Photo: Robbie Sweeny
Hometown: Born in Atlanta, Georgia. Mostly grew up in Clarendon Hills, near Chicago, Illinois.
Current city: San Francisco
Age: 51
College and degree: BFA in Dance from Western Michigan University
Graduate school and degree: MFA in Dance Performance/Pedagogy from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (age 22)
Websites: www.la-alternativa.us|www.freshfestival.org
How you pay the bills: I teach classes at ODC School and Lines Ballet Training Program in San Francisco, with guest artist gigs at universities and other studios; organize regional and national touring and write grants for ALTERNATIVA, my company with musician Albert Mathias; raise money for and plan FRESH Festival for a good amount of the year; organize and direct PORCH Training Program in June at Ponderosa in Germany; teach and perform in other European locations and at other festivals during the summer; and collaborate and perform with/for colleagues.
All of the dance hats you wear: Dancer / Choreographer / Improviser / Educator / Director / Producer / Curator / Collaborator / Grant Writer / Publicist / Tour Manager / Light + Graphic Designer (on occasion) / Mentor
Non-dance work you do: Shiatsu and Cranio-Sacral Therapy
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Describe your dance life….
20s: Finishing my BFA at Western Michigan, starting my MFA at University of Illinois. Learning, teaching, making dances,performing, reading, writing, making costumes. Creating events, getting grants and bringing in guest artists through student dance organizations. Meeting Scott Wells and Contact Improvisation in graduate school. Moving to San Francisco at age 24 and making a company with him. Beginning my journey of collaboration. Joining Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and becoming a member of Contraband (Sara Shelton Mann). Touring through the States, in Europe and Mexico. Eyes opening to the larger dance world. Starting to teach in San Francisco. Also collaborating on classes and projects with my peers.
30s: Being a member of Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Contraband/Sara Shelton Mann, and Bebe Miller Company. Dream jobs of mine, one after the other, sometimes overlapping. Working with Albert on ALTERNATIVA, building our classes and performance work, touring the States. Starting to build programing at Ponderosa with Stephanie Maher. Collaborating with artists in Europe and Mexico.
40s: Continuing to dance with Sara Shelton Mann. ALTERNATIVA becoming resident artist at Kunst-Stoff Arts in San Francisco, and starting to program classes, workshops, performances and other events. Starting FRESH Festival and PORCH Training Program in 2010. More focus on teaching, making work and touring with ALTERNATIVA. Creating FAKE Company in order to work loosely, over time, with a group of international artists. Creating more reasons to be in Europe more often.
50s: I’m just into my 50s and still dancing full on and full out, though not spending as much time in the studio as I used to because there is so much administrative work to be done. Performing with Scott Wells in the 25th Anniversary of our company. Teaching and making new duet work with Albert, and touring the work in California and on the East Coast. Celebrating 10 years of FRESH Festival and 20 years of ALTERNATIVA. Premiering a new evening-length group work, Reckoning, in FRESH 2019, in collaboration with 2 local dancers, a guest artist from New York and a duo from Mexico, along with members of FAKE Company. As I reckon with the past and look towards the next 20 years, I’m pulling together an international, generational, multi-disciplinary entourage of mentors, peers, friends, allies and fans to celebrate and collect the memories while we create new futures.
Mentors/someone who believed in you:
Clara Gamble, Renee Wadleigh, Margaret Jenkins, Brenda Way, Kimi Okada, Sara Shelton Mann, Bebe Miller, Nancy Stark Smith
Major influences:
My family, especially my parents who are both great social dancers; my peers throughout the years, such as Scott, Stephanie and Albert, as well as Jon Weaver and Sue Roginski from Margaret Jenkins Dance Company; Elaine Buckholtz, Peter Overton and Shannon McMurchy from Contraband; Angie Hauser, Darrell Jones, Kathleen Fisher and David Thomson from Bebe Miller Company; Claudia Lavista and Marianela Boan, from Mexico and Cuba; human behavior and conditions, nature, physics, somatics, magic.
Kathleen Hermesdorf and Albert Mathias of ALTERNATIVA. Photo: Robbie Sweeny.
What is on your calendar for 2019?
Teaching and performing in FRESH Festival in January. February/March teaching in the Bay Area. June/July directing and teaching in PORCH, which also celebrates 10 years in 2019, and performing with FAKE Company in the Ponderosa TanzLand Festival. July/August at Bates Dance Festival with Albert. Making work in Ireland in August and hopefully teaching at Impulstanz that month as well. East Coast tour in the Fall with Albert, teaching and performing. We’ll also try to find more opportunities to perform our most recent duet "TONIC."
Can you talk a little bit about the FRESH Festival? What are you really excited about for the 2019 iteration?
FRESH 2019 is our biggest, most ambitious Festival yet as we celebrate 2 big anniversaries: a decade of FRESH and 20 years of ALTERNATIVA. I’m bringing together people from all over the world who have influenced my work, my career and my life, and I’m excited for the reunions, the mixing of communities and the collaborations within ALTERNATIVA for our premiere of Reckoning. My co-curator, José Navarrete, has attracted Regina Evans and Nicia De’Lovely, Juan Manuel Aldape, Byb Chanel Bibene and a cast of 20 dancers, Antoine Hunter and Ayisha Knight-Shaw from the deaf community, and EastSide Arts Alliance, a cultural organization in Oakland, and will share new work by NAKA Dance Theater with Debby Kajiyama. Chrysa Parkinson, Amara Tabor-Smith, and Sherwood Chen are back, along with local superstars and Festival regulars Sara Shelton Mann, Abby Crain, Larry Arrington and Keith Hennessy. We’re hosting a cohort of collaborators from Ponderosa, near Berlin, Germany, including FAKE Company. We’re also engaging in cultural exchange with artists from Mexico, representing Mazatlán, Guadalajara and Mexico City.
What does the phrase “teaching artist” mean to you? What is the interplay between art making and teaching?
I’ve always used class as practice and research. Even more since I began sharing it with my musical collaborator. We engage our creative process in class and share our creative research. I also try to bring in as much of my experience from rehearsals and performance into class and find ways to integrate that into the practice. The interplay allows for articulation and activation of intention, attention, sensation, inspiration, organizing principles, absurd situations, and more. This serves the teaching, the creating, and life in general.
It seems like in recent years your time has been split between Europe and the United States? Can you talk a bit about this? What are the similarities and differences right now between your gigs abroad and your gigs in the U.S.?
I started going to Germany in 2000 to collaborate with my friend and dance partner, Stephanie Maher, on programming at Ponderosa, which had just begun. Over time, I was invited to Amsterdam and to Impulstanz in Vienna, among other places in western and eastern Europe. I’ve also been going to Ireland for the last 3 years. The most blatant difference between the States and Europe, still, is that art is an accepted, respected and supported part of the culture there. The independent scenes are similar enough in terms of effort and funding, but there is a different attitude about being an artist. My gigs abroad allow me a sort of freedom in my work that I don’t always feel in the States. There is less fear of the intellectual, less hierarchical obedience, and more feedback on the actual work. Dancers in the States are just as smart and technical and creative; they are just being seen and used in different ways. American dancers have a special kind of passion and tenacity because it is more expensive to train and study, and more difficult to make projects happen and keep companies and careers going over the long term..
Kathleen Hermesdorf and Albert Mathias of ALTERNATIVA. Photo: Robbie Sweeny.
These days, how do you train and care for your body?
Since I spend more time at my computer than ever before, I am walking and doing yoga when I can’t dance. I’m looking into boxing and trying to find the right pool for swimming. I soak in salt a lot and have started taking magnesium. I have wonderful bodyworkers who I see when I’m in San Francisco - an acupuncturist/massage therapist and a chiropractor. I am training in Cranio-Sacral Therapy, which is as beneficial to give as to receive.
What does wellness mean to you?
Calm and centered, energized and open, passionate and patient, eager and ready. Good food, good sleep, good friends, good work, good dreams.
Three pieces of advice, or three questions/considerations, for aspiring choreographers:
Know yourself - face your nature, listen to your intuition, trust your instincts.
Find your own balance of inspiration, ambition, life experience and thinking outside the box.
Don’t forget about the rest of the world or the rest of your life.
Final thoughts: Hope/belief/love of the profession:
Dance is transformational. It is a way of perceiving the world and a transmission of human and individual experience. It is how I process and prove truth. It is what makes me more alive than anything else. I find it both phenomenal and phenomenological. I love it even when I haven’t seen a great dance in ages. I love it even when I have a bad day with it. I have also met the most incredible people through dance, and these wonderful artists, friends and loves have left their marks on me. Dance is delicious and dangerous and it has shaped my life, taken me to places I never imagined. I am continually thrilled by the ride.
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