Inside SPUNKandCOmpany

by karen Krolak

Word on the web is that SPUNKandCOmpany's debut this weekend at the Dance Complex has already sold out! If this interview with Artistic Director, Jillian Grunnah, whets your appetite for dance, be sure to get on the waiting list now.


karen Krolak: So what prompted you to start a company this year?
Jillian Grunnah: It was the collaboration with the dancers during the Green Street Emerging Artists February "edition" that spurred the choreographic necessity to start something. We gelled so well and all seemed to want the same thing at the same time. The energy that we all brought to the table was so real and ripe that we knew we had to jump on it. I was bit by the choreographic bug a long time ago, but the time is now. I feel more confident and ready to make a commitment to producing work on a regular basis.


kK: I am so glad to hear that you gained so much from the Emerging Artists experience and I seem to remember reading that you are going to include your piece from the Green Street Studio concert in Eleven. Is that right?
JG: That is correct. After working on Thick/Thin a bit more, harnessing the relationships between the women on stage, and adding a new "dancer," I feel like I can't wait to show this piece again. It is one of my favorite out of the many I've made. It's very layered, and I hope that people who've already seen it can look at it and find something new this time.

kK: Excellent! I am excited to see how it has evolved. After reading your post about participating in Emerging Artists program, Arthur Fink sent along several great questions about the process of building Thick/Thin. He wondered how your mentors interacted with your artistic project? He wanted to know if it was it with any intention or message or with your fascination with any kinds of movement or presence? I realize that it could be awkward to talk about the specifics of your mentors in this case since I was one of them. However, could you talk about it abstractly to address his questions?
JG: Sure, the mentors provided feedback that fueled my thought process more than my movement analysis. I needed assitance with building a strong concept and reaching a specific goal towards developing female friendships on stage. The mentors were the outside eyes that my subjective and narrow ones couldn't be.


kK: Arthur also asked,  "Is the mentor a critic, or something else? Does the mentor become a collaborator, or just (not just) another source of light and enlightenment?"
JG: The mentor is at once all of those things. In any kind of art, it is almost impossible to remove the subjectivity, as we all come from very different backgrounds and with different baggage, if you will. The mentor certainly provides a critical perspective, but it is hopefully one that inspires and encourages the choreographer to reach a deeper level in her work. As the mentor views the work over and over, she becomes a collaborator as she becomes more invested and educated in the developing work.


kK: What do you think SPUNKandCOmpany will add to the Boston Dance Community?
JG: I hope that the company brings a fresh vitality to the scene in the raw physicality of what we do and that it provides another mode of storytelling through dance. We exist because we are all dancers and dance makers. We start from a very collaborative place, and we hope that reads in the work. Dance does not have to be authoritative; in fact it's extremely communal. We hope to be a laboratory of sorts for dancers/dancemakers, sort of like singer/songwriters.


kK: I am curious to know more about your collaborators. How did you select people for your company?
JG:We were all close artistic friends who had a drive to work on our own schedule outside of full-time jobs and who had similar aesthetic, athletic, and creative ideas. We felt comfortable dancing with and giving feedback to each other. The company, just like the first dance, grew out of a very natural place and organic process. It just felt right. We are all, minus one, the original dancers/choreographer of Thick/Thin, an ironic tale of female friendship in itself!

kK: Well, congratulations on launching SPUNKandCOmpany and I will see you Saturday after the show.
JG: THANKS, Karen!

Jillian Grunnah on Mentoring

As August winds down, local choreographers who had flocked to summer workshops, residencies, and performances in cooler climates begin to migrate back to Boston. For example, Jillian Grunnah recently returned from in Italy and is already preparing for the launch of her newest creation, SpunkandCOmpany. Her company is composed of six dancer/choreographers who lend, not only their technical skill, but also their creative input and energy to every dance. 

Since Jillian participated in the winter Emerging Artists Program at Green Street Studios, I decided to pick up the thread of our series on mentoring with her. I asked her to ruminate on her experience as a mentee and to riff off of  Kendra Heithoff 's request for more in-depth mentoring relationships.   


By Jillian Grunnah


The most valuable part of the GSS Emerging Artist Concert was the factor of accountability to yourself as an artist and to the work you are creating. Having a mentor keeps you focused and constantly pushes you to think outside of your own creativity and values. Knowing that someone is there to see your work through to the next place keeps the wheels turning. I was not allowed to become complacent or satisfied too quickly with my work. I think having that outside set of caring and knowing eyes allows a choreographer to feel supported yet challenged.


I think that it was difficult having two mentors. Although I appreciated the diversity of opinion, I think that it would be more beneficial to have a longer, closer process with one person. Maybe instead of a two-month process, it becomes half a year or even an entire year. My only fear is being solely influenced by that mentor, but I would hope to have someone who has similar aesthetic and conceptual values as I do, or at least is open to approaching different types of work and to really becoming invested in the development of my work. I felt like I experienced something like this in graduate school at Smith College in western Mass; although even there, it felt sometimes scattered and not as focused as I'd hoped. The mentor/mentee relationship is difficult in an artistic process because while it is important to be pushed, held accountable, and given new perspectives from which to work, the creative process for me has always been very individual and isolated. I guess that I sometimes fear that I will attempt to please the mentor instead of working from an authentic place.

Mark your calendars:

SPUNKandCOmpany
presents

ELEVEN
Friday / Saturday
September 16 & 17, 2011
8:00 pm

choreography by
audra carabetta
jillian grunnah
eileen kielty
miriam lundgren
tara mccrystal

Julie Ince Thompson Theatre at the
Dance Complex
536 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA 

Tickets / $10 / can be reserved by email: 
spunkandcodancecollective@gmail.com, or by calling 312.315.4181

Kendra Heithoff on Mentoring

As we continue our series about mentoring, I thought it would be helpful to talk to someone about being a mentee. Kendra Heithoff, Artistic Director of sixoneseven Dance Collective,  immediately sprang to mind because she has participated in several choreography programs in Boston.

Summer Street Photography 

by Kendra Heithoff

As a young choreographer, I've had my share of mentor relationships. I can honestly say that I would not be the artist I am without these relationships. I can also say that the concept of mentorship and 'young artist development' gets thrown around almost as much as trendy catch phrases like 'being green,' 'collaboration' and the use of the word 'natural' in the food supply. 

Obviously artists of all stages (mentors and mentees) need a solid community of artists whom they can turn to for support. It creates a vision beyond yourself and helps translate your ideas into tangible works of art that others can also appreciate. Here in our intimate Boston dance community, we need all the mentoring programs we can get. No one can argue with that. 

In my humble opinion, what often gets overlooked is the time it takes to develop these kinds of mentor relationships. Having participated in both the Dance Complex's Shared Choreographers Concert and Green Street Studios Emerging Artist Program, I learned much from the concert mentors designed to help in the fast and furious process in which the dances were created. The mentor's feedback was absolutely helpful towards the particular piece I was presenting, but that's where it - and ultimately the relationship with them - ended. Not that I wouldn't have wanted to foster that relationship further, but the simple facts remain that these short term programs are designed to get people in and out and on to the next concert. Perhaps we are shortchanging ourselves. 

Summer Street Photography 

Relationships take time, and the intimate experience of sharing the process of making art together takes just as much time as an old friendship. There is no easy answer since programs like the ones listed above do an excellent job of connecting as many people as possible to a larger community of dancers, as well as provide an excellent space for sharing work with real live audiences. 

I will be the first to say that I'm no better than anyone else, but, in the end, it all comes back to one thing: how willing we are to take the time to foster and maintain relationships. 

Rozann Kraus on Mentoring

My fellow mentor on the 2011 Winter Emerging Artist Program at Green Street Studios was Rozann Kraus. In addition to working as published author and poet, Rozann is the founder and President of the Dance Complex where she created the landmark Shared Choreographers Concert series. She has served on the faculties of the Yale School of Drama, New England Conservatory of Music and Boston University. Winner of an Artists Foundation Choreography Fellowship, a Choreography Fellowship from the State of Ohio, the Paul Robeson Award and Arts Lottery Grants from five cities, her work has been commissioned by a wide range of sponsors, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, The Yale Art Gallery, Composers in Red Sneakers and (for nine consecutive years) Boston's First Night. Touring throughout the country as teacher, choreographer and performer, Ms. Kraus has been a guest choreographer at MIT, the Cambridge School and Tufts University and was an Artist in Residence at Clark University's Center for Contemporary Performance and many other institutions. As mentors, Rozann and I really clicked in ways I was not expecting and I was curious to hear her philosophy on the process.

by Rozann Kraus

I think of mentoring like tending a seedling.  The roots are there and the core is emerging. What's needed is the right amount of water, nutrients and sunshine. Too much or too little, the right or wrong timing can be painful and harmful; understanding the nature and having the experience to modulate the support is crucial to a viable outcome.  With dance, where the medium is the message, gentle teaching is needed because the seedling is the artist's ego.

Mentoring is a deeper partnership than the one that comes from teaching because, at its best, it is sensitive to and responsive to the unique needs of someone. As a mentor, the challenge is to be able to offer insights from your own gleanings, without smothering the others' vision or confidence.

I began the Shared Choreographers' Concert series to provide choreographers  crucial feedback and support that only exists in a conservatory setting. But dancers, too, gain insight into their roles by being privy to the discourse and getting additional information about their choreographer's motivations and goals.

Applications are now being accepted for the next Shared Choreographers' Concert which will occur on October 21 & 22 and will be part of the Dance Complex's 20th Anniversary Celebration

Echoes: Emerging Artist Concert

by karen Krolak

Yesterday's David Parker post mentioned the Emerging Artist Concert at Green Street Studios this weekend. This session was mentored by David and Lorraine Chapman, one of my favorite local choreographers. (If you attend the Mass Dance Festival in August, you can check out one of her zany creations. I am quite certain that you will be instantly smitten.)

I am most excited to see Josh Hilberman's quartet. Shannon Sullivan, who teaches with me at both Impulse Dance Center and Springstep, is performing in it. She  filled me in on Josh's process for building a tap piece in a space that normally does not allow style that might harm the stage. Also, after each mentoring session, she shared insights on the different ways that modern and tap choreographers think. Keep your fingers crossed and maybe I will coerce her into sharing these observations on the blog.

Jason and I are really curious and have made our reservations for the show tomorrow night. Perhaps we will see you there?

ECHOES

features the work by Jennifer Hardy, Josh Hilberman, Jessica Howard, and Rebecca Midler
Mentored by

David Parker and Lorraine Chapman 

Each performance will be followed by a Q&A session moderated by the mentors.

Sponsored by the Green Street Studios Emerging Artists Program:
Green Street Studios' Emerging Artists program is designed to provide infrastructure for choreographers to create new work, and to provide deep, ongoing mentorship between experienced and early-to-mid-career choreographers. For more information: GSSEmergingArtists.blogspot.com

Friday/ Saturday July 8/ 9th @ 8pm
Green Street Studios
185 Green St. Cambridge (Central Sqaure)
Tickets $20 and $15 for Students, Seniors, GSS and BDA Members.
For Reservations:
Email: info@greenstreetstudios.org
or call 617 864 3191

David Parker on Mentoring

This July,  David Parker will be influencing choreographers all over Boston. He's mentoring the Echoes, Emerging Artists Concert at Green Street Studios this weekend, and then he will scoot over to Concord to guide Summer Stages Choreographers' Project. He seemed like the perfect man to kick off our series on mentoring. Monkeyhouse's Nicole Harris shot off one tantalizing question. Just reading his well- crafted response reminds me why I emulate him so.

Nicole Harris: Unfortunately, it seems that lately so many programs like the Green Street Studios Emerging Artists Program are having to fold due to lack of funding, lack of resources or simply a lack of understanding as to why they are so important. As someone who has supported programs like this in the past I was wondering if you could take a minute and send me your thoughts on mentoring and why it is important to keep these programs alive. 

David Parker: I serve as mentor to dancers and choreographers on many levels.  Being a mentor, as I understand it, goes beyond teaching and extends to providing opportunities and strategies for success including more personal things like how one speaks, dresses and carries oneself and assessing what kinds of psychological barriers may be providing interference. It’s a much more intimate role.

I learned how to be a better person, a better man, from my mentors rather than just how to make my dances better.  I try to offer the same to those I mentor in my own company.   I want their presentation of self to reflect the best values we all share which is why we are a company and not a pick-up group.

Choreographic mentorship like at Green Street Studios or at Juilliard where I serve as mentor to selected Senior choreographers is a bit more discreet. I try to uncover where their actual aesthetic values lie and to make them aware of what it is they’re really doing and what potential it has. I also try to evaluate how successfully they are doing what they do and provide them with a means to get closer to what they’re doing.


As a teacher of dance composition I do different things.  I try to give them choreographic strategies and structures that they would never normally use on their own.  I don’t need to know their actual aesthetic values, I only need to give them more.  I try to expand their range of choices available to them by giving them assignments which challenge and stretch their own preferences even to the point of contradicting them.  This is, in some ways, at odds with mentorship but there is some overlap.  In a mentor-mentee relationship the mentee is offering something of this own and the mentor is using it and extending it. My mentoring of my own dancers is good for my art and my company. In teaching, I’m at once more controlling and more at the student's service.

Mentoring

by karen Krolak

Happy New Year...sort of. Like many organizations, Monkeyhouse just launched into a fresh fiscal year. We are really jazzed about the 2011-2012 season because we will be exploring the impact of mentors through our programs and projects.

Do ever feel lost creatively and wish someone could advise you? Do you have a mentor? How does she influence your life? Are they important? Have you ever been a mentor? How do you find one? What is the difference in your mind between being a mentor and a teacher? Or are those words interchangeable in your mind?

As we participated in the Emerging Artists Program at Green Street Studios this winter, Nicole and I began peppering conversations with these questions. People's responses were remarkably eloquent and passionate. Often, they often touched on how difficult it is to sustain these vital relationships in the dance world outside of school.  Around Monkeyhouse, our chats catalyzed ideas for new programs and directions, such as our new Bloggers-in-residence to help nurture another generation of dance writers. I can't wait to see how this evolves.

Throughout the year, we will be digging in to this subject. We welcome your thoughts, comments or questions about it. If you have an idea of someone we should interview or want to share a story from your own experience, please contact us.

Against the Odds Drawing

Throughout Against the Odds we will be selling tickets to the Against the Odds Drawing.  Each weekend two lucky winners will win a pair of tickets to a local arts event.  All tickets will be entered into the Grand Prize Drawing for a chance to win tickets to The Fashion Show, an amazing evening of hope and fashion where everyone is a survivor, to benefit the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life.

Tickets are $2 each or SIX for $10 (That's buy five get one FREE!) and can be purchased at any Against the Odds event.  Help support Monkeyhouse and all these amazing local artists!!

What else can you win?  Good question!

Against the Odds Drawing #2

Winners Announced Saturday, March 26^th

THERE ARE TWO CHANCES TO WIN!

Enter to win a pair of tickets to: 

LOIS' TAP LANE 

All-Star Tap and Jazz Salute

        

Friday, May 13 @ 8:00pm

Regent Theatre

7 Medford St, Arlington, MA

OR

SPIRIT:

Native Music and Dance from Hawai'i and the Mainland

Saturday, April 7^th @ 7:00pm

Springstep

98 George P. Hassett Dr, Medford, MA

Donated by Josh Hilberman & Springstep

***

Against the Odds Drawing #3

Winners Announced Saturday, April 9^th

THERE ARE TWO CHANCES TO WIN!

Enter to win a pair of tickets to: 

Hotel Cassiopeia 

By Charles Mee

        

Thursday, May 5-Saturday, May 21

10 Channel Center Street, Fort Point, Boston

OR

Memories and Fantasies

Contrapose Dance and

Kelley Donovan & Dancers

June 10^th – 12^th

Calderwood Pavilion

527 Tremont St, Boston, MA

Donated by Fort Point Channel

***

Against the Odds Drawing #4

Winners Announced Saturday, April 16^th

THERE ARE TWO CHANCES TO WIN!

Enter to win a pair of tickets to: 

Emerging Artists Program 

By Green Street Studios

        

July 8^th-9^th

Green Street Studios

185 Green Street, Cambridge, MA

OR

D is for Dance

Dance Complex Faculty Concert

May 14^th-15th

Dance Complex

536 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA

Donated by Green Street Studios & Dance Complex

The Against the Odds Rockstar of the Day -- Rozann Kraus & The Dance Complex

by Nicole Harris

I was lucky enough to work with Rozann at the Green Street Emerging Artists Program this winter.  Her insights helped me look at my work in a new light.  This week Rozann was kind enough to donate two tickets to The Dance Complex's upcoming faculty concert D is for Dance to the Against the Odds Drawing.  I can't tell you how grateful I am to have such strong support from the Boston dance community.

Thank you Rozann and I hope we get to work together again soon!

For more information on Against the Odds and to buy tickets click here!

Against the Odds is supported in part by the Medford Arts Council, a local agency supported by the Mass Cultural Council.

Thank you to Springstep for its support of this event.

2 Chances to Develop Dances with David Parker

by karen Krolak

If you are a choreographer in the Boston area, now is the time to polish up your resume. Get cracking because you have two upcoming opportunities to create work under the auspices of David Parker, one of my favorite dance artists roaming the planet. David is the Co-director of The Bang Group (TBG) out of New York and he is currently on the faculty of Julliard, Barnard, and the Ailey School. TBG has toured to 13 countries and 21 states. Their repertory exudes wit and grace even after repeated viewings. Do not be intimidated by David's credentials, though, he is refreshingly gregarious and amazingly supportive of young artists.


Applications are due on March 4th for the next Emerging Artist Concert at Green Street Studios mentored by David and Lorraine Chapman. Selected choreographers receive 40 hours of rehearsal space, mentoring sessions, and a fully produced concert of their new group piece on June 10 and 11.

Then on April 1st, you can submit your materials for the Choreographers' Project at Summer Stages. Richard Colton and Amy Spencer developed this fabulous program where three choreographers set new works on Summer Stages students. This year, the resulting pieces will be presented at the  ICA's magnificent stage. The Bang Group has been in residence at Summer Stages for over a decade and they work closely with the Choreographic Fellows. Oh, and choreographers also get to attend daily technique classes with Dan Wagoner and other Summer Stages teachers.