Life as a Modern Dancer

Dance as Event: An Interview with Lauren Simpson about DANCE EXHIBIT

Photo: Robbie Sweeny

Dance as Event: An Interview with Lauren Simpson about DANCE EXHIBIT

By Jill Randall

Last week I got to sit down with choreographer Lauren Simpson about her 5-night run of DANCE EXHIBIT at the Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco from May 9-18, 2019. Read Lauren’s full artist profile on Life as a Modern Dancer here.

What are 5 words or phrases to describe DANCE EXHIBIT?

Objects

Agency

Labor

Seen/unseen

Women

What is the role of beauty? Is beauty of relevance to this work?

I think about beauty in the context of this space --- as in a visual arts, white cube space. The ways choreographers tend to understand  and make beauty is between bodies. A black box lends itself to this. The focus is around action between people in the center of the theater space. Here I am in a white box meant for art work to live on walls, plinths, and surfaces. So for me when I an working in dance in the white cube, it became no surprise the beauty seemed to arise from the bodies in relationship to the walls, edges, and surfaces as much as they relate to each other.

Can you talk more about the site-specific nature of the project?

Primarily, I have not been thinking of this work as a site-specific work. It has a thematic thread connected to ideas not inherent to the space (labor, women, the role of objects and materials in our lives), and they are themes I’ve explored in theaters and elsewhere. Nonetheless there were things to consider which a site-specific choreographer would also need to --- natural lights (there are skylights and large glass doors), physical features of the space (most prominently, 12 huge I-beams bisecting the center of the performance space), and flow of the audience.

Please share a little about each dancer. What do you love and appreciate about each collaborator?

Lydia Clinton: I love her professionalism and heart. She brings both with equal force.

Marlie Couto: I am very grateful for her confidence in herself and in me.

Arletta Anderson: I love her clarity of being. It goes beyond her as a dancer.

Cauveri Madabushi Suresh: I love that Cauveri  is freshly out of academia and still in an intellectual headspace of theory and questioning and scholarship.

Virginia Broyles: I love her humor and levity. She is fast --- fast to learn, fast to make.

Dance as event. Talk me through the night.

The show begins with the option to purchase drinks and snacks from the adjacent restaurant, Besharam. You can carry these treats around with you as you view art we commissioned from Dana Hemenway and Brion Nuda Rosch. There’s a soft start around 7:45pm which includes a sound installation and the dancers reorganizing the space. 8pm marks the start of the performance. At 8:40pm the post-show speaker begins. There are many points of entry to the event, from food to visual art to dance to talks.

On vulnerability, risk taking, and the audience:

Something distinctive to this show is the speaker series.I have asked five people from the arts community to offer talks from various lenses. Since I am not entirely sure how the talks will unfold, it’s quite an improvisational part of the evening for me. It feels somewhat risky in that these lenses can really shape the way the audience thinks and feels about the work. I asked them to follow a three part format: Tell us who you are and what is your research/area of interest. Two, how is that topic present in or related to DANCE EXHIBIT? Three, they are free to ask the artists and audience questions connected to their topic.

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DANCE EXHIBIT with Lauren Simpson Dance

Minnesota Street Project

1275 Minnesota Street in the Dogpatch neighborhood of SF

Please arrive at 7:30pm

 

Show dates and post-show speaker schedule:

Thursday, May 9 Marie Tollon, Writer in Residence, ODC Theater

Topic: Lingering between the inanimate and animate: What are the ways dance and visual arts cross pollinate?

 

Friday, May 10 Sarah Hotchkiss, Artist and Visual arts editor, KQED

Topic: The performativity of things

 

Thursday, May 16 Karl Evangelista, Composer

Topic: Abstraction and Activism - An Improviser's View Into the Politics of Art

 

Friday, May 17 Claudia LaRocco, Writer and Editor, SFMOMA Open Space

Topic: There is a way in which the translator must love failure

 

Saturday, May 18 Gerald Casel, Choreographer

Topic:  Race and Abstraction

 

Ticket link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dance-exhibit-tickets-56688790699

More about the show: https://www.laurensimpsondance.com/upcoming-performances

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One Good Quote: Lipstick Lumberjacks, Losers, and Leapfrogs (Vella & Merrell)

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 Vella and Merrell's Lipstick Lumberjacks, Losers, and Leapfrogs at Humanist Hall in Oakland May 11-12, 2019, 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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One Good Quote: Dance Exhibit with Lauren Simpson Dance

Photo: Robbie Sweeny

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 Lauren Simpson Dance's Dance Exhibit at Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco May 9-18, 2019, 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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MA and PhD Programs in Dance

From Blog Director Jill Randall:

Three years ago, I compiled a running list of MFA dance programs in the United States. Today, I want to share the running list of MA programs and PhD programs. While the focus is still on the United States, please feel free to share more details here about programs around the world.

As we keep shaping and developing these programs, 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.

If I missed a program, or a program no longer exists, please leave a comment below. Thank you.

Each link in grey goes to a college/university’s site. Whenever possible, I listed and linked to artists who have been featured on Life as a Modern Dancer, who have graduated from these programs.

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MA in Dance

Temple University

The College at Brockport (SUNY)

Texas Woman’s University

Florida State (MA in American Dance Studies)

Florida State (MA in Studio and Related Studies)

Mills College

Cal State Long Beach

• Artist Profile: Wendy Jones

Wendy Jones holds an MA in Dance from Cal State Long Beach. Read her recent post about Studio Practice/Studio Time here.

MA in Dance Education

NYU (Joint MFA/MA)

NYU (4 different MA options/specializations)

Hunter College

UNC Greensboro (online option)

University of Northern Colorado (low res option)

Ed.M in Arts in Education

Harvard

• Artist Profile: Lauren Simpson

MA in Teaching Artistry

Wayne State University (online format)

MAT-FA in Teaching

University of Utah (low res/online format)

MAAA in Arts Administration

Goucher (low res option)

• Graduate Profile: Nicolle Wasserman

Indiana University Bloomington

MAM in Arts Management

Carnegie Mellon University

MA in Arts Administration

Teachers College

Baruch College/CUNY

University of Kentucky (online format)

Southern Utah University (online format)

Drexel University (online format)

MS in Arts Administration

Boston University

MA/MBA Program in Arts Administration

University of Cincinnati

MA in Performance Studies

Northwestern University

NYU

• Artist Profile: Cynthia Oliver

Cynthia Oliver holds an MA and PhD from NYU. Photo by Valerie Oliveiro.

PhD in Performance Studies

NYU

• Artist Profile: Cynthia Oliver

UC Berkeley

• Artist Profile: Sima Belmar

UC Davis

Northwestern University

PhD in Culture and Performance

UCLA

• Artist Profile: Sarah Wilbur

PhD in Dance Education

Teachers College

PhD in Dance

Texas Woman’s University (low res format)

Temple University

PhD in Critical Dance Studies

UC Riverside

PhD in Dance Studies

The Ohio State University

• Artist Profile: Ashley Thorndike-Youssef

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

Today San Diego-based artist Jess Humphrey shares about her studio practice. Please also check out Jess's artist profile on the blog from 2017 here.

What’s your studio practice?

I aim for an average of three studio sessions a week. One is LIVE practice, a time-based, ensemble improvisation session that’s been my standing Thursday morning commitment since 2008. The other two are usually connected to whatever I’m working on with Eric Geiger, and often, Leslie Seiters. If I count teaching and studying, it’s more like six to eight sessions.

Is your studio practice intertwined with an actual production on the books?

LIVE was initiated by folks who wanted a space to practice dancing without a direct or explicit connection to a specific project or production on the books. It’s still that way, and it’s a great thing.

When I’m working on a piece, there is typically a premiere on the books. Sometimes there are work-in-progress showings of varying degrees of formality.

When do you have time for noodling around, improvising, and playing without product? Is this with other dancers, or mainly yourself?

LIVE practice. Definitely with others. Noodling and improvisation count as “products." We point to their functions often in LIVE, and I’m forever studying how the many ways they serve and sometimes actually are the “real” work.

The fine line - and intersections - between self-care and creative work, exertion and recuperation, training and art-making…

...is very fine indeed. Often my dancing happens right on that line. When I’m dancing a complex and ♾demanding section of a piece, I sometimes choose to presume that every cell in my body is served by the dance (or any one of Deborah Hay’s koan-like questions), apply a particular somatic lens (thank you BMC, LMA/Bartenieff, Feldenkrais, Alexander…), dance it as a meditation (identify with the vast, open, spaciousness in which the dance, me, my thoughts and fears, and those I’m dancing with are all arising, or let the the dance dance me instead of me dancing the dance…).

Sometimes it’s more of a throughline than a dividing one. Or a dynamic shape rather than a line. I’m thinking of the infinity symbol or lemniscate that Peggy Hackney uses to house the polarities in the Integrated Movement Studies Program (Laban/Bartenieff Certification) and in Making Connections, her book on Bartenieff Fundamentals. Colleen Wahl calls them “organizing themes” in her new book, Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies: Contemporary Applications (I love both the book and the author...she and I were part of the same IMS cohort.) Hackney puts a polarity in each side of the symbol, signifying what she calls a “lively interplay” between them. And since typing the lemniscate kinda kills it (exertion ♾recuperation) and doesn’t really capture the symbol’s power to expand binaries into continua, I now use something I learned in Nina Martin’s dissertation, Emergent choreography: Spontaneous ensemble dance composition in improvised performance. She writes about a “continuum of deliberation” as an alternative to the traditional binary of  “set” and “improvised” material within dance. This “continuum…situates more or less repeatable choreographic works on one end of [a] continuum and more or less improvisational works, without so much as a plan or score, on the other end of [a] continuum," and she uses a tilde to signify this transcending of either/or. Set~Improvised. Self-Care~Creative Work. Exertion~Recuperation. Training~Art-Making. And I’ll add Teaching~Learning because the students at SDSU are brave and trusting. They stay with me when I push them (even when I do so from my own learning edge), and I’m often flooded with gratitude after classes.

Martin wrote a piece for Contact Quarterly called, “Ensemble Thinking: Compositional Strategies for Group Improvisation” in 2007 when I was in graduate school doing my thesis on contact improvisation and creative process. In it, she wrote, “I like to think that I choreograph my improvisations and I improvise my choreography” and this quote has been a huge part of my dancemaking (and life) ever since. I also like to think that I choreograph my improvisations and I improvise my choreography. And I like to think that my self-care is a creative process and that making creative work is a form of self-care, that it’s possible for recuperation to be built into studio practice so that the exertion that dances sometimes require isn’t so draining (and that both can look like the other, depending upon what’s come before or what’s needed), and that, when I’m making art, it teaches me so much...including how to make better art.

I don’t know how often I succeed at this “lively interplay," but working in this way is central to how I set up my dancing life. Eric and I are constantly studying our states of body~mind in these different modes by making works that include dances all along the continuum of deliberation, and I’m so grateful for his and Leslie’s thoughtfulness, reflections, and devotion to keeping us all in the studio so we can keep letting the dancing work its magic.

Do you consider being in class part of your practice? Teaching as part of your practice? Basically...what falls under the category of “studio practice?"

Anything connected to my research in dancemaking that requires space for moving falls under the category of “studio practice." When Eric, Leslie Seiters, and I were making pause, with Deborah Hay, we practiced the piece in the studio together once or twice a week between intensives with her. She wanted us to practice every day, so we started a text chain and whenever one of us began our daily practice, we wrote, “going in” just before we started. This went on for some years, and one of us will still “go in” occasionally.

I think that most of the studio classes I teach count as studio practices, but only if they are directly informed by studio practices where teaching is not the focus. Devotion to studio time outside of teaching is essential for me...without it, my teaching is less alive. I am less alive.

When I’m a student in a studio class, I definitely count that as studio time. I’m so teacher-ly...it comes naturally to me, so it balances my soma when I practice the surrender that’s possible when studying with others. Right now, I’m working on finding that sense of surrender while I’m teaching, while still tracking the dynamics in the room.

And, does the topic of studio space play into this? Do you have regular access to a space (free or for a fee)?

I’m incredibly lucky and grateful to have regular access to the most beautiful dance studio I’ve ever been in (see photo in this post). I don’t pay a fee, but it’s definitely not free! I’m part of a very small dance department at SDSU where full-time faculty must do a ton of service since there are so few of us. It’s all worth it every time I get to dance in this room...it’s called the ENS 200 Studio Theater, but I call it the Magic Room.

Amy Foley’s Let Slip the Witches is Flat-out Transcendent

Photo: Stephen Texeira

Amy Foley’s Let Slip the Witches is Flat-out Transcendent

By Sarah JG Chenoweth

The irresistibility of witches is markedly familiar, even if you don’t share the compulsion. From fable to brutal history to contemporary practice, their stories are streaked with a power and mystery that we cannot ignore. It seems that to be witchy is to have command of both the worldly and the otherworldly. That’s what Amy Foley captures in Let Slip the Witches: the equal earthiness and sacredness of the witch. 

A few pieces preceded Let Slip the Witches in Foley’s show last weekend at ODC Theater. The first, A History of this Moment, choreographed by Robert Moses and danced by Foley herself, charted the keenly sensate role of the dancer/artist in today’s time and times past. Moses’ voice gushed meditations on the dance artist’s insightful and weathered body, their fears and ambitions, the impact and echoes of their work. Matching the stream of consciousness style of Moses’ delivery, Foley was impeccable. Every millisecond of the piece was punctuated with her razor sharp movement execution. But her demeanor was casual and genuine, as if in real-time conversation with Moses. She danced with a faculty and maturity we all dream of. 

Thighs and Wages, a restaging of Foley’s 2016 work, tumbled through women’s experiences in a society rank with patriarchal tenets for bodies and wealth. Five dancers seemed to perform every move in the book: intense floorwork, classic turns, assertive partnering, lilting solos, eloquent gestures, sailing jumps. At times they had enough reserves to support each other in this cruel mess, and other times they had to retreat to their personal battles. The theme of combatting patriarchal harm was almost too abstracted to be clear. Even so, as four of the five women fell in eventual defeat, the piece poignantly expressed that “survival mode” doesn’t guarantee survival.

The next piece was First Love, in 3 Parts, and it was as charming as it was complicated. Nol Simonse, Tanya Bello, and Foley made and danced the trio. As they weaved in and out of solo, duet, and group material, the piece celebrated their abilities as outstanding performers. The whole thing swelled with fondness for one another and honor for their individual perils. 

Finally, Let Slip the Witches closed the evening with impressive flare. It stands as a phenomenon—an event only truly understood by encountering it. But, here goes. 

Let Slip the Witches opened and remained in near darkness, with the incomparable Kaitlyn Ebert running her hands down her throat, displaying a crown of gnarled fingers, bending and twisting just enough to suggest deviousness. Something was happening to her, but she was communing with it. Elena Martins, Karla Quintero, and Juliann Witt joined her shortly, blanketed in the shadows between a floral gobo light design. The four began a soft and serene incantation to set in motion the coming ritual. “Seeker. Goddess. Mother. Priestess,” they whispered as they demarcated the space with limb and voice. Their hush grew to declaration, and their movement correspondingly intensified, creating a layered quilt of sounds, reaches, prayers, curves, callings. 

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.

At the seeming insistence of the lead sorceress (Ebert), each dancer had her moment of rapture. Martins flew through the space in a fury of jumps, convulsions, and spills, exhausting herself into a heap of heavy breath on the floor. Afterward, the coven surrounded her, picked her up, and took care of her, but was not “careful." Instead, they were task-oriented, as if this was the millionth time they had carried a comrade through her destruction, and they would do it a million times more: this is how we clean her up; these are the tasks we do to mourn, to make change, to acknowledge her passage. It’s just what we (must) do. 

An actual, historic ritual—performed by primitive and modern people in order to manage the natural and unexplainable world—lies outside of aesthetic and technique, and only cares about the efficacy of the act (Highwater).  Let Slip the Witches falls somewhere between ritual and performance. Aesthetic and precise choreographic structure were clearly paramount to Foley, but so was the unfolding of an uncultivated, task-based journey.

Moments of the work had the dancers carving out private exorcisms on the ground, while others had them gently bending into each other’s arms. Some moments firmly referenced popular associations with witches. We were gripped when the four stood like a small crowd downstage center, the house lights came up, and they surveyed the audience with vehemence. When they’d decided on a target, they’d point—arm and index finger hardened with condemnation. The scene reproduced the arbitrary rancor extended to women during the Salem Witch Trials. It was convincing. It was haunting.

But it’s the ending that elevated the piece to the phenomenal. Ben Juodvalkis’ music was literally rumbling our chairs and bones—the driving drum beats of ancient peoples—and the dancers were whipping up a fifth, metaphysical body that swept around and above them, so turbulent that its tendrils reached out and curled around us too. Shuffle, slap, clap, snap, shuffle, shuffle, pivot, switch, slap, slap, snap, shuffle, switch. They outlined distinct spatial patterns and rhythms again, and again, and again. An invigorating frenzy of mathematical, determined orbiting and pounding. By this time, their hair was down and thrashing, full of sweat and tangles, further freeing their energies. This section truly made the work. Without it, we may have enjoyed a conceptual dance piece with attractive witchy imagery. With it, we were entranced in something that felt primal and important. 

Let Slip the Witches rang of some matriarchal pagan time, one in which women’s moves are seen to possess the wisdom and magic it takes to enact rites of passage and to defy physics and create energy. The piece feels feminist because of how power was defined and used. While it was clear that forces were acting upon and inside these characters, it was also clear that they had authority over themselves. So much potency came from their ability to endure and transcend, not just the insanely physical (dance) feat before us, but also millennia of labor, public shaming, and bludgeoning that they conjured up. 

At last the dancers lay on the floor, collapsed and panting. We expected an ending and would have been satisfied with it. But, the lead sorceress hopped up and goaded the others to do the same, as if to say, “We still have our work to do.” So they continued, with only slightly less vigor, to close the ritual, repeating the calls to seeker, mother, goddess. They ultimately settled into a warped, yogic goddess pose—fully flung, pulsing, wrecked, exposed, and robust, goddess. 

Highwater, Jamake.“History as Ritual.” Dance: Rituals of Experience, Toronto, Methuen Publication, 1978, pp. 39-44.

 

Sarah JG Chenoweth is a dancer, teacher, and writer based in Oakland, California.

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

Today New York City-based artist Jodi Melnick shares about her studio practice. Click here to read Jodi's full artist profile on the blog from 2015.

Photo: Maggie Picard

Studio time/practice has been an every (almost) day occurrence since college. I was fortunate to go to school with a group of artists, and had teachers, that instilled this notion that spending time alone, with others, exploring, dissecting, experimenting, finding the newness and re-doing the sameness, would be a vital part of my creative practice.

It is indeed a luxury, always in this dance economy, to have space available to oneself, and for that I am eternally grateful for the spaces I have found that I can afford or have taught in, or have resided in as a result of a fellowship. When space has not been at my disposal, the floor where I live, or a long wide hallway where I used to live, or my mother’s patio in the hot sun - for real, has served as my space.

It’s the aloneness in any space, the entering, lying on the floor, waiting for my body, my desire, my thoughts, images, plans, to all sync so I can generate a physical expression that propels a thought to the next thought, or a knot to untie, it is perplexing and clarifying. It is my vehicle to speak. Starting is overwhelming, as exciting as it is harsh and terrifying, and it always starts with not knowing. I put myself through the same thing that I put myself through the day before, but I do this because my practice is my life, a place/space that allows me to understand how I best relate to the world and the people I engage with.

This past December, I got hit by a taxi in NYC. I’m healing from broken bones, incorporating plates and screws, bones with screaming nerves. My daily practice has been dealing with depression, sadness, and physical therapy. Healing for me means getting back into the studio, something I am just starting to do now. I miss it. I wish I did not miss or need it so much.

 

Click here to read how six more artists think about their studio practice/studio time.

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

Today we hear from San Francisco Bay Area artist Randee Paufve.

Studio time is solo time, when I work on everything, something, or nothing for the number of projects I have going at any time. Studio time takes place in dance studios, at a church in El Cerrito, in my apartment, at a park, at the gym I keep joining and quitting. Studio time is anywhere I dance that is not about a deadline, actively choreographing/directing, teaching, writing grants, strategizing about how to get the dances made/supported/seen, or any of the other things we do as dance people. My practice of the last many months starts with walking and making sacrifices to the four or five or 8 or 12 directions. Then I walk all the diagonals in the space. I walk in spirals, forward and backward, with my eyes open and closed. I breathe and crawl and pray. I do pushups and other strengthening and dancey things. I write and read things aloud, talk to myself, and also with others who aren’t there. Eat snacks, think and improvise.

I slow down to myself, inside and out, feeling my skin feeling air and space. Sacred. Opening. Forgiving. I see, smell, listen. Acknowledge the floor, the walls, the ceiling, all the stuff. Sometimes I rant and cry, mewling howls, so grateful and lucky and scared and pissed off. Sometimes I play music loud or soft or I sing a little.       

I move a lot. In recent years I find more physical limitations, so I work with what I have and kind of forget about what I can’t do which is kind of cool. Right now it’s all about upper body movement and expanding stillness as my hip is healing.

Find out more about Randee at paufvedance.org.

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

Today we hear from San Francisco Bay Area artist Nina Haft.

Nina Haft & Company. (Left to right: Rebecca Johnson, Sarah Chenoweth, and Frances Sedayao.)

My studio practice has evolved and continues to cycle with seasons in my production, teaching and life schedules. Noodling around and improvising is something I don’t do enough of lately, but when time (and pain levels) permit, I find that an unstructured hour in the studio with no product in my sights is the very best way for me to keep my kinetic imagination tuned and porous. Once I am in a rehearsal process, I tend to shift my needs to a group studio practice – a directing one. The longer I make work, the more I understand that exploring the dancers and our alchemy together is a huge part of grounding a project in something specific to that inquiry. I now find what the work is about in great measure by 1) asking a series of iterative questions with dancers; 2) observing their movement and interactions; 3) sharing observations (talking) and mostly by listening to them. I then reframe the question or the task, and we dive back in.

This process takes time. It always feels worth it.

Over time, my body has become more limited in the ways it can move freely. This is aging, and also the product of long-term use injury. I am learning to dance with pain and also to free myself from secondary injury (i.e. compensation that creates new pain) mostly by doing Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lessons. My teacher Mary Armentrout has become a touchstone for my practice, not only for her healing hands and astute eyes, but also for her ability to bridge this self-care practice into a larger compositional and philosophical context. Working easier not harder has helped me to focus my efforts in ways that do not take such a toll on my mind, body or spirit. This gives me hope. Our art form as it lives in the urban capitalist framework is not generally restorative. We dancers do much to generate value for and with each other. But at the end of the day, I sleep and wake in my own body.

Teaching feeds by directing practice by prompting me to track my intuitive movement impulses (making material) and by crafting it for an audience (students). Although my choreographic work is rarely structured around music or rhythm, I pretty much always create material by finding music that makes me want to move. In some ways, I think of this channel of movement making as an alternate personality of mine! It reminds me of where I come from, and it reveals to me the ways other people’s movements are filtering into my own. I am grateful that it does.

I am blessed with access to studio space as a Company in Residence at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, and also (to a much lesser extent) as faculty at CSU East Bay. I also regularly rent studio space due to scheduling needs. I have noticed that the nature of a space seems to percolate into the work itself. It can really help to have a "neutral" space – one where I do not fulfill roles for anyone else but myself – when I need to tap into my intuition.

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Related posts:

My Dance Week: Nina Haft

Blog Series: Studio Practice/Studio Time

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Speaking as a Teaching Artist: Five Bay Area Artists Share Perspectives (Lauren Simpson, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Charles Slender-White, and Kristin Damrow)

From Blog Director Jill Randall:

During the past year, these five San Francisco Bay Area artists have shared Artist Profiles on Life as a Modern Dancer. Today, I pulled together their thoughts around the art of teaching. Click on each artist's name to read their full Artist Profile.

Lauren Simpson teaching "Practice, Process, Research: Defining Terms and Playing Around" at Lion's Jaw Festival 2018. With collaborator Jenny Stulberg. Photo by The Fleet NYC.

From Lauren Simpson (San Francisco, CA)

What is the role of teaching in your career?

Teaching has been the most consistent part of my life and career. Recently I’ve been most excited about developing a theory around dance making and arts practices geared specifically to dancers and movers. I am interested in concrete ways to be creative in the studio/classroom, demystifying the creative process a bit. I hope to enable artists to explore artistic choices systematically through practice, process, and research – practice is about work, process is about framework, and research is about fieldwork. I draw on other artists' work and my own to make arguments about what’s required to make a dance successful, what’s required to make a dance enjoyable to create and what’s required to make a dance possible. I have been developing the curriculum through short-term residencies at Universities around the country.

In addition to my visiting teaching work, I have been an Adjunct Professor at University of San Francisco and Harvard College teaching contemporary modern technique, contact improvisation, dance history, and composition. One of my most formative teaching experiences was the three years I taught dance full time at the Cambridge Rindge & Latin School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since I was 14 I have been teaching dance in some capacity. Of the three typical dancer hats - choreographer, performer, teacher - it’s the thing I’ve practiced the longest and it’s likely my strongest suit of the three.

From Kathleen Hermesdorf (San Francisco, CA)

What does the phrase “teaching artist” mean to you? What is the interplay between art making and teaching?

I’ve always used class as practice and research. Even more since I began sharing it with my musical collaborator. We engage our creative process in class and share our creative research. I also try to bring in as much of my experience from rehearsals and performance into class and find ways to integrate that into the practice. The interplay allows for articulation and activation of intention, attention, sensation, inspiration, organizing principles, absurd situations, and more. This serves the teaching, the creating, and life in general.

From Charles Slender-White (San Francisco, CA)

Teaching. What do you love about teaching? What challenges you? Role models and inspiration for your teaching practice and pedagogy….

I most love teaching because it’s a direct way for me to share my enthusiasm for dance with other people. I start with a series of proposals, witness how the dancers in the room are taking in the information, observe what’s going on with my own dancing, and go from there. Every class is an amazing combination of physical effort, intellectual problem solving, community activation, and hopefully, joy.

I am currently working on two things: 1.) using more direct language and, 2.) becoming more sophisticated in my ability to sense when, in class, it’s time to say more and when it’s time to just shut up and let people dance.

I have been teaching Countertechnique since 2012, and it has an organized pedagogical framework. Within this framework, though, the teachers are encouraged to let their personalities, strengths, and interests inform the class. I continue to be profoundly inspired by my Countertechnique colleagues and my teaching mentor, Anouk van Dijk. James Graham is also an inspiring teacher. He and I started dancing together in 2003, and it has been amazing to grow into our respective practices alongside one another over the last 15 years.

Charles Slender-White teaching (far right). Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

From Kristin Damrow (Oakland, CA)

What is the role of teaching within your dance life? What do you love about teaching? What does the phrase “teaching artist” mean to you?  

Teaching for me is everything. I love the rigor and physicality. I enjoy the challenge that comes with teaching different ages/levels. I find excitement in finding new ways to explore familiar techniques/patterns. “Teaching artist” for me has a defined meaning as I was a teaching artist with LEAP when I first moved to the Bay Area. I would go into schools, usually k-12, and teach dance to students. As, I look back on it now, I think teaching artist can have many meanings or values. There is definitely an art to teaching.

Role models and inspiration for your teaching practice and pedagogy:

My pedagogy has morphed into what it is today by all of the influential teachers I learned from. At Columbia College: Margi Cole, Darrell Jones, Liz Burritt. Here in the Bay: Katie Faulkner, Christine Cali, Janice Garrett, Mo Miner. In NYC: Yin Yue and Shannon Gillen. To name a few.

From Tanya Chianese (Oakland, CA)

What is the role of teaching within your dance life? What do you love about teaching? What does the phrase “teaching artist” mean to you?

I could write a novel in response to these questions! Most of my income is from teaching dance, and I adore it. I used to teach upwards of 18 classes a week, but recently only 7-10 a week. Teaching helps me stay grounded and in reality. Because I have the pleasure of teaching a large age range (age 3-adults) I get to explore dance from all sides, ranging from focusing on the placement of our scapula bones to telling stories via creative movement. Each age, level, and context has taught me so much - both as an artist and a human.

But most importantly, teaching is not about me! It is about sharing this transformational practice in order to teach students a variety of lessons including how to take ownership of their body, how to express themselves, how discipline and respect will move them through life, how to be compassionate in the world, how to release stress and anxiety, how to work as a community, and so much more.

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One Good Quote: Let Slip the Witches with the Bellwether Dance Project

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 Bellwether Dance Project in Let Slip the Witches at ODC Theater in San Francisco April 4-6, 2019, 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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