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.