ran-&-rave

The groundbreaking musical La Cage aux Folles opened on Broadway 40 years ago last August. As part of the anniversary celebrations, members of the original Cagelles—the dancers who formed the drag ensemble at the heart of the show—organized a series of events in conjunction with Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

It’s fitting that the group marked the occasion by raising money to fight HIV/AIDS. La Cage took Broadway by storm just as the AIDS pandemic reached the public’s consciousness. And as the “gay plague” swept Broadway companies, including their own, the Cagelles organized numerous benefits, some of which continue to this day.

Some of the 10 gay men and two women first cast as Les Cagelles were little more than teenagers when they joined the show. These are a few of their stories.

A Little More Mascara

Dennis Callahan (Monique): I think there were between 800 and 1,000 at the original open call. Scott Salmon, who was the choreographer, was not a New York person. So it was really like a clean slate as far as what he was seeing at these auditions.

David Engel (Hanna): I was only being seen for Jean-Michel [one of the leads]. Then they said, “We need to see you dance and in drag.” I didn’t know why. I came to the final dance call. Everybody else had learned all this choreography. I learned it on the spot.

Dan O’Grady (Odette): It got down to maybe 25 of us at the end. I had never done any drag, but I decided to show up in drag [for the final audition]. It was really, really funny. When I got into the cab, the cab driver got out, opened the door for me, called me ma’am. Then I went into the theater, and they didn’t know who I was. No one else arrived in drag.

DC: From 10 in the morning to 4 or 5 in the afternoon, we did all of the dancing in drag. And at the end of this long day, we were 12 and 12 across the stage.

DE: Basically, it was like the end of A Chorus Line. We were all lined up across the stage. And then they’re like, “Rehearsals start on this date—congratulations.” Everybody’s jumping up and down screaming, and I’m like, “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

DC: After the others left, they had the 12 of us gather around the piano and sing “There’s No Business Like Show Business” in real short-clipped piano voices. [Composer] Jerry Herman said, “This is the style of La Cage’s opening song, ‘We are What We Are.’ ” It was such a cool moment to be around the piano with Jerry and [music director] Don Pippin, all of us in drag.

Not a Place We Have to Hide

DE: The very first day of rehearsal, [director] Arthur Laurents said, “We are not doing this apologetically. We are proudly playing these roles.”

DO: He gave us all storylines. Some were more developed than others, but we all had a bit of one. He really instilled in us that we were important to the story.

DC: Though I don’t think any of us had any experience doing drag, I don’t think any Cagelle would say it was hard. The atmosphere in the room was so supportive and nurturing that none of us felt any fear of being judged.

DO: I remember Arthur working on “I Am What I Am” with George Hearn [who played Albin], a straight man. The amount of pride and dignity that Arthur conveyed not just to George but all of us was very powerful. It moves me even just to think of it now.

DC: The Cagelles were given the last bow. When does that ever happen? We each just took a humble bow as ourselves. The sound of the audience was unbelievable.

Sometimes Sweet and Sometimes Bitter

DE: We had a whole warm-up area in the basement, and at intermission, we’d dress up, we’d be ridiculous. We just kept creating and playing.

It was the best of times. And it was the worst of times.

DO: I first started hearing about the “gay cancer” when we were in Boston. Nobody knew what it was.

DE: I remember thinking to myself, if I went to a gay bar, I would hold my breath. You just didn’t know. It was everywhere, and if you tested positive, it was a death sentence, definitely. And you could go quick.

DO: I think David Cahn [Chantelle] was the first of us Cagelles who got sick and left, then John Dolf [Nicole].

DC: I don’t remember any conversation between the rest of us about the boys being sick. I think it was sort of a feeling of: If they wanted to talk about it they would, and they’re not, so neither should we. And maybe there was also a fear.

DO: We felt the loss from the inside, and I think that’s what sort of led us to start thinking about the Easter Bonnet competition. Howard Crabtree and the other costume folks did these silly Easter bonnets, and we had folks donate. In the beginning it was just the cast, the crew, and the orchestra.

DE: We did the Easter Bonnet pageant in the basement and a Queen of Hearts pageant for Valentine’s Day, both just among ourselves, and raised money for Gay Men’s Health Crisis. The next year we decided to bring the Easter Bonnet pageant onto the stage and invited other casts to come—A Chorus Line, Cats, there were a few companies. I remember when they flipped over the cards at the end, we had raised $17,000. I was sobbing, sobbing.

DO: I think we needed a sense of agency. Because there was no hope. There really wasn’t. Our friends were dying, and we couldn’t do anything about it. But we could dress up and act silly and ask people for money.

DC: Teddy Azar was instrumental in the whole look of the show makeup- and wig-wise. He was one of the first in the company to come down with AIDS. He was at St. Vincent’s, and David [Scala, who played Phaedra], Sam [Singhaus, Clo-Clo], and I got some nurse drag with these giant hypodermic needles and resuscitation devices, just ridiculous stuff, and we went down there. People who worked there came up to us and said, “Could you please come bring some of this joy into some of the other rooms?” And we went in and out of these rooms, these three big old drag queens in nurse drag, and it was joyous. The whole thing was joyous.

DE: I had plenty of hard losses, but the hardest was [executive producer] Fritz Holt. At the show that night, we silently got in place, and one by one we turned around in the opening number and we all started singing “We Are What We Are.” But then one by one voices were dropping out. We just couldn’t sing. We were all crying. The cast members in the wings on both sides were singing for us, trying to keep it going.

We Are What We Are

DC: When we would turn around one by one in the opening number, you could feel, physically, this sort of crossed-arm, furrowed-brow feeling from the audience. They were probably wondering if maybe we’re too close, we’re going to get [AIDS].

By the end of the show those same faces were leaning into the stage, wide-eyed. I left every night thinking, Wow, I think I was part of something that changed what people think about homosexuals.

DE: I came out to my mom when I was 18, and she really struggled with it. She couldn’t understand what she had done wrong. And it was La Cage that turned her around. It let her know that you can have love and family being gay. She became a mother to all of my gay friends that had parents that disowned them. They adored her, and she loved all of them.

DC: From the beginning my parents saw something in me. They would take me to the Muny Opera, to the Starlight in Kansas City, and nurtured that in me. But at the same time I didn’t ever feel like I needed to tell them I was gay. I thought the words and the situation would hurt them. And they knew.

When they saw the show, that was my way of being able to tell them and show them that I was going to be okay.

DO: La Cage changed my life. I got to work with Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman and Arthur Laurents and Fritz Holt and Barry Brown and Don Pippin, and George Hearn and Gene Barry [Georges] and Merle Louise [Mme. Didon]. I also learned so much from Linda Haberman [Bitelle] and Jennifer Smith [Colette]. The work ethic, the creativity, and the artistry was like nothing I had ever been exposed to.
DC: At the 40-year reunion, we sang “The Best of Times.” There were two older gentlemen sitting next to each other in the audience, and they were bawling. And I thought, god, this show affected more people than we will ever know. It’s so special to have been a part of something like that.

The post La Cage aux Folles’ Cagelles, 40 Years Later: Something About Sharing, Something About Always appeared first on Dance Magazine.

It’s 2009, and my high school self is in the studio choreographing a new duet with my best friend to Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here.” The company director pokes her head in and disparagingly tells us the song and movement choice makes us look like “a couple of lesbians.”

We stand in stunned silence. I grew up in a performing arts family and had never once correlated being gay with being bad. My director’s tone, however, tells me a very different story. My brain files the conversation under the heading “Being a Lesbian Dancer Is Not Okay.”

I wish I could say that after high school, my world opened up wide, and I saw an abundance of representation within the dance world. I didn’t. Though I had out-and-proud peers, they were the subjects of frequent whispers. I still didn’t see any female or female-identifying professionals out. I didn’t have my first queer female teacher until graduate school. I went through multiple dance history courses without so much as a mention of a queer female.

I came out publicly after completing my MFA. As I continued to study dance history, it felt odd not to see myself in anything I was reading and watching. It really seemed as though queer women were just absent from the dance history canon. In contrast, queer men were widely acknowledged—we know about Alvin Ailey, Bill T. Jones, Merce Cunningham, the complicated history around Vaslav Nijinsky. We have records of queer men in dance even if they lived in eras when homosexuality was punishable by law or shunned by society.

Why does the dance world celebrate the queerness of men while simultaneously suppressing its queer women? It drove home my internalized feelings that queer women were, in fact, not welcome in the dance community.

In 2019 I began to teach dance to high school students, and the more time I spent with them, the more I wanted better for them. I wanted them to see themselves in our history. I wanted them to see themselves represented, to see career paths beyond what I had chosen. Statistically, there had to be queer women in dance’s narrative—so where were they? Was their absence a fault in my education or memory, or in the field of history itself?

This year, I began to search in earnest for the queer female dancers of the past. (I’m nowhere near the first person to probe for similar answers in queer dance history; Clare Croft and Peter Stoneley are two trailblazers that spring to mind.) I had expected to unearth communities, modern greats who had “special friends” or “roommates” or “fellow spinsters with whom they lived their entire lives.” Instead, I found very little. And what I have seen, I’m baffled by. Why, when I learned about Yvonne Rainer, was her sexuality never mentioned? Though I do not believe we should “boil people down” to their sexual orientation, are we not considering representation for those in our classrooms? Why do we strip women of the same identities we applaud or at least acknowledge in men?

It feels like both a society-at-large and a dance-community problem. The dance world is so gendered. Its treatment of people according to their gender identities is painfully unequal. And we have historically gone through periods of acceptance, tolerance, and oppression of the LGBTQIA+ community, with no linear timeline. The side effect is that we have figures of dance history who could not come out, regardless of their wants and desires.

As I continue my research, I ask two things of the dance world: Can we create space for queer women to be out, celebrated, and acknowledged? And can we work together to find and recognize our queer female dance ancestors? When we root ourselves in our past, we give ourselves something to grow from.

If you have information about queer women in dance history to share with Wesler, please get in touch via her website: sammwesler.wixsite.com/sammwesler

The post Queer Women Are Disconcertingly Absent From the Pages of Dance History. Where Are They? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Let’s talk about stage fright. Whether you’re new to performing or you’ve been in front of audiences for years, everybody can admit it’s at least a little nerve-wracking. And yet, it’s the culmination of all the work dancers do! So, as a teacher or studio owner who teaches your dancers all about technique and artistry, how can you coach them through the practicalities of performing, like performance anxiety?

Andrea Kolbe, studio owner of Art in Motion Dance Center in Long Island, New York, shares how she spots and soothes students who are feeling nervous. We also spoke with Chicago-based dance/movement therapist Erica Hornthal, author of Body Aware.

Step one is definitely identifying the problem – and it can start even before you get to the theater. Nerves might be affecting your dancer onstage, backstage or even in the studio well before the performance. Is one of your dancers wobblier than usual the week before? Has their attitude changed in rehearsals?

Kolbe says, “When we have our recitals, I can typically tell when the dancers are nervous because of the look on their face and being super jittery. Some will talk excessively, while others will be super quiet and focus inward. I also have some of the dancers verbalize that they are nervous to me or the other instructors backstage.”

If dancers can recognize for themselves and express to you that they’re not feeling their best, that’s fantastic. But it’s important to remember that nerves will look different on everyone. Different methods of dealing with those nerves might work better for some dancers, and other methods for others. Most dancers feel better after testing their shoes onstage and having time to try the choreography in the space. Some may need time and space to focus alone. Others might benefit from a connecting pre-show ritual with their group, like a huddle and pep-talk backstage to connect with their peers.

“Group camaraderie and teamwork definitely ease onstage jitters and nervousness,” notes Kolbe. “I’ve noticed over the past 13 years of teaching in a studio setting that dancers are much more nervous when they are performing a solo on stage.” In the scenario of solos, maybe take your dancer aside and learn what they personally need, whether that’s to burn off some energy, talk it out or do some breathwork.

We asked dance/movement therapist Erica Hornthal for her top three tips on dealing with those pesky jitters in the wings, or nervousness leading up to that moment. Her take?

#1. “Meet your emotions. Identify what/how you feel physically.”

#2. “Notice what the timing, rhythm and intensity of this emotion is. This will help you express it.”

#3. “Express it. This can be through shaking, tapping, jumping, bouncing, etc. There is no wrong movement when it comes to expressing how an emotion feels in your body.”

A simple 1 2 3, right? Well, if you want to make this method its most effective, it takes some practice. Mental health can’t only be addressed by three “top tips” when you’re already in the wings.

“Practice the above sequence at times when you are not feeling stressed, anxious or overwhelmed,” Hornthal encourages. “This will allow you to use it when you really need it.” Some of her other suggestions include moving in unfamiliar ways to build a greater emotional capacity, and checking in with your body regularly to identify emotions as they arise.

It’s about building good mental health habits. Be sure to introduce this to your students before the big day. When they’re feeling fear creep in at the studio, or before bed on recital eve or even when they’re not feeling stressed at all, they should use this method consistently so they know they can rely on it when they’re stepping onstage.

What does Hornthal feel is overlooked about performance anxiety? “Anxiety is a feeling. It’s normal,” she says. “You will never eliminate it. The key is noticing it, understanding it, even befriending it so we can dispel the fear and release the control it has over you. It is not something to be avoided, but rather confronted in a safe and compassionate manner.”

If only we had access to professionals like Hornthal in our studios! Few dance schools have the budget to have a dance/movement therapist on staff, but boy would it be helpful. Kolbe agrees that having a mental health expert come to the studio and give a lecture on recital anxiety would be beneficial to her dancers. If not a guest lecturer, what other mental health resources can we provide for our students? As teachers, it’s our job to set them up to do the best they can – and in a performance art, that includes giving them tools to dance without anxiety affecting their performance.

By Holly LaRoche of Dance Informa.

The post Fighting stage fright: How to spot and soothe performance anxiety appeared first on Dance Informa Magazine.

Malak Shoeira went to her first pole dance class half-jokingly, after a friend’s suggestion. At the time she was a ninth-grader in Egypt, and almost everything she knew of pole came from American TV. But that was in 2017, when pole dancing was relatively new to Egyptian gyms and dance studios.    

She ended up discovering a new passion. “I had never really found myself in something, and pole was so different from anything I had done before,” Shoeira says.

Today, Shoeira is an enthusiastic proponent of pole dancing as an art, a sport, and a means of self-expression. But not everyone in Shoeira’s life has been happy about her dancing. Her dad, especially, needed convincing. “We’d have fights,” she says. “But eventually, especially as I had started coaching, he became more okay with it.”

In many Western countries, pole dance classes achieved mainstream popularity years ago. Egypt’s pole dancing culture has been slower to grow—partly due to the country’s conservative society, and partly because it can be perceived as a Western take on “provocative” belly dancing, an art still facing its own stigmas.

Though social media has helped Egyptian pole dancers tackle taboos, misunderstandings persist. Egyptians wanting to try pole dancing are sometimes suspicious, for example, of its shorter outfits, seeing them as unnecessarily revealing. Shoeira encourages her students to experiment with their clothes for their own confidence, but also emphasizes that bare arms and legs make it easier to move on the pole.

Sharoubim and Shoeira have different opinions on the women-only rules that shape dance culture in Egypt. Shoeira is among the few pole instructors in Egypt teaching mixed-gender classes. They have proved highly successful despite some initial negative reactions, and sometimes even draw more men than women. Sharoubim, on the other hand, believes that women-only spaces are crucial in Egypt, as they typically help women feel safer and free to take off their hijabs or wear form-fitting clothes.

Sharoubim’s students span a wide age range; she says she’s had several older pupils who were dedicated from the start. “One 62-year-old woman told me pole made her feel like she ‘was flying’ and that she became ‘20 years younger,’ ” Sharoubim says. A 45-year-old told Sharoubim that pole and its sensuality helped her love her body and herself. Across generations, Egyptians are finding a new kind of freedom in pole dancing.

The post The Rise of Pole Dancing in Egypt appeared first on Dance Magazine.

As I’ve been rediscovering as I return to dance, auditioning is an inherently vulnerable act. Even the most accomplished performers will tell you they hear “no” more often than they hear “yes.” When we get a callback or book a job, we are on top of the world. When we get cut, we are forced to pick up the pieces of one lost dream so that we can be ready to chase another tomorrow.

It’s a lot for anyone to cope with, but especially those newer to the industry. What can you expect at auditions—and how can you cope with their unique pressures? I asked two experts to share their advice.

How to Audition Well

If you want proof that Shannon Lewis knows how to audition, just look at her resumé. She performed in 10 Broadway musicals, was a Radio City Rockette, and has danced on “The Today Show” and at the Tony Awards. Now, she’s on the other side of the table as a choreographer, director, and educator. Through her experience in the industry, she has discovered various tools for auditioning well.

First, recognize that the people at the front of the room want you to succeed. “I want everyone to come in and blow me away,” Lewis says. “I am actively wanting you to be the best you can possibly be and to have the best day ever.” Rather than looking at casting directors and choreographers as scary judges, see them as cheerleaders, and your energy will become more inviting and magnetic.

Second, the best way to enter auditions feeling confident and prepared is by honing your skills in class, fine-tuning technique and learning to pick up choreography.  “That’s where dancers build their toolbox throughout their entire careers,” she says. “So when you’re in the room and the choreographer wants a triple that stops on five, you can do that, because you have been working on it yourself.”

Third, build relationships through networking. “Someone will be more likely to take a chance on you if they know your work already,” she says. If you’re new to the professional dance world, a good place to start that process is the classroom. “If you really connect with a teacher, it’s great to be in that class as much as possible, because it will give you the chance to build a relationship,” Lewis says. “Loyalty and consistency are really important words in our world.”

Even if you go into auditions well-prepared, you’ll still likely face a lot of rejection. But remember that every experience is setting the groundwork for future opportunities. “Even if I’m auditioning someone for something they are completely not right for, if they come in the room and do an incredible job, I will absolutely remember them for the next thing I’m doing,” Lewis says.

How to Cope With the Emotional Strain of Auditioning

Terry Hyde, a UK-based psychotherapist and the founder of Counselling for Dancers, is also well-versed in the challenges of auditioning. Like Lewis, he started out as a performer, dancing with The Royal Ballet and London’s Festival Ballet (now English National Ballet), and performing in musicals in London’s West End.

I’ve worked with Hyde briefly myself as I’ve grappled with the myriad emotional challenges that come with returning to dance after 10 years of illness. Here are his tips for coping with the specific stresses of auditioning.

First, Hyde recommends taking 15 minutes to practice meditation as part of your daily routine. “This will prepare you to have a clear mindset on the day of your audition,” he says.

Next, he recommends finding a private space at the audition—a dressing room or bathroom—to do breathing exercises. Sit for five minutes and breathe slowly: inhale on the “and,” exhale on the “one,” inhale on the “and,” exhale on the “two,” until reaching the count of four; then reverse the count. “If any thoughts come into your mind as you do this, just tell them, ‘Hang on a minute, I want a quiet moment,’ ” Hyde says.

Hyde also wants you to reframe words like “nerves” and “rejection.” “You have probably been told that butterflies and tension before a performance are nerves, but the physical feelings of anxiety are identical to the physical feelings of excitement,” Hyde says. Rather than saying “I’m so nervous,” before an audition, say “I’m so excited.” “Our minds are so powerful that they create the reality in which we live,” Hyde says.

If a dancer doesn’t book the job they are auditioning for, Hyde wants them to know that it’s not a true rejection of their talent or who they are. “Auditions aren’t rejections. They are very subjective,” he says. “You might not be what they are looking for, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t got talent.”

For more audition tools and advice from Lewis and Hyde, watch their full interviews in the latest “Begin Again” vlog over on Dance Magazine’s YouTube channel.

The post Begin Again: Auditioning With Confidence appeared first on Dance Magazine.

How do we respond to recurring accounts of an acclaimed choreographer’s damaging relationships with dancers, especially women? Recent podcasts (Erika Lantz’s The Turning: Room of Mirrors) and books (Alice Robb’s Don’t Think, Dear) have contributed to a narrative that’s been emerging for decades: Throughout his career, George Balanchine employed power dynamics that controlled and hindered some dancers’ choices and opportunities.

On April 5, 2023, The New York Times published a response, “Finding Freedom and Feminism in Ballet. (It’s Possible.),” by dance critic Gia Kourlas. In promoting Balanchine’s choreography as a practice of “freedom,” Kourlas fails to address multiple experiences detailed within these two works and beyond of people who witnessed in- and out-of-studio practices that harmed women.

In noting what she calls a “myth” of ballet as “suffering, pain and blind subservience to patriarchal leaders,” Kourlas supports a system that has historically ignored the first step to ending abuse: Believe the survivors’ stories. Far too often, women in ballet have been disbelieved, gaslighted, judged, or blamed for the harms inflicted on them by their abusers. Kourlas continues this trend, but attaches these behaviors to words like “feminism” and “freedom” in a way that diminishes them.

Other authors have approached the same subject with more nuance. Throughout her book, Robb acknowledges the ways that women, historically and currently, have sought Balanchine’s and other men’s approval. Although Balanchine died in 1983, his leadership style has survived through actions and attitudes adopted by some of his protégés and other directors. Such leaders handwave alleged abuses in the name of tradition, excellence, or, as Kourlas phrases it, “freedom,” while continuing to validate the patriarchy and misogyny still rampant in some ballet settings.

The power dynamics at play in ballet are not specific to artistic institutions. It’s dangerous to dancers, as well as to women, female-identifying and gender-nonconforming people, when gendered abuses of power are confused with acceptable working conditions. The Duluth power wheel (used in cases of domestic violence) outlines approaches similar to those that have been used by some ballet directors to isolate and control women.

Perhaps the uncomfortable question is: Can we continue to appreciate artistic works with an awareness of the harm done by their creator? Can we even rely on a single person to hold the answer to this question? Kourlas suggests that we situate histories of abuse in relation to liberatory moments onstage—that we look to the brief moment of freedom a dancer has when performing. But is it really “freedom” if that fleeting success relies on discounting or dismissing the suffering of other women?

Many writers and teachers are wrestling with how to bring attention to ballet’s intersecting racist and patriarchal foundations. For example, Episode 8 of Season 2 of The Turning, on “American Ballet,” examines Balanchine’s statement that a ballerina should be “the color of a peeled apple,” and cites scholarship by Brenda Dixon-Gottschild to analyze Balanchine’s appropriation of other artists’ (Katherine Dunham) and communities’ (jazz and tap dancers) steps and styles.

There’s a wealth of women in leadership roles as choreographers and directors who are advocating for women’s rights and questioning/dismantling institutional norms, even within New York City Ballet. In an April 18 New York Times article, Virginia Johnson, outgoing director of Dance Theatre of Harlem, says ballet “is a living art form that needs to be true to the time that it lives in.” If the reduction of women, dancers of color, and especially women of color to lesser-than status was acceptable in ballet in the 20th century, these gendered and racialized biases must shift in the 21st.

As a critic for the New York Times, Kourlas holds the power to shape these histories and narratives. Our past continues to inform the present, and we should invest in respectful treatment for all dancers to pursue collective freedoms within and beyond ballet.

Rebecca Chaleff is an assistant professor at SUNY–University at Buffalo; Michelle LaVigne is a senior lecturer at Cornell University; Kate Mattingly is an assistant professor at Old Dominion University.

The post Op Ed: What’s Possible in Writing About Ballet? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

It’s my personal belief that at the center of every electrifying dance performance is a story. Even the works that are supposedly plotless have something evocative going on behind the eyes—in the way the body floats, jabs, crumples, and reaches. Sure, dancers tell their own tales from time to time, but more often than not, they embody a character onstage (think Giselle or the Sugar Plum Fairy, for example.) Ultimately, dancers are actors. And yet, most have limited (if any) formal acting training. It’s a truth choreographer Marguerite Derricks often lectures young students on. In a recent interview for Dance Magazine, she told me, “You can kick and spin and pas de bourrée, but the magic is how you put it all together in a story. Acting brings greater depth to your dancing.”

I began acting in college while in the depths of my illness. At the time my body was barely functioning well enough to accomplish basic tasks, let alone sustain grand allégro. But my heart yearned for performance and creative expression, so I decided to try my hand at something dance adjacent—acting.

I was terrified on my first day of class. I had no idea what to expect or how to prepare. I wanted to be respectful of the customs of an acting class, and I didn’t want to look silly. (Spoiler alert, there is no way to avoid looking silly, so just lean into it.) I wanted a play-by-play of what to expect, but instead, I had to jump in blind and hope everything went okay. (It did, but I could have done without the added anxiety.)

So for those of you who are looking to improve your dancing through acting, I caught up with my teacher, Andrew Polk, who leads the class I’m taking on on-camera technique at The Freeman Studio. You may recognize him from films like Armageddon Time and television shows like Billions, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, House of Cards, and more. Here, he shares what to expect, how to prepare, and what he thinks dancers could take away from a class like his.

What to Expect

First, it’s important to know that every acting class is going to be a little bit different. Each teacher will have a unique approach, and the medium (theater or on-camera) will change the experience entirely. For example, Polk wants dancers to know that they are not at a disadvantage in an on-camera class because they don’t have heavy theater training as actors. “Working on camera is like another art form. It’s like you were playing basketball your whole life and then someone asked you to play the violin.”

That said, you can likely plan on a few things regardless of the teacher or medium. First, you will likely perform a scene at the front of the room with your teacher and class watching. Then the teacher will provide feedback for you to apply to your work (just like in a dance class). You will then have the opportunity to watch other class members perform their respective scenes, as well.

How to Prepare

For Polk’s class, scene assignments are sent out a few days before the first day of class and we are expected to have done text analysis and be off-book (memorized) by the time class begins. Each subsequent week follows this same pattern. In other courses I’ve taken in college or at The Freeman Studio, the first day of class has been more of an introduction to the course while the teacher outlines their expectations, and then we’re expected to be off-book by the next class. If your instructor doesn’t send out an email ahead of time to let you know what to prepare, I recommend reaching out and politely asking what their expectations are for your first day.

You can prepare by reading the scene, digging into the given circumstances, and familiarizing yourself with your character (and, of course, your lines). “Preparation is necessary—you need that kind of discipline,” Polk says.” Even more important than that, he wants you to bring your instincts. “A lot of what I teach is to trust your instinctual response to the material,” he says. “Often that is hard. A lot of people want to approach things the right way, but there is no ‘right way.’ Dancers are really in touch with their instincts and their bodies, and I think that would be very helpful.”

Classroom Rules

Each acting teacher will have different expectations for classroom etiquette, but for Polk, he wants students to be prepared, on time, and void of judgment. “Don’t judge your character or other actors,” he says. “In my class you spend a lot of time watching others. We are not there to perform for each other, we are there to work. So when you see other people work, you shouldn’t judge them, you should imagine you are them. It’s a really great way to learn.”

How Polk Believes Dancers Can Benefit From Acting

When students finish a cycle of his class, Polk hopes they know what it feels like to successfully act for the camera. “I want them to have progressed,” he says. For dancers specifically, he would hope that a class like his would expand their performance. “Can you tell a story that is not technical? Can you let go of your technical ability and lean into the story and into the character and be messy? If you are creating life, if you are creating a moment, that is what you are aiming for. That is the main challenge and reward for a dancer who is not used to that.”

Curious about what an acting class actually looks like? Head on over to Dance Magazine’s YouTube channel. There I share a day in my life as I prepare for, and attend, one of Polk’s “On Camera Technique” classes.

The post Begin Again: Acting for Dancers appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Visualize your favorite hobby—is it drawing, cooking, running? Now, visualize yourself in your element, whether at your desk, in the kitchen or on the trail, and you are totally consumed in your craft, your brain is so focused on the task at hand that external thoughts are unable to penetrate your intense, but effortless, concentration. Time seems to stop and you are truly living in the moment.

As a child, I found a similar groove in reading. I remember devouring the Harry Potter books and getting in trouble for reading in bed under the covers when I was supposed to be asleep. I was obsessed with the calming feeling that reading brought me, and how words on a page could steal me away to a magical world where anything was possible. Ballet became that escape for me as I got older, and I found a calmness in the daily routine and tunnel-vision focus that it requires.

Starting ballet at the age of 5, I never really saw any other way of life and left home at the age of 14 to train pre-professionally in Philadelphia. I developed in my career and danced with Houston Ballet’s second company, and this all led to me being where I am today: a company dancer with Atlanta Ballet. The hard work that goes into this art form has always captured my focus in a way that nothing else has been able to, and my brain and my body began to crave the flow state of mind that it brings me. When my attention is completely attuned to the movements of my body, the strain in my muscles and lungs falls away and I find a feeling of serenity and an out-of-body experience.

Every day, I chase the headspace that ballet gives me, and my genuine appreciation for the art has only grown. The best moments in our lives are when we are challenging ourselves, pushing our limits in an effort to accomplish something that is hard to attain yet worthwhile. It brings me joy and fulfillment to devote my time, energy and focus to the never-ending goals and challenges that come with being a professional ballet dancer. I have come to appreciate that it is truly a gift to be able to step into a studio and leave everything outside for a few hours, to step onstage and become a different character, and to give audiences the immersive experience of seeing us convey stories and emotions through movement and music. Dancing leaves me feeling ecstatic, inspired and fulfilled—and always coming back for more.

The post Jessica He on the Joys of Being a Professional Ballerina appeared first on Dance Magazine.

I am a unicorn, so I’ve been told. I can make people feel a certain way, move a certain way and feel validated. I nestle, negotiate and fly in spaces on- and offstage. My role? Making performers, spectators and directorial/producorial teams feel like they belong. This magical work grew out of my lifelong career in postmodern, physical, immersive and dance theater in Europe and in the U.S.

My name is Stefanie Batten Bland. I am an interdisciplinary director and choreographer. An American of African and European heritage, I am a woman of brown tones and reddish-brown bushy, curly hair that has volume and unapologetically takes up space. I’ve lived the better part of my life in spaces that weren’t necessarily designed for me, and yet I’ve thrived.

Being seen for who you are—with casting, lighting and costuming choices that support that—is an incredible feeling. But it is a state with which I have a complex relationship. I grew up needing to negotiate familial spaces and, as such, was always hired as a type of hybrid mover, sprinkled in hybrid genres. I know how a person’s identity is tied to their reality—and how that spills into their work, whether a production is thematically abstract or a fictional narrative.

Inside of ballet, I was an inaugural choreographer for ABT’s Women’s Movement, for its Studio Company in 2019. I see the ballet industry beginning to examine its hiring practices and role-distribution policies. Now, further spurred on by the theatrical justice movement during the pandemic, it is immersive theater’s turn to change patterns as we move with pride into the rest of this century.

Outside of my own work with my Company SBB, I am casting and movement director, as well as performance and identity consultant, for Emursive Productions, the producers of large-scale immersive theater in New York City and across the globe. Immersive work is a form that often engages with being seen and not—through mysterious lighting, enticing characters and stories that center audience members and set them free to chase, follow and choose how close they get to the cast.

However, there is a profound difference between BIPOC immersive­ performers not being seen by choice and not being able to be seen at all. This is where I come in. I aim to ensure that directors, producers, scenographers and designers dream up shows with a lens of inclusivity. How can they meet diverse performers in auditions, imagine them in all roles, and then make sure audiences can see them, literally? How do light levels, instruments, costuming, approaches to character description and all the other visual cues, from the space to the sound, help performers play their best fiction while living their truth?

Art-making is complex, controversial. I know what I am doing cannot fix everything nor please everyone. This theater practice has been mainly made for and by people of European ancestry. Not to say BIPOC performers weren’t in these shows. But they weren’t centered around us, our tones, our skin bounce. My work inside of Emursive is profound as it shifts what “absence in plain sight” means in this proximity-based work. My weapon of choice is what great performance is rooted in: imagination. I open up our framework of imagining people by how we see them to also include how they see themselves. Our daily life biases are present in all we do, so I start where I see absence.

In our new show, I help develop characters that previously would have been considered supporting roles. (Just think about how BIPOC performers are often cast as exotic, magical or humorous characters who are short-lived or featured for only a few minutes—like the Black kid in the horror movie who gets killed first.) Some of my approaches to moving beyond­ “traditional” character decks include shifting to BIPOC-centered imagery in lieu of past predominantly white typecasting patterns. Then I explore the first- and second-degree resources (real people, living or dead, who share a character’s bio or archetype similarities) and ensure they are also BIPOC. I focus on finding the best performer for that character.

From the moment a BIPOC performer walks into a space, they/we should feel empowered. During auditions, the hiring process and the special walk to the dressing room, we should feel normal because our space is made for all to succeed. My work centers on putting into practice a majority–minority cultural shift in performance and identity.

In shows that are already up and running—and this is where the unicorn again raises its head—I apply the same techniques to move a production into present/future time, as opposed to the past. I’ve been in these shows myself and noticed as patrons saw me as an “angry Black woman” instead of the character I was portraying. I saw their fear because of my proximity to them—a result of their biases, even though they’d paid to be inside of a fictional theatrical space. It was humiliating to lose an audience at moments when my colleagues of Euro-based heritage did not.

I help shows rework material in ways that simultaneously honor the scripts while addressing the many complicated facets of life here in the U.S. It has been a lonely labor, but now I am seeing immediate changes. I am needed once again for my hybrid sensibilities, and I not only feel good in my skin, but I can ensure all who come after me will feel good in theirs. When I see the success of this work, it is reflected in the performers, the shows and the spectators. It is thrilling. Creating and re-exploring productions in partnership with people of different skin tones makes more performance opportunities for all.

Race is imaginary. The representation of all in our performing arts shouldn’t be. So says the unicorn.

The post Why Crafting More-Inclusive Immersive Theater Matters appeared first on Dance Magazine.

I am deeply, madly, in love with movement.

It is one of the great loves of my life, it is my heart.

The very unromantic reason why I dance is because it is my vocation, my entire adult life’s work, it is what I do. But back to the heart…

Since my beginning, my beginning, beginning, I had (and still do) two modes: constant motion and stillness/staring/observing. Skipping, flying, rolling, running, climbing, dancing down supermarket aisles, cartwheeling…that led very quickly to aerial cartwheeling, and front and back flipping was a perfect fit for my childhood as a competitive gymnast. Those big, moving expressions elided into a greater love for dance, tap, jazz, and to my infatuation with gesture. I’m from Brooklyn, grew up in Long Island, and my dad would take me to New York City Center to see Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. I’d watch the dancing scenes from West Side Story and Singin’ in the Rain over and over again, and choreograph my way in and out of the town pool. In college, I was again constantly falling in love with movement—Limón, Cunningham, Graham, then improvisational forms and, boom, I was hooked.

Dancing can be supremely solitary, especially when you love to be alone for hours in a studio, loneliness being a downfall. But with that comes autonomy, individuality and how I learned about myself. It’s strange to spend one’s life dedicated to creating experiences that vanish as soon as they are constructed—but those experiences forever stay with the body.

Dance brings me pleasure, friendship, expands the shimmering relationship between people and collaborators that has shaped my life. It is expressive of the exact time we are in, full of endless potential, trust and teaches me about continual change. It is freedom, it is community, not to be taken for granted. Dance has been generous; more importantly, it has given me a way in which to be generous—teaching, sharing experiences with my students, continues to push my own dancing and choreographic voice.

The dance community is intense and specific. It is how I have socialized myself in the world and learned the most about myself and how I am best productive and honest.

Dance is the experience of adrenaline and melancholy, wildness and restraint, what is beautiful or terrifying, articulate speechlessness. It is constant, vigorous motion that keeps on going.

I like how dance acts as an intensely active process while watching, making and doing, involving a stream of inferences, hypotheses, predictions and anticipations, and changes on a dime according to one’s stream of consciousness.

Dance is where I locate continuum.

Dance is abundant in form, like water.

A stream, river, pool, coming out of a faucet, falling from the sky, the power of a wave, it is forever changing.

Dance is freedom to be led by my instincts, doesn’t have to be logical; movement can be compared to the infinite sensations I am feeling, a cacophony of ideas, all of them coming from movement.

This dancing life is how I feel rich and embrace optimism.

It is the hardest thing I will ever do.

I’m waiting to wake up and not want to be a dancer. It hasn’t happened yet.

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