Hometown: Orlando, FL
Current city: Atlanta, GA
Age: 35
College and degree: I have a BA in Psychology from Emory University; I minored in Dance and Sociology. Emory didn’t offer a major in Dance until my junior year when I had already completed quite a few Psychology credits. But even if a Dance major were available from the start, I probably would have done the same thing. I liked the diverse education.
Graduate school and degree: I have an MFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from Florida State University. I took one year off after undergrad to travel (I lived in London for 6 months and traveled around Europe), then started grad school at age 23. I graduated when I was 26.
Website: www.staibdance.com (the Atlanta-based professional contemporary company my husband and I run together)
How you pay the bills: So many jobs…
1. I am an adjunct professor of dance at Oxford College of Emory University where I teach Pilates, ballet, modern and direct the Oxford Dance Company.
2. Some semesters, I teach dance at Emory’s main campus, and occasionally, I teach Pilates or Core Conditioning for Emory’s PE department.
3. For the past 10 years or so, I have been a Reading Therapist and Center Coordinator at Syllables Learning Center in Atlanta. We tutor students in reading, math, test prep, vocabulary development, study skills, and writing. Currently, I’m developing a new vocabulary curriculum with Jennifer Hasser, Executive Director and founder of Syllables. I work one-on-one with kids who need reading remediation (mostly kids with dyslexia), and I also tutor at an inner city elementary school that has adopted our original reading curriculum.
4. I am the movement instructor and choreographer for East Coweta High School’s color guard. I choreograph the winter guard and marching band shows and teach regular dance classes.
5. I write for Dance Informa and ArtsATL, both online publications. For ArtsATL, I cover the local dance scene writing profiles, reviews, and news articles. For Dance Informa, I conduct interviews and pitch dance-related stories that interest me.
6. I dance professionally for Staibdance and serve as its Managing Director. I also serve as an administrative coordinator for our summer intensive in Sorrento, Italy.
All of the dance hats you wear: All of the above and more. When I get the opportunity, I freelance for other companies and choreograph my own work. Currently, I’m setting a work on Emily Cargill and Dancers for their upcoming season, and I performed with that company at the NYC10 Dance Festival in New York City last fall. I often serve as rehearsal assistant to George Staib of Staibdance.
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Describe your dance life ….
First 2 years after graduate school:
These were hard. I had just spent 3 years living and breathing dance in a pristine environment without much financial worry or responsibility. Suddenly, I didn’t have access to regular classes in beautiful studios, and I had to fend for myself. I accepted a job at a new fine arts magnet high school in an impoverished suburb outside of Atlanta and quit after one excruciating year. For the first time, I saw the ineffectiveness of poorly-funded public education in this county and realized I (and dance) could do nothing about it. Though I loved a few students and years later came to realize I made a positive impact on their lives, I knew I needed to get out before I started resenting dance. So I took a job as an adjunct professor at Spelman College (making a quarter of what I made at the high school) and started accumulating jobs to make ends meet (nanny, color guard instructor, tutor).
Five years after grad school:
Still at Spelman College and starting to hate the adjunct life. I felt like my talents were being exploited; I worked alongside full-time faculty who had the same teaching load as I did and made more money. But I was developing as a teacher. I was becoming more confident and starting to integrate my skills as an educator in both dance and reading tutoring. I was becoming better at improvising and in-the-moment problem solving. I was also stressed out, feeling like I couldn’t devote 100% to anything because I was stretched so thin.
Now:
Now I appreciate the adjunct life and have developed better time management skills. After many failed attempts at obtaining a full-time faculty position in a university, I have to come to realize it’s probably for the best, at least for now. I’ve come to fully embrace my role at Syllables and have rediscovered a love for curriculum development (I did a little of this at the magnet high school, but it never came to fruition). I’m so grateful for the opportunity to expand my resumé beyond dance into other realms of education. I’m becoming more confident as a writer and hope to one day take it a step further – blogs, novels, textbooks? Who knows, and maybe the “who knows” place isn’t as scary as it once was… more possibility, less fear.
Major influences:
First and foremost, I must credit my husband George Staib in the creation and establishment of my ever-changing dance career. He encouraged me to go to grad school and helped guide me through all its uncertainties. He also encouraged me to quit the high school job, seeing my daily frustrations and knowing I could do more in the field. As a choreographer, George has taught me to be opinionated and discerning, to keep pushing even when something seems “good enough.” He inspires me in and out of rehearsal, and we never run out of things to talk about, questions to pursue, opportunities to grasp. Less direct influences would be the work of choreographer Ohad Naharin, whose Gaga workshop I attended in Tel Aviv a few years ago. Also the faculty at Florida State, most notably Lynda Davis for her approach to creating an effective classroom environment, Nancy Smith Fichter for her attention to “phrasing” in choreography/movement and Gerri Houlihan for her gentle classroom demeanor and wise advice.
What’s on your calendar for the rest of the 2015-16 academic year?
Staibdance has recently welcomed some new members, and I have loved being a part of this amazing group of artists. In February, we will travel to Stockholm, Sweden to perform and teach at Sodra Latins, a performing arts college. We will also perform at the American College Dance Association Southeast Regional conference at Emory in March. Both of these performances will feature material we are creating for our next major project to debut in Atlanta in June. My new piece for Emily Cargill and Dancers premieres in April, as does my work for the Oxford Dance Company Spring Concert. In July, we will travel to Sorrento, Italy for the 7th annual Staibdance Summer Intensive. Next semester, I will continue my full teaching load at Oxford, Syllables, and East Coweta High School Winter Guard.
Current choreographic interests and projects:
Choreographically, this has been a rich year for me. Oxford Dance Company will perform December 7, 2015 – a new 20-minute piece I created in collaboration with 10 dancers. In the spring, I will debut a reinvented version of my piece "La La Land (originally created on Spelman Dance Theater) for Emily Cargill and Dancers. A new crop of dancers will perform in the Oxford Dance Company concert in April, and I hope to invite a few local choreographers to present work as well.
These days, how do you train and care for your body?
I’ve been an athlete and a gym rat most of my life. In high school, I ran cross-country and pole vaulted for the track team. I’ve also been a competitive swimmer, tennis player, and gymnast. All of those experiences have informed my exercise regimen (I belong to a boxing gym and regularly take CrossFit and kickboxing classes), and I love to work out hard. But lately I’ve been dealing with some injuries and have tried to tone down my workouts. I love yoga and Pilates (I’m also a Pilates instructor), and walking does wonders. I’m addicted to foam rolling and try to get therapeutic massages whenever I can.
Non-dance activities and hobbies important to you:
I love working out in its many forms – running, going to the gym, walking my dog. These days, it feels like I have very little downtime; the life of a dancer/teacher/writer/company manager leaves little time for hobbies. But we definitely make time for good food! George and I love exploring Atlanta’s many culinary gems, especially restaurants in Downtown Decatur and East Atlanta Village, two of the city’s many distinct neighborhoods. I also travel whenever possible, whether work-related or not. At home, after eating dinner at 10:30, George and I are on the couch with glasses of wine watching The Good Wife or Breaking Bad or whatever other great show everyone saw a few years ago. Or I’m out with friends at one of Atlanta’s many fabulous drag shows.
What the term “teaching artist” means to you:
The more time I spend in front of a room full of students, the more I realize the vast difference between giving a class and teaching a class. Most people start out giving classes. They take the information they received from previous teachers, and they regurgitate it. I did it too-- where else can you start? I gave the information that was given to me. But then I started to really watch and listen. When something that made sense to me obviously didn’t make sense to my students-- as in it wasn’t producing the results I wanted-- I had to make changes. Use imagery, relate it to everyday life, try to inspire confidence, close the mirrors, concentrate on one thing at a time, slow down, repeat. A teaching artist is someone who realizes his or her class can and should be forever evolving to include new information. A teaching artist talks to dancers and cares how they process what they have learned; she sees as much dance as possible and stays current; she rejoices in her student’s successes.
How did you get into writing about dance? How often do you write? Advice to other dancers who would like to pursue writing:
You get into dance writing by making it known that you want to be a dance writer. The job is 100% about connections. You also get into dance writing with one or more jobs already under your belt, because it is not how you will make a living. In 2008, a former Emory professor Sally Radell was asked to write about dance for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Knowing she didn’t have time to add another responsibility to her plate, she passed my name along, and I was given the opportunity to write a test review. I agonized over that review – it probably took me 10 hours to write a 600-word article – but I got the job. Unfortunately, less than a year later, all the AJC arts reviewers were let go (a pattern that continued throughout the entire country, the New York Times is the only publication in the country left with a full-time dance reviewer). A couple of years later, I was approached by ArtsATL, an online publication founded by former AJC arts writers, to join their team. They had read my work in the AJC, they were expanding and needed more dance writers. Soon after, Deborah Searle, editor of Dance Informa magazine, contacted me, said she had enjoyed my work for ArtsATL, and asked me to join her staff.
Advice? Write a lot! Practice writing about movement and read other art reviews (I listen to NPR book and movie reviews as much as possible for tone, style, and content). Get your work out there and if it's good, someone will notice!
Last performance you saw that really inspired you:
When I was in Tel Aviv 2 years ago, I saw a performance by Israeli choreographer Idan Sharabi. I haven’t seen the art of movement invention approached with such rigor, such technical mastery and wild abandon in a long time. I’m really inspired by the direction I see Israeli contemporary dance taking right now. Most recently, my company participated in a workshop led by Israeli actor/performance artist/clown Ofir Nahari. It was so refreshing to hear someone talk about “moving” not “dancing” in order to achieve real physicality on stage. I'm interested in pursuing theatricality further, both in my choreography and my approach to performance.
Please describe the Atlanta dance scene:
Atlanta is on the right track. We have a growing base of highly trained, ambitious and creative young artists, many of whom chose Atlanta over New York City (better weather, more opportunities to choreograph and perform, a less competitive and more supportive artistic climate, reasonable cost of living). Atlanta boasts many alternative performance venues: lots of cool, underused industrial spaces artists inhabit and, as a result, highlight. Site-specific work is thriving. But concurrently, the big fancy performance spaces are often (inexplicably) reserved for out-of-town companies. We have big talent here. I’m hoping the art-going public – many of whom show up in droves for live music, local festivals and new restaurants – will become just as enthusiastic about dance and larger, more traditional stage venues will start booking local companies. Though we have a need for it, the class scene has not caught up with the influx of artists. For commercial and hip-hop dance, it’s great. But a solid base of contemporary classes is lacking. At the same time, we have four major universities (Emory, Spelman College, Agnes Scott College and Kennesaw State University) with thriving, quality dance programs and/or majors. We’re starting to see talented dancers from those programs stay here after graduation, which is a great sign.
Final thoughts: Hope/belief/love of the profession:
While I appreciate the growing trend towards the melding of performance art and “dance” into one category, I still want to see movement – subtle, powerful, dynamic, abstract, raw, and crafted. Idan Sharabi’s small group of dancers made me remember that thoughtfully constructed, beautifully executed movement can still stand alone. Dance that is too conceptual often falls flat for me and fails to strike an emotional chord. But great and honest movement -- even if it's just seeing a student unlock her fears and start moving from her center-- is the most important thing in the world. We all move so we all connect to movement. But sometimes the pressure to "move like a dancer" extracts the individual and erases what was interesting in the first place. Shows like "So You Think You Can Dance" give a false representation of the art form, its nuances, individuality, and the ability to convey real emotion. Choreographers who are pushing the art of movement invention (and there are many), instead of relying on habit and tradition, are pioneering the next wave of great dance.
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