Advanced Beginner’s Ballet at the 92nd Street Y

Last weekend I observed Gregory Nuber’s Advanced Beginner’s Ballet Class at the YMCA on Lexington at 92nd St.  Gregory was a dancer with the Mark Morris Dance Group; he was with the Pascal Rioult Dance Theatre prior to that.  He is my “teaching source”– the only dancer I’ve yet interviewed who is passionate about teaching the dance he performed: ballet.  This January he’ll return to Arizona State University, his Alma mater, to complete an MFA in dance so that he can teach at the university level.But for the past months he’s been coaching an eclectic group of students at the 92nd Street Y.  On the Sunday morning that I sat in there were eight students in attendance, all women.  The youngest was likely in her early twenties; the oldest was just as likely topping 70. 

Bringing Dance to School

I recently chatted with Renee Pena, former dancer/dance student, current dance teacher, and recurrent CTFD client.  Renee is maybe the first dancer-activist I’ve spoken with this semester.  She started dance at a community center in Queens when she was 5, trained in ballet and modern through high school, and was accepted on a dance scholarship to Bard College in upstate New York.  In her senior year, in the week before performing her senior project– an end-of-major requirement in the performance arts at Bard– Renee tore a ligament in her right shoulder during rehearsal.  She went through with the performance.  And that, she said, was the infamous “it.”  She was 21 at the time of her injury; she’s now 24.

Renee’s story is an interesting one not because it typifies The Sad Dancer Plot, but rather because pursuing dance wasn’t easy for her, and because she’s now dedicated to making it easier for city kids and teens of similar backgrounds.  Dance lessons are expensive.  Insurance is expensive.  Physical therapy without insurance is even more expensive.  (“Money!” said Renee on Wednesday, putting up her hands, like, okay, I give; “everything’s so much money.”)  Travel is both expensive and inconvenient.  She was born out in Queens and she wasn’t of money– that made dance something of a luxury.  This is something she hopes to change.

At thewinger.com:

Responses to Kourlas’s recent NY Times piece on LEAP.

Another Option

In the NY Times on Sunday, Gia Kourlas covered the New York branch of LEAP, the San Francisco-based Liberal Arts Education Program for dancers.  The program allows dancers to earn arts or bachelors degrees, receiving academic credit for their professional experience and further drawing upon that experience in their specialized studies.  The program was founded in 1999.  Since then 209 have enrolled in the program, and 42 have graduated.

What’s interesting about this program– what Kourlas only touches upon– is its seeming educative basis in dance despite that it is essentially a post-dance program (meaning it’s second-career-minded, like CTFD).  

A Vignette: Karin Baker

When Karin Baker was ten years old (“sometime in the mid-1950s,” she says vaguely, but really it was 1953) she wrote letters to New York, to renowned tapper and tap teacher Ernest Carlos, requesting tap routines.  Tap was out of favor in Cincinnati where Karin grew up.  She had started to tap when she was five years old, under the tutelage of a vaudevillian who played the xylophone while he danced.             

 “I had learned a lot of great, old-fashioned buck-and-wing steps,” says Karin, “but I was teaching tap in our basement by the time I was ten.”  At that age Karin already knew that she wanted to dance professionally, and that meant moving on to ballet, a more profitable form.  But still she wrote to Carlos to request a routine that would challenge her.  He obliged, sending combinations written out, long-hand, in choreographer’s notation.           

CTFD Dance Gala Didn’t Really Rock

… according to Jennifer Dunning of the NY Times.  In an article published today, Dunning critiqued this year’s dance gala, “Dance Rocks,” and its series of varied performances as somehow lacking in dignity. 

CTFD Coverage in the Times

This weekend the NY Times came out with an article about CTFD, its mission, its clients– Tentative Steps Into A Life After Dance.  The article lands on the concept that for former dancers there is little chance of finding a future in anything as fulfilling as dance.  I think that for many dancers this is true; but, I’m finding that for as many others, it’s not quite the case. 

My impression after talking with the counselors and administrators at CTFD was that transition is an unequivocal crisis in any dancer’s life.  It is inevitable and nonetheless dreaded, and invariably difficult.  But my meetings with transitioned dancers– both of recent and not-so-recent transitions– has uncovered another school of thought about the transition process.

CTFD Video Library

At the center of the CTFD office is its resource library, a well-organized collection of career guidebooks, informational career pamphlets, college brochures, training program booklets, an impressive number of subscription papers and magazines, and, maybe most often overlooked, a fairly extensive collection of VHS tapes.

Nevermind that almost no one owns a VCR anymore.  Alongside the orderly collection of tapes is a tiny black Sony TV/VCR combo, its bubble screen a neat 10″ x 10″.  

The TV/VCR is there so that visitors to the library can watch the archived workshops, seminars and lectures that CTFD faithfully continues to videorecord.  The tapes are neatly stacked (and evidently rarely touched); they are labeled with titles and dates.  The earliest tape-date I came across was June, 1998.  Titles included: “Embracing the Fear;” “Juggling Your Life and Your Career Part II” (I couldn’t find Part I);  ”Take Charge of Money;” and, “Help! I Need a Non-Performance Resume.”  In all my visits to CTFD, I’ve never seen anyone seated at the VHS counter.

Generational Diversity, Nostalgia and Age (a pitch.)

All above are issues raised by the upcoming CTFD Annual Gala (“Dance Rocks”). 

 

Non-profit organization Career Transition for Dancers (CTFD) holds an annual dance gala to raise money for its no-charge counseling services and scholarship funds (for dancers pursuing post-dance careers).  This year’s gala, scheduled for October 29, is themed “dance through the decades,” “an entertaining evening of music from the ’50s to hip-hop– sure to attract theater-goers and nostalgia-seekers of all generations.”

This year’s gala theme seems somehow more pertinent to the CTFD mission than prior themes.  Because through its provision of tangible resources—career counseling, monetary grants, and access to an extensive network of transitioned dancers—CTFD really attends to the effects of an intangible issue: i.e., the issue of age in the dance community, and the reality that a massive majority of dancers will inevitably age out of the profession.

The Age Issue

From a recent NYT article: Two years ago trumpeter Henry Nowak was fired from the American Ballet Theater Orchestra.  Nowak had been with the orchestra for 28 years; he was 74 years old.  Last Thursday he filed an age discrimination suit with the US District Court in Manhattan.  The complaint cites an unnamed conductor asking an orchestra member for tips on how to convince old orchestra members to retire, and said of them, according to the NYT article, “It’s time to go.”  Commission lawyer Judy Keenan claims that the commission has evidence of other similar cases in ABT Orchestra history (part of the reason, evidently, that this case was one of relatively few ageism complaints brought to suit over the past year; apparently only 50 out of 16, 548 complaints were accepted between October 2005 and September 2006). 

Nowak’s case puts a strange spin on the age issues already at play in the dance community.