Hometown: Darien and Waterford, Connecticut
Current city: New York City
Age: 61
Attended an arts high school? No, but had a wonderful dance teacher named Pat Peterson at my school - Emma Willard 1972.
College and degree: B.A. Inter-Arts Oberlin College 1976
Website: http://pamelaquinn.net/
How you pay the bills: Lecturer, teacher and private coach for people with Parkinson’s disease
All of the dance hats you wear: Choreographer, dancer, teacher, coach, speaker, Parkinson’s disease advocate, writer, and administrator.
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Describe your dance life in your…
20s: I was working with colleagues at Oberlin College - Brenda Way, Kimi Okada, and KT Nelson. There we started a group – a consortium of artists - called the Oberlin Dance Collective, which evolved into the dance company ODC/San Francisco after we moved west. In San Francisco we choreographed, performed, toured, opened a center where dance classes were taught, sponsored a performing arts series and published a journal called New Performance.
As an original member of ODC, my most significant contribution to the company was the athleticism of my personal movement style. I choreographed, danced and performed with the company for 10 years - 10 very formative years.
30s: I continued to work with ODC in San Francisco and then forged out on my own to collaborate with actor/writer Michael O’Connor on dance-theater pieces. We moved to NYC and performed in the downtown dance scene for ten years. Eventually, we also married.
40s: We had two children. I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
I was in shock. Whenever I went to class I was faced with a body that couldn’t do what it used to be able to do; it didn’t respond to my commands. Dancing made me face my disease every day in a way that deeply saddened me. I would never be the same, and the path that lay before me was only one of deterioration. I stopped going to class; I stopped moving. I retreated from the dance world in order to figure out who I would now become. It was a difficult time for me. I was quite alone. I didn’t want to tell anyone about my disease because I didn’t want any pity.
Yet, I found that dancing did give me some tools. As I struggled to hide my disease from all those dancer-trained eyes, I used my knowledge of the body and my kinesthetic awareness to circumvent my physical problems and to live a life of physical secrecy. (It’s kind of ironic that the very tools I developed to help me move were developed in order to hide my condition.) Eventually the pressure of hiding my disease worsened my symptoms – like my tremor would get really big if I got nervous, which happened sometimes when I was trying to hide my shaking, so I finally became public with my situation. And I found as I experimented with different strategies, that music was my elixir…my most dependable partner. Indeed, it was my medicine. It allowed me to move…even to dance, which I did in the psychological comfort and privacy of my home.
I kept experimenting with different ideas - also thankful for the fact that dance training had instilled in me the practice of rigorous work habits and the mental freedom that comes with creating. As I discovered certain ways of thinking and moving that allowed me to move, I thought, maybe I should teach these techniques to other people with Parkinson’s. I approached a woman named Olie Westheimer. She was head of the Brooklyn Parkinson Group that had started a dance class at the Mark Morris studio in Brooklyn. I told Olie that I wanted to do a dance class with music, but I also wanted to be able to experiment with any crazy idea I had that might help people with Parkinson’s. She said, come, and I did. I called the class PD Movement Lab.
Over time my relationship to the dance form kept changing. It had gone from totally defining me, to being something I figured would fade into the distant past as part of a former life, to becoming my very helper and savior. I returned to it with deep thanks and respect for the form rather than with regret and defeat.
50s: PD Movement Lab developed and grew. A drug company wanted to make a video. We did. Olie told me of a worldwide conference for PD that was having a video competition. I decided I would try and choreograph something - it had been at least 10 years since I had made a dance. I made a dance piece about Parkinson’s called "Welcome to our World" (see pamelaquinn.net). It won the competition!
In a way, in my own way, I could be a dancer again. My history with dance – my love of movement, music, the culture of being a dancer, and the practice of always striving to improve your body - gave me an advantage over others that had PD. My disease didn’t progress as fast. I kept teaching, both privately as a one-on-one PD coach, and group classes at Mark Morris for the Brooklyn Parkinson Group and at upper Manhattan’s JCC where they had a program affiliated with NYU’s movement disorder center (thanks to the Safra Family Foundation). And, last but not least, I got to be Christopher Walken’s movement coach for the film A Late Quartet in which he plays a cellist diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
60s: I have become well-known in the field of Parkinson’s as a teacher, speaker, advocate, and creator of videos. I have presented my work around the country and in Europe, and have recently been profiled in a book called Brain Storms by the BBC journalist Jon Palfreman. Neurologists in most movement disorder centers here in NYC refer many of their patients to me. But what gives me the most satisfaction is to be able to make people with this disease enjoy the beauty and soulfulness of dancing while they courageously cope. These PD “dancers” are quite beautiful and inspiring in their own way.
What is on your calendar for 2016?
I have been chosen as one of two patients from around the world to be interviewed for a podcast that leads up to the next World Parkinson Congress, an international meeting of scientists, doctors, researchers and patients that happens every three years. I am making a video for their video competition (my 2010 video, “Welcome to our World,” in which I dance and speak, won in 2010; my video, “With Grace," was selected to be among the top 12 in 2013). I will be presenting my work at various universities, sometimes with David Leventhal, who runs the Mark Morris Program called Dance for PD. I have many projects in mind but am frustrated by the unevenness of life that PD brings; you can only function well at certain times. I also have a health clock ticking. How long will I be able to do what I do?
Current training practices and care of the body:
I take yoga occasionally, run around the park, play tennis, teach and go on the elliptical.
Have somatic practices influenced your work as a dancer and teaching artist?
No, but I have just befriended Martha Eddy, and I suspect she will have an influence on my own training.
How can people connect with you and your classes? Do you take interns?
They can get information about me and my teaching from my website, pamelaquinn.net; they can contact me at [email protected]. I do have interns helping in my classes.
What do you love about teaching?
I love defying people's own expectations about what they can do. I love teaching them about their own bodies, which they’ve lived in but haven’t known for many years. I love them experiencing the joy of moving and the community that comes from moving together.
On balancing a dance career and raising a family:
Difficult but doable and totally worth it. Having children deepens your wonder of life and the world and puts things in perspective. Even if you think you can’t afford it, have a family. It’s one of the most meaningful experiences in life.
What would you say are some of the biggest changes you have seen in modern dance over the span of your career?
The economics of survival and how difficult it is to live and work independently in a city like NYC or SF.
Last performance you saw that really inspired you:
Meredith Monk at Dancespace. Her total commitment through her voice and body and her willingness to explore unusual and even comic territory was wonderful. She’s a fabulous performer.
Final Thoughts: Hope/Belief/Love of the profession:
Dancers don’t realize the talents they have and what hard workers they are. I hope that in the world of health that dancers' knowledge - how body mechanics work, how to use rhythm, how to transform yourself through imagery and how to communicate through movement - will be understood, valued, used and appreciated for all that it has to give. It is neurologically complex, and one of the most beautiful things to experience.
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Related posts:
My Dance Week: David Leventhal
Dance for PD® - Information and Training Opportunities
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Absolutely wonderful story. Pam Quinn is a modern day hero. I know whereof I speak: I danced with her in high school and have followed her amazing career since 1978. Her video is gorgeous: whenever I need inspiration, I go back an look at it again. Her students and colleagues are blessed to have her in their lives.
Posted by: Megha Nancy Buttenheim | 03/15/2016 at 01:27 AM
I danced with Pam at Oberlin College though decided to continue my dance career in Boston rather than move to the West Coast with the ODC. The year I graduated from Oberlin, 1974, the Collective took a wild summer bus tour in an old yellow school bus across the country, stopping to perform in cities along the way--and when we were lucky--to get put up by friends along the way. Real beds, fresh towels, showers! Bliss Otherwise we lived in the bus and some of us drove in shifts around the clock. We were quite a crew: the dancers, our photographer, our musician, and our leader Brenda Way, with her three children. What a magical mystery tour.
I eventually left dance and lost touch with Pam until a few years ago when she was offering a PD dance workshop and lecture at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, not far from where I live. What a glorious reunion. Pam is magnificent--always has been--and she's a beacon for so many.
Several decades ago, I turned from dancing to writing and now use her videos as writing prompts in workshops I lead for people living with chronic illness. Her determination and grace and vibrant honesty have inspired and given hope to dozens of my writing students who are living with illness--and to many more who aren't.
Posted by: Carol Henderson | 03/15/2016 at 03:32 AM