Photo courtesy of Paufve Dance; photo by Pak Han
Hometown: New York, NY and Greenwich, CT
Current city: Oakland, CA
Age: 50
Attended an arts high school? Well, not technically, but Greenwich High School had incredible arts resources. I was involved in drama, vocal performance, and an electronic music/film/dance hybrid project that was pretty advanced for the time.
College and degree: BA in Dance and Religious Studies, Connecticut College, 1984
Graduate school and degree: MS in Early Childhood/Elementary Education, Bank Street College Of Education, 1992. I started grad school at 27.
How you pay the bills: I teach dance to elementary school children in the Berkeley, CA public schools. This has been my job for 14 years.
All of the dance hats you wear: Dancer, teacher, performer, mentor, arts advocate, body musician, student, student, student.
Non-dance work you do: I have a husband and two daughters ages 12 and 15. I am part of my school’s Leadership Team, planning the school’s direction and professional development. I work with the Cultural Humility Collaborative, a group of folks in mostly healthcare related fields working to foster equity in community-institutional encounters. I work with the International Body Music Festival yearly, doing hospitality for performance events.
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Describe your dance life in your….
20s: Graduated at 21, went to NY to pursue professional performance. My goals were that performance work would pay for all the dance-related stuff (class, Pilates, etc.) and to be able to work steadily without having to audition all the time. I did it!! And got to work with some terrific choreographers -- Catlin Cobb, Mark Haim, Monica Levy, Hilary Easton, Stephan Koplowitz. I performed everywhere from Central Park to DTW to SUNY Brockport to the Cunningham studio to the (brand-new at that time) Joyce Theater. I formed dance relationships that continue to this day. I also taught movement and dance a lot – to babies and parents, to schoolkids through National Dance Institute, as a personal trainer, at Julliard as a rehearsal assistant. I made a friend at a bookstore where I worked; he was training to become a schoolteacher, and hooked me up with a couple of school programs. All that was the foundation of my later career.
30s: I stopped dancing to pursue elementary school teaching; got my masters degree and was a classroom teacher for a few years (1991-95). My teacher training and early classroom experience focused on creating curriculum for equity and social justice, based in the multiple realities of a school that was diverse by design. I got married, and we moved to Oakland in 1994. I returned to dancing in 1995. That first class back, I realized I hadn’t really breathed in four years, and knew that for me, dancing was not just a career but a part of myself. I spent the next several years having two babies and figuring out how to connect dancing and education work. By that point I had left classroom teaching and was working on designing community-led curriculum in what was then called multicultural education for doctors, staff, and community physicians at a children’s hospital (that became the Cultural Humility work in which I’m still involved). I decided to go back to elementary school teaching as a dance teacher (which in my teens I vowed I would NEVER do!). My master’s degree enabled me to get a teaching credential within a couple of months, and within a year I had a job teaching dance in the diverse-by-design Berkeley public schools. I returned to performing in 1998, when my older daughter was 18 months old.
40s: Parenting, dancing
with hundreds of kids each week, taking class a couple of times per week. For several years, I was dancing just for
myself, filling up my tank so I could pass it all on to my students and my own
kids. That dancing kept me sane as
I built my teaching practice and did the intense work of parenting young
children. I began to have time and
opportunity for performing work beginning around age 45, with Nina Haft, who I
had worked with earlier. I discovered body music around the same time, and
started going to workshops with Keith Terry and Evie Ladin. I had the
opportunity to be an artist-in-residence at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, where
I made Shomer, a piece about the connection between household chores and
synagogue practice. About two
years ago I joined paufve|dance, for a major project, which brought me back to
rehearsal and performance. Full
circle!
50s (and your wishes for your dance life in your 50s): To still be in love with dancing. To continue to rehearse and perform as long as I can. To get back to the ideas in Shomer and make more of it. To keep refining my teaching. To mentor younger dancers and newer teachers. To continue mining the music/dance connection inherent in body music. To keep bringing all the threads together.
Who are your “role models” or inspiration within modern dance?
Doris Humphrey, for the notion that dancing happens between one shape and the next. Pina Bausch, Anna Teresa de Keersmaker, David Gordon for theater and ideas about time; Joe Goode and Mark Morris for music; Susan Marshall, Randee Paufve, Bebe Miller for the humanity, presence, and transcendence-in-the-everydayness of their work. Anna Halprin for starting so many things. The hip hop kings and queens for making a new new thing, a form that truly connects (and technique that blows my mind). The folks who created and the folks who continue the work at the great gathering places: American Dance Festival, Jacob’s Pillow, Dance Theater Workshop. Frank Shawl and Victor Anderson, who have devoted their lives to creating a center for dance that is home to me and to a vast array of dancers. There are many such homes across this country.
What do you love most about performing?
When I was younger, it was about being seen, showing the work, showing my own prowess, the giddiness of being in well-known theaters. Now it’s much more about communicating, about sharing something that we’ve taken time and care and thought and practice to create. It’s about the wild unknowing-ness of "What’s it gonna be like tonight?" and the underlying certainty that whatever happens is one-time-only, created, shared, held by everyone in the theater.
What do you love most about the rehearsal process?
Basically everything. That total nausea of the first movement exploration for a new thing? I adore it. The hour spent tinkering with exactly where, how, why, with what intent, and as opposed to what else, does this arm (for example) go in this moment? Fantastic. The connection between the novel you read ten years ago and the intention behind this phrase? Thrilling. The great new idea that follows the choreographer stating "this is the last thing" for the forty-seventh time, after four hours, at 10 PM on a school night? Bring it on. Rehearsal, the creating of the thing, is the closest we get as adults to the all-absorbing dramatic play of childhood. What’s not to love?
On training and care of the body…..
I think it’s vital for dancers to train as well as dance. Training for me means any practice where I am focusing purely on strength, mechanics, alignment, release, ease, and efficiency of use. This happens best in a non-dance class setting. Different modalities work better for different individuals. (For me, it ‘s been Pilates, Alexander technique, hill hiking, weight work, and Iyengar yoga). One then takes that understanding into dance class and rehearsal where, because you’ve spent the time and focus on the specifics of your particular body, you can use that body more fully as a dancer.
The role of teaching in your dance career:
I was and am beyond lucky to have studied with many brilliant dance teachers; I would not have a career without Betsy Ceva, Fred Mathews, Gary Masters, Gerri Houlihan, Martha Myers, Constance Cole, Jim May, Ara Fitzgerald, Michelle Bach, Jaclynn Villamil, Christine Wright, Kathy Grant, Nina Haft, Randee Paufve, Chris Hoskins, Gay White, Mary Lou Weprin, and especially Marcus Schulkind, who said, as I headed to New York, “find a way to make money that feeds your soul instead of burning you out.” So I began teaching to pay the bills – movement and tumbling for toddlers and young children, after-school dance for elementary school kids, work with the National Dance Institute, pre- and post-natal exercise, personal fitness. The money was way less than waitressing or catering; the time commitment was greater and less flexible; the emotional investment was also greater. But it was the right thing for me, and still is.
My second year in New York , I got a job as an assistant teacher in a preschool. It was half-day work, with health benefits, and enabled me to still take class and rehearse in the afternoons and evenings. Experiencing the arc of children’s growth over a school year was powerful for me, and led me eventually to pursue non-dance teaching as a career path. But I found that teaching without dancing was impossible for me.
Advice to young dancers on teaching, the role of teaching in their dance lives ahead, and becoming a well-prepared teacher:
Most dancers will teach as a money-making thing at some point. I think it’s hard to teach well if you don’t love it. So find out what it is you love about teaching. Perhaps start with what you love about the way your favorite teachers teach. Study your teachers, compare and contrast them: how they structure class, how they give feedback, their little pauses and quirks. When you’re in class, use the moments of watching others to become a teacher in your head. Take notes on ways of teaching that resonate with you, and ways that don’t. When you begin teaching, ask teachers you respect for help, whether that’s coming to observe you, looking through your class plans, or debriefing with you afterwards. Being well-prepared means preparing; when I started out it took me twice as long to get a class ready as it did to teach it. I still spend about three weeks each summer getting ready to teach the following year, and about one hour preparing for each grade level I teach each week.
Photo: Elio Gizzi
Perks at your job:
Salary. Benefits. Tenure. Worker’s comp. A BEAUTIFUL teaching space. Having students for six years, and seeing them develop as dancers, thinkers, people. Being part of a community that puts my work on par with the classroom folks.
An idea from your college or grad school years that you still think about/apply:
Martha Myers, the head of the dance department at Connecticut College when I was there, said frequently that her goal for us was that we would be dancing, and part of dance communities, throughout our lives. There was never a sense that being in a major company or becoming a major choreographer was the only way to be a dancer.
College course or grad course that made the most impact on your career path:
At Connecticut College, there was a required, weekly, non-credited Dance Majors class for all four years, in which we explored a wide range of somatic practice (Alexander technique, Laban, Feldenkrais work, Aston Patterning). This was pretty new stuff back then, and definitely led to my current good physical state. We learned how to accompany dance class (thanks Wall Mathews and Andy Williams!), a skill I use in my teaching practice to this day, and which led me to the Body Music work I do now. We also had a required class in dance teaching, where we observed our own teachers and taught ourselves.
Your growth as a dancer over time:
My technical and performing abilities grew and developed in my twenties. But it wasn’t until I started to dance purely for the enjoyment of it, as opposed to trying to get somewhere with it, that I really started to DANCE. And it took me even a little longer (mid-30s) for me to realize that my musical training and ability (I started dancing at age 6, in music school) was a huge part of my dancing self. Now I get to use it all.
Future career goals:
Having returned to rehearsal and performing fairly recently, I want to keep doing it as long as it feels viable. I’ve stepped into some mentorship roles, and am hoping to continue that as well.
Books, websites, blogs, and shows that serve as inspiration:
Next to dancing, I love to read best. The Writer’s Almanac is a poetry website/radio program that puts out history of poets and writers’ lives, and publishes/ reads aloud a poem every day. I love being read to, and Garrison Keillor has a great read-aloud voice. The tag line for the website is “be well, do good work, and keep in touch.” It’s a solid mantra for any artist, in any field.
Advice to young dancers:
I just tonight heard this quote from Anna Halprin. It expresses so eloquently what I think a dancer’s life really is: “I spent 20 years developing methods, road maps, so that this very personal material could be developed as art. So that, as your life experience deepened, so your art expression could expand, and as your art expression expanded, this in turn could deepen your life experience.”
Discover, know, name, and value your particular gifts as a dancer. Bring those into your work, and benefit from the complementary gifts of others in the dance community. Understand that your fellow dancers and your teachers and choreographers you work with can be your true family in a very profound way. Look seriously at the great rewards of this field, and figure out how you can realistically and practically stay in it despite the great challenges. Many of those challenges are financial; find a way to make money that feeds your dancer self and soul (thanks for the quote, Marcus!). Bring whatever that work is into your dancing; bring all of your world into your dancing. And vice versa.
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