“My growth as a dancer is never over, and that’s one of the many reasons why I still love it,” says Cira Robinson. The Cincinnati native trained under Arthur Mitchell at Dance Theatre of Harlem and joined London’s Ballet Black in 2008. A senior artist in the company, she’s originated roles in ballets by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Will Tuckett, toured internationally, and performed for a 100,000-strong crowd with British rapper Stormzy at the 2019 Glastonbury Festival. She’s a force offstage, too: Her 2017 collaboration with Freed of London produced two pointe-shoe skin tones for Black, Asian and mixed-race dancers—Ballet Brown and Ballet Bronze. And on social media, she was candid about a 2020 health scare that created a shift in her “keep-going” mentality. “It’s a phenomenal thing, what dancers do, but we are not superhumans,” says Robinson. “Health needs to be at the top of the list.”
When She Knew: “Ballet was always something that just clicked. It wasn’t until I did my last summer program at Dance Theatre of Harlem, at 18 years old, that I knew this is what I wanted to do forever.”
PreShow Jitters:
“My dancer mentality wants to hit every step perfectly, but then my human side kicks in and I accept that I’m a professional and I’ve got this—and if I don’t, I better figure it out! Then I Tiger Balm everything, take a couple of deep breaths and leave Cira in the dressing room.”
Making Dance More Diverse: “Things are happening, but not at the rate that they should. People should want diversity, development and inclusion in their schools and companies—it’s more than having one person of color as a teacher or on the board.”
Cira Robinson. Photo by Laura Gallant.
Collaborating With Freed: “I had always pancaked my shoes, but even though it’s something that needs to be done, it’s tedious. I went to Freed of London to inquire about having a custom brown shoe made for me, and they told me that I needed to find the proper brown satin for the shoes, so I did. I went to seven different fabric stores before I found the perfect swatch of brown. When I informed my director Cassa Pancho about customizing a shoe, she sprang into action with Freed, and a collaboration was birthed.”
Her Turn as Teacher: “I try to keep the values, etiquette, and ‘good stuff’ that I grew up with that helped me to navigate through this dance world, but I also know that I have to adapt to this generation of students. There’s a level of respect that should be there amongst the teacher and student, but ultimately, I like to be as appropriately real as possible with the older students while helping to feed the imagination and dreams of the little ones.”
Growing as an Artist: “Diving deeper into the acting side of the various narrative roles I’ve portrayed in the past five years, I’ve noticed that that’s where I thrive and feel full. Being extremely vulnerable and consumed in a role onstage and being able to take the audience with me every step of the way is what I’m recently most proud of and what I try to bring to everything that I dance.”
As a dancer, I have always understood how much I depend on my body. But I hadn’t ever thought about how much my world would change if it functioned differently. I thought I was rather invincible, with my young age, agility and health.
Then, one day, I couldn’t breathe. Not easily, at least. I became alienated from my body as it failed to do what I wanted and needed it to do. But let’s first back up a bit.
Before I developed long COVID, a collection of lingering negative effects from the virus, I had this subconscious expectation that I would find relief for any suffering I experienced. I have always had privileged access to the world. Being a white Jewish girl from Eugene, a small hippy town in Oregon, I have dealt with the occasional religious microaggression and familial issues, but the world has been available to me.
Last year, after my junior year at Scripps College via Zoom, I spent the summer in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, working on philosophy research and dancing in the city. I had felt bored and empty so often during the pandemic, but that summer I started to feel like myself again. I could finally dance large and uninhibitedly in a studio after over a year spent dancing in my room, banging my knees on the side of my bed. I went out with best friends who’d also migrated to New York City for the summer. Life was good.
Then, like so many others in late July 2021, I tested positive for COVID-19. Although somewhat shocked that I was a breakthrough case, I had a good feeling that my vaccine would save me from serious trouble and that after two weeks, I could return to business as usual.
During those two weeks of isolation, I slept for days. I discovered I had lost my sense of smell after my parents sent flowers. I cried a lot out of loneliness, screamed into my pillow out of anger, and stared into space, stripped and empty. My body had almost immediately weakened, shaky even when I tried to stretch.
On my first day out of quarantine, I tried to purge my body of this virus by renting out a studio to myself in the city. I spoke while I danced, shaking, rolling, sweating. When I left, I was beyond exhausted and felt a deep heaviness on my chest. Maybe that was too much too soon, I thought.
Back in Oregon, I had a week to rest before driving down to Scripps with my parents. I was ecstatic to start my senior year, in person for the first time since March 2020. On the second day of our trip, as I was carrying a lightweight table to the car, I stopped in my tracks, feeling a weight on my chest and the sudden need to sip extra air. I continued a few more steps and stopped again. Sipped more air. In the car, the weight started to feel heavier and my fear grew. I felt thirsty, but for oxygen instead of water. I started to panic, and then to cry. But the crying made it worse, so I practiced stifling my tears so as not to increase my shortness of breath.
My mom kept asking if I wanted to stop at the nearest emergency room. I had never felt so vulnerable; it was the first time I believed that something in my body could fail. We decided to pit-stop at the hospital, and learned that my oxygen levels were okay, above 90 percent, but I still felt pressure in my chest. It was safe to continue on our drive.
Finally, I was back on campus. I didn’t feel close to normal, but I told myself that if I took better care of my health, I would make a full recovery. I tried a few dance classes, but found myself gasping for air inside my mask halfway through. Each time I ignored my pain and pushed beyond my limit, the weight on my chest increased and my intense exhaustion lasted for nearly a week. I started sleeping through my 11 am ethics course and forgot to bring my computer and textbooks to class. I just couldn’t seem to get organized.
When my school doctor referred me to a long-COVID outpatient clinic, I was thrilled. To hear the phrase “long COVID” in regard to my symptoms was a relief because it meant I’d finally get help. On my first day at the clinic, I was observed during a six-minute walk, and my oxygen levels dropped so low that the lung specialist told me to absolutely stop dancing for the time being. Instead, I went to the clinic twice a week to get hooked up to the rolling oxygen tank while I walked at a slow pace on the treadmill, rode the bike at low resistance for 15 minutes and did some minimal arm exercises. I was the only person I saw below the age of 70 with an oxygen tank.
Though I’d mostly stopped dancing, I still had to choreograph a piece as part of my senior thesis that fall. In rehearsals, I tried to command the room with a motivating presence, but I often had to stop speaking to catch my breath, and I couldn’t demonstrate the choreography more than once or twice. We did our best and made something beautiful, but what I produced didn’t feel like me because I wasn’t fully there to produce it.
Not only did I have chronically low energy, difficulty breathing, dancing or walking up stairs, but this seemingly random sickness had now turned the world around me rotten. The putrid scent came on suddenly; it took me a week to realize that it wasn’t the things I was smelling, but that my sense of smell itself had changed. Many savory foods, coffee, smoke and my own body odor had started to make me gag. I would plug my nose at the dining hall. I later found out that my new condition had a name: parosmia.
Even though I was always tired, I resisted falling asleep because when I had nothing to distract me, I couldn’t ignore the heaviness on my chest or the fear, however realistic, that I might have died a premature death.
As I existed in my new state of being, I went through a long period of mourning for my past life, body, mind, smells and movement. I forgot what it felt like to sweat from moving and to be tired at night because I had lived such a fulfilling day.
I had to constantly ask for accommodations (like driving instead of walking to dinner) and to defend why I needed them. I couldn’t directly blame anyone, though. Invisible illness is difficult to remember. And I didn’t always understand what exactly someone could do to make me feel more acknowledged.
Still, there were a few friends who helped me feel less alone, who didn’t seem somewhat put off by my illness—who weren’t uncomfortable staying with it as a topic of conversation, asking questions and trying to brainstorm little solutions. They met me where Iwas, even if that meant sacrificing some of their desires.
This public health crisis has exposed the attitude our country has toward the chronically ill, the disabled, the sick, the dying and the old. Too often we hear sentiments like “It’s only the immunocompromised or elders who are dying from COVID-19. Why can’t they stay home while the rest of us live our lives?” I always knew this mindset existed, but my own health crisis allowed me to see it from a different vantage point.
The attitude is that the chronically ill, the disabled, the sick, the dying and the old are a burden to even think about. That their lives mean less. That they hold us back, instead of teaching us to see more. The truth, though, is that at some pointmost of us will be ill or experience a change in some ability or function, and all of us will die.
It was easy to see how my chronic illness made me weak. But in fact, it has given me immense strength for patience. The self-compassion required for resilience. The sureness in my own abilities, even when I knew I couldn’t yet use them.
The last year has forced me to see my own fragility but also my own humanity. We will constantly change, constantly develop new ways of moving and being. But we must keep trying to face, struggle with and see these changes. We will never escape the vulnerability of our bodies.
When you return to a piece of choreography after a while, whether rehearsing for another performance or simply reminiscing with old company friends, it’s a kind of performer time-travel. The muscle memory is potent. You are pulled back to the stage with the emotions and knowledge and language you had then; you feel the heat of the downstage light. In the present you are connected to the past and your body lies in between, understanding both what you did then and who you are now. I think this snapshot encapsulates why I dance: I’m responding; feeling this fluid body gleefully rebound off of scattered invitations to perform, curate, choreograph. The body holds a time machine, and that experience of travel makes life sweeter.
I respond through my belly. It was there I felt a twinge and knew I should move to New York, knew I should enter my first dance studio, and knew I should perform onstage. It was what convinced me to pursue anything in the first place—the mixture of terror and delight, a weightless moment. It’s the belly that tells you you’re in your lane. Years of churchgoing had taught me the inescapable power of call and response, and how it’s important to voice your recognition. Words must form on your lips and air must push out of your chest to make a sound. There is nothing but movement in call and response, just a matter of degrees. So, I could only—when I think on it—respond with my body when I was invited to dance. This was revelatory and scary, because for years I was troubled by the incongruity of wanting to be an artist but having less than I wanted be available to me as a disabled person, as someone aged 20 just starting out, as someone new. Up until this point, I had strung together swaths of the full picture, enjoying glimpses of nearness to the stage, or a development process, or any variety of artistry.
“Dancing is the physical sign of the ways I say
yes to art every day.”
Jerron Herman
I must say here that I always knew I could dance, not professional combinations per se, but I knew how to be boundless in my movement if only at house parties. Now, after an invited audition, a choreographer was asking me to join her company. Because dance was so audacious, so out there, I had to do it. On one level, I had no reference and therefore little reason to fear. On another level, I had always known how to be free, leaping in and passionately immersed, so there was a deep reference somewhere that would be my guide to successfully be a dancer. For the first years it was pure osmosis, merely absorbing the environment on the job. And then it became love, as I extended my authentic self across the whole environment. I saw myself in a line where thousands of performers precede me and thousands run after, but I’m taking this point in the timeline of dancers, lending my gifts to our ecosystem. It leaves me breathless to think that every opportunity I have is because I responded to one invitation. Dancing is the physical sign of the ways I say yes to art every day. And see how sweet it was to go back in time? Response is magic.
Despite having grooved onstage with tap icon Michelle Dorrance for over a decade, Gregory Richardson doesn’t consider himself a dancer. The composer and multi-instrumentalist is the musical director of Dorrance Dance and has been composing and performing with the company since its 2011 inception, having met Dorrance when they were both playing in the indie band Darwin Deez. In 2015, Richardson joined forces with Brazilian choreographer Leonardo Sandoval to create the Afro-Brazilian tap company and live band Music From The Sole, which was recently awarded a National Dance Project Production Grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts. With steady support from Jacob’s Pillow, The Yard and Works & Process at the Guggenheim—where Music From The Sole performed its third commissioned evening-length work in April—Richardson says he feels more confident than ever in what they are creating.
My main goal is usually to make sure the dancers and band are all one sonic force. If someone comes to a Music From The Sole show, they’re going to get right off the bat that the tap dance is the percussion of the song, and it’s not making it overly complicated. What we don’t want to look like is a dance company with a back-up band.
A unique part of our process is seeing how the musicians move. We do a lot of body percussion—slaps, claps and snaps—and give everyone movement to do together, so we embrace what the nondancers, including myself, add to it. We found out that our drummer is a fabulous mover and just naturally adds these little flourishes and hip movements. He’s extremely fun to watch, so we incorporated that. He’ll be spotlit in the next show.
We blur the lines when it comes to who is composing, too. There have been pieces where I wrote out a percussion part, recorded it, took it to Leo, and he choreographed the movement so the taps could replace the rhythm of the song. On another song, Leo came up with a melody, and I was able to notate, arrange and put chords behind it. That’s turned into this huge, beautiful piece. So, we’re both doing melodic and rhythmic work.
When you’re collaborating, you never get to use every single one of your ideas. But since Leo and I really get to have the final say, it’s the first time I’ve been able to stake out certain priorities that I simply don’t sacrifice. It’s a lot of pressure, but it’s also a lot of fun.
I’ve learned to trade drafts often. If you rehearse the band and dancers separately and things evolve, you can start to get on different pages. You can be totally enamored with what you’ve made, but when you come back together, it’s dissonant and someone has to give up more than they’d like. As soon as I’m excited about something, I show it to Leo right away.
Traditionally, a musical director makes sure the music is being executed right, runs the rehearsals and takes care of personnel issues with the band. But Michelle is such a killer musician, dancer and percussionist, she’s at the helm in a full rehearsal with Dorrance Dance, stopping the musicians to adjust tempo or dynamics. She has a vision for what she wants the whole show to be—and good instincts—and that just makes my job easier.
Michelle has definitely been my model for growing and leading a company with integrity. Like when you go into a new venue, introduce yourself to everyone from the front-of-house manager and sound engineer to the lighting assistant. Bring them in like they’re your team, and they’ll be excited to help execute your vision. And when someone gives you an opportunity, you better wring it for every drop it’s worth. If they give you a week of residency time, you better be in there for 10 hours a day.
From Manon’s bedroom pas de deux to Sonya Tayeh’s entwined ensembles in Moulin Rouge! The Musical, intimacy is everywhere in dance. It’s also sensitive territory, and some companies are turning to intimacy professionals for guidance. During its recent production of John Neumeier’s A Streetcar Named Desire, which addresses interpersonal violence, mental health issues, sexual orientation and consent through intensely physical choreography, the National Ballet of Canada engaged intimacy consultant Anisa Tejpar. A former dancer with ProArteDanza in Toronto and a rehearsal director with Côté Danse, Tejpar spoke with Dance Magazine about how she helps dancers feel safe while staying true to the choreographer’s vision.
Starting the Conversation
It was as if Tennessee Williams had an intimacy professional in mind when he wrote scenes depicting sexual assault, mental illness, suicide, homophobia, sexual physicality and plain nastiness. Simulated sex, nudity and aggression in performance have to be processed through today’s much-needed requirement of consent. Dance historically has been last at the table in these conversations and yet is the most physically and emotionally charged of the performing arts.
Creating Safe Spaces
The challenge was to help each artist make the provocative material work for them within their own boundaries. Give them space to vent, dialogue, question and make the choreography their own and something they consented to…the antithesis of what the play is all about.
Defining Consent
For the performer, the questions are personal. How do we show consent in an onstage kiss that is meant to be consensual, when there are no lines? Consent matters, and today’s performance environment requires sensitivity and recognition of the performer’s individuality and boundaries.
Intimacy coordinator Anisa Tejpar. Photo by Tim Leyes, Courtesy NBoC.
It’s About the Audience, Too
My lens also filters care for the bystanders in the studio or onstage who watch, listen and are affected emotionally by the weighted acts being performed by their colleagues. I created content warnings for the program and website to mitigate unwanted surprise in the theater.
Respecting Confidentiality
NBoC participated fully and created a collaborative environment for all players in the production. In this groundbreaking approach, I was mandated to have confidential conversations with artists throughout the process and performances, and communicate concerns up the chain.
A Growing Effort
An intimacy professional is invaluable to new creations and remounted works with challenging themes. Scottish Ballet recently hired intimacy coaches for their adaptation of Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling, and Rambert engaged Yarit Dor as an intimacy director for Rooms in 2021.
Moving Art Forward
This is a new, exciting and powerful time for performance. A time where voices can be heard, where an individual’s boundaries become a creator’s opportunity, and where those of us who have a passion for storytelling and onstage magic can support artmaking in a way that protects and nurtures performers as they reach new heights.
Taking class with Baryshnikov in the room never fazed me.
It was the late 1990s and I was in college in Manhattan, where I took (and still take) classes at Steps on Broadway, and where Baryshnikov or any number of dance superstars might roll in. It’s not as though he wasn’t incredible; that’s a given! But when Karole Armitage showed up for Simon Dow’s class one day, taking her place at the barre along the Broadway-facing windows in Studio 2, with her signature spiky platinum pixie cut and wearing a pair of red sweatpants, I paid attention. She was already a legend in my mind—she had danced with Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève in the mid-1970s before switching gears and returning to New York City to join the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for five years. Her own choreographic debut in 1979—costumed in fur pants and performed in a high school gym—garnered her the nickname “Punk Ballerina.” And although she’d been directing and choreographing prolifically for some of the most prestigious dance and opera companies in Europe since the mid-’80s, she’d come back to the city to test the waters—not long after we first overlapped in class, she established the latest incarnation of her own company, Armitage Gone! Dance (AG!D), in New York.
Soon after that chance encounter at the barre, I holed up at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to catch up on her riveting early performances on grainy black-and-white videos. The founding members of the new company, and those who came after, were quiet riots, pulsing with rich interiority and laser-cut technique. As a child, Armitage split her time between the small university town of Lawrence, Kansas, and the wilderness of Colorado. And yet her directorial aesthetic so clearly reflected the energetic urbanity and diversity of New York City, as it still does today. Her movement vocabulary is at once calligraphic and off-kilter, formalist and influenced by street dance and pop culture. Armitage’s restless intellect propels the work to unexpected, unconventional places, but with the integrity and undergirding of rigorous research. The nonnarrative choreography is often rooted in art, fashion and science, as in her 2008 collaboration with theoretical physicist Brian Greene about string theory, in which I danced as a guest performer.
Although 2021 was the first year since its inception that her company didn’t perform live, it soon became clear that she was still hard at work. Early in 2022, I started seeing publicity materials for the New York AG!D season in March, which included such foreshadowings as “Karole’s first performance since 1989, likely her last” and “the final season of new work.” A turning point was at hand. As a fan of this insatiably curious iconoclast whose artistic journey presaged aspects of my own, I invited Armitage to shed some light on her inner workings in the weeks leading up to the performances of A Pandemic Notebook. The twist was that I asked her to keep a diary rather than participate in an interview. I offered her the proverbial mic. While she confessed to never having done anything like it before, she was game. What she has shared is a window into the logistics of putting on a performance, the wisdom gained through hard experience, and questions about what her future holds. I’m thrilled, but hardly surprised, to say that her incisive writing voice is every bit as compelling as her choreographic voice.
2.22.22
The date is auspicious. 2.22.22. Maybe this way I can get myself to start a diary. I’ll begin with quotes to explain why a diary is just not my thing.
As Joan Didion once wrote, “Our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable ‘I.’”
Author Helen Garner, who burned her notebooks, wrote in The Guardian in 2019, “I was so bored with my younger self and her drowning sentimental concerns that there was nothing for it—this [expletive] had to go.”
Sierra French, Alonso Guzman and Cristian Laverde-Koenig in Louis. Photo by Stephen Pisano, courtesy Armitage Foundation.
2.23.22
What do you do when someone in the subway asks you for money? My philosophy is to give to anyone who asks, because, as I see it, if someone is in the subway asking for money, they must need it. I keep dollar bills for that purpose. And on the subject of money, I finally faced up to buying enough COVID tests so that everyone can do a daily rapid test prior to rehearsals. The bill for the season is about $2,500. That’s hard to swallow, but it feels good to see negative tests line up as each dancer and our company class teachers send in the results. We always start the day with ballet class and then rehearse for six hours. We also spent a lot of money this year going into three dance bubbles, in order to create the work for our March season at New York Live Arts. A five-second commute is a nice feature of a bubble, as well as a company dinner. I invited some wonderful Italian friends of mine to become cooks for us daily. There’s nothing like having Italian food prepared by a real Italian unleashing the genius of Italian cuisine.
2.24.22
I read with interest that Mark Morris goes to the studio three times a week these days. Beato lui [“lucky him”]. That’s as far from my life as imaginable.
2.25.22
We’ve had fantastic classes this past week from former NYCB dancer Antonia Franceschi. I’m thrilled to see that she, like Paul Boos, who’s also one of our regular teachers and a former City Ballet dancer, has the willpower and knowledge to demand the highest level of aspiration from us in mind and body. This means aiming to master the technology of the body, and the musicality of that technology, while unleashing one’s personal imagination. That’s how I was raised and that’s what I believe in. I’ve had unwavering willpower in aiming for that over all these years. This rigor applies to all of it, from dance classes, to costume and lighting design, to the choice of music, to treating dancers and collaborators well. I believe in working only if I can provide a living wage in the form of a serious salary and planning every detail, so that everyone knows what to expect. But lately, I feel exhausted by these aspirations. There are so few who care about these things and keep the faith. There are so few who believe that in the silence of dance, that in pure movement, we can grapple with existential and spiritual questions, finding solace and connection.
2.28.22
Today we have a costume fitting with a wonderful artist and our wardrobe manager, Aaron Cobbett. The dress for our dance Beautiful Monster is based on the fabulous dress that Silvana Mangano wore in the Italian film La Strega Bruciata Viva, by Luchino Visconti. It was made by a great seamstress who teaches tailoring at a well-known university. However, something with the dress went completely awry. It hangs on dancer Sierra French’s body in a way that is pinched and corseted, particularly egregious given that the fabric is very stretchy. I spent hours and hours ripping it apart and resewing it by hand. But it is still lousy. It’s interesting how people can get an idée fixe in their head and not see reality. I learned long ago that what I felt while dancing or choreographing was not objective. I learned to mistrust myself. One must let go of one’s ideas and, with a very cool eye, examine the result.
“Rats and roaches live by competition under the law of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.” Wendell Berry
Alonso Guzman and Sierra French in Beautiful Monster. Photo by Stephen Pisano, courtesy Armitage Foundation.
3.1.22
Yikes, it’s March. Two weeks till showtime.
It seems like costumes never get done. It’s so hard to find the simplest things, like socks that fit right, or socks with mainly cotton fiber, so they’re not slippery. Thanks to Amazon, all the old standby stores have gone out of business. Ugh! Not to mention the harm to the environment in fuel use and throwaway packaging. What does the Amazon phenomenon have in common with small dance companies? The biggest thrive and the smallest disappear. It’s pretty insane that dance companies with a $500,000 budget are competing with the dance companies that have a $25 million budget for precisely the same resources—the same very small pool of New York City patrons for dance, the same granting agencies and even the same studio space. I’ll never forget being thrown out of a studio a few years ago when a major ballet company needed extra rehearsal space for one of their special programs. Even though I had paid two months in advance, we were kicked out.
Although all of the dances we are presenting live have been filmed, one would think that means that the costumes are finished, but that isn’t the case. There are so many costume elements that must be adapted for quick changes. Snaps, Velcro, new rigging and myriad other extra bits to make things faster. Every second backstage counts.
3.2.22
A lot of challenges with the technology today. First it was the JetBlue website not working. But then it escalated into almost everything seeming to be hard to do. The most important is for the dance 6 Ft. Apart. The sound is generated by accelerometers taped onto bodies to create a soundscape in real time. I was having trouble with the coding, but that got solved thanks to the genius of sound engineer Agnes Cameron, who guided me via screen share from London. Now, for some reason, the feather that is part of the equipment isn’t communicating with accelerometers to respond to momentum. More to untangle. The more I work with hardware and software that isn’t human, the more I appreciate the extraordinary technology of the human body. Dancers are a trillion times more reliable than all the other stuff.
3.4.22
What will today bring? Worries about technology continue. Should I buy seed pods that we could mic as a backup, in case the receiver and accelerometer system does not fire up?
Apparently, The New York Times plans to review the show, which brings forth a dark dread. There is consistently a gargantuan gap between those reporters’ perceptions and mine.
3.6.22
Jock Sotohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_Soto arrived in New York from his home in Eagle Nest, New Mexico. We had a great rehearsal. We made minor adaptations to make the dance work on the stage, rather than in the wilderness landscapes where the work originated. Frankly, it’s a lot easier to dance on marley than on snow, sand, lava and rock.
Alonso Guzman and Sierra French in Head to Heel. Photo by Stephen Pisan, courtesy Armitage Foundation.
3.20.22
I forgot to write during the entire week we were at the theater for tech and performance. It’s always very intense when preparing and rehearsing for a season, given the requirements of fundraising, administration, publicity and marketing, logistics and the art itself. Last week, though, everything outside of the theater flew out of my brain.
So, to recap: As expected, I was preoccupied with the complicated jobs outside of my own dancing—lighting, projections, sound and new staging. There are always surprises. During tech, the Baroque wigs for Louis shed bobby pins dead center stage. How to deal with that? We came up with an amusing solution: Alonso Guzman, wearing the accelerometers, came out to center stage carrying a broom and dustpan and proceeded to do a violent shimmy, setting off cascades of sound while sweeping, a fairly comic and bizarrely existential moment.
As for my own dancing, I had one really great night out of four. The core company members, Sierra French, Alonso Guzman and Cristian Laverde-Koenig, were magnificent every night, as were the newer members, Isaac Kerr, Kali Oliver and Kara Walsh. There was only one day that I had no insanely stressful, urgent problems that had to be dealt with. On Friday, I could calmly take class, rehearse, warm up right before the show and then perform. I could feel the magic of playing with time and consciousness. That is the great gift of live performance, for both performer and audience.
I always kept in shape, at least vaguely. My body is my sketchpad. I’m generally dancing all day, every day, at a low technical level, to practice choreography. For 25 years, however, I stopped taking class in order to let some of my mild injuries heal. I did intense yoga and Pilates to realign. But this season I had to go back to ballet. Like an 8-year-old child, I worked like a fiend at the basics—placement and turnout—trying to acquire strength once again, so that at age 68, I could dance with some dignity. It worked out pretty well. My circle of dance life became complete. My first professional job was dancing in all-Balanchine repertoire in the company Mr. B directed in Geneva, Switzerland, at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in the ’70s. Though he wasn’t there all year long, he taught us class, staged the ballets, worked with the orchestra on colors and tempo, and took the “girls” (as we were called then) out to dinner for fondue. My circle became complete by dancing with Jock Soto, who very generously lent his years of experience as a principal dancer at New York City Ballet to our cause and was my partner last week during our season. Thank you, Jock!
Jock Soto and Karole Armitage in Time/Times. Photo by Giovanni Cardenas, courtesy Armitage Foundation.
On the night of our last show, March 19, the craziest thing happened. The electric grid was struck by lightning. All power failed, except for one computer controlling the stage lights. The other computers, lights, fans, backstage lights, monitors, the projector and the sound went out. Luckily the sound came back pretty quickly. But nothing could get the projector going again. I had to improvise two spoken interventions to cover the time needed for costume changes so that we could finish the show.
At least half of the audience stayed in the lobby every night to cheer us on. Everyone loved the show, except some of the press, as expected. I do things that are new and different, that challenge dance culture and that aren’t yet accepted. I’m used to bad reviews because I was the first person to put a man in a skirt onstage as a matter of style and identity rather than drag, the first person to deeply entwine the technique and sensibility of modern dance with ballet and street influences. I worked in film, on Broadway and with pop stars, when doing anything outside of strict theater dance was taboo. I paved the way for others.
The lightning strike on the building also struck my brain. Self-producing is a no-win game.
Self-producing is the only option if one wants to maintain a company by having an annual season, because the very few institutions that commission or present dance in New York City are not in a position to present a company annually. Without institutional support there’s no way to reach an audience, get funding, get previews in the press, get into the cultural priorities of the moment, et cetera. The season we just finished encompasses 2.5 years of mostly very intense work and hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses.
The difficulties are not just financial. Working with freelance collaborators means that the cherished minds you hope to continue to work with aren’t available and you have to spend weeks, if not months, finding a way to replace them. You perform for four nights and many who want to see it are out of town. There’s no way to actually get the message out that the performances are taking place. Our internet society is diffuse and without authority. Thus, there’s the great challenge of finding an audience, exacerbated by on-demand culture, the disappearance of representation in dance, a staid and unadventurous mindset in the dance world and continuing pandemic paranoia. We had a roughly 35 percent absentee rate in people not showing up who’d purchased tickets. I’m very grateful to everyone who bought tickets, to those who came, and am especially gratified by the unbridled enthusiasm that greeted us nightly.
Everything about self-producing is punishing, except for working with the dancers and communicating with an audience. That is exhilarating. I’ve done it, against all odds, since 1981, when I quit the Cunningham company. Self-producing means leading a life so perverse and out of balance that I just might not be able to face the preposterousness of it anymore, mainly because everything has become that much harder every year.
That would mean essentially letting go of my company now, and that is very hard. I’ve had an extraordinary group of dancers. Those who made up the relaunching of the company in 2004 when I returned from 15 years abroad, until today—yes, nearly 20 years—have been incredibly gifted dancers both creative and technically remarkable, as well as generous and thoughtful human beings. I am at peace with letting go, though it is not my desire. It seems like it is time to swerve, but in what direction I do not know.
I had a fulfilling end to my dance and choreographic life in New York City with this last season. We demonstrated resolve and resilience through the terrible challenge of COVID. I was able to pursue a rewarding experience as both a dancer and a choreographer, and even as a filmmaker. I will continue to work in opera, in film and live with dancers, if and when we’re commissioned to create. Our next project is a site-specific work for the James Turrell installation Twilight Epiphany, on the Rice University campus in Houston on April 22 and 23. Ciao! Enjoy life! Fight for what you believe in.
When I was little, I would people watch all the time. I would narrate what I thought they were thinking and doing. I would do accents. That sense of wonder and play and whimsy is essential to my work. Those moments alone or with friends when you’re playing around, you go a little too far and you say, “That should be in a piece.” Lately, I’ve been giving my mind an opportunity to experience that and wander again.
It started in 2020, when I felt free to do something I had wanted to do for a long time: disengage online. I thought, If the reason I came to social media was to promote my company, there’s no reason to do that, because right now there’s no work. Everything I had was canceled. So I took a four-month social media hiatus starting in August 2020. In 2021 I deleted Instagram and Facebook from my phone. I could still post from my computer. My latest break, which started in November, has been about trying to reimagine my relationship to social media in a way that’s healthier. And professionally, in researching my work, I’m trying to be conscious of this intimate relationship.
Rosie Herrera. Photo by Lydia Bittner-Baird, courtesy Herrera.
What I had noticed is that I was disassociating from the world. I wasn’t engaging in social media in a meaningful or sincere way. It was like a bad relationship. Social media and I were just passing the time together rather than finding a deeper intimacy.
I also noticed I never had an opportunity for my mind to wander, which is important to me creatively. That felt so sad. Whenever there was a quiet space, there was my phone. I need a couch for a piece—go to my phone. Haven’t talked to a friend in forever—go to my phone. Instead of calling her, my instinct was always to reach for social media. And when that wasn’t possible, I would think, Wow, who do I talk to?
“I’ll have this profound moment in rehearsal and think, I need to post this so people can see it. That’s bizarre.”
Rosie Herrera
I wondered, What are the questions, the answers, the fears I am asking social media to solve? Every time I’m questioning something, I want my phone to answer. That’s a lot to ask of a little object. So me and my phone are in couples counseling. I also feel we’re in such a divisive time. I was starting to think what I was seeing online was a part of my life. And it wasn’t. I want to engage in a way that’s meaningful to me. Even if it’s just videos of cats that bring me joy—which they do, incredible joy, because I’m allergic to cats and I love cats. Everyone wants what they can’t have.
Photo by Adam Reign, courtesy Herrera.
The piece I’m making right now is about what we devote ourselves to and how we cast a more reverent gaze upon the things that occupy our mind and time. How do we navigate intimacy with technology? Where am I mentally, psychologically and emotionally when I engage with it? Imagine kissing someone and then asking, “So what did you think?” That’s what social media feels like sometimes. Or I’ll have this profound moment in rehearsal and think, I need to post this so people can see it. That’s bizarre.
I’m reimagining my relationship to my phone. How did it become a sacred object? Because if you’re in a long-distance relationship, your phone is a sacred object. I’ve practically wanted to make out with it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about physically integrating these concepts. You can curate a persona for yourself online. But if you haven’t taken time to integrate that identity into who you are physically, it only exists in the ether. When you’re a dancer, you use the idea of integration in a lot of ways. Dancing is so ephemeral. But, in dancing, what I feel and think becomes visible to you—the audience—when we’re together. It’s felt deeply and understood deeply.
What do we hear when we have space and time enough to listen, whether to the outside world or to what’s coming from inside of us? You can find beautiful truths. Or ugly truths that are important to confront.
Imagine the feeling you have when the sun hits your cheeks, warming them on a particularly brisk morning walk. Now, call to mind the burst of juicy goodness when you bite into that perfect summer ripe peach, its initial tartness smacking your tastebuds awake just in time to give way to the glorious sweetness of the nectar. Finally, recall a time when you felt like you were flying, whether you were on the drop of a roller coaster, airborne from nailing that rad sledding jump you built with your siblings or sticking your head out of the back seat window on a country road drive.
My life in dance encapsulates all those feelings and manages to reproduce them in limitless combinations. But what happens when life beyond the stage becomes incredibly unpredictable, as it inscrutably has as of late? What becomes of our post-lockdown commitment and vigor towards a better system when, after the curtain falls on our first performances back, we feel the sting of a world that just wants to snap back to “normal”? I know that I am not the same person I was in 2020, and I certainly am thankful for the growth. But I won’t lie that the sunburn blisters hurt, as much as the sweet-sounding yet empty lip service that touts change is hard to swallow.
As you may know, experiencing the life-affirming zest of adrenaline is one of my preferred states of being. But that adrenaline can also induce the most sensational fear. Fear that perhaps change is not what gatekeepers want. Fear that, perhaps, all we have individually done is not enough. Fear that with every minor shutdown, time keeps ticking away. Will it run out for me and my career?
“The zest of adrenaline is one of my preferred states of being.” Georgina Pazcoguin
At the end of the day when I weigh all the fantastically wonderful and the incredibly putrid aspects of our world, the scale in my mind tips toward hope. I am, after all, an unabashed romantic. My life, our lives as artists, has always embraced the wildness of the unpredictable.
I’m thankful for my discipline, honed from my very first ballet class. And I turn to dance now, and most likely will again and again until the very last moment my vessel will allow me to, because that’s one way, through pent-up social anxiety and PTSD, I am able to reconnect to the experience of living. The practice of dance has saved my life many times over. Sharing my gift with audiences has heightened and expanded its healing reach. My relationship with dance has taught me more about life and being present than I ever imagined it would. And as I enter the next chapter of my artistic exploration, I’m certain dance and its lessons will be right there with me.
Shoba Narayan, who plays Princess Jasmine in Broadway’s Aladdin, just so happens to also be an award-winning bharatanatyam performer and teacher, as well as a classical violinist and trained ballet dancer. That sheer variety of artistic training has enabled Narayan to breathe vivid, original life into characters like Hamilton’s Eliza on tour, Wicked’s Nessarose and Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812’s Natasha.
Embodying New Characters
“In many bharatanatyam pieces, you’ll embody as many as 10 different people to tell an epic story. A lot of my process for physically becoming a character comes from that training.”
Understanding Jasmine
“There’s a stillness and power about Jasmine’s physical presence—and softness, a compassion for those who didn’t grow up with the privilege she has. Then there’s this exuberant, excited energy to see the world beyond the palace walls. As Jasmine, I have a strong stance. My shoulders are pulled back, my feet are firmly grounded to the floor, and my chest is presented as a ballet dancer’s would be.”
Performing Bharatanatyam
“My favorite thing to perform in bharatanatyam is the varnam: a 30-minute journey between intricate, pure-dance sequences and storytelling. It tests physical energy and stamina, and your ability to hold a story for a very long time—which I now do as an actor. Doing the varnam taught me to sustain the emotional and physical stamina for two-and-a-half-hour performances.”
Shoba Narayan. Photo by Mark Mann, courtesy Narayan.
Revisiting Aladdin
“When Aladdin came back last fall after 18 months of shutdown, there was an openness to revisiting parts of the script and choreography that were no longer sitting as well as they did in 2014. With Disney’s blessing, I was able to tweak some Bollywood-based movements and hand gestures, or mudras, in a workshop with the entire company. What was a closed, squeezed gesture is now the alapadma mudra: a beautifully curved gesture of the hand that mimics the petals of a lotus.”
Staying Grounded
“I still take a ballet barre daily because it’s great conditioning that aligns me really well. Afterwards, I feel warm and my joints are lubricated, but I’m not so depleted that I can’t do the show.”
“I stay plugged in to bharatanatyam by teaching middle- and high-school students over Zoom. And I’m constantly choreographing and performing Bollywood dances for various weddings, which is so much fun.”
Playing the Violin on Broadway
“I never could have anticipated that in my Broadway debut—Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812—I’d have to play a violin solo. There’s something to be said for maintaining skills that you’re passionate about. It doesn’t hurt to keep in touch with all the facets of your artistic background.”
