Critical Correspondence

University Project: Ed Burgess, Professor at the Peck School of the Arts, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

in conversation with Maura Donohue

Interview: 03.30.09

The UW-Milwaukee Department of Dance offers BA, BFA, and low-residency MFA degree programs, as well as a PK4-12 Teaching Certification. The curriculum recently expanded to include a Musical Theater component, and beginning in fall 2009 new curricular concentrations in Dance of the African Diaspora and an Inter-Arts in Dance will be available in the BFA degree program.

Maura Donohue: You’ve been with the department for 20 years. Can you talk about its development?

Ed Burgess: I’ve seen every brick come into place and begged for many dollars. I’ve been fortunate to attract a fantastic faculty and the rest has flowed from them. Once we began gathering student success stories, it grew much easier to get the university to support our growth. For example, we just received the list of the graduate students getting the biggest scholarship awards that the university offers and four of them are in the Dance MFA program. This might be the first time for the entire School of the Arts. One of them got the highest scores for the scholarship application. It’s nice when dance artists are at the top of the roster, getting the big, competitive, academic, accomplishment-oriented scholarships. Yes, the University likes to see its name in the papers. They like it when students get into companies, are travelling worldwide, are on television. We were just in Minneapolis for ACDFA (American College Dance Festival Association) and both of our adjudicated works were selected for the Gala concert. I try to be humble, but in the academic environment we need to use every gold star. We have to remind the University that there are – in the midst of an economic meltdown – positive things going on. We’re doing a lot of things well and the students want to be here and they do a lot of things well. Once that cycle begins, it can go on as long as you keep growing and thinking about the higher expectations of the art form. Keep digging for those higher standards. The students will respond.

Maura: The breadth of your program amazes me. You have an army of adjunct faculty and quite a few full-time as well.

Ed: We have this crazy mission towards versatility. We’re in a city in which there’s a lot of very interesting, remarkable, cultural community from art museums to music organizations and three strong resident companies and most of those folks teach for us. So we get some very strong instructors here who are affiliated with the companies in town, which provides opportunities for the students to dance off campus. There’s experimental work and proscenium concert work and a lot of people in the professional community. Our students are surrounded by a lot of working artists. They’re not training in a vacuum. We put the variety of skills our faculty brings to the table on display so that the students can get a sense of what they might evolve into. We’re lucky our faculty model these skills of continued exploration. We want to keep people connected to their passion.

Maura: How do you partner with outside artists?

Ed: We have a great amount of guests. The casting director from Cirque Du Soleil just visited and spent a week doing workshops. It was quite different and it wasn’t always easy for everyone, but they know being versatile is important and ended up with a professional contact. We grapple with how many guests we have. We worry about keeping the kids on task. The day-to-day mentor needs to keep them on their path. We might have had too many. We all tend to know a lot of people. Marie Chouinard just came over for a big day of festivities. Milwaukee Ballet just had an international choreographer competition and the winner will be back next year and we’ll work with him. It’s inspiring that we share our network of friends. We have to plan a good deal in advance to interact in the most fulfilling ways and we feel really lucky that our students get to meet so many different people who are working in the marketplace. Last fall, Uri Sands and Trey McIntyre were here. This spring we had Christian Von Howard from Virginia Commonwealth University teaching ballet, modern and comp. We can get too nurturing with the kids and a guest might come in and want to see them produce. We just got an NEA grant to mount two Nikolais works. We’ve had Pilobolus members in for master classes. There are so many opportunities that our biggest thing is keeping them from passing out. They have their own events as part of some of their coursework. The composition event and a dance-for-the-camera event at the end of the semester have hundreds of people coming each. The undergrads really are happy that we have a strong guest artist program. It just makes it more real to them – the idea that they could become like one of the people who we bring in. It demystifies the notion of what a successful artist is because everyone’s just a regular person – with amazing skills and investment and perseverance and passion. If the students aren’t excited then their development won’t happen. So, the role modeling, the opportunities, they create the buzz for fairly strong work regiment, a work ethic. Sometimes the guests pull you further than the faculty. There is a never-say-die attitude in the community.

Maura: Do the undergrads have much interaction with the graduate students?

Ed: Not so much. They don’t have to teach the undergrads because they’re mostly stimulated by each other and each others’ accomplishments, authenticity and individuality. Undergrads can’t keep up with them. Should there be graduate students who want practice working with larger group of dancers, they can. Some just want to work on their own work and some just want to work with each other. Every once in a while, we’ll have a graduate student come do a piece during the academic year. We bring them in as a guest artist. Given our roster, they certainly qualify. Our MFA candidates are a pretty high level and must be equipped to survive a certain level of intensity. We keep up the intensity by bringing artists who have a strong sense of purpose and what they believe in. Their level of inquiry, experience and accomplishments feed the MFA program. They come in with proven artistry and it’s very stimulating. Everyone ends up being very bold, adventurous and inspiring to one another.

Maura: How did you envision the shape of the MFA program?

Ed: Really, we stumbled into this. It just worked out. We realized we couldn’t do it during a regular academic year and wondered what the alternative would be. We didn’t really get to the place we’re at now, right away. We had some speed bumps along the way, and then suddenly it started to turn around. Each year we were able to define what it was. It took about three or four years before it became known as a place that was welcoming and that understood what folks who had already accomplished a great deal needed out of an MFA. It wasn’t a traditional experience. They needed something that took into account their expertise and history. We couldn’t find space or time or faculty during fall or spring. So, we asked each other if we were ready to work 12 months out of the year. Everyone hear seems to have an adventurous spirit and now it’s pretty clear that it turned out to be a unique model. You can come out in a couple summers and then once you return to all the professional activities you’re doing – all of that work counts towards your continuing work as an MFA – you don’t have to just be here. There’s a lot of self-direction and self-assessment, which these artists have already done. We just formalize it.

Maura: Are you feeling an impact from the fiscal crisis?

Ed: It’s not that we’re insensitive to the economy. We’ve stepped up our recruiting and advocacy and we have to let people know of the accomplishments of the students in the face of trimming and dealing with reduction, but we’re finding our way. We’re lucky in that we have a lot to share in honors, awards, and success stories. It’s almost an embarrassment of riches. Even in the face of economic trouble, there’s talk about building “a campus of the future” with a lot of conversation about a dance center – developing a theater specifically for dance and that has a lot to do with our profile. But, yes, it has made us more vocal. Everywhere I go, I try to speak positively about the department. We have success stories that are ongoing – we have quality products that we can constantly be excited about. It helps. We have to find donors and get new students and get people into see shows. But, we’re lucky we have stuff to talk about.

Maura: Is there anything else you wanted to share?

Ed: Our mission was not only to train the versatile interpreter and choreographer, but to impact the city and I think we have done that. We have built a strong community and based on the variety of our alumni and faculty activities off campus, it is a vibrant one.