Flyaway Productions        Jo Kreiter, Artistic Director        Photo: Austin Forbord

What do you look for in a dancer? How do you find dancers?

From Tiffany Mills (Brooklyn, NY):

When looking for a new dancer, the company either holds an open audition or a private call. When hiring, I am always looking for a person who is curious and invested in a deep creative process; is inspired by a group of like-minded and highly articulate dancers; is trained in improvisation, partnering, and release technique; and is fascinated with fusing dance, theater, and other mediums.  

From Banning Bouldin (Nashville, TN):

The dancers I am working with currently are dancers that I have previously worked with on projects outside of New Dialect and dancers who have attended any number of our intensives and classes. I’m not interested in one particular aesthetic or “type” of dancer. What I’m looking for is difficult to see in an audition, which is why I don’t look for new dancers this way. I’m interested in the choices they make, their ability to work with prompts to generate material, their personality and ability to connect with other dancers in the room, their personalities. I’m interested in curating a diverse group of artists who possess different influences, believing that when we come together united in purpose we are able to create something we could not make without each other. This is where the name New Dialect comes from.

From Jo Kreiter (San Francisco, CA):

I find dancers every way I can. Most are dancers first and aerialists second. A few are like me in that they have managed to equally balance their dance and aerial training. Some are former divers, gymnasts, track stars. I choose dancers I see in technique class, in my workshops, or who write to me from other places. I look for someone whose creative instincts are as sharp as her technical lines and as deep as her ability to breathe with her whole body. I like to work with dancers who can create independently within the scores and narratives I set up. I work in a collaborative process with dancers.

Sometimes I create from the outside move by move. This happens most when we are working with a new object or a new physical challenge, like dancing on a wall with a suspended steel hanger and dress, or an upside down umbrella. When the physical risk is high, we create together, frame by frame. Other times I offer an object and an image, send the dancer to another corner of the space and come back to full phrases that can be easily linked into a whole. We mostly create on site, so I need to work with people who are interested in site work, both its joys and its hardships.

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