A Thought-Leader In Family & Children’s Dance Classes | Houston, TX
Frame Dance is a thought leader in dance education, inspiring the next generation of movers, makers, and world changers by offering dance classes for adults & children, multi-generational ensembles, professional performances, networking events, and film festivals. We are nestled between West U and the Museum District.
We believe in developing the whole dancer, teaching critical life skills such as creative thinking, leadership, collaboration, and resilience through our artful and playful dance curriculum at our studio and in partner schools.
Our adult modern dance classes are designed to offer you the joy and magic that’s possible when you create space in your life to move, to grow, and to share in the creative process with a like-hearted community.
For more than ten years, Frame Dance has brought radically inclusive and deeply personal contemporary dance to Houston. Led by Founder and Creative Director Lydia Hance, whom Dance Magazine calls “the city’s reigning guru of dance in public places,” the professional company is made up of six acclaimed co-creators committed to collaboration. Frame Dance has created over 50 unique site-specific performances and nine dances for the camera screened in festivals all over the United States and Europe. With an unrelenting drive to make dance in relationship to environment, Frame Dance has created dance works for and with METRO, Houston Museum of Natural Sciences, Houston Parks Board, Plant It Forward Farms, CORE Dance, Rice University, Houston Ballet, 14 Pews, Aurora Picture Show, and the Contemporary Arts Museum. Frame Dance’s productions were described by Arts + Culture Texas Editor-in-Chief Nancy Wozny as “some of the most compelling and entertaining work in Houston.” Creative Director Lydia Hance is a champion of living composers and is dedicated to work exclusively with new music.
The 1930’s was a time of celebration and hardship. Talking pictures were all the rage at the local theaters and radio became a household item where everyone could tune in to hear Orson Wells tell the American public of a pending alien invasion from War of the Worlds. The Depression sent many families into poverty and many businesses were closing up shop, but that didn’t stop America’s optimism and ingenious designers from opening the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge for the whole world to see. The 1930’s had its ups and downs throughout the decade but that didn’t stop people from dancing! Dances like the Foxtrot, Tap and the Waltz were becoming popular once again on the dance floor while others like the Jitterbug and Swing were just getting started!
A Dutch instructional film from 1930, demonstrating the ballroom Foxtrot of the time.
Keep Punchin Jitterbug Contest
Fred and Ginger – Waltz in Swing Time (Waltz, Tap and Swing all in one)
Happy Monday dear Framers! I am excited to post this because I have so enjoyed reading Matthew Cumbie’s articles. But it’s the third of his arc, so that’s a bummer. But in the meantime, enjoy…
“Small Dances About Big Ideas,” and the importance of story telling*
So far, when writing these blog entries I’ve chosen to tackle topics that I’ve felt strongly about. I haven’t talked directly to my experiences in graduate school, or before or after, very much at all; a conscious choice of mine, most certainly. But in doing this I realize that I haven’t given much insight into who I am or what I do, merely glimpses; I haven’t shared my story, and frankly, I believe that everyone’s story matters. It’s this belief that shapes much of what I do today and has led me to where I am now. It’s also this belief that, for me, contextualizes the larger artistic questions that we as a community find ourselves asking and the research we do to explore those questions; in plain, within these personal stories lie universalities and shared experiences that ground what we know and how we come to know that.
My current story picks up in Washington, DC, where I am a Resident Artist and the Education Coordinator for Dance Exchange, an organization rich in history and rooted in the belief that everyone’s story matters and that everyone can and is encouraged to dance. The path taken to this fortuitous place has been one of much meandering, difficulty, and perseverance (and a bit of good fortune). Truly, until my time in graduate school I had a very small understanding of what the organization did and does still; then it was the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and I distinctly remember at one point encouraging a peer of mine to audition but not really envisioning myself involved in such a process. After finishing my MFA, however, I decided to get to know the organization better and enrolled in their Summer Institute, a condensed amount of time in which participants work closely with the company learning about their collaborative process and tools and history while collectively making and sharing. I fell in love and almost immediately knew I had found a home, one in which I was enlivened and engaged in a way that I had been searching for.
While in graduate school, as I’m sure many can attest to, one must really be focused on the work that is happening. This is particularly important if the work you’re doing is challenging and valuable, as I think most work at the graduate level should be. For me, graduate school became everything. I felt challenged on all fronts and grew three dimensionally in a way that I had never before experienced and with such rapidity that at times it felt almost impossible to keep up. It was probably one of the most difficult and exciting points in my life. I cried a lot. I laughed a lot. And I learned more about myself and my craft than I could probably ever explain on paper. I lost a relationship, and at that point particularly, poured myself without abandon into my work. My dog Lucas served as my anchor at home and my friends and peers within my program kept me afloat. I don’t regret any of it, but as I exited that environment and found myself back in a world outside of academia I realized how disproportionate my life had become.
It was at this point that I began to want and need and work towards finding a way to compromise the distance I felt between my artistic self and my everyday self. I began to question the processes that I was engaged in, wondering why I was doing this work and of what value did it have for others besides myself. What good was I doing for anyone else but me? What did I value in both my art making and my life making that I could harness in a process and feel satisfied with? How could I participate in a rigorously full artistic process and a rigorously full life simultaneously? These questions felt important in lessening that gap. When I started my work with Dance Exchange at that Summer Institute, and subsequently on some residencies that I was invited to help facilitate, answers to some of these questions manifested themselves either in the work that was made or in the relationships that formed, and I have a feeling it has to do with the alignment of my values and the organizations’ values and in the way that this process and work asks me to bring my whole self regularly.
As I mentioned before, at Dance Exchange we believe that everyone’s story matters and that everyone can and is encouraged to dance. Because of this philosophy, and our constant questioning of who gets to dance, we are committed to making space for all to participate in the making of art; from trained professionals to unexpected movers and makers, criss crossing all disciplines and engaging any who are interested in questioning and creative research. It’s in this place of exchange of ideas and information that I feel my many selves, Matthew the artist/human, fully engaged and aware. It’s in this place, where 90 year old women and men move with teenagers and twenty something year olds as a way to know and relate, that I find resonance in what I do and how I do it. It’s in this place that I have found a bridge between my many selves and feel more able to work on lessening that gap between the artistic and everyday.
To take a more macroscopic view, I want to leave you with this. In my personal experience, and in talking with many, many peers, I have found that leading full artistic lives and full everyday lives to be sometimes difficult (one could also change the word ‘artistic’ to ‘any other career’). But both are important. An integral step in doing that is finding a process or group or company or school or ensemble that continually asks you to bring your whole self, your many beautiful selves, to the work. It’s in this exchange between your own ideas and interests and this exchange between you and others that richness can be found and that much can be learned. Sometimes this work is hard; that’s when the work can be the most rewarding and relevant. One of my former graduate professors once spoke of her ‘pedagogy of discomfort,’ a term that I have come to love. Although probably different in meaning, I have found that when situations or experiences seem to be uncomfortably hard or trying, it’s through the perseverance and working through those that has proved to be the most illuminating.
There’s something in here related to my previous posts about value and pausing, and in the combination of these 3 writings that I think speaks to carving out sustainable lifestyles as people that are committed to processes that might sometimes be difficult, especially in regards to an increasingly connected, fast-paced, and ever changing world. I hope that, wherever you’re at on this journey, you have found some nugget of something worthwhile in this and that applies to your story and story telling. It’s these stories that we carry and share that make our work worthwhile, that allow us to better our art and our lives, that allow us to gather as a community and work towards our individual and shared goals. It’s these individual small dances that we make which contribute to our collective big ideas.
* “Small Dances About Big Ideas” is a work by Liz Lerman and the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange which premiered in 2005. It is not at all related to the topics discussed above other than the connection of Dance Exchange.
Matthew Cumbie is a professional dance artist based in Washington, DC, and is currently a Resident Artist and the Education Coordinator for the Dance Exchange. As a company member with the Dance Exchange, he works with communities across the United States and abroad in collaborative art-making and creative research as a means to further develop our understanding of our selves and community in relation to the environment around us. He has also been a company member with Keith Thompson/danceTactics performance group, and has performed with Mark Dendy, the Von Howard Project, Sarah Gamblin, Jordan Fuchs, jhon stronks, Paloma McGregor, and Jill Sigman/thinkdance. His own work has been shown in New York, Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, and at Harvard University. He has taught at Dance New Amsterdam, Texas Woman’s University, and Queensborough Community College. He holds an M.F.A. in dance from Texas Woman’s University.
For the next few of weeks, Tuesday Tunes will be spotlighting famous dance crazes throughout the decades!
This Tuesday Tunes celebrates the…
The spirit of the 1920’s was marked with a disdain for modesty and the breaking of traditions which brought the sensations of jazz music and the ideology and fashion of the flappers. The Roaring Twenties, also know as the Golden Twenties, was a time of raised skirts, bobbed hair and exciting parties filled with fun cocktails and wild dances. Dances like the Charleston, Black Bottom, the Shimmy (which was actually banned in certain areas)and many others took the world by storm and dancing to a whole new level.
Time is a funny thing. When you want more of it, it doesn’t seem to exist. When you’re anticipating something coming or going, you really wish that time would fly by. At least that’s been my experience. You see, I’m a planner, as I’m sure many of us are. How can you not be when you’re a working artist? Between scheduling rehearsals, performances, application deadlines, auditions, teaching gigs, meals, and maybe (just maybe) some personal time- one sometimes has to be quite diligent about putting things down somewhere. I find that when I do put those things down, though, often my mind will wander away into future- or past-ness. In rehearsals this last week, in every down minute that I had I realized that I was thinking to the weeks ahead, going over schedules to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything or adding new things to a growing To Do list to accomplish who knows when. Even this morning over breakfast, I was trolling through photos on my phone, going over where I had been and what I had done and missing people, places, and specific times in my life. The funny thing about time and all of this, though, is that in missing or not missing things both past and present I am missing what’s happening right now. Right in front of my face. Literally. My dog is asleep on one of his beds under a side table (a favorite spot of his), my coffee grows cold, and a slightly overcast DC gets a bit sunnier outside.
As a mover and improviser, being present in the moment is something of a goal of mine. For me, being present means being aware and responsive to the temporal moment, tracking your internal choice making and external stimuli simultaneously. It’s of such interest that it even had an entire section of research devoted to it in my professional paper for my MFA. I bring this up because I realize how much of a slippery slope getting caught up in planning and reflecting can be, and how important it is to ground oneself in the now as much as we can. It is in these moments that I feel as if time expands and I can really do so much with what time I have, relieving stress and allowing me to appreciate what I have and what is presented to me.
Now how do we go about attuning ourselves to the now? Really I believe that this is a personal process, one that we develop with repetition and over time. In my practice, it’s about finding a pause or interruption. When improvising and moving from one score to another, a certain kind of momentum builds that is either physically manifested in the body or an internal momentum of choice making in which choices are made before they are fully realized, or both. As soon as I acknowledge that I’ve been riding this dizzying wave of momentum and that I might not be tracking or seeing certain possibilities, I quickly search for a pause or interruption so that I might re-engage in the now and gather a new sort of clarity. Applying this same process to our daily lives, as soon as I realize that I’m stressing about what is going to happen next week or when I’ll be able to take a day off, or if I’m reminiscing about the ‘good ol’ days’ and missing my friends from Texas terribly, I similarly try to find a way to pause or interrupt that process so that I can be more fully present in the moment.
In doing so, I’m better able to notice vibrant colors, textures, make connections that are more meaningful and authentic with others, and better appreciate myself and my potential (to name a few). I realize that maintaining this kind of perception, this responsive sense of seeing and experiencing, can be difficult. And all of this is not to say that we shouldn’t think ahead or look back, as both are wonderful reminders or where we’ve been and where we’re headed. But I firmly believe that if we take the time to pause or interrupt ourselves more frequently, that we’ll better be able to consciously craft our selves and track a more rich and meaningful path.
So for the sake of brevity, and to practice rather than preach, I’m going to bring this to a close. I don’t want to toil over what to write or whether or not this or that thing said will be a more relevant nugget of whatever; I want to cling to my belief that within each of us, our bodies and stories, lives wisdom that we all might draw upon and that by attuning to the temporal moment we might more readily access that. There is so much activity happening right now; the air is buzzing. Harness that energy and do something. In fact, if anything, I encourage you to always do something.
Go make something. Go see something. Go talk about something with someone. Find a way to disrupt your everyday so that you might appreciate the beauty and vitality of that moment.
Matthew Cumbie is a professional dance artist based in Washington, DC, and is currently a Resident Artist and the Education Coordinator for the Dance Exchange. As a company member with the Dance Exchange, he works with communities across the United States and abroad in collaborative art-making and creative research as a means to further develop our understanding of our selves and community in relation to the environment around us. He has also been a company member with Keith Thompson/danceTactics performance group, and has performed with Mark Dendy, the Von Howard Project, Sarah Gamblin, Jordan Fuchs, jhon stronks, Paloma McGregor, and Jill Sigman/thinkdance. His own work has been shown in New York, Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, and at Harvard University. He has taught at Dance New Amsterdam, Texas Woman’s University, and Queensborough Community College. He holds an M.F.A. in dance from Texas Woman’s University.
And this is why I despise the word ‘passion,’ or Establishing our own value
by Matthew Cumbie
How much is my careeram I worth? How much is my artwork worth? When is it ok for me to ask forexpect compensation for my services?
These are questions that I struggle with almost daily. And I’m willing to wager my small salary that many of you struggle with these same, or similar, questions at various points in your artistic career. Why is that? What is the cause for this dilemma? And when did it become O.K. to divert our attention from addressing these questions by saying, “Oh, you do it because you love it”?
Before I go any further, I want to say that I feel very, very fortunate for my current situation and for those experiences and situations that have led me to where I am. I realize that few opportunities to do what I do exist, and to get paid to do those things is sometimes unreal. And I love what I do. But I don’t ever recall this to be a reason that we not pay someone for their work. Returning to our questions above, the reasons could by many: too little funding, it’s a great experience, I don’t have a budget, and many others that we could compile over a few glasses of wine I’m sure. And while these all might be true and very valid, I would like to throw one (or two, depending on how you look at it) more in the mix that I find often unacknowledged: you and me.
That’s right. We are sometimes the cause of our own problems, especially in this situation. I say this because we, as performers and makers and teachers, perpetuate this problem of not paying artists when we participate in this cycle. We do it because we have no other option. We do it because we want to be involved in this love affair at whatever the cost. We do it because we know that if we don’t, someone else will…and for free. We do it because we want that, that right there, on our CV. You know, so when we decide that we’re marketable or valuable we’ll have more artistic weight to throw around. And that’s the magic button- we decide.
This is where the water gets murky, though. When do we put our collective foot down and say enough is enough, and that I have bills to pay too? I recently had a discussion with a good friend from my undergraduate years regarding this issue of paying dancers. Following school, we pursued very different paths; both still involved in the field but in different professional capacities. I say this only to illustrate that we are coming from different vantage points. Anyways, our debate came down to a discussion about experience and caused me to reflect on my own participation in this unspoken poor person’s treatise. Prior to and throughout graduate school, I viewed getting paid to dance as an added bonus. I was there for the experience, and felt quite uncomfortable addressing the compensation side of things. Almost afraid to bring up the subject, really. As if some omniscient fairy would one day fly down, take all that money (which was not a lot) that I had earned from various dance gigs, and bop me on the nose for being silly enough to think that I could make a living doing something that I enjoyed so much. Looking back, I’m not sure that I thought much about the fact that I had to work a number of other jobs to carve out a sustainable life; some of that might have had to do with my age and some with the place in which I was living (a much, much lower cost of living than where I’ve been post graduate school).
Immediately following graduate school, I moved to New York City for the second time (the first was brief and I was young- another story for another time). Surely, I thought, here would be a progressive community of like minded professionals who all valued dance the same as I and wanted to acknowledge and celebrate our abilities as professional artists by paying each other accordingly. Wrong. Instead I found myself having to work a number of projects simultaneously, as well as work a few other odd jobs to pay my rent…and loans. What ended up happening in this time period, interestingly, was probably more valuable than actually being paid enough to make a living; I finally started to look at how I was allocating my time and my work and began to curate what opportunities interested me the most, looking at what kinds of experiences I would be invested in and what kind of investment this artist was making in me. All of the artists I found myself working with at some point verbally acknowledged that the amount we were receiving was nowhere near what it should have been or what they would like it to be, and I appreciated the dialogue and knowing that they were making efforts to help us create a sustainable life. I appreciated the external validation that I was valuable in the same way that I saw myself as valuable.
More recently, my friend and fellow Dance Exchange artist Sarah Levitt and I were attending an arts conference about sustaining and growing the arts. When discussing how our various organizations might do more for less, it was suggested that we all hire interns because, “they don’t need to be paid.” Both Sarah and I, having had many conversations privately about paying artists/people what they are worth, were aghast. While I realize that internships provide excellent opportunities, and many of these opportunities are unpaid, the manner in which this comment was so brazenly delivered had me seriously questioning at what point do we deem someone valuable enough? Is there a transition point when we go from being unvaluable to valuable? Does it hurt? I mean, interns are people too. Somewhat related, Sarah and I have talked about a ‘new model’ for the arts, something we’ve both heard from various sources. As a working artist, the proposed new way to do your work is to get a full time job doing something else and to do your art on the side. Why? What does that say about how we value our work then? Not that I think it’s a bad model, but I believe that we all should be able to create our own models for working and sustaining ourselves. If I want to make a living by creating art, then I should be able to do that and know that it’s my responsibility to be able to communicate why this art is valuable to a larger audience.
The whole point of this blog is not to answer any questions really. It’s to ask more questions. Why is the system like this? What are we educating and telling the future dance makers and artists out there? That there are prescribed ways of working? Of valuing? Of navigating this diverse and rich field? I hope not. If we’re ever going to challenge our old ways of doing and thinking, we need to start talking about it. I think that making the decision to be valuable is up to each individual, and to weight that against whatever the experience might be and whatever the compensation might (or might not) be. You are of value, rich with history and talent and ideas. I’d like to think that through this conversation and acknowledgement of who we are and how what we do is worth something, that perhaps we can start to change the system. Perhaps we can up the ante and help create, find, or inspire those funding sources. Maybe we can encourage more artists to think about how they’re working with others and compensating them for their time. Hopefully we can challenge this popular, romantic belief that we are only in this because we love it, that our passion for dancing is what gets us through. Hopefully.
And that is why I despise the word ‘passion.’
Matthew Cumbie is a professional dance artist based in Washington, DC, and is currently a Resident Artist and the Education Coordinator for the Dance Exchange. As a company member with the Dance Exchange, he works with communities across the United States and abroad in collaborative art-making and creative research as a means to further develop our understanding of our selves and community in relation to the environment around us. He has also been a company member with Keith Thompson/danceTactics performance group, and has performed with Mark Dendy, the Von Howard Project, Sarah Gamblin, Jordan Fuchs, jhon stronks, Paloma McGregor, and Jill Sigman/thinkdance. His own work has been shown in New York, Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, and at Harvard University. He has taught at Dance New Amsterdam, Texas Woman’s University, and Queensborough Community College. He holds an M.F.A. in dance from Texas Woman’s University.
A Critical Assessment of “Drill Team” vs. “Concert Dance” Culture
“Drill team” is its own culture in the dance world; it has its own set of expectations, language, behaviors, and customs. A drill team is a group of trained dancers that perform precision in various dance genres during football halftime shows, local parades, and dance competitions. Over the years, I have noticed a regimented trend within drill team choreography. After experiencing collegiate dance making processes and developing my own personal process, I believe the process of generating high school drill team choreography can be expanded and explored to parallel the ideals of concert dance making.
Typically, drill team choreographers have a limited amount of time with their dancers, while a wide range of choreographers in concert dance have residencies that last from a couple of days to a number of weeks. Both processes also pose different outcomes. The drill team choreographic process is final product based, whereas the concert dance world is more interested in the actual process. In attempts to introduce the drill team industry to the processes of concert dance, I believe there are various avenues to generate choreography. Some examples of these avenues stem from Tere O’Connor’s “lines of research,” which is taken from a workshop with Headlong Dance Theater’s choreographers and Larry Lavender’s “IDEA model,” which comes from his book about “facilitating the choreographic process.”
As previously stated, Tere O’Connor’s “lines of research” would be an essential attribute to drill team dance making. “Lines of research” is an investigation of particular obsessions that can be as simple as a hand gesture. Exploring this single movement can then become a process in and of itself. What is “interesting, evocative, [or] curious” about this particular movement and how many different ways can you explore this hand gesture through timing, direction, and manipulation? By investigating this single gesture, a person can be provoked to make an entire work about that one move (if they so desired). This “lines of research” idea allows the movement to evolve and develop, rather than dictating what the movement should be. In Tere O’Connor’s “blook” (his version of a book and blog), he mentions that he wants to “make work as a method for processing a constellation of ideas.” In drill team, the final product is the goal, but by exploring O’Connor’s method, I would hope to see a shift in the mentality by allowing the process to be the rich, driving force of the work.
Another intervention of drill team that could be implemented is Larry Lavender’s “IDEA model.” This model serves as a way to approach, generate, and manipulate choreography. “IDEA” is an acronym that stands for Improvisation, Development, Evaluation, and Assimilation. While I believe drill team choreographers use some of these modes, I do think there can be more involvement with each of these four modes to enrich every aspect of drill team choreography. In the chapter of Lavender’s book Contemporary Choreography: a critical reader, he mentions that all of these IDEA modes should be present in the creative operation of dance making.
The one mode that is not present in drill team is improvisation. The mode of “Improvisation” is essentially what it sounds like, experimenting and improvising with different movements with different bodies. Reflecting on my background of drill team, improvisation is unheard of and somewhat frowned upon in this industry. My intention with this method would be to develop a movement dialogue with the choreographer and dancers, while also making and inventing different movement through a more artistic, personal, and vulnerable place.
As explained above, there are numerous possibilities that are feasible for the drill team industry. My ambition is to one day shift the paradigm of drill team choreography by infusing the principles of Larry Lavender and Tere O’Connor into the world of drill team by diving deeper into the work and creating richer developments and opportunities of movement in order to lead up to a process-based final product, instead of simply a final product.
Angela Falcone, a Houston native, graduated from Friendswood High School in 2007. She was a member of the drill team, the Friendswood Wranglerettes, where she held the title of Grand Marshal. After graduating, she followed her dream and tried out for the Kilgore College Rangerettes. She had the honor of being chosen as the Freshmen Sergeant and Swingster her freshman year, and received the greatest honor of being chosen as Captain her sophomore year. Following graduation from Kilgore College with an Associate in Fine Arts, she was accepted to the University of Texas at Austin, where she holds a B.F.A. in Dance. Angela currently attends Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas where she is pursuing her M.F.A. in Dance. She is specifically interested in shifting the paradigm of high school drill team by reinvigorating the choreographic process and bringing a somatic awareness to high school dancers’ bodies.
Five years is a long time and a lot can happen during that time. When I moved to California in August 2005, I didn’t know exactly where I was going to end up in June 2010, but I would have told you one definite thing: I would not be in Riverside County. Yet here we are in April 2013 and guess where I am… that’s right, Riverside County.
As I previously mentioned, I entered grad school with no attachments that I was obligated to attend to or return to, so I figured when it was all over and done with I could go wherever the wind took me. I envisioned applying for fellowships and visiting positions, and I was going to live my dream of traveling and moving. I did not have any interest in setting roots anywhere yet, and then the most amazing complication occurred: I met a wonderful partner. This was wonderful for all the reasons and benefits that make having a partner desirable: he was a tremendous support through the entirety of my exam and dissertation process, he happily pushed the cart at Trader Joes and didn’t judge me for the 12 bottles of wine I’d picked out, he calmly listened to me stress about the writing process, and he was never bothered by the odd hours I kept. But… and most people wouldn’t read this as a problem, he already had a job. Not just a job, a career. And one he really loves. He spends his days getting paid for something he would happily do for free most days. And if that wasn’t good enough, it is incredibly stable and has great benefits. Again, who would ever complain about such a wonderful fate?! Apparently me.
There I was, recently out of school, newly married, and tied down to a city (more like a town) where my degree was completely useless. In a desperate attempt to find some work that didn’t involve pouring coffee or serving food, I applied to teach at a local studio. They had a competitive team program that was good but not the best in town, they seemed to like the class I taught, and I thought I had a great interview. I was so willing to do this job I even offered the same (low) rate I was offering when I was first out of undergrad. Yet, the same day my degree was conferred I was notified that I didn’t get the job. I was beat out by a student in the community college program I was an adjunct in. As far as I can tell, this was because she probably offered a rate that was a fraction of what I offered. Two degrees in dance, a dissertation on competition dance, years of experience teaching in studios and colleges as well as almost a decade working for competitions and I was unable to get a job at a studio.
With the exception of a local community college program, I quickly realized that I lived in a wasteland for the arts, or at least for the kind I was trained and qualified for. I was, and still am, on faculty at the college; however, California’s badly damaged economy has limited the opportunities I will have at this program for years to come. I applied for both part and full time positions within a 100-mile radius, and after some time, I started to realize that taking a job with a 90+ minute commute (each way) was insane if I ever hoped to have a family and be a part of that family.
I began to conceptualize what kinds of options might be out there for me. I began to think about all the other career paths I could explore that would require the skills of my PhD, even if it didn’t require the degree itself. I realized that since the jobs I thought I wanted five years earlier were not only difficult to come by because of the plummeting economy, but were even more difficult to find because I was now geographically limited. Since the community I lived in had no jobs for me, it was time for me to create my own work.
I have more or less taken every position that has been offered to me. Any day of the week you can find me donning four or five different hats. I once went to an event where I represented three different organizations simultaneously. Since completing graduate school, I have taught part time at three different collegiate institutions (including in a Global Studies program), began managing a small, but busy, professional dance company, became part of a collective of choreographers that produces events and workshops locally, found a local studio that I love teaching at, and I started my own local dance company. Meanwhile, I find ways to collaborate with long distance colleagues on scholarly work.
On my worst days I feel like my brain is going to fracture and cause me to lose my mind. On my best days I am completely fulfilled, feeling like I am not missing out on a single part of the wonderful world of dance. I get to teach all ages, and I get to perform when I want. I’ve learned that I love managing productions, and I never feel pressured when I sit down to write or research because it is always by choice. My days can be exhausting and I am excruciatingly underpaid because many of these positions are with brand new organizations that I am helping to build, but I see potential for a future in this wasteland that I live in. I see a future that I not only like, but a future that might just need someone exactly like me to help it succeed. The way I see it, no one may think that I am valuable now, but if I help to show them what I can do and what they are missing, then maybe one day there will be a local need for me and my degree.
I’d like to acknowledge that none of what I am doing in this effort is done alone. I have a small network of local colleagues who not only provide me opportunities but also support my endeavors. Together, I see us building a community that will not only provide for us but also for our neighbors. I am fully aware of the fact that my unstable lifestyle is made feasible by the fact that I have a partner whose stable job gives us many benefits, including health insurance. Because of this, I am able to take career risks that might not be smart decisions otherwise, so I recognize that this path may not be for everyone.
What I do encourage anyone, regardless of their marital status, geographic location or financial stability, to consider, however, are the many possibilities for their skills and degree. In academia, it is not uncommon to be conditioned to follow a narrow career path. But, just imagine what our world would look like if more arts administrators were MFAs or Ph.D. Imagine what it would look like if those on grant panels were working artists and not reps from corporations. Imagine if the majority of teachers in dance studios had MFAs. As other bloggers have said, you won’t be rich, but none of us go this direction for the money. So get creative about what you could do, because the possibilities are endless!
Dr. Alexis Weisbord received her BFA in Dance from University of Minnesota and her PhD in Critical Dance Studies from UC Riverside. Alexis was a competitive dancer in high school and later spent over ten years directing dance competitions throughout the US. Her dissertation was entitled “Redefining Dance: Competition Dance in the United States” and she has a chapter, “Defining Dance, Creating Commodity: The Rhetoric of So You Think You Can Dance,” in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen. Alexis has held positions as Lecturer in Global Studies at UC Riverside and Associate Faculty in Dance at Norco College. Currently she is an Associate Faculty member at Mt. San Jacinto College, Managing Director for The PGK Dance Project in San Diego, and founder/co-director of an emerging dance company, Alias Movement.
Five years is a long time and a lot can happen during that time. When I moved to California in August 2005, I didn’t know exactly where I was going to end up in June 2010, but I would have told you one definite thing: I would not be in Riverside County. Yet here we are in April 2013 and guess where I am… that’s right, Riverside County.
As I previously mentioned, I entered grad school with no attachments that I was obligated to attend to or return to, so I figured when it was all over and done with I could go wherever the wind took me. I envisioned applying for fellowships and visiting positions, and I was going to live my dream of traveling and moving. I did not have any interest in setting roots anywhere yet, and then the most amazing complication occurred: I met a wonderful partner. This was wonderful for all the reasons and benefits that make having a partner desirable: he was a tremendous support through the entirety of my exam and dissertation process, he happily pushed the cart at Trader Joes and didn’t judge me for the 12 bottles of wine I’d picked out, he calmly listened to me stress about the writing process, and he was never bothered by the odd hours I kept. But… and most people wouldn’t read this as a problem, he already had a job. Not just a job, a career. And one he really loves. He spends his days getting paid for something he would happily do for free most days. And if that wasn’t good enough, it is incredibly stable and has great benefits. Again, who would ever complain about such a wonderful fate?! Apparently me.
There I was, recently out of school, newly married, and tied down to a city (more like a town) where my degree was completely useless. In a desperate attempt to find some work that didn’t involve pouring coffee or serving food, I applied to teach at a local studio. They had a competitive team program that was good but not the best in town, they seemed to like the class I taught, and I thought I had a great interview. I was so willing to do this job I even offered the same (low) rate I was offering when I was first out of undergrad. Yet, the same day my degree was conferred I was notified that I didn’t get the job. I was beat out by a student in the community college program I was an adjunct in. As far as I can tell, this was because she probably offered a rate that was a fraction of what I offered. Two degrees in dance, a dissertation on competition dance, years of experience teaching in studios and colleges as well as almost a decade working for competitions and I was unable to get a job at a studio.
With the exception of a local community college program, I quickly realized that I lived in a wasteland for the arts, or at least for the kind I was trained and qualified for. I was, and still am, on faculty at the college; however, California’s badly damaged economy has limited the opportunities I will have at this program for years to come. I applied for both part and full time positions within a 100-mile radius, and after some time, I started to realize that taking a job with a 90+ minute commute (each way) was insane if I ever hoped to have a family and be a part of that family.
I began to conceptualize what kinds of options might be out there for me. I began to think about all the other career paths I could explore that would require the skills of my PhD, even if it didn’t require the degree itself. I realized that since the jobs I thought I wanted five years earlier were not only difficult to come by because of the plummeting economy, but were even more difficult to find because I was now geographically limited. Since the community I lived in had no jobs for me, it was time for me to create my own work.
I have more or less taken every position that has been offered to me. Any day of the week you can find me donning four or five different hats. I once went to an event where I represented three different organizations simultaneously. Since completing graduate school, I have taught part time at three different collegiate institutions (including in a Global Studies program), began managing a small, but busy, professional dance company, became part of a collective of choreographers that produces events and workshops locally, found a local studio that I love teaching at, and I started my own local dance company. Meanwhile, I find ways to collaborate with long distance colleagues on scholarly work.
On my worst days I feel like my brain is going to fracture and cause me to lose my mind. On my best days I am completely fulfilled, feeling like I am not missing out on a single part of the wonderful world of dance. I get to teach all ages, and I get to perform when I want. I’ve learned that I love managing productions, and I never feel pressured when I sit down to write or research because it is always by choice. My days can be exhausting and I am excruciatingly underpaid because many of these positions are with brand new organizations that I am helping to build, but I see potential for a future in this wasteland that I live in. I see a future that I not only like, but a future that might just need someone exactly like me to help it succeed. The way I see it, no one may think that I am valuable now, but if I help to show them what I can do and what they are missing, then maybe one day there will be a local need for me and my degree.
I’d like to acknowledge that none of what I am doing in this effort is done alone. I have a small network of local colleagues who not only provide me opportunities but also support my endeavors. Together, I see us building a community that will not only provide for us but also for our neighbors. I am fully aware of the fact that my unstable lifestyle is made feasible by the fact that I have a partner whose stable job gives us many benefits, including health insurance. Because of this, I am able to take career risks that might not be smart decisions otherwise, so I recognize that this path may not be for everyone.
What I do encourage anyone, regardless of their marital status, geographic location or financial stability, to consider, however, are the many possibilities for their skills and degree. In academia, it is not uncommon to be conditioned to follow a narrow career path. But, just imagine what our world would look like if more arts administrators were MFAs or Ph.D. Imagine what it would look like if those on grant panels were working artists and not reps from corporations. Imagine if the majority of teachers in dance studios had MFAs. As other bloggers have said, you won’t be rich, but none of us go this direction for the money. So get creative about what you could do, because the possibilities are endless!
Dr. Alexis Weisbord received her BFA in Dance from University of Minnesota and her PhD in Critical Dance Studies from UC Riverside. Alexis was a competitive dancer in high school and later spent over ten years directing dance competitions throughout the US. Her dissertation was entitled “Redefining Dance: Competition Dance in the United States” and she has a chapter, “Defining Dance, Creating Commodity: The Rhetoric of So You Think You Can Dance,” in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen. Alexis has held positions as Lecturer in Global Studies at UC Riverside and Associate Faculty in Dance at Norco College. Currently she is an Associate Faculty member at Mt. San Jacinto College, Managing Director for The PGK Dance Project in San Diego, and founder/co-director of an emerging dance company, Alias Movement.
Born in New York City to Maurice Hines Sr. and Alma Hines, Gregory Hines began tapping when he was two years old, and began dancing semi-professionally at the age of five. Since then, he and his older brother Maurice performed together, studying with choreographer Henry LeTang. Gregory and Maurice also learned from veteran tap dancers such as Howard Sims and The Nicholas Brothers whenever they performed in the same venues. The two brothers were known as “The Hines Kids”, making nightclub appearances, and later as “The Hines Brothers”. When their father joined the act as a drummer,the name changed again in 1963 to “Hines, Hines, and Dad”.
Hines performed as the lead singer and musician in a rock band called Severance in the year of 1975-1976 based in Venice, California. Severance was one of the house bands at an original music club called Honky Hoagies Handy Hangout, otherwise known as the 4H Club. In 1986, he sang a duet with Luther Vandross, entitled “There’s Nothing Better Than Love”, which reached the No. 1 position on the Billboard R&B charts.
Hines made his movie debut in Mel Brooks’s History of the World, Part 1. Critics took note of Hines’s comedic charm, and he later appeared in such movies as The Cotton Club, White Nights alongside Mikhail Baryshnikov, Running Scared, Tap and Waiting to Exhale. On television, he starred in his own series in 1997 called The Gregory Hines Show on CBS, as well as in the recurring role of Ben Doucette on Will & Grace. In 1999, Hines made his return to television with Nick Jr.’s Little Bill, as the voice of Big Bill in which he won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer In An Animated Program.
Hines made his Broadway debut with his brother in The Girl in Pink Tights in 1954. He earned Tony Award nominations for Eubie! (1979), Comin’ Uptown (1980) and Sophisticated Ladies (1981), and won the Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for Jelly’s Last Jam (1992) and the Theatre World Award for Eubie!. In 1989, Gregory Hines created “Gregory Hines’ Tap Dance in America,” which he also hosted. The PBS special featured seasoned tap dancers such as Savion Glover and Bunny Briggs. He also co-hosted the Tony Awards ceremony in 1995 and 2002.
In 1990, Hines visited with his idol, Sammy Davis, Jr., as he was dying of throat cancer, unable to speak. After Davis died, an emotional Hines spoke at Davis’s funeral of how Sammy had made a gesture to him, “as if passing a basketball … and I caught it.” Hines spoke of the honor that Sammy thought that Hines could carry on from where he left off.
Hines was an avid improviser. He did a lot of improvisation of tap steps, tap sounds, and tap rhythms alike. His improvisation was like that of a drummer, doing a solo and coming up with all sorts of rhythms. He also improvised the phrasing of a number of tap steps that he would come up with, mainly based on sound produced. A laid back dancer, he usually wore nice pants and a loose-fitting shirt. Although he inherited the roots and tradition of the black rhythmic tap, he also influenced the new black rhythmic tap, as a proponent. “‘He purposely obliterated the tempos,’ wrote tap historian Sally Sommer, ‘throwing down a cascade of taps like pebbles tossed across the floor. In that moment, he aligned tap with the latest free-form experiments in jazz and new music and postmodern dance.'”
Throughout his career, Hines wanted to and continued to be an advocate for tap in America. In 1988, he successfully petitioned the creation of National Tap Dance Day, which is now celebrated in 40 cities in the United States. It is also celebrated in eight other nations. Gregory Hines was on the Board of Directors of Manhattan Tap, he was a member of the Jazz Tap Ensemble, and a member of the American Tap Foundation (formerly the American Tap Dance Orchestra). He was a good teacher, influencing tap dance artists Savion Glover, Dianne Walker, Ted Levy, and Jane Goldberg.
In an interview with The New York Times in 1988, Hines said that everything he did was influenced by his dancing–“my singing, my acting, my lovemaking, my being a parent.
Hines died of liver cancer at 57, on August 9, 2003, en route to hospital from his home in Los Angeles. He had been diagnosed with the disease more than a year earlier but had informed only his closest friends. At the time of his death, he was engaged to Negrita Jayde. Hines is interred at Saint Volodymyr’s Ukrainian Orthodox Cemetery in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, the country in which he met Negrita. Negrita, who died in 2009, is buried next to him.
Gregory Hines Solo Tap Scene White Nights
Fit As A Fiddle: Steve Martin & Gregory Hines
Gregory and Maurice Hines in the Cotton Club
Fun Facts about Mr. Gregory Hines
He and Maurice Hines were cast as brothers in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Cotton Club (1984), set in the Harlem club where their grandmother had been one of the elite black entertainers performing for a whites-only audience in the twenties and thirties. Coppola encouraged the brothers to improvise so they based one scene on their real-life reunion in “Eubie!” and admitted the tears were real.
In the late ’60s he decided to try his hand at performing rock ‘n’ roll music, and writing his own songs.
Was aged six when he and brother Maurice Hines performed, as the Hines Kids, at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem.
Had his professional debut when only 5 years old.
When he was in his twenties he worked on a farm.
Was considered for the part of “Winston Zeddemore” in Ghostbusters (1984).
Hines made his feature film debut in Mel Brooks’ History of the World: Part I (1981). He was a last minute replacement for Richard Pryor, who had to cancel his appearance in the movie due to his freebasing accident.
Won Broadway’s 1992 Tony Award as Best Actor (Musical) for “Jelly’s Last Jam,” for which he also shared a Best Choreographer nomination with Hope Clarke and Ted L. Levy. He was also nominated for Tonys three other times: as Best Actor (Featured Role – Musical) in 1979 for “Eubie!”, which he recreated in the television version with the same title, Eubie! (1981); ; and as Best Actor (Musical), in 1980 for “Comin’ Uptown” and in 1981 for “Sophisticated Ladies.”
In 1954 he and brother Maurice Hines they were cast in the Broadway musical “The Girl in the Pink Tights”.
He had a reunion with brother Maurice Hines when they were both hired for the Broadway musical, “Eubie!” in 1978. It earned him a Tony nomination, as did his role in another musical, “Sophisticated Ladies”.
His own stage show took him from New York’s Bottom Line to spots as far-flung as Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Japan and Monte Carlo.
Inducted into the International Tap Dance Hall of Fame in 2004.
MFA Monday typically centers on musings from local holders of Master of Fine Arts, but for this series we’ve got something a little different! For the next three weeks we will get to hear from a contributor all the way from California…drrrrum rrrolll please:
Part 1 of 3
As I sit here trying to figure out how to start writing about my experience in graduate school, I am becoming keenly aware of my many mixed feelings about my time there and my time since. So here is to hoping that whatever comes out here makes some sort of sense, for me if no one else.
First let me say that if I could go back and do it all again, I would have waited a few years after undergrad before going to graduate school. I started my doctorate at age 22, immediately after completing my BFA. A lot happened in the subsequent five years of my life while I was in school and working on my dissertation. Your early twenties are incredibly formative years, but I wouldn’t know because I spent them ALL in school. So all I know is how formative graduate school can be.
The moment I learned that a field called “Dance Studies” existed, something in me shifted. Growing up with parents who were teachers and in an academically rigorous community, I have always enjoyed traditional learning. But dance was always my passion. Until college, I thought the two things existed separately.
Although I have danced since I was a child, I’ve never thought of myself as much of an artist. When I was given the choice to write a thesis or choreograph a concert for my Senior Project in undergrad, I only considered the concert option for about 15 seconds. I wanted to write. I was interested in the research process and wanted to be a part of something that blew people’s minds the way Dance Studies did for me when I was 19. After dancing and thinking separately for two decades, I was excited to discover a place where both worked together. I’m not suggesting that choreographing and performing doesn’t require both activities simultaneously, because it certainly does. For me, growing up dancing meant just replicating with no thinking. And while I logically understand that both can, and do, happen in the same body at the same time, I am not sure I have ever fully understood how to make that happen for myself. Even to this day, I don’t fancy myself much of an artist and am incredibly insecure about my own artistic process and choreographic product. But give me a page and I will write! Give me an inspired theoretical text and I will happily analyze movement! In fact, at my going away party before I moved for grad school, I remember a conversation with a dear girlfriend and brilliant choreographer. She couldn’t quite understand why I was choosing to subject myself to even more schooling immediately after graduation. I remember telling her, “I want to be able to write about what you do. I want help people know it exists and remember that it exists for the rest of time.” So when I was 22, that was my plan: To write. About dance. Beyond that, I had no idea what graduate school and a doctorate in dance meant. This should have been my first clue…
I was excited for the letters after my name. I was excited because it sounded cool. But, frankly, the whole thing was hardly planned. I applied because it came recommended from a trusted mentor and I didn’t have any other plans. I honestly didn’t think I’d get in. In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t. I wish I could have taken an extra year to work, even if it meant working as a caterer, to think about life, about myself, and what I wanted in my future. I could have read more, increased my vocabulary, and written more. I would have interacted with more people, learn what life was like outside of that of a full-time student, and simply enjoyed a moment in my 20s before real life became too permanent and demanding.
I think that year in between would have helped me avoid the panic attack I had the third week of classes. Towards the end of a seminar, in a small and crowded room, after trying to stay calm for several weeks, the realization that I simply had no idea what I was doing came flooding over me. It turns out everyone in graduate programs are REALLY smart (usually). It’s like having a class full of only the smart kids that raise their hands. Let me clarify, it’s not “like” that, it is that. This is really intimidating for the quiet 22 year old who is keenly aware of her own inexperience. So in that moment, I couldn’t figure out why I’d moved away from everything I knew. I couldn’t figure out how I came to sit in a room with so many people who were so much smarter than me. I was convinced that I’d never succeed, that I’d possibly even truly fail for the first time ever. Suddenly, the classroom door got farther and farther away, the tears welled up and I realized that I would not get through graduate school without crying in public…
Now, I’m not suggesting that a year serving food and working for minimum wage would have kept me from crying in graduate school, but I do think it would have made me more confident and more self-assured. I think I could have come in with a better perspective of the world and not one developed solely from books and research. Or maybe even a master’s program would have helped. I thought I was on the fast-track because I was special, smarter than the average bear. And I might have been. But no matter how good I felt when I got that acceptance letter, no matter how smart I may have been in undergrad, I found myself in a room with a collection of people that still, to this day, are the smartest people I know, with more experience, more knowledge, and more skill than I had in that moment. If there is one thing I am confident in in life, it’s my intelligence. But graduate school is NOT real life. These people were/are really brilliant. I was too inexperienced to have confidence in my own intelligence in that moment (and many more to follow).
The one thing I wish someone had told me before I went to school was: “Wait, not yet, maybe next year.” Graduate school is only what you make of it, so be sure you have all the tools and resources you might need to get the most out of it. It’s like trying to paint the walls before you’ve done the primer. It’ll get done, but the color could be sharper and last longer if you prime it first.
Stay tuned for more from Dr. Alexis Weisbord!
Dr. Alexis A. Weisbord received her BFA in Dance from University of Minnesota and her PhD in Critical Dance Studies from UC Riverside. Alexis was a competitive dancer in high school and later spent over ten years directing dance competitions throughout the US. Her dissertation was entitled “Redefining Dance: Competition Dance in the United States” and she has a chapter, “Defining Dance, Creating Commodity: The Rhetoric of So You Think You Can Dance,” in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen. Alexis has held positions as Lecturer in Global Studies at UC Riverside and Associate Faculty in Dance at Norco College. Currently she is an Associate Faculty member at Mt. San Jacinto College, Managing Director for The PGK Dance Project in San Diego, and founder/co-director of an emerging dance company, Alias Movement.
