Mary Carbonara. Photo by Weidong Yang
Hometown: Englewood, New Jersey
Current city: San Francisco, California
Age: 54
Attended an arts high school? No, but we had a dance teacher, dance studio, a contemporary dance company and a robust musical theater department on campus. I was able to take dance during school several days a week and be a part
of the school dance company which performed regularly, from 7th through 12th grade. And I did all of the musicals, spring and summer. I fancied myself a triple threat -- dancer, singer, actor -- though singing and acting were definitely not my top talents.
College and degree: B.A. in English from Barnard College, Columbia University
Graduate school and degree: M.F.A. in Performance and Choreography from Mills College. I was 32 when I completed my degree.
How you pay the bills: I teach classes through KINDance and LINES Dance Center and I have been an independent public relations consultant since 1995. Most of my clients are dance companies. I provide them with media relations, social media and marketing consultation, and long-term planning. I am also full-time as the Director of Community Programs at LINES where I’m in charge of school programs, weekly tuition-based classes for kids, summer camps and Dance for PD® at LINES.
All of the dance hats you wear: Teacher/ Program Director / Public Relations Consultant/ Marketing Consultant / Writer / Scheduler / Website Designer / Fundraiser / Performing Arts Liaison / Teaching Artist Mentor / Arts Education
Advocate
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Describe your dance life in your…
20s - I loved going to college in NYC, but over the course of those 4 years, I realized I didn’t want to
spend my professional life there. It just never felt like home. During a spring break visit to the Bay Area in
my senior year, I knew I would move here. I felt like I understood the place, that I could be me here. I
moved to the East Bay a month after graduation.
Anderson converted into a center of art making and community charms me today as much as it did on my
first visit. It was so unassuming, quaint even, but it was such a big place to me. Being there blew my
mind open to what dance could be: community, acceptance, home. Shawl-Anderson was my dancing home for
nearly a decade.
Somewhere in my first year or so in the Bay Area, I auditioned and got my first local job dancing with
Helen Dannenberg in a piece she was making for the Bay Area Dance Festival. I remember tutus,
cartwheels and tricycles. In one of the rehearsals she told us to do something we were great at that
wasn’t dance. I can’t remember what I did, but I remember Helen delighting in us, and I felt so bonded to
her because of that.
I met a lot of great dancers during that project, as well as in Dance Brigade’s Revolutionary Nutcracker
Sweetie, where I met a ton of great people whom I’ve ended up working with and for over the years,
including Amelia Rudolph who invited me to join her new company, Project Bandaloop. We performed
around the Bay Area and Amelia had us teaching dance to middle schoolers through a partnership with
the Museum of Children’s Art in Oakland. I had no idea what I was doing. Thankfully I was partnered
with Karen Elliot who had an easy way with kids so she took the lead and I learned. Amelia began
integrating rock climbing and suspension into her choreography. We gave our first performance at a rock
climbing gym in Emeryville and it felt magical; we were flying! I worked at cafés and restaurants to pay
the bills.
I moved to San Francisco in 1991 and began dancing with Liss Fain who had just arrived from Boston
and was starting a company. I loved dancing with Liss. Her work was technically hard, and required a lot
of strength. She was different, outspoken and ballsy, ready to say what everyone is thinking. I’ve always
loved that about her. Her work then was abstract, and interesting to make. We were animals, lights and
elements. It felt very experimental. I was dancing and training a lot, and realized that I needed a job I
could do that wasn’t physical so that I wouldn’t burn out. I met David Landis who was starting his own
public relations firm. He hired me as his assistant. I mopped the entryway of his Haight Street office every
morning, as well as helped him promote everything from tennis tournaments, major corporations and
dance companies. I worked for David for several years while his firm grew and during which he
generously gave me time off to dance and even tour. He taught me so much about how to run a
business, how to advocate for the arts, and how to take care of people who work for you.
One day I got a call from my close friend Suzanna Gallo, urging me to go to a private audition for
Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. Suzanne had been invited but couldn’t go and she told them they
should audition me. I’m still floored by what a generous act this was. Margy needed someone to fill in for
an injured dancer. Somehow she let me audition, and I got the job. It was my first tour and one of the
hardest jobs of my life. I learned that filling someone else’s shoes is not one of my strengths. After the
tour, Margy hired someone else. I was devastated.
30s - I taught at Shawl-Anderson, where I met Claire Sheridan from Saint Mary’s College who gave
me my first gig teaching in higher education. That led to other teaching gigs at UC Davis and San Jose
State University. I loved college level teaching and decided to go after my MFA so that I could apply for
more secure jobs. While I was getting my MFA at Mills College I was teaching at Shawl-Anderson in
Berkeley, UC Davis, Saint Mary’s College in Moraga and San Jose State, driving my little Honda CRX up
and down Northern California. It was grueling, but I loved it. I loved going from being a student to being a
teacher on the same day. I would learn something in the morning, and then teach it that night.
Meanwhile I danced two seasons with Robert Moses' KIN and worked part-time for David, assisting him
with a massive campaign around the renovation of the SF Opera House. I’m not really sure how I
managed to carve out the time to do it all. After I got my degree, I got a job as a Visiting Assistant
Professor of Dance at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. I loved it, except that it was
so far from the dance community that I loved and my then boyfriend, now husband, Robert Moses. So
rather than pursuing a permanent appointment, I moved back to SF after one year. We got married 2
years later.
I went back to teaching locally, doing P.R. and training, mostly in San Francisco. In 2001 Margaret Jenkins
invited me to audition for her company and this time I got in. We rehearsed in an enormous space she
had converted into what she called the Dance Lab on the old UC Berkeley Extension Campus in the
Lower Haight. It was extraordinary, the full length of a university gymnasium, all sprung floor. (It’s now
condos). I worked with Margy for several years, touring nationally and assisting her on various projects,
including one that got me to Kolkata, India as her assistant for a three week residency with a company
there. I loved dancing in MJDC -- the dancers were all so good and so smart, and the work was
collaborative, with Margy steering the ship. Meanwhile, I was investing in making my own work,
showcasing on programs like Summerfest, then West Wave, and presenting my own full evenings at
Dance Mission and ODC Theater. I called my company Mary Carbonara Dances. I made work about
stuff that I was struggling to understand: faith, violence, homelessness, motherhood. I felt daring,
fearless, vulnerable, energized. I began teaching at LINES Dance Center when it was still at 50 Oak
Street, and at ODC School, and even did some teaching gigs in New York and Tokyo. It was a super
productive time for me professionally. I had my daughter when I was 39 years old.
40s - I danced one more season with MJDC, touring to Tallahassee, Chicago and New York City. Soon
after I had my son and resumed teaching at LINES and doing public relations independently for various
clients. I had my son when I was 42 and continued to make work for my company, often with my baby in
tow. It was hard and I gradually turned most of my energy toward my two kids. We took them to Noe
Valley Nursery School, a cooperative preschool where parents were empowered as teachers and that’s
where I discovered my love of teaching kids. I realized that teaching kids was a way that I could spend
time with my own children, dance and make money all at the same time. I picked up a few books by Anne
twice but whose advice and feedback continues to inform my teaching practice. I learned how to teach on
the job. I made a lot of mistakes and had a lot of fun in equal measure. I rented space and offered dance
camps for preschoolers. I called it Hamster Dance Academy. When my kids entered elementary school,
I taught dance at their school. In 2014, Robert and I started Studio 200, where we both taught and
rehearsed our companies, and where I held kids camps, Dance Teacher Gatherings, Artist-to-Artist
panels, open showcases, and co-hosted regular Dancer Musician Jams with Kara Davis, who taught me
so much about holding space.
50s - Studio 200 closed at the end of 2019 when our lease ran out. I continue to teach and I still have my
public relations business. I’ve represented clients like Robert Moses’ KIN, Margaret Jenkins Dance
Company, Jess Curtis/Gravity, FRESH Festival, PUSH Dance Company, Cuba Caribe, Lenora Lee
Dance, Nina Haft & Co., ka-nei-see dance, Nava Dance Theatre, Chitresh Das Institute, and many more.
In 2017 I spent several weeks in Kolkata, India again, this time on my own, in residence choreographing
and teaching for Sapphire Creations dance company. I was preparing to return to work with them again in
March 2020 for another residency, until everything was cancelled by COVID. I hope to get there soon.
Most of my public relations work was on hold for 2020, since everything was shut down and companies
weren’t able to perform, but they’re slowly coming back with online programming. All of my teaching has
been online since March, with the exception of one weekly outing I make to dance outdoors -- physically
distanced -- with some very dedicated students each week.
In my work as Director of Community Programs at LINES, together with a team of amazing teaching
artists, we have put all of our kids classes and teacher trainings online since March, and we’re working to
create a more culturally responsive and trauma informed curriculum. I’m so grateful to be working and to
be surrounded by such talented people dedicated to kids and arts education.
Mary Carbonara in soon and briefly by Lynne Fried
Major influences:
Lynn Simonson, Susan Edwards, Suzanne Gallo, Frank Shawl, Margaret Jenkins, Krissy Keefer, Katiti
King, Roberta Mathes, Merce Cunningham, Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker, Robert Moses, my kids and my
mother who always made me feel like I knew what I was doing.
What is on your calendar for 2021?
I’m working from my kitchen table these days, busy with Community Programs at LINES, continually
adapting our programming during the pandemic and trying to anticipate what the fall will look like for kids
and how we can serve them better. I’m handling publicity for the 2021 Beyond Gravity program February
19 and 20, the 25th anniversary season of Robert Moses’ KIN and I have a few other public relations
projects coming up later this year. I’m also hoping to pursue more graduate studies in dance and
education.
Current movement practices and care for the body:
I hate exercise. If I’m not dancing, my physical activity is erratic at best. Normally I commute by bicycle,
but I’m cycling less since there’s nowhere to commute to nowadays. Sometimes I run or do yoga --
again, very erratic. I walk my dog a lot. I take my own classes, which still feel really great on my body and
have always been my most consistent form of self care.
The role of teaching in your career….and what the term “teaching artist” means to you:
Teaching is my research and creative practice. I feel like I’m at my best when I’m teaching, most in the
present and mindful of what I’m doing and where it’s all going. I love it more than performing. To be in
the investigation of what works, what heals, and what inspires is endlessly interesting to me. I’m
fascinated by anatomy, alignment, what qualifies as a technique and how to help injured dancers keep
dancing. I often feel like a sleuth trying to uncover the mystery of what works for one dancer, but not
another. I love working with new students, learning what they respond to, seeing them discover a
potential they didn’t know they had, undoing a habit that was blocking them or just watching them dance
their asses off. It’s an endless joy. If I wasn’t teaching dance, I’m not sure I’d still be dancing. I don’t
think it would be enough.
Advice to dancers who are learning how to teach:
I’m a big believer in training for teachers. While inevitably you always will be learning on the job, to truly
be in service as a teacher requires dialogue and reflection with peers who can challenge and support you.
I’ve trained in Simonson Technique since I was a teenager, with Lynn Simonson during college and I took
her teacher training intensive in my 20s. In that intensive, she taught us how to work with beginners, how
to communicate verbally and with touch, how to observe, when to wait, when to step in, and how to
modify for different bodies and abilities. Without question, that six weeks was the singular most valuable
training of my career.
For years, I was convinced I would never teach kids. I was sure I didn’t have the patience. Then I met
Susan Edwards, the director of my kids' cooperative nursery school, who taught me how to
communicate with children, how to trust them, that play is learning, and how making a mistake can be the
funnest, most productive part of a class.
- Study human development for the age group(s) you teach; kids are not teens, seniors are not 40 year olds. Their bodies and brains are very different.
- Study the different ways that people learn before judging what you think your students don’t know.
- Dismantle your biases and put your students at the center of your practice.
- Know what you do best, admit what you don’t know or aren’t good at, then get more training in both.
- Watch other teachers to learn what to do as well as what not to do.
- Don’t teach for free. Know your worth and always advocate for it.
Can you share about your work as an arts administrator? How is arts admin also a creative endeavor?
I love thinking big and saying yes, and I’ve always been impatient waiting for permission.
For me, arts administration is the work of making things possible, going out on a limb, facilitating a vision,
then sustaining its growth. You have to be nimble, you have to be willing to do things differently when old
solutions no longer work or when an opportunity is just too important to pass up. Sometimes it’s a long
haul and other times it’s a quick fix. Either way, you have to think creatively, especially in the nonprofit
world where resources can be scarce and opportunities fleeting.
What keeps you believing and passionate about modern dance in 2021?
Dance is the one thing that continuously and consistently makes sense to me. There are questions I can
only answer when I’m moving, music I can only hear when I see it danced, and people I understand best
when I see them in motion. Dance has saved me a few times, pulled me away from depression,
loneliness, self-centeredness, isolation and grief. It’s doing that for me now, too.
Last performance you saw that inspired you, or, a show that lingers with you:
Beneath the Surface, Lenora Lee’s underwater multi-media piece in 2018. I’m still reminded of how the
dancers danced in and with the water. Lenora was able to use water as a container, not just the
swimming pool, but the substance itself was a liquid vessel, a prismatic, splashing and evaporating
landscape. I’d never seen anything like it.
Final thoughts - Hope/belief/love of the profession:
As much as online classes and meetings frustrate me to no end, I’m still front row to a lot of great dancing
and to the catharsis and the love that happens between people when they dance with and for each other.
In 2020 I connected with hundreds of dancers, teaching artists and arts administrators. The vast dance
world feels a little closer knit. I’m looking forward to when we’re actually together again.
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