Member Profile: Leeanne M. G-Bowley

My name is Leeanne M. G-Bowley and I’m thrilled to be a member of the Dance/NYC Junior Committee.  I’ve been impressed by the Junior Committee since I first learned about it at last year’s Dance/NYC Midwinter Symposium.   (This year’s symposium is less than a week away.  I’ll be posting about that later this week!)

This week I’ll be blogging for the Junior Committee as well as updating our twitter (@DanceNYCJComm).  I’d like to start off the week by sharing a video that inspires me.  This is a video from an international breakdancing competition and features the USA vs. Korea.  It captures what I love about dance—it reaches people.  I am the artistic director of a contemporary dance company that is proudly based in Queens, the borough where I live.  I love Queens due to the great potential held within the most diverse borough in our incredible city.  Through our work, I have an opportunity to see how dance draws people into live performance.  It creates a community through a bond of engagement in the movement.   This video represents my borough’s potential as well as the pure power of the art form.  Breakdancing reaches  people around the world, not because it is promoted by big corporations or by governments, but it organically inspires young people and is typically taught peer to peer or through mentorship.  That is the powerful.

I could watch this for hours.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jbHLRql7Ng&feature=related

More inspiring dance videos to come on the Junior Committee twitter and blog!

For the Choreographers Out There: Keep Making and Reflect Often

The ups and downs of a choreographer’s creative practice are evident in any discussion with a dance artist, teacher, funder, audience or critic.  These conditions rise and fall as a choreographer continues to make work.  There are many fears and many joys in this practice.  It is patience, clarity and confidence that helps navigate these unknown waters.  There are many choreographers who make work, all for different reasons and to varying degrees of success.  There are also many different kinds of processes and many different processes used by each artist.  Our dance community is rich by the existence of these varying paths.

I think the most paramount element of making work is to examine one’s intention.  Why am I making this work?  What does this contribute to the dance and arts community and is that needed?

Recently I had a discussion with a dancer who saw a massive amount of APAP work and his one comment was how much work is made irresponsibly and how few works are made responsibly.  This comment regarding responsibility was not about fiscal or time management but rather artistic responsibility.  That work needs to made responsibly with awareness, keeping to a strong and confident compass and that it holds meaning and value beyond the initial concept or many concepts.  I think this ‘responsible’ work and process of working takes time, an ability to accept and reflect on criticism, self – discipline and an ability to convince others to believe in the impossible.  All necessary qualities to be a leader.

Many conversations of how to improve our NYC dance community focus on resources and administrative capacity but not often on the making of the work.  I think this conversation needs to be just as present.

Two books I’ve recently found to be immensely helpful as guides in this type of conversation are:

The Choreographer’s Handbook by Jonathan Burrows, published by Routledge.  It is a collection of phrases, ideas and reminders that Jonathan collected over many years of teaching workshops on composition.  Recently, in one of his workshops, I have found this book a tremendous aide – in the studio, in the process, in my mind, in my journal.

The second is: Art and Fear, Observations on the Perils and Rewards of Art Making by: David Bayles and Ted Orland.  Visual Artists have known about this book since it was published in 1993 by the Image Continuum yet dance and choreographic artists are slowly uncovering its presence.  Though most of the examples and discussions are based in visual art there are applications to dance throughout, since the focus of the book is you the artist and your process, the fears that come up and how these perceptions are received by peers, audience and critics.

I truly believe we are in a time in our dance culture where great strides are going to be made.  Where stronger work will emerge from NYC and that it will find its audiences.  To the artists: we just have to be held accountable for our end of the deal.  To show up with our best work and to remove all of our excuses and disclaimers and let the works speak for themselves.

Death of a Dance Program

Beginning next academic year (2012-2013), Cornell University, my alma mater, will eliminate its dance major entirely. To be fair, it is also eliminating the theater major and the film major. In their place, the Department of Theater, Film and Dance is opting instead to combine all three areas into a new Performing Arts and Media major. There are reasons for this, of course, the most unfortunate of which is budgetary. Forced to reduce their annual expenditures by $1 million to $2 million, staff cuts were inevitable and these have fallen entirely on non-tenured lecturers, and production staff. What does this really mean? For starters, it means that Barnard is now the only Ivy League institution to offer a dance major. More importantly, for future students in this department, it means less support for those wanting to take part in professional calibre productions, less exposure to guest artists, and fewer outlets for student choreography; it means a higher percentage of theoretical courses, more emphasis on interdisciplinary work, and a pick-and-choose major that is about breadth rather than depth.

While none of these are inherently bad outcomes, what is…shall we say, interesting, is that this new structure is framed within the context of  “the changing nature of the field and profession” and is intended to “enhance students’ ability to secure employment or future academic pursuits.” While it’s true that a great deal of interesting work occurs at the intersection of art forms, does that necessarily devalue the rigor of understanding one art form in depth? In the liberal arts education system, approximately 1/3 of students’ coursework comes from their chosen major*, providing depth and focus, while the remaining 2/3 credits provide breadth and a well-rounded context for their chosen focus, but if that focus becomes diluted, aren’t students missing out on something?

What is the place of dance within a liberal arts education? Should programs take their cues from critical and theoretical academic trends? Or look to the industry itself? Those are two divergent tracks that are not always relevant to each other. So, I pose the question to all of you: dancers, administrators, educators, scholars. What should university dance programs be teaching?

*Note: this would be for a BA program, a BFA program requires 2/3 coursework.

On Writing Dance

Last night the Junior Committee had the privilege of sitting and talking with dance writer Eva Yaa Asantewaa. Forever a student, I listened intently taking notes on what she finds important when writing about dance because let’s face it – … Continue reading →

JComm Recommends: Pina

JComm Recommends is a feature posted every other Tuesday. It’s a performance or gathering within our age demographic that we think would be fun to attend.

Have you gone to see Pina yet? What were your thoughts? Look for show times here.