“White” Photo by Ian Douglas
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY (originally from Sugar Grove, IL)
Current city: Brooklyn, NY
Age: 38
College and degree: BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Website: michelleboule.com
How you pay the bills: Teaching, making dances, performing in other people’s dances, BodyTalk, for a while I was able to sublet my apartment while I toured
All of the dance hats you wear: Choreographer, dancer, teacher, all-around administrator/manager, fundraiser, grant writer, cheerleader
Non-dance work you do or have done in the past: Bookkeeping, office admin, personal assistant
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Describe your dance life….
20s: I arrived in NY when I was 21 and started dancing immediately with Gabriel Masson for $3/rehearsal (round-trip subway fare). I met Miguel Gutierrez through taking his class (I took a lot of classes when I first moved here). I injured my shoulder doing a “John Jasperse” roll during one of Miguel’s phrases, which launched me more deeply into holistic bodywork. Miguel asked me to be in a short duet for a PS122 show in early 2001, when I showed up to his class again several months later. I asked him if we could keep making things, and voila, I danced and toured with him through 2015. I also did projects with John Jasperse, Donna Uchizono, Judith Sanchez-Ruiz, Beth Gill, and a William Forsythe commission with Deborah Hay. I taught throughout this whole time.
30s: More dancing with Miguel, more teaching, more international touring. A project with John Scott in Dublin which took me all over Ireland for a couple of years. From my late 20s into my 30s I was touring a lot, with teaching and performing, to the point where I would be away from NY for many months out of the year. In my later 30s, I’ve begun focusing more on my own work and saying no to offers to dance in other people’s work. I’m trying to figure out that balance, because I do love performing and being a collaborative artist. I also became a Certified BodyTalk Practitioner in 2008. That work has deeply influenced my understanding of the body and philosophy on life, and therefore, my artistic practice.
"Age & Beauty Part 2: Asian Beauty @ the Werq Meeting or The Choreographer & Her Muse or &:@&” by Miguel Gutierrez. Photo by Ian Douglas.
Major influences:
Miguel! John and Deborah also. Tons of admiration for Ralph Lemon. Anna Halprin is a hero. I like looking at what women are up to. In the past, I’ve really enjoyed looking at visual artists Agnes Martin, Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Valie Export, and Yayoi Kusama. Also huge for me are BodyTalk and the philosophies, science, and healing work it has exposed me to.
What is on your calendar for 2016 (teaching, choreographing, performing)?
I remounted my trio “White” at Danspace Project in January, performed at the Met Breuer with my friend and collaborator cellist Okkyung Lee, and performed in Eiko Otake’s Platform at Danspace Project. Since then I’ve been focusing on making a new piece that will premiere in 2017. It’s a transitional year, as all of my prior touring projects with others have phased out, and I have no new work with other people coming up, although I did say yes to a project with Bebe Miller, which really gets moving more in 2017. I’m making a piece on the students at Eugene Lang this fall, and have choreographic residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, Bemis Center, Governors Island (LMCC), and collective address throughout 2016. I’m residency hopping, and raising money! I’m also taking some BodyTalk courses and making a new BodyTalk website. I’m trying to stay open to what else might show up this year.
Current training practices:
I do a lot of exploring on my own, with influences coming from Body-Mind Centering, Feldenkrais, yoga/Ayurveda, BodyTalk, qi/energy work, and the breath and vocal training I’ve done. Over the years, I’ve done a lot of private sessions with practitioners. I’d like to start taking classes with people more, which I moved away from when I was performing and touring so much. I knew what my body needed, and oftentimes, didn’t have the time for class. Now it feels like time to find a practice that involves more community.
What is the role of teaching within your dance life? What do you love about teaching? What does the phrase “teaching artist” mean to you?
I love teaching. It has always taught me how to process my questions and find clarity, and more recently, just to ask questions. At one point, teaching became a way to process the things I was experiencing personally. How do I open my heart? How do I accept? How do I let myself go? These questions and this approach are all still in the room, but I think the body has in some ways become less and less “personal” to me. I’m enjoying what it gets to experience, being present with the change that is always happening.
There is an art to teaching…being able to listen to the energies in the room and guide them, finding ways to stay inspired and inspire. I just took a workshop with Sara Shelton Mann, and I had a brief chat with Beth Goren who was sitting on the side watching. She said that she had studied with Sara in the 70s and that she’s still the same! She said it seemed Sara had found her “life thrust.” I loved that. That feels like being a “teaching artist.”
“WONDER” Photo by Ian Douglas
Can you talk a little about your performance practice? You have performed extensively over the past decade. What has been your growth as a performer? What are your strengths? What are you working on and exploring these days?
I learned in an early rehearsal with Miguel (in 2001) that everything was visible when I was onstage. He could read me through my body. I couldn’t control all the variables of what people saw, but I could try to become more and more aware of myself and my actions. There was also a point when I realized that if I was engaged, the audience probably was too, and perhaps my strategy was to engage with as much as possible, not in a spastic way but in a connected, aware way. Not a “performance of engagement” either. That’s kind of annoying. I just did a Vipassana meditation retreat, and performing is sometimes like that…getting out of the way to feel sensation throughout my body. My body and my perception are alive. My imagination sometimes tosses me into energetic worlds that may seem bigger than reality, but I try to not be delusional. I enjoy reading the energy of the room. I like the accountability and responsibility of being seen and carrying information. Being witnessed serves as a bullshit meter in some ways…going back to how everything is visible.
I’m currently looking more deeply into what is made possible via performative presence. I’ve also been exploring the invisible, less tangible architectures and energies that we “dance with,” as well as the etheric body and how that directs the physical. I would love to do more coaching of performance, as I feel like I’ve spent so much of my time watching the tactics and direction (or lack of direction) of the performers. Only recently have I begun to prioritize watching the choreography! Not that I wasn’t watching that…I just am beginning to watch choreography with the detail with which I’ve watched performing over the years.
I feel like a lot is said through how the body and presence are used, and it feels important to be conscious of the statements we are making and what they are supporting in the world.
What are the skills a contemporary dancer needs in 2016?
Seeing Darrell Jones and Angie Hauser dance at the Movement Research Gala honoring Bebe Miller made me think that dancers are training differently today…maybe there’s less emphasis on “technique” and what might seem like an older model of “virtuosity,” perhaps on the tails of an emphasis on conceptual work. While I love the variety of abilities in “technique” and performance presence, I still hold a fondness for the ability of a person to embrace all—an ability to fluidly traverse different performative presences with an invested interest in knowing how to articulate the body through a whole range of tasks and movement. I think the dancer needs to be curious and hungry, and also to follow what feels truest personally in terms of what they want to explore. However, I think we need to be able to embody the information we want to convey through performance, and that’s maybe where the real heat of the skill is, or as my friend Miguel says [paraphrased] “to be able to trust the messenger as well as the message.”
“White” Photo by Ted Roeder
As a choreographer, questions on your mind right now:
I am still teaching myself what it means to choreograph. The piece I’m making now is a return to a solo practice (from my 2013 piece WONDER) with an application of what I learned about choreographic form in my trio White from 2015. White looked at the invisible energies and architectures that surround and also run through us. That matrix of information is still of great interest to me, and it feels very related to a 3-D or 4-D visual experience of work. I want to keep looking at how the dancer plays in that field. I’ve also been researching the etheric body and will probably continue to explore what feel like dichotomies…etheric and physical, virtuosic and mundane, good and bad, right and wrong. I’m curious about the anecdote from Yorubaland (West Africa) of the trickster-divinity Edshu, who purposely creates conflict by making people argue about who’s right. I don’t think I’m a trickster in that way—harmony is too important to me—but we sure do put a lot of energy (as a culture and society) into trying to prove one way is right over the exclusion of another.
Advice to dancers wanting to move to NYC:
Use your resources…friends, family.
Go to the free events (Judson and other showings).
Take class…if you can afford it and have the time.
Build community.
Be kind and curious.
Take care of your body, mind, heart, and spirit.
Surround yourself with people and things that support you.
Final thoughts: Hope/belief/love of the profession:
We get to be embodied…that is a radical act. To be in touch with the very simple truths that are deeply expressed through the vessels of our bodies. It’s so easy to take that for granted and to dishonor that space. Dancing, although I sometimes feel like I could walk away from it at any moment, is a gift and honor. It’s a way to access transformation. If it stops feeling like that, then maybe it’s time to do something else (forever or for a while). And we don’t need to be so precious about it either.
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Artist Profile: Jennifer Monson
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