My 40s: At the end of my 30s I enrolled in grad school because I was interested in teaching at a university level. I was offered a full-time tenure track position at Marymount Manhattan College before I graduated. I then had several very packed years teaching full-time and being a new mom at age 38. Teaching was very stimulating and rewarding, but after 5 years working in a full-time capacity, I stepped away from the full-time position in favor of being an adjunct, because I still have a lot of art making left in me. So I recently co-founded a new interdisciplinary company with my husband called Paper Canoe Company to create high quality family programming. Having a daughter has deeply influenced what I want to spend my time doing and what I want to be making. Paper Canoe shows have been wonderful to work on because my husband and I can play together in the studio trying our hand at new things like puppetry and singing and outrageous accents. Our daughter is really invested in these performances too and even introduces our sock puppet shows. I’m really excited about growing this business over the next decade to build on my work combining arts and education. I’m still of course making dance theater works for adult audiences with my dance company, Tami Stronach Dance.

 

I think to be a dancer in 2016 you need to commit to sharpening your administrative skills and become interested in the business side of things. Expect to have several jobs. My generation all went to art school dreaming of graduating and getting into a dance company where we would dance 8 hours a day and then go to the hot tub. But that kind of company model was already drying up, and I saw that if I wanted to stay active I would need to generate opportunities for myself. One skill you will really need is networking. Pay more attention to that than you think you should…reprogram your brain to see administrative work as creative work. Trust your taste. It’s ok to like what you like even if its not popular…things go in and out of fashion. What you are passionate about will cycle around — keep refining your voice so when the microphone comes, you are actually ready to make some noise.

 

 

My 40s: Over the past nine years, I've maintained several very unstable adjunct teaching positions, continued to run my company and perform for others, earned a Laban Movement Analysis certification in NYC, took on some volunteer roles with NERT (Neighborhood Emergency Response Team) and Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, started the 100 Days Score, and began facilitating Wrecking sessions.

 

Bartenieff Fundamentals, improvisation, cycling, contemporary classes, ballet barre, Pilates, running Path on the beach

As a choreographer, questions on your mind right now:

• Who gets to dance
• How my personal politics reside in the choices I make in my work – as subtext not as content
• Unearthing vocabularies that are stripped of classroom phrase defaults
• Why so much work seems to value physically punishing its performers
• Resisting beauty as a dominant paradigm
• What is the right structure for each work
• How amazing it is that we can pay attention to so many disparate things at once

Christy Funsch

Can you talk a little about your performance practice? What has been your growth as a performer? What are your strengths? What are you working on and exploring these days?

I practiced a lot of weight sensing as a child, and as a kid I was encouraged to improvise around the house. I would say whatever strengths I have as a performer come from longevity of practice. In college I went to a small school, and the benefit there was that I always had access to studio space – and I was encouraged to use it. So I developed a comfort level with being in the studio by myself without necessarily having a goal or deadline. My initial teachers were martial arts practitioners and also CMAs, so there was a lot of variation in effort and a lot of floor work….and they were making pretty experimental work. In graduate school I found myself still making experimental work with colleagues but having to fit into pretty rigid formal structures in faculty works. So this set up an interesting tension for me where performing was sometimes behaving and sometimes rebellious. Around this time I starting tracking my consciousness during performances. I would write down as soon as possible after performing what I could recall as “the ride” that the piece took me through. I was then (and still am) fascinated by performance cocktails of control and surrender. Somatic practice help widen my performing range and so did cross training. My interests now are following my nonlinear consciousness of movement the same way I would let my thoughts flow during a free write. I'm trying to do more but perform less so the intention is not that I'm presenting a performance facade but that I'm bare and vulnerable and letting the viewer in on my experience. I've never been a performer of conventional virtuosity or prowess. I've been fortunate to have really supportive collaborative practices throughout my development that have helped me dig deep grooves into my movement profile while nudging me out of my comfort zone.

From Linda Carr (Berkeley, CA):

My 40s: My daughter was born 4 months before my 40th birthday, and my son was born two years later, which changed my relationship to my teaching and to my dancing. As a teacher, I’ve learned to become more efficient and more focused. I have to make the most of the time I am at school, because I can’t spend hours afterwards thinking and preparing. I’m also more creative in my choreography at school now, since I’m no longer getting that creative energy out with a performance company of my own.

In my forties, I’ve returned to technique class. After a neck injury some years back, I took a break from Contact Improvisation and looked for other dance forms to get my fix. I find that my older body is happy revisiting the structure of good old modern dance classes. It’s helpful to me as a teacher, of course, to see how others orchestrate their classes, but also it’s just so much more fun to be in class now. I get the same kind of joy out of class now that I did as a child – before I wanted anything from dance, as a career. Now, again, I find that I can just enjoy the challenge and the beauty and the pleasure of dancing, without the painful internal monologue of my earlier years – when I was in a constant state of comparison, frustration, etc. Now, again, it’s dance for dance, and I love it. I’m so grateful for that.

In recent years, I’ve begun taking Cuban Salsa classes, which are incredibly humbling, and I’ve returned to a girl group I dabbled with years ago, doing body rhythm with Evie Ladin’s MoToR. I was on stage with that group last fall (for the first time in a decade) and had a blast. As my body and interests change, the style of dance and performance I’m attracted to shifts, too, but overall, dance has been a constant in my life. It’s where I go to feel myself and to feel inspired.

Advice to dancers wanting to get into teaching in a K-12 public school:

Go for it! There is work, despite what my mentor Bobbie Boatman said to me. I’m actually surprised by how many dance teaching jobs there are in the Bay Area public and private schools – many more than I ever imagined when I was growing up.

I love teaching in an institution, because I don’t have to hustle for my students. They are right there. I have ultimate respect for teaching artists who travel the globe giving workshops, but I always knew that I did not have the stamina or ego for that kind of personal promotion. Also, I like being a part of a community. In some ways, schools are at the center of community life, and I enjoy the influence that that brings. The artistry we present on our stage impacts not just the dancers themselves, but the audience of friends, parents, grandparents, etc.  And the more invested I become in this community, as a resident and parent myself, the more I appreciate the influence that teachers have on the spirit of the community as a whole.

From Jennifer Edwards (New York, NY):

My 40s: In my 40s I have come back to dancing – as a choreographer, movement director, and dancer. I just, one month ago, had my first dance residency at Omi International Dance Collective. It is weird. Like moths to a flame I watch friends, students and other dancers I work with struggle with this form and the system we have silently agreed to participate in. The system continues to make me feel an outsider in a field that regularly turns to me for leadership/processes/answers. My deepest desire is that we/dancers co-create an empowered, equitable values-driven new idea of what "dance" is and the space it can hold in society. I had a taste of that this summer at Omi – it is a beautiful dream.

In your recent Dance Magazine article, you used the phrase “sustainable dance career.” How would you define this?

In several recent meetings, the director of NEW INC introduced me by my title and then added that I am a dancer and choreographer. She stated that she’s seen how this informs the work that I am doing and how I approach the material. Her commentary was unsolicited, and we’d not talked about this prior. It is an example of what I mean when I talk about sustainability + dance + "career." I encourage dancers to never leave the skills we have or the identity of "dancer" at the door. Bring dance into everything – parenting, walking, working, relationship-building – leverage your kinesthetic intelligence on stage and off. We need to broaden our understanding of what dance means – for dancers. The rest of the world values us based on how we value ourselves. We need to craft and own our stories far better. Currently, we are denying ourselves and the world the valuable wisdom we hold.

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Dancers Reflecting about Their 40s:

Amy Foley, Reggie Wilson, and Tiffany Mills

Adriane Fang, Sarah Wilbur, and Dawn Stoppiello

Jennifer Nugent, Carley Conder, Damon Rago, and Rebecca Johnson

Jennifer Salk, Rebecca Lazier, and Kate Weare

Katie Kruger, Annie Rosenthal Parr, Sarah Crowell, and Jeanine Durning

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