Articles from January 2025

The funding freeze that President Trump instituted earlier this week has had ripple effects in the dance community. Choreographer Jody Sperling, whose company Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance often engages creatively with the issue of climate change, was told that the troupe had lost a major State Department grant—just before leaving for the tour that grant was supposed to fund. During Sperling’s interview with Dance Magazine, news broke that the freeze had been rescinded. As of publication, Sperling is still unsure how her situation could be affected. Here is her story.

Update: On February 1, Sperling received word from the U.S. Embassy that the grant had in fact been terminated.    
      
At 8 am on Sunday morning, I woke up to a missed call from a Washington, DC, area code. It was the day before we were to leave on tour, and I’d been planning to pack and get everything together. The message was from somebody in the State Department telling me to call them back. When I got a hold of them, I was told the $30,210 grant that was partially funding our project no longer “effectuates agency priorities,” so it was terminated, and we should cease activities immediately.

We’d been planning this tour for almost three years. The director of Hakawy International Arts Festival for Children in Egypt—which brings international artists to do really innovative programming for kids of all backgrounds—wanted Time Lapse to perform. We had secured a $12,750 grant from Mid Atlantic Arts. Then the U.S. Embassy in Cairo awarded around $30,000. Time Lapse did a fundraiser to cover the rest.

We spent months working out the programming and logistics for six shows plus workshops in three cities. Mid Atlantic Arts had already told me that we would have to give back their entire grant if we didn’t perform. We’d purchased the plane tickets. The dancers had cleared their schedules, and I had contracts with them. So I realized: It’s not going to cost us much more to go than not to go. We might as well go.

I started making phone calls. I texted anyone I could think of who might have some means or some sway. But by the time I landed in Egypt, potential funders had been inundated with emergency appeals from others who’d lost funding.

We’d already gotten a $10,000 deposit for the Embassy grant, and can document enough expenses that we won’t have to give that back. We have $10,000 in fundraising pledges so far, and a board member and another supporter have offered loans to get us through the next few months.

So whatever happens, we’re not going to go bust over this. But there are going to be a lot of people hurting financially. People are scared, wondering how they’re going to be affected. It’s really concerning—not just the chaos, but also the fear of the chaos.

At one point on Sunday, the festival director asked me, “Well, do you have another show that’s not climate-related?” They assumed, rightly or wrongly, that our project’s climate message was the reason for the termination.

Even before this, I’d had a conversation with a grant writer, because the National Endowment for the Arts deadlines are in February, and I was thinking, Boy, I wonder what’s going to change. If climate change is an integral part of your work, how do you write a proposal to an administration that is actively not wanting to draw attention to that science? I think we’re going to find that some of us are maybe more cautious about how we communicate. Others may feel emboldened to say things that they never would have said before.

I really hope that we can continue not just to survive, but to grow. Because there is power in what we do, and I think it’s time to wield that power. Sometimes it feels so small in the face of the looming storm cloud. But I also feel like it isn’t insignificant.

The post How the Federal Funding Freeze Nearly Upended Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance’s Egypt Tour appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“Dance is the art of movement, and therefore anything that is moving, breathing, growing, or feeling is part of the dance,” says Vija Vetra, a 101-year-old Latvian-born dancer, choreographer, teacher, and lecturer who first earned acclaim as an Indian classical and modern dancer in the mid-20th century. Vetra’s passion for her art has taken her around the world, and it’s just only recently that she’s begun to slow down.

Born in Riga on February 6, 1923, Vetra recalls seeing a performance of Swan Lake at age 5 and instantly falling in love. At 16, she left home to train at the Vienna Academy (now the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna), where her instructors included modern dance legend Rosalia Chladek. In Vienna, Vetra studied ballet, modern, and various character-dance styles, as well as music, anatomy, and psychology.

World War II forced Vetra to leave Austria. Because Latvia was now occupied territory, Vetra spent several years as a war refugee. She eventually immigrated to Australia, where she joined Bodenwieser Ballet, under the direction of modern dancer and choreographer Gertrud Bodenwieser (a fellow émigré from Europe). Vetra later struck out on her own as an independent performer and opened her own school. She also danced in many Australian theater productions and even had her own television program, “Music and Dance,” in 1959.

It was through theater that Vetra encountered the dance style that would become her lifelong passion. “A director asked me to create an Indian dance for a play about the life of Buddha,” she says. “I’d never studied Indian dance, but I’d always been very interested in it.” Because there were no Indian classical dance masters in Australia at the time, Vetra immersed herself in the culture’s art and sculptures, carefully studying the poses. She also read the book Indian Dancing, by Ram Gopal, a London-based performer and choreographer. “I called him my ‘guru in absentia,’ ” Vetra says, adding that in a full-circle moment, she was later able to perform with Gopal and his dance company on tour.

Although she was self-taught, Vetra was so convincing that a group of Indian audience members believed her to be from their country and encouraged her to create more Indian dances. Soon, the Indian embassy took an interest in Vetra’s work; the ambassador’s patronage led to an invitation to travel to India. On what became her first of three trips, Vetra was finally able to train with a guru in person. “He was so surprised at what I already knew,” she says, “but of course I still had much to learn.”

As her knowledge and experience grew, Vetra began incorporating Indian classical dance into her own performances. She describes her shows as “East meets West”—a nod to various Indian dignitaries’ description of Vetra herself as “a bridge between East and West.” “I started each show with dances of India,” she says, “and then moved to modern dance, performing my own choreography.” It was in the East, however, where she felt most at home: “When I do Indian dance, I feel that I come back to my true self.”

While on a coast-to-coast tour of the U.S. and Canada in 1964, Vetra was offered several teaching opportunities. She decided to stay in the U.S. and soon opened her own studio in New York City. Ever eager to broaden her horizons, Vetra also trained with Martha Graham and José Limón. “I wanted to understand American modern dance,” she explains, “because the European style was quite different.”

Vetra continued to tour the world as a performer and choreographer. When Latvia regained its independence, she was able to visit home for the first time in decades. Starting in 1990, she traveled there annually to perform and teach. In 1999, she was awarded the Order of the Three Stars, Latvia’s highest civilian honor. In celebration of her 100th birthday in 2023, Vetra starred in a two-hour dance performance in Latvia. Unfortunately, health concerns rendered her unable to visit in 2024.

Within the U.S., Vetra has been on faculty, taught master classes, and given lectures at numerous colleges and universities. She was a member of the Dance Teacher’s Guild (now the American Dance Guild) and the now-defunct Congress on Research in Dance (CORD). She still teaches a weekly movement class for seniors at Westbeth Artists Housing in Manhattan’s West Village, where she’s lived and worked since 1970.

As she approaches her 102nd birthday, Vetra hopes to be remembered not only for her illustrious stage career but also for her work as an educator who helps students discover their unique artistic voices. “When I teach, I always underline the creativity within dance,” she says. “It’s important for every dancer to find a way of self-expression, rather than squeezing into the form of someone else. It’s a special delight to watch students developing and becoming. The act of becoming is beautiful.”

The post For 101-Year-Old Vija Vetra, Dance Is a Symbol of Life Itself appeared first on Dance Magazine.