Photo by TEO.
Hometown: Born in Pasadena, raised in San Dimas, California
Current city: San Diego
Age: 40
College and degree: Cal State Long Beach, BFA
Graduate school and degree: University of Utah and the Integrated Movement Studies Program (IMS) for Laban/Bartenieff Training. I turned 30 during grad school.
Website: www.jesshumphrey.com
How you pay the bills: Teaching and doing research in dancemaking
All of the dance hats you wear: Dancemaker (I love this word because, for me, it contains dancer, choreographer, director, improviser), teacher, mentee/mentor, somatics practitioner/educator, philosopher, administrator, animal.
Non-dance work you do or have done in the past: Teaching TONS of Pilates throughout the country, support staff at a domestic violence shelter, food service, cocktail server (at the Improv comedy club), artist model, data entry, babysitting.
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My 20s: Finding dance, catching up, and dancing no matter what
1997/21ish: I was about to transfer to USC to study print journalism, and I took a jazz class at Saddleback Community College. Around that same time, I started dating my husband, who knew, maybe even before I did, that I’d found my life’s work. I ditched the journalism plan and auditioned for Cal State Long Beach (CSULB). The ballet barre was a disaster…I didn’t even know which way to angle for battements and almost kicked the barre. I did a scholarship program at Jimmie Defore Dance Center in Orange County, California where I took something like 20 classes a week, and got into CSULB on my second try.
1999/23ish: I basically lived at CSULB for 3 years. I can’t believe how many hours I spent dancing in those studios, training, making, performing, working in the costume shop…even on breaks. I loved it there. I had severe back pain that led me into the first dance-specific Pilates certification that Karen Clippinger and Rael Isacowitz (BASI) did together. When I graduated, I started teaching Pilates and dancing with an LA-based company called bodytalk dance. My husband wanted to get out of California, so we moved to Idaho about a year after I graduated. I danced with CORE Dance Theatre, taught Pilates with some women who had long histories within somatic methodologies, and very quickly realized that 1) I would not be dancing enough there and 2) somatic practices were another key to navigating my back pain. Soon I was off to New York to do a project with a friend from CSULB, Christie Freeman, who was about to give birth. I always knew that living in New York as a dancer would be unsustainable for me. Diving in fully (14-hour days that included seeing every show possible, teaching a lot of Pilates, taking classes, dancing at jams, and performing a little) was only possible for me because it was temporary (just under 6 months) and partially supported (Christie and her partner Dave let me live with them). I went back to Idaho and made a full evening with CORE in an airplane hangar, and started gearing up for grad school.
2005/29ish: I lived with my cousin in Buellton, California for six months so I could wait enough tables and teach enough Pilates to pay for the first summer of the Laban/Bartenieff training (Integrated Movement Studies with Peggy Hackney & Janice Meaden) at the University of Utah. In the fall, I started grad school there. I grew a thick skin in the super competitive and crowded program…there were 25 graduate students at the time! I wanted a weekly practice connected to my thesis work, so I started a Contact Jam at 8:30am on Tuesday mornings…and people actually came. Every week. There was even a local Alexander Technique teacher in her sixties, Marjean McKenna (another cherished somatics master), who had been doing Contact for thirty years. During this time, my husband and I separated and got back together, my dad died in an accident, and I broke my foot. Ron and I had spent about 5 consecutive springs apart for all kinds of reasons. By the end of this decade, we’d moved about 20 times. Needless to say, I had some healing to do by the time I graduated.
30s: Incubation, improvisation, integration
I thought we’d move to the Bay Area after grad school, but after a few chance meetings and other signs, we ended up in San Diego. I’m a total homebody…traveling has never been my thing. I fell in love with San Diego pretty quickly. I found Adrian Bean, a brilliant acupuncturist, who helped me place some more pieces in my back pain puzzle and soon found that staying in one place allowed me to spend more time in the studio. I did projects with Guillermo Gomez-Péna’s La Pocha Nostra and Sara Shelton Mann, started dancing with Leslie Seiters/littleknown dance theater, and joined a dance practice group (Kristopher Apple, Liam Clancy, Ron Estes, Eric Geiger, Mary Reich, Karen Schaffman, Yolande Snaith, Leslie Seiters, and me) that came to be called LIVE. At the time, many in LIVE were university faculty wanting a weekly, process-oriented practice outside of the institutions. It was magical and complex, and for about 3 or 4 years it was the same 9 people, every Thursday morning. I was one of the youngest in the group. Some have called what we practice spontaneous dancemaking. Conversation about what happens during practice is part of the practice. A few years in, we started performing our practice. The dances I was a part of during my 30s were made with different configurations of those in this group. I was adjuncting all over San Diego during this time, and I drove so much that I like to say I got some kind of PhD in podcasts. I studied Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory and Dan Siegel’s Interpersonal Neurobiology in this way, and both systems started influencing my dancemaking. I had a miscarriage in 2010, then a healthy baby girl in 2012. About six months later, my 20 or so years of back pain finally subsided. Somewhere in here, Justin Morrison (founding member and frequent guest with LIVE) became a very important dancer and thinker in my life. During the last few years of my 30s, my collaboration with Eric Geiger deepened through hours and hours in the studio together where we started by saying yes to everything (and editing later), and my life/dance with Leslie Seiters continued, expanding to include collaborations within the Dance Division at SDSU, and the joys and messes of being working, dancing mothers. In the last few months of my 30s, LIVE almost died, I started a tenure-track position at SDSU, and Leslie, Eric, and I started a piece with Deborah Hay. The biggest finish imaginable.
40s: Family, learning/teaching, and dancing no matter what
I’m almost 41. Just thirteen days after my 40th birthday last year, and a few months after we started our project with Deborah Hay, Eric Geiger’s husband, Carl, had a massive stroke. I am still trying to make sense of what this means for our work together, while he is fighting for both of their lives. I cherish every moment we get in the studio together these days. Leslie and I are still working on the piece we started with Deborah, and I began a Body-Mind Centering (BMC) training program. LIVE is still finding its new identity. For my 40s, I envision being in the studio as much as possible, and I am working to establish that in these first few years in my new position at SDSU. I’m also determined to make more time for my family. There is no way I’d be where I am now in the dance without my husband, Ron. We have been together nearly 19 years, and Hazel is almost 5, and I am falling more in love with them both all the time. We live a fun, rowdy, artful life in a tiny house. We’ve made a home where we can truly be ourselves with each other. As I write this, Ron is learning Rocket Man on the guitar and Haze is singing along while building a rocket ship out of cardboard boxes. It is wild and wonderful and worth it.
Eric Geiger, Jess Humphrey, and Leslie Seiters in rehearsal in the desert with Deborah Hay. Photo by Deborah Hay.
Can you talk about your work with Deborah Hay? How has she influenced your artmaking, process, and teaching?*
*Italicized words (except for LIVE) are Deborah’s.
Deborah Hay’s work changed my life and continues to rock my world. I first studied with her (assisted by Scott Heron) fresh out of grad school in 2009 when Karen Schaffman brought her to CSU Summer Arts. Eric Geiger and I roomed together during this intensive study and, although we’d already been practicing together weekly with LIVE, our collaboration was born during this experience.
We spent 80 hours or so working with her questions during the intensive, and my perception of choreography and improvisation fell apart in the best possible way. It was confusing, but I trusted it/her with every cell in my body. There is just no bullshit there. The work is the thing, not her (although her presence is something to behold!). It doesn’t seem like she’s trying to inspire anyone. She does not feign profundity. She just makes dances (and works and works and works, practicing the performance of them), and what emerges is inspiring and profound.
The primary question we are working with in our trio is, “What if I presume every cell in my body is served by how I see?” I am working (like a dog) at surrendering completely to Deborah’s process. It’s challenging because the years of LIVE are such an important part of our trio’s shared history, as are the myriad dancemaking processes that each of us bring as individuals. One thing I’ve learned about integration is that differentiation is a big part of it, and that means really dropping into the rigor of Deborah’s process and turning my fucking head, over and over again, toward the work emerging from it, even if that means setting my own ideas aside. And I typically have a LOT of ideas.
She’s been unbelievably flexible over the past year since Carl’s stroke has made Eric’s role in the work unclear. Leslie and I have FaceTime calls with her, where we all share what’s happening within our respective practices. It’s been a dream…and it’s hilarious because Leslie and I are trying to be totally present with each conversation while trying to figure out how to document them!
I feel a huge responsibility when I share Deborah’s work, often with students who have never encountered her work before. My reverence for her and personal devotion to practicing her questions both guide my translations, explanations, and adaptations of her ideas. I get to watch the questions change people’s lives, again and again. Deborah is my mentor, and I get to feel into what it means to be a mentee. I’ve also been learning about being a mentor through a more formalized process of sharing the questions with a student from SDSU, Aubrhe Yruretagoyena, who will be working with Deborah for two weeks at the end of this month, and will likely assist during Deborah’s next residency. I can’t wait to learn more about Deborah’s work through her experience.
Her questions are the fascia of my teaching. They are everywhere, and they connect everything: somatic and contemplative practices/dancemaking, performer/audience, teacher/student, dancer/dancer, dancemaker/dance, dance/life and cells/selves.
Favorite Deborah Hay bits (not exact quotes): What if (no big deal), every cell in my body has the potential to invite being seen, in relationship with others, choosing to presume that they’re practicing what I’m practicing? You don’t have to be creative. How you perceive is the creative act. You are entering into a process that is already happening. What if I notice, dis-attach from, and respond to the feedback from my whole-body-at-once, the teacher? What if every cell in my body has the potential to notice space changing as I move through it? What if I notice time as it passes? What if where I am is what I need? What if dance is how I practice relationships?
What is on your calendar for 2017 (teaching, choreographing, performing)?
I’m hosting Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen at SDSU in February. Deborah comes in May for another residency, and I hope we’ll perform that work during Summer/Fall 2017. I also want to be in the studio with some of the younger dancers in town. There are some incredible artists here. I want to invest some in the dance community in San Diego, and I want to spend some time in 2017 figuring out how.
Current training practices:
Body-Mind Centering, LIVE practice, contact improvisation, Feldenkrais ATMs and FIs (mostly with Leslie, who just finished the training last year), napping, meditation, Kundalini Kriyas, rebounding, dancing with Hazel, anything that gives me a chance to practice any kind of listening, and various other practices for my health including eating the best food/fuel possible, far-infrared sauna sessions, supplements, and working with an acupuncturist (still Adrian Bean) and a functional medicine practitioner. I grew up in an abusive household and have had head injuries, so I’ve found that the only way I can thrive within the demands of the dance field is if I take very good care of myself. It’s a dynamic, creative process.
The influence of somatics on your training, teaching, and artmaking:
Slowing and softening are a lifelong endeavor for me. I’ve been in so many situations where I’ve had to fight, and that’s taken some time to unravel. My trauma history is part of it, but I also come from a long line of strong, loud, intense women and grew up doing gymnastics where coaches yelled both punishments and praise at me hourly. Somatic practice helps me with modulation. It also helps me appreciate and leverage my speed when I need it.
I’m interested in cultivating as many perspectives as possible. Somatic systems offer such detailed and nuanced methods for waking up to one’s first-person experience. This waking up is artful. It is beautiful. I’m also interested in what happens when a relatively objective or “it” perspective is added/integrated.
A somatic pedagogy involves harvesting existing knowledge from individuals/groups, and moving from that process into the introduction and integration of new energies and information. What do those in the class already know? What is the collective knowing of the class? Starting there is a somatic practice.
I’ve been paying attention to what somatic and contemplative practices can do within dancemaking processes for some time, and here’s how I’m thinking about it lately:
- State Induction (for both creation and execution, and sometimes at the same time)
- Generation of Material
- Support for Execution of Choreography
- The Dance(ing) Itself
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?
Lineage is so important to me…sometimes I wonder if I have anything original to offer, or if my superpower is more about learning, integrating, and articulating others’ genius.
Teaching is a way of learning for me. It’s a somatic practice, a mirror, a dance…it’s exposing, risky, exhilarating, inspiring, exhausting, nerve-wracking, and life-giving…sometimes all within the same class! I felt ready to teach dance long before I started, but I’m glad I identified more as a student for so long. I learned as much from terrible and abusive teachers as I did from my favorites, so I believe that students are more responsible for their learning than their teachers are.
Being a teaching artist means that I am co-creating knowing and knowledge with students. I try to reveal my preferences, desires, and biases. I know I’m not “neutral," so I put my stuff out there as much as possible. When I think of my favorite teachers, there is some relationship between vulnerability and credibility that comes to mind.
Teaching is not policing. Remembering that can be a challenge in a university setting when freshmen are learning to live as adults for the first time. Parker Palmer talks about student-centered, teacher-centered, and subject-centered classrooms. I like it when the center moves around a lot (in the classroom, dancing, life), but I try to make classes mostly subject-centered.
more UNICORN by Leslie Seiters (Jess Humphrey, Eric Geiger, and Leslie Seiters; Anya Cloud to the side). Photo by TEO.
What are the skills a contemporary dancer needs in 2017?
- A deep and wide love of the art form…so much love that you learn as much from a performance you hated as you do from one that leaves you speechless.
- Know how to take care of yourself, and that what you need can change, moment to moment. And then there are the basics: water, sleep, clean food, etc.
- Get down like you did before you started training as a dancer. Wild. Full out. Uninhibited. Dance party. Animal.
- Discipline to practice regularly, and to pay attention to your practices so you can keep them alive and relevant.
- Find other dancers to practice with, and show up for them in order to show up for yourself.
- Pay attention to power. It is complex and constantly operating.
- Connect to the larger field: books, videos, blogs, friends who are dancing in other places…
- If you want to be dancing with someone, learn to ask them what you can do to make that happen.
- Find work that makes you money and the ability to perceive it as practicing dancing, performing, and/or creating.
- Identify mentors, and be a supportive and generous mentee.
- If you want a partner, make sure they are fabulous. Dance is hard to compete with.
- Meet the ground with the perfect combination of softness and strength.
- Make lines, break lines.
- Be right where you need to be, right when (and how) you need to be there, but not by stressing out about it.
- Know where you are and how to get lost.
- Make a mess.
As a choreographer, questions on your mind right now:
- What is the difference between
- being careful and full of care? (Privileging the latter…)
- risk and recklessness? (Privileging the former…)
- top-down attention and bottom-up awareness?
- I’m working with neurologist and zen meditator, Dr. James H. Austin’s definitions
- Leslie has been talking about willfulness and permeability in the last few years, and this feels related.
- my state of mind/body in Deborah Hay’s work vs. LIVE practice?
- seriousness and sincerity? (The latter is something Leslie was working with when we co-taught Dancemaking this fall.)
- What is at stake?
- What is the perfect relationship between chaos and order, moment to moment? This question has been in my head and heart for as long as I can remember…it’s how I meet, make sense of, and make decisions about/within dances.
- Pattern recognition. What do I do with this skill? It’s a full-time job, a tool, a trap…I love Tere O’Connor’s treatment of patterns.
- Coming in through the back door. Going at something specific, and then noticing how that creates something totally unintended. I might make a dance about love, but I would never succeed in doing so by trying to make a dance about love.
- How can the relationship (or at least the shared root) between “experimental” and “experiential” be the key to making experimental dance and performance more accessible? (Leslie brought up the relationship between these words after watching a piece I directed for Jean Isaacs/San Diego Dance Theater’s Trolley Dances. I’m so into it!)
- I’ve been quieting the part of me that is drawn toward leadership for a long time now. First because I started dancing late and had a lot of catching up to do, next because I was in the thick of more egalitarian value systems (contact improvisation, somatics, LIVE), and now because I am in a new job and my closest dancemaking collaborators are older than me. I’ve been studying leadership all along, and most recently through the work of Diane Musho Hamilton and Ten Directions.
If dance companies were the thing for a long time, then dance collectives started happening, then what’s next? I love what happens when a group of dancers practices together over time. What does leadership look like when it isn’t about domination? What is a hierarchy where power and responsibility move around?
- I love music, sound, text, noise, and speaking and singing in languages that don’t exist. How is this dancing?
- How can I bring Eric into the room when he can’t be there?
Last week’s attempt when I was teaching at the ADF Winter Intensive: Fake laughing and crying. I learned it from him.
This week: We actually got some studio time this week
Next week: He talks about making dances that are “problematic, provocative, and incomplete." Am I willing to do this? Problematic for whom?
How would you describe the modern dance scene in San Diego?
Some years ago, there was an effort to unify the dance community here. The first meeting was connected to a funding opportunity, so it was massive. This led to a series of meetings that eventually became San Diego Dance Connect. They would have a perspective that includes knowledge of more artists than mine. What I learned from attending those early meetings is that there are many different value systems represented in the dance community in San Diego. Words like contemporary, experimental, modern, postmodern, style, and collaboration mean different things to different people. Many of those working in ways that I might describe as experimental are connected to the universities (CSUSM, SDSU, UCSD) and are often described by others in the community as postmodern or improvisational.
There used to be a place called SUSHI dedicated to experimental performance, but it closed in 2009 and left a void still felt by many. Currently, there is a non-profit called PADL West that brings the kind of artists into town that SUSHI might have hosted back in the day. They do not have a space, so they collaborate with the universities and other spaces in town. Jean Isaacs/San Diego Dance Theater and Malashock Dance are the two major modern dance companies that have been established here for over thirty years. They have established spaces, employ dancers regularly, and offer dance training.
The community in San Diego is small and scattered, but there are some beautiful dancing humans here. I am always so torn when dancers graduate from SDSU. Part of me wants them to get out of here and experience the world, and another part of me wants them to stay and build the community here. Now that I’m full-time at SDSU, I am feeling into my place in the larger community and what I hope to help cultivate. Also, Justin Morrison is from here, and is back after much time away. Excited to see what he’ll stir up.
Humphrey family photo by Allyson Barnes
To end, here are a few related links:
Ten Directions (Integral Facilitation taught by Diane Musho Hamilton)
An Overview of Integral Theory
Integrated Movement Studies Program
The School for Body-Mind Centering
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Related blog posts:
Spotlight on MFA Programs: University of Utah
Deborah Hay's Latest Book, Using the Sky
Artist Profile: Jeanine Durning (another artist who worked with Deborah Hay)
Artist Profile: Shelley Senter (artist and Alexander Technique teacher)
Tracing Our Somatic Lineage (an article)
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