Photo: Almudena Ortiz

Hometown:  
New York City

Current city: 
Oakland, CA

Age:  50

College and degree: 
Swarthmore College, BA (majored in religion)

Graduate school and degree:  University of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee. MFA in Dance and Choreography, ages 38-41.

Websites:  www.ninahaftandcompany.com and www.ninahaftandcompany.wordpress.com

How you pay the bills:  Teaching dance – I am full time,
tenured faculty at California
State University, East Bay and I also teach as modern dance faculty at
Shawl-Anderson Dance Center.

All of the dance hats you wear:  Choreographer,
teacher, administrator, fundraiser, PR and marketing drone, observer and
commentator on other people’s work, grateful audience member

Non-dance work you have done in
the past: This is going to be a long list!
Until 6 years ago, I typically worked 2-5 part-time jobs. This helped me keep a
flexible schedule, but I always was looking for a job….

Describe your dance life in your….

20s: I followed a dancer/choreographer (who has ever since been
my role model) out to the San Francisco Bay Area to take a summer choreography workshop.
I was soon asked to join that company, but I was really shy and naïve, and just
wasn’t ready for the intense interpersonal dynamics that company sported, so I
turned it down.  But I had found an
artistic ecosystem that really suited my interest in art and activism, and I
made the Bay Area my home. I took class, was part of a women’s political dance
theater collective, got absorbed in martial arts and earned my black belt. Took
a hiatus from dance for a couple of years in the middle of all this, then
became one of the first members of AXIS Dance Company (a company of dancers
with and without disabilities).

30s: I left AXIS after a great 10 year run. Kept dancing and
choreographing my own work and committed more seriously to being an artist. I
began teaching dance technique and that radically infused my own dancing and
performing and choreography with new questions, energy. I started Nina Haft
& Company when I was 37.  The
next year, I went back to graduate school. It was the only way I could think of
to spend more time choreographing.

40s: Building my company, and realizing more fully what it means
to commit to being an artist, have shaped this decade for me.  I started making dances as a child, and
am now coming full circle to embrace letting go of everything I know. This
decade has seen my company grow to include national and international touring,
including an ongoing Middle East choreography exchange. I am humbled though by
how much each project can feel like starting from scratch. I want more than
ever from dance, and am not sure how that’ll work out. I’ve been very lucky
though so far, and so I keep at it.

Each time I feel like I am growing stale, I have found great
rejuvenation in taking on a new movement practice. My newest miracle is
Feldenkrais – who knew I could feel this good after 35 years of mileage on my
chassis?

Photo: Marty Sohl

Can you talk about your experience in martial arts, and its
influence on your dance classes and movement vocabulary?

 If it were not for my time as a martial artist, I would
never have stayed in dance. Martial arts helped me find my voice as a mover and
performer, while giving me training and leadership skills.  It also inspired me to integrate
movement with activism. As a mover and performer, martial arts has given me a
zest for grounded, explosive and also fluid, attentive movement.  As a choreographer, I am particularly
attuned to distance between dancers as an activated space – perhaps this came
from years of full contact sparring! My martial arts training has given me a
great tolerance for not having the answers to everything at the beginning of a
rehearsal or a new piece. Rehearsal is a lot like sparring – the quality of
engagement is set by who our partners are and our ability to listen with our
whole selves to what each person brings. 
Some things I love about martial arts training is the value placed on
mixed-level training. I think my teaching works for dancers at many levels. I
am not shy about grouping students in my classes according to unorthodox
commonalities (i.e. how they move through space, or the speed at which they
work best when tackling new challenges).  Somehow the overt nature of martial arts ranking was a relief
to me after years of unspoken pecking order in ballet class and other dance
settings.  It validates what each
person brings to the encounter. I also love how martial artists revere their
elders and recognize the subtlety of their skill.

As a choreographer, when did you know it was time to take
the leap and form a company?

I thought it was time to call what we did a company when I
premiered my first evening-length work. 
I had also been working, at that point, with a steady core group of
dancers for 2-3 years. Becoming a company honored that  mutual commitment.

Site specific work and performances in non-traditional
venues. Can you talk about these two ideas and projects you have done over the
years?

I am fascinated by space and how it shapes what we do and
see and feel, especially how we experience movement. It seems natural then to
take dance performance out of the strictly rectangular stages and layer it into
real life. Everything we take for granted (angle of view, focus, scale, speed,
predictability, etc.) is called into question by working this way! Some of my
most rewarding artistic experiences have taken this on. Highlights include our
site-specific performance installation in a cemetery (Mountain Views); a
performance on the docks of the Port of Oakland (Geographies of Memory); and
our annual Park[ing] Day Dances, a community dance event which we do in the
middle of a busy boulevard in downtown Berkeley each year. I love the
unexpected nature of rehearsing and performing out of the box.

Mountain Views; photo by Jeff Lindeman

What do you look for in a dancer?

Trust, candor and humor. An insatiable appetite for inquiry.
Patience and kindness. Movement-wise, I am drawn to dancers with clear, fluid
and sensual head-tail connections and spatial intelligence. I work best with
dancers who enjoy improvisation as a significant part of the rehearsal (and at
times, performance) process. As a director I work a lot more from the questions
than the answers.  Technical ease
and strong partnering skills are very important to me too. 

Photo: Pak Han

Resources and resourcefulness being a choreographer….how do
you stretch dollars, prioritize, and budget?

I now have access to studio space as an artist in residence,
which helps with some but not all of my rehearsal needs. I feel it is really
important to pay dancers for their time and expertise, but my resources are not
yet large enough for me to offer a salary. So, I pay an extremely modest
stipend for rehearsals, which I like to offer in forms that support dancers’
training and health: dance classes and/or bodywork. This gives the stretched
dollar a bit more meaning. There have been times that I have focused on
site-work and non-traditional spaces when it became expensive to self-produce
in a theater, or there were precious few available.  I have had to limit what pieces I tour sometimes because of
travel expenses. But my first priority is always to prioritize artistic risk
above other needs. This way the value of any project stays long after the
dollars are gone.

What are 3 pieces of advice you want to give to aspiring
choreographers?

Give yourself over to whatever feeds you. This will feed
your art.

Be patient and gentle with your body.

Habits are hard to change. Start a new one instead.

Current passions and curiosities:

Urban farming and food justice, cooking from my garden,
graphic novels

What are the key skills a “modern dancer” needs in 2013?

Time management skills – life is hectic and expensive, and dance will always take more time than anything. Thank God.

Versatility – make it a habit to train in things that are new to you. You might find you have a special affinity for something that you misjudged.

Self-care – sleeping and eating well, having fun and cross-training are key to longevity in our art form.