Critical Correspondence

University Project: Jim Coleman, Chair of Five College Dance Department and Faculty at Mt. Holyoke College, MA

in conversation with Maura Donohue

Interview: 03.11.09

Maura Donahue: What are the values of partnering with working artists?

Jim Coleman: I think about what are we teaching our students. What kind of risks can you encourage them to take? How effective is our training of young artists? I just returned from ACDFA (American College Dance Festival Association), and I was upset at the limited range of experimentation and lack of originality. What does that say about us in the Academy in terms of educating artists? There are always some very good works—originality, vocabulary, phrasing—but, predominantly the work is very conventional. How do we encourage students within the awkward framework of grading to take real risks? They become easily thwarted in their own experimentation. One solution to this is bringing in working artists. Letting them see artists who are taking more risks personally, politically and aesthetically. This exposes students to the artists and to risky and experimental working methods firsthand.

Maura: When I think of the Five College Dance Department residencies, I recall Balanchine, Trisha Brown, Mark Morris pieces. It’s great the dancers get those opportunities. But are other kinds of residencies taking place?

Jim: During faculty meetings there’s a lot of controversy around doing well-known classics. The classics give the students the experiential knowing of work they’ve read about. Plus, it gives dance a cultural legitimacy in our larger institutions—dance is real in this culture, it has a tradition, and we’re part of that. But, many of us have felt the need to bring in more experimental work. There are two women’s colleges. We’d like to bring in more women artists to provide younger mentors for the students and opportunities for those artists. That’s a newer initiative. Of course, funding has defined what we can bring in. National College Choreography Institute (NCCI) funds these classics. But the smaller, less expensive options are something we’re pursuing. Several of the colleges have budget lines for guest artists, but they were originally developed in a “visiting artist” two-year format. We found we couldn’t bring in working artists for two-year residencies, so we undid the time frame for shorter terms. We brought Bebe Miller in several times. We had Tere O’Connor also, and these would be three-week maximum, typically in January (during interterm), or over the course of a semester over weekends. We’re hoping that this will manage to stay in place albeit the budget cut-backs. There are hiring freezes, cutbacks in budget lines. But the administration has agreed to open up the guest-artist line to free up more flexibility.

Maura: So the framework of these residencies differs in that their commissioning work? The artist brings their expertise and notability, and gets working time? Are they getting creative residency time or just a job re-staging rep?

Jim: Jawole made a new work, which then she remade for her company. Tere came and made a new work. Bebe made a new work. I think it’s an even split. For Jawole, it served for her initial experiments. But, Tere came and did his best to create with the students in a short period of time. I’m not sure if it served him further. I know from my own experience in residencies that it might be frustrating. It was great to create and work with the students, but I’m not sure if it furthered my work. The question of re-staging versus just making something new is challenging too. It can be very frustrating and might be a good paycheck but that’s it. So, how can we offer opportunities to younger artists to further their work. We’ve been trying to be more proactive in bringing alumns back. We did this with Martha Mason from Boston—brought them for summer, put them up, and they worked in the empty studios for a week. In exchange, they came back in the fall and showed some of the work informally. It comes down to what do we have to offer. We obviously offer money, space and time. The housing situation is difficult. We have good spaces that are sometimes free in January and the summer. We also have equipment. We’ve been talking to Kinodance in Boston, which Nell Breyer has been working on. They’re using our black box space, projectors and stage lighting. But this is very difficult, because we then need a Technical Director and additional staffing. That gets expensive. We can give you our space and access to certain equipment, but we can’t pay for personnel to be there.

Maura: How have institutional budget cuts impacted dance and arts departments?

Jim: There are freezes in hiring, budget cuts of three to five percent, elimination of administrative positions and talk about merging departments to cut expenses. There will be cutbacks. I know Wendy Woodson at Amherst College needed a new position, and had a lot of support. But now it seems very unlikely that she’ll get help. There’s a lot of discussion around retirements. Will those lines be cut once the faculty member retires? This is a big issue for us around here.

Maura: College can be a highly expensive investment for a family to make. Do you see a relationship between the pressures dance majors feel to justify their study and how you shape the program?

Jim: In relation to tuition, right now, private colleges are anxiously waiting to see how many people are deciding whether they can afford to go to a private college. But, our enrollments and majors have been on an increase around here in the past few years. Of course, the justifying of a dance major is an issue everywhere. It was a problem in my family. We do find often in the four liberal arts programs that students come with many different interests. The norm is for people to double major. So the kinds of careers they go onto are quite varied. There are many very active dancers who minor and expect to continue their studies, but major in something else. One of the heartening things for us, is being able to cite major universities like Princeton’s President pushing: “It is time that the creative and performing arts assume their rightful place within the academic landscape of the University, with the kind of support and visibility we accord other disciplines. The fact that this has not occurred may reflect a long- standing academic perception that while it is important to study artistic works, it is much less vital to create a curricular environment in which these works are produced. I do not share this view, for, as I told the trustees, to separate the doing of art from the criticism or study of art is akin (at least to a molecular biologist) to separating experimental and theoretical science.”

Maura: I think you’re touching on something important about creating allies, like a President. Trying to get someone like a Provost to be an ally for “practice as research” (and not just theory) is very important for the survival of a program. What do you think you are preparing your students for?

Jim: Certainly this is tied to a broad big issue on a pragmatic dimension about a liberal arts education. What is the value of educating the whole person? Then the arts have to figure in. The mixing of practical career path with broader liberal arts education is the current reality. We are not a conservatory; professional prep is not our primary mission. We have a more general student. One of the things we are in the midst of is opening up our major, curriculum and our guest residencies. We call it “Areas of Focus” – based on student interest and the actual career paths of our alums. We have a lot of people in New England in Dance Education. Dance in the Schools for New York came for a major lecture that every dance student in the five colleges was required to come to. People often have such a limited idea of what they are going to do in dance. Many people have gone on to somatic and bodywork practices – how can their training in dance not impact that path even if they’re not performing in dance. There are so many careers into which dance studies can figure.

Maura: What do you think you are doing for those particular students who are certain they want to make work or perform regardless of, say, that English degree that appeases the parents?

Jim: We are providing a huge array of classes and we have so many different performance opportunities. In fact, this is something I talk about with prospective students. We have so many performing opportunities within the Five Colleges that we have to limit how students. We’re trying to bring in different kinds of work, different choreographers. With our own faculty and facilities, we have an emphasis on letting them create and perform their own work either for something like Wendy Woodson’s Performance Project at Amherst or outside of class where they can present fully produced concerts. The other key piece is the presence of guest artists. We need to bring in contemporary artists, like Nell Breyer’s hybrid work, so that students are more attuned to what is at work today. Particularly where we have older faculty members who are mired in their aesthetics and ways. We’ve started forays to EMPAC (Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY). We’re going to see Tere O’Connor soon. We need to see what is happening now. Our faculty is really traditional, and not exposed to as much.

Maura: Anything I should have asked?

Jim: I think this endeavor is very important, and to open this dialogue is invigorating both ways. Artists need space and financial support, and educational institutions need new ideas. It’s mutually beneficial. The larger selling point of this project is that it can help us convince academic institutions to see the value of the arts. Marjorie Gerber’s arguments are ones that we should all be making ourselves familiar with and we should all be champions for academic patronage of the arts.