Summer Belnap Robertson is the artistic director of St. George Dance Company in St. George, Utah. After dancing in New York City, she returned to her hometown in southern Utah, where she has played a major role in building the adult dance scene. She describes her experience catalyzing dance in a small city.

This interview is part of Where Dance Is, a series of interviews with dance artists working outside major metropolitan centers.

~~

Where do you live and work, and how did you come to be based there?

I currently live and work in St. George, Utah. I am originally from St. George and have returned here after 10 years on the east coast. My passion for dance took me to the North Carolina School of the Arts and then to New York City to dance with Avila/Weeks (now Delirious Dance) and Michael Mao. I also attended Columbia University and earned an MA in dance education.

Can you describe your current dance and teaching practice?

One reason I was hesitant to return to St. George was because there was not a strong adult dance community. If I wanted to be a part of a dance community, I would have to be a big force in helping to create it. So, for the past 11 years, I have produced a choreography showcase (now part of the Red Rock Dance Festival) that provides the opportunity for choreographers to present their work. It has brought dancers together and been the springboard for the St. George Dance Company, of which I am the artistic director. My daily practice is very administrative. I write the grants, create the contracts, hire teachers, guest choreographers and dancers, rent the space, create the programming, update the website, and do all the marketing. Most of the things I do each day are not what I studied in school. However, I get the pleasure of setting dance work on adult dancers who are delighted to be there and want to work with me.

How would you describe the general dance scene where you live?

Utah is very supportive of the arts and dance. There are numerous studios for dancers under the age of 18. My goal has been to fill that big gap for dancers who have lost touch with the art form because of no opportunity to continue practicing it after college. The dance scene now provides classes and rehearsals and pays principal dancers to perform. We are growing and attracting more skilled dancers. The strong and consistent management over the years is something fellow dancers appreciate and want to be a part of.

What do you perceive are some benefits to working where you live?

The city and county fiscally support us. The city provides us with subsidized rehearsal and performance space.

What are the drawbacks?

Speaking very generally, audience members seem to appreciate sensationalized dance that is entertaining rather than artistic. Many people expect what we will perform for them will be something they may have seen as halftime entertainment at a sports event.  However, there is a group of our supporters who appreciate what we do and attend regularly. Another drawback is I am over-worked and under-paid like many artistic directors/administrators, so staying consistent for many more years may not be viable.

What do you perceive your influence has been on the community where you live?

The St. George Dance Company is the only adult modern dance group that many people in our community have ever seen. We have been most successful in introducing them to the art form largely through collaboration with other large arts organizations in our community such as the local symphony, choir, art museums, visual artists and even poets. Finally, the Red Rock Dance Festival has brought together dancers and choreographers from all over the southwest and allowed them to feel connected with the rest of the dance world and work with companies such as Paul Taylor II, Repertory Dance Theatre, SALT Contemporary Dance and SampleDance.

~~

Summer Belnap Robertson is originally from St. George, UT, but spent 10 years on the east coast, primarily in New York City. She received a BFA in Contemporary Dance from the North Carolina School of the Arts and an MA in Dance Education from Columbia University. In 2001, she founded Summer & Company, which presented work at various New York City venues. Summer was a member of the Michael Mao Dance Company and the Avila/Weeks Dance Company. She danced as a guest with the David Parsons Dance Company in the Millennium Celebration at Times Square, with Karla Wolfangle for Paul Taylor’s 70th birthday celebration at Jacob’s Pillow, and with Janis Brenner & Dancers at the Alvin Ailey School. She is the founder and director of the St. George Dance Co., which recently hosted its 10th annual Choreography Showcase as part of the Red Rock Dance Festival. She has four children: Seva, Wells, Inga, Loa, and a creative husband, Joel.

Photo by Kathy Cieslewicz

To learn more, visit www.saintgeorgedance.com.

The post Bringing Dance Home appeared first on Stance on Dance.

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT; PHOTOS BY SOREN WACKER

Mark Young founded and built Leviathan, a dance studio dedicated to contact improvisation on Lasqueti Island off the coast of British Columbia, Canada. Home to about 400 year-round residents with a passenger-only ferry connecting the island to the mainland, Lasqueti is one of the few places in North America a dream like Leviathan could be realized.

This interview is part of Where Dance Is, a series of interviews with dance artists working outside major metropolitan centers.

~~

Tell me a bit about your history and how you came to found Leviathan on Lasqueti Island.

I’m from Toronto originally. In 1997, I was in a car accident and my skull was fractured. When I woke up in the hospital, I didn’t know my name or where I was from. Because of the brain injury, I had no balance and my left leg was compromised. I started doing contact improvisation and tai chi as part of my rehab. A transient dancer friend who came through Toronto introduced me to contact improvisation about a year before my accident. After the accident, I was locked up in rehab and incredibly depressed, so I tried doing something fun and went to the local Toronto jam. The accident liberated me to go down a road I might not have otherwise. It quickly became apparent how fast and well I was recovering. The doctors were amazed and told me to keep doing what I was doing. There were up to 40 doctors and therapists involved in my treatment, so it was a large medical consensus.

The accident was a million-dollar court case. I didn’t get paid a million dollars, but a lot of lawyers and doctors got paid. After the settlement, and when I saw how much I benefitted from contact improvisation, I became committed to building a dance studio.

Five years after the accident, I headed for British Columbia, which had been a long-time dream. I was looking for a place to build a studio. I ended up on Lasqueti because there’s no building inspector. I wanted to build something completely alternative. The design is so unconventional. The trusses that hold up the roof, for example, are based on a design for a 12^th century bridge in China called the Rainbow Bridge. I adapted the design. Most engineers work with right angles, post and beam, not arches, which require more structural engineering and math. That’s why I ended up in a remote place where I could build what I wanted. In another place, it might have cost a million dollars, but I built it by myself for $30,000. The studio is 10,000 sq. ft. and the dance floor itself is more than 2,000 sq. ft.

How is Leviathan run, and why the name?

Leviathan means whale, gargantuan, or a large ocean-going vessel. In myth, it is a creature that eats whales, and there are also some biblical references to it. While I was building the studio, it looked like the ribcage of a whale, and the name spontaneously came to me.

I run contact improv workshops, and I bring in teachers from all over the world. An important component of the programming is sharing meals together. After my accident, I developed allergies to dairy, wheat and soy. Going to retreat centers, I was often only served vegetarian options, so I would basically subsist on lettuce. That’s why I developed a studio with programs that include serving meat. Participants in the workshops often have similar food allergies. Compromised digestion is a common problem with acquired brain injury that a lot of people don’t know about. Sometimes people suffer from eczema or fibromyalgia without knowing it stems from a decades old concussion. I was speculating at first, because I developed these allergies right after the accident. Doctors told me they weren’t connected, but they looked connected to me, as I didn’t have them beforehand. I’ve since done research, and there is a connection. I hunt animals and serve bone broth, and there’s access to fresh fish. Vegans are cared for as well. People come to dance and be nourished with food. It’s more of a holistic healing center that way.

The programs tend to be at least two weeks, though people often stay longer. Visitors commonly come from as far as Europe or China. Since people make a long journey, they want to spend a significant length of time here. Workshops generally have 25 participants with a staff of five for 12 days, so there are as many as 30 people on the premise. The staff are interns here to dance and work.

Workshops happen from May to September. The rest of the year, it’s just me doing maintenance and construction. It’s too cold and wet in the winter. Visitors primarily camp in the summer, and the studio isn’t enclosed. Birds fly through and, in January, the cold wet fog.

Can you tell me about the people and culture of Lasqueti Island?

People here are fiercely independent who care for each other in times of need. There are 400 residents. Artists and retirees are common. It’s a cheap lifestyle. It’s all off grid; there’s no power, water or garbage pickup on the island. It’s a difficult supply chain getting food here. There’s a ferry, but it’s not a car ferry, so food must be carried off the boat onto the truck and to the studio.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of basing Leviathan on Lasqueti Island?

The obvious advantage is that there’s no building inspector, so I got to build something really extraordinary that I couldn’t build anywhere else. Another advantage is that the people who come dance here have made a commitment. It’s a one-hour ferry ride that doesn’t run every day, plus I’m at the top of a hill, so if you’re going to come to Leviathan, you’re really committed. It weeds out people in a good way. It’s not a drop-in center. It’s not Burning Man where you can do whatever you want. It’s for dancers who want to seriously study.

The disadvantage is the same. It’s hard to get to, so it cuts into the economics. The access issue makes it small and not for everyone. I’d love to host a Danceability session here, but the ferry and facility aren’t suitable for wheelchairs. Once you leave the dance floor, the ground isn’t flat. The studio has been operational since 2010 but it’s still not completed, and neither are the trails.

What do you perceive is your impact?

My biggest impact is providing the opportunity for sustained training within the world of contact improv. It’s not expensive to stay here, about $100 per day with meals included, and it’s often commented that Leviathan has the best dance floor participants have ever seen. I hear this from professional dancers. If you can get here, I can provide long and intense training. Fifteen people are spending six weeks here this summer dancing, in addition to participants for shorter amounts of time.

Any other thoughts?

I was recently asked to participate in the Brain, Body and Cognition conference held at Harvard. I don’t know how they got my name. Last year the conference was at Oxford, and I didn’t even read the invite, I thought it was spam. This year I was invited again. They really want me to come. Perhaps this is because I know something about the world of rehab. I got far better than I was expected to, and I attribute it to dance. Dance is different than any other modality. In tennis, for example, there’s tension and competition. In dance, you’re just playing. Contact improvisation is a great dance form in this regard. It allows the body to play. Even ballet or yoga can become very competitive but, when contact improvisation is done well, it’s just play. That essence of play is very nourishing and rehabilitating. It needs to be documented, so I’m looking forward to hopefully giving others some of the same benefits I received.

~~

To learn more, visit leviathan.lasqueti.ca.

The post Contact Improv’s Leviathan Studio appeared first on Stance on Dance.

This interview is part of Where Dance Is, a series of interviews with dance artists working outside major metropolitan centers.

~~

How did you come to be based in northern Wisconsin and found ChaliceStream?

In 1978, Barry Lynn and myself moved Lynn Dance Company from Salt Lake City, Utah, to an abandoned farmstead in northern Wisconsin which had belonged to my grandparents, an unlikely place for two men to transplant a dance form that struggles even in the city to attract audiences. But my personal connection to that land through years of summer visits with my grandparents, as well as Barry’s readiness to leave the trendiness that so often drives art in urban culture, brought us to pioneer our art in the north woods.

We named our home “ChaliceStream” to symbolize the role art plays in spiritual uplift and nourishment. Like a stream, art opens channels.

One of our first projects was placing a studio on the property. We acquired the former Willard Center School building, a vacant wooden one-room schoolhouse which sat in the adjoining township, and had it moved onto our premises. That building has now served us 40 years as a teaching and performance space, as well as our dwelling.

Can you describe your current dance and teaching practice?

Our teaching, geared toward adults’ bodies and sensibilities, is based in the modern dance tradition, where movement arises from the need to express rather than follows a preset vocabulary. Emphasis is placed on centering movement in the torso, where emotion is born and where physical balance and outreach begin.

Although our method of physical training effectively strengthens and stretches the body and promotes general fitness, the underlying spirit which motivates our regimen seeks to express human experience so that, in the process, the student is devel3oping both the inner and the outer person.

Some students value the training simply as a means for personal well-being, while others apply their training to developing themselves as dance performers. Those who choose to perform have the opportunity to show their creative work in concert during seasonal performances given at ChaliceStream.

To enhance adult student enrollment, we opened a second studio in 1999 at Banbury Place in Eau Claire, and travel there weekly to teach.

How would you describe the general dance scene where you live?

Local residents here probably view dance more as a social activity or mode of exercise than as an art form. If they do watch dance performance, they most likely tune in to programs such as “Dancing with the Stars.” Some adults may participate occasionally in line dancing or “move around the floor” at wedding receptions, and a few may enroll their daughters in ballet class, if a teacher is available, but few appreciate dance as a vehicle for expressing ideas and emotion.

What do you perceive are some benefits to working where you live?

The benefits of working where we live are twofold. First, our studio home frees us from having to rent space to teach and perform. Second, presenting our style of dance outside the confines of an urban arts culture allows us to draw audiences who evaluate what they see here on the basis of whether they personally like it rather than being influenced by what dance critics in the cities might say.

What are the drawbacks?

The liberating benefit of building something yourself in an uncommon place has a flip side, of course. You cannot piggy-back on the work of your predecessors. You must shoulder the burdens of educating a public who initially may see no need for what you’re offering.

What do you perceive your influence has been on the community where you live?

My life partner Barry died January 27, 2018, two weeks shy of reaching his 104th birthday. At the memorial service, many spoke of the deep impression Barry made on their life, chiefly in the fact that he was authentic, that he never let disfavor or convention pressure him to conform. Of course, his artistry and personal charm, as well as the way he made our audiences feel at home and delighted them in performance and empowered his students to be creative, were also memorable and will have lasting impact on many of those who studied or attended performances here.

Barry and I never started a wave in this community; however, we did set a current in motion which continues to serve those who’ve either come here or will in the future avail themselves of its potential to stimulate and enhance their lives.

Any other thoughts?

If a flower blooms in the woods and no one passes by to see it, has it wasted its beauty? That is the nature of the question my partner and I have been asked many times after we relocated our modern dance company from an urban environment to an abandoned farmstead in Wisconsin’s north woods.

Surprisingly, we have danced here 40 years, and successfully. But, in that time, had there not been a soul who came to see our art, we would not have ceased to create it, in the same way as that flower in the woods cannot but offer what it has regardless of whether anyone witnesses it. Its beauty must be expressed ere its life is passed. Only its failure to do that would be a waste.

~~

Barry Lynn (1914-2018) was a dramatic dancer, an actor using movement as his medium, a teller of tales both legendary and real, a visual artist who reveled in color and design.

Communication was always his foremost intention, so he used whatever he needed on stage to facilitate the expression and articulation of his ideas, despite the notions of his dance critics who often disparaged his use of set pieces, properties and imaginative costumes as being borrowings from the theater.

He preferred to work as a solo dancer, emphasizing the choices the individual must make in achieving a meaningful life. Chief among these was being true to the self, the keynote in his teaching, performing, or daily living. He strode through barriers in life and did the same onstage, beginning his concerts by waiving the boundary that separates performer and audience, stepping forward onto the apron to address his guests with an air of both command and concern, inviting them to join him on this journey of discovery.

After years of touring out of his base in Salt Lake City and working on the production staff at the University of Utah, he and his partner, Michael Doran, moved to northern Wisconsin, where they established a teaching and performing facility they named “ChaliceStream.” There, for 40 additional years beyond his retirement age, Lynn was able to have his own studio space in which to teach and perform, and to present his style of dance to “non-purist” viewers, who liked it or not, judged on its own merits and appeal.

In Lynn’s memorial celebration, Doran noted that his beloved partner had been “an alchemist, able to take commonplace materials and convert them into stage-worthy properties, even as he encouraged people to transform their lives by transcending their fears. He was a master of turning dross to gold.”

The post A Flower in the Woods appeared first on Stance on Dance.

This interview is part of Where Dance Is, a series of interviews with dance artists working outside major metropolitan centers.

Photo by Monica Morones

~~

Where do you live and work, and how did you come to be based there?

Constance: I live in Palm Springs most of the year, but I spend summer months in Provincetown, Cape Cod, MA. After moving to Provincetown from the Bay Area in 2015, my partner and I came running back to California for sun and warmth. We are certainly getting that in the desert! Going between these two gorgeous and very different places is of course a luxury, yet is it also challenging in maintaining community and consistent dance practices.

Brittany: I live in Indian Wells, and I moved here a few years ago to begin working for arts and culture organizations like La Quinta Arts Foundation and California Desert Arts Council. Prior to living in Greater Palm Springs, I lived in Canelo, AZ, Santa Fe, NM, and the Bay Area.

Can you describe your current dance and teaching practice?

Constance: At 56, I am once again in transition, this time to fewer technique classes and more movement exploration. I am interested in un-doing aspects of the forms I spent a lifetime building, and finding what is less habitual, less domesticated. As an Alexander Technique teacher, I do have a head start in un-doing patterns! Yet as I play with ways of moving that are atypical for me, I find that moving into pleasurable sensations is of more importance than external form. Un-domesticating and un-forming as somatic practice feels supportive and nurturing at this stage of life.

All that said, I also teach an adult ballet class twice a week! Mostly because this is the dance class that most people want. As I subvert the dominant paradigm of ballet by inviting more pleasure into classes, I hope to both educate more gently and inspire a kinder way of being in an adult body. I also give Mindful Movement classes for dancers and non-dancers, in which we attend to somatic awareness, explore intuitive or expressive movement, and give permission to let go of cultural norms of “dance.”

Brittany: My current dance and teaching practice consists of co-leading the movement improvisation collective Peer Practice in the Desert with Constance Clare-Newman (Palm Springs) and Sue Roginski (Riverside). Every first Sunday at a rotating location in the desert region, we explore a theme, site and improvisational movement score. Admission is free, and we always say, “Free to participate. Participate with freedom.” This practice is where I experiment with teaching: styles, questions, group vs. solo/duet/trio direction, and where I learn from the collective of teachers who take turns leading among the group. Some of my favorite ways of moving involve my training in improvisational techniques –  freestyle hip hop dance upright styles, ensemble postmodern dance, and contact improvisation training. These techniques sometimes become part of this practice, and I love the opportunity to re-orient myself each time we set up for Peer Practice. (To learn more, visit www.facebook.com/peerpracticedesert)

In addition, I practice in the studio at my gym, in public parks, and at social dance spaces where I can get down to a variety of music, including live musicians, DJs or special guest performers. While I do miss the opportunity to take technique classes, I opt to give myself class in certain trainings and modalities that I’ve learned from my teachers over the years. Occasionally, I sign up for a movement class or workshop out of town on the weekend to get back into that discipline, rhythm and exchange of information.

I am currently developing a duet entitled ‘task’ with my colleague Sarah Ashkin, co-director of our collective GROUND SERIES. We will perform the piece at Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles on August 17 and 18, 2018. Dealing with themes of failure, listening and accountability, this duet asks: What is the task of white women in our current political moment? ‘task’ is a public practice reflecting on the problematics of the white female body moving through the foreground and background. GROUND SERIES is a dance collective using performance as embodied political intervention. Each GROUND SERIES production is rooted in ensemble collaboration, interdisciplinary approach, inquiry-based content, and site-specific dance-making. In practice and performance, dance is used as a means of personal and communal transformation and as a catalyst for community dialogue. Since its inception in 2012, GROUND SERIES has created 15 original dance works performed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, Philadelphia, northern New Mexico, and London.

How would you describe the general dance scene where you live?

Constance: The Coachella valley has plenty of neighborhood dance studios that specialize in competition dance. Dance as an art form is rare and, if there is any post modern or experimental dance and movement, I have not found it… Until we started Desert Movement Arts!

Photo by Monica Morones

Brittany: Some of my vivid memories from the dance scene in the Coachella Valley include unique experiences across this region:

-Witnessing dancers from Rancho Mirage High School rehearse their athletic, syncopated dances to high energy hip hop music on the basketball court at the public park, while I was nearby on the grass, practicing a solo piece ‘Light the Way’ for the SF Movement Arts Festival 2017.

-Simeon Den performing a riveting solo outside his gallery in Cathedral City. He performed modern dance in front of a video projection on a wall, which was covered with large translucent paper, featuring charcoal tracings of black crows. The wind fluttered the paper birds, the sound from the video and the sound of his breath filled the outdoor space. He has a magnetic stage presence.

In 2018, Simeon welcomed Wyld Womxn (a Coachella Valley-based feminist art collective of which I am a co-leader) to program a performance night, including works by Desert Movement Arts members Constance Clare-Newman, Lauren Bright and me. We were thrilled by the large audience turnout and supported by the local media for our event – which was part of the gallery art exhibition ‘The New Feminist Gaze.’

-Viewing complex choreographies and ritual performances by Danza Azteca Citlaltonac, first at a community event ‘Synergy Fest,’ featuring music, arts, spoken word and a classic car show. It was presented by Culturas Music & Arts at Dateland Park, featuring the historic Shady Lane Mural. Nearby is the internationally recognized Coachella Walls.

Secondly, I gathered at Sunnylands for a special Dia de los Muertos event which welcomed community organizations to contribute altars, participate in crafts, walk in the gardens, and celebrate the live performance by Danza Azteca Citlaltonac. This time, their performance took place at the center of the manicured estate, under the stars, with a hushed, engaged crowd. This showing really made an impact on me – the detail, the up-close view of the costumes, the commitment and risk of the dancers’ movements and unexpected changes of direction. The spiritually grounded experience reminded me of my university research trip to the Dominican Republic with Wesleyan dance professor Pedro Alejandro, who introduced me to his ethnographic research in sacred arts practices, dance history and cultural practices.

-At a performance ‘East Valley Out Loud’ 2017 at the McCallum Theatre, I witnessed an amazing showcase of talented performers. The dancers of the Purepecha community of Mecca (Purepecha is an indigenous group from the Mexican state of Michoacan; many live in the Eastern Coachella Valley) blew me away with their intricate footwork and travel patterns.

What do you perceive are the benefits and drawbacks to working where you live?

Constance: The benefits are that, as Desert Movement Arts grows, we could become a resource for other experimental movers. Since we do not see other companies making intergenerational and experimental work, we are free to create with less preconceived ideas. Another benefit that we experienced after our first performance last year is that many in our audience hadn’t seen a dance performance like ours and were excited about what they saw. The drawbacks are mostly that no one knows what we are doing! So our future includes educating our audience, as well as inviting a coterie of movement arts lovers.

Photo by Monica Morones

Brittany: Benefits to working where I live:

-Space. The desert is vast, and dance loves to be in space!

-Visual artists and musicians love the desert. Dance loves visuals and music!

-So many visual artists make the desert their home, there is an abundance of galleries, exhibitions, installations, public art projects and photographers all milling about in this region. It makes for a vibrant resonance around ‘image-making’ when I consider dance-making here. I’m lucky to work for La Quinta Arts Foundation, presenter of the number one fine arts festival in the nation, La Quinta Arts Festival, which presents top contemporary exhibitors in over a dozen mediums. I’ve met numerous artists who exhibit in the annual event, and their dedication to their artwork and business has filled me with so much respect and admiration for fine artists.

-Musicians and DJs flock to the desert too. I enjoy going to music concerts and events where DJs keep the dance floors full for everybody to enjoy.

-There are so many talented drag queens and kings innovating here, and the community embraces and supports drag shows every night of the week. Viewing drag performance reminds me of the power of transformation and that perfect biting, edgy sense of humor. For more info, check out Toucan’s in Palm Springs and follow Bella Da Ball. Big gratitude to CounterPulse in San Francisco for opening my eyes to the art of drag performance and to the complex histories of performance art.

Drawbacks:

The desert is not a dance-hub, filled with a million dancers who come from all over the world to view, make, re-design, present, socialize, compete, construct, laugh, eat while dancing. The fact that dance is not top of mind nor centered for a resident, visitor or student makes it a drawback for me – someone who has dance top of mind and centered in my life and how I make sense of the world. Since there is not a huge economy for professional dance here, I am challenged to dig deeper in the region to find live arts, and/or I have to travel out of the region to engage in a dance performance, dance class, or dance-y experience.

What do you perceive your influence has been on the community where you live?

Constance: So far, my influence feels small but rich. Giving classes and workshops that invite pleasure, somatic awareness and mindful movement, I have a few brave souls who clamor for more and let me know how this work enriches them. In starting Desert Movement Arts, I am thrilled to be collaborating with Brittany, Lauren and Lois, and excited to invite in other movers as they appear and fit our collective. Moving forward, I hope we will broaden the kind of dance audiences can see in our area.

Brittany: Desert Movement Arts members have created an influence of curiosity and care. In our connections to the community, be that in our work, our volunteering, or our sharing movement, Desert Movement Arts members have influenced our community by sharing our care for a multi-generational representation of women (in a community that is certainly figuring out how to work better across the generations, from the retired set to the new families), and curiosity for what may happen when you put dance outside the theater frame and use dance to ask questions of the future.

In my view, we started Desert Movement Arts as a call to take our practice into performance and begin sharing our site-specific studies with an audience in a context which felt right and engaging for us. The performances we offered were framed by a group visual arts exhibition and thematic show, ‘The Salton Sea: An Artistic Discussion,’ at University of California Riverside-Palm Desert campus. The lectures, discussions, visits to the sea, participation at Salton Sea community events and political gatherings – all this work culminated with two ensemble dance pieces. Our multi-generational group of dancers came together for rehearsals, a colleague Marnie Navarro developed the sound score (with field recordings and original beats), and the community at UCR Palm Desert was very welcoming and open to seeing our work. I look forward to future exchanges of site-specific dance and educational dance presentations in relationship to Desert Movement Arts and the creative communities here.

The communities in our region are so resilient. You have to be if you choose to live in a desert.

Photo by Marnie Navarro

~~

To learn more about Desert Movement Arts, visit desertmovementarts.weebly.com or check out their Facebook page.

More about Brittany Delany: https://brittanydelany.weebly.com/

More about Constance Clare-Newman: https://www.constanceclare.com/

The post A Flourishing Resilient Community appeared first on Stance on Dance.

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT

Patricia Chen is a dancer, teacher and choreographer living in Bordeaux, France. After a career in New York, she found herself in France, slowly building her own dance practice, creating her company – Chendance – and building her studio in the countryside – Oakspace. She tells her story and contrasts her experience in Bordeaux with New York.

This interview is part of Where Dance Is, a series of interviews with dance artists working outside major metropolitan centers.

Photo by Pauline Jasson

~~

Tell me a little about your history and how you came to be based in Bordeaux.

I danced in New York from 1980 to 1993. There was a whole population of us who weren’t dancing in big companies, but who were performing in a variety of venues around town. I danced with maybe 13 different smaller companies. I was always paid for dancing, but never with one big company that paid me a salary. I always had a side job word processing for a lawyer or for engineers, as well as accompanying ballet classes (I’m also a classical pianist). My dance classes were covered by scholarships, so I had to be in the studio every day. It was a precarious existence where I had to keep it all going in order to keep it all going.

Through my roommate, who was also a dancer and whose side job was working in French restaurants, I met a French chef. We started going out, and it became a long on-and-off love story and friendship. Whenever I had a break, I used to go to Paris. At one point, I had ostensibly quit dancing and decided to go to medical school. My French friend/lover proposed to me and said, “Why don’t you move to France, so we can finally be together and start a family?” He told me I could go to medical school in France. We got married in New York and moved to Bordeaux. He had a restaurant on the Bassin d’Arcachon, a beautiful bay close to Bordeaux. I had plans of going to medical school, as my prerequisites were all completed, but by the time school started, I had a baby.

It was hard to be a new mother and be in medical school, and I didn’t last very long. I started looking for a job, and discovered that all the jobs for Americans in Bordeaux were teaching English. I didn’t even try to pursue dance; I had quit dancing in my mind. The first job I got was teaching English at an international school. Later, I ended up with a fulltime job teaching English at the School of Fine Arts in Bordeaux (ebabx) and the Conservatory of Bordeaux. At the conservatory, I was primarily working with actors. I started teaching English through dance – I would make movement phrases using chance operations, picking elements randomly out of a stack. This way, my students learned body parts, verbs and adverbs.

After a while, I got a bit of a following. Many of my student actors wanted to keep working with me. One particular class had been studying with me for three years and, when they graduated, wanted to keep studying. At that point, I found a space and started an open workshop where once or twice a month on weekends, all these actors from the conservatory, as well as sculptors and painters from the fine arts school, would come take my workshops.

I was in residency in the space for three years, and people who were interested would come work with me. We did all kinds of experiments. My daughter was still little at the time, and by then I was a single mom, so she would play in our apartment, which was next door upstairs, while I taught downstairs. Sometimes she and her friends would participate.

Eventually, my students asked to show what they were doing, so we organized a performance. Because we had worked on different forms each weekend, the show became a suite of little movements. But since it had been over a period of three years, it ended up being a huge piece. We named it “Tribe,” and we called the group Chendance. From there, we were invited to perform at a festival. We also put together a film version.

Since then, there have been four iterations of Chendance. Some groups have had six or seven members, while others have had only four. They come from various backgrounds in the arts, but I primarily choose them for their minds. They don’t pay me, and I don’t pay them. It’s more of an exchange. I develop my work with and on them and, if I get opportunities for them to perform, I pay them a small stipend or a one-time fee. However, they all leave Bordeaux at some point to pursue their own artistic careers, as there aren’t a lot of other opportunities here. That’s why there have been four iterations of the company. It’s like a creative family that takes a life of its own.

There’s also a larger group of people in Bordeaux and surrounding area who take my workshops when they are offered, and some of those people pay a reasonable fee. The ones who can’t pay help me with the cooking or work on the place in exchange. My workshops now take place in my space in Charente-Maritime, outside Bordeaux. Sometimes the workshops are for kids or for people who don’t have artistic backgrounds.

Tell me a little about your current space.

One of my best friends had a sprawling house in the country in Charente-Maritime with only a few rooms fixed up. Our kids are close, so we used to spend a lot of time together there on the weekends. At some point, she suggested I buy something in the area.

My parents had bought me an apartment in New York when I lived there and, when they sold it, after paying for my studies at NYU, I used the money to buy three acres of land and the two 200-year-old ruins on it. It’s located one-hour northeast of Bordeaux in a town called Sousmoulins. I turned it into my own studio, called Oakspace.

Now, it’s open for residencies beyond my own work. People have come from as far as New York, Florida, Tel Aviv, Milan or Berlin. I also invite people who I’ve met or who I used to dance with to teach workshops. It’s also, of course, where Chendance rehearses and where I teach.

How would you describe the local dance scene where you live?

The most interesting thing going on, in my opinion, is the local hip hop scene. I was in New York when hip hop was first developing. Here in Europe, it’s become almost a vocabulary of its own. I feel it’s a very rich and creative thing happening in Bordeaux. There are two established hip hop companies now that are getting grants and touring. The rest of the hip hop scene is operating through non-profit associations, and people come here from all over France to do battles.

What takes about 25 percent of the budget available to support all the arts in Bordeaux is the opera. Bordeaux is a bourgeois town with old families who made their money in wine and slave ships. It’s the dirty secret of Bordeaux. The problem is that the people here get their culture by going to the opera and ballet. They have their subscription. When they decide to find something more modern, they go to the National Theater, where they might see some more avantgarde stuff.

There are a few smaller theaters within an hour of Bordeaux as well. If you want to see good dance in Bordeaux, you can organize yourself to see some cutting-edge stuff. But there’s no dance population that stays here when they finish school because there are almost no open professional-level classes.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a dance artist in Bordeaux?

The benefit is that no one cares what I’m doing. I have total creative freedom. I am basically subsidizing myself, and I have a free space. I have access to people who are really excited to work with me.

When I left New York, I felt like I knew everybody, and everybody knew me. I had danced for choreographers who gave dancers a lot of responsibility in the creative process, so the step from dancer to choreographer was quite easy. I started doing solos on myself when I was in New York. I did solos because I couldn’t pay anybody to work with me, and renting space was already so expensive. I made a couple of solos and showed them, and a lot of people really encouraged me. But when I ran into people I knew, they always wanted to know what my next project was, or when I was going to perform or choreograph next. I felt blocked by all that pressure.

When I moved to Bordeaux and quit dancing, nobody cared or even knew I had been a dancer. They just knew me as “Lani’s mom.” It was extremely freeing and, when I started to incorporate dance into my English classes, nobody really paid attention. It was truly experimental with no economic justifications.

The drawback is that I’m not legitimate in the eyes of the local schools and institutions. France is very attached to its institutions. It’s for a good reason – students in France can get a music, dance or theater education for basically free, assuming they get accepted to the state-sponsored schools, but those are understandably the people who are supported professionally, since public funds have already been invested in their education.

I have French citizenship, but I would never get funding or grant money. They don’t know what to do with someone like me. They have to support the population that went through their system. I’m independent, especially since I have my own space. I get performance opportunities through friends and associations

The other problem is that there are private studios for kids and amateur adults, but no open classes for professional level dancers. So even though there are some good schools in the area, the dancers that come out of them tend to leave. The opera ballet company is not open for class either. There’s one guy in Bordeaux – his company is called Lullaby – and he teaches a three-hour class that consists of floor barre, ballet class and hip hop. I used to take the first two parts of his class.

There used to be the Center for Choreographic Development. It was a little out of Bordeaux, and they had great programs and concerts, as well as a professional class once a week. That was where I met a lot of the dancers and teachers I know here. But they lost their space and have just recently taken over another space. I’m waiting to see what they will do next.

Everyone here is kind of hanging on, looking for space, looking for students, trying to get performance opportunities, and all the decisions here are political. Our mayor is not very up on culture, and his culture team makes decisions to give most of the money to the big institutions. All the little companies and theaters are barely making it.

There used to be a status called “intermittent.” It was based on the understanding that if you’re a performer, you are working on your craft for many hours beyond performances, so if you did at least 25 performances a year, you could receive unemployment between gigs. It kept everyone going. But under Sarkozy, the status became almost impossible to get. Now you must have more gigs over a shorter period, so independent performing artists can’t get that unemployment insurance. It’s really hard to be a freelancer here.

What do you perceive is your influence on your community?

I’m offering workshops and a professional atmosphere that few others outside of the institutions here are. Through my contacts and relationships, I have built an international experimental space. It’s a form of cultural exchange that brings in totally different styles and personalities and offers rich experiences. I’m feeding a population that wouldn’t normally have that access to emerging or cross-disciplinary artists.

There’s a whole philosophy to my company and workshops. We cook and eat together in addition to dancing together. We shoot videos in the fields and forests around the house. We dance with the horses. We make our own music and sometimes it grows out of our discussions around the table, for example. What I do hooks people up to work together in the future. Projects grow out of what happens in my space in very unexpected ways. It’s a safe and supportive environment. I try to strip away the distractions of competition or judgment. I provide a first step for young artists coming out of the schools. They discover what a kind of “artistic family” atmosphere is all about. What I create is what the people who come and work with me carry away with them.

Photo taken at a meal during a Gaga workshop w/ Tom Weinberger at Oakspace

~~

For more information, visit chenoakspace.wixsite.com/chendance and the Chendance Facebook page.

The post Outside Institutions appeared first on Stance on Dance.

Dark Sky Aerial is an aerial dance theater company based in Flagstaff, Arizona, comprised of dancers, acrobats, actors, and artists working together to construct interactive worlds into which they invite their audience. Abby Chan, one of Dark Sky Aerial’s founders, discusses the impact the company has on its members and community.

This interview is part of Where Dance Is, a series of interviews with dance artists working outside major metropolitan centers.

Photo by Ed Moss

~~

Where do you live and work, and how did you come to be based there? 

I was born and raised in Flagstaff, Arizona. I left for school to become a registered dietitian, and then returned to Flagstaff to open a private practice. I chose to stay for many reasons, one of the main reasons being the access to the outdoors. I love mountain biking, trail running and climbing. Flagstaff is the perfect smallish town, with access to the arts as well as outdoors.

Dark Sky Aerial (DSA) was originally created when Carrie Gaydos, one of the four directors of DSA, received a grant from the Flagstaff Arts Council for the Arts and Sciences. This marked the beginning of DSA, allowing Carrie and the other four directors – myself, Elisa Venezia, Isabele Dove-Robinson and Joan Garcia – to create our first aerial installation, called OPIA. We have varied backgrounds, coming to Flagstaff from San Francisco, Crested Butte (CO), Montana, and Baltimore. Our love of aerial theater is what brought us together.

Since our first show, we have co-collaborated with 20 Moons dance company in Durango, CO, Flem Chen Circus and Fire Theater, and CaZo Dance Company in Phoenix, AZ.

Can you describe your current dance and teaching practice?

I started teaching dance at the age of 15, and this helped pave the way to becoming a teacher as well as educator. Since, I have taught Pilates, ballet, jazz, lyrical, yoga and aerial. Currently, I teach yoga, and choreograph my flows to incorporate dance movements and creative transitions. Due to my current professional demands, yoga is the only movement form that fits in my schedule. Because of this, I have used it to foster a creative outlet that involves the connection with the body, breath and music. As one of the directors of Dark Sky Aerial (DSA), we spend a lot of time of time creating and choreographing vignettes that are woven into our large-scale shows.

DSA’s current dance style and practice is vast. We specialize in aerial dance and harness dance, which is vertical floor dance. Our company members are trained in modern, contemporary, ballet and jazz as well as capoeira and other movement backgrounds. Aerial dance training is also very specific to the apparatus. Our company members train in various apparatuses which include lyra, aerial fabric, straps, pole, trapeze and acro dance. Our home studio, Momentum Aerial, offers classes and training in all these apparatuses. We collaborate with local dance studios including Canyon Movement Company and Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy for floor dance training.

Photo by Gean Shanks

How would you describe the general dance scene where you live? 

Although Flagstaff is a “small town,” the dance scene in Flagstaff is rich in opportunities for modern, contemporary and partnered dance. Flagstaff also has one of the richest aerial communities around. The support and involvement of the community is a beautiful sight.

What do you perceive are some benefits to working where you live? 

The key benefit of working and living in Flagstaff as an artist is the community. Flagstaff has a very supportive and nurturing community of artists and arts lovers. The Flagstaff Arts Council has embraced the performing arts and provided us with many opportunities to showcase our art to the city. For DSA in particular, due to the nature of our site-specific performances, we work closely with local businesses to utilize their spaces. In Flagstaff, aerial dance is a “newer” style of dance, and we have been able to open the minds of Flagstaffians and our community to new possibilities on the floor and in the air.

Photo by Gean Shanks

What are the drawbacks? 

In Flagstaff, the main drawbacks are a lack of rehearsal spaces and limited studio space. Although we do have a performing arts center, it is not ideal for aerial dance nor is it ideal for floor dance performances. We have had to become very creative with the way that we utilize our performance spaces. We have used historic hotels, airplane hangers and other random warehouses for performance space. Our goal in the next several years is to fund the creation of a community performing arts center that would better meet the needs of our company and the community.

What do you perceive your influence has been on the community where you live?

As mentioned before, aerial dance is a newer artform to Flagstaff. We have been able to expand our audience’s minds of what is physically capable as well as tap in deeply to their emotions. Our goal for DSA is for our audience to take a moment from the busy world and tap into our emotions as humans, to take our masks off and give ourselves permission to feel. We have had may positive responses from our community of how they have been moved and inspired to create and become an active participant in the arts.

~~

To learn more, visit www.darkskyaerial.com.

The post Up and Away in Flagstaff appeared first on Stance on Dance.

There’s no denying that different environments – big cities, small towns, countryside retreats, even different geographical areas like foggy coastlines or expansive deserts – create different experiences of pace and space. There’s the rush of millions of people moving in multitudinous directions in large metropolises, versus the trickling traffic of a sparsely travelled road, or even bright sunshine announcing morning versus slow gray gradations announcing day. These are, in part, why we feel attached to different spaces: because of the movements that come to define them.

How we perceive time and space is, of course, central to how we dance. It’s little wonder then that Western culture’s mainstream perception of dance, which seems to be most often associated with big cities, is characterized by agility, swiftness and tricks. The land of the skyscraper demands faster, bolder, sleeker.

But the first dances happened on dirt. They reflected the lifestyles, needs and emotions of the people who created them. That feedback loop still exists, but the conversations examining how our dances are byproducts of our lives, and by extension environments, seem to happen less often.

My purpose in bringing up these considerations is to introduce another round of one of my favorite interview series: Where Dance Is. I relish the opportunity to speak with dance artists living in smaller cities and towns not well-known for dance, who are making rich contributions in their respective scenes. Look for these interviews the next couple weeks on Stance on Dance, and feel free to read some of the archived articles too.

When I first moved from California to New Mexico, I felt I had to justify (mainly to myself) my decision to move away from a big dance scene like San Francisco to a little dance scene like Santa Fe. But as four years have gone by and I’ve become increasingly embedded in the dance communities in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, I’ve noticed my dancing shift for the better.

I have to take much more responsibility for my dance outcomes in New Mexico because, if I don’t, they won’t exist. There is not a large number of classes for me to drop in on, nor a series of choreographers for me to work with, nor an abundance of venues for me to perform in. I never thought of myself as a choreographer in San Francisco, whereas now I have become one out of personal necessity. I’ve also started teaching improvisation classes at the local senior citizen centers. And I’ve gotten into forms like African and contact improv that broaden my practice, which of course would have been great to do in the Bay Area as well, but there were hundreds of classes and workshops to choose from, not just a few each week. I find it wonderfully ironic that I’ve taken on a more diversified practice even though I have less options.

On the other hand, there’s the internet. It used to be said (though perhaps still is) that pursuing dance outside a few major cities just wasn’t viable. The internet is changing all that. Social media and multimedia are shifting the nature of marketing and performance, and streaming makes it possible to rehearse from different countries even. For me personally, running Stance on Dance allows me to feel the pulse of the larger dance world from my sun-lit desk overlooking my garden. I sense that I escape small-town myopia by soliciting interviews and engaging in discussions outside my direct circle.

And let’s not forget the cost of living in places like New York, San Francisco or London. In my 20s, it felt rather glamorous attempting to “make it” in the big city, provided my parents were a call away. It was a time of incredible growth and experience. However, with each new financial responsibility, I felt like a buoy at sea pulled further down into the water, and I wasn’t even trying to buy a house or have kids. How is a dancer supposed to take on ordinary adult responsibilities when the cost of living is prohibitively expensive? It’s as if “dancer” existed outside the realm of social demands and economic timelines.

Finally, in this rambling case for dance anywhere but an urban jungle, I often come across this attitude in my colleagues and peers of “Where should I live that gives me what I want and need?” Of course, that’s always a consideration on some level. But for those of us who have complained about the stereotypes associated with dance, or lamented access, or wished more “non-dancers” knew much or cared about dance, perhaps it’s time to stop working in expensive, exclusive spaces, and ask ourselves instead: “Where and how can I have the most impact?”

If I sound preachy, forgive me. I just really believe that by altering the pace and space of how and where we dance, whole new worlds might open.

My recent performance at a gallery in Santa Fe

~~

The post Pace and Space appeared first on Stance on Dance.

After dancing professionally, Christin Hanna took her passion for ballet back to her hometown of Lake Tahoe in 2008 to start a dance school. In 2013, she launched the Lake Tahoe Dance Festival with her longtime friend, Constantine Baecher. The dance school, festival and a variety of other performances around the year have been integrated under the umbrella of the Lake Tahoe Dance Collective, which is slowly but surely building access to top notch dance in this beautiful mountain town in the Sierra Nevada.

Christin Hanna and Constantine Baecher; photo by Jen Schmidt

~~

How did you find yourself living and working in Lake Tahoe?

Christin: I was born and raised here. There was a ballet class at the rec center I took when I was five, but the teacher moved away. At that point, my parents started taking me to Reno, Nevada for better training, which is an hour drive away. As the years passed, they were eventually driving me an hour each way to dance, seven days a week. This was obviously not something everybody in our community could take advantage of.

When I was looking for my next step after dancing professionally, I knew Lake Tahoe was a place where I couldn’t make more of an impact teaching and presenting dance.

Constantine: I became friends with Christin at a summer intensive at ABT in New York when we were teenagers. We have been very close ever since, and that was about 15 years ago. It was Christin who brought me out to Tahoe, and I fell in love with it the first time I was here. It’s amazingly beautiful. I grew up outside of Boston going to Jacob’s Pillow in the summers, which is a huge dance festival. There’s something about the serenity of Lake Tahoe that reminds me a lot of the Pillow. Since launching the Lake Tahoe Dance Collective, I’ve been coming out each summer to help Christin for three weeks with the festival.

What does your current dance practice look like?

Christin: I started a school here eight years ago, the Tahoe Youth Ballet, and I continue to teach intermediate and advanced levels. Otherwise, I try to get to San Francisco about once a month to check in, take class and see shows. Locally, I teach and stage work, including some of Constantine’s choreography. Mostly I teach classical ballet with an eye toward taking classicism into contemporary choreography. I’ve also started to work more with improvisation in order to get the bunhead out of the dancers.

Constantine: My dance practice is quite different. I work for Carolyn Carlson, a choreographer based in Paris at the National Theatre of Chaillot. I am on tour with her internationally about half the year. Otherwise, I help run an international choreography competition in Copenhagen in the summer. Once I finish here in Tahoe, I’ll go straight to Denmark. I also guest teach around the states. It’s a little of everything: teaching, performing or administering depending on the project. But I think that’s the way the dance world is going now. There’s a lot more upstart dancers who make their own projects happen, and that involves being a jack of all trades. The dance company model, fortunately or unfortunately, is dwindling. There was an era when that was the way to do things, but budgets are getting cut each year, so you increasingly see dance artists pulling up their bootstraps to make things happen.

Constantine Baecher; photo by Max Ruiz

How did you go about programming the Lake Tahoe Dance Festival?

Christin: Our year-round population is happy to come out, but they don’t necessarily know a lot about dance, so I’ve always felt it’s important to show a little of everything stylistically. That way, local audiences can start to see and appreciate the difference between modern dance and classical ballet. We’re fortunate to have an ambassador from the Hawkins company come and demonstrate early American modern dance, which I’ve always felt strongly about representing. We also always include classical ballet in the program; this year we have guest artists doing the “White Swan” pas de deux. Constantine is showing a new work and Christian Burns—an improvisational dance artist in San Francisco—is also coming. So there’s a nice mix, and people walk away forming opinions about what they got to see.

How would you characterize attitudes toward dance in Lake Tahoe?

Christin: We’re a real community of athletes here; we pump out skiers like you wouldn’t believe. There’s something about how everyone here really knows their body—whether they are skiers, runners or hikers—that lends them to respect the technique and talent in dance. There really is an appreciation for the physicality of it.

We started talk-backs, because we found people didn’t know how to talk about dance or even ask questions. We opened up a conversation about how the works made people feel or, if they didn’t like a piece, why that was. Our festival has grown and we’ve seen a tremendous response in the community. Last year, we drew a total of just over 350 people to the festival.

Constantine: This is an area where there’s not a huge amount of opportunity to go out and see quality arts performances. With the rise of dance on reality television, we are showing parents and dance students alternatives to what they are seeing in their living rooms. We try to give them the resources to find out what attracts them in the broader dance world.

Marissa Kamenetsky, Maia Baehr, Sierra Bertini & Bryce Walsh; photo by Ambera Dodson

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced organizing dance in Lake Tahoe?

Christin: There’s no venue here. Since I started, we’ve performed at the high school, the convention center… really any room that doesn’t have columns in it. We’ve settled in at a museum with a large open space often used for weddings. We used to rent portable staging, but last year we fundraised to buy our own, so now we have a stage. We can even do outdoor performances. A friend of mine took over the dilapidated old movie theater in town and renovated it, so we set up our stage in the movie theater for the spring and fall performances. We’ve come a long way in that regard. There are no lighting or stage technicians here; we’ve had to build what we have with every performance.

Constantine: There are always a lot of challenges in putting together an arts festival, no matter the budget or circumstances. It’s the nature of the beast. One of the wonderful things here is that people are so open. I’ve found that in more urban places, there’s a higher chance of finding a certain jadedness or attitude of, “That’s not the kind of dance I’m into.” Here, people approach with an open mind almost everything we bring, and that makes it much easier to get excited and be fearless as a programmer. We don’t have to worry about distancing our public.

What do you perceive your impact has been on the Lake Tahoe community?

Christin: One thing they get is a beautiful evening of dance in a beautiful place. At the end of the day, that’s really the best thing we can offer. As far as the workshops, it’s great to bring in teachers who offer techniques my students otherwise might not get exposure to. My students now have established relationships with dance artists who come summer after summer, and some have even gained the confidence to go away to a summer program. We’ve given them a foundation, and we’ve really tried to hold ourselves to a very high standard despite our challenges.

How do you envision growing the Lake Tahoe Dance Collective in the future?

Christin: We’ve been looking at the concept of a residency program. It’s so inspiring for dance artists to leave the city and enjoy the serenity of Lake Tahoe, so the ultimate dream would be to keep doing what we’re doing but also offer artists a long-term residency. Let’s say an artist was awarded the residency for three years with a month every year to come and work in a studio here. And if something came out of that, then at any time during those three years they’d have a low pressure performance space. There are a lot of residency programs, but many of them expect a finished work at the end.

Constantine: It’s about trying to create a pocket where people could come and live by their artistic ethos by having the time and space to delve into what they don’t know. In New York, I’m a resident choreographer at New Chamber Ballet. There’s always the pressure of critics and high profile people coming, and no space to show a work in progress or a first draft. It’s not a head space to genuinely create in.

We are in the beginning of trying to put together a circuit of like-minded institutions. If we find like-minded administrators, presenters and residency programs, we can help artists get exposure and recognition in addition to what we have to offer.

Christin Hanna and Constantine Baecher; photo by Jen Schmidt

~~

The 4th Annual Lake Tahoe Dance Festival will open Wednesday, July 27 at 6pm with a gala performance, and with main stage performances on Thursday, July 28 at 6pm and Friday, July 29 at 6pm.

Christin Hanna enjoyed a busy freelance career, performing with Oakland Ballet, Ballet NY, and Cincinnati Ballet, and was a founding member of New Chamber Ballet. She initiated a performance and summer workshop with students in her hometown of Tahoe City in 2006. Since her return to Tahoe in 2008, Hanna has produced 12 performances, featuring over 50 works with more than 20 guest artists under the auspices of her school, Tahoe Youth Ballet. She and longtime friend Constantine Baecher started the Lake Tahoe Dance Festival in 2013.

For more information, visit www.laketahoedancecollective.org.

The post Building a Dance Festival in Lake Tahoe appeared first on Stance on Dance.

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT

Sasha Chudacoff lives and works in Crested Butte, Colorado—a small rural mountain town of 2,000 locals at elevation 8,500 ft. Since relocating there six years ago, she has helped to grow two dance non-profits which cumulatively serve over 300 people.

This interview is part of Where Dance Is, a series of interviews with dance artists working in rural places.

~~

How did you come to be based in Crested Butte, Colorado?

I moved to Crested Butte from Berkeley because my partner was living there. This was in 2009. Prior, I was a dance specialist in the Berkeley public school district in three different schools, mainly working in early childhood education centers and elementary schools. Through the P.E. department, I would go into classrooms during the school day, move the chairs aside, and the kiddos would get to dance. The Berkeley School District cut many of its art programs in 2009, and I lost my job. At the time, I was also ready to transition out of the Bay Area to a different kind of community.

When I moved to Crested Butte, I thought I was going to let go of dance and maybe get into yoga or something. I was pleasantly surprised to find people interested in dance; it’s a very physically oriented community. I was also pleasantly surprised to find a preexisting dance community. There was an established dance school that had existed for about 30 years called the Crested Butte School of Dance, and they were open-minded to expanding.

The Crested Butte Dance Collective performs Move the Butte 2013 at the Crested Butte Center for the Arts in Crested Butte, CO. (Photo/Nathan Bilow)

What is your current dance practice?

My main dance practice is facilitating children’s dance education and community dance projects. I work about 30 hours a week, mostly teaching, organizing, doing admin and running various childcare/playgroups. Often I teach up to 15 classes a week, including baby-parent classes all the way through sixth graders. I teach creative dance, improvisation, ballet, jazz, hip hop and aerial dance. Part of that programming is specifically focused toward boys, like all-boys hip hop classes.

The other organization I work for is the Crested Butte Dance Collective. It’s geared for people over the age of 18, and it’s more focused on creativity and performance than on dance education. Within that program, we choreograph and present two productions a year. One of them is a huge community dance production called Move the Butte. This year, I directed it, and we had over 100 dancers involved. We also have a smaller fall production focused on a choreographic theme. The Crested Butte Dance Collective is also where our aerial dance program lives and is growing.

I have also been involved with physically integrated dance. I used to work with a physically integrated dance company for mixed abilities in Oakland. When I moved to Crested Butte, I wanted to continue that work. We partnered with an organization called the Adaptive Sports Center, an outdoor recreation center for folks with disabilities. Through them, we were able to add dance to their services. In fact, every class I teach is an inclusive dance class. For example, I have a six year-old in my hip hop program who is paralyzed from the waist down. I’ve also had dancers with down syndrome and kiddos on the autistic spectrum in my program for over two years.

How would you characterize the general attitude toward dance in Crested Butte?

For a small community, it blows my mind how many people want to dance. We serve over 300 people in a community of 2,000. That’s a lot. There’s such a strong desire and interest. Historically though, dance education here has followed a more traditional model. There are a few people like myself who are busting that open. I’ve gotten to bring in a lot of Bay Area flavor. I study Butoh and Axis Syllabus, and I’ve found people are really open to new ideas around movement and dance. I had no idea people would be interested.

What are the benefits and drawbacks to working in dance in a place like Crested Butte?

I feel very blessed because, by transitioning to a rural community, I have been able to create employment for myself getting to do what I love. I think that’s a benefit to being in a place where dance is not saturated. I was trying to do a lot of the same work in the Bay Area and it was very challenging because there were so many people doing the same thing. That’s a huge benefit to working in a rural community.

The drawback is I miss having a diverse dance community like in the Bay area with many different perspectives and experiences.

When you feel like you need inspiration, how do you seek it out?

The most immediate way I find inspiration is I go outside. In this valley, we are surrounded by mountains that many artists visit to feel creativity and inspiration.

Also, I seek out professional training opportunities outside of the valley. I recently did a workshop in Axis Syllabus with teachers from as far as Berlin, and I attend the aerial dance festival in Boulder every summer. I also love watching and getting inspired by dance via youtube. That’s one of the ways I keep my practice up.

A newer idea I’ve had is to bring to Crested Butte teachers who have inspired me. This summer I am hosting a three-day Butoh workshop with Diego Piñon. I love where I live, but I keep having to leave to get the dance training I want. I realized I could start hosting teachings in Crested Butte because there is such an interest. Diego’s workshop filled immediately and there was a lot of ease in organizing it.

What do you perceive your influence has been in Crested Butte?

I can’t take full responsibility; I’d like to honor Adge Marziano, KT Fotz, Joan Grant and Bobbie Reinhardt, all of whom are influential leaders in building the Crested Butte dance community. The interest and history of dance in the Gunnison valley laid the groundwork for people like me to come in and thrive. My influence has been expanding people’s minds about what dance is and can be. I’ve been able to shake the scene up a little bit with my love for Butoh, somatics, Axis Syllabus and dance/movement therapy. I hope to expand how we think about dance and life.

Any other thoughts?

Dance is for everybody, and everybody can dance. Part of my personal history coming to that conclusion was attending Naropa University for a year and studying dance movement therapy and somatic psychology. I also want to name and appreciate my teachers: Diego Piñon, Frey Faust, Kira Kirsch, Shinichi Iova-Koga and Kazuo Ohno.

The post Reshaping Dance in Crested Butte appeared first on Stance on Dance.

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT

Ponderosa Dance, located in Stolzenhagen, Germany, is an international dance meeting space in the countryside outside of Berlin. It offers artist residencies, studio rentals, workshops, festivals, contact jams and performance venues. Stephanie Maher is one of Ponderosa’s founders, as well as one of the artistic directors of the residency program P.O.R.C.H.

This interview is part of Where Dance Is, a series of interviews with dance artists working in rural places.

~~

What was the genesis of Ponderosa?

It was very organic. I was involved in a cooperative to save the spaces of an old farm. Then we built a dance studio there. And then it was about keeping my connections in San Francisco, where I had danced for 15 years. I kept inviting colleagues and friends, and that started to create the framework for Ponderosa. This was in 2000-2001.

My family and I lived in Berlin to begin with and drove back and forth to Ponderosa. It’s about an hour drive. We did this for about 10 years, because it wasn’t comfortable to live there yet. Then we lived there full-time for eight years. Then we moved to the states for two years while I got my masters at Smith College. We’re in Berlin now, since I have two children in school. We’re back to driving back and forth.

Ponderosa is comprised of a non-profit, a cooperative, and some entities that are privately owned but get shared. Many structures create the economy, and can blend or be separated as need be. It informs how we share things, how we allow people to be there, how we create exchanges, and how we create a business. It’s many-layered.

What is your current dance practice?

It’s strange right now because I think I just became a business woman. I went to Smith, did my masters in choreography for two years, and enjoyed the luxury of just being a student. Then I went head on into creating financial structures for the space. As a result, I haven’t been doing much dancing. I’m very much in between the spaces or moments, facilitating a lot, still teaching a lot, and still very much body-based, which means I think I’m performing all the time. I also do a lot of gardening and being in the dirt. I think of it as a meditative daily practice trying to be aware of everything. How do I walk? How do I dig? How do I talk to people?

We have a summer residency program called P.O.R.C.H., which stands for Ponderosa Ongoing Research Collaborative Happenings. I found curating short workshops to be exhausting with all the coming and going. With P.O.R.C.H., people stay from one to three months. It’s open to people who have gone to college, maybe have been in a company, have done their own work, and are now a bit jaded or confused. In the field of dance, it’s confusing how to make a living. You wonder: Do I stick with it? Do I create work myself? P.O.R.C.H. offers a thread for people to make connections on a global level. It’s also a great example of Do-It-Yourself. There’s one module that’s about body practice and improvisation, another module about creating a daily performance practice, and a third module for creating choreography. When people come, they tend to drop their ideas about what they think dance is and reinvent themselves. The conversations get quite real when you invest enough time. Dance is a hard profession, and we hope to present some good options.

What are the benefits and drawbacks to Ponderosa’s rural location?

We get very little funding. We get about $10,000 a year for our summer festival, but otherwise it works because we’ve made many compromises. We’ve lived in the space, shared our bedrooms, and created work exchanges. Somehow, that has made the place blossom.

Stolzenhagen is full of wonderful people who are not artists or dancers. It’s satisfying being around them even though they don’t all like contemporary dance. They often find it unsettling to watch bodies shake and roll on the floor. But we coexist.

What do you perceive your impact has been, both on the dance community and the local community of Stolzenhagen?

Some people in the local community are very fascinated by what we do and come to the performances. Others don’t want to see any of it. There’s a utopic idea we have about countryside, freedom and the body, but sometimes it’s not the right venue for everybody. Some of the best performances are for two people in a private dialogue.

People come to Ponderosa and have life-changing experiences by running in the rain naked, by being challenged in their capitalistic, consumerist self. People are blown away by the space, and sometimes by the perceived rudeness of Germans, who aren’t too friendly. It’s a culture shock moment. People who come here are stretched to ask how they’re connected to the world, how they approach dance-making in this weird makeshift international community. It’s hard to pinpoint. You feel the bridge or the wall. The misinterpreted moment. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Sometimes we’re not always able to communicate.

But I keep feeling the bliss people experience. The studios and countryside are beautiful. The whole thing builds year after year. I have long-term relationships with the teachers who come. It’s not superficial.

Any other thoughts?

I felt very lonely for a long time performing and touring in places where I didn’t feel connected. I didn’t choose to set up Ponderosa in the East German countryside, but it’s phenomenally beautiful. And I find it fruitful to perform for a small incestuous little audience. The period of exchange is more satisfying than trying to show my work in New York. I don’t need it. It feels too distant somehow. I don’t enjoy the disappearance afterward of myself and/or the situation. It doesn’t have continuity. In Ponderosa, I don’t need a producer or advertiser. I can stay and keep going on so many different levels. In that regard, I consider myself lucky.

~~

Stephanie Maher was based in San Francisco for 15 years, dancing in several collectives, particularly with Jess Curtis, Keith Hennessey and Kathleen Hermesdorf. In 1998, she relocated to Berlin, Germany where she continues to perform, organize, develop and teach. She helped found the Ponderosa Tanz/Land Festival and P.O.R.C.H. in Stolzenhagen, Germany.

To learn more, visit www.ponderosa-dance.de.

The post Ponderosa Dance: An International Rural Retreat appeared first on Stance on Dance.