NEXTSTEPPAD – Page 10

Mental health: When to persevere and when to step back

“The show must go on” — it’s perhaps the most quintessential performing arts adage. Yet, human beings aren’t machines. Yes, we as dance artists commit and have people depending on us, and some level of discomfort is par for the course (arguably, it’s a key part of growth), but are there times when for us, for our own wellbeing, the show shouldn’t go on? Are there times when it’s actually best to step back or step away from dancing because we need a rest and reset?

These questions are particularly key in a time when a pandemic-induced reshuffling of the arts — and, for many, the mental health challenges that it’s brought — has led many dance artists to take time away from the art form, or at least consider doing so. Those same forces have also opened up conversations on mental health, resiliency and self-care in the world more broadly, creating an environment more conducive to these conversations in the dance field. To dive deeper into these matters, Dance Informa spoke with dance psychologist Lucie Clements and dance/movement psychotherapist (BC-DMT, LCAT) Cashel Campbell.

Challenges and performance readiness

Lucie Clements. Photo by Rory Chambers Visuals.

Some might reasonably question the idea of stepping away or stepping back because of discomfort; particularly in endeavors like dance, some level of discomfort is part of growth. Clements agrees with that idea — within the realm of technical skill and mastery. Learning and growth occur when one steps beyond the bounds of their current knowledge and/or abilities.

Clements offers an important guideline to that idea, however. “The key thing is that when we enter that place of ‘not knowing’, that we are correctly guided and supported by someone with the skills and experience until we have mastered how to do it independently,” she says. “The guidance needs to be about moving step by step rather than trying to get from the bottom to the top of the staircase in one move.” There seems to be a happy medium at which stepping outside our comfort zones is challenging and comes quickly enough — and at which one is also supported by a knowledgeable teacher.

One also needs to find a “middle road” when it comes to optimal performance. Clements explains that balanced place through the concept of the “Zone of Optimal Performance,” which is shaped like an upside-down “U.” On one side of that zone is hypoarousal, when one cares little enough about their performance that they underperform. On the other is hyperarousal, when one cares so much about performing at their best that they experience anxiety or fear.

“The most important thing is to learn where the limits of your zone are and never compare yourself to your peers. We are all built differently and can tolerate different amounts of emotional arousal or distress,” Clements affirms. How can one learn about themselves in that way, and find the inner fortitude to refrain from comparing themselves to others?

For Campbell, so much of our wellness and self-knowing is about authenticity. For her, staying connected with her Caribbean roots reminds her to not take on burdens that aren’t hers, for example. She also emphasizes the importance of, as dancers, being clear about what is us and what is the artist within who we are and what we do. In order to do that, we need to maintain practices that keep us fully embodied, whatever that might be for us (whether yoga, walking in nature, improvising or simply resting), as well as take time and space to look inside to our own truth, she asserts.

Burnout, warning signs and being proactive

Burnout can be a true sign that we’ve gotten disconnected from that inner wisdom and perhaps overworked ourselves. Clements notes that physical and emotional exhaustion, as well as diminished performance, can be key signs of burnout, which she defines as “prolonged exposure to stress.” Even more concerning, burnout is also associated “with devaluing dance, or feeling a reduced interest, which can quickly lead to dropout,” she explains.

At that point, taking a pause from dancing, as she likes to call it, can actually help a dancer to “step forward,” Clements argues. “If we don’t pause, we don’t have the opportunity for our well-being to recover, or to reconnect with our values as a dancer and why we loved dance in the first place. Pausing is not stopping, but an investment in your present and future,” she notes. Campbell shares how some of her best classes have been after taking time away to rest, for example.

Are there ways to notice that we’re going in that direction before it gets to that point? Yes, Campbell believes — within particular physical signs, through which our body is trying to tell us that it’s all too much. Those signs include negative changes in sleep and/or eating, strange aches and pains, sudden gastrointestinal issues and — as Clements notes — diminished desire to dance or do other things that we normally love to do. Further, “when you recognize that you feel numb, that’s a sign that it’s time to step away,” Campbell affirms.

One might think of those signs as yellow lights, signaling us to stop before a red light comes — because continuing to go at that point could be truly harmful. Clements also notes the importance of being proactive in that way, so that decisions to pause aren’t at the point when we have to weigh competing obligations.

Difficult decisions

The point at which one is sensing that they need a pause could be the middle of a rehearsal process or a company season. In fact, the pressures and workload of those periods could be key contributors to burnout. Clements acknowledges that dancers can have important commitments — to castmates, choreographers and even young dancers looking up to you — yet, commitment to one’s own well-being is also an important commitment.

She suggests clearly defining what the current stressors are doing to one’s well-being, and at what point that impact is too much. “It’s like having a contract with yourself that guides you to know when to place your well-being above your commitments,” she explains.

Cashel Campbell. Photo by T.F. Roo Photography.

As for the feeling of potentially “letting down” young people who admire you, Clements argues that it’s actually a very good thing for young artists to see dancers they look up to place their mental and physical health first. “I don’t think there could be any better inspiration for our young dancers than hearing your idol say, ‘I am pausing to put my mental health first,’” she states. Clements believes that “the most important lesson dancers can teach the next generation of performers is to work hard, be committed and stay focused whilst also respecting your health.”

In these situations we can — perhaps even more so — also dread disappointing or burdening choreographers, artistic directors and others in positions of power. Campbell brings it back to authenticity, to know what emotions are yours and what are others’. She also notes that we can sometimes perceive such pressures and expectations as bigger than they really are. It’s natural to feel badly when we’re stepping back from our commitments — yet, “we don’t have to apologize for taking care of ourselves,” Campbell also affirms.

Structural and cultural supports

Apart from what individuals can do to make more attuned, healthy decisions about when it might be time to take a pause from dance, Clements points to two larger structural forces at work. First, dancers must be provided with the tools to get to that more attuned, introspective place, such as wellness workshops and available career and psychological counseling.

Dancers also have to work in environments in which they feel empowered to be themselves and make choices that are best for themselves (as artists and as people). “It’s all very well giving these skills to our dancers, but if managers or directors create a culture of fear around time off or stepping back, then real change can’t happen,” Clements argues.

Second, by consciously attending to their own well-being, those in leadership positions can set a positive example for dancers working with and under them. Campbell notes how now, as we reevaluate and rebuild norms and structures following COVID, is a great time to set in place these sorts of culture shifts within the dance field.

“Reclamation is powerful,” she asserts. Perhaps now is a time when we, as the dance field, can reclaim the ability to take time away from dance when we need it. Whether we do or not, whatever we decide is best, it’s in our collective hands.

By Kathryn Boland of Dance Informa.

The post Mental health: When to persevere and when to step back appeared first on Dance Informa Magazine.

Shifting From a Creature of Habit to an Ever-Evolving Artist Revitalized My Career

Many years ago, I had an experience at the Museum of Modern Art that rocked me hard. At a Willem de Kooning retrospective, there was a timeline of his career that detailed his stylistic shifts. Among other things, he worked as a house painter, a muralist, an abstract expressionist, a sculptor, then in figurative landscapes before returning to abstraction. I had an epiphany: Of course he worked on different things as he became interested in different ideas or was exposed to different influences. He evolved as a human. Why wouldn’t his art reflect that?

At the time, I was in the early stages of my transition from ballet to contemporary dance. I’d known how to be a ballet dancer, was well-versed on how to lead that daily life. It wasn’t easy, but it was familiar. And while discovering the contemporary, postmodern scene was invigorating, it was also disorienting. I’d walked away from the aesthetics, routine and people that I’d known.

Our field requires commitment, and for people who don’t want to disappoint, breaking up—with a director, a company, a show, a genre—can be a challenge. As dancers, we lovingly invest in relationships and repetition, but this can also render us creatures of habit who are particularly resistant to doing things differently.

I hadn’t realized it when I was in the thick of it, but my knowledge of the dance world then was myopic. Even though I’d left one chapter to begin the next, I was still looking backwards more than I was able to look ahead. I kept comparing myself to the dancer I’d once been, in part because other people kept pointing out how much I looked like a ballerina when I’d execute contemporary work. I did myself no favors by getting stuck in the labels I let others put on me, and the labels I put on myself.

Sometimes when we work exclusively on behalf of a singular idea of “right,” one way can easily become the only way. Devotion can be a vacuum. We become so laser-focused that we exclude the possibility of options, and we might find ourselves stuck, whether it be in a particular style or a certain work situation. But when you don’t—or can’t—allow space for change, you impede your growth as an artist. Even when we say we want to “improve,” we often forget that that itself is a form of change!

Meredith Fages. Photo by Beowulf Sheehan, Courtesy Fages

“While change is most commonly considered reactive, it can also be proactive.” Meredith Fages

With an expansive mindset, change doesn’t have to be so precipitous or vertiginous. Allowing ourselves to be insatiably curious can help to unzip narrow notions of success and identity, thereby softening our perceptions of what’s at stake in a career transition. The words “pivot” and “resilience” have gotten a lot of airtime during the pandemic, yet their definitions are invaluable. In this era of the Great Resignation, many dancers are rethinking their career paths. It’s easy to forget that while change is most commonly considered reactive, it can also be proactive. What if moving forward could be less about negating prior experiences and more about pulling back the layers of an onion? It’s all part of a whole.

I took my first improvisation workshop at age 27. The opening prompt was to move in response to elements in the ornately decorated room. The instructor, Todd Williams, offered a sample demonstration, during which he endowed the smallest body parts, like his little toe, with the same power for expression as the more obvious parts. In a mere 15 seconds, I experienced a radical paradigm shift that helped dislodge a mental block that had been holding me back. I’d never considered that my own body could be a spontaneous, generative force, or that I had the agency to invent movement that still celebrated the clarity of line that I spent so many years honing in ballet.

When I did venture back to a ballet class after five years away, it was with a newfound peace. At that point in my contemporary work, I was no longer adamant about breaking away from or disguising my past. I let it carry me forward, and my artistry deepened. As de Kooning once said: “After a while all kinds of painting becomes just painting for you—abstract or otherwise.”

What artistic adventures will be found on the timeline of your retrospective?

Making Growth Manageable

With micromovements, we can start small and invite fluidity in on a daily basis.
Postmodern choreographer Deborah Hay is known for sounding her wakeup call in blunt language: “Turn your [expletive] head!” If that doesn’t resonate, consider these concrete, actionable steps to become more comfortable with change:

Cross-train your brain. Investigate something you know nothing about.
Reinvest in action verbs. Be purposeful in how you taste, touch, harvest, concoct, share.
Reacquaint yourself with wonder. Be moved by the beauty found in unexpected people, places and things

The post Shifting From a Creature of Habit to an Ever-Evolving Artist Revitalized My Career appeared first on Dance Magazine.

25 Prompts to Liberate Your Choreographic Practice

I’m a white choreographer based on the ancestral lands of the Ramaytush Ohlone people, otherwise known as San Francisco. My recent book, Shifting Cultural Power: Questions and Case Studies in Performance, imagines equity-based models in dance that decenter whiteness.

Writing about anti-racism work is a fraught endeavor because, as a white person, I’ll always have blind spots. For example, the book includes a list of “25 Practices for Decolonizing Dance (and finding your Poetic Nerve).” In retrospect, I should have used different language.

“Decolonize” has become a ubiquitous term because colonialism is everywhere. Colonial legacies exist not only outside of us, in sociopolitical power dynamics, but also in our bodies. Colonial legacies pervade dominant cultural notions of time, value, space and language.

But Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s article “Decolonization is not a metaphor” criticizes use of the term in contexts other than the repatriation of Indigenous land, saying that decolonization “is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies.” Holding Tuck and Yang’s article in mind, I want to be more specific with my language when I talk about reorganizing the field to resist complicity with legacies of oppression. We can ask many questions that interrogate power and privilege in the field: How can we compose bodies in space and time without asserting power over those bodies? How can we resist monolithic meaning in dance? How do we disentangle authority from authorship? How can dancemaking be liberatory for everyone involved? How can we anchor dancemaking in authentic community and in trust? How can we dismantle white supremacy in the field? These questions are related to the important economic and political work of decolonization, but not synonymous with it.

“There’s value in putting ourselves in a destabilized space and listening for what comes next.”
Hope Mohr

Courtesy Mohr.

I want to talk about aligning choreographic practice with commitments to mutual liberation. This is necessarily both structural and personal work. We must reorganize the underpinnings of art practice: our organizations, agreements with collaborators and relationships in the studio. We must democratize arts leadership, demand equitable contracting, train arts workers in cultural competency, add Indigenous representation to boards and staff, center BIPOC artists in programming, honor Indigenous protocol by acknowledging Native land, and advocate for reparations for the displacement of Indigenous peoples.

And politics don’t stop at the studio door. How can we integrate political commitments into our dances, our bodies?

With this context in mind, I offer this revised list of prompts from Shifting Cultural Power: “25 Practices for Aligning Choreographic Practice with a Commitment to Mutual Liberation.”

The space should not be white-dominated. Indigenous people and people of color should be fully integrated, engaged, empowered, acknowledged and respected in the cast, crew and artistic staff.
Practice sustained listening.
Encourage imperfection and doubt (yours and others).
Slow down. Value pause. Waste time. Wander.
Value pleasure.
Invite excess, kitsch, camp, sentimentality and overmuchness.
Orient the dance and its systems outward. Make in relationship. Make dance in the mess of the world.
Allow the dancing to be invisible, ambiguous and illegible.
There is no original, truest version of movement. Movement material is collectively owned and authored.
Allow edges to be a part of the landscape of the dance. Refuse a fixed front.
Be transparent about your needs and your fallibility as an artist. Be clear about the terms of the work with yourself and your collaborators. Name collaborative periods of work. Name when you need to author or edit.
Acknowledge and credit sources of movement, both in the studio (“This is a phrase that Jane made.” “I pulled this idea off of YouTube.”) and in promotional materials (“This dance was co-created by…”).
Allow for multiplicity: multiple voices, multiple variables, multiple vocabularies. Develop a vocabulary of inclusion sourced from multiple bodies. What does it mean to express authorship amidst multiplicity?
Acknowledge and pay attention to how everyone in the room works at different processing speeds. Orient the process to different people’s sense of time.
Explore what it might mean for the dance to be porous. What can you let into the space of the dance?
Practice making without a show in mind. Hold the creative process lightly while still staying engaged,
accountable and supportive of others in the space.
Allow improvisation to take over the process. Maintain a state of radical uncertainty about what the dance might become.
Allow for sustained movement research outside of the task of making. Find creative modes beyond composition and mimicry.
Collaborate with people and places that destabilize and challenge authorship.
Question your choices. Question instinctual preferences. Work with a palette you despise. Stay with an idea much longer than you think is appropriate.
Invite other people’s emotional lives into the work.
Invite other people to hijack the process.
Practice financial transparency about artist pay, project budget and funding sources.
Show up with no agenda. Work with what and who is in the room.
Be vulnerable.

If I were to implement all of the above prompts, I might not end up making a dance at all. But there’s value in putting ourselves in a destabilized space and listening for what comes next. These are prompts for locating your political and poetic nerve. Poetic nerve does not necessarily mean surrendering authorship. It means going beyond yourself, and then back within again, and then again out past yourself, and so on, in a constant conversation between the dance and the world.

Doing the Work

These ideas are not mine. Throughout the vast and violent span of colonial history, dance artists, especially Native artists and artists of color, have been doing and continue to do this work. There’s Sydnie L. Mosley, advocating for liberation of dance pedagogy through practices such as acknowledging that “all dance forms are specific cultural practice and should be acknowledged and specifically named as such”; Mar Parrilla’s cultural exchange projects with Puerto Rico–based artists and members of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe to explore colonial legacies; Emily Johnson, whose decolonization rider calls on presenter partners to commit to the “living process” of decolonization, including compliance with Indigenous Protocol, acknowledgment of host Nations in all press, and engagement with the Indigenous community. There are countless other examples.

Why am I, as a white person, even trying to talk about decolonization? Because for too long, Indigenous people and people of color have shouldered this work. In the words of feminist writer Judit Moschkovich, “it is not the duty of the oppressed to educate the oppressor.” White people must do this work too.

Q&A: What tools or tactics are you using in the studio to liberate your choreographic practice?

David Herrera, artistic director and choreographer for David Herrera Performance Company:

“I channel movement through emotional recall and muscle memory to return to a time when studio teachings did not dictate how I performed or danced. I swayed, gyrated, stomped, shook my hips, pranced and spun before I ever stepped into a modern dance class. Through this approach, I am actively shedding the heavily calloused, conditioned layers of white modern dance technique. It’s a slow and arduous process; a relearning of feeling, instinct and physicality. I aim to liberate myself from the burden of aesthetics that were not inherent to my cultural upbringing or my brown body.”

Yayoi Kambara, dancer, choreographer, teacher and director of KAMBARA+:
“I dismantle systems of oppression, colonization and power by creating space to liberate our imaginations. I build artistic teams that value curiosity and mistakes. I confront my intentions behind each movement. Ballet is associated with whiteness, but it’s part of my training. When I’m making movement that twists, curves, quirks and springs, something from ballet often appears. I love a good à la seconde. But à la seconde has no inherent value. When à la seconde shows up in my choreography, it can be anything: honest, strong, vulnerable. No two bodies do it identically. Often I pause inside a ballet position and then fall out of it. Just as I consider the values behind my movement, my dances invite audiences to consider their own values.” —As told to Hope Mohr

The post 25 Prompts to Liberate Your Choreographic Practice appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Austin Goodwin Uses Humor to Tell It Like It Is

You caught us. We’re undeniably hooked on Austin Goodwin’s flair for hilarious honesty about the dance industry. In one of his wittiest Instagram videos, he asks his landlord if he can pay rent with “exposure,” since that’s the form of payment he often accepts from freelance jobs. “How many times have we heard ‘Look, there’s no money in this, but it’s going to be great exposure,’” he told Dance Magazine in a recent interview. “I mean, come on, no one’s going to watch this muffin commercial and want to book me for a Broadway show or a European tour. I need to pay my bills.”

We’ve all had those same hushed thoughts before, but this past year, Goodwin has brought them out into the open. Through short videos on his Instagram account—usually a close-up of him acting out two sides of an awkward conversation—he riffs on real-life dance situations and uses humor to offer relatable takes on auditions, creative processes and more. With a career spanning from Sleep No More to Broadway’s Fiddler on the Roof and Netflix’s Tick, Tick… Boom!, the Juilliard-trained dancer certainly knows the ins and outs of the industry. And thousands of likes, shares and comments later, the laughs he provides have sparked important conversations and united the community in a much deeper purpose.

What was your personal inspiration to make these videos?

I think we’re in such a strange, wonderful and sometimes kind of awful industry that people don’t really understand. And I thought a way to help people understand, and also to help other dancers connect about the personal things we hold on to, was to make everyone laugh at it.

But there’s a larger conversation happening too, and I think the pandemic has allowed dancers to sit back and really look at their experiences and see the way we’re often treated. A lot of us have had our jobs literally ripped away from us, and if we’re freelancers, we’re left with no protection. I don’t always want to be hypercritical of the dance industry because I’m obviously a part of that community and it’s a community I love and have great respect for. But I think we’ve had an opportunity to look at the systems that are not working. And to look at our experiences with choreographers, with schools, with bodies…to see the way we fit ourselves into this mold that really is not healthy in some ways. It can be a relief to feel like “Oh, my god. I’ve done that. I’ve been there. That’s happened to me or that’s happened to someone that I know.”

In your ideal world, what changes do you hope these videos could bring about?

I hope people can start asking for things that would allow someone who pursues dance as a career to really have a livelihood without holding multiple jobs at the same time. We want to be able to start families and buy homes and pay off our student loans. I hope to have more support from the government, from each other. I want dancers to not be afraid to ask for what they deserve. What they really deserve. I think we so often dismiss it all because we really want the job. But you can want the job and also ask for the things you deserve as a human being.

For example, I hope to have a dialogue about dancers generating material and recognizing the creative contributions that they’re not given credit for. How can companies look at that process and pay their dancers accordingly? And if those pieces are then remounted elsewhere, how can royalties be implemented? Even if it’s just a small royalty. It’s still the act of doing it that shows care and respect.

Whenever I watch your videos, I can’t help but wonder what else is going on in the room around you at that moment.

It’s usually just my partner, Paul, sitting in the kitchen, watching me go off on a tangent.

But sometimes he’s the cameraman, and we often have to start over because he’ll just laugh hysterically to the point where we both end up in fits, unable to move on.

But that must be so therapeutic for you!

Oh, that’s a huge part of why I do it. Some of the videos are based on things I’ve really been through, and being able to find humor in them has been fun but also incredibly healing.

So how can humor help us stay grounded during difficult times?

Right now it’s scary. It’s emotional. Everyone is carrying around a lot of anxiety. There’s political turmoil, environmental distress. And everyone is having their own personal awakening, whether they’re talking about it or not. In this pandemic, we’ve been forced to look at ourselves straight on, and I think humor allows us to do that and to unite with other people in the process. Everything is funny in some way. It helps. It keeps us in check. Humor brings empathy. And at the end of the day, if you can find a way to laugh at it, you can get through it.

Check out a few of Austin’s greatest hits:

Dance process

Dance Auditions

Dance Auditions pt.2

When a dancer sees a doctor for a cold

Dancer interviews for a tech job

The post Austin Goodwin Uses Humor to Tell It Like It Is appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Find Your New Year’s Dance Resolution!

The new year is here, and that means it’s time for New Year’s resolutions, promises, and challenges to sweep across the world, and then be promptly forgotten by next month. At Fred Astaire Dance Studios, we believe in setting realistic, achievable goals that help you better yourself. To this end, we’ve compiled a short list of dance resolutions for you to try out in the New Year!

Try a new dance style!

Whether you are a fitness dance enthusiast coming off a history of hardcore Zumba classes, a new student just getting comfortable with the ballroom basics, or an experienced ballroom dance veteran with years of competition under your belt, there’s no better way to start the year off right than trying something new! Those salsa classes you’ve been unsure of? Sign up and give it a try! Did you see something cool online that inspired you? Ask your teacher about it! Even if the novelty fades quickly, the experience and perspective you can gain from stepping outside your comfort zone cannot be understated!

Meet new dance partner(s)!

In the spirit of new beginnings, connections, and ventures, try expanding your horizons by dancing with a new partner! Attending a social dance party at Fred Astaire Dance Studios is the perfect opportunity: Look for an acquaintance or new face, and ask if they’d like to give it a try! You just might find a new friend, partner, teacher, or student in that new face you extend a welcome arm to. Grow your dance family in 2022!

Take part in a performance or competition!

While we believe that dance is a worthwhile activity even when alone, it can become truly magical when you perform for an audience! The pressure of performance and competition drives dancers to perform at their peak, and helps the most dedicated find purpose and motivation through many hours of hard work and practice. Even if you are a new or shy dancer, it can be a great way to push yourself out of your comfort zone and truly experience the visceral experience

Start a dance journal!

If you’re already a practiced, experienced dancer, try starting a dance journal! You can document things like progress and notes you’ve made during lessons, reflections on your current routines and steps, and even fun notes and reminders you get from other dancers about new steps to try or songs to check out! You’ll be amazed at the virtues of journaling your dance journey, and eventually you’ll have a treasured record of your growth as a dancer.

Hopefully, we’ve given you some ideas and inspiration to seize the new year and start dancing! We can’t wait to continue dancing with you in 2022, so make sure to schedule your lessons, eat well and take care of yourself, and come ready to make the world a more beautiful place!

Begin Again: The Real Deal With Creating a Dance Reel

If you ask experts in the performance industry, they’ll tell you that one of the best ways to book work in 2022 is to post content online for casting directors and agencies to see. Even better? A dance reel that demonstrates your skill in a variety of genres.

Unfortunately for me, the last legit video I have of myself dancing was taken 10 years ago at JUMP Dance Convention. (Did I still use the footage? Obviously. Seventeen-year-old Haley was on fire that day! Was it enough to fill an entire reel? Absolutely not.)

So I recently took on a humongous task: I rehearsed, filmed and edited five different individual pieces that I combined into a single dance reel. Then, I went through a similar process for my acting and vocal reels.

Whew—it was a lot!

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Haley, we talked about this: You can’t do too much or your health will regress.” Don’t worry—I spread my projects out, I scheduled shoots at mostly reasonable hours (when I couldn’t be reasonable, I went to bed super early), and I accepted help from a bunch of wonderful people.

And it was worth it: I was really happy with the result! Here’s how I made personal promotional content that I’m proud of, using tips from industry experts.

Prep Work

When I began ruminating on this project in September, I interviewed talent consultant Leesa Csolak, CEO of lbctalent.com and director of Launch Talent, on crucial dos and don’ts for creating reels. First, she let me know that any assets I send to agencies need to be concise. “Your reel should be roughly one minute long, and even then, they likely won’t watch more than 10 seconds of it,” Csolak says. She recommended including clips from a variety of genres so that agencies and casting directors can see my range, then separately share full videos of each piece on social media or through Dropbox/Google Drive folders in case agents or casting directors want to explore my work further.

I started with a contemporary piece I choreographed titled “I Lived,” which is about my experience living with chronic illness. It’s personal, and important to me, and I am so grateful I was able to capture it. I also did a jazz piece titled “Oh Darling,” choreographed by Sabrina Phillip, a musical-theater combo titled “Call Me Irresponsible,” choreographed by Scott Fowler, a “jazz-plus” combo titled “Kokomo,” by Dana Wilson, and a jazz-funk combo by Bobby Newberry to “Good For You.” (The last three combinations came from virtual CLI classes.)

For the most part I prepped these numbers on my own in an affordable rehearsal space, but as the shoot dates loomed closer, I rehearsed with my friend and Broadway performer Libby Lloyd at Ripley-Grier Studios to get feedback on my dancing and clean things up a bit.

For acting and voice, Csolak recommended including two or three juxtaposing monologues and songs that fit my casting type. Once again, she said they should be short, and that I should get some expert advice on choosing material. I worked with my acting coach, Andrew Dolan from the Freeman Studio, to choose a comedic monologue from the film He’s Just Not That Into You and a dramatic monologue from the play Mary Jane, by Amy Herzog. Then I worked with a rep coach (someone who can listen to my voice and send over material they think would be a good fit) named Abby Middleton, and my voice coach, Rebecca Soelberg, to prepare a pop song, a golden-age ballad and an upbeat contemporary song.

Filming

I started my shoots with “I Lived,” at sunrise on a rooftop with the Manhattan skyline in the background. The videographer I worked with, Jacob Hiss, shoots for Steps on Broadway. I had been following his work on social media for a while and decided to shoot my shot by direct-messaging him on Instagram. I let him know the details of my project (how long the shoot would last, how long the finished video would be, how many cuts of the video I wanted) and asked what his rates were for something like this. He responded with a ballpark estimate, and graciously accepted the opportunity to work together. Then, I reached out to a friend who lives in a building with rooftop access and asked if she would let us use it. I brought along my husband and my dear friend Hannah Nixon to assist with lights and music. The shoot began at 5:45 am (hello, 4 am wakeup call!) and lasted 45 minutes in the freezing cold. (Barefoot dancing on a windy rooftop in the middle of November is not for the faint of heart.) I cannot wait to show you the results!

For the second video, “Oh Darling,” I worked with Broadway Dance Center videographer Jeremy Davidson. Once again, I reached out through social media, and he took me up on working together. Jeremy is an incredibly talented dance videographer, and a warm and encouraging human being. This shoot was so good for my soul! We filmed in a beautiful studio at Gibney (a little pricey, but worth it for the final footage). I brought another friend along to assist with the 90-minute shoot.

The next two videos, “Call Me Irresponsible” and “Kokomo,” were filmed by two of my photographer/videographer friends, Katie Gallardo and McKall Dodd, and they absolutely crushed the assignment. We filmed in a beautiful studio at Arts On Site in the East Village at 8 am on a Saturday morning. The price was reasonable and the space was perfect for what I needed. The fifth video, “Good For You,” was once again filmed by my friend Katie, this time in Central Park at the Naumburg Bandshell on a Thursday afternoon. (It’s always fun to put on a little show for the tourists walking by!)

For my acting and vocal reels, I borrowed a backdrop structure from a photographer friend and hung my sheets over it for a solid background. I set it in front of my bright windows at home and filmed over three consecutive days. (I probably could have gone faster, but the trouble with self-taping is you can always film again to try to make it better!) My vocal coach joined me for one of the shoot days and helped me set up my framing and work my microphone.

Editing

Let me tell you—I have mad respect for all the creators who edit footage for a living! Thankfully, “I Lived” and “Oh Darling” were edited by the videographers. I edited the other three videos, as well as my reel, with help and feedback from friends and loved ones. I went down a YouTube rabbit hole to see what kinds of music most people use for reels and found that electronic songs seem to be a favorite. So, I decided on Paradise, by MEDUZA, featuring Dermot Kennedy.

The Portfolio of Work

And voilà! I have a portfolio of work that I am prepared to send to agencies. This was a true labor of love made possible by kind people who shared their time and talents with me.

I am bleary-eyed and exhausted and ready for the week-and-a-half break I am giving myself after this.

Check out my latest YouTube video on Dance Magazine’s channel to see a full version of my final reel.

The post Begin Again: The Real Deal With Creating a Dance Reel appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Dance Magazine’s Top 8 Stories of 2021

With its massive ups (live shows back in theaters!) and massive downs (COVID-19 cases and supply-chain issues canceling far too many of those shows), 2021 has truly been a year like no other. Throughout it all, Dance Magazine has worked to cover the trends, the changes and the inspirations that have kept us going. Here are the eight stories you loved the most this year.

The Dancing That Made Gymnast Nia Dennis Famous

Nia Dennis. Photo by Don Liebig/UCLA Photography, Courtesy UCLA Athletics

UCLA gymnast Nia Dennis was popping up all over social media in January with a floor routine that incorporated stepping and iconic social-dance moves like the Soulja Boy and the woah. Editor in chief Jennifer Stahl interviewed both Dennis and the team’s choreographer, BJ Das, about how it came together. Later in the year we looked into what was behind the overall trend of college gymnasts going viral because of their dance moves.

Our 2021 “25 to Watch”

Our annual “25 to Watch” feature, highlighting up-and-comers we believe are on the verge of breakthrough, is always a favorite, and this year was no different. After publishing the list on January 1, we spent the year watching these artists make waves throughout the field.

The Dancer Who Holds a Surprising Guinness World Record

Claudia Steck, Courtesy of Sarah Louis-Jean

One of our more unexpected breakout hits of 2021 was a profile of a dancer with an unexpected story: Sarah Louis-Jean took home a Guinness World Record for the most boleadoras taps made in one minute (385, if you’re curious). Our intern at the time, Breanna Mitchell (who’s now, for obvious reasons, on our roster of regular writers), wrote about how the Black Canadian woman became a master in the Argentine folk dance that’s traditionally performed by men.

A Look at What Makes a TikTok Dance Challenge Catch On

Kara Leigh Cannella. Photo courtesy Cannella

At the start of 2021, TikTok was already a major destination for dance, and it’s only grown over the course of the year. Writer Siobhan Burke looked into the unparalleled appeal of the platform, and why dance is such a natural fit for it.

Boston Dynamics’ Robot Choreographer

Who’s behind those viral music videos of robots dancing? Writer Sydney Skybetter did some investigating to track down the choreographer of Boston Dynamics’ then-latest film, “Do You Love Me?”: Monica Thomas. She shared with us the inside scoop on a creative process like no other.

The History of the Temple Dancers Who Inspired La Bayadère

Nikiya, danced by Natalia Matsak at the National Opera House of Ukraine. Photo by Ksenia Orlova, via Wikimedia Commons

Few ballet lovers these days would be surprised to hear that Petipa took, ahem, certain liberties with the cultures that inspired his famous ballets. But journalist Sarah McKenna Barry’s deep dive into the real lives of the actual women whom Nikiya is supposed to represent will make you see La Bayadère in a whole new way.

Edward Watson’s Cover Story

Just before Edward Watson retired from The Royal Ballet this fall, Laura Cappelle took a look at how he carved out a new space in ballet for male dancers who don’t fit the traditional “prince” mold.

“30 Over 30”

During a year in which time seemed to both stand still and fly by all at once, Dance Magazine decided to push back against the narrative that only the young can have dance careers. Putting our spin on the traditional power list, we choose “30 Over 30,” highlighting people who prove success can happen at any age.

The post Dance Magazine’s Top 8 Stories of 2021 appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Begin Again: Dealing With a Spoonful of Setbacks

Just for today, this column is not what I planned it to be. In an unexpected (or entirely predictable, depending on when you ask me) turn of events, I am not feeling good.

How did we get here? How did we go from doing so great that I pitched a comeback story to the preeminent dance magazine in the country to crying on the studio floor? To answer this question, I need to explain “The Spoon Theory,” a term coined by a blogger with lupus named Christine Miserandino.

It goes like this: Imagine you have 12 spoons in your hands—each visually represents a unit of energy. When you’re chronically ill, everything you do takes more energy (spoons) than it takes the average person. Showering takes a spoon, commuting to the studio takes a spoon, a dance class might take three spoons. This pattern goes on and on until there are no spoons left in your hand. You might be able to reach over to the table next to you and borrow a spoon from the next day, but then you will have fewer spoons to use tomorrow. Eventually, if you keep depleting your spoons, you will run out and crash completely.

Over the past year, I have planned my days meticulously, slowly adding more physical activity to my plate only when it can match the additional spoons I’ve been given through improved health. Unfortunately, with my last column, on training, I did too much and ran out of spoons. I didn’t crash completely, but I started seeing shades of my old symptoms, like fatigue, inflammation, migraines and nausea, creep up, and I had to do something about it.

I took a few things off my plate (RIP Dance Spirit editor position), prioritized sleep (9 pm bedtime for the win), told myself it was okay if I couldn’t make it to ballet every day (at least for now), and tried to give myself grace during class when I was able to be there. In a Dance Magazine article on returning to dance post-injury called “When the Body Betrays,” sports psychologist Dr. Alan Goldberg says recovering dancers should keep their focus on the progress they’re making. I can’t realistically expect my body to be able to move the same way it did when I was 18 years old—that is setting myself up for failure.

Honestly, I’ve been pretty disappointed. When I was a young dancer, a teacher once told me that a day off in dance was like a week off in any other passion. Although this is a myth that’s been debunked (taking time off can actually be a great thing for your dancing!), those words have still haunted me every day for the past nine years. I didn’t want to take two steps backward, even if just for a month. I wanted to go full throttle—to chase my big plans.

Thankfully, though, the decision to be respectful of my body’s physical boundaries has paid off, and I’m beginning to feel better. And if the past year has shown me anything, it’s that it’s never too late to try again.

As many dancers return to their first big runs of performances like Nutcracker and other holiday shows since the onset of the pandemic, I’d imagine some of you might also be realizing that dance is taking a bigger toll on you than it used to. It’s terrifying to be in a new body with new physical and emotional challenges. Let’s give a little space to the need to prioritize recovery, listen to our bodies and acknowledge that progress is not linear.

So that’s it for today. No milestones. Nothing flashy to show. Just a spoonful of setbacks to push through. That’s life, right?

The post Begin Again: Dealing With a Spoonful of Setbacks appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Robert Battle at Full Throttle

When you’re enjoying the easygoing, joke-telling manner of Robert Battle as the welcoming emcee of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, you might not realize there is a ferocious choreographer underneath all that charm. To celebrate his 10 years as artistic director, at New York City Center on Tuesday night the company presented seven works Battle’s created over the last 22 years. Each one held bold surprises—even for those of us familiar with his work.

At the Dance Magazine Awards the previous night, Judith Jamison, in presenting the award to Battle, said, “I love watching Robert’s bravery.” I think she meant both his bravery as a choreographer and as an artistic director. As the latter, he has expanded the Ailey repertory with so many interesting choices—Aszure Barton, Wayne McGregor, Johan Inger and Kyle Abraham—that we tend to forget about Battle himself as a choreographer.

A bare-chested Asian man jumps straight up into the air on a dark stage, his expression surprised, arms gently bent out to the sides — Kanji Segawa in Robert Battle’s *Takademe*. Photo by James R. Brantley, Courtesy AAADT

Well, the program at City Center reminded us in a big way. Robert Battle is a choreographer of masterful restraint and sudden explosiveness. He is a choreographer who has definite musical tastes and finds a different, original movement vocabulary for each of those music choices.

With a disciplined sense of suspense, he makes us wait for the big moment. In Mass (2004), a devotional piece of skittering, swirling and vibrating and a modernist sense of design, the 16 dancers sometimes lock into off-kilter positions of stillness. And then a burst of momentum pushes these monklike figures across the stage in an agitated, unstoppable herd. In his portion of Love Stories (2004, originally a triptych with contributions from Judith Jamison and Rennie Harris), we crave to be carried on a high by Stevie Wonder’s songs, but Battle reins the dancers in with strict unison until the very end, when he unleashes a torrent of wild revelry.

In Unfold (2007), the extreme attenuation for the woman—in this case a ravishingly arching Jacqueline Green—is sustained throughout this short work to the operatic voice of Leontyne Price. Green’s partner, Jeroboam Bozeman, seems like a lost soul clinging to his memories. With a slow développé to the side, toes pointing upward, Green hits the high note just when Price does. It’s the kind of satisfying convergence that Battle is careful not to overuse.

Jacqueline Green and Jeroboam Bozeman in Robert Battle’s *Unfold*. Photo by Paul Kolnik, Courtesy AAADT

The evening’s emotional range went from the desperation of In/Side (2008)—which finds Yannick Lebrun staggering and spiraling to Nina Simone singing “with your kiss life begins”—to the giddiness of Ella (2008), in which two dancers (Renaldo Maurice and Patrick Coker) physicalize Ella Fitzgerald’s speedy scatting that ricochets between popular tunes of the 50s and earlier.

The work that premiered this season, For Four, laced its full-bodied jazz moves with chaîné turns and cabrioles, and somehow it all fit into the robust Wynton Marsalis score. The projection of an American flag onto one dancer seemed to suddenly curtail the dancers’ freedom and make them feel trapped.

Takademe (1999) never fails to excite. With crackling energy, Kanji Segawa mirrors Sheila Chandra’s staccato stutterings, deep exhalations and vocal spurts. A brief, enchanting masterwork, Takademe is where language, voice and movement mingle—at top speed and intricacy.

In his opening speech to this program honoring him, Battle graciously pointed out that David Parsons gave him his first chance to choreograph, and he, Battle, has given Jamar Roberts his first chance. And so the chain of extraordinary artistry continues.

The post Robert Battle at Full Throttle appeared first on Dance Magazine.

From Billy Elliot to Bernardo: David Alvarez’s Journey to “West Side Story”

It was clear to anyone who saw David Alvarez in the musical Billy Elliot more than a decade ago that there was something remarkable about this teenager debuting on Broadway. Even at 14, he had a gravitas beyond his years. His dancing was both expressive and explosive—it said something about the character’s inner life, and also about his talent. You left the theater wondering what was next for this extraordinary young performer.

But, to the surprise of many, he didn’t stay in show business, despite winning a Tony for Best Actor in a Musical, along with his two fellow Billys. Instead, he disappeared from view, finished high school and then joined the army. “I wanted to be part of something bigger than myself,” he said recently of his decision to join up. “It was, no doubt, the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” He still wears his dog tags. Though he didn’t see combat, he says that the experience—the physical and mental training—changed him.

In 2015, at 20, he briefly resurfaced as a swing in the Broadway revival of On the Town. Only to disappear once again, this time winding up at Case Western University, where he majored in philosophy.

Now he’s back, in a big way, with two major debuts that place him right at the center of our cultural moment. On Showtime, he has a lead role acting in a dark, dramatic series called “American Rust,” which debuted in September. This month he will be coming to a movie theater near you in Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story, the pioneering 1957 musical (and 1961 film) about warring gangs in New York City. He plays Bernardo, the charismatic, proud and sometimes violent leader of the Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks.

It’s a lot for a 27-year-old who just two years ago was an undergraduate with no plans to return to the stage. But when I ask whether working on two high-profile projects back-to-back was intimidating, he gives a characteristically low-key, thoughtful response: “You know, it’s almost as if I’ve been making sure that I’m ready and prepared for the things that are thrown at me.”

He wasn’t planning to audition for West Side Story, he says. One day, out of the blue, the casting director Cindy Tolan reached out to him on social media. “I was so confused by it,” says Alvarez. “I couldn’t understand why she was messaging me after I had disappeared from the face of the earth for the last six years.” But it turned out that she, too, remembered him from Billy Elliot.

Justin Peck created the choreography for the new film; the original was famously choreographed by Jerome Robbins. Peck recalls the audition: “He just had a spark, and this real edge to the way he moves, despite the fact that he was a little rusty.” The two worked together closely, honing Bernardo’s movement style. For his part, Alvarez was deeply impressed by Peck’s grasp of the cinematic effect of the choreography. “Everything interconnects and weaves together beautifully,” Alvarez says. “He’s choreographing for how you look within the group and how the group looks within the picture. He’s always a step ahead of where you think he is.”

Though Alvarez had to get back into dancing shape, he says the process felt natural, “almost like riding a bike.” In fact, Peck explains, the quality of his dancing helped to shape the role. “We really embraced his sense of athletic classicism,” he says. “There are some moments of virtuosity that I maybe wouldn’t have choreographed otherwise.”

What impressed everyone on set even more was his ability to go deep, in a very quiet, direct way. “He has this ability to express a total spectrum of emotions just through his eyes,” says Peck. It’s something that comes through in his performance in “American Rust,” as well, a role in which he projects a deep vulnerability, verging on woundedness. And not only in his eyes. The way he moves reveals volumes about his character’s inner life. He’s not dancing, but he’s using his body to express what’s happening inside of him.

Ariana DeBose and David Alvarez as Anita and Bernardo in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story Niko Tavernise, Courtesy 20th Century Studios

This is a quality he has always had, certainly in Billy Elliot, but also when he was a promising young ballet student at American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School. “He was like a little adult,” remembers Franco De Vita, who was then artistic director of the school. “Incredibly focused, quiet, reserved.” And intensely talented. It was clear to his teachers that he could have become a ballet star. “We thought he was going to be the next Fernando Bujones,” says De Vita, referring to the great Cuban-American dancer of the ’70s and ’80s.

Interestingly, both of Alvarez’s recent breakout roles depict working-class men of Latin-American heritage. Bernardo is Puerto Rican, and his character on “American Rust” is half Mexican. Alvarez himself is the son of Cuban immigrants, a cancer researcher and a former actress. He says his background helped him connect to these characters’ struggles. “I’ve heard so many stories from my aunts and uncles about what it’s like to come to a new country, start from zero, with no foundation, no context, having to create that for yourself.”

It helps that, according to both Alvarez and Peck, the Bernardo character in this adaptation of West Side Story is a more complex figure than he was in the 1961 film. The new screenplay is by the playwright Tony Kushner, writer of both Angels in America, a play about the AIDS crisis, and the screenplay for the movie Lincoln.

This time, it seems David Alvarez is here to stay. He says he’s open to anything, dancing roles, nondancing roles—it’s all about translating something that comes from inside. For years, he says, he was searching for something. But recently, he has realized that it’s okay to just follow his inclinations. “There really is nothing to search for,” he says, “because everything you’re looking for is right here, right now.”

The post From Billy Elliot to Bernardo: David Alvarez’s Journey to “West Side Story” appeared first on Dance Magazine.