration. 

Anna Greenberg with ensemble in Kristin Damrow's Impact. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

Kristin Damrow & Company: Impact (January 31-February 2, 2019 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum, San Francisco)

Reflection by Molly Rose-Williams

Where the chorus deepened and texturized as the piece progressed, the principal dancers coalesced into solid archetypes, each defined by specific, caricatured movement. Anna Greenberg, the dancer at the others’ feet in the opening image, began to stand for me as an evil queen. Where she went, the chorus in black seemed to follow. She held dominion over them, physically and energetically manipulating them to do her bidding, which more often than not included oppressing the other principal dancers through physical obstruction and domination.

Was the chorus an externalized manifestation of her power? Magical shadowy subjects? Human subjects oppressed by an unjust power structure? Or some other metaphor exposing the dark sides of power? The explicitly narrative interactions between dancers, the archetypal roles they played, and cohesive, albeit nonlinear, plot made me lean towards literality in my viewing.

Over time, I decided we were seeing a series of flashbacks to explain the dramatic opening image. My questions kept me fully engaged like a good story - primarily, how had the queen gone from all-powerful monarch to the defeated figure from the opening? Why and how had she come to hold dominion over the others? And how had that dominance been lost?

Katie Faulkner: Divining (February 14-16, 2019 at ODC Theater, San Francisco)

Reflection by Michelle LaVigne

...the last tableau with all four dancers leaning back on their forearms, staring up at the sky with expressions of wonder. This last scene offers hope. Hope that our bodies, for all of their faults and fits, know something about being in the world. Faulkner’s faith in the body’s resilience offers a way of seeing the future not as an object, but as a process of discovery.

The work on display in Divining - choreography, lights, music, dancing - raises important questions about how we we face the future and offers hope in the form of moving, breathing, and wondering bodies. We are definitely not alone - all we have to do is find a welcoming elbow, look up at the sky, or just breathe.

Rogelio Lopez & Dancers. Dancer: Kevin Gaytan. Photo: Ryan Kwok

Rogelio Lopez & Dancers: Dicotomía del Silencio (March 16-17 and 23-24, 2019 at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, Berkeley)

Reflection by Molly Rose-Williams

If reckoning is a sensational act - a surrender to past, present, and future converging in a single, visceral moment - then Dicotomía del Silencio gives form to that sensation. The newest work from Rogelio Lopez & Dancers is based largely on Lopez’s exploration of past traumas, and what he calls in his Director’s Note “a need to organize and contextualize” his experiences growing up in Mexico with a “heavily Catholic faith influenced family.” In this deeply personal process of sense-making, Lopez has shepherded to expression not just the concepts that order his chaotic past, but the very sensations from which those concepts arise. The result is a haunting, awestruck, and searching prostration before a realm of visceral truths.

ka-nei-see | collective and Cat Call Choir: Nevertheless (March 7-10, 2019 at Z Space, San Francisco)

Reflection by Sarah JG Chenoweth

In the beginning of the piece the movement, as necessitated by the theme, felt more contained and writhing than some of Chianese’s past work. Various soloists seemed to dance inside of themselves, twisting and squeezing perpetrators’ badgering out of their bodies. As the piece progressed, the movement became more extended and explosive. Correspondingly, the dancers became equally more frayed and more powerful—the exhausted, “persisting” survivor. 

Amy Foley: Let Slip the Witches (April 4-6, 2019 at ODC Theater, San Francisco)

By Sarah JG Chenoweth

What followed was irrefutably badass. For the next almost hour, these sister witches shook, twitched, lunged, and leapt their way into a different dimension. As technical as they were wild, the women showed the resolution of the most tenacious beast. Their goal? To create a tempest, or maybe a public outcry. It could have been an ancient fertility ritual, or a funeral rite. Repetition of simple movements and walking patterns gave it the tone of a folk dance. But it was also a knockout modern dance piece, packed with arduous contemporary movement and skill.

Vella & Merrell Dance

Vella & Merrell Dance: Lipstick Lumberjacks, Losers, and Leapfrogs (May 11-12, 2019 at the Humanist Hall, Oakland)

Reflection by Molly Rose-Williams

In describing my experience of the show to others, I have found that queer theory offers a useful framework for greater precision here; if “queerness” can be understood as a willingness to see taboos broken down, or a realm in which binaries are no longer relevant, then “Lipstick Lumberjacks, Losers and Leapfrogs” for me felt like a physical investigation of the act of “queering.” The works ran the gamut, from a manifesto on the radical potential of platonic intimacy urging us to “use emotionality as a radical tactic against a society which teaches you that emotions are a sign of weakness;” to an absurd and stunningly precise romance between a pair in striped shirts, berets, and glue-on mustaches; there was a joyful surrender to the physical release of punk rock, a depiction of modern queer love with dialogue so stereotypical and hilarious it was difficult to hear over the laughter, a tortured case of unfulfilled desire, and many more equally absurd, tender, and incise visions. Throughout, I saw a playful, but insistent line of questioning: What range of experience can we make room for? What forms of expression can we honor? How vast, inclusive, and beautiful can this shared life be?

Peiling Kao: One Body, Five Dances, Six Perspectives (May 24 and 25, 2019 at Dance Mission Theater, San Francisco)

Reflection by Sima Belmar

Peiling Kao lived in the SF Bay Area for many years and now resides in Honolulu, HI.

Over the phone after the show, Kao back in Honolulu, Kao told me that she has been thinking a lot about a question Gerald Casel has asked about whether a dancer’s body can be colonized by choreographic intention. “There are different ways to examine whether or not choreography is a colonizing force,” she said. “I don’t think of dance training and technique as colonizing forces necessarily—it’s a process of learning. We have to deal with power, as Gerald and I discussed post-show. If the commission comes from me, can we say I’ve been colonized? During the process, I felt like I was giving the power to those choreographers. I bow myself down, you tell me what I need to do and I will do my best, I’ll try again and again. In a collaborative process, a choreographer might see me as an equal power in the process—I’m giving you power and you’re also giving the power back to me.”

Lili Weckler | Unhinge: SiStars Strange & The Shatterer of Worlds (May 25 and 26, 2019 at the Fort Mason Chapel, San Francisco)

Reflection by Garth Grimball

In addition to “choreographic rock opera,” SiStars Strange & The Shatterer of Worlds describes itself as “punk” and “queer.” The most non-normative quality in this show has nothing to do with gender or boundaries or performance theories. This show is earnest. Earnest feels radical and unbound. Earnest melts away irony to reveal heart. Weckler is open and genuine in her art-making, and she invites her collaborators and the audience to be the same. The success of the art in reckoning with “environmental, political, and social unraveling” is questionable. But sounding the alarm with guileless energy and a rallying guitar riff is heartening. There’s nothing minimal to it.

The Anata Project: BIG SALT (May 30-31, June 1, and June 7-8, 2019 at the Joe Goode Annex, San Francisco)

Reflection by Garth Grimball

BIG SALT develops with detailed craft and smart editing. Visual metaphors and relationships morph and eclipse. Dancers lean, fall, grasp, and throw each other, exploring when support is a burden and when feeling someone else’s force is the remedy for being weightless.

Molly Heller: Heartland, Woodland Creatures (July 13, 2019 at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, Berkeley)

Reflection by Garth Grimball

Molly Heller is a Salt Lake City-based artist and Visiting Artist at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. This performance was her third at SADC in recent years.

Shuffling over and through each other to form a casual ring around the performance space, we audience members mirror the set pieces in the center of the dance floor: islands of moss and flora. Jenny Stulberg, perched above us in open attic space, swathed in fabric, poses like one of Michelangelo’s Sibyls. Molly Heller, Marissa Mooney, Brian Gerke, and Nick Blaylock huddle in the faux island and explode out in solos of angles and syncopation. Michael Wall leaves the accordion for electronic beats. Pulsing rhythms expand the space. Heads and bodies bob along. The dancers strut back and forth and in circles, sometimes quickening to a trot or gallop, off-kilter enough to never be walking, jogging, or running. The movements are specific, grounded. Each body seems to quake in response to another in frivolity and frenzy.

Joy Davis and Eric Mullis. Photo courtesy of FACT/SF. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival: The works of Joy Davis and Eric Mullis, tinypistol, dazaun.dance, and FACT/SF (August 15-17, 2019 at the Joe Goode Annex, San Francisco)

For this festival, we asked two writers (Molly Rose-Williams and Todd Courage) to write about the festival. We segmented the writing into 4 posts:

On the choreography of Joy Davis and Eric Mullis

On the choreography of Dazaun Soleyn (dazaun.dance)

On the choreography of Maurya Kerr (tinypistol)

On the choreography of Charles Slender-White (FACT/SF)

An excerpt from post #3 about Kerr's work, written by Todd Courage:

The evening’s third offering was Maurya Kerr’s my beloved comet, an investigation into wonderment and what complex social forces might limit or prohibit that. The piece felt experimental; a courageous endeavor. Fourteen sections, short and shorter, for two dancers,  showcased Ms. Kerr’s current concerns both socially and artistically. As a viewer, letting go of any prescribed narrative seemed key to the success of the work. To experience this episodic piece as independent movement studies, or many small duets, invited the audience into the unfolding of an artist’s process, sometimes clear and flowing, sometimes unresolved and less certain. To see Ms. Kerr’s intellectual exercises in this context was fascinating and, frankly, wonder-inducing. What initiated this choreographer’s growing concern for time and how might that be represented in the dancing body? What power might stillness hold in relationship to an expectant audience? Might the urgency of the choreographer’s message – slow down – be somehow related to the comet she alludes to? Or do we metaphorically grab its tail in a last ditch attempt to escape the world’s madness by yielding to the hypnotic nature of what we see? And, of course, how can one ever really not construct social meanings from two interacting bodies? A phenomenological quandary.

Queering Dance Festival: FROLIC, Program A (September 19-22, 2019 at the Waterfront Theater, Berkeley)

Reflection by Todd Courage

A solo by choreographer Audrey Johnson, titled "towards is no longer a direction.," was its own condensed gem. Refreshingly, a short jazz riff by Yves Tumor swelled in the darkness before Johnson’s solo body emerged bent over in an orangey-crimson wash. Silence. “The body marks its spiral in space,” she begins by saying as she turns toward us. This already feels like an investigation into a living body perceiving its own animated experience, the miracle and irony of contemplating oneself. Dressed casually and deliberately in an amber camisole and black sweats, she lingeringly feels her responsive body with her hands: the backs of her legs, then her feet and ankles, shins, pelvis, stomach and ribs, upward across her breasts, sternum, and neck, and purposefully across her radiant face and black hair. Her voice supplies the only sound, a spilling chain of statements all commenting on the potentials of a body in space. “It being the spiral,” the artist says, “It being myself,” all the while reaffirming the surfaces of her own body, both front and back, again and again, a kind of Merleau-Ponty-ish theme. Johnson’s text refers to the flesh as the pace of her diving and uncoiling quickens. Over and over, faster and faster, the dancer’s motion reiterates the urgency with which life is lived in these consciousness-carving vessels of experience called bodies as her narration rolls calmly forward. “But I digress,” she says after wandering into a random topic (but not really) about the dynamics of a relationship. Suddenly, as if she were channeling Trisha Brown, Johnson turns her head to the left, breaking from the established pattern while seamlessly introducing another. She undulates backwards. A counter-clockwise running theme unfolds joined with an improv flute jam that took me back to the tracks of French movies in the 70s. Johnson slashed and sewed huge circles with growing speed and intent. Women’s vocals came up as the dancer moved through her explorations unabashedly. As the music faded, she persevered, morphing, breathing; a pace of remembering, the site of return.

Stephanie Hewett in the Queering Dance Festival, Program B. Photo by Lydia Daniller.

Queering Dance Festival: FROLIC, Program B (September 19-22, 2019 at the Waterfront Theater, Berkeley)

Reflection by Garth Grimball

The final work on the program shares a beautiful symmetry with the first, at least formally. In “Sam Cooke Wasn’t Gay” Stephanie Hewett uses ritual, voice over and lip sync to examine artistic process, intersectionality and cultural hijacking. As Hewett crawls into the space her recorded voice informs us that the work is unfinished. A narrative device that risks a blamelessness by way of apology but evolves into a meta commentary on process and ownership; on the definitions of queerness and the living of queerness. Hewett walks the perimeter of the space rolling and unrolling the legs of her pants. We learn of her injury fears, love of techno, and how “feeling inspired is the new falling in love.” She is falling inspired but subordination taints inspiration. Black techno co-opted by white space. A black man, one of the greatest vocalists of the 20th century, shot and killed by a white woman. Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” starts to play and Hewett erupts in sinew and stretch across the dance floor. In a deep second position plie, fists to her heart, she stares directly at us for the first time mouthing the lyrics. The confrontation is striking. Hewett exposes her body, her ideas, her process, but rarely her look. The ending is the most unfinished part. The music stops and we learn the original plan was to sing the song herself, but time and money got in the way. Instead, she invites us to sing-along with her. We do. It’s messy and awkward and queer.

Davalos Dance Company: Borders, Spaces and Brown Eyes (October 5 and 6, 2019 at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, Berkeley)

Reflection by Bhumi B. Patel

Today, our attention turns to the ways in which our differences today define, strengthen, and afford us an unapologetic authenticity to challenge the racist hegemony of our contemporary cultural moment. And certainly, this work made me see each performer on stage, and made me continue to dream of the world where we aren’t valued by our ability to assimilate. Set in six sections, the work travels through an emotional landscape examining the breadth and depth of how each member of the company has come to know, understand, and love their brownness.

Hope Mohr Dance's The Bridge Project in Signals from the West: Bay Area Artists in Conversation with Merce Cunningham at 100 (November 8 and 9, 2019 at ODC Theater)

Reflection by Garth Grimball

Ten artists were selected to participate in a residency with Rashaun Mitchell and Silar Reiner, former Cunningham Company dancers, to create original works, and four dancers were cast to learn and perform Cunningham repertory. That’s 11 artists’ works plus collaborators sharing an evening to honor/complicate/respond to the legacy of one man.

What is a legacy? And what is it worth? It is easy to reduce Cunningham’s creative voice to systems. Chance operations - I Ching, Solitaire, flipping a coin - guide his choreographic craft. This democratic, formalist method is equal parts impenetrable and inviting. It is what it is. It refuses to submit to the tyranny of narrative. Cunningham technique is precise and exacting. This is why the work is so ripe for interpretation, so fecund for collaboration. All of it is there. 

Nina Haft & Company. Dancers Rose Huey and Rogelio Lopez. Photo by Yvonne M. Portra.

Nina Haft & Company: Precarious Pod (November 15-17 and 22-24, 2019 at the Joe Goode Annex, San Francisc0)

Reflection by Garth Grimball

The program informs us there are fewer than 10 vaquitas remaining on Earth. We are killing them, drowning them. We the creators of precarity. Haft and dancer Mallory Markham create a sublime solo of isolation. The choreography is beautiful and tightly constructed. Bathed in a large down pool of light Markham wriggles on the floor, slowly makes her way to standing and articulates every movement and every body part with clarity. She radiates a bodily awareness born out of solitude. 

patelworks: divisions the empire has sewn (November 16-17, 2019 at Finnish Hall, Berkeley)

Reflection by Molly Rose-Williams

Perhaps the most evocative element of the work for me is the fact that I never land. I am herded from place to place, never settling for long before being shepherded to the next nebulous experience. The work exists in pockets of bound displacement. The entire time, the large white screens circle the center of the hall, and just beyond, I see a beautiful table set with white linen, china, and white branches adorned with tiny sparkling lights. The scene evokes for me the compelling promise of something better but always out of reach. 

What’s To Come: An Evening Spent at Juilliard’s New Dances

This Great Wilderness by Jamar Roberts. © Todd Rosenberg Photography

What’s To Come: An Evening Spent at Juilliard’s New Dances

By Phoebe Ballard

 

Part 1: The Show

This is my favorite environment. The lobby is abuzz with excitement: parents visiting from out of town, friends from neighboring departments, members of the dance community affiliated with academia and beyond. Patrons who simply know ‘Juilliard New Dances’ is synonymous with an-evening-spent-admiring-exceptionally-talented-young-movers. This show, the first New Dances curated by Dance Department director Alicia Graf Mack, features new work by renowned choreographers Amy Hall Garner, Jamar Roberts, Andrea Miller, and Stephen Petronio.

This is my favorite environment because this night is about the undergraduates. The undergraduates who spend their days and evenings in the studio - soaking up everything they can. Tonight (and yesterday, and tomorrow, and Saturday two times, and Sunday) they finally get to share. They get to be relished. They get to be applauded. They get to perform.

I can’t imagine how much excitement vibrates backstage.

 Sight & Sound by Amy Hall Garner. © Todd Rosenberg Photography

Sight & Sound by Amy Hall Garner

The show opened with Sight & Sound, choreographed by Amy Hall Garner and performed by the Class of 2023. A shimmering, bronze, rectangular bar spanned the width of the stage and hovered about twenty feet above the floor. Underneath, as the slow glow of the lights revealed, lay the 24-person ensemble methodically entangled in a rippled patchwork. A centipede made up of bare limbs and black covered torsos. It was a striking image I could not shake for the rest of the work. Everything brought me back to that defiant stillness.

Sight & Sound was pushed forward by rich changes in light, the cyc turning golden or blue or red, propelling the bronze bar to move up or down and instigating a novel physicality in the dancers. Against the stirring sound, the dancers' bodies reverberated and moved in what felt like silence. Perhaps their bodies were quieted by the rich live music of Joel Wenhardt. Their ferocity, however, was not quieted - darting out at me with agile grace. Dancers swept in and out of the space, running, connecting, enveloping themselves in daring feats of movement. Intimate partnering and piercing limbs darting out in all directions. These feats were underscored by small skitters manifesting in the legs and sometimes rippling through the arms. Each time these sparks of movement took place, my mind leaped back to the centipede image from the beginning. Under this ever-shifting bronze horizon, the dancers expanded to become larger than life (without making a sound).

This Great Wilderness by Jamar Roberts. © Todd Rosenberg Photography

This Great Wilderness by Jamar Roberts

Next was This Great Wilderness, choreographed by Jamar Roberts and performed by the Class of 2022. As the curtain rose, the cold lights made the body-filled space feel hollow. Eerie but compelling - twenty-two powerfully bare beings were arranged meticulously to frame the center of the space. The rich rhythm of a live saxophone echoed through their bodies, making it clear there was not a note of music, not a single body part, that was unaccounted for in this choreography.

I found myself searching for narrative, perhaps because of the title, perhaps because of the eerie almost mysterious nature of the staging and the lights. Were they in a forest? A supernatural rendering of A Midsummer Night’s Dream? I was compelled by the choreography – was drawn to the exactitude of it. Each dancer inhabited their dimensionality with piercing precision.  There was something important about the center; they kept coming back there. I saw their silhouettes but also saw each rib, saw the capabilities of both. The dancers operated in separate universes, were beautiful but interchangeable. They formed a mass movement choir, people kaleidoscoping in and out of center, growing smokier and smokier until the stage went dark.

Desde by Andrea Miller. © Todd Rosenberg Photography

Desde by Andrea Miller

Desde, created by Andrea Miller in collaboration with the dancers of the Class of 2021, stole the show. The instant the lights came on, there were gasps from the audience. An LED ring of fire hung in the middle of the stage, swimming in a sea of fog. From this fog emerged dancers flanked in straight lines as they traveled downstage and disappeared, honing the pulsing rhythm of Nicolas Jaar’s music in their grounded bodies. Primal, powerful and rhythmic vestiges of phrase work metamorphosized from line to line. They lived in the bend of their knees, the floor of their pelvis. I could have watched this beginning the whole time.

The piece progressed, and the pulsating rhythm of the music dissipated into a soundscore of shattered glass. These lines evaporated into just two dancers on stage. They remained ephemeral creatures, the same ones who had emerged from the fog. Intimate feats of partnering ensued, tangling the limbs, contorting one body upside down into the empty space of another. They were tethered together, a directness in the extreme capacity in which their bodies performed. The Gaga-like movement vocabulary left me leaning forward the entire piece. The movement was so powerful, so researched, I was not searching for anything else. I just wanted to keep living in the warm suppleness and agility of the dancers’ bodies.

It ended the way it began, but instead of moving away from the ring of fire, they moved towards it, this time submerged in fog. Headed back to wherever they came from.

#prayerfornow by Stephen Petronio. © Todd Rosenberg Photography

#prayerfornow by Stephen Petronio

Finally, a piece for the seniors. #prayerfornow, created by Stephen Petronio, began with three dancers laying downstage, each placed far in front of narrow black chalkboards. In silence, three dancers emerged from the walls upstage and each wrote a word: ‘#prayer,’ ‘for,’ ‘now.’ Surrounding these bolded words were encouragements written by classmates, audience members, teachers. The entirety of the piece would be framed by these walls, the seniors moving in and through this world of support.

Petronio’s history as a Trisha Brown dancer was evident in the movement. The release packed a punch, pendulous in nature and quality.  As the stage populated with dancers and sieved to just a few, I was drawn to the unpredictability of the spatial patterns. I could not predict what would come next, was intrigued by how the dancers continually found new pockets to populate.

The orchestral drone and bleakness of the grey costumes countered the supportive nature of the walls of encouragement which so warmly opened the piece. This juxtaposition perhaps spoke to the state of ‘now’ (perhaps why we need a prayer). I desire more in where this piece went. About halfway through there was a stillness that made me see differently - all bodies onstage, not moving, just being. Watching each of them move made me excited for where these seniors will go next – their skills and knowledge of modern dance strongly intact.

Part 2: Moving Forward

I am a huge proponent of dance in the sphere of education, a huge advocate for dance programs in universities, colleges, and conservatories as perfect training grounds for entering the ‘real’ world as both dancers and people.

This show allowed the opportunity to think not about curriculum, not about faculty, not about what pedagogies are used in the classroom. This show allowed the opportunity to watch the dancing, to think about the students, to think about their talent, curiosity, and intellect. Knowing these students are about to enter the ‘real’ world is exciting. Their talent is extraordinary; their performance ability uncanny.

I think back to the lobby, the way it buzzed with excitement and curiosity. I think about the way that same buzz was palpable on stage as well. A fervent excitement shared by students, faculty, and audiences alike. It is a privilege, I assume to make and to work in that large, deep sea of talent displayed on the Juilliard stage. Of course, an undergraduate setting provides nurture in the way the dance field doesn’t always. But this nurture is what jumpstarts the confidence to ‘make it work’ when they move forward. The skills they learn in this environment are irreplaceable. Group works with as large a cast as demonstrated this evening are rare outside of academia, but provide skills that fold into what is needed to work in more intimate processes - navigating space, personalities, creativity, confidence, and so much more. 

I can’t help but think - this is a collegiate level show, but here people sit, right next to Lincoln Center, enjoying a professional level evening of dance. We are all excited for these dancers to enter the real world. But, when you think about the caliber of this show, the choreographers they worked with, the people in the audience – haven’t they, in a sense, already entered?

We are the better for it. 

 

Phoebe Ballard is a movement artist, educator, and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. A teaching artist at Dancewave and public schools throughout the five boroughs, she hustles between different writing, administration, dance-making, and teaching engagements in NYC and NJ. She graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2018 with her BFA in Dance.

Eight Free and Downloadable Options on Life as a Modern Dancer

 

From Blog Director Jill Randall:

Happy December! This is the time of year when I wrap up, review, and reflect about the blog, not into year 8!

Today I wanted to share a variety of free and downloadable projects that you might like to use this week or this coming semester.

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Technique Journal : To use within a college technique course - weekly reflection and articulation

On Technique II : A second version of the journal, to use within a college level technique course

The Arts Administrator's Alphabet : A project with 11 arts administrators around the country. 180 terms and concepts explored within 88 pages. For current arts administrators or to use within a college/graduate level course.

The Verbs of Arts Administration : A simple PDF to post on the wall or use as a reflection starter in a staff meeting

For Middle School Dance Classes (Graphic Organizer) : An 8.5x11 paper to use with your students to capture and document choreographic ideas

"Becoming a Teaching Artist" Graphic : Two versions of a design as you consider becoming a teaching artist

Job Survey : A simple springboard to complete when considering a career path in the field of dance

Dance+Change : Twelve graphics with potent words and questions. Post in your office...use within a course as a discussion starter....

 

New Dance Books in 2019

From Blog Director Jill Randall:

One of my favorite activities each year is to compile this list of books about dance, movement, arts education, and somatics. I am a longtime dance book lover and collector. I also now have the privilege of writing book write-ups/short reviews for Dance Teacher Magazine each issue. 

I hope you find a title or two here to purchase for yourself or to add to your course's reading list. 

 

Arts Integration in Diverse K-5 Classrooms: Cultivating Literacy Skills and Conceptual Understanding by Liane Brouillette (Teachers College Press)

Bodies Alive: A dance journey across the Contact Improvisation landscape by Liesbeth de Jong and Sarah Guilleux (self-published)

Dancing Revolution: Bodies, Space, and Sound in American Cultural History by Christopher J. Smith (University of Illinois Press)

Drawing the Surface: A Biography in Charts by Annie-B Parson (Wesleyan Press)

Hot Feet and Social Change: African Dance and Diaspora Communities edited by Kariamu Welsh, Esailama G.A. Diouf, and Yvonne Daniel (University of Illinois Press)

Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham: Dances in Literature and Cinema by Hannah Durkin (University of Illinois Press)

Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life by Twyla Tharp (Simon & Shuster)

Making Dances That Matter: Resources for Community Creativity by Anna Halprin (Wesleyan University Press)

Merce Cunningham: After the Arbitrary by Carrie Noland (University of Chicago Press)

Mindfulness for Dancers by Corinne Haas (self-published)

Out Loud: A Memoir by Mark Morris and Wesley Stace (Penguin Press)

Physics & Dance by Emily Coates and Sarah Demers (Yale University Press)

(Re)Positioning Site Dance: Local Acts, Global Perspectives edited by Karen Barbour, Vicky Hunter, and Melanie Kloetzel (Intellect Ltd)

The Disintegration of the Critic by Jill Johnston (Sternberg Press)

The Style of Movement: Fashion & Dance by Ken Browar and Deborah Ory (Rizzoli)

Valuing Dance: Commodities and Gifts in Motion by Susan Leigh Foster (Oxford University Press)

 

And, a few 2018 titles you might have missed:

Back to the Dance Itself: Phenomenologies of the Body in Performance by Sondra Fraleigh (University of Illinois Press)

Diverse Bodies, Diverse Practices: Towards an Inclusive Somatics by Don Hanlon Johnson (North Atlantic Books) 

How to Land: Finding Stable Ground in an Unstable World by Ann Cooper Albright (Oxford University Press)

Oppression and the Body: Roots, Resistance, and Resolutions edited by Christine Caldwell and Lucia Bennett Leighton (North Atlantic Books)

The Profitable Artist by New York Foundation for the Arts (Allworth)

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