Hometown: I was born in Brooklyn to an actor father and musician mother. We lived in NYC then NJ. I spent my adult life in NYC. My husband and I lived in the same loft in Soho for 40 years(1972-2012).
Current city: I relocated to the Bay Area in 2013 and am happily living in Oakland.
Age: I am 69 years old. I met my husband, David Tobis, in college and have been married to him for almost 50 years. We have a daughter (40), a son (27) and two granddaughters aged 13 and 10.
College and degree: I graduated from Bennington College as a dance major in 1969. One of the most important things that happened there was that I met Viola Farber who came as a guest teacher.
Graduate school: I did a lot of college teaching early in my career. At that time a masters degree was not required; you just had to be a working artist. I did not go to graduate school. Looking back it’s something I would like to have done. I only now fully appreciate the value of being in school – the opportunities for space, dancers, critiques, study of history, anatomy, and criticism.
Website: risajaroslowdance.org
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Describe your dance life in your….
20s: After graduating from Bennington in 1969 I spent a year in New Haven, CT where my husband was in graduate school. The Vietnam war was raging, and my husband handed in his draft card. The Black Panthers were on trial in New Haven. We were going to anti-war demonstrations in New Haven, Washington, DC, the Chicago Democratic Convention. I went to Ericka Huggins’s trial in New Haven regularly as an observer and demonstrator. I went to ballet class in Hartford and modern class in New Haven with Dan Wagoner. I danced with the New Haven Dance Ensemble. It was the early days of the women’s movement. I made a piece called Libby Woman (makes me cringe now); it had a life size mannequin in it.
We came back to NY in 1971, where I studied with Viola Farber and at the Cunningham Studio. I started teaching at Trinity College in Hartford. Other teaching jobs began to come my way – Adelphi University, CW Post College, Pratt Institute and others. I was doing a lot of running around so I could fit in teaching, taking class and making dances. I started working with my friend Wendy Perron. We brought a third person in and made work on each other. We performed at many of the venues for new dance in NYC, and Wendy and I toured with work of our own and one duet that Sara Rudner made for us. Wendy had the smart idea to create an organization and get a 501C3 so we could apply for funding. We established the Roxanne Dance Foundation. It initially included Wendy, Dana Reitz, and myself. Dana left to set up her own organization. Susan Rethorst came in. I left to create my own 501C3 organization (High Tide Dance). There were a number of people in and out over the years. Roxanne now is dance/video artist Cathy Weis’s organization.
One of the high points of that period was being part of the quartet that created and performed Sara Rudner’s Dancing on View. It was a five-hour piece that was performed as part of the 25th anniversary celebration of Danspace at St Mark’s Church. We subsequently performed parts of it at Oberlin College in 1975, where I met Brenda Way and the rest of the ODC gang. They left Oberlin for SF the following year. That same year, 1976, I was 29 and I had my first child. It was a turning point for me.
30s: We couldn’t really afford sitters so I started a playgroup with some other mothers. We rotated houses and had one paid care person and one parent to take care of the kids each day. Having a child made me more focused and productive. When you have less time you learn to use it well.
A defining incident happened when my daughter was one and I was 30. I auditioned for Trisha Brown because I wanted the experience of getting inside someone else’s work and getting to dance and perform a lot. I loved her early work. There were just a few of us left after several callbacks. Trisha called me and said though I was the dancer she wanted, she was not going to ask me to join the company because I had a baby. It was a rude awakening for me. At that time none of my peers were having children. I felt completely alone and that I’d have to make my own path and create a work environment that suited my life.
So the rest of my 30s was filled with making dances, collaborating with composers, performing at most of the venues for new dance in NYC, some touring, teaching and raising my daughter. I didn’t have much time for networking and seeing other people’s work.
One of the creative high points for me in this period was Rites of Passing, a piece I made for the Battery Park Landfill. Creative Time produced Art on the Beach at the Landfill. It included commissioned performances and installations. At that time all that was in lower Manhattan was the World Trade Towers, and they were the backdrop for this piece. There was no Battery Park City, World Financial Center, Stuyvesant HS. It was just acres of sand. After the performances at Art on the Beach, I collaborated with filmmaker Nancy Schreiber to make a film of the piece. I received funding from the still new National Endowment for the Arts for the film. (An excerpt is on YouTube.) Another site-specific work I made in that period was done in the pools of the Sculpture Garden at MOMA. I also made work that was presented at the new dance venues like Dance Theater Workshop.
40s: In the late 80s I learned, through my husband, about University Settlement on the Lower East Side. He told me there was a 1500sq ft auditorium with a wood floor and no pillars that was not used much. Available space is a choreographer’s dream, so I went to see it. The floor was a little funky, and there was a useless stage at one end of the room. But there were high ceilings, windows all around and lots of open space. I made an arrangement with the executive director to use the space for rehearsal in exchange for teaching a weekly class at the Senior Center. It was something I’d never done, and it was a life-changing experience.
The seniors I worked with were beautiful movers and took such delight in moving with music and with each other. I was thinking a lot about age having just given birth to my son at 42 when my daughter was 13. Working with the elders led me to create On An Overgrown Path. The cast included two twenty-somethings in my company, an 87 year old retired social worker, a 60-something actress, and me.
My work at the Settlement expanded to include working with formerly homeless women, teenagers, new English language learners and others. My work began to increasingly include trained and non-trained dancers. I love seeing the skill and beauty the dancers bring and the humanity and beauty the non-trained movers bring to the work. I developed an Arts Program at the Settlement that served the neighborhood as well as the downtown dance and performance community. I raised $100,000 to renovate the auditorium – a new floor, windows, risers, and lighting grid. I left the Settlement when I felt that I couldn’t devote enough time to my own work. The program is still running.
50s: From 1994-2003 I worked in Poland. I first went there through the auspices of the Suitcase Fund of Dance Theater Workshop. I was in residence with the Silesian Dance Theater, the first internationally recognized contemporary dance company in Poland. I made many friends and connected with various groups and went back each year, sometimes twice in a year, to teach and perform. Some trips were with my dancers, some alone.
The culminating project I did there was thrilling. One of the community groups I worked with was a chorus of elderly women. They sang traditional Silesian songs. After leading several movement workshops with them, we embarked on an ambitious project. We created Bliskosc (Closeness), a piece with a cast of six of my American dancers, four Polish modern dancers, and ten elders from the chorus. The singers were integrated into the choreography. The biggest thrill was watching the reaction of the audience when they saw someone who looked like their own grandmas being lifted into the air by four young dancers. We went back the following year to reprise the piece because it was such a hit. We then took it to a festival in St Petersburg, Russia. It was the first time some of the older singers had been on a plane.
I was still making work and performing in NY. Whole Sky was a piece I made after 2001 when my father died, I had disc surgery, and 9-11 happened. The piece asked, “How do we find wholeness as individuals and communities?” My dancers and I led workshops with many different groups including Lower East Side Girls Club, Voices of Women (VOW) serving domestic abuse survivors, and NY Society for the Deaf. In these workshops we made dances based on responses to that question. The final piece, Whole Sky, had a cast of six dancers, two teens from the LGBT Center youth group, a NYC firefighter, a midwife, and a member of VOW.
60s: I continued working with community-based groups in NY - the Initiative for Women with Disabilities and Project FIND serving senior adults - and making and performing new work. For my 60th birthday I sent a request to 60 people (friends, family, colleagues) asking them to give me an idea for a dance. I chose 12 of them as the basis for Sixty, an evening-length work with a cast of my five dancers and fifteen more dancers who ranged in age from 20-70. They were all people I had worked with at some point in my career.
I was beginning to find NY oppressive. The Soho we moved into in 1972 was no longer a place where artists were experimenting. It became an upscale mall crowded with tourists and tour buses. It was getting increasingly difficult to find the resources to make new work. I wanted a change badly.
In early 2012, right around my 65th birthday, my husband and I decided we’d leave NY and relocate to the Bay Area by the end of that year. Once we made the decision to leave NY there was no question about where we’d go. We had kids and friends in the Bay. Though I didn’t know the dance scene well, I thought I’d be able to work here. I was prepared to take a chance. It was a great decision.
Since getting here I’ve been a guest choreographer at Sonoma State and at Mills College. I’ve found wonderful dancers to work with and have shown work at a number of small venues in SF and the East Bay. In October 2015 I did my first season at the ODC Theater that included a revival of Resist/Surrender and a new solo that I made based on prompts that I received from Keith Hennessey, Katie Faulkner, Larry Arrington and Christian Burns. I made Resist/Surrender in 2006. It asked, "What is the meaning of maleness in our culture and how could it be different?" It had a cast of four dancers and ten men who were not trained dancers. We performed it at the first Dublin Dance Festival in 2008 and again in NY in 2012. I had for years wanted to bring the piece to the west coast. I was so glad to have the opportunity to do that.
70s: I will be 70 in March 2017, and this April 27-30 we will premiere a new work at ODC Theater. I am creating Dancing With Basses (working title) in collaboration with composer/bassist Lisa Mezzacappa, two more bassists and three dancers. After that? Often the next idea comes from what I’m working on at the moment.
Photo: Margo Moritz
Major influences:
Viola Farber and Donya Feuer were two teachers who influenced me – Donya was my teacher when I was 12, and Viola when I was in college. Viola was my advisor; I will always remember her telling me that you should only make dance your life if you “have to,” that the need has to be so great you can’t do anything else. She was in Merce Cunningham’s first company. I was in awe of her seriousness and her quirky, gorgeous dancing. I continued to study with her in NY after I graduated. I went to her class almost every day for years.
What is on your calendar for the next year’s time (choreographing, teaching, etc)?
In January we’ll get back to work on the new piece for April. That will take all of my time and energy through April. I began going to ballet class about a year ago, and I love it. I hadn’t been to a ballet class in 40 years and was never a fan. But now I find it exhilarating. I intend to continue Isabelle Sjasahm’s class and hope to be able to add another one to my schedule. I would like to do more teaching
Please share a little about your latest project. What questions are you asking with this work?
In Dancing With Basses we are asking:
How can we make three dancers, three musicians and three double basses equal players?
What relationships can we find between the people and the basses, the dancers and the musicians, the music and the movement?
What does collaboration mean to you?
It means the possibility for growth. I will only collaborate with someone I know I will learn from. It means giving up some control and sharing the agony and the joy.
How do you find dancers? What do you look for in a dancer?
I look for dancers who have an appetite for collaboration. They need to have strong technique and be well-grounded. I like to work with dancers who know how to use their plié. They need to be generous, thoughtful, and smart. A sense of humor is desirable.
Some financial wisdom to pass onto choreographers:
Find a way to pay your dancers!
On the topic of setbacks and sacrifices:
They will always be there. Don’t think otherwise.
Last performances you saw that really inspired you:
Batsheva in Tel Aviv in May and Jess Curtis and Claire Cunningham at CounterPulse in September.
Current training and movement practices:
At this stage of the game I need to maintain strength and stamina so I go to the gym regularly. I spend a lot of time on a mat doing a sequence that includes things from PT, yoga, and dance. I work with weights and do cardio on the elliptical. I go to ballet class once a week and hope to increase it to twice a week. I occasionally go to a yoga class.
A book or website you would recommend to dancers:
Through the Eyes of a Dancer. It’s a collection of Wendy Perron’s writing over many years and includes pieces on Susan Sontag, baseball and lots of other things as well as dance reviews, all through Wendy’s unique eyes.
Final thoughts: Hope/belief/love of the profession:
Being in a studio with dancers, making movement and choreography, is where I am a completely integrated human. Whatever else I’m dealing with or worrying about disappears. I love dancers. They are the smartest, bravest, most humble, generous people I know. It is a privilege to work with them.
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Artist Profile: Pamela Geber Handman
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