N: For NACHMO Boston this year you created a piece on the ice. Can you tell me a bit about your history with ice skating? How has it complimented and contradicted your experience as a dancer? AG-B: Sure! It's interesting, my dance background actually began as a supplement to my skating career. I started taking ballet at the age of 9 (rather late!) to help with my posture, extension, and coordination on the ice, and I became increasingly interested in various dance forms as I continued my competitive track in figure skating. As my competitive career came to an end, I started to transition more and more to dance as a practice, and when I moved to NYC for my Masters in Composition, I gave myself over to training as a dancer quite heavily, working in disciplines from ballet to GAGA and many places in between. I took some needed time away from the ice to engage with my movement research more fully, but soon returned to coaching and sharing on the ice. It's been both a compliment and a contradiction, I have to say. On the one hand, they are very much one and the same, in which the blades come off and it becomes dance. On the other hand, there are many qualities that cannot be achieved on the floor that are unique to the ice and vice versa. That's part of the fun of it though- there are so many possibilities that can easily translate, while others become a real challenge, and that investigative challenge is particularly exciting to me. It can be easy to slip into the mindset of partitioning the two into separate categories, but I am working concertedly to integrate my movement practice and blur that distinction. Another category to add here is my background as a composer, which I have previously allowed to be its own separate entity in my life as well, but one that I would like to invite into the same space as my movement practice. I teach composition at Berklee College of Music, and I was always afraid to share the movement side of myself with my colleagues out of fear that I would not appear as a "serious" composer, but the more I live in my creative world, the more I realize these components of my life are one and the same. It was great fun to finally sample some great sounds from the ice in the sound design in this film. I want to push further in this regard, and this NACHMO experience was a step along that pathway.
N: A lot happens in a short amount of time during NACHMO. What was something that went really well? What was something that went a little sideways? AG-B: Speaking of a short amount of time, that's what I had to film! There is a window in this one particular ice rink that I coach at before the sun comes up, and as I stayed one morning to skate on my own, I noticed this ethereal, otherworldly light that refracts as the sun peaks through that window. It is a magical glow that makes the fluorescent lights disappear for a bit, but it's a very narrow window of time that only lasts for about 20 minutes or so. Therefore, we only had about 20 minutes to film everything, which was rather nerve-wracking! I guess that thing that was so great was also the most elusive to manage.
N: Who are your mentors? What makes those relationships special to you? What are you doing to pay forward the gifts they have given you? AG-B: Wow, where do I start? They have all given a piece of themselves to me and walk with me everywhere I go, whether I am creating work myself, teaching, or collaborating with others. I have many, and I endeavor to share the best that each of them has given me in my work and with the next generation of artists. I wish to give a special mention to my composition teachers, Reiko Fueting, Nils Vigeland, Marjorie Merryman, and Peter Child. They very much empowered me to imagine beyond what I had made on the page and where an idea could go. In my dance and figure skating training, I have many mentors: Frances Patrelle, Adrienne Hawkins, Mary Wanamaker, Beth Duxbury, Nathan Birch, Doug Webster, Sheila Barker, Brice Mousset, Manuel Vignuole...the list goes on. These people have given me so much support and so many tools to draw from, and at times have given me a kick in the "tuck-ass", in Frances "Uncle Frankie" Patrelle's words, to believe in myself and never be satisfied.
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N: A lot happens during NACHMO Boston, this year more than most. In what ways did and didn’t your piece become the thing you thought it would at the start of the month? CC: I could not possibly have anticipated what developed from the unique circumstances of this year’s choreography challenge. My original intention was to set a work that was completelychoreographed, solid and repeatable, mainly because most of my work over the last few years has been largely improvisation-based. I also intended it to be filmed entirely outdoors. However, one thing I could not have anticipated was that I would end up being exposed to and contracting coronavirus very early on in the endeavor. That completely derailed the process but led me to examine how to conserve energy and work efficiently with the circumstances I was given. It forced me to be creative in ways that I would otherwise have resisted. It required me to set aside expectation entirely and strive for what made sense in the moment rather than trying to force something into existence. That’s where the idea of using a guided mediation came about. In the piece When We’re Stuck Inside, I was literally stuck inside, unable to go anywhere and frankly too exhausted to have gone anywhere anyway. But I am an energy healer and guided meditation plays a major role in my healing work. I decided to create a meditation as the soundtrack in an effort to suggest that one way to find joy is to find or create it in the mind. When I was able to film outside again, I used it as an opportunity to explore the relationship between inside and out that could signify finding the sense of joy as in a dream. It seems to have worked better than I intended because a number of people who saw the work in progress told me that, rather than feeling the piece as a suggestion, they went on the journey through the meditation as it was happening, feeling relaxed and happier afterward. The most unexpected part is that this led to an expanded project around this idea that is now in the first stages of production! I can’t say too much yet but I’m bursting with excitement over the possibilities of the first iteration and many more to follow!!! Now I definitely didn’t think my piece for NACHMO 2021 would become that, but here it is and I am so grateful!
For the Malden Dance Mile, I entirely re-filmed the piece but spent a great deal of time planning and implementing the production. Having the opportunity to hone the piece after the first showing was such an incredible learning experience. It’s still not perfect, (when will it ever be really) but I took to heart the suggestions given in the workshops and mentorship opportunities that NACHMO Boston provided this year which I feel elevated the piece in ways I had never considered before. And let me pause here to say how grateful I am for the grace and skill with which NACHMO Boston handled the challenges of this format. N: Who are your mentors? What makes those relationships special to you? What are you doing to pay forward the gifts they have given you? CC: I am lucky to have had some wonderful teachers and mentors in my life as a dancer. I went to Bard College as an undergraduate to major in dance. I met some wonderful teachers there, two of whom I would like to mention in particular because they are no longer with us and I often think of them when I dance: Lenore Latimer and Aileen Passloff. Both of those wonderful women inspired me to dance with authenticity and honesty to who I am as a human being. I can never thank them enough for what they taught me in the short time I knew them. The rest of my professors in the dance department at Bard College all had a hand in making me the dancer and choreographer I am today. Peggy Florin, Jean Churchill, Maria Simpson, Leah Cox, Stuart Singer, Marjorie Folkman…each of these wonderful teachers and more all gave me something important. They inspired me, challenged old thought patterns, supported me while I learned to dance on pointe (even if they weren’t thrilled about it at times), and pushed me to discover what my way of dancing through the world is. In a completely different way, my Master’s Tutor at the Glasgow School of Art, Michelle Hannah, challenged me as an artist. Without that challenge, I might never have thought to push beyond what I thought of as dance performance, stretching into the world of fine art performance as well. Her support was invaluable in that process. And then there’s Dance Prism Ballet Company. Dance Prism, and its Artistic Director Mary Demaso, have become like an extended family to me. Though I have come and gone back and forth over the years that I have been dancing with the company, every time I walk through that studio door it feels like coming home. I am so lucky to call Mary and the wonderful group of dancers at Dance Prism my friends. Truth be told, I don’t know that I can ever do enough to pay forward what these wonderful dancers and teachers have given me over the years. The best I can do today is to keep making work and bringing dance into the world. Hopefully, someday I can inspire someone the way they did for me.
That being said, I have had some incredible experiences over the years with organizations like The Dance Complex, Dancing Queerly, Luminarium Dance Company, and of course Monkeyhouse. The works I have seen, classes I’ve attended, workshops I’ve taken and auditions I’ve been to have all been integral to the process of understanding who I am as a choreographer and dancer.
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