Happy Monday Framers!  Today we are flashing back to the VERY FIRST EVER MFA Monday Column.  Enjoy!!

Confessions of an MFA: Day 1

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about connections in dance and the dance community.  I’ve come to the conclusion that, really, the relationship between a dancer and company, a teacher and school, an artist and product, all follow the path of a romance.  First, there’s a honeymoon phase – everything is exciting and new, every word spoken is brilliant, every action is appealing.  Then you stumble upon your first fight.  Suddenly, those parts that were once so endearing are now incredibly irritating and need to change right now.  Finally, you settle into a comfort with each other, knowing and accepting the quirks and, hopefully, making each other a little bit better.

Such has been the nature of my relationship with dance.  It feels as though there are constantly parts of me in each phase of the relationship, continuously cycling between fighting with each other and comforting each other.  We break up and get back together.  It’s a messy and confusing relationship, and perhaps not always the most healthy one.  But when it’s good, it’s so good, and so I can’t let it go.

About six months ago, I made a decision that, many days, feels like the craziest one I have ever made.  Without a job or a plan in place, I packed up an oversized Uhaul, attached my car to the hitch, and drove across six state lines to move from the Bay Area to Denver, Colorado.

For many people, this would be a big deal, you probably should have done it sooner situation.  For me, the queen of planning, organizing, and budgeting, this was an epic, earth shattering life change, one which I did not handle particularly gracefully.  There was a great deal of time spent crying into a blanket, staring longing at a bottle of wine and realizing it was only 1 pm on a Tuesday, and so opening it was not acceptable.  I think I probably said “I’m getting on a plane back home tomorrow!” at least ten times.

In this haze of tears and wine (although it didn’t get opened at 1 pm, it certainly was opened eventually), I started to reflect on what exactly it was that I was missing so intensely.  Of course I missed my friends and family and knowing my way around.  But what truly lay at the core of my sadness was that I felt so alone.  I no longer had a community of any kind that I belonged to, and that was something I hadn’t ever experienced.

As an artist, our community is my inspiration.  The work that my friends, colleagues, and mentors are doing is what motivates me to do the work that I am doing.  Without being a part of that community in a new city, I felt completely devoid of stimulation, devoid of creativity.  I felt alone with my tumultuous relationship with dance.

I came to the realization that the dance community is my web of well-being.  They are the people that I go to when I want to sing the praises of dance and when I need to vent on how dance has treated me.  They are, for lack of a better description, my girlfriends.  And even though our community may not always be in the honeymoon phase, I think we always reach a place of comfort and support.

Slowly, as the months have passed, I am starting to find my dance community here.  It’s certainly not something that can be forced, but something that I can keep trying to build and develop.  It’s a new relationship and I just hope to hold off our first fight for as long as possible.

Mary Grimes is a dancer, choreographer, writer, teacher, and working artist living in the Bay Area.  Since receiving her MFA in Performance and Choreography from Mills College, she has started working as a dance writer and critique, writing for such magazines as Dance and Dance Studio Life.  She has had to opportunity to work with accomplished choreographers including Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, Molissa Fenley, and Marc Bamuthi Joseph.  Her choreographer has been presented nationally.  In the future, Mary hopes to continue her work as a dance writer and is excited to see where this path will take her.

Happy Monday morning, Framers!  This is the final installment from Dance Source Houston‘s Stephanie Todd Wong.  They just launched a new website, so after you read this fabulous advice, head on over and check them out!

Surrender to the Process

A few parting pieces of advice…

• Immerse yourself in the place and program.   If you going dedicate the time and money, you might as well make it worth your while. Don’t hold back.

• Try to enjoy it.  You’ll be exhausted and stressed, but try to maintain some perspective and have fun.

• Luxuriate in the structure.  Once you finish, you’ll be forced to create structure for yourself, which isn’t easy.  So enjoy it while you can.

• Be okay with being overwhelmed.  It’s going to happen, and it’s okay.  This too shall pass.

• Get comfortable being uncomfortable.  You’re going to spend a fair amount of time outside of your comfort zone, get used to it.  And if you’re not being pushed there, you’re in the wrong place.

• Embrace your colleagues.  They will become some of your closest friends and collaborators.  They will most likely also piss you off and annoy the hell out of you at times, but that’s part of their charm.

• Challenge yourself and allow yourself to be challenged.  Be wiling to hear what your professors and colleagues have to say about your work.  This can be exceptionally difficult, but necessary to true growth.

• Challenge your professors and colleagues.  You should take this time to question everything and everyone.  Nothing is sacred.

• Take risks.  You will never have a safer place to fail.  Make use of it.

Stephanie Todd Wong moved to Houston in 2008 after spending ten years in Washington DC as a dancer, choreographer, dance teacher and dance administrator.  Stephanie holds a BA in Dance from Mercyhurst College and received her MFA in Dance from George Mason University in 2004.  While living in Washington she was a dancer in the Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company, which performed in various locations in DC and New York City.  She also had the privilege of working with Lorry May, founding director of Sokolow Dance Foundation to learn and perform Anna Sokolow’s The Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter.  As a choreographer, Stephanie’s work was presented at both Joy of Motion and Dance Place.  Stephanie also spent time teaching dance and worked to create a high school dance program for The Flint Hill School in Vienna Virginia.  Beginning in 2007, Stephanie began working for Dance/MetroDC, the local branch office of Dance/USA, serving as its Programs Associate and ultimately its Interim Director.  In this role she was responsible for creating and executing all the organizations programming, including the Metro DC Dance Awards, a region wide awards program that took place at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.  Stephanie became Executive Director of Dance Source Houston in 2011 and currently sits on the Advisory Board for Arts + Culture Magazine and an Affiliate Working Group of Dance/USA.

Good Monday to you Framers!  Here is the second installment from the fabulous Stephanie Todd Wong, Executive Director of Dance Source Houston.  Here she goes…

Reality Checks

The first question I ask someone who has expressed an interest in grad school, is “Why?”  And I ask it not to be flippant or to discourage, but with genuine curiosity.  Why? What is the goal?  What is motivating you?  What do you hope to accomplish?  The administrator in me these days, wants to ask what is the ROI? I think these questions are super important, because let’s face it, higher education isn’t cheap.   We’re talking about a serious investment here, in terms of both time and money.  And as dancers, we can’t afford to waste either!

When I entered grad school, I did it wanting several different things.  I wanted to be a better dancer and choreographer. I wanted to be able to teach at a university level.  I longed for the structure school provides and the resources of space and bodies to work with.  And if I’m totally honest, I wanted something I could hold up that might make others outside our field take my profession more seriously.  (“I have a terminal degree now, this isn’t just a hobby!”)

Back to the ROI or return on investment….  Since I will probably be paying off my school loans up until the moment I start paying for my daughters’ college expenses, I have to bring this up.  School is expensive and when you finish you’re not entering a professional world known for high compensation.  Will an MFA advance your career enough to justify the expense and/or debt?  Is the degree truly worth the price tag?

Take time to sit with the “why.”  Having honest answers to that question will guide you more surely than any advice you could get from me.

Stephanie Todd Wong moved to Houston in 2008 after spending ten years in Washington DC as a dancer, choreographer, dance teacher and dance administrator.  Stephanie holds a BA in Dance from Mercyhurst College and received her MFA in Dance from George Mason University in 2004.  While living in Washington she was a dancer in the Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company, which performed in various locations in DC and New York City.  She also had the privilege of working with Lorry May, founding director of Sokolow Dance Foundation to learn and perform Anna Sokolow’s The Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter.  As a choreographer, Stephanie’s work was presented at both Joy of Motion and Dance Place.  Stephanie also spent time teaching dance and worked to create a high school dance program for The Flint Hill School in Vienna Virginia.  Beginning in 2007, Stephanie began working for Dance/MetroDC, the local branch office of Dance/USA, serving as its Programs Associate and ultimately its Interim Director.  In this role she was responsible for creating and executing all the organizations programming, including the Metro DC Dance Awards, a region wide awards program that took place at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.  Stephanie became Executive Director of Dance Source Houston in 2011 and currently sits on the Advisory Board for Arts + Culture Magazine and an Affiliate Working Group of Dance/USA.

Coming next week…

Sarah Wildes Arnett

Sarah Wildes Arnett is Founder/Artistic Director of SWADanceCollective and Assistant Professor of  Dance at Valdosta State University in Georgia. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Dance Choreography at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2012 and a Bachelor of Arts in  American Studies from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Sarah’s interests are interdisciplinary as she enjoys integrating her talents  in film-making, photography and music composition into her choreography while also expanding boundaries of genre and style. She continues to perform professionally with various companies and artists in the southeast. Most recently, she has performed and shown work at the MAD Festival (Atlanta), Alabama Dance Festival (Birmingham), NC Dance Alliance Annual Event (Greensboro) and RE:Vision by Forward Motion Theatre (NYC). http://www.swadanceco.com/

Stay tuned for her MFA-related musings!

It promises to be an informative and engaging series, we can’t wait!

Hey Framers!

We’ve been recovering from our  jam-packed show week and Lydia’s tooth surgery 🙁 (Leave her a get well message in the comments!) Hope you have had a wonderful week! Almost the weekend!

Ecouter was FABULOUS last weekend – each night was close to capacity and filled with local talent! A BIG thank you to all who came out and supported the event!

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Now onto Thesis Thursday! Written by Frame Development Assistant, Lena Silva.

In case you’re not caught up with Frame’s newest weekly series, Thesis Thursday, you can catch up on the last three blog posts here. In a nutshell, this series features installments of my senior thesis written for Rice University’s Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality. It explores the topics of Contact Improvisation, Feminism, feminist performance art, and female empowerment through movement.

If you don’t have time to read through the past blogs, have no fear! Here’s a re-cap of my general thesis statement:

I will argue that CI is a complex feminist practice. The relationship CI has to feminism is complex because it is not inherently feminist, but enables women to have a feminist experience.

This week will feature Part I of II blogs detailing the connections between CI founder Steve Paxton and radical feminist Yvonne Rainer.

Ch. I Part III. Contact Improvisation and Feminist Influences 

As a white, unconsciously ambiguous artist, oblivious to art world sexism and racism and ensconced in dancing (a socially acceptable female pursuit), I started reading…Sisterhood is Powerful…Scum Manifesto and…Dialectics of Sex. I had never thought of myself as belonging to an oppressed group – nor privileged one, for that matter – especially as I began to achieve recognition.[1]

These words belong to Yvonne Rainer, a colleague who danced alongside Paxton under Cunningham and in the Judson Dance Theatre. She became intimately involved in the women’s rights movement and declared herself a “political lesbian.”[2] She is today renowned as the quintessential feminist performance artist, and has received the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1990 and two Guggenheim Fellowships. She is widely known for her solo dance “Three Seascapes” (1962), in which the female dancer performed a screaming fit downstage in a pile of gauze and a black overcoat. Sally Banes notes that critics have understood Rainer’s piece as feminist in the sense that the screaming dancer’s actions “…may be seen as a critique of hysteria – that is, of the female dancer’s image as gripped by out-of-control emotion.”[3] This criticism of hysteria is common to many feminist writers of the time period including the author of one of the above-mentioned texts, Shulamith Firestone.

Yvonne Rainer on the cover of her autobiography, Feelings Are Facts.

In 1970, Paxton joined the Grand Union improvisational dance company spearheaded by Yvonne Rainer. The Grand Union was a collective of nine performers, many of whom had danced together for many years, like Paxton and Rainer, who gathered to investigate dance, theatre and performance.[4]  Rainer’s piece entitled Continuous Project-Altered Daily (CP-AD) was the pivotal work that led to the consolidation of the group. CP-AD was named to describe the ever-changing process that was the “show” seen by audiences. This “show” entailed an anarchic, free-associative performance with dialogue, props, costumes and music. The show was an exploration of the dance-making process, which included both improvisation and choreography, as well as pedestrian and professional movement.

Steve Paxton

            The organization of the Grand Union allowed members to “participate equally, without employing social hierarchies in the group.”[5] Paxton thoroughly enjoyed “…the development of trust within the group, the necessary precondition of mutual agreement for dependency, the pleasure of establishing firm communication and sharing explorations.”[6] He was critical of the dictatorial hierarchies that were often imposed within traditional ballet, modern and even post-modern dance companies. He wrote: “It was the star system. It is difficult to make the general public understand other systems, inundated as we are with the exploitation of personality and appearance in every aspect of theatre. Though this basic poverty of understanding on the audiences’ part is a drag, unique and personalized forms have been emerging, such as those seen in…the Grand Union.”[7] Yet again, Paxton prioritized the opening up of new “systems” of movement beyond the exploitative nature of commercial dance in a capitalist society.

The performances by the Grand Union would last for several hours often with no set beginning or end; the audience would ebb and flow. Grand Union performances were opposed to the commonplace paradigm of dance shows that relied on stylized manipulation of dancers’ bodies to entertain audiences. The emphases put on democratic leadership and decision-making led to performances in which no single dancer was the “star,” which also broke from the traditional dance show paradigm. The “star” was the spontaneous process itself that manifested onstage, a process that had been previously discussed and conceptualized in a democratic manner and a process that gave, according to Sally Banes, “…permission for the dancers to make choices and exercise freedom within an overall structure.”[8]

With such a high level of cooperation and exchange, Yvonne Rainer’s feminist practices that were anti-hierarchical and overtly anti-sexist become more than perfunctory detail and venture into the realm of purposefully influential. Rainer was a self-proclaimed “political lesbian” who responded to Audre Lorde’s famous quote: “You can’t dismantle the master’s house using the master’s tools” with “You can, if you expose the tools.”[9] The main “tools” that Rainer may have been referring to are the patriarchal organization of society and commercialization of nearly every facet of humanity that, through art, can be exposed and symbolically challenged and changed. The political exploration and experimental dance processes spearheaded by Rainer and complimented by her feminist ideology epitomize the early work of the Grand Union, and strongly influenced the work of Paxton who was often featured in Rainer’s work and often used Rainer in his own pieces.

Happy Thursday!

One more day to the weekend, but more importantly ONE MORE DAY UNTIL ECOUTER OPENS!

Get your tickets here, still only $15 until tomorrow!

In case you’re not caught up with Frame’s newest weekly series, Thesis Thursday, you can catch up on the last three blog posts here. In a nutshell, this series features installments of my senior thesis written for Rice University’s Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality. It explores the topics of Contact Improvisation, Feminism, feminist performance art, and female empowerment through movement.

Here’s a re-cap of my general thesis statement:

I will argue that CI is a complex feminist practice. The relationship CI has to feminism is complex because it is not inherently feminist, but enables women to have a feminist experience.

If you don’t have time to catch up on the first two posts, have no fear! It’s a perfect week to dive in! In this post, I will explore the relationship between CI’s history and postmodern art of the 1950’s-60’s. Enjoy!

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 Chapter I. Part II. CI and Postmodernist Influences

The Living Theatre opened in 1947 and is the longest standing experimental theatre group in the U.S. “Over the course of almost fifty years, The Living Theatre has been known as the most radical, uncompromising, and experimental group in American Theatrical history.”[1] It pulled Steve Paxton (see past posts for more info on Paxton, who is hailed as the originator of CI) into its vortex of action and awakened his political consciousness. The theatre is known for the radical politics of its founders’, Judith Malina and Julian Beck, specifically their commitment to nonviolence, anti-hierarchy and anti-commercialism of art. Their politics manifested in a unique theatre experience that transcended the specific medium such as film, painting, or dance, and aimed to engage the audience by dissolving the “fourth wall,” which separates audiences from the stage, and exposing them to what Antonin Artaud theorized as the “theatre of cruelty.” Artaud was a French playwright and actor prolific in the early 1900’s in Europe.[2] He is widely known for his writings regarding the theatre of cruelty, which was a stark portrayal of reality meant to propel the audience from passive complacency to thoughtful action. According to theatre critic Albert Bermel, Artaud believed that, “If theatre is a necessary part of our lives…[i]t has an obligation: it’s every performance must, by virtue of its cleansing and purifying, transfigure those audiences.”[3] One example of such theatre is Jack Gelber’s play, The Connection, which featured actors already on stage as the audience entered the theatre.  The actors are waiting for their heroin dealers and walk through the aisles asking for money to get a fix during intermission.[4] In the words of Julian Beck:

            To call into question

            who we are to each other in the social environment of theater…

            to set ourselves in motion

            like a vortex that pulls the

            spectator into action…

            to move from the theater to the street and from the street to the

            theater.

            This is what The Living Theatre does today.

            It is what it has always done[5]

Robert Dunn’s composition (choreography) classes taught at Merce Cunningham’s studio in The Living Theatre from 1960 – 1962 were the impetus for the development of the Judson Dance Theatre two years later.[6] Dunn’s first composition class started with only Paxton and four other students. Paxton worked with Dunn for the next four years, and Paxton was forced to challenge the conventions of his modern dance training. Paxton says of the experience:

The work that I did there was first of all to flush out all of my “why-nots,” to go through my “why not” circles as far as I could until getting bored with the question…It was a very permissive time…which was my first contact with the rise of political consciousness – where I first saw a peace symbol, where I first saw dope smoked, where they were doing plays like The Connection and talking about prison reform.[7]

Yvonne Rainer, a fellow dancer in Dunn’s choreography class at The Living Theatre recalls a piece by Paxton in which he sat on a bench and ate a sandwich.[8] This piece was minimalist and its rejection of modern dance conventions and refined technical vocabulary was groundbreaking for the time period. It demonstrated anti-commercialism and criticized over-the-top entertainment. Dunn’s classes led to Paxton and his classmates creating many diverse dance scores. Eventually the classmates decided to present their collection of work as the Judson Dance Theatre (JDT), in the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, New York City on July 6, 1962. So began the Judson Dance Theatre’s twenty-year domination of the postmodern dance scene. According to dance scholar Sally Banes, “It was the seedbed for post-modern dance…The choreographers of the Judson Dance Theatre radically questioned dance aesthetics…”[9] The JDT is widely regarded as the first organized instance of postmodern dance. It defined postmodern dance as a reaction to modern dance that rejected many of modern dance’s technical constraints. The result was an embrace of everyday movement. The techniques of musicians who used non-traditional instruments, chance composition and improvisation complemented this new type of performance. These elements would be seen later in Contact Improvisation, which also utilizes improvisational musicians to create a musical score in jams and performances.

The group’s success was partly due to the egalitarian and democratic nature of the organization. Judith Dunn, a dancer in the first concert and wife of Robert Dunn, wrote, “No important decisions were made until everyone concerned and present agreed.”[10] Again, this lesson, taught by Cunningham and Limón, was not lost on Paxton as evidenced by the anti-hierarchical, cooperative and egalitarian organization in his own movement form and practice. However, the JDT pushed Paxton outside the technical and apolitical style of modern dance and exposed him to postmodern experimentation with the mundane and pedestrian as a form of political critique which I will argue set the stage for a feminist experience to develop.

This is the final installment from Sue Roginski! Enjoy! The Framers wish you a merry Monday to start the week! It’s definitely not too late to purchase your discounted tickets to our show this weekend, Ecouter!

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Part 3 of 3

For some reason I was under the impression that after graduate school you would immediately pursue a job teaching in a college setting. This emerged as an unspoken expectation or perhaps something I concocted along the way.

job reality

I started the process of applying for jobs, specifically the full-time tenure track dance jobs in a college setting.

At this point I had a part-time job at a community college and was fairly settled in Riverside. It did not even occur to me to open up the geographic range of where I would begin the job search.

There might be more successful job search potential if you are willing to travel to another state. Nonetheless, I began seeking those full-time tenure track positions in state.

A few job applications began to lead to rejections.

side note

There are resources at school that enable you to always have a CV, cover letter and letters of recommendation on file, so that when a job becomes available you are already prepared to send those materials out.

job pieces

For whatever reason I did not take advantage of the school resource yet paid attention to job listing sites: HERC, Indeed, and the CCC Registry. Each time I applied for a job I would spend about two weeks gathering the pieces, and having contacts and colleagues write a letter or adapt an existing letter to speak to that job. I would typically create the cover letter to respond to a particular job listing. It seems the personal touch could be more effective.

I have had many thoughts throughout the full-time job search and process. Would I have better luck if I were a renowned choreographer (inside smile)? What if I could really fill all requirements of a certain job sometimes including the ability to teach ballet, modern, jazz, hip-hop, tap, dance history, somatic practices, dance pedagogy, dance theory, and specialize in a world dance form while trained in yoga or pilates?

There are rarely job listings that might speak to what honors you or your creative background specifically.

I don’t think I could fake a jazz class to get the job (although my teacher told me that I most certainly could-inside laughter)!

adjunct appreciation

Seven years post the MFA degree, the life of an adjunct has grown on me. I have had the opportunity to be in several communities at the same time and to move amongst a diverse group of individuals studying dance. I have witnessed the varied styles that full-time faculty bring to a program.

As an adjunct I am able to continue creating work and immersing myself in multiple community dance projects. A teacher of mine in college chose to be an adjunct because she just wanted to teach. Another professor I know retired because he “was overwhelmed with paperwork and just wanted to teach”.

What I have discovered as a dance artist and teacher piecing together the parts is that the possibilities for other ways in which to engage in a dance field are unlimited.

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Sue Roginski graduated from Wesleyan University in 1987 with a BA in Dance and from the University of California Riverside in 2007 with an MFA in Dance (experimental choreography). She is a teacher, choreographer, and performer who has produced her own work as well as performances to benefit Project Inform, Breast Cancer Action, and Women’s Cancer Resource Center. In the past few years, Sue has had the opportunity to share choreography at Anatomy Riot (LA), Highways Performance Space (Santa Monica), Unknown Theater (LA), AB Miller High School (Fontana), Culver Center of the Arts (Riverside), Society of Dance History Scholars (conferences ’08 and ’09), The Haven Café and Gallery (Banning), Back to the Grind Coffee House (Riverside), Heritage High School (Romoland), KUNST-STOFF arts (SF), and Riverside Ballet Arts (Riverside). She also has been privileged to dance and perform with Susan Rose and Dancers since 2005. Sue teaches at Mt. San Jacinto College and Riverside City College and divides her time between Riverside and San Francisco where she had a ten year career as dancer and collaborator with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. Sue performs with Dandelion Dancetheater (Bay Area based ensemble) and Christy Funsch (SF dance artist) whenever possible, and in 2010 created P.L.A.C.E. Performance (a dance collective) with friend and colleague Julie Satow Freeman. Her ongoing creative process infuses choreography with improvisation.