BY JULIA ALLISSON COST

Note: This article was first published in Stance on Dance’s fall/winter 2024 print issue. To learn more, visit stanceondance.com/print-publication.

It took me six years to create my first picture book, The Girl and the Boat, and the process was an act of choreography. The square of the page is not dissimilar from the square of the stage. A book is a length of time folded up and bound in a cover. My book has no words, so the viewer “reads” my book by studying the characters’ movements and emotions to make meaning of the story.

The idea for my book itself came out of a moment in a dance rehearsal circa 2013, in which I had asked a dancer to sit facing a large wooden toy boat and ask it where it was going. That moment in rehearsal was profound and I went on to paint it as a large oil painting. I pondered that painting for years, imagining it as the start of a story. Indeed, 10 years later, I would go on to recreate that image for the cover of my picture book.

Left: Julia’s oil painting: Abby and the North Star featuring dancer Abby Stopper in a dance rehearsal circa 2013. This painting inspired Julia to create her picture book. Right: The cover of The Girl and the Boat.

Choreographing a book, like a dance, is largely about designing the experience of the viewer. What is unique about a book is that there are infinite possibilities for the point of view of your audience. The below is a sample of the choreographic decisions I pondered in depth during the years of creating the 30 paintings for the book.

The girl is traveling down a pathway on this page and the energy of the scene should feel alive with wonder and curiosity. To achieve this, what is the best shape and direction of the path across the page? What is the color scheme that creates the energy that I am after? How much speed is in her movement, and how do I convey this with the position of her limbs and the way her clothes are moving? How does lighting and time of day enhance the feeling of this scene? If I bring the audience very close to the scene, it can feel intimate and convey inner emotions of the character. If I take the audience far from the character, that can lead to a sense of staring out into the distance, the solitude of a figure in space, and perhaps a feeling of longing. If I set up the scene to look at the characters from overhead, this can be useful for showing their proximity to each other. If I have the audience look at a character from behind her back, the audience can feel unnoticed, and this vantage point can feel peaceful and protected. If I sit the audience on the floor with a character, it can feel cozy and familiar. If I place the audience at the bottom of a hill while a character is traveling towards the audience, it can create anticipation awaiting the approach. If I allow the audience to discover a new character from behind the shoulder of a familiar character, the audience and the familiar character are on the same team. This can be a loyal feeling. If I have taken the audience on an emotional story arc and then reveal a sweeping view over a landscape, this can create the soaring end-of-the-movie feeling when you are ready for the credits to roll. If I surprise the audience with an unexpected epilogue of scenic/ color/ costume change, this may evoke surprise or even laughter, and this can shift the meaning of the entire story. If I zoom in on an object, this can create a feeling of nostalgia. Timing is also important to consider. If I zoom in on a character’s face suddenly, the emotion on the face feels important. I can also lure the audience into a sense of comfort by giving them steady, regular intervals of pacing, so they do not expect it when I slow down radically. This can be handy for making an audience vulnerable to experiencing deeper emotions. Shifting the pacing from hour-by-hour activities to moment-by-moment movements can have a big emotional impact for the thing I am slowing down to reveal. To complicate it further, the composition of the double-page-spread paintings need to work around the centerfold of the book without disrupting the images. And finally, since a western audience is accustomed to reading text left to right, this audience will also likely read paintings in a book in that direction. I must be aware of all these factors and use them to enhance the story.

Early pencil sketches for The Girl and the Boat, circa 2018, before Julia decided to make the book wordless.

For the first several years of working on my book, I carefully considered these questions as I crafted each beat in the story, designing the arc of emotion in sketches, and breaking down the story into the precise moments like a stop motion movie. Eventually, it came time to transform these sketches into finished paintings. I painted the first 10 pages in watercolor, but I was not satisfied. The children I was drawing from my head were sweet but felt flat and simplistic compared to how I knew I could paint them if I could study real bodies with light and shadow pouring across them. I wanted to be able to observe children kneeling, skipping, walking, turning, running, from overhead, from the bottom of a hill, laughing, holding back tears, etc. I knew that painting observationally would be the best way to achieve the level of realism I wanted in this book. I decided to paint the illustrations in oil on canvas, my favorite medium, and the one in which I knew I had the most ability to create richly realistic scenes.

Left: Model Tehya Artzi performs a scene in costume in Julia’s garden. Right: The resulting oil painting in the book.

At this juncture, I leaned even more into every skill I had learned from my performing arts background. Casting director: I reached out to two friends whose daughters looked like the girls I was drawing from my head. They sent me headshots and I pinned those to mood boards I was developing for each page. Costume and fabric designer: I got the girls’ measurements, searched high and low to find the color of fabrics and style of dress patterns that I had been drawing, and then sewed costumes. I sewed the costumes for the final scene with my own fabrics featuring my paintings. Location scout: I scoured Maui for places to stage every scene. I climbed on the roof, laid at the bottom of hills, identified rooms and gardens that I could transform into sets, and determined where precisely I should perch myself in each spot to get the best point of view. Lighting Designer: I studied the sun and shadows in each location at different times of day and planned when to stage the scenes accordingly. Prop master: I sewed a patchwork quilt, crafted set pieces, built tiny props, and sourced many objects for every set to be able to paint it all in vivid detail. Choreographer and Artistic Director: from May 2021 until Jan 2022, I did a series of photoshoots in which my amazing child models showed up in costume to perform the story in all the locations. My years of sketching, planning, and creating every detail finally came together in real life. During these shoots, I described the emotional experience of each scene to my models, designing different physical and mental prompts for them until their performances felt natural and realistic. I took hundreds of photographs for every scene to capture the expressions and movements of the children. And then finally, I prepared for the massive task of painting it all. I was relieved to have so many wonderful reference photos captured of the children’s facial expressions, clothing, and bodies in movement so I could relax about how they were rapidly growing into teenagers, faster than I could paint this book. Painter: from 2021 to 2023, I painted the 30 finished oil paintings. Each piece took me weeks or months, depending on the size and complexity. I painted them in order of appearance so that I would be aware of continuity from scene to scene. As I finished them, I hung them on the wall beside my easel until the canvases filled a space larger than 6 ft. x 6 ft.: a mural’s worth of tiny detailed brushstrokes. Early in the process, I thought I would include text in the book, but as I painted, I realized you could read the book in infinitely more ways if you could explore a page for the duration of your curiosity, instead of the duration of a sentence. I am so happy that my book is wordless. Like watching a dance, the scenes envelop the reader with visual wonder, allowing for silence and space to explore. With each reading the viewer may see the paintings in a completely new way.

Julia in her studio circa fall of 2022, working on the 30 oil paintings for the book. Some of the props and costumes she sewed are in the background.

Now, The Girl and the Boat is out in the world, and I have the amazing pleasure of watching person after person opening the book, studying the figures in the paintings, reading their own tale, and sometimes gasping and stepping backwards with tears in their eyes as they watch the scenes unfold. I can’t believe I made a piece of choreography that lives within the covers of a book, ready to play out whenever someone opens it.

Huge thanks to my models, Tehya Artzi and Kaia Coon, and their families who were so supportive of this years-long project.

L to R: Tehya Artzi and Kaia Coon (models for the book), Julia Cost, and Farah Coon (Kaia’s sister). The kids are wearing costumes from the book, and Julia is wearing a fabric based on a painting in the book. Photo by Ilan Artzi.

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You can find The Girl and the Boat at juliacost.com and in a growing list of stores.

Julia Allisson Cost is a Maui-born-and-raised painter, textile designer, and picture book author. Learn more at juliacost.com and @juliaallissoncost.

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I’ve been running Stance on Dance as an online publication for 12 years and publishing a print edition for three years now. In that time, I have never tired of discovering new corners of the dance world. I am honored to continue that vein in this issue.

In these pages, you’ll discover more of dance’s incredible richness as a practice and form of expression: Snowflake Calvert describes Queering Cultural Forms, a program of the Queering Dance Festival that provides a platform where traditional cultural dances are explored and enriched through a queer lens. Julia Allisson Cost details the process of painting a picture book, and how she experienced the process as similar to choreographing. Bonnie Eissner profiles Bobby “Pocket” Horner, a street-dancer turned Broadway star who asks difficult and important questions about the nature of working on Broadway. Erin Malley shares the ways in which the Argentine tango world is in flux after the pandemic. Jessie Nowak reflects on the agony of artmaking as she created the sci-fi dance film Emerging. And Donna Schoenherr makes the point for better aging in dance opportunities through her work at Ballet4Life and the nonprofit Move into Wellbeing®.

Additionally, I interviewed Zazel-Chavah O’Garra, director of ZCO/Dance Project, about how her brain tumor surgery catalyzed her passion for integrating dancers with disabilities, and Vicky Holt Takamine, master hula teacher of Pua Aliʻi ʻIlima and the executive director of PAʻI Foundation, about how she is working to preserve and perpetuate native Hawaiian arts and cultural traditions for future generations. Finally, Erica Wilson renders raw and surrealist moments in dance in her quest to capture gesture and flow.

I learn something new every time I edit a story or interview a dance artist, and I feel I’m just getting started understanding the breadth and depth of this field. If you have a stance on dance, please get in touch at emmaly@stanceondance.com. I look forward to learning from you too!

GET YOUR COPY OF THE Fall/Winter 2024 PRINT ISSUE NOW!

Illustration by Erica Wilson

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“Betty Ann’s Hula” (2014), Oil on canvas, 16″ x 12″

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“Doorways, Frigiliana” (2013), Oil on canvas, 30″ x 40″

This painting pictures a moment of choreographic process from the making of a dance film in the village of Frigiliana, Spain.

Dancers left to right: Amy Quanbeck, Madeline Seers, Rebecca Levy

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“Maya” (2008), Oil on canvas, 24″ x 11″

Picturing Maya Guice

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Julia Allisson Cost was born and raised in upcountry Maui, Hawai’i by a family of many artists. She is passionate about making anything by hand, in particular: capturing the world on canvas through painting, transforming her paintings into textile designs, and the physical and emotive experience of dance and choreography. She earned a double BA in Studio Art and Dance from Scripps College and a MFA in Dance from University of California, Irvine. She is a painter, textile designer, sewist, dancer, and maker of all kinds. See her work at juliacost.com.

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Happy 11^th birthday to Stance on Dance! When I started Stance on Dance in 2012, I had no idea I’d be continuing it more than a decade later, or that it would grow into its present iteration as a nonprofit and print publication. As Stance on Dance reaches its third print issue, I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to continue publishing the perspectives of myriad dance artists and sharing those perspectives with Stance on Dance’s donors as well as with students of dance around the country. I’m honored to be able to send a copy of each issue to folks who donate at least $25 a year to support Stance on Dance’s arts journalism nonprofit.

The spring/summer 2023 print issue features movement artist breana’s poignant poem about their history in ballet and subsequent trauma; Liz Duran Boubion’s meditation on how her residency in the desert has influenced her thoughts on death; Julia Cost’s sumptuous paintings of people in motion; Micaela Gardner’s reflections on making Resuenen, an interpretive dance film that explores the US-Mexico border; Mary Elizabeth Lenahan’s story of former dancer Adelaide and her son, Preston, who is on the autism spectrum and dances with Dance Express; Shannon Leypoldt’s intriguing look at the link between artistic practice and the menstrual cycle; Kevin O’Connor’s ode to his “dancestor” Billy and his suggestions for scores to improvise with one’s ancestors; and longtime dance teacher Diana Turner-Forte’s account of her experience facilitating a group of students with intellectual disabilities. This issue also includes my interviews with Maggie Bridger, a choreographer and PhD candidate who explores the relationship between pain, dance, and disability; and Wonyoung Kim, a choreographer, dancer, and lawyer who views choreography as metaphorically similar to law. If you’d like to receive a copy, please consider donating to Stance on Dance. Otherwise, all the articles and interviews will eventually be published online and will be free and accessible to anyone interested.

A big component of Stance on Dance is to not only create a platform for dance writers but also to send free copies of Stance on Dance to colleges and other dance learning spaces with the hope that the next generation of dance artists will become excited by the possibilities of dance journalism. To date, Stance on Dance has sent free copies to 20 dance programs around the country. If you work with a college dance program or other dance learning space and are interested in receiving free copies of Stance on Dance, please reach out to me at emmaly@stanceondance.com. And if you’re reading this and thinking, “I have a stance on dance!” don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Cover by Julia Cost
“Betty Ann’s Hula” (2014)
Oil on canvas, 16” x 12”

The post Supporting and Spreading Dance Journalism appeared first on Stance on Dance.

The Fall/Winter 2024 print issue features the following:

Snowflake Calvert describes Queering Cultural Forms, a program of the Queering Dance Festival that provides a platform where traditional cultural dances are explored and enriched through a queer lens. Julia Allisson Cost details the process of painting a picture book, and how she experienced the process as similar to choreographing. Bonnie Eissner profiles Bobby “Pocket” Horner, a street-dancer turned Broadway star who asks difficult and important questions about the nature of working on Broadway. Erin Malley shares the ways in which the Argentine tango world is in flux after the pandemic. Jessie Nowak reflects on the agony of artmaking as she created the sci-fi dance film Emerging. And Donna Schoenherr makes the point for better aging in dance opportunities through her work at Ballet4Life and the nonprofit Move into Wellbeing®.

Additionally, Emmaly Wiederholt interviewed Zazel-Chavah O’Garra, director of ZCO/Dance Project, about how her brain tumor surgery catalyzed her passion for integrating dancers with disabilities, and Vicky Holt Takamine, master hula teacher of Pua Aliʻi ʻIlima and the executive director of PAʻI Foundation, about how she is working to preserve and perpetuate native Hawaiian arts and cultural traditions for future generations. Finally, visual artist Erica Wilson renders raw and surrealist moments in dance in her quest to capture gesture and flow.

If you donate $25 or more to support dance journalism, you will receive two issues of Stance on Dance’s print publication. Stance on Dance is a 501c3 and your donation is tax-deductible.

Get your copy now!

We will only be able to ship our print publication to readers within the United States. International donors will recieve a PDF of the print publication. However, all content in our print publications is eventually made available online. Follow us on  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn to stay up to date on all the stances on dance!

Stance on Dance sends free copies of our twice-a-year print publication to college dance programs and other dance learning spaces. To date, we have partnered with dance faculty at Antioch University New England, Arizona State University, A:shiwi College, Austin Community College, Bennington College, California State University East Bay, California State University Long Beach, Colorado State University, Cuyahoga Community College, Davidson College, Florida International University, Keene State College, Kent State University, Loyola University Chicago, Old Dominion University, Ohio State University, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, Skidmore College, Sonoma State University, Texas Christian University, Texas State University, Texas Tech University, University of Akron, University of Arizona, University of California Irvine, University of California San Diego, University of Florida, University of Illinois Chicago, University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign, University of Kansas, University of Maryland, University of Nevada, Reno, University of New Mexico, University of Richmond, University of San Francisco, University of Silicon Andhra, University of South Florida, University of Southern Mississippi, University of Utah, University of Washington, and Utah Valley University. If you work in a dance department or other dance learning spaces and would like to learn more about this program, email emmaly@stanceondance.com.

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Editorial Note: For the past nine years, Stance on Dance has asked a variety of dance artists at different points in their careers what “making it” means to them. Please join us in looking at what “making it” means as a dancer, artist, and human.

What does being a dancer/ “making it” as a dancer mean? It keeps meaning different things as I get older. Here’s my journey of continuing to find new answers to that question. 

Age 3-8: Being a dancer seemed like being the ballerina in my music box; some other rarefied realm of glory and nothing but dance, tucked outside the mayhem of regular life. My memories are a whirlwind of ballet, the smell of old buildings with dusty floors, the Lycra, lace, changing rooms, pianos tinkling, and trying very hard to be good, to be better, to master the art. I thought being a dancer was a fairytale dream. 

Age 8-10: The royal academy of dance training of my formative years started to feel stifling, and my eye was drawn to the painted sets and wild costumes of the drama classes. I quit dance and dove headlong into acting, inhaling the funny language of Shakespearian scripts, magical characters, and the sacred black box theater where stories of all sorts came alive. I thought being a dancer was a prison of strict rules.

Age 11: Seeing the development of physical prowess in my former dancer friends led me into a flood of regret when I realized I had three years of training to catch up on. The desire to become physically masterful as a dancer consumed me. I dove into dance at my new middle school and worked so hard it became all I thought about. I thought being a dancer was being good at steps.

Age 12-16: My whole focus revolved about dance. I slipped into the school theater every lunch break to just submerge in the scent of that dusty sacred space and do my homework from the seats in the theater, looking out at the stage with wonder and thrill. I worked so hard that I was soon the youngest kid dancing with the highest level of the program, but it wasn’t enough; I knew I was still behind. I thought being a dancer was the coolest thing in the world.

Age 17: I quit the dance program at my school and enrolled in the local arts academy whose classes were more challenging and technical. I flailed but worked my butt off to catch up. I auditioned for a prestigious summer intensive and somehow got in though I was technically weak. I struggled throughout that program but was obsessed with the challenge. I thought being a dancer was incredibly hard and tantalizingly far out of reach.

Age 18: I went off to college on the east coast and was unprepared for living that far from my island home. I dove into the college dance program as my solace. The familiar rigor of the ballet barre and the hours of hard rehearsals got me through that semester until I dropped out at winter break in a mental tailspin. Being a dancer was the only place I felt comfortable. 

Age 19: I began a humbling period living back at home as a college drop-out after being an overachieving top student my whole life. It was an identity crisis. I dove back into dance at my local academy, and it gave me joy and community while I sorted out how to get myself back into college. Being a dancer was my family. 

Age 19-21: I enrolled in a new college on the west coast. I didn’t know what to study; I just didn’t want to waste this chance. I started an Art BA, meanwhile taking as many dance classes as I could and being cast in many concert pieces. As I dragged myself back to my dormitory every night in my sweaty leotard and plopped down to do homework, my roommate suggested that I seemed overjoyed spending so much time dancing, and that I could major in what I loved. The next morning, I stamped the forms to add a Dance Major. The choreography classes obsessed me. By junior year I was a studio rat, hanging around in the dance building every vacant period to dream up choreographic ideas to create on my fellow dancer friends. By senior year my passion was creating choreographic works, guiding dancers through processes, and inventing moving pictures for the stage. I thought being a dancer was the deepest way for me to express ideas and connect with and empower others.

Age 22-24: I was accepted on a full ride to a graduate program to get an MFA in Dance. Those two years were a whirlwind of finding my voice and empowering fellow dancers through the choreographic processes and pieces I created. I was collaborating not only with super talented dancers but also set designers, lighting designers, and composers to create the worlds of the works I imagined. It was insanely all-consuming and it was heaven. I thought my purpose in life was to empower other dancers through growth-provoking choreographic experiences and to move audiences with the realness of what was happening on stage. 

Age 24-26: I moved to a big city and was creating choreography with friends in their living rooms and through residencies at an underground theater. I was struggling to earn money, to pay rent, and to gather dancers together in the sprawling world of the city. I was finding myself unable to create choreographic work I truly believed in while having such a hard time just getting by. After an amazing choreographic residency that culminated in performing my work at a beautiful big-name theater, I made the painful decision to quit choreographing. I turned all my focus to growing my art career and surviving financially. I was losing sight of how to develop rich choreographic ideas with meaning to dancers and audiences as I struggled with the reality of being an adult. Dance felt like the furthest thing from practical.

Age 26-30: I worked like a maniac on my freelance art career and took up running, not dancing at all. I trained for years and then ran a marathon as my physical challenge. I developed a painting career and supplemented that income with work as a prop stylist, art teacher, and childcare professional. Being a dancer or a choreographer was a distant dream.

Age 30-31: I moved home to Maui. A few months later I saw a dance concert and I almost jumped out of my seat with the desire to dance. I took one class with the company and it was all still in me; the coordination, the groove, the joy, the feeling of being in love with the experience of my physical form in space and time. I was rusty, but it was all there. I felt healed by the very first class. I remembered that dancing is part of who I am and it is beyond all logic or explanation. 

Age 31-33: I trained fanatically to get back in dance shape, taking weekly ballet and modern classes for the first time in nearly 10 years. The sweat and the challenge made me feel madly alive in ways I had forgotten. I discovered my strength, remembered what it is to be in love with life through dancing, made an entirely new community of friends, and found my beauty. I inhabited my body with more supreme peace than I ever had. I began to teach classes and choreograph bits of work, inhabiting these roles with new purpose and clarity. Soon I was cast in a concert and performing a solo, feeling utter comfort in front of so many witnesses. By February 2020 I was performing in front of a crowd of nearly 3,800 people, and the grounding and freedom I felt in the middle of that sea of chaos was unbelievable. I found myself again by dancing. 

Pandemic March 2020-present: As COVID hit, I promptly quit dancing to pour myself into keeping my family’s business alive. On top of all that, I threw all my focus into growing my art career. I launched my own original textile business in May 2021, designing my paintings into fabric and selling yardage to clients all over the world who are transforming my paintings into wearable art. I am promoting my fabric with photos and videos of myself wearing it, and often I am dancing. My dancing body has become a vessel for sharing my new art with the world. I feel more integrated than ever.

I know now that I have always been connected to dance, though it continues to take new shapes all the time. It is always there, and it always will be. I can’t wait to see what’s next.

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Julia Allisson Cost was born, raised, and currently resides in upcountry Maui, Hawai’i. She comes from a family of many artists. She is a painter, textile designer, sewist, and dancer. See her work at juliacost.com.

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I’m here to say: I don’t really know what contemporary dance is. “Contemporary” means new, so therefore contemporary dance must be relatively new choreography or composition. Most of us who have pursued dance (in almost any genre) have at some point encountered the word “contemporary” used in relation to our dancing. Being a performance art, it’s only appropriate that dance is often new.

However, the term “contemporary dance” seems to connote something beyond simply “new” dance. It seems to connote a genre within dance: there are ballet dancers, hula dancers, tap dancers, contemporary dancers, etc. It is used as a distinguishing term. But what exactly makes a contemporary dancer?

I am guilty of hypocrisy here. When meeting someone new who asks what kind of dance I do, I’ve more than once answered, “Contemporary dance,” knowing that “ballet” would invite unwanted stereotypes, and saying, “I study several different forms and approaches with the intent of pushing what dance can be” sounds obscure. Answering “contemporary dance” feels like a compromise, although I recognize in that instance I’m copping out.

The best insight I’ve found into what contemporary dance entails came when I attended “Pichet Klunchun and Myself” by Jerome Bel in San Francisco in 2009. Pichet Klunchun is a traditional Thai dancer and Jerome Bel is an out-of-the-box French choreographer. The show consisted of a staged conversation between the two. I’ve since acquired a video of the performance, and here is what Jerome Bel told Pichet Klunchun on the subject of contemporary dance:

“What I’m doing belongs to a little community in the West called the contemporary arts. I’m working in a field called contemporary dance, which belongs in the contemporary arts. In the contemporary arts you have dance, music, theater, visual art, films. In this community, you have three groups. First: the artist. The contemporary artist’s work is to create new forms to represent the reality of today. But, as our reality of today is different than the realities of before, he or she needs to find some new forms. To find new forms is difficult. You cannot use old forms. So you need to do research.

“Research takes time. And you need to eat. You need money. Here is the second group: the government. Some people in the government decide to save a little amount of money for the contemporary arts. They give the money to the contemporary artist for them to make the research to try to find some new forms. [Don’t we wish!] But, when they give the money, they don’t know what the artist will do. The artist doesn’t know what she or he will do. Otherwise they are not contemporary artists. When you are a contemporary artist, you don’t know what you are doing. That’s why you have to do research.

“The third group is the audience. When the audience buys a ticket for a contemporary dance performance, they don’t know what they will see. That’s why I don’t understand when they ask for their money back. I didn’t promise anything. I’m a contemporary artist. I don’t know what I’m doing. People come and respond, and then I start to understand better what I’ve done.”

Hearing this in 2009 for the first time was an “Aha” moment. It shifted the paradigm for me: as dance artists, we can be more than automatons dutifully performing repertoire. We can do research to help find representations of our reality. This way of working feels…honest. At least in theory.

For the next several weeks, Stance on Dance is featuring the voices of contemporary dance artists across the country. I ask them to describe contemporary dance in layman’s terms, how one trains in it, how it evolved, and what the future of contemporary dance looks like.

I wrote that doing contemporary dance research feels honest in theory because I worry that a lot of contemporary dance forgets it’s doing research. Often, when I see contemporary dance shows, they seem to be shamelessly attempting to please the audience, unabashedly imitating what other dance artists have already achieved success doing, or isolating the audience to boredom. The third, in my opinion, is by far the lesser sin of the three. Part of my motivation in interviewing contemporary dance artists is to suss out where these problematic detours from honest research come from.

I’ll leave you with one more quote. The painter Ran Ortner said: “Art is not a skill contest, nor an innovation contest. Art is an honesty contest. If we can be precisely who we are, in the most intimate and candid and courageous way, we will start to connect to the universal.”

In thinking of doing contemporary dance research to represent the realities of today, honesty seems a pretty good place to start.

The post Researching Contemporary Dance appeared first on Stance on Dance.

Janet Lemon Williams is a dancer, academic, movement therapist and teacher in Guelph, Canada. Chatting with her was like traversing a landscape. She had opinions on just about everything; we talked for a good hour. Below are some snippets from our conversation.

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Tell me a little about yourself and what you do through dance and movement therapy?

I got my Masters in Dance Therapy in 1991 from Antioch New England in New Hampshire. I did my dance therapy internship at Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital in San Francisco, which is part of UCSF. I also did an internship in Vermont at Austine School for the Deaf. After I graduated, I worked in mental health with the deaf and with women in rehab. I then left mental health and went back to school and got my Bachelors of Education so I could teach in the schools. So between 1994 and 1999, I was doing that and running a dance company for young women – the Horizontal Dance Co.

I was also trying my hand at private practice, but initially I found it difficult. Later on, after I completed other training in Alexander Technique, Pilates, fascial work and anatomy, I developed a movement education model where I am comfortable. I work with people on their relationship with gravity instead of the psychotherapeutic model. Psychotherapy tends to focus on the major relationship in life – like parents, lovers, spouses and children – whereas I work with our relationship with the planet. I work with space, time and effort in order to recognize patterns and help people be aware of themselves on a very nuanced level so they can make changes in how they move through space and time.

My work is about each person’s own relationship with themselves via their body. I believe strongly that a person’s relationship with gravity is more pivotal than any other. If you have issues with your parents, I’m not saying those aren’t important but, ultimately, whether you can literally stand your ground and find your center is going to make you move through life more effectively, and perhaps face those other issues.

I’m back at school now, so I’m not working in private practice much, but I still apply the same concepts to the movement classes I teach. I’m currently working on my PhD in Dance Studies at York University in Toronto. One of my areas of research is: what is embodiment? What is dance therapy? My dissertation is going to challenge the current norm of what that is, particularly how it’s defined by the American Dance Therapy Association. Canada is differently laid out as a country than the U.S., so I argue that the American model doesn’t work for us since we don’t have 350 million people. We have 35 million people, and a lot more space. So I’m looking at what a Canadian model for dance therapy would look like. I’m investigating Australia’s model, for instance.

I’d like to push the envelope of what the American Dance Therapy Association recognizes as dance therapy. The definition as it now stands centers on the psychotherapeutic use of movement. There’s money in psychology and psychiatry, so it was a way for dance therapy to attach itself. Music therapy, art therapy and drama therapy have done the same, but they’ve had more successful growth, particularly in music and art.

Janet’s thoughts regarding dance training:

Dancers have been told to hold their bodies the way they were trained, so when I work specifically with dancers it’s a little different because there’s a strong rehearsed set of movements. We all have our preferred movements, but those of us with a lot of training in a particular set of movements can have a strong attachment to the identity that goes along with that movement repertoire. Helping people change that, whether they’re athletes or not, can be emotional. I find that people who are particularly well-trained may have good awareness, but perhaps have more to shed. For people without training in movement, it’s all new, so I experience less resistance – but that’s not a hard and fast rule.

There’s a balance though to working with body awareness with dancers. As a dancer and choreographer, I believe those rehearsed movements are critical to success. When I was training dancers, I told them to take ballet because ballet is the language and the nomenclature, the meat and potatoes of Western dance. You don’t have to agree with it or even use it all the time, but you have to know it. There’s a strength and comprehension of lift and being centered that comes with ballet training. It’s the closest we’re going to get to a universal language in Western professional dance.

On understanding one’s relationship to gravity:

As a dance therapist, the most common wall I come up against in the common person, as opposed to a dancer, is they think they must collapse into gravity. That they can’t possibly win and so they may as well give up. Dancers, on the other hand, feel the opposite, but the wording is still negative. They think they have to defy gravity. In both scenarios, there’s a negative relationship with gravity that is promoted throughout advertising, from getting Botox to getting a boob job and fitness aparati — it’s all about fighting gravity. But no one is going to win against gravity. If you’re beating a cosmic force, I want to know how you’re doing it. Gravity gives us our shape and form; it allows me to be separate from you. It’s what gives us the sense of our feet on the ground. We need it all the time, so our relationship needs to be framed in a positive. It’s a matter of language. Instead of “defying,” we can say “I’m working with…” or “I’m tuning into…”

On aging as a dancer:

You have to approach aging with the idea of change, and that change is positive. I think that’s difficult because of the Western dance model that says: if you’re not in a dance company, you’re not a real dancer. The dance world is full of those kinds of unspoken rules. While with aging comes pain and new limitations, there is a smaller playing field. There are less and less of us – and we know we’re not going to be in a company, so a lot of stress goes away.

For example, I like to go to beginner ballet classes because then I don’t feel like I have to work on the fancy stuff. I can focus on the plie and the tendu, which is what it’s all about. If I go to fast, I’ll hurt myself. As I age, it becomes more about the technique in my body than to keep up with the girl in front of me.

On dance’s cultural capital:

Dance scholarship and research suffers the same way dance therapy does – in fact, anything to do with dance seems to suffer from a real insecurity. There seems to be a complex around trying to prove we’re worthy all the time. As a dancer, I always feel like dance is at the bottom of the grant-getting barrel. Music, theater and art always seem easier to promote than dance. Many people say they can’t paint but enjoy art. Most of us know nothing about the film creation process, but we all watch movies and have opinions about it because our culture is steeped in film and television. With dance it’s different – it’s as my husband tells me — he doesn’t have the vocabulary and doesn’t know what’s going on in contemporary dance. And ballet still suffers from a feminine mystique that many the man – no matter how feminist — does not wish to engage with. The same insecurity is seen in academia as well.

On dance in academia:

In one of my classes for my PhD coursework requirement, we read an article where dance scholars assert that dance is a form of research in itself. It’s not something you research; it’s the way to research. We’re trying to argue for that, but it’s really hard because we work against ourselves. We hear our professors say, “Okay, now I need you to talk about this.” It seems backward to me that even in a dance PhD program, written/spoken discourse is prioritized over non-verbal discourse. This is the constant tension, whether you’re a dance academic, dancer, choreographer, teacher, body worker or dance therapist: the professions inform us about things that can’t necessarily be articulated; movement is not really translatable. And if it isn’t translatable, then it can’t be worth anything in our dualistic culture that prioritizes mind over body. Or is it? We end up questioning ourselves. Are we on the cutting edge of something? Or is movement/dance too primordial, too primitive, and too representative of a moment in evolution after the humanoid but before the written word. I believe we in the Western dance world – no matter which faction – all have to face this conundrum, and I suggest the more we can help each other with it the more we can figure it out. Get out of our silos and visit each other’s worlds without judgement.

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For as long as I’ve danced (since I was five), I’ve wrestled with a feeling of invalidity when I tell people I’m a dancer. Now that I work fulltime as a writer, I feel even more so like I defend myself against being seen as a devoted hobbyist. I know this is an utterly stupid feeling, and wholly self-enforced. But there’s some sort of unspoken cultural validity that comes from working within the constructs of a well-known institution, and when you don’t have that institution, there’s a lot of explaining that necessarily comes with the simple statement, “I’m a dancer.”

After piecing together the manuscript for the Dancing Over 50 book, I’ve come to question whether that institutional construct is ever an accurate barometer of validity. Although many of the dancers I interviewed had danced in highly regarded companies, a good number hadn’t and, furthermore, even those who had danced in fulltime companies eventually found themselves at a place in their lives when they weren’t interested in auditioning for a conventional dance job, but indeed weren’t done dancing.

I think being a dancer has nothing to do with any badge of employment given by a major institution, but with the quiet work of cultivating a personal practice over the long run. It’s that act of still going through the motions when there is nothing obvious to be gained by it that reinforces one’s devotion to the art form. Granted, economic stability attained in the field of dance is a very rare gift, and certainly something to be proud of. But even in those cases, it never lasts forever, and it seems to me a very narrow definition of “dancer” to equate the title with a contract, especially considering the breadth and depth of dance in the course of human history.

So for the month of January, I’m including on Stance on Dance the voices of artists who are supporting their own dance craft from start to finish. They are their own generators. They produce and perform in their own work, and find ways to subsidize their art through a mixture of ingenuity and frugality.

For my part, I know this feeling of needing to validate my worth as a dancer is (a) stupid, and (b) undermines the validity of other dance artists whom I completely respect and admire but who happen to work outside the parameters of major institutions. So I’m going to get over it.

I’m a dancer. Often, I dance for myself. Other times, I might dance for a choreographer, but only if I respect the work. I pursue what interests me, and don’t pursue what doesn’t interest me. I have ample training and performance experiences from which to draw upon in making those decisions for myself. These days, I spend more money on my dance practice than I make from it. I’m totally fine with that for now. I don’t know what the future holds. It might bring institutional support, or it might not. It doesn’t alter my devotion to the art form. I dance because I can’t not and, since it’s a fairly relegated art form in mainstream media, and a particularly ephemeral art form on top of that, any success or failure I perceive is a little blip in the greater human history of people dancing. I’m honored to be a part of that blip.

For all of us who claim the title of “dancer,” may the motivation to keep the flame lit only waver as we deem necessary, but never because someone higher up gave us validity or, for that matter, took it away.

The post Rethinking “I’m A Dancer” appeared first on Stance on Dance.

POETRY AND ARTWORK BY JULIA COST

The way she fits.
The perfection.
Settled on my forearm, my hand supporting her thigh.
Her face tucked under my chin. Her breath gentle on my neck. My cheek
against her forehead. Her ear on my chest. My arm laced under hers,
palm cupping the dome of her sweet sweet head.
This
To just stay like this.

Julia Cost was born and raised Maui, Hawaii in a family of artists. She went on to earn a double BA in Studio Art and Dance from Scripps College and a MFA in Dance from University of California, Irvine. Since 2011, Julia has resided in Berkeley, CA. She has painted professionally since 2005 and works as a freelance graphic designer and art teacher as well as co-artistic director and choreographer for Nine Shards, a Bay Area based dance theater collective.  For more on her artwork, visit cargocollective.com/juliacost.

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