Doing double duty: Stephen Koplowitz, teacher/choreographer - Interview - Biography

Dance Magazine, Nov, 2003 by Christopher Reardon

FOR HIS 1985 DEBUT AT NEW YORK'S DANCE THEATER WORKSHOP, CHOREOGRAPHER STEPHAN KOPLOWITZ OFFERED A WRY MEDITATION ON THE ANXIETIES OF ADOLESCENCE. CALLED I'M GROWING, it showed six young guys darling around in gym clothes while a voice-over recounted the emotional toll of homework and registering for the draft.

Nearly two decades later, Koplowitz is still grappling with pubescent angst. As director of the dance program at Packer Collegiate Institute, an elite private school in Brooklyn, he spends his days teaching hormonally charged teens to make dances on their own bodies. Somehow, he finds time to follow his own muse, too.

During the nineteen years he has taught at Packer, Koplowitz has created forty-six professional works, ranging from intimate pieces for the stage to sprawling, site-specific shows in the United States and abroad. He won a New York Dance and Performance Award, or Bessie, for sustained achievement in choreography in 20013. In April 2003, he snagged a coveted Guggenheim Fellowship.

"Some artists are: shocked when they find out that I teach full-time," he says. "And some teachers and students are surprised to see that I'm able to create so much work. But that's who I am; I lead two very full lives."

As a teacher, Koplowitz has found a novel way to engage his students--and quell the apprehensions that preoccupy many teenagers. He gives each of his ninth-graders a copy of Improvisation Technologies, a CD-ROM that distills the movement principles of William Forsythe, the famously cerebral director of Germany's Ballett Frankfurt. Forsythe may seem like a stretch for freshmen, but experience with the disc proves otherwise. Its deft use of computer animation, superimposed on video clips of Forsythe and four of his dancers, helps illustrate spatial concepts--like lines, planes, and volumes--that are integral to his work.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS ARE HIGHLY AWARE OF their bodies," says Koplowitz, 47, who loosely resembles the actor Jason Alexander. "What's great about the Forsythe material is that it helps them let go of their self-consciousness and focus on the techniques. It suspends their ego a little bit and lets them master the material without realizing that they've mastered it on their own bodies. Before long they are making movement and dances that are truly personal," as opposed to learning someone else's steps.

Forsythe originally developed the videos as a training tool for newcomers to his thirty-six-member company. In 2000, he released a commercial version, which can be ordered online at www.artbook.com. The disc features more than sixty' video clips demonstrating the fundamentals of his movement vocabulary, including gestures he refers to as "extrusion," "matching," and "room writing."

Forsythe, who is working on a new version for DVD, noted that Koplowitz is not alone in using the disc as a teaching tool. "It's pretty mappable onto most kinds of dancing, and it's really successful with hip-hop," he said. "Last spring I gave a copy to a social project in Rio de Janeiro, and it gave these teenagers from the favelas [squatter settlements] the ability to get really creative really fast. It accelerates the learning curve."

Its elegant simplicity appeals to Packer's cyber-savvy students, who get their own iBooks in fifth grade and enjoy wireless Internet access throughout the school. Students use their laptops to create digital videos and sound scores, submit homework assignments, and sometimes even to take tests. Founded in 1845, Packer enrolls more than 900 students from preschool through twelfth grade. It requires some course work in the arts, starting as early as kindergarten, but as a college preparatory school it focuses primarily on academic subjects.

At the beginning of ninth grade, each student takes Fresh Arts, a survey course with rotations in dance, music, theater, and visual art. During the second semester they choose two of these art forms for in-depth study. For students in higher grades, Koplowitz and an associate offer intermediate and advanced composition courses as well as a technique class.

"We don't expect our students to pursue carrels in dance," he says. "We're trying to empower them to be independent creators and thinkers. When they leave Packer we want them to have the confidence to express their own voices and share their own visions, no matter what fields they enter."

Koplowitz began using the Forsythe CD four years ago. "As a teacher, you're always looking for new ways of reaching your students," he explains. "At first, I wasn't sure how it would go. But now I use it with trained dancers and with newcomers. The outcomes are different, but it seems to engage them no matter what level they are at."

Last spring, seventeen students signed up for the freshman composition course. Among them was Colin Touhey, an avid hockey player who has never taken a dance class outside of Packer.

"I did a rotation of dance in the first semester, and at the end Mr. Koplowitz showed us the Forsythe CD," Touhey recalls. "That motivated me to sign up for his class. Not the CD in particular, but the theory--and the idea that, as a dancer, you can sec things the audience doesn't necessarily see." (He referred to Forsythe's use of geometric forms as organizing principles for his movement, which the CD makes readily visible.)