Three years ago, Ivy Baldwin wrote an artist profile for the blog. Today, she candidly shares an update about her work and how major life events alter our artistic landscape.
Ivy Baldwin. Photo credit: Nafis Azad
How would you describe the past 3 years?
They’ve been challenging. In late 2014, just as we were in final rehearsals for Oxbow for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, my beloved long-time dancer/collaborator/friend, Lawrence Cassella, someone I was intensely connected to and spent countless hours with, suddenly became extremely ill. Over the next several weeks, without a clear diagnosis, this exuberant, powerful, funny man got sicker, weaker, was hospitalized, and passed away quite suddenly in January 2015 from what turned out to be a very rare immunodeficiency. It was such a shock and a heartbreak to all of us. He was only 38 years old.
Following his death I took a break from dance, and then began the Keen project in late 2015, working through, and with, the grief I and the rest of the company were feeling. Keen as a title references keening — the old Irish grieving ritual practiced predominantly by women.
Keen (Part 1) was a site-specific dance for the Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan, CT that premiered in May 2016 and was performed by the remaining women of Ivy Baldwin Dance (Anna Carapetyan, Eleanor Smith, Katie Workum, and Ivy Baldwin).
Then the presidential campaign and election of 2016 happened, and deeply affected so many of us. The day after the election I drove to Peterborough, NH to begin a month-long fellowship at the MacDowell Colony to develop Keen [No. 2]. My originally deeply personal connection to grief and women suddenly became more universal, and it was there I imagined a louder, stronger female presence in Keen [No. 2] and committed to making the work a dance for 10 women instead of 4. We premiered Keen [No.2] at the Abrons Arts Center Playhouse in June 2017.
So though the last 3 years began with an incredibly sad and difficult event, they’ve also been filled with a lot of creativity, and expression, and deepening relationships with friends and family and my husband — much of it profoundly colored by that event.
Photo: Maria Baranova
What would you say is the most major change in your dance career, or the role of dance in your life, since you wrote the profile?
After Lawrence passed away, I had to reconcile how and why to keep making dance in the face of this loss. Choreographing Keen (Part 1) and Keen [No.2] gave me the opportunity and space to process and reflect on grief, how women grieve and support one another, and the joy of memory and love, too. Now that I’ve created these works in response to this tragic loss, I find myself yet again at a crossroad where I must ask myself how best to continue. The role of dance in my life has always been (and will most likely always be) the way I process the world around me and the messiness of being a human being in it.
What is the role of teaching within your work? What is the interplay between teaching and choreographing?
When I took a break in early 2015 from making new work, I also took a break from teaching and choreographing work on students. It’s something I’m now eager to dive back into—particularly working with college-aged dancers. Working with young people has always fed my choreographic process with my company as it makes me both question and clarify my methodologies and inevitably spurs new ways of thinking about, seeing, and making dance.
What is on your calendar for the new year?
Upcoming projects include a month-long fellowship at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY in early 2018 and the creation of a new site-specific dance for Manitoga/The Russel Wright Design Center in Garrison, NY in 2019.
Links to Keen (Part 1) and Keen [No. 2]:
Keen (Part 1) at the Glass House
Keen [No. 2] at Abrons Arts Center
Photo: Maria Baranova
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Related links and posts:
Artist Profile #74: Ivy Baldwin
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