talking to asks me what I do for work
I am a dancer I am a choreographer and I
am a professor of dance to which she
says wow that must be so much fun and
that response used to confuse me but
over time I’ve come to think it’s a good
one and so now I’ve taken to just
countering with wow you’re an accountant
that must be so much fun dancing is
incredible it is fun sometimes it’s
really hard intense painful work it can
be soul-sucking it can be glorious but
dance is so much more than just a
profession dance is my identity and so
that question posed to me a dinner party
shouldn’t be what do you do but rather
who are you the answer to that I’m a
dancer I grew up watching musicals
because my parents love them and I was
very taken by the performances of Gene
Kelly and Debbie Reynolds and singing in
the rain and I love the choreography of
Jerome Robbins in west side story and I
would just be so excited that I would
start to choreograph and dance in my
bedroom mostly to pop music of the 80s
now most dancers begin training when
they’re quite young like two or three
years old but I was very shy and I
couldn’t be convinced to do that so it
wasn’t until quite a while later I saw
my friend Erica practicing her tap
routine at the mall and I thought that
was excellent and I wanted to do the
same so at the age of 13 I put on a
unitard and I started taking dance and
to nobody’s surprise I was very terrible
but I loved it and I practiced a lot
anywhere I could I would tap dance on my
mother’s kitchen for which she loved and
I would do flying leaps down the
concrete in the snow but I had a couple
things going for me one is I had very
supportive parents and two as I had
access to quality dance training my
modern dance teacher in high school she
was the first person to really show me
that dancers and choreographers were one
in the same and she allowed me to begin
choreographing on myself and on my peers
and that was the
moment of no return I was no longer just
a dancer I was a creator so what is it
that dancers create or do or communicate
well dance is about the body and perhaps
this is why people find the profession
to be such a novel one because there
aren’t that many professions that
involve so much time and attention and
focus and analysis on the human body is
dance now we’re all very familiar with
the senses taste touch smell etc but
there’s one that dancers use a lot it’s
called proprioception proprioception
proprioception is the body’s sense of
itself in the space that it is in so
this is how I know that my arm is
extended out to my side even though I’m
not looking at my arm extended out to my
side and this is why when dancers start
to move on stage they have a sense an
intrinsic sense of where they are in
space dance is about community it’s made
on human beings human bodies dancers
bodies that need to train and work
together for months and sometimes years
to get it right and bound together over
time those dancers become a company a
dance family but to exist those dancers
need witnesses an audience of community
members to watch in real time the dance
in 2010 I was about to move to
jacksonville florida from Los Angeles
and I had just gotten a professorship
here but I didn’t really know much about
the professional dance world so I did
what anyone would do and I googled it
and what I found is there were a lot of
dance schools in Jacksonville for
students there were a couple of really
great college programs but what I
couldn’t find where where all the paying
professional modern dance companies work
and I didn’t see any studios for
professionals to take class and every
other place I’ve ever lived in my life
has had a lot of those things available
it had worked for professional dancers
and it’s had a place for them to take
class and here i was about to move my
entire life across the country and the
thing that defines me didn’t appear to
exist there I was at a place in my
career where I didn’t feel like I wanted
to retire yet so I didn’t quite know
what I was going to do but I packed up
and moved across the country knowing
that I had to do something Google wasn’t
exactly right it was right in a lot of
areas there was no professional paying
modern dance company but with their work
were a handful of professional modern
dancers and they were really talented
these dancers had performed in Europe
they had performed in New York they had
danced for the Metropolitan Opera they
had danced in Israel and they were the
most generous interesting dance artists
I have ever met and we immediately
started working together and talking and
creating because dance defines them to
one day I was sitting in my office at
the college and a student came in and he
wanted advice about where he should go
after graduation to work professionally
in the dance world and I had a really
tough time trying to figure out reasons
to tell him to stay in Jacksonville and
so I didn’t I advised him that he should
go to Los Angeles because the odds of
making money as a dancer are way higher
the primary issue was not that the city
didn’t have the artists but rather that
it had no organization for those artists
to create to perform and to be paid for
it and over time if there’s no work and
there’s no money the artists leave and
the implications of this are serious
what is a city without its artists it
provides a robust cultural experience
for the citizens artists ask the
important questions and they try to
answer them it wasn’t because people
weren’t going to arts events that’s not
true people go to arts events in
Jacksonville in fact I saw more people
in theater and music and museums then I
hadn’t even seen living in Los Angeles
people love the arts here they wanted to
be a part of it they would sit on
committees they would donate money and
all I heard over and over again was the
potential of Jacksonville Jacksonville
has so much potential it just didn’t
have a professional paying modern dance
company so the question remained for me
what do you do if the thing that you
need to do doesn’t exist in the place
where you live well the only answer that
a dancer would give is to create one
because dancers do not just do the job
of dancing they are dancers and so one
evening after teaching all day I asked
all of my dancer friends to meet with me
and my friend Katie’s kitchen and we
start around her table and I looked
around and I asked all of these people
that I respected so much if we should
start a dance company and all of them
said yes it was important to us that we
start a company not just for ourselves
but one that would fit into the cultural
landscape of Jacksonville so we founded
Jacksonville Dance Theater our goals
were clear we wanted to provide the city
with wonderful professional high caliber
modern dance and we wanted to provide
the
answers with an outlet to perform to
create and to be paid to do so and no
sooner did we say those words than the
opportunities came rolling in people
really really liked this idea and they
wanted us to perform everywhere so we
began to teach ourselves how to run a
dance company from the ground floor up
with no actual ground floor we didn’t
even have a place to dance in yet see
back in those early days dance education
was twofold one was obvious it was for
the dancers with the other is for the
community that wants stands to exist in
it art is not free the desire for it is
great with the willingness to pay for it
was not and so the situation would go
like this a big organization in town
would say we love what you’re doing this
is necessary here in Jacksonville we’re
so excited the quality of the product
you’re creating is really fantastic we
would love for you to perform at our
gala event there is no pay but there is
great exposure and at first that was
okay because we needed exposure but what
happens to artists is if you start to
give away the thing that you do people
stop seeing the value in what you do and
so over time it went from just us
performing for exposure to us not being
provided with water or bathrooms or a
safe place to warm up or even sit down
when we weren’t dancing so what do we do
well we’re dancers we educate and i
would start talking and i would continue
to talk whether or not people would want
to hear it and i talked about what it’s
actually like to be an artist what it
takes to train the time the money the
effort the passion the sacrifice what it
takes to run a dance company what
happens if there is no dance company
what happens to all of our students that
are studying dance here what happens if
our artists leave
and something really great happened
people started paying us we started
getting donations and then it got to a
point where when they would ask us to
dance for free I would say thank you
know Jacksonville dance theatre was
founded by a group of artists that love
the city they lived in and wanted to do
what they loved in that city we’re
currently in our fifth season and we
have 18 paid professional dancers thank
you jacksonville is not its not New York
it’s not Los Angeles it’s not Chicago
but Jacksonville has this infrastructure
that supports a thriving performing arts
culture and because we’re not New York
and we’re not Chicago we can create our
own aesthetic and that aesthetic can
breathe and grow and change with time
and that is our offering to the greater
dance world ultimately dance is the
language I speak it’s the energy that I
need to live my life so when I was put
into a situation where there was no
company I worked to create one I needed
it for me the dancers and the directors
needed it for them but what came as a
great surprise were the audience members
they told me I didn’t know I needed this
but I did they needed it to the story
doesn’t end here we have a long way to
go we work hard we still work to pay our
dancers more Commission and
choreographed more work do more concerts
do more touring but I know because of
the community of artists and because of
the community of Jacksonville these
you [Applause]