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Hometown: Syracuse, NY How you pay the bills: Adjunct Instructor, CCSF (City College of San Francisco) and Cabrillo College, other freelance teaching, freelance performer, Bartenieff Fundamentals/LMA/ergonomic coach All of the dance hats you wear: Dancer, choreographer, teacher, improviser, LMA coach, photographer, grant writer, graphic designer, costume designer, publicity Non-dance work you do or have done in the past: I've been working since I was 16, including as an ice cream truck driver, a metal factory assembler, a maid, an art model, a plasma lab recorder, an administrative assistant, etc. |
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Photo: Alex Keitel Describe your dance life.... 30s: In my 30s I did some visiting assistant professoring, moved to SF, earned a Pilates certification, performed with Maxine Moerman, Mary Armentrout, Stephen Pelton, Sue Roginski, Nol Simonse, among many others, and started my own company, Funsch Dance Experience. 40s: Over the past nine years, I've maintained several very unstable adjunct teaching positions, continued to run my company and perform for others, earned a Laban Movement Analysis certification in NYC, took on some volunteer roles with NERT (Neighborhood Emergency Response Team) and Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, started the 100 Days Score, and began facilitating Wrecking sessions. Major influences: In random order—my family, Mary Pat Speno, Helen Moore, Bruce Walczyk, Elaine Heekin, “Daddy” Wagner, Eugene McGovern, Irfan Malik, Give John A Razor, Virginia Woolf's The Waves, Psycho Sye and the Bombers, Laurie Simmons, Nan Goldin, ESTRUS Works, Seamus Heaney, The Unfaithful Wives, Bergman's 1968 film Shame, Royce Union, Lydia Davis, Frankie Manning, Gretchen Jane Mentzer, Larry Gianettino, Jim Jarmusch, Viva La Vulva, Merce Cunningham, Portugal in 2003, Daniel Nagrin, Julie Mayo, Melville's 1963 Les Doulos, Tere O'Connor, Sue Roginski, Nol Simonse, Cornelia Parker, Stephen Pelton, Maxine Moerman, Susan Rethorst - I'm leaving out too many people (I'm very impressionable). |
Le grand spectacle de l'effort et de l'artifice, November 4-6, 2016 at the ODC Theater
What is on your calendar for the rest of 2016?
Choreographing a premiere at ODC Theater (SF) November 4-6th, in which I am going to be the first woman to perform Daniel Nagrin's iconic solo from 1965, Path. I'm also facilitating a weekend of Wrecking for ODC Theater's 40th Anniversary in October.
Current training practices:
Bartenieff Fundamentals, improvisation, cycling, contemporary classes, ballet barre, Pilates, running Path on the beach
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've been teaching part time for twenty years now, and it's a consistent source of nourishment. It gives me repeated practices for examining structures and priorities. What am I giving value to and why? What are the assumptions I'm making? Is this class an extension of my own home practice, and if so, is that really appropriate for who is in the room? My dance teaching has been hugely informed by my somatic studies and also my continued dance practice both as a student of others and as a performer. I've found it incredibly beneficial to continue to be a student in order to pull the lens out on my own teaching perspective. "Teaching artist" to me means to invite questioning and to be suspicious of comfort. It also means that I can reinterpret the instability of adjunct teaching by mobilizing myself for opportunities untethered to SF.
Can you talk a little about your performance practice? What has been your growth as a performer? What are your strengths? What are you working on and exploring these days?
I practiced a lot of weight sensing as a child, and as a kid I was encouraged to improvise around the house. I would say whatever strengths I have as a performer come from longevity of practice. In college I went to a small school, and the benefit there was that I always had access to studio space - and I was encouraged to use it. So I developed a comfort level with being in the studio by myself without necessarily having a goal or deadline. My initial teachers were martial arts practitioners and also CMAs, so there was a lot of variation in effort and a lot of floor work....and they were making pretty experimental work. In graduate school I found myself still making experimental work with colleagues but having to fit into pretty rigid formal structures in faculty works. So this set up an interesting tension for me where performing was sometimes behaving and sometimes rebellious. Around this time I starting tracking my consciousness during performances. I would write down as soon as possible after performing what I could recall as “the ride” that the piece took me through. I was then (and still am) fascinated by performance cocktails of control and surrender. Somatic practice help widen my performing range and so did cross training. My interests now are following my nonlinear consciousness of movement the same way I would let my thoughts flow during a free write. I'm trying to do more but perform less so the intention is not that I'm presenting a performance facade but that I'm bare and vulnerable and letting the viewer in on my experience. I've never been a performer of conventional virtuosity or prowess. I've been fortunate to have really supportive collaborative practices throughout my development that have helped me dig deep grooves into my movement profile while nudging me out of my comfort zone.
What are the skills a contemporary dancer needs in 2016?
Cross training, seeing the big picture, being kind, knowing yourself
As a choreographer, questions on your mind right now:
- Who gets to dance
- How my personal politics reside in the choices I make in my work - as subtext not as content
- Unearthing vocabularies that are stripped of classroom phrase defaults
- Why so much work seems to value physically punishing its performers
- Resisting beauty as a dominant paradigm
- What is the right structure for each work
- How amazing it is that we can pay attention to so many disparate things at once
How do you find dancers? What do you look for in a dancer?
I usually see dancers perform, or I see them in class and am drawn to them. I can't stand auditions. I work with people who can stand a high level of “unknowingness” and precariousness. I rely on my performers to be able to shed control and let go of material and even habituated skills if that is what the work is calling for. I need to work with people who can also leave everything outside what Sarah Michelson calls the “working room.” I'm really sensitive to the subtle ways that the collective attention in rehearsal can be derailed.
How do you find a balance with the administrative and creative needs/projects for your company?
I just power through, interminably intern-less! I wouldn't say I have a balance in the sense that things even out. But the administrative work does tend to keep me focused on the creative work - excessive writing about the work for example. I wouldn't recommend the way I take it all on. I think if you find the right people to delegate to, which is its own skill and practice, that can support your longevity.
Financial advice to pass onto dancers just embarking on starting their own company:
Gather an advisory board soon, and let them nurture your growth. Usher and do favors for people in order to see lots of performances for free. Bring people into your work as support staff who are not fellow artists.
Final thoughts: Hope/belief/love of the profession:
We live in astonishing machines that communicate as directly as speech. We're three dimensional and filled with inner volume. The body as a natural phenomenon holds endless mysteries and power. Performance is one way of being fully in our bodies, fully in our consciousness, fully aware of how we're marking time. As advocates for the body, our presence is subversive. Material and gain-based systems are on the way out - they've utterly failed us - and practice-based systems are the best alternative we can offer our next generation. Life is short. This gives urgency and relevancy to every day and every breath and every choreographic moment.
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Related posts and articles:
A Modern Dancer's Guide to....the San Francisco Bay Area
Life as an Adjunct - By Ann Murphy (in Dance Studio Life Magazine)
Books: A Choreographic Mind by Susan Rethorst
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