Photo: Stephanie Passantino
Hometown: Seattle, WA
Current city: Seattle, WA
Age: 54
Attended an arts high school? No, but the public high school I attended had a great theater program.
College and degree: University of Washington, B.A. in English literature
Website: daynahanson.com
How you pay the bills: Commissions, for-hire choreography, consulting, teaching, advising, freelance work across dance, film and writing/communications
All of the dance hats you wear: Choreographer, dancer, teacher, lecturer, mentor, administrator, grantwriter, researcher, writer
Non-dance work you do: Screenwriting and directing, creative direction, copywriting
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Dayna Hanson in “The Clay Duke.” Photo by Benjamin Kasulke.
Describe your dance life in your….
20s: Aside from living room shows I made as a little kid, it wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I began dancing, after earning a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and English literature. I saw several live performances that completely altered my worldview: The experimental theater work of The Wooster Group and dance theater performances by European choreographers like Maguy Marin and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker sparked me to suddenly teach myself to dance and choreograph. From the start I was defiantly self-trained — though I’ve taught dance classes, I’ve still never taken one.
Some of my early dance took place within a multidisciplinary performance group called Run/Remain. I also created my own work, often in collaboration with artists working in other disciplines. I worked obsessively in my 20s, at a time when Seattle was an easy place to do that — cheap rent and plenty of underused space meant I could devote huge amounts of time to both collaborative performance and ongoing exploration of my choreographic vision and methods.
30s: From 1996-2006 I co-directed a dance theater company in Seattle called 33 Fainting Spells. I’m currently working on digitizing the work I made with my collaborator, Gaelen Hanson — we made six evening-length pieces in 12 years. We toured extensively during this period, often with support from National Performance Network and National Dance Project. Our work was critically acclaimed and well funded; we ran a lean nonprofit organization that allowed us to work full-time.
Gaelen and I began investigating dance film within the context of 33 Fainting Spells after falling in love with some specific titles from the library of the European Dance Development Center in Arnhem, Netherlands, during a 1998 residency. We began producing a dance film festival in partnership with the Northwest Film Forum in Seattle; Next Dance Cinema (1999 – 2005) introduced the Seattle dance community to a genre that had no prior exposure in this region. We also started making dance films, including Measure, which can be found on First Run Features’ Dance For Camera, Vol. 1 DVD. Measure was an adaptation of material I had choreographed in 1990; John Dixon and I re-learned and integrated it into a 33 Fainting Spells piece in 2000, and Gaelen and I adapted it for film in 2001.
40s: 33 Fainting Spells came to a close during this era, and I went back to making my own work, including solo pieces, evening-length works, short dance films and my first feature film, Improvement Club, which premiered in Narrative Competition at South by Southwest in 2013. Improvement Club was a fictionalized adaptation of the process of making of Gloria’s Cause, my 2010 ensemble piece that attempted to deconstruct the American Revolution. During my 40s my work took on social overtones — though I don’t see my practice as overtly political I was motivated to address certain concerns directly in my work.
50s: I’ve made two evening-length works so far in my 50s — one highly topical dance theater piece, The Clay Duke, and one abstract dance piece based on calculus problems, 28 problems. I recently wrote, choreographed and directed an episode of HBO’s new anthology show, Room 104, by the Duplass Brothers. And I’m in the early stages of a project to revisit — maybe reperform, remount, adapt — selected works from the 33 Fainting Spells period of my career.
Dayna Hanson, Ezra Dickinson, Marissa Niederhauser, Wade Madsen and Dave Proscia in “We Never Like Talking About The End." Photo by Benjamin Kasulke.
Current movement practices and care for the body:
I’ve studied Pilates with Michele Miller since 2000. Pilates is the cornerstone of a training practice that is also inspired by T’ai Chi, Hatha Yoga, Makka Ho and strength training. My own movement practice integrates notions of translation and transposition; I draw on gesture, behavior and found movement as much as I invent my own vocabulary, using my own body. I’m still honing my movement style, which I’d like to think of as intricate, casual and humanistic.
What is on your calendar for the rest of 2017?
I leave November 27 for a three-week residency at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. I don’t know exactly what I’ll be working on, which is exciting! I will be considering how to issue an RFP to mathematicians for the second phase of 28 problems, experimenting with new movement ideas, writing and reflecting on — and possibly relearning — some old material.
Your creative endeavors cover a wide range – from live dance to film to being in a band and designing clothing. Can you talk a little about your varied interests and passions?
For better or for worse I’ve always been a polymath. I do things that interest me a lot, either in sequence or simultaneously. This is sometimes challenging, and I’ve had to find ways to manage my varied interests, but it’s the nature of the beast for me. I love dancing and choreographing, I love writing music. I love filmmaking, and I love writing. I love to draw. I try not to have more than eight distinct projects going at any one given time.
From the start my work was collaborative and multidisciplinary — I combined dance, theater, original music and film. One of the areas that carried over from my undergraduate studies was the concept of intersemiotic transposition — the idea that content from one set of signs can be ported into another set of signs, and that when that happens, something truly new can emerge in the process. This notion of transposition or adaptation has driven my work for 30 years now.
Madison Haines and Julia Sloane in rehearsal for "28 problems." Photo by Nico Tower.
You recently opened an artist space in Seattle. Can you share more about it? What happens in this space, and how can people get involved?
Base is a flexible, 2,000 sf rehearsal/performance space in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle — the industrial south end of the city. We’re situated within a larger arts complex called Equinox Studios. Peggy Piacenza, Dave Proscia and I opened Base in 2016 as an artistic home for us that could also serve as a home for other artists experimenting in dance, performance and multidisciplinary art. The cost of living in Seattle has jumped so high and so fast that artists are scrambling for space; Base is in many ways an optimistic response to a crushing situation.
We’re a 501(c)3 with a mission to elevate risk and invention; we provide residency opportunities along with affordable hourly and weekly rental rates. Base is a really beautiful, light space with 20-foot ceilings, light and sound systems and a kitchen and bathroom.
Looking at the life of 33 Fainting Spells….what are you most proud of with this endeavor? What do you celebrate and relish?
I’m in the midst of reflecting on this now, and it was really so rich that it’s hard to boil down. The collaborative nature of the work was worth celebrating because it took the work in directions neither one of us imagined. We relished touring widely: The work we made benefited from exposure to such a variety of audiences, and we loved connecting to communities outside our own in Seattle.
In terms of the work itself, it always emerged slowly, over a sustained process, and the ideas felt deeply investigated. We would work six hours a day, four to five days a week, for an average of 18 months on a single piece. To me that sounds like a luxury now, and I absolutely loved immersing in work that way.
Please pose a few questions for choreographers to consider:
Why am I doing this? Why do I want to do this? Am I enjoying this? Am I following default impulses? What is my work in dialogue with? Who am I communicating with? How do I situate my work in a larger context, and how do my values show up in my work and process? Can I express in words my aesthetic concerns? And really, why make durational work?
What are the skills a contemporary dancer needs in 2017?
They’re buzzwords, but resilience and grit are as important as technique or communications and fundraising skills right now. Maybe for anyone — not just a dancer or choreographer. It’s not a skill, but passion may be more of a pre-requisite, and it comes more automatically to younger artists. Irrational levels of optimism seem mandatory. The ability to tolerate doubt and even more, to sustain dialogue with one’s concerns and doubts on a daily basis — the clarity and resolve to make room for such mental activities will come in handy at some point, if it’s not personally necessary now. Might as well get good at it.
Last performance you saw that inspired you:
Heather Kravas gets me every time. Her work makes me contemplate dance anew. Her approach to performance, people, objects and ideas is rigorous, joyful and tortuous all at once, and I appreciate her deeply. Seattle is so fortunate to have her as a member of our community again after so many years of living and working in New York.
Pol Rosenthal, Dayna Hanson, and Jessie Smith in "Gloria’s Cause." Photo by Glassworks Media.
How would you describe the modern dance scene in Seattle right now (training, performance opportunities, festivals, support, funding, etc)?
There is both abundance and scarcity in Seattle right now. Relatively vast numbers of choreographers and dancers contribute to a sense of vitality; the organizations that exist to serve the contemporary dance scene — On the Boards, Velocity, Base — are working nonstop to provide support and opportunity. I see the community examining issues of equity even as larger forces (i.e., Amazon) are changing artists’ access to resources. Because the cost of living has jolted upwards so quickly, it’s suddenly much harder for artists to afford to deepen or even just keep up their practices. And because funding is relatively limited, crowdfunding has become a primary source of income for projects. That said, the performance opportunities that have long nurtured the dance community are holding fast — and new, more grassroots or alternative opportunities are emerging all the time. Training continues to be a focal point for the community.
Final thoughts - Hope/belief/love of the profession:
I recently sat with a group of seniors from the Dance Department at Cornish College of the Arts to discuss the field and help answer questions about life in dance. By the end of the discussion I was feeling tender — the energy, inquiry and determination of these students reignited my own excitement about the dance life. That sense that there are always new individuals coming along to enrich the art form, young people who are so obsessed with dance that they devote everything they’ve got to it, is just the best and most undeniable inspiration.
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Related posts:
Artist Profile: Jennifer Salk (Seattle, WA)
MFA Program Spotlight: University of Washington
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