Hometown: Pittsburgh, PA
Current city: New York
Age: 33
Attended an arts high school?: Yes - CAPA Pittsburgh
College and degree: BA in Dance from Connecticut College
How you pay the bills: Mostly freelance dance projects, choreography commissions, and some teaching
All of the dance hats you wear: Dancer, choreographer, teacher
Non-dance work you do or have done in the past: Special education teacher, yoga teacher, waiter, babysitter, and arts admin
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Photo by Frank Mullaney, 2014. "This," Neil Greenberg.
Describe your dance life in your….
20s
My twenties were odd. When I first came to New York after college I couldn’t figure out how to pay rent, so I became a NYC teaching fellow. I ended up teaching at a Special Education high school in Brooklyn, for students with emotional disturbance. For a little while I stopped dancing altogether. I thought about my students all the time, and I learned a lot about the kind of person I wanted to be. The work was hard but it was so gratifying to actually be able to help people on a daily basis. I believed in what I was doing.
When I returned to dance, it was different. It meant choosing not to work with my students anymore, and that gave it a different kind of weight and responsibility. I had left work that was deeply meaningful and helpful in order to do this more ephemeral thing, and in order to reconcile that for myself, I had to find ways to believe in what I was doing--even though it didn’t have the same kind of direct impact on the greater world. And I gave myself to it, the same way I did to my work as a teacher, which meant showing up every day and believing that what you were doing mattered even if it seemed hopeless sometimes.
When I was 26, I started having interesting dance jobs. I found Juliette Mapp’s class through Movement Research, and I loved it so much. I went to every class she taught and asked if I could do anything to help her. She was having a baby at the time, so I became her babysitter, and I did that for the first three years of her son’s life. During that time I danced in her work, which I embraced because it held dance as a political act, of the greatest importance. I got the opportunity to dance with seasoned dance performers who I admired so much. I focused quietly and learned from them. Around that time I also started dancing with Melinda Ring, a dance and visual artist originally based in LA. She held an audition that was highly personalized and unique, and so despite how shy I was and what a poor auditioner, I had the opportunity to be noticed. I still work with Melinda now. Her works each have their own aesthetic and visual landscape that rely on dance as its main medium.
The other thing that happened in my late twenties is that I met Eleanor Smith, who has since become my working collaborator and my best friend. We were in a project together and knew right away that we wanted to spend more time in the studio with one another. We made small pieces together, and now we make large scale projects. Our working model is an equal collaboration, and we have found a special way of performing together.
30s
I’m only three years into my thirties, but the last three years have been very rich and complex. As a performer I have had the opportunity to work with artists whom I deeply admire. I’ve made three works as a performer with luciana achugar, and these works have changed my understanding of myself. Through them, I reconnected with a kind of virtuosity based on strength and endurance, as well as freedom. I gained a lot from working with Neil Greenberg, a kind of new appreciation for the individual beauty of how each person dances, and the ability to see this more clearly and analyze it from a kinetic, somatic, and even virtuosic standpoint. I have developed meaningful relationships with choreographers and dancers, like Keely Garfield and Paul Hamilton, who by dancing together and being in the same community they have become like family to me. It doesn’t matter how much our lives and our work grow and change because the connections we have made through making work together are very deep.
In the last couple of years I spent a good deal of time being away from New York, not in the way of touring with a company, but because some of the projects I have been a part of traveled, or spent time during in residency in another country. I spent time on a museum-based project with Maria Hassabi where we performed daily and throughout the day as part of an ongoing installation. I would perform a sequence that looped for 2 to 3 hours a couple of times a day. I got to know what it means to perform material again and again. I enjoyed traveling but ultimately I love being in New York. The projects here have so much heart. Often we work on them for a year, or a year and a half, and they show for 4 nights. But they have a kind of potency because of that. And also what is being performed here is often something that is too new or experimental for the rest of the world to recognize it or evaluate it. But the expression is here, it happened here, and I like being close to it.
Recently I am focused a lot on how this model of being a freelance dancer and choreographer in New York can be a lasting thing. I am thinking about raising children here, and how that could be possible. And I am thinking about these different models of dancing in various artists’ work and also making my work with Eleanor. Each experience is unique. Lately I have been going to rehearsals with Wally Cardona, toward a work in collaboration with Jennifer Lacey, so that is me as a dancer working for a choreographic collaboration. And then I go to rehearse with Donna Uchizono, who has been at it for some time now, and I remember looking up to her dancers in college, and in there I am me still--meaning I am an accumulation of my experiences as a dancer and choreographer. I guess I’m saying that each work experience is different--each project, each group of artists, and each artist from project to project. And each work experience is therefore a further accumulation from the last one, for each person. So I enjoy this life, of freelance dance work, and varying commissions, because my experience of dance continues to get richer.
I am thinking of how to teach this experience, of what I have to teach, and trying to connect it to when I first came to New York and taught high school.
Major influences:
The artists I have worked for have all been major influences to me--there is no way around that: Eleanor Smith, Debra Wanner, Naomi Goldberg Haas, Heidi Henderson, Jen Rosenblit, Juliette Mapp, Melinda Ring, Keely Garfield, Vanessa Anspaugh, Anna Sperber, Joanna Kotze, luciana achugar, Neil Greenberg, Maria Hassabi, Emmanuelle Huynh, Donna Uchizono, Wally Cardona, Jennifer Lacey.
And looking up to certain dancers has also been a guiding principle: Omagbitse Omagbemi, Hillary Clark, Paige Martin, Okwui Okpokwasili.
What is on your calendar for 2017? (Teaching, performing, travel, commissions, etc.)
-I’m teaching at Movement Research and Gibney Dance Center in NYC.
-Eleanor Smith and I are beginning a new work through residencies at MANCC in Florida and The Yard in Massachusetts. We have work-in-progress showings at Danspace Project and The Center for Performance Research in NYC.
-I’m performing in June as part of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s River to River Festival in works by Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey.
-In December I’m performing in Keely Garfield’s work at The Chocolate Factory Theater in NYC.
-Throughout this time period I am in rehearsals with Donna Uchizono and Melinda Ring for premieres in Spring 2018.
Photo by Maria Baranova; Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith
Please share a little about your most recent project with Eleanor Smith – the project and then the experience of performing it/sharing it recently.
Here is bit we wrote for the program:
“Focused on the bodily desire to heal oneself in connection with others, Basketball is a work based in feeling and change. Our working process of improvising together as a way of empowering ourselves has been consistent over the past ten years of knowing each other. Material for this work came from improvisations generated over the past two years. Due to the way our bodies accumulate and express--and that the two of us are the material as well as the understanding and performance of it--this dance has within it these moments of dancing together as well as all the events that occurred around them. Basketball aims to reintroduce the struggles of these events as colorful, sculptural, and textural expressions.”
But the show was just three weeks ago, and I am just beginning to process it. It’s a lot...making and performing in your own work. And just to re-emphasize the New York “downtown” process, Eleanor and I started working on this piece two summers ago. Doing it felt like a big release of this shared history, and also an end to it, so I’m grappling with that. It felt like we got a good “response” to the work, in that it felt supported, understood, and got positive press. It will take me a little while longer to understand more of what the impact of the show was and also what to do next.
Current movement practices and care for the body:
I have studied with Barbara Mahler for the last 8+ years. I continue to employ her techniques when warming up in rehearsal. I also see her for bodywork occasionally, or frequently when something is awry.
I take ballet with Janet Panetta.
I always warm up and I try to improvise when I warm up now to see what my body needs.
Please pose three questions for choreographers to consider in 2017:
Why are you making dance work?
Why is this important?
What are you doing when you are rehearsing?
Who would you say “taught you how to choreograph” – whether in a formal class or course, or through time and experience in the studio with a particular artist?
I think it is everything I have done so far, and also I don’t feel like I have a way. It is different for each work, and when I am in a work I am still thinking innovatively as a dancer within it.
In your own work, do you now use the term “contemporary dance,” or do you continue to use “modern dance?” Why?
“Modern dance,” because it is quicker to say and sounds less snobby, when I am talking to someone who doesn’t dance, and asks what type of dance I do.
“Dance,” or “dance artist,” or “freelance dance artist,” when I am in a position where there will be a continued conversation.
Photo by Brian Rogers; Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith in “Beautiful Bone”
The role of technology in your dance life:
I should do more, but I have reservations about having a website, marketing, etc. I get nervous that trying to market something changes its form. But lately I have worked with institutions like PS122 who are careful and generous about how they frame your work and so I am feeling a little more optimistic.
I read reviews sometimes, but I don’t feel that they often change my own experience of seeing or participating in a work.
Last performance you saw that really inspired you:
There have been so many--I don’t think I can put just one.
Recently I did a workshop with Simone Forti, and watching the performances within that really meant something to me. I think inspiration all depends on what you are seeking and how what you see matches with that.
Final thoughts - Hope/belief/love of the profession:
Dance is so important! Trust your body.
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Related posts:
Artist Profile: Donna Uchizono
Speaking as a Teaching Artist: 50 Perspectives
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