An Open Letter to the Portland, OR Dance Community

Jamuna Chiarini in "Like a Corvette," choreographed by Linda K. Johnson

Photo: Chris Peddecord

From Jill Randall and Jamuna Chiarini

I have been thinking a lot about the Portland dance community over the past week. I appreciated Jamuna’s honesty and bravery writing the Modern Dance City Guide for my blog, which went online last week. There are many wonderful and exciting dance components of the Portland scene, and yet I also clearly feel the holes, gaps, and hurdles.

I myself have experienced three very different dance communities throughout my life (growing up in a small town in Pennsylvania, attending college in Salt Lake City, and living in Berkeley for the past 17 years). What constitutes a thriving dance community? Reading the other City Guides on the blog also provides perspective. Check out the guides to New Orleans, Chicago, Columbus (OH), Salt Lake City, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jamuna put much thought and time into crafting the city guide to describe Portland’s offerings and opportunities. Now, Portland dancers, can we keep the conversation moving forward?

I invite dancers of the Portland community to respond here. Let’s keep this conversation going this week, with both the strengths and the weaknesses about the dance community. I want this blog to help drive the conversation further and deeper.

In the comments section below, please list three things:

Who you are (Ex. Your name, freelance dancer and teaching artist)
What do you love most about the Portland dance scene
What is one wish you have for the future (Ex. More grants for individual artists)

But you have to comment! I will use the blog as an opportunity and arena for dialogue, and I am also committing to pulling together these ideas (along with Jamuna’s City Guide) to then write or call some of the key members of your arts community. Three responses on the blog won’t work; we will need twenty or more.

Please join us!

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Jill Randall is the Blog Director for Life as a Modern Dancer. She is a performer, teaching artist, and writer living in Berkeley, California.

Jamuna Chiarini is dance writer, producer, performer and choreographer living in Portland Oregon. She has performed with many choreographers including Subashini Ganeshan, Randee Paufve, Linda Austin and Linda K. Johnson. She is also the founder of The Outlet Dance Project, a showcase for emerging women choreographers in Hamilton, NJ and is a writer for Oregon Arts Watch and Artslandia.

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7 responses to “An Open Letter to the Portland, OR Dance Community”

Ella Matweyou

Jul 1, 2015 at 11:45 am

Hi, I’m Ella. I moved to Portland last August, having recently completed my BFA in Dance with a minor in English from Ohio State. I’m trying to be a freelance dancer here, but finding it difficult to find performance opportunities. I have found several great teaching gigs, so most of my involvement in the dance community is either through teaching kids, taking classes myself (usually at BodyVox or NWDP), and attending performances. Favorite things about the Portland dance scene: I love that there are so many shows going on all the time, thanks to White Bird, as well as the local companies and independent artists presenting work. I LOVE the non-profit outreach organization that I teach for, The Aspire Project. They are located in St. Johns and provide classes on a sliding scale for students who normally wouldn’t be able to afford ballet training, as well as free classes in the SUN after-school programs. They also loan leotards, tights, shoes, and costumes free of charge to students who don’t have them. I feel very lucky to be a part of this organization and to have the opportunity to teach proper classical ballet technique (as well as creative movement for little ones) in a setting that is disciplined and provides a space for students to focus on their training, yet more relaxed than a competition studio or conservatory. I also love that there is an opportunity to take ballet class on almost any day of the week here. However, I feel that the Portland dance community is sorely missing more contemporary technique classes. I love Tracey’s and Franco’s classes at NWDP and BodyVox, but they are more contemporary jazz than contemporary/modern. Alicia Cutaia teaches a great class on Fridays at BodyVox, but as it is an open class, it’s not quite as challenging as most professional dancers would ideally want. I know that there are other classes happening around town on Tuesday and Saturday mornings, but unfortunately I haven’t been able to attend regularly due to my teaching schedule. It seems that the contemporary classes here are either Luigi based contemporary jazz, or all the way on the other side of the spectrum with post-modern release technique/improvisation based classes. It would be nice to find some more diversity in the modern classes available for advanced/professional dancers. Also, it would be great if established independent choreographers would hold auditions here for upcoming projects. I get that it’s easier just to work with people they already know, but I feel that a lot of talented, younger dancers who are newer to the area are getting overlooked because the same established dancers get recycled for almost every performance. In general, auditions are hard to come by here, and I wish that they weren’t. I’ve been trying to take classes and network with people, but so far have only performed in one show. I don’t have much choreographic experience, so I don’t necessarily feel the urge to try to put on a show of my one. I’d just like to dance in someone else’s work! I wish there were more opportunities for freelance dancers to do that here.

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James

Jul 1, 2015 at 1:15 pm

Hi! I loved the article from last week. I identify and struggle with many of the points and issues that were identified. My name is James, and I moved to Portland a few years ago from New York as my professional career with a modern company (Shen Wei Dance Arts) was winding down a bit and I wanted to explore new opportunities in an area closer to my family. My move was gradual, and I landed a couple teaching gigs as I was transitioning my life from New Yorker to Oregonian. Although the handful of teaching gigs I have are great (Pacific University and a couple after-school high school programs), I find it has been difficult to access the local professional community. There seems to be quite a bit of dance creativity in Portland, but getting to know the community on a personal level has been mostly unsuccessful for me. I have found that the organizations that are creating work successfully are already a tight knit community in themselves, and those creating work independently are doing so with small audiences and with little opportunity for funding to pay dancers or themselves. I also feel as though affordable classes for modern dance and more alternative styles is something that Portland could use more of. It seems as though Portland doesn’t really have a home base for modern, somatic, or alternative classes like this, and classes that are offered are sporadic and inconsistent. To be fair, however, I think dancers in Portland are also pretty inconsistent about actually taking class regularly, so maybe the demand isn’t there. If I want a modern class, I have to dig pretty hard, plan ahead for a guest artist, or shift my work schedule in order to actually make it to a random class offered. I have always thought that Portland already has an excellent and enthusiastic dance audience, but I think our creative community has much more to offer beyond contemporary Jazz and ballet. I love that White Bird does so well to bring such a variety to our Portland audience, and quite successfully, but I also believe that there are layers and layers of talent in living quietly Portland that are not sure how or where to share with the greater dance community.

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Jamuna Chiarini

Jul 2, 2015 at 10:46 am

Thank you Ella and James for adding your personal experiences to this conversation. I’m curious what class times would be good for you both and what do you think is a fair price to pay for a class? I’m also curious if you think class location plays any part in the low attendance?

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Sara Parker

Jul 3, 2015 at 4:12 pm

Hi! My name is Sara. I just graduated with my MFA from the University of Utah and was living in Portland for four years before I went to graduate school. I will be moving back to the area in a couple weeks, and while I am nervous about the dance scene as I remember it (and read about on here) I am also excited about the possibilities. When I lived there before I worked full time and could primarily only make classes at Vega Dance+Lab. It was not mentioned in the article, but they mainly offer hip hop, lyrical, jazz, and burlesque classes. I took a liking to hip hop classes, and eventually the owner got to know me and allowed me to teach whatever kind of class I wanted. I ended up starting some modern classes there and they had a great following! I had my core regular students that were devoted to my classes, and then the others who would come and go. Regardless, my classes tended to be pretty steady in numbers. Sadly (and exciting at the same time), I left to pursue my MFA and the classes went off the schedule shortly after. I think there is a hunger for some good modern dance classes in Portland, but what I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of classes but not a ton of variety (in terms of what instructors are offering). As I come back to Portland, I would LOVE to teach some modern classes and I’m pretty excited about trying to start some back up. I think it would be wonderful for Portland to have a dance center that brings in professionals of all backgrounds to share their research/viewpoints/experiences with dance (I feel like Conduits potential was this, yet sadly they closed their doors). I wish Portland had something like this… James and Ella- I’d love to link up with you somehow and talk dance!

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Jamuna Chiarini

Jul 8, 2015 at 10:29 am

Sara and James, I would also like to get in touch with you or anyone else who wants to dance or talk privately. My email is Jamunadasi@me.com.

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Jamuna Chiarini

Jul 12, 2015 at 12:27 pm

In my brief above, I feel like I did not honor the very experienced teachers that are currently teaching in Portland who have held the space for modern dance in Portland for so long.
Those teachers are…
Linda K. Johnson who was one of the founder of Conduit Dance Inc. 20 years ago; she teaches Wednesday and Thursday mornings at Studio 2. Wednesday mornings she alternates with Dawn Stoppiello who is the Artistic Director of Troika Ranch. Here is the link to their class descriptions. http://studiotwozoomtopia.com/classes/
Greg Bielemeier teaches for Conduit as part of Conduit’s mobile program at Center Space on Saturday mornings, more info here http://www.conduit-pdx.org/classes.html.
Josie Moseley teaches at 9am Tuesday mornings at BodyVox. More info here http://www.bodyvox.com/classes/open-modern-1
Please let me know if I have left anyone out.

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Tracy Broyles

Jul 21, 2015 at 10:57 am

Hello, My name is Tracy Broyles and I have lived and been a part of the Portland Dance scene for almost twenty years. In my experience, the people who make up the community here are creative, talented, strong and more often than not; self starters. They are welcoming and kind. In a conversation I had with someone recently, she (who moved here about ten years ago,) said that before the people moving here were artists/choreographers and now they are dancers. I find this true as well; there was a time when everyone was making work, and because of this it was always a scramble to find dancers. In some ways there was a culture of supporting each other, you dance for me and I will dance for you. I think this may be why there can be a habit to recycle dancers, because the pool was quite small for awhile. We all wanted more dancers, but now that they are arriving there may be some growing pains to get infrastructure in place, such as regular classes (which have always been spotty in attendance), and companies that have continual work. For myself making work is an overwhelming creative pull and impulse, which also involves the huge struggles of producing and fundraising for myself and my dancers. This makes keeping up a regular company or practice with others almost impossible, so I chose to work project to project, as most choreographers here do. Money is of course a problem, that I do not need to outline here. We all know it is true. As the dance community continues to expand, which I think is fabulous, here are my concerns. First; there is a habit of separateness in the community here, people identify with this method or the other, this group or the other. I think this is a big mistake. We will grow hugely as makers, audience and performers if we find, accept and respect what different actions have to offer. I think this kind of training is more prevalent in Europe- the ballet dancer studies contact improv, the modern dancer does consciousness based Butoh, the post modern improviser studies physical theater. Sometimes I sense a snobbery about aligning to a form that I think only limits us. My other hope is that as we move forward the experimenters will keep fiercely experimenting and that there is an acknowledgment of the rigorous, disciplined approach inherit in pushing performance boundaries. Portland can trend towards the formal and classical as the default of “important” art. I also think this is a mistake. I want to see the makers pushing their own limits and the limits of the form, and not be seduced to rely only on the virtuosic technique of a dancer. I want to continue to see provocative, experimental and interdisciplinary work that challenges us as audience, performers and makers. Finally as for the last post of Jamuna’s, there are several other places that offer movement/dance/Butoh classes in either a workshop or ongoing format; Flock Dance Center, (post-modern, modern, somatic based classes) The Headwaters/Water in the Desert (who brings international Butoh artists) and Momentum Conscious Movement (improvisation and Butoh based.) Thank you for the conversation.

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