Dawn Stoppiello; photo by Piro Patton, 2001
To date, 159 artist profiles have been published on the blog. Many artists will share details about going back to school to graduate school - when and why. Here are 5 quotes from artist profiles over the years. Click on any person's name to read their full artist profile.
Molly Heller (Salt Lake City, UT): MFA University of Utah
I think my life experiences following my undergraduate education helped to prepare me for the rigor and demands I would encounter. I was ready to dive in head first, to question my beliefs and to simultaneously strengthen my core values. Grad school allowed me to dedicate time to the type of research I have been interested in, and it offered me the resources and connections I needed to deepen that research. I have appreciated the diverse and extensive teaching opportunities and mentorship I received while in school. I have grown a lot as a teacher and I know myself better at the end of these three years. I really love the people here, they are family to me – they really attracted me to the program. I also knew I would have space in this program – space to find my way through the curriculum and space (both literally and artistically) to make a lot of work. Grad school is never perfect, but it has been a gift in many ways.
Rebecca Stenn (New York, NY): MFA University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (low-res)
In my late thirties, I had another baby and began to teach at the newly formed dance program at The New School. I loved teaching from the minute I started and decided to enroll in graduate school very soon after I started teaching. I completed the program in Wisconsin in two summers, one of them while I was pregnant with my four year old in tow (he also attended the University, in a summer camp program for children of faculty and students – I used to joke with him that we were both matriculated students there). The second summer I had a 6 month old baby, and a five year old, and was trying to complete my graduate degree in an accelerated program. What I remember is mastitis, sleepless nights, groggy rehearsals and lectures and extreme gratitude for my roommate, Eric Jackson Bradley, who wordlessly (if not always cheerfully) took the baby when I was losing it, or calmed me down at 3am when a paper was due and the baby had a fever. I somehow got through it and began teaching and growing the program at the New School in earnest.
Jennifer Salk (Seattle, WA): MFA Ohio State University
In my 30s I returned to school and felt like the luckiest person on the planet. I think it was when I was able to mature as a dancer and artist and was able synthesize my knowledge thus far. I got a full fellowship to OSU so I didn’t have much debt when I got out. HINT – GO TO GRAD SCHOOL AS AN OLDER STUDENT. YOU BRING SOMETHING TO THE DEPARTMENT THAT THEY WANT, AND THEY WILL OFTEN OFFER YOU FUNDING. I think that, for the most part, getting an MFA when you are 22 is a waste of money and a lot of people will disagree. But I think grad school is more meaningful if you have wisdom under your belt.
Dawn Stoppiello (Portland, OR): MFA George Washington University
I went to graduate school in 2012 because academic tides had shifted so much that I could not be hired by a university, even as an adjunct, without a Masters Degree. I was the oldest and most experienced person in my graduate school cohort. And thankfully, GWU gave me a full ride, otherwise I would not have been able to go. During graduate school I focused on a few topics that had risen to the forefront for me in the previous two+ years of time away from NYC, away from the grind of my not-for-profit existence and from ideas that were still resonating from making loopdiver. I became very interested in close audience proximity and participation, in architecture/space as inspiration and in performance itself as content. I called this creative approach Portable Performance Process (http://dawnstoppiello.com/creating/ppp/). I wanted to create performance in unintimidating settings for uninitiated audiences and where the audience was asked to be mobile and active.
Cynthia Oliver (Urbana, IL): MA New York University, PhD New York University
I didn’t set out to get a PhD. I came to a crossroads in my career. I had achieved my high school dream of dancing with a company (companies) and touring the world early and quickly. I had traveled a lot by my late 20s and suddenly I thought, “Is this it?” So I started searching for other interests. I was going to try arts management. I thought being in front of the curtain would assist behind the scenes. I took a position as manager of Urban Bush for a year. While I made lifetime friends with Jawole and others in the group, it was not an area I was interested in pursuing. I went into an interdisciplinary program at NYU’s Gallatin School and started along a path that led me to Performance Studies, where I found my passion. I went on to a PhD because as I was defending my Masters Thesis I was literally thinking…”I haven’t mastered anything!” SO I kept going and here I am 12 years out from having defended and now am considered a senior professor. Time is funny. My dissertation was a study of pageantry and black womanhood in the Caribbean. I used beauty pageants – which are plentiful in the region, as a means to discuss gender, nation, sexual and economic politics in the history and present of the US Virgin Islands. It also related to the excavations I had been doing choreographically throughout my career – that of exploring women’s worlds, always somehow anchored within Caribbean traditions and practices even if not overtly so.
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Related links:
How many MFA programs are in the United States right now?
Multiple Pathways: Highlighting 10 Dancers with Tenure
Continuing the Dialogue Around MFA Programs in the United States
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