Dancer’s Biggest Mistake

Last week was probably one of the most important times in a dancers year.  It wasn’t because there were new jobs, auditions, or styles being created but because many dancers got to stop for one whole week.  This rest is a very vital part of a dancers career and is easily ignored or nonexistent in a majority of dancers lives.  With out this break dancers injuries increase, both physically and mentally.

Dance is the only sport, art, whatever you want to call it that isn’t done in a season.  There’s baseball season, football season, and basketball season all of which last about 18-32 weeks.  Out of a year this equals about 1/4 to a little over 1/2 of the entire year.  This means these sports players get to take a break to go to physical therapy, relax their muscles, and just do nothing for awhile.  That dance seasons starts January 1st and goes all the way until December 31st with little to no breaks in between.  This means dancers get no build up or let down like many sports teams do.  As dancers we are expected to do the same unbelievable acts of strength as sports players do, but never take a break to recharge for them.

Another issue that exist in both dance and sports is that many performances or events are over the holiday breaks.  This is because people are able to come see more performances at these times and so people are required to do more then before.  Thanksgiving day there are three football games, along with a long parade for the dancers.  Over the Christmas seasons the Rockettes are kicking of their super overtime with their New York winter show, along with sending out smaller corps to perform around the country.  Easter means that many theatre groups are doing different performances for their spring season.  While these are the “high times” of these performing groups these performers are put to a new level a stress.

When I was in 8th grade i participated in an outside of school dance company along with my in school band and theatre company.  This meant I got no break ever and often had more then one performance at a time.  One week after a long band practice, theatre rehearsal, and at my dance class I was doing an across the floor progression.  In the middle of the progression I did a leap and was unable to land it.  I twisted my ankle which is nothing new to my normal dance class.  As all dancers do in class we fall and usually bounce right back up.  However, due to the amount of stress I had been under my body had been exhausted and could not bounce back from the fall.  I ripped 3 tendons in my ankle along with pulling many others.

I had to spend the next six weeks with a boot and couldn’t event let my foot touch the floor.  After that I had to spend another few months leading up to being able to dance with multiple days of physical therapy a week and barely being able to take dance classes.  Moral of the story is that us as dancers need to take breaks to keep doing what we love.

Next time you get the option of a break think about taking it.  Even if its just a few days out of the year or an entire weekend of nothing once in a while do it.  We so easily overwhelm ourselves and need to confront this.

The Good

• Breaks allow our body to refresh and renew itself.
• Who doesn’t enjoy a break.

The Bad

• Taking a week or two off may cause the muscles and a persons endurance to slowly decrease.

The Question
How long do you take off of dancing a year?  What is your busiest time of the year and how well do you get a build up to this time?

Professional Dancers and Why We Need To Do It All.

Last time I discussed professional dancers I picked two dancers who were masters in their own art.  While the world does reward the best and the brightest in everything, especially dance, there are those who can demonstrate an extreme ability at a lot of different things.  These dancers are priceless for a company or a commercial because they bring more then one aspect to a performance.  In this competitive of a world it is almost required for dancers to be able to do everything.  Growing up many studios and schools require students to take at least ballet, modern, and jazz once a week.  This is on top of many dancers who also take tap, hip hop, contemporary, lyrical, musical theatre, african, and any other dance you can imagine.  This trend is only going to become more necessary and dancers need to begin to make the transition now.  

One of the biggest movers in the direction of “doing it all” is the hit TV show “So You Think You Can Dance”.  As we all know, the show requires dancers to draw a dance that they will perform that week with their partner or as a solo or even now as a group.  This causes many of the dancers to have to dance outside of their comfort zone.  There are ballerinas who get forced to do a gangster hip hop dance and then B Boys who get sucked into doing an emotional lyrical/contemporary dance.  Many of these dancers have never attempted this style but must adapt immediately.

If they do not they get kicked off the show because they wont receive votes.  It’s literally them fighting every single week for their life.  This is an idea that us as dancers have to bring into our every day life.  I have often walked into a dance class and looked at the first few moves and thought to myself “What the heck is this person doing?”  However, we just have to buckle down because one day we may have to pull off a SYTYCD move and be asked to do something we’ve never done before.  In order to not starve and get kicked out of our apartment we will have to adapt.

This same concept of doing it all takes place even outside the commercial world of dance.  It is a lot more difficult to see how being diverse in a concert dance world will benefit but there is one dancer we can all look at to understand this concept.  Mikhail Baryshnikov is a concert dancer who has taken his name from a extremely powerful male ballet dancer to a amazing male dancer.  Baryshnikov started off as a ballet dancer in his home country of Russia before he moved to the United States to perform with the New York City Ballet and then the American Ballet Theatre.

Despite his overwhelming talent in ballet Baryshnikov also choreographed many ballets and modern dances.  His ability to not only perform these stories but also to choreograph these styles make him an even larger asset to a concert dance company.  American Ballet Theatre was able to move from doing only big ballet pieces to a more contemporary ballet style.  Even later on ABT was doing a few modern dance pieces that were choreographed by Twyla Tharp and many could state that it may have even been a jazz dance.  Without being so diverse it is highly possible Baryshnikov wouldn’t be as large of a household name he is now and that the concert dance world wouldn’t be starting to look at diversifying its dancers.  

As a dancer you have to remember you’re a product.  You are selling yourself and in order to sell the best you it is required to have as many different abilities possible.  Being able to dance more then just one style makes you a better product, being able to choreograph more then one type of style makes you a better product, anything as a dancer you can do as a dancer can make you a better product.

The Good

• Many dancers, including everyone I go to school with, are talented at more then one style.
• The more and more dance shifts to this ideal dancers will have more and more abilities.

The Bad

• More dancers who are more well rounded means less opportunities at jobs.
• The elite performers will always be favored for being amazing at what they do (maybe this is both?).

The Question:
Are you versatile and if so do you see this as one of your bigger assets?  What styles do you do?

Learning From a Professional -Daniel Squire-

This upcoming week Chapman Dance Department has a guest choreographer from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company coming to reset a mini event on dancers.  Daniel Squire was a dancer with MCDC for over ten years and was a well respected dancer and had many Cunningham original pieces set on him.  Daniel Squire has set many mini events on an assortment of colleges and works all over the country doing so.  There are many interesting things that come with working with a person who has performed for many years with many companies and in the field.

The benefits that one can get from working with active professionals is a lot different then that of teachers who may have been at one time a professional.  All teachers who teach Chapman Dancers have had varying amounts of professional company or commercial dance experiences and tries to bring what they have learned to their students.  While this is helpful to students every day training as the teachers know what they had to learn to get to the jobs they had.  However, due to the fact that Squire is currently auditioning for companies and performing with them he knows exactly what many of these companies are looking for at this time.  He also is able to give us a direct connection with the current professional world sharing his stories of what is going on in many different companies.

Another benefit about learning material from an actual professional who did it is you can get insight into the rehearsal process.  When learning things Squire will refer back to things that Merce Cunningham actually said during the rehearsals.  In 2009 Merce Cunningham passed away making this sort of insight even more vital to our experiences and re staging of Cunningham’s work.  It is hard to be authentic to a work without receiving this insight information.

Difficulties do arrive when you are taking a class from a professional.  First is the difficulty to make personal connections with them and themselves with the students.  Because these professional teachers are only able to stop by for a week or even a month at max they are not able to really meet and talk to the students they are teaching.  Also, Squire has had to work at multiple different schools and groups over the past few months.  This causes him to make a few mistakes with names making students feel that perhaps he isn’t connecting as well.  While this often happens many professional teachers are extremely good at making connections.  Squire is able to play “games” with his students that do connect back into the choreography but can help him meet the students he is teaching.

A difficulty that I have encountered, not with Squire, but other professional dancers is that many are not good teachers.  There are hundreds of dancers who perform amazingly but aren’t very good teachers.  This is because many are not able to teach because they were naturally gifted and never had to encounter the difficulties that many other dancers go through.  These dancers also were greatly capable of learning what others compose but can not compose movements to teach to students to help make them better.  Daniel Squire overcame this issue in multiple ways.  First, the MCDC, like a bunch of modern dance companies, requires their performers to go out and teach classes while they are in certain cities and also to help teach company classes.  Also, Squire was a senior in the MCDC which meant he had to teach many of the younger recruits how to do the work.

The experience of learning the Merce Cunningham Mini Event is one that could be very different depending on who or what kind of teacher is teaching it.  While we have taken class from Daniel Squire and Liz Maxwell, a teacher at Chapman who trained at the Cunningham School, we’ve also had rehearsals that were lead but students.  These are great for reviewing what we’ve worked on in class but are not as functional as the professional teachers.  The professional teachers function better because they can bring a type of objectivity to the rehearsal where us as students are stuck in the form of dancing we do.

The rehearsal we had with Daniel Squire today from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. was a long and grueling process.  But this training and personal connection we as students get to make with a professional is one that goes far far beyond the lessons we learn in class.

The Good

• Professionals bring their own personal insight into the education process.
• A connection directly into the  professional world.

The Bad

• Many professional dancers should not be professional teachers.
• Personal connections are difficult to make with busy professionals.

The Question:
Have you ever taken a class from  a professional dancer?  What makes them good or bad teachers?

American Celebration

American Celebration is Chapman Universities largest fundraiser for scholarships and other extra money.  This is a performance that is put on by COPA, College of Performing Arts, and has performers from theatre, choir, and dance.  The performance is held in Memorial Hall which is revamped to look like one of the worlds top of the line performance venues.  American Celebration often performs many “older” broadway songs and is a fusion of musical dancing and singing.

This year, like last year, I was casted to take part in American Celebration as a dancer.  The performance is unlike any other performance I have done and different then any show I’ve done at Chapman.  Most dance concerts have a small budget in which a company or organization is able to barely costume their performers, cover the small amount of props they have, and get a venue to perform in.  American Celebration does not encounter this problem.  There are over three hundred costumes all covering the hundred performers.  The performers get to utilize an assortment of props from benches, tarps, and hats to enhance the experience.  The stage has an assortment of new lighting fixtures added and the proscenium and stage are covered with a new coat of paint and pretty curtains.

American Celebration is also extremely different for a dancer at least in the fact we get to perform with a live band.  This however isn’t the Chapman Big Band, which is amazing in itself, but is comprised of individuals who play in many of the big bands around Las Angeles and many of them have performed in or with the Grammy Band.  This brings on many issues that happen when someone takes their art from an educational level to a professional level.

The band that performers with us is a unionized band.  This means they have strict rules on how long they can play, when they can play, and what they can play.  This changes the flows of rehearsals drastically in comparison to working with other students that the only rule is that you are here to work and to work hard.  Instead of being able to rehearse none stop from 6pm-10pm we have to stop midway through and give the musicians a break.  We also aren’t allowed to keep them over their time because that would be the equivalent of putting them into overtime which is bad in two different ways, their union and their expensive.  The next problem we encounter is because these musicians are so amazing and well known they are expensive to get a hold of.  Instead of having them with us for the whole two weeks of rehearsal we usually get them for the two dress rehearsals and the performances.  This is difficult because the dancers and singers have to adjust to the new sound the band brings along with their rhythm and musical idiosyncrasies.

American Celebration also brings some special guests onto the stage that usually don’t show up at normal dance concerts.  These special guests include many alumni and special guests who are invited into the performance to either participate in the dances or give speeches.  The special guests we have this year range from our own president Jim Doti to one of Chapman’s greatest supporters Julianne Argryos. There are also speeches given by the Henleys and many Chapman Alumni and donators are in the audience and asked to stand and be seen through out the show.  

The opportunities and experiences that are gained through taking place in American Celebration and Fall Faculty allow the dancers at Chapman University to try to experience a professional level of performances.  The performance takes place this Friday and Saturday and all the dancers get to experience how to look for an audience of older and wealthier participants then we as dancers are used to.  American Celebration is a performance that many dancers and singers will remember and take the lessons into the rest of the world with them.    

The Good

• Working with a unionized band.
• Having a high budget production.

The Bad

•  Hard two week rehearsal process.
• Very commercialistic.

The Question
Would you rather be in a large production like American Celebration or a Broadway production or a smaller company performance?  What is appealing to you about your choice?

Dancers with Cirque Du Soleil

Cirque Du Soleil is a company that has X amount of shows located on almost every continent.  Their company is comprised of performers from fifty countries that speak twenty five different languages.  Cirque has shows that will open in a year or two and shows that have been open for fifteen or more years.  Cirque Du Soleil is a company that will be around for the long term and will always need new performers to help bring the magic to the stage.

Last weekend Cirque Du Soleil held a Technology and Dance Symposium at Chapman University.  This symposium brought a large assortment of people to the Chapman campus from the LA area and people from Mexico and Japan.  These participants were taught by the professionals from amazing shows such as Ka, Love, and O.  Participants could take place in stores from Dance improv to Lighting Design.

As a dancer you are probably thinking what does this mean to me.  Cirque is actually an amazing company that needs amazing dancers.  Currently they employ about 150 dancers in their resident and touring shows.  These dancers may do flips, splits, and other unhuman movements.  However, in the depths of the Cirque ideology is the idea that dancing can wow an audience as much as a gymnast doing 400 flips.

What is the Cirque wow dance factor?  It is when a dancer can fuse the two schools of technique and artistry.  It is great if a dancer has amazing feet or can tell a story with their body but if one of these two factors out power the other the audience wont get the wow.  Cirque tries to find how a dancer controls these two factors in an audition by providing a technically challenging combination that requires a dancers heart.  If a dancer is strong enough in both these feats they move onto Cirque’s second ideology about dancers.  Dancers have to be versatile and able to do anything.  With only having 150 dancers spread out twenty five plus shows the dancers in a show have to do many different roles and styles of dance.  Cirque puts the dancers to the test in an audition by forcing dancers to do both a lyrically technical piece, and then a groovy funky jazz dance. 

Many people wonder why would you want to dance for Cirque over another company.  First, Cirque Du Soleil gives dancers a year long renewable contract for a show.  This means a dancer is hired for the entire year, no strings attached, and gets reviewed at the end of the year to decide if the dancer comes back.  Many other dance jobs don’t promise a job for nearly this long at a constant pay.  Cirque also refuses to fire a dancer when they hurt and instead will pay workers compensation while the dancer goes through physical therapy at the Cirque studio.

Secondly, Cirque pays a constant and stable rate.  Dancers make money based on how many shows they do and with a total of 500 plus shows a year a dancer can make a substantial amount of money.  This is different then most dance jobs that either last for a very short time with one lump payment or a company job in which a dancer gets paid differently depending on whether they’re in rehearsal or tour mode.

Finally, Cirque provides many amazing health benefits that will lengthen dancer careers.  The perks provided vary from massage, PT, and many other health benefits.  Cirque also helps dancers receive some sort of health benefits without having to be union.  

The Good

• Cirque provides a stable and safe work environment for dancers.
• Constant pay.

The Bad

• Cirque is a job that doesn’t allow one to easily jump to other jobs or have a second job.
• Demanding work load of ten shows a week.

The Question:
Would it be helpful to understand more of the business aspect behind Cirque as a dancer or should all those facts and decisions be left to the corporate workers?

Reviewing Fellow Discourse

It’s great and all to have a personal blog where I can write about all the information I find on dancing as a profession.  That however can only be so meaningful and to take a blog to the next level the blogger has to research and see what is going on in their community.  This ongoing conversation that is going on in the blog world is the discourse community.

An amazing blogger who I hope to discuss more about later on is Brittany Fridenstein-Keefe.  Keefe writes on her own blog called “Empowering Thoughts For Dancers” on which she writes about many members in the company she is in, Morphoses.  Keefe takes place in the discourse community I am partaking in because she looks at dancers who are freelance dancers in New York.  In this post I’m going to look at her most recent post “Yusha Love’s Everyones Individuality”.

Keefe interviews a dancer named Yusha Marie-Sorenzo.  Yusha, along with many of the other dancers Keefe interviews, went on to get a college degree before going out and getting professional dance jobs.  Keefe’s interview follows a set of consistent questions that she asks everyone who she interviews.  This is nice as a reader because we can compare differences between performers.

When looking at many of Keefe’s interviews I’ve noticed that we are asking people the same thing.  How do you live off dance?  At first I felt like my blog was more about the company and Keefe’s more about the dancers but now looking at it it appears we both are looking at the same group of people.  By looking at BLOC agency and Keely looking into her future of dance I was looking at “How will these people live off dance in the future”.  Keefe’s interview with Yusha asks the question of “How are you living off dance now”.  This is a very important question for all dancers because no dancer wants to have to work another none dance job.  We’re dancers because we want to dance not because we want to dance and wait tables, even though we sadly have to sometimes.

The fun thing about my blog in comparison to Keefe’s blog is that we are looking at dancers in opposite orders.  She looks at dancers who are already in and I’m looking at dancers who are praying to get in.  This is great for both our audiences because they can find the similarities between both our potential dancers and our professional dancers.  This helps the discourse of dance as a profession because it reinforces the information we both find in interviews which makes me feel more comfortable in my postings because an already well established blogger is saying the same thing I am.

There is a questios I would ask Keefe to bring up in her interviews.  I would like Keefe to ask her performer friends for advice that they could give to other dancers. The rest of the interview seems like a Q and A that a potential dancer would be asking a professional but I feel that the questions fall short on giving the help for those inexperienced.  In exchange I would probably ask my interviewees what their biggest fear about dancing in the future so we could have an exchange of information.  I look forward to developing an exchange between the two blogs which would enforce our discourse community.

The Good:

• Keefe’s blog provides more information into the discourse.
• She also does reviews of other discourse material which brings the entire community closer together.

The Bad:

• Blogs are easily isolated from each other and to make each other stronger we need to work together.
• One day our material may go in different directions requiring each blog to find more bloggers in the community.

The Question:

Read Keefe’s blog.  How in comparison of Keefe’s blog and my blog would you try to bring the discourse community closer together?  Do you feel as dancers we need to worry about a “discourse community” or is that for more academic blogs?

What makes dance different than other careers?

With the current economic conditions of the world getting a job is hard for everyone.  Many families are living off of one or no income and are searching for jobs desperately.  Dance has not been exempt from the difficulty of these economic times and there are still a shortage of jobs.  Companies continue to struggle to not only pay their dancers but keep the basis of the company afloat.  While the National Endowment of The Arts is still trying to give money to dance companies to keep them moving the amount is less then normal.  However, searching for a job in dance and a job in any other career are vastly different.

To find out the difference in the job search I interviewed a senior at Chapman University, Keely Misenhimer.  Keely is from Yuma, Arizona and trained at the Yuma Ballet Academy under the eyes of Jon Cristofori and Kathleen Sinclair.  After training with Yuma Ballet Academy she joined the affiliated pre-professional company called Ballet Yuma.  She had focused solely on ballet for a majority of her training with very small amounts of jazz, modern, and musical theatre.  She came to Chapman University where she is earning a B.A. in Dance and a B.F.A. in Graphic Design.

After graduating from college Keely is going to pursue her dance career first.  Dance is a physically demanding profession with a very short window of opportunity and Keely says that after she graduates her body will be at its finest for the career.  The accent of focusing on dance before graphic design also comes at the monetary expenses between the two.  Taking dance classes when not in a company can be expensive while the mere price of auditions can cause about $50 dollars each.

I then asked Keely what differences she has discovered in looking at both a dance career and a graphic design career.  She said that “looking for a job in dance is much more demanding both in the time it takes to look for  a job” and the already stated price of auditions.  She also mentions how one must spend their time differently for both careers.  In order to get a graphic design job one may have to send in, either email or mail, different designs and projects they have already done along with a resume or go in for a one on one interview with a firm.  However, to get a dance job, Keely will have to attend group auditions where hundreds of other dancers will have to meet up at the same time to try to get into a company.  She has the oppourtunity to control her schedule for graphic design unlike in dance where auditions are given dates.

Keely is looking to audition for a large amount of companies, including Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, Kansas City Ballet, and Ballet Nouveau.  She is looking at many of these companies because she plans to focus in contemporary ballet.  I asked her if going to Chapman University had any influence on her new dreams of dance and what she thinks about telling others to go to college.  She mentioned that receiving more training in modern and jazz has shifted her focus to contemporary ballet so she can continue following these new skills she’s developed.  Receiving a college education also armed Keely with the knowledge of anatomy, music, and choreography.  She thanks college for setting her up for her future and believes that college is a personal choice that each dancer should examine when preparing to move into the real world.  Keely didn’t decide until her junior year of college that dance would be her profession instead of a hobby.  Though she may be a late bloomer this will not hold her back in finding a dance career.

The Good

• Many company auditions are open to all and have a given date to help a dancer organize their schedule.
• The NAE tries to help keep dance companies alive in a difficult economy.

The Bad

• Auditions may require a dancer to pay to even get into the audition.
• The career time of a dancer is variable and unpredictable.

The Question
How vital is it for a dancer to have a “backup” degree and why do people take this view on art careers instead of other careers?