Photo: Seth Langner
Hometown: Boston, MA
(Adopted hometown: Los Angeles, CA)
Current city: Jacksonville, FL
Age: 37
College and degree: Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA. Bachelors Degree of Fine Arts in Dance
Graduate school and degree: California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA. Masters Degree of Fine Arts in Choreography. I was in graduate school from age 28-30.
Websites: www.rebeccarlevy.com and www.jacksonvilledancetheatre.org
How you pay the bills: I am professor of dance and director of the dance repertory company for Florida State College at Jacksonville. I also work as an independent choreographer/performer/ teacher, do residencies, set choreographic work, etc.
All of the dance hats you wear: Artistic director, dancer, choreographer, educator, public speaker, grant writer, PR person, filmmaker, production manager, graphic designer, sound editor, bookkeeper, payroll manager, arts advocate.
Non-dance work you do or have done in the past: I have been fortunate to work exclusively in the dance field for my adult life. When I was a teenager I worked at Capezio selling dance shoes.
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Describe your dance life….
20s: I moved to Los Angeles from Boston, MA when I was 22 years old because I was drawn to the weather, the industry, and the diversity of the city. I said yes to every dance job offered to me. I did a bunch of odd performance gigs (a trend that continued the entire time I lived there), but ended up getting hired by Lineage Dance Company, a modern dance company, within the first month or two. The company was newly founded by Hilary Thomas, and was unlike anything I had done prior to it. I can attribute much of my growth as a performer and professional to Hilary and the company. It allowed me to tour all of over the country, and perform regularly. It taught me the importance of showing up at 100% all of the time, regardless of how the body/mind feels. Oftentimes we were traveling 2-3 weekends of the month to different areas. It was a small company, and the relationships I made with the dancers I still have to this day.
One of my dear friends from undergrad, Eryn Schon, was also living in Los Angeles during that time, and out of a need to create and perform my (our) own work we started the pick-up company, B.E. Productions. I co-directed that company with her until I moved away from Los Angeles in 2010. We made work collaboratively and separately, and were fortunate to produce the work in LA, and tour it to other locations throughout the country.
Half way through my first year in Los Angeles, a job came available for Director of Dance at South Pasadena High School, and I was selected to fill it. At the time I was thankful for regular, steady work in dance, but when I look back now I am so grateful for this opportunity to refine my skills as a dance educator in an environment that supported the performing arts. Unfortunately, this was during the No Child Left Behind era, and that ended up creating major cuts in this program – so much so that I eventually left it to return to graduate school.
Grad school made a huge impact on my choreographic voice and the direction I was going artistically.
30s: In my early 30s I relocated to Jacksonville, FL – as I was fortunate to secure work as a professor at Florida State College at Jacksonville. Doing some research about the city brought me very little information about where a professional dancer could take class, and where they might get paying work as a performer. I found ways to work on my craft – I would “drop in” to college dance classes, and I created choreographic works with the handful of professional dancers I met upon moving there. In 2012 I co-founded the company Jacksonville Dance Theatre with the idea of creating a company for professional dancers and choreographers to perform and create – and be paid to do so. We are currently in season five, and the company continues to grow.
Happy to say I continue to choreograph and perform regularly.
Photo: Trib La Prade
Major influences:
Visual art (specifically contemporary art), popular culture, feminism, Bob Fosse, house music of the early 90s, Martha Graham, baseball, Debbie Reynolds, and RuPaul.
Choreographic influences:
Martha Armstrong Gray, Deborah Wolf, Colin Connor
Dance-Filmmaker influence: Mitchell Rose
A turning point:
Making big moves (no pun intended). The choice to move to Seattle, Los Angeles, and Jacksonville were the catalysts for all new/exciting/terrifying things in my career.
What is on your calendar for the rest of 2017 (teaching, choreographing, performing)?
I am currently finishing a new long-form concert work on Jacksonville Dance Theatre that will be premiered at our 5th annual repertory concert at the Florida Theatre in downtown Jacksonville, and then re-staged in July on the Nancy Evans Dance Company in Los Angeles. JDT has a full season of local and touring performances as we launch into season 6 next August.
I’m going into year 7 (!) as professor of dance at the College.
Current training practices:
I take modern and ballet classes regularly. Pilates Reformer almost everyday, and the gym.
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?
Teaching is where I get to dive into investigating what is fascinating about the human mind and body. The most satisfying moments are when my students take charge of the material and start to make independent connections.
There has not been a time in my professional career when I wasn’t teaching, so it feels like a tightly woven part of my life as an artist.
Even though the material I work on with the professional company is really separate from what I’m doing at the College, the way in which I work on my skills as a communicator is shared. I work hard to articulate concepts clearly - through my physical practice, through every word I say aloud in and out of the classroom, and energetically to students receiving feedback. Teaching is my daily practice (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) in mindfulness.
Photo: Shana Skelton
Can you talk about building your dance company, Jacksonville Dance Theatre? When did you know you wanted to start your own company? What does a typical week look like with your work with the company (choreographing, rehearsing, arts admin, fundraising)?
I have always wanted to work with a group of dancers that I could choreograph on and perform with. My idea of complete contentment is the opportunity to create dances as much as I can, for as long as I can. The manifestation of this was to start a dance company.
I co-founded JDT in 2012 with two of artists I admire greatly – Katie McCaughan and Tiffany Santeiro. It was created out of a need for professional work for dancers in the city. There were a handful of professional dance artists living in Jacksonville, and they were incredibly talented. They had experience dancing all over the world and had landed here for diverse reasons. It’s been an adventure teaching ourselves how to run a dance company of this size from the ground up. There are ups and downs not only with the ins and outs of running a company, but also educating the city we live in as to why a company is important, and what it can provide the cultural landscape of Jacksonville.
I spend every day, including weekends, working on company business whether that be artistically or administratively. Communication with dancers, board, directors, community members, gigs, etc., is constant. The biggest challenge for me artistically is having the funds to rehearse the company more. We take pride in paying full company members for all classes, rehearsals, and performances, but that means there aren’t as many rehearsals per week as I’d prefer.
As a choreographer, questions on your mind right now:
This year I have been considering the fact that the dance I make leaves no lasting physical artifact. I am constantly stressing to my dance colleagues and students the importance and magic of creating and performing, and while I believe wholeheartedly in this, at Art Basel in Miami this winter, it was a smack in the face to realize the amount of money feeding the visual arts in the US. The idea that art is a commodity that can be bought and sold is a hugely foreign concept in my experience. Not only is dance underappreciated in the American South (arguably the whole country), but few seem to understand why it should cost money – that it is deserving of money. So the large questions I have been considering in my practice are: How can my cultivation of ideas, process, and performance leave an artifact that may (or may not) be a sellable commodity? What does that artifact do once I’ve left it? Does it matter or have its own worth independent of the process that brought it to life? These questions feel as though they go, radically, against the paths of all my foremothers, who paved the rocky ways toward becoming movement/performance artists regardless of the resources available to them. I hope to discover something rich and positive about the relationship between dance and artifact, but perhaps, at the very least, my questioning may increase the perceived value of dance to the public and therefore help sustain my art form.
How do you find dancers? What do you look for in a dancer?
We have found dancers through two main avenues. When we first created the company we asked people in town that we had worked with before and respected. Now we tend to use a more traditional audition process. JDT contracts dancers season by season, and only holds auditions if we are in need of new dancers or dancers are out on maternity leave (the company has many mothers in it!). We will not be holding auditions this year.
I look for dancers with former professional experience (and ideally with a BFA or higher degree in dance) that have strong, refined, traditional dance technique, are open to new ideas in dance, and are intuitive in the creation process. Equally important is personality! I have high expectations for work ethic and effort, and am appreciative when dancers share that quality for hard work and investigation in movement.
How do you find a balance with the administrative and creative needs/projects for your company?
This is very challenging, and as I write this we are in the middle of three grant cycles that require attention! I would say that 80% of my time with JDT is working on administrative needs, and at times that “balance” puts a strain on me as a choreographer/dance-artist. In order to stay emotionally healthy, I always try to be working on a new choreographic work, teaching company class, and dancing in some of our repertory. If I’m only focusing on admin it begins to be really challenging.
Financial advice to pass onto dancers just embarking on starting their own company:
- Invest your own money into the company. Use it to pay the dancers, first.
- Keep really good records, and keep all paperwork.
- If you are asking people to donate money, make sure that you are also donating to other companies' campaigns. We will all ask for donations at some point, and I’m a firm believer in mutual support.
- Learn Quickbooks for non-profits. Also know Excel.
- Hire someone that knows how to file with the IRS for 501(c)(3) non-profit status.
- Get a business bank account, and put all company funds into it (even if you are donating from your own pocket).
- Get separate bank accounts for each grant that you receive. It makes reporting way easier.
- Keep track of your hours, and the hours of those in the company. Even if you are not getting compensated, it’s important to show the value of time.
- Use letters of agreement or contracts for every single person you work with. Even if they are your best friends. Boundaries make everyone more comfortable, and help if there is confusion later on.
How would you describe the dance scene in Jacksonville?
Growing! From the very beginning there were a variety of dance schools/studios/college programs here in town. There is no shortage of good dance training. We’ve been seeing more pick-up companies making work and producing shows in town, which is fabulous. Florida just cut the arts/culture budgets, which is discouraging, but people are still pushing!
What makes Jacksonville so unique is the community of supporters that live here. People are great at attending art/culture events, care about the arts, and are excited for the growth of dance in the city.
Final thoughts: Hope/belief/love of the profession:
There is always a way to create the thing you need to do (perform/create), even if those outlets seem to not be available in the place where you live. Dancers are some of the most resourceful, creative, community-driven humans in the world. Use those qualities to start or sustain a movement.
Dance is about body and community, and through those things dance is about exploration. It is the most primal form of communication, and it is a connection to the divine. Before humans can speak, they move. And through movement, we explore the unknown, the steps that don’t yet exist, the steps we may not even know we need until we take them — individually and ultimately together.
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Related posts:
Mitchell Rose's film, "Exquisite Corps"
Artist Profile: Rachael Leonard of Surfscape Contemporary Dance Theatre (Port Orange, FL)
Artist Profile: Gwen Welliver, Professor at Florida State
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