Photo by Robbie Sweeny
Hometown: Mokena, IL
Current city: San Francisco, CA
Age: 35
College and degree:Carleton College, B.A. Anthropology/Sociology
Graduate school and degree: University of Colorado-Boulder, M.F.A. (age 25-27), Harvard University, Ed.M. (age 27-28)
Website: www.laurensimpsondance.com
How you pay the bills: Teaching and residencies. My partner earns the majority of our household income.
All of the dance hats you wear: Choreographer, teacher, grant writer, fundraiser, administrator.
Non-dance work you’ve done: Companion to an elderly woman, high school teacher, personal trainer, waiter.
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Describe your dance life in your….
20s: My dance life was spotty and non-committal. I bounced around cities/countries, Latin America, NYC, Minneapolis, Boulder, CO, Boston. I studied for the LSAT exam and auditioned for dance programs in the same year (2007). I didn’t decide to focus on a life of art and dance until I entered an M.F.A. program (2008). I realized systemic change in the arts happens through public programs and public education, and I love teaching, so I did a Masters of Education (2011).
30s: I turned 30 while I was working full time as a public high school teacher in Cambridge, MA. I loved this job but I wasn’t making work. When I moved to the Bay Area (31) I wanted to commit myself to performance and choreography. For the most part, this is what I have done with my time (besides having a daughter in 2016).
Jenny Stulberg and Lauren Simpson performing Still Life No. 7 at Lion's Jaw Festival 2018. Photo by The Fleet NYC.
Major influences:
Teachers - Margaret Jenkins, Liz Lerman, Risa Jaroslow, Jill Johnson, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Onye Ozuzu, Michelle Ellsworth, Nada Diachenko, Rennie Harris, Erika Randall, Chris Aiken, Angie Hauser, Jane Shockley, Mary Moore Easter, Donna Zeigler. (The five names here in grey have their own artist profiles on Life as a Modern Dancer.)
Choreographers - Jerome Bel, Liz Lerman, Bob Fosse, Jonathan Burrows, Pina Bausch, William Forsythe.
Can you talk about your most current project? What are you exploring?
My current project explores the beginnings of a new series, Dance Exhibits. This is a departure from the Still Life Dance series I did for almost five years with my creative partner, Jenny Stulberg. Sensibilities from the previous series remain - unison, craft, specificity. However, in Dance Exhibits I will investigate the ways moving with actual art objects and working with contemporary visuals artists changes the work. Dance Exhibit 1 will take place at Minnesota Street Project as a site-specific performance in its Atrium gallery.
What’s on the calendar for 2019?
My biggest near-term work will be Dance Exhibit at Minnesota Street Project May 9/10 and May 18/19/20, 2019. In addition, I am teaching and creating a new work at University of Nebraska-Lincoln January 9-19, 2019. Finally, I will be collaborating with visual artist Dana Hemenway on a Fall performance for her gallery show.
Teaching "Practice, Process, Research: Defining Terms and Playing Around" at Lion's Jaw Festival 2018. Photo by The Fleet NYC.
What is the role of teaching in your career?
Teaching has been the most consistent part of my life and career. Recently I’ve been most excited about developing a theory around dance making and arts practices geared specifically to dancers and movers. I am interested in concrete ways to be creative in the studio/classroom, demystifying the creative process a bit. I hope to enable artists to explore artistic choices systematically through practice, process, and research – practice is about work, process is about framework, and research is about fieldwork. I draw on other artists' work and my own to make arguments about what’s required to make a dance successful, what’s required to make a dance enjoyable to create and what’s required to make a dance possible. I have been developing the curriculum through short-term residencies at Universities around the country.
In addition to my visiting teaching work, I have been an Adjunct Professor at University of San Francisco and Harvard College teaching contemporary modern technique, contact improvisation, dance history, and composition. One of my most formative teaching experiences was the three years I taught dance full time at the Cambridge Rindge & Latin School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since I was 14 I have been teaching dance in some capacity. Of the three typical dancer hats - choreographer, performer, teacher - it’s the thing I’ve practiced the longest and it’s likely my strongest suit of the three.
Current dance training and other movement practices:
I go to contact jams when I can. It is my favorite way to dance. I run. I dance with my kid in the living room. I injured my hamstrings a few years ago. I don’t often take modern dances classes for this reason. I need to do physical activities with which I don’t have much personal ambition attached because I tend to push and re-injure myself.
What does wellness mean to you? How do you support wellness for yourself, and wellness for your dancers?
Wellness for me means time management and reducing stress. It has taken me years to understand the value of breaks between events in my calendar. The best things happen in those gaps (and extra 15 minutes at the coffee shop with a friend, an after-class check in with a student). Wellness for my dancers means paying them. I do my best to fundraise ahead of a project so dancers are guaranteed regular compensation. I will cut a project and the number of collaborators so funds are not spread too thin.
On balancing dancing and family life:
There’s not a balance. I just spend way more time with my family than I do dancing or dance related activities. Prior to having a kid, it was the reverse. I knew it would be like this before having my daughter and have happily accepted this reality. Right now, the most challenging part is not seeing as many shows as I want to. Performances are usually in the evening but so is story-time and bedtime at home.
Please pose 3 questions for other choreographers to consider:
Does anything change if you replace the word “choreographer” with “artist?”
What are the conditions you’ve set up in your life so you are practicing art making with frequency and consistency?
What would it mean to take yourself seriously as an artist? (Stole that directly from Hope Mohr who asked me the very same thing. Thank you, Hope.)
Dancers Virginia Broyles and Lydia Clinton rehearsing for Dance Exhibit, premiere Minnesota Street Project SF May 9-19, 2019. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.
What are the skills a modern dancer needs in 2019?
A compositional eye and an ability to bring your own aesthetic to the creative process in a way that serves the project.
Well, dancing skills. Not trying to be funny here, but sometimes it’s simpler than it seems. Modern dancers should be highly trained in a physical style/approach/methodology they love by putting in the time.
Advice for dancers wanting to move to the SF Bay Area:
Find a mentor or two ASAP. Despite the social nature of dancing, it is a very lonely profession. No one is interested in your success except for you, so find others who can help. People are always flattered to be mentors and you are not putting anyone out. One day you’ll pay it forward.
Vocal/singing skills seem to be of interest to many Bay Area choreographers.
Find a way to earn money that conforms to the economic realities of the Bay Area.
Related - do not work for free. It does a disservice to the dance ecology and is a boon to dancers who are already at an advantage financially (because they “don’t need the money”).
See a lot of shows and approach people with whom you want to work. Showing genuine interest works.
Final thoughts - hope/believe/love of the profession:
One final thought, which is actually more top of mind lately, is how privilege and art-making intersect. I’m thinking about what it means to be making art from a privileged place – I’m white, cis-gendered, and was raised with a set of educational and other opportunities. I want to find ways to self examine how I engage with this privilege which, in many situations both in dance and outside of dance, perpetuates oppressive systems. I am fortunate to be in a position of hiring, curating and awarding artist support, which I believe demands thoughtfulness around privilege. I hope to hold myself accountable while in these roles.
In addition, every year around New Years (at the time of writing this, actually) I find myself going through the exercise of recommitting to the profession; re-convincing myself I made a good life choice. Some years I have to try harder than others. This year I am thinking about how much I love being in the studio making decisions and mistakes and discoveries with a group of people I trust. And I love it no matter what comes of it. The worst of criticism and embarrassment has already happened to me, so I have nothing to lose. It’s a freeing place from which to make work, a feeling that’s keeping me in the game yet another year.
And lastly, I just realized that in some fundamental gut-way, dancing is the only thing I’m good at. So it comes as a relief that it’s my only option.
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Related websites and posts:
Website: Simpson/Stulberg Collaborations
Musings on "Unison" - with Lauren Simpson, Cynthia Oliver, Amy Chavasse, and Jo Kreiter
Establishing Simpson/Stulberg Collaborations: My Biggest Challenge So Far - By Lauren Simpson
A Modern Dancer's Guide to the SF Bay Area
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Posted by: Jannes Gibson | 01/06/2019 at 07:22 AM