Hometown: Woodinville, WA

Current city: Brooklyn, NY

Age: 36

When you started to dance:
I was in and out of my mom's dance classes from a young age, but started
seriously studying as a freshman in college.

When you first took a
modern dance class: Freshman year at University of Washington

College and degree: BFA in
Modern Dance from the University of Utah

Website: Trisha Brown

How you pay the bills: I dance full time for the Trisha Brown Company, but I also
moonlight as a personal trainer.

All of the dance hats you
wear: Primarily
performer and teacher for the Trisha Brown Company. Working with Trisha always
involves a lot of improvisation, so through that, and creating phrases for
classes, I don the "choreographer" hat. 

 ———

How many years have you
been with Trisha Brown? 

I've been working with
Trisha Brown now for six and a half years now. 

Talk about touring, life
on the road, finding time for friends, family, and relationships. Do you keep
an apartment in NYC? Talk a little about your most memorable place you’ve
toured with the company.

I've moved many, many times
since first settling in NYC : seven times in 11 years. I've lived in my current
place, a room in a shared brownstone in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, for two years
now. When I first moved to NYC, I knew that I ultimately wanted to dance with
the Trisha Brown Company, who had done a residency at the University of Utah my senior
year, but also that their touring schedule kept them very much out of the gritty "downtown dance scene," so I decided to freelance for a while. 

My first year I worked as a
nanny for two pre-teens, which left my mornings and late evenings open for
classes and rehearsals. I was fortunate to start working with the Steeledance
company within my first three months, and pretty much auditioned for, and
accepted, any work out there. I remember having the goal of performing in all of
the main theaters/studios/performance spaces in the city that I felt were
important in the scene. 

It was through working on
independent projects with Daniel Charon (then a member of Varone's company)
that I came to dance for Doug Varone when he choreographed for the Metropolitan
Opera. The friendships I formed with dancers in that cast have deepened as most
of us continued to work in the dance world after those magical (and
lucrative!) projects. I went on to become a member of Bill Young/Colleen Thomas
and Dancers, and moved away from nanny jobs to pursue work in a gym as a
personal trainer. I toured internationally for the first time with Bill's
company, and found that I loved seeing the world while performing and teaching
abroad. 

After two years I decided
to leave that company and start pursuing my dream of dancing for Trisha Brown.
I started taking the company's open weekly classes, and signed up for their
summer intensive. When they had an audition that fall, I was there, and made it
through all of the cuts, to begin working the early spring of 2006. 

Touring, especially
internationally, continues to be a highlight of working in the company. I've
grabbed the opportunity to revisit and hone my high school French during our
frequent performing and teaching tours. We've had a number of "extended stay" tours while creating work in Paris, and being able to taste life in that city
ranks high on my list of lovely memories. My favorite period was three years
ago, when we had an "eternal summer" of touring that saw us living in
Aix-en-Provence, Amsterdam, and Athens for the summer months, then spending the
fall in Brazil.

I love life on the road because the company (8
dancers, 2 directors, etc.) is small and feels like family. With most of my NYC
dance friends in similar touring lifestyles, all of us feel grateful for the
few shared moments possible in the city, and make due with Skype to keep in
touch with family and friends around the world. I think that I'm so content
with this lifestyle because I had those first five years to truly immerse
myself in daily life in NYC. If I weren't traveling so much with TBDC, I
probably would have moved from New York a while ago. 

Write a little bit about “company classes” and training expectations in the company.

We don't have company class. Training is the responsibility of the individual dancer, though our directors definitely advise each of us if it seems we need to build strength, focus on somatic work, etc. All of the dancers in the company come from a conservatory/university dance background, and most have worked with other companies/choreographers before TBDC.  We have the fortune of working 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, so doing the work becomes your training. 

Write about the role of teaching within your position in the company.

It's become less structured, but when I first joined the company, you didn't begin to teach until you'd been a member for three years. Before then, they pair you with a "senior dancer" to co-teach class. Trisha doesn't have a codified technique, so classes always start with a very individual warm-up and then consist primarily of repertory material. 

How do you train these days? How do you maintain and care for your body?

Each day, as a warm up, I do a personal blend of yoga and more classically balletic movement, with the goal of preparing all of my muscles to move optimally within their full range. I work out at the gym two days a week, though my goal is always four. There I do 30 minutes of aerobic running/cycling/elliptical, and some high rep, light weights. On my time off I try to stay active by biking, taking yoga class, and swimming. I've had an ankle injury for almost a year now that I go to a physical therapist, on and off, to help me strengthen and avoid further injury. 

Over the years I have studied pilates and gyrotonics on the side, and always felt fantastic doing so. Financially I have to choose between doing this and receiving recuperative body care such as massage or acupuncture. I have been choosing these for the last 2 years. 

What are you working on/exploring/are curious about as a dancer these days?

I'm still very challenged and inspired by the repertory my company continues to bring back onto the stage. In the last two years, teaching has become much more interesting to me than it ever was. My favorite gigs are now week-long teaching projects where I get to try and pass along the deeper understanding of Trisha's movement principles and choices. 

Can you talk a little about where you are now, as a dancer in your mid 30s, versus in your 20s?

In my 20s I was more open and less focused on wanting to work with a particular company. Now, though I feel like I really know my body, and how to best perform through many situations, I'm also aware of how fragile certain parts have become, after so many years of abuse. My goal is to be as strong as possible, in as big a range as possible, to be able to deliver the most subtle nuance of weight shift, gesture… I'm definitely pickier about the projects I take part in, and for many years now my priority has been to my dance job, so I say no to snowboarding, skiing, etc. for now…

Future career goals:

I'm very interested in creative arts/expressive arts therapy. I want to take the profound understanding and awareness of the body that dance engenders, and discover its links with psychology, towards a more therapeutic approach. 

Advice to young dancers, especially dancers who want to be in NYC:

Be brave and move! NYC is an incredibly vibrant, exciting place filled with a surprisingly small and loving dance community. The breadth of classes and performances available will inspire you, even if you just stay for a year. There is a ton of work available, especially in child care or body training work (pilates, etc.). Most of all – commit to staying at least a year, and never stop auditioning.

Find out more about Tamara by reading the article published in Dance Magazine:

click here