Sometimes as a teacher, I feel like my hands are tied, especially when it comes to mentor-ship (which really bugs me because I want to be a resource for my students).
I had a student who couldn’t fulfill her commitment and her actions came into fruition. Grateful at first, she recently decided to blame the teacher/studio for the result of her actions.
OI.
I don’t have any outside contact with this student. I’ll probably never see her again. But man, if she asked for my advice, if she wanted to hear from me, this is what I would say:
Even if you decide to never dance again, there will be other opportunities that will ask of your time and your commitment. If you cannot honor a commitment, it is always apparent when the ball has dropped in your court. If you blame the person who gave you an opportunity that you lost, kiss any future opportunity from that person goodbye because you’ve just proven you are difficult to work with. It is so easy to burn a bridge; it takes work to build one.
I know I used to talk about this a lot in my training, but when I think back on when, I think it was actually when I was older that I heard this. I WISH I had known this earlier because I did burn bridges in my youth out of fear. Now, even if I have a hard time working with someone, I try my darnedest to keep bridges intact. People change on both ends and I just think it’s worth it to create good karma instead of bad.
I also believe that since I chose dance, the older I got, the more my teachers imparted to me. And it was always under the guise of “dance is hard enough without making these kinds of mistakes.” But a lot of this advice is just good advice overall. Don’t burn your bridges, build them.
[This post is also reminding me of a book I devoured when I was 12: A Dancer’s Manual]
When my current jobs fell into my lap, I was still in the depths of my job hunting spread sheet. I poked at it a couple of times, asking myself, do I really not need this anymore? Is it really over? For me the answer is over for now.
I thought it might be helpful for those still in the depths to know what I did. I am definitely not saying that I have it completely made, but I am happy that for this year, this is what my work life is going to look like. Essentially, I’m teaching at two studios (one old and one new) and part time work that has amazing benefits for me as a dancer. My jobs are a really good fit FOR RIGHT NOW.
I’m also going to write this blog post with a graduate student in mind.
Have a Job While in School
When I moved to California, I knew that I needed to get back into teaching dance. I had taken a year off so that I would have time to audition for graduate programs across the country. I moved to California essentially a month before school started, using that time to fully move in and to job hunt. And I needed that full month for a job to finally come through that would work with my schedule. I still have this job (and I love it).
Intern
So I stole this idea from my boyfriend. My boyfriend was able to volunteer for multiple archives and ended up with a job before he even graduated from his program. Lucky duck. But he had made all these great connections that got him the job.
I basically went out and did the same thing. I interned at CounterPULSE Theater where I was face to face with the dance scene here in the Bay. I found that I loved working in a theater and that I actually did like marketing and arts administration. I’m now a part time receptionist for another dance theater in the city and I definitely attribute my experience at CounterPULSE for getting me this job. Interning is such a useful networking tool.
Join Organizations (Local and National)
God this really saved me over and over. I joined Dancer’s Group as well as the National Dance Education Organization (which automatically gives you membership to many local divisions, including California). This was money well spent because I got quick access to job listings and auditions. Having a constant update of what was even available as far as employment in the dance world really kept me going and kept me from loosing hope.
How is Craigslist Still Keeping Me Hired?
I’m honestly shocked by the fact that I keep getting hired from ads posted on Craigslist. Some of my best teaching positions I found through Craigslist. I guess the things I’m doing right when it comes to Craigslist is keeping up with posting (that are within my traveling distance), writing clear and concise email copy, and constantly improving my resume (not just my experience but how it’s designed). There are some people who have this down WAY more than me, so it shouldn’t take too much digging to find out other people’s tricks for Craigslist.
What worked for me this summer specifically was saying yes to practically any opportunity that would knock on my door and trying my best to stay busy. I did finally have to say no to other things to have what I have now, but that was after many many many job applications and fortunately a good amount of interviews.
If you are in the job search, don’t loose hope. What you’re doing is no small task. Every step in this journey is a great accomplishment. And if something comes to you that seems totally out of the blue–dude, GO WITH IT (at least if it feels right). Sometimes life happens suddenly.
After I graduated from my undergrad, my main goal as a dancer was to get right back onstage. Living in Austin, TX, I found my best way to get back to performing and even start performing professionally was to go to class. I barely went to auditions when I lived in Austin not because I didn’t want to, but there were little to be had. Much of the dance scene was who you knew and word of mouth.
photo courtesy of Jenna Jones
If you are dancing in a new city, then picking the classes that will get you seen by choreographers might seem a little daunting. Here’s how I go about it.
Identify Dance Schools and Dance Centers
You’ll want to do your research on what dance schools or dance centers offer classes to adults. The format of a typical dance program for adults is usually a class card/drop in system because they understand that the adult demographic needs flexibility in order to participate. I’m speaking directly about on-going classes, not a workshop series that might be a set number of weeks (another offering at these kind of schools). If you find that a school or studio is trying to sign you up for a whole semester or a whole year, they might be putting their efforts to kids rather than adults, or they are catering to beginning adults. Also, if there are no intermediate or advanced levels, then cross those off your list as well.
Another place to find classes is from companies that own their own spaces. This might be harder to find. If your city has a dance organization, they might have a list of active dance companies.
Research the Faculty
Once you know where you’re going, look up the faculty that is teaching your genre and your skill level. Read their bios and if they have “artistic director”/ “director”/ “directing” followed by the name of their dance company, then congratulations! You just found a working choreographer!
I take this one step further and research the company. What I look for is if they have dancer bios. I’m looking for this to see if they have a set group of people and what this choreographer looks for in a dancer. It helps me identify if I would be a good fit or if it’s a company I can aspire to.
Difficult Choices
Here’s where you have to just go ahead and try. If you do this research, you will probably find that many of these classes are conflicting in time. You can’t have it all (sorry). I’m in this conundrum personally myself, but I think I’m going to go with best fit as far as “maybe I’ll actually get hired”/ “this fits my future goals”/ “I feel happy when I take this class.” I’m also going off my experiences from last summer taking dance class around the area.
Essentially, you have to try it and see if you like it. And I wouldn’t judge a class the first time around, especially if it’s not so great the first time. You never know what might have caused it; the teacher had a funky day, it was a strange mix of students, etc. Give yourself the time to figure out if you really like it by going more than once.
Once you have really committed to a choreographer, go to every one of their classes at your appropriate level. This might include taking both intermediate and advanced levels because the choreographer would prefer you to have more exposure to their work. Also, if you do end up working with the choreographer, your likely to have to do this anyway.
Good luck picking your dance classes (and getting seen by the right people). If you have other tips on how you choose class, please share!
I recently came across this video of a woman who taught herself how to freestyle dance in the span of a year…
Her name is Karen X. Cheng and she’s a bit of a serial self teacher. Freestyle dance is not the only thing she’s self-taught herself. She taught herself graphic design and with just 6 months of self study was able to change careers from Program Manager to Graphic Designer, freestyle dancer on the side. It’s pretty impressive and speaks to the power of the internet. I know the internet is full of cats and memes, some great, some just useless, but really the internet is reasonable open access to information. And what we do with that information I think speaks greatly of what kind of person you are, what life circumstances you find yourself in.
Karen suggests to become a great freestyle dancer to practice everyday, which she did for a year. I tried to say that to myself:
I should dance/create everyday.
Wait…should I? I really stopped on that thought. I’ve already wrote about how I feel about our American need for busyness, and so I don’t automatically say yes to this phrase like I would if I went along with the work-til-you-drop mentality. It makes me stop and well, stumble.
I just went to the doctor to get my MRI results on my left knee. I have tendonitis. My meniscus is bruised. To tell the truth, I’ve been going to dance just in case the doctor said, “Sorry, stop dancing.” It’s probably the wrong action, but whatever, I don’t want someone telling me I can’t dance. But nope, I got “good” news that it was “just” tendonitis. And I find myself a bit frustrated.
I realized as I was emailing the physical therapist that I had little knowledge of how to live with tendonitis anywhere in my body. I don’t know how to warm up just my knee. I don’t know if the stretching I’m doing is any good. I don’t know what to do after I take a dance class to help my knee recover. Since insurance will cover physical therapy, that’s what I’m currently seeking out.
Injuries happen either from an extreme accident or a repeated move done incorrectly, creating stress over and over and over. It’s the bodies way of saying, “Stop already!” Karen describes practicing everyday, even if it was just her arms or her fingers. I admire her commitment, but I wonder, does she graphic design every single day? I scoff and think the answer is yes. Am I just feeling petty? Just trying to find an excuse for a break? Is a break legitimate? Rather, can you take a breath, a break, a vacation from what you usually do most every day and still be considered committed to your practice?
My body is telling me yes with this damn knee. I am incredibly grateful that it was not something worse, but I am frustrated that I have this. Yes, I dance a lot, especially during school. And grad school is not an accurate example of work-life balance. And work-life balance is just plain hard, and there are not clear answers.
I ran into one of my professors while at a summer gig. She asked me if I was dancing, and I told her I was going to roughly three classes a week. Her eyes bugged out a little and she said, “Make sure you take a break. This is your break.”
But if I completely shut off, I will put myself in not a safe place come the start of school. I’ll be even more at risk for injury as a result of being out of shape. Dance is such a tricky balance. But I guess I’ll at least have my body to tell me what’s going on.
It really could be worse. I could have a tear in my leg, I could need surgery, I could be in so much pain that I wouldn’t be able to rebelliously dance. I’m lucky. Maybe I just need to pat myself on the back for working on this now instead of beating myself up about why I have this in the first place.
By the way, my Fourth (the last time I took a break) was excellent. Was yours? I hope so.
This past month has been a balance of dancing, writing, cleaning and cooking. And I think I’m okay with that.
After taking a week off of dancing because of my blood blister, I finally went back to class and took Kat Worthington‘s class at the Alonzo King LINES Dance Center. It was rocky coming back from not dancing for just a week. But I got through it and have been able to get to Shawl-Anderson twice this week. In both classes, the teachers begged the students to go take from them at LINES so that they would have more room to dance. But I have to say, if I don’t feel like waking up at 6 in the morning, Shawl-Anderson makes it pretty easy to do just that with their evening class offerings. But I did buy a class pass to ODC and I need to make my way back there. Next week, next week.
I’ve been hacking away at my Thesis slowly but surely. I’m going through a stack of books (mainly about modernity) and have all the quotes from my sources organized through Google Docs. It took me a week and a half to get through one pretty frustrating source. But I finally broke through yesterday and I’m onto my next source. I really hope it goes faster so I can get to some actual writing…
I’ve had more time on my hands than I sometimes know what to do with. Or maybe I’m just epically procrastinating on my Thesis…but I’ve been cleaning my room like a crazy person. First my desk, then my bed, then my toiletries, and my whole room eventually. Yesterday I started vacuuming my room. Who. Am. I? But I really do like my new bedding. I wanted something lighter with my bedding because it’s been getting pretty hot and there’s no AC in my apartment.
I’ve also been cooking more, which has been pretty relaxing. I’ve made biscuits and tuna casserole thus far and I plan to make scones, tilapia, and stuffed sweet potatoes. Oh yeah…I need to buy some cheese. That somehow didn’t make it in my basket. But it’s been a good way to save money while not feeling deprived.
My internship starts next week and I’m excited/nervous. Wish me luck!
Last week, I attended Robert Moses‘ Intensive which was a week long at ODC. It was actually not what I was expecting, but I don’t feel that I left empty handed.
When I initially signed up for the intensive, I had a couple of goals. One, be exposed to a local artist and how they work. Two, make local dance connections. And three, improve my technique.
The technique classes were a mix of a traditional technique class and self exploration. I do appreciate exploration being included in a class, especially with my work with Patricia Reedy in my Pedagogy class this past semester. I was a little thrown off when Robert would show a combination with little explanation. But I feel I just needed time to adjust to this pace of teaching. My favorite use of this technique is when Robert showed one part of the phrase at a time, like an add on after add on after add on. That felt puzzle like and enjoyable to me and gave the dancers a fun combination to do across the floor. I also feel Robert was really feeding off of our in-class musician during this exercise, so it also became a play on rhythm. A very enjoyable experience.
The workshops in the afternoon were more beneficial to me as a choreographer than as a dancer. Robert challenged us to manipulate given material over and over again, so I now have a couple of ways to take one phrase and expand it, edit it and manipulate it. For one exercise, we stood in a circle and showed one move, and then we went back and explained the intention of that move. We then had to take all of the different intentions and create a phrase. That was enjoyable because it felt less like “showing off cool moves” and more oriented to accomplishing a movement task. The partner work was very enjoyable, especially since I don’t have a lot of partner development experience. My previous partner work has been choreographed onto me and my partner.
So choreographic process took precedence over learning Robert’s repertory. We were able to learn some of his repertory on the last day. But because I was already tired by Friday, I didn’t overanalyze it by the time the rep came around. And I was used to Robert’s style through the technique classes. Throughout the workshop, Robert encouraged us to remember everything we created and learned, which was a bit of a daunting challenge!
Robert had some of his company members attend the workshop and they provided insight in how what we were doing in the workshop compared to Robert’s actual process. They said it was similar, but on a more intense level. Intense, I guess, because Robert might not provide as much scaffolding for the exercises or apply changes to choreography very quickly. And when I say changes to choreography, I mean choreography that was created or manipulated by the dancers (so just recently acquired) and then the changes seem like impossibilities at first for the dancers. Sometimes entire transitions would be taken out, so the dancers would have to create an entirely new transition.
Overall, I feel my choreographic brain acquired some new tools in expanding and editing choreography. I greatly enjoyed the discussions at the end of the day. I met new dancers that I hope to see again and feel more connected to the local dance community through this process.
P.S. I gave myself blood blisters on the last day of the workshop. OUCH! It’s kept me out of the studio for about a week.
I know I’ve been a little mia lately on here, and really it is because of the intense process of grad school. It’s honestly been hard to collect my thoughts and think of something worthwhile to write about. But I should make more of an effort to put my thoughts down for my own personal check in. But this blog is not just about me, but also about you, the reader.
This is my first time having school after Thanksgiving since I was in high school. It feels really strange. My brain just wants to decorate and cook, not do school work. But I think because I’m so nervous about final exams that I’m actually kicking into survival mode. I’ve been finishing my homework way earlier than I ever have before. I even did a load of laundry and put it all away–on the same night. I told my boyfriend that and he literally said, “That’s not you.” Yeah, I think I’m pretty nervous about the end. At least it’s manifesting itself in action.
As I’ll probably mention a million times, this semester has been intense. A few things have been keeping my sanity though:
Downloading Adventure Time on iTunes
Painting my nails
Playing video games (never thought I would say that)
I took yoga at Black Swan Yoga the other night and as usual, was asked to set an intention for my practice. That night, my word was “patience” and as I went through my practice, I realized that I was experiencing the word patience through my body, not just my mind. And that’s when I realize the same is true when we dance. Dance is our most ancient language, used to teach rituals, express the power of the gods, and explain human relationships. There was a language before words, and if we give ourselves the chance, we can experience words as they originally were–before the written word.
I experienced the word patience through my body that night. I became short of breath, making myself stop and breath. I slowed down my pace, and felt my body telling me “you don’t have to be a yogi overnight.” But I can keep practicing, keep trying without beating myself up that I’m not perfect yet. I learned “patience” through what my body told me. I love that yoga can quiet my mind to where I can hear my body, not my busy mind.
Have you listen to your body language lately? What lessons has it taught you?
P.S. This photo reminds me of a goal I have for this summer…
P.P.S….
There was a Q&A session after the Gaga class this Monday. One question was, “Why is it named Gaga?” The teacher responded that it was because Gaga are some of the first words we say as babies. Gaga language (rather than technique) is meant to represent original dance language. I was a little shocked when I was hearing this, seeing as this musing had occurred inside me just the night before. When moments like that happen, I feel like I’ve been a good listener to my muse.
I’ve been traveling a lot these past couple of months. This personal project of mine is thankfully coming to an end (so much so that soon, I’ll finally be able to tell you what it is!). It’s been an expensive project that has required me to visit four different locations. One of those was NYC.
For my first two trips, I stayed with family and friends, but when it came to visiting New York, it was a different story. Not to say I don’t have friends in New York (I did get drunk with college buddies in the Chelsea neighborhood one night–awesome times), but I realized that they had very limited space to offer. It made me feel guilty asking for even a couch to stay on. So I found Airbnb, an online service that allows people to rent out space to travelers. The reason I went with Airbnb is because I felt safe reading all of the reviews of the different places to stay. The room I ended up staying had 15 positive reviews (now 16 because I added my own review). It was clean, it was private, and it was very close to Manhattan, which was what I needed. I paid about $100-$200 cheaper for that room than I would in a hotel. And I had a personal guide right there where I was staying. So if you find yourself in a situation where you’re not sure where you’re going to stay and you’re tight on funds, consider Airbnb.
Yes, that is a picture of the Guggenheim museum, one of my favorite places.
Monk, Create! 