Hometown: I was born in San Luis Obispo. I have lived in New York City and Berlin.
Current city: Los Angeles
Age: 34
College and degree: BA Art History, UCLA
Graduate school and degree: MFA candidate 2018, UCLA
Website: www.toddmcquade.org
How you pay the bills: Teacher's Assistant at UCLA, Body-Worker
All of the dance hats you wear:
Choreographer, Director, Editor, Sculptor, Carpenter, Teacher's Assistant, Body-Worker
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The first five years after college (2003-2007):
The day after my last final exam of the undergraduate degree, I moved to New York City. I spent the following five years researching, making and performing dance. Year one after graduation (2003), I was busy taking open ballet classes in the morning and early afternoon, and then waited tables in the evening. Year two (2004) I was busy taking ballet and modern dance classes in the morning, rehearsed roles in project-based groups in the afternoon, and waited tables until very late at night. Year three (2005) I took a job in the feeder, or "2nd" company, of a contemporary-ballet ensemble in Chicago. I rehearsed and performed from early in the morning all day and into the night. Year four (2006) I worked with a young-upstart dance company in New York City - we were all friends, we were supported by an older dancer, we toured to Europe, we weren't paid much, but felt like hard work was paying off. Year five (2007) I started working full-time with a New York City based post-modern dance company. That first year, I learned the roles of the dancer who I was replacing. Each day, he and I worked in the studio in the first part of the day and then I observed the company in later part of the day - the work was challenging, the training came, but slowly.
Ten years after college:
Ten years after college (2013) I was based in Berlin, working for two choreographers, starting to get serious about my own studio art practice, going hard in Berlin, living out of bags, deeply affected by family crisis and long distance relationships, looking for a way to land.
Now:
I live in Los Angeles. Everyday I go to the studio and/or class in an MFA program. This will be my schedule for the next three years.
Major influences:
I'm greatly influenced by the natural resources in my surroundings, especially those situations where these resources meet human construction, and customs are performed at their crossing. For instance, the ambulation around the salad bar, the teenage spray-paint tag on the boulder, the reflection of the scene on the camera lens. I'm also greatly influenced by collective experience - dances, parades, days off, teams, hang-outs. I try not to look at too much media (print, internet) so that when I do, I perceive it as the object it is rather than the "reality" it wants its viewer to believe it is. I'm most deeply influenced by music.
What inspired you to go to graduate school? What are you loving about the UCLA program?
After reaching a certain threshold of research into the body, I wanted to begin a research into bodies of material and my means of interfacing with them. An art department at a university seemed like the right kind of laboratory to conduct this research. In the department, there are facilities that can get dirty, access to tools, and teachers, who are artists, that consider teaching a central part of their art practice. I'm loving the diversity of my fellows at UCLA. Specifically the diversity of beliefs about what art is and what doing it does. It's also lovely to be in an environment that feels public - specifically in LA where there is isolation, and 2015 where there is so much privitization.
What is on your calendar for 2016?
In 2016 I am going to step behind the camera, off the stage, and disappear from the frame in my production. I'm going to start a research into the temporal dimension of my perception. I plan on getting caught up with semi-solids. I'll read. I have no travel planned, no engagements other than a measured research.
Can you provide a little window into your time with some major choreographers and companies? How did you get these gigs (auditions, seen in classes, a workshop, etc)? How long were you with each?
Trisha Brown:
Technically speaking, I got the job with the Trisha Brown Dance Company after a very long and arduous audition process. But realistically, I think that I got the job because Trisha liked something about me - the other rehearsal directors told me years after the fact that I was not their pick, that only Trisha was interested in me. Why was Trisha interested - I'd like to think that it was because I had done my research. Prior to the audition, I spent a year trying on her style, her approach, and I think she could read that in my movement. The other reasons are hers, which I didn't have access to. I took classes at the company's studio when they had a school, I watched every video of the company's work on file at the Performing Arts Library in New York, I read the criticism, I studied the strategies of the company's collaborators. So when I met her, I felt immersed in her work. I also had this great fantasy about the company and its legacy. I was attracted to the proximity to the 1960's & 70's, and the visual art world, which I gained access to through the company. I was lit on this fantasy and preparation. Dancing the work also felt really good. I joined the company at the moment when dance was starting to be staged in the museum again. A group of the company's works from the late sixties and early seventies were being recognized as foundational to this more contemporary circumstance and we performed them in museums. I learned a lot about composition from painstakingly studying the company's repertory via frame by frame video. About how to deploy content. How to make temporal psychical collage. A lot about rhythm and play. The dances that company made were like abstract origami - so precise and exacting, kind of cold, kind of animated.
Sasha Waltz:
Alongside my interest in formalism and abstraction, I am deeply invested in a practice of drama and affection. I first learned about Sasha Waltz in 2004, I joined her company in 2009, and in the time between, I stoked up another fantasy about that work. It was European, German, Berliner, deeply affecting, potentially dangerous, eloquent. I met Sasha after a performance that I gave with Trisha's company in France. I took class with the company when I was in Berlin and expressed my interest in the work. Sasha asked me if I would come learn some repertory, and at the end of the working week, I performed the duet that I had learned for the company in the studio. We started working on projects together shortly thereafter. When we started working together, the company was in a moment of re-emerging after a long research into site-specificity and we made a big intense group piece together. In the creation process, any gesture and form felt possible - any thing was allowed. Sasha gave me what felt like a lot of space to experiment, she challenged me to push to an edge but in a manner so that I could continually re-approach that edge. The nature or gestalt of the work came together without much discussion between Sasha and the dancers. We found out about what the meaning of our dancing meant by dancing.
Meg Stuart:
I auditioned for the replacement role in Meg's work Violet. My friend was leaving the work. I had been quiet close to him during the creation of the work. We were both busy with the themes that appeared in it - altered states, liminality, duration, improvisation, so, I felt like I had some access to the concepts within the work before I was actually performed it. I found the themes of her work to be very seductive, and I wanted to be near to them. I played it cool in the audition, under-performed, and then did it over the top once. I guess we both played each during the process, and this play felt like it was part of the dramaturgical strategy of the work and working conditions. I found it a challenge to perform a role made by a dear friend who has a different disposition and approach to performance than I do - like shining a flood light on a dabble-only plant. The work was exceptionally demanding psychic-ly. It was basically a choreographed catharsis. Performing it was a psychological thriller on stage and off.
How have you grown as a performer over the past decade?
I think that my dexterity with timing has changed over time. I can be still, slow, plodding, jittery, basted - I have more of a range and comfort with performing different durations. I have also given up physical range as a priority in favor of a pragmatism.
Can you talk about the similarities and differences between working as a performer in Europe and working here in the US?
One main difference is that dance in Europe is not auxiliary to life. In the United States dances can operate like a consumable good. In Europe dance is bolstered by it's history. It's treated as a form through which culture is both produced and critiqued. Dance is more closely linked to institutions of thought, philosophy and art in Europe. There isn't the tradition of Hollywood, or Broadway, in Europe. In the US dance often functions as specter, as harlot, as the sizzle towards a sale. Both non and professional dance in the US seems to be a tradition through which coming-of-age cultural practices around the body and its representations of gender, discipline, desire are learned, rehearsed and performed. Dance is often a thing, a stage, that people go through here in the US. Dance seems much more connected to self-development in the US, whereas in Europe it aids in the formation of institutions that are beyond the personal.
Last performance you saw that inspired you:
I was at a great Halloween party in Echo Park in LA where everyone was in raging drag of various shades.
Please pose 1-3 questions you have for contemporary artists right now:
What does it do? What does it to do to its context, its viewer, ideologically, materially?
Final thoughts: Hope/belief/love of the profession:
What I really want from dance happens while I'm doing it.
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Related posts:
A Modern Dancer's Guide to Los Angeles
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