Today we hear from San Francisco Bay Area artist Nina Haft.

Nina Haft & Company. (Left to right: Rebecca Johnson, Sarah Chenoweth, and Frances Sedayao.)

My studio practice has evolved and continues to cycle with seasons in my production, teaching and life schedules. Noodling around and improvising is something I don’t do enough of lately, but when time (and pain levels) permit, I find that an unstructured hour in the studio with no product in my sights is the very best way for me to keep my kinetic imagination tuned and porous. Once I am in a rehearsal process, I tend to shift my needs to a group studio practice – a directing one. The longer I make work, the more I understand that exploring the dancers and our alchemy together is a huge part of grounding a project in something specific to that inquiry. I now find what the work is about in great measure by 1) asking a series of iterative questions with dancers; 2) observing their movement and interactions; 3) sharing observations (talking) and mostly by listening to them. I then reframe the question or the task, and we dive back in.

This process takes time. It always feels worth it.

Over time, my body has become more limited in the ways it can move freely. This is aging, and also the product of long-term use injury. I am learning to dance with pain and also to free myself from secondary injury (i.e. compensation that creates new pain) mostly by doing Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lessons. My teacher Mary Armentrout has become a touchstone for my practice, not only for her healing hands and astute eyes, but also for her ability to bridge this self-care practice into a larger compositional and philosophical context. Working easier not harder has helped me to focus my efforts in ways that do not take such a toll on my mind, body or spirit. This gives me hope. Our art form as it lives in the urban capitalist framework is not generally restorative. We dancers do much to generate value for and with each other. But at the end of the day, I sleep and wake in my own body.

Teaching feeds by directing practice by prompting me to track my intuitive movement impulses (making material) and by crafting it for an audience (students). Although my choreographic work is rarely structured around music or rhythm, I pretty much always create material by finding music that makes me want to move. In some ways, I think of this channel of movement making as an alternate personality of mine! It reminds me of where I come from, and it reveals to me the ways other people’s movements are filtering into my own. I am grateful that it does.

I am blessed with access to studio space as a Company in Residence at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, and also (to a much lesser extent) as faculty at CSU East Bay. I also regularly rent studio space due to scheduling needs. I have noticed that the nature of a space seems to percolate into the work itself. It can really help to have a "neutral" space – one where I do not fulfill roles for anyone else but myself – when I need to tap into my intuition.

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Related posts:

My Dance Week: Nina Haft

Blog Series: Studio Practice/Studio Time

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