Hometown: Detroit, Michigan
Current city: Champaign, Illinois
Age: 65
College and degree: University of Utah, BFA
Website: http://www.dance.uiuc.edu/
How you pay the bills: Head of the Dance, University of Illinois
All of the dance hats you wear: Dancer, choreographer, teacher, writer, administrative head (and body).
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Jan Erkert and Dancers. Photo by William Frederking.
Describe your dance life in your….
20s: During this decade (70’s) I explored my body through dance, rock climbing and skiing. During that time, I had the great fortune to study the techniques of the classic moderns – Graham, Limón, Nikolais, Cunningham, and Dunham. I was a painfully slow learner, so integrating technical skills with my authentic self took some time. As a member of Mordine & Company in Chicago, I was introduced to the life of a modern dancer through daily rehearsals, performances and touring. The Artistic Director, Shirley Mordine, had developed intricate and fascinating choreographic processes, so by the end of this decade I developed an appetite for choreography.
30s/40s: Choreographing and teaching were central to these decades. I formed Jan Erkert and Dancers, a Chicago company that lasted for 20 years. I made over 70 works that explored the intersections between dance, film and theater. I wanted to break from narrative story telling, yet bring poetic sensibilities to issues of social justice, health and spirituality. The study of somatic practices such as Body-Mind Centering and Authentic Movement became critical to finding abstract yet expressive languages rooted in the body.
50s/60s: As I aged, what I knew to be “creativity” kept expanding. At first creativity meant dancing, then it progressed to making dances and writing. I wrote a book on teaching – Harnessing the Wind, The Art of Teaching Modern Dance, in order to share philosophical viewpoints underlying teaching technique. In this process, I learned that I loved to write, and found it to be as deeply satisfying as making dances. Eventually creativity came to mean a way of thinking and seeing. This gradual emancipation of creativity was critical to the next step. At 55 I took the job as Head of the Department of Dance at the University of Illinois with the question - could I choreograph leadership?
Jan Erkert and Dancers, 1990. Photo by William Frederking.
Current training and care of the body:
Yoga became an important supplemental practice in my 40s when my body began to break down from overuse in dance and dance teaching. Yoga provides a space for my body to age with grace. I am currently becoming certified to teach Yoga as I want to teach well into my 100s, and yoga provides this possibility. Maybe some day my 100 year-old body will finally accomplish chadaranga (the excruciating push up position)!
What is on your calendar for the next year’s time? Where can dancers study with you? See your work?
I don’t make dances or perform at this moment – but folks can get my books. Harnessing the Wind, The Art of Teaching Modern Dance is on amazon, and hopefully Choreographing Leadership will be out in a year or two. This year I will be teaching a pedagogy workshop at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and at times I have been teaching for the Bill Evans Summer Intensive for Teachers. I am currently very interested in leadership and visioning so I have been invited to be a consultant for Dance Departments. I was invited to Israel this summer for an international think tank about dance.
Can you share a bit about your most current project?
I recently finished the first draft of a manuscript for a book titled Choreographing Leadership. Combining my own leadership experience with compelling evidence from artists, systems thinkers, and scientists, Choreographing Leadership explores the relationships between embodiment, choreography and leadership. Most books on leadership come from the business community, so I wanted to rebelliously place the arts central to the leadership discourse. It posits that the creative process and embodiment are core to visioning, managing and building collaborative teams. In the book, I share choreographic methods concerning space, time and energy, all of which are vital to analyzing how communities work and making choices as a leader. The book aims to help leaders of all kinds (not just within corporate America) develop their own effective, authentic, creative approach to leadership.
What are the skills a modern dancer needs in 2017?
The faculty at Illinois continues to wrestle with this question. We have shifted our description from modern dancer to a dance/artist; to represent the broader, multi-faceted directions students pursue post graduation. At Illinois we have identified five domains of knowing that are critical to building a sustainable artistic life – inquiry, agency, context, synthesis and reflection. If students have developed substantial skills in how to conduct an inquiry, how to take ownership of their learning, how to contextualize their methodologies, how to draw disparate ideas together, and how to look within - then we feel they will have the skills necessary to build a sustainable artistic life.
What is the interplay between teaching and choreographing for you?
Choreography has become a way of thinking about living and learning, so it is the ground floor of teaching. When teaching, whether choreography or technique, I set up questions or problems that the students must negotiate. Attentive listening is required in order to read the needs and desires of the dance or the person. For me, choreography and teaching have become so intertwined; it is hard to distinguish one from the other anymore. Even the product could be considered the same. Transformed space, time and energy. Transformed lives.
Financial wisdom to pass onto choreographers just developing their company:
- Investigate your relationship to material things and make peace with living a frugal life. Sustaining an artistic life is easier and happier if it is based on philosophical beliefs about how one lives one’s life.
- I made a rule after I graduated from college, that I would accept any job, as long as it furthered my interest in the body, dance and art. This allowed my working life to intertwine with my dancing life. This might not be the best path for everyone; for some, separating work/dancing life is more productive. But, it is important to consider the different choices and make the choice that is best for you. This will provide a sense of empowerment over your life.
- Resist the temptation to feel marginalized. Rather, channel your energies toward possibilities and believe that the world desperately needs what you do.
Last performance you saw that really inspired you:
Since I have been immersed in reading - I would rather recommend several books that have deep connections with dance and the body.
- The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak is BRILLIANT and provides a poetic conscious for the troubling politics of today’s America. Written for young people, the book explores Nazi Germany through the eyes of a young girl, narrated by the figure of death. His writing is embodied, rich, poetic and lusciously and imaginatively direct.
- Re-Inventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux. This book explores organizational leadership from an evolutionary perspective. Laloux researches 13 organizations that are exhibiting profoundly new ways of operating. These organizations are based on living systems (like the body) and display a deep connection with concepts based in collaboration and embodiment. The theories of leadership parallel concepts dancers have always known and practiced.
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a letter to his son, exploring race in America today. It parallels James Baldwin’s writings of the 1960’s, and provides ways for the dance community to think about how we work together.
Final thoughts: Hope/belief/love of the profession:
The contemporary world desperately needs what dance artists know. Dance artists have developed profound knowledge about perception, consciousness and collaboration that needs to be shared with scientists, environmentalists, humanists, engineers, etc. Unfortunately, those folks don’t always know they need us, so we (dancers) have to be proactive in engaging with worlds outside our own. While the work on-stage is critical, it is also time to move off the stage and into the center of the great issues of our time.
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Related posts:
Jan Erkert's Book, Harnessing the Wind
Spotlight on MFA Programs: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Virtual Writers' Workshop for Dancers
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