Boot camp for dancers: pushing personal boundaries at Austin's Glenda Brown choreography project - Summer Study Guide 2003

Dance Magazine, Jan, 2003 by Sondra Lomax

Two dancers jointly clutch a roll of paper towels overhead. Their arms are fully extended; their bodies pressed closely together. As they move sinuously across the stage, a bossy voice suddenly booms from the theater, "Make it less sexy. And change it quickly! Time is money!"

This is a moment in a mock TV commercial in the Glenda Brown Choreography Project, a summer training program based at the University of Texas at Austin. The exercise is an assignment in interactive choreography in which students create a thirty-second dance promoting goods ranging from paper towels to breakfast cereal, while faculty pretend to be corporate executives. As the dancers perform, the choreographers are ready to make on-the-spot changes to please their would-be clients.

The mood is upbeat and lighthearted. Choreographers, who are directing from the stage apron, banter with the teachers. One faculty member, in a fake German accent, says, "I don't like it. Make it hip-hop." "Aye, which part?" quips the choreographer in a Scottish brogue. Dancers erupt in giggles as they wait for their choreographers' orders. Despite the playfulness, the challenges for choreographers and dancers are real: The assignment demands creativity, adaptability, and most of all, the ability to work quickly and efficiently.

During ten days in August 2002, the workshop offered hands-on instruction for nine choreographers and thirty-five dancers selected from across the country. Rigorous, intense, but intended to be fun, the total-immersion program appeals to emerging dancemakers as well as mid-career professionals.

According to Glenda Brown, the program's director, the workshop's purpose is to provide skills for devising formal, concert dances as well as routines for music videos and other commercial forms. It's like choreographic boot camp: Participants endure a relentless daily regimen of technique classes, choreographic assignments, rehearsals, performances, and late-night critiques. To help the students keep pace with the demanding schedule, the faculty stresses focus and discipline. Morning ballet and modern classes are followed by improvisation and theory sessions, where students receive individual assignments. After lunch, there are jazz and theater courses. The only breaks during the day are for meals.

The most intense work begins each afternoon, when choreographers and dancers have only three hours to create, rehearse, and polish a three-minute work to be performed that evening. Assigned specific music, movement styles, and performers, choreographers have to develop a dance quickly. That evening, each group performs on a proscenium stage with lights and, if appropriate, costumes and props. Afterward, everyone returns to the dorm, where the faculty critiques each work.

"We learn from each other here," says Margo Sappington, a Broadway choreographer and director of choreography at the project. "There's no sense of competition," she said, taking a break in a conference room at the University of Texas. "It's a nurturing, healthy environment. We give only constructive criticism and encourage students to take risks and make mistakes. Experience is the best teacher."

Sappington's own choreographic experience began in 1969 when she choreographed Oh! Calcutta! on Broadway. A former dancer with The Joffrey Ballet, she has since created dances for ballet companies, Broadway shows, grand opera, music videos, and commercials.

The customized assignments devised by Sappington and Paul Hodgins, the program's music director, usually push students out of their preferred movement styles, forcing them to explore new vocabularies. Dancers with balletic backgrounds might be assigned a contemporary piece; modern choreographers could be given a pointe assignment. Initial exercises usually involve abstract movement, but by the end of the workshop, choreographers are asked to create emotionally charged dances.

According to Hodgins, some students find it difficult to work outside their comfort zone. "It takes a lot of guts to get out there every day and create a work and then get critiqued each evening," Hodgins says. "Creative process is a personal thing, and it requires maturity to take criticism and learn from it."

Since the emphasis is on process, not product, Sappington and Hodgins continually probe each choreographer's strengths and weaknesses, and they craft assignments accordingly. "Almost anyone can choreograph for fabulous dancers," Sappington said. "Part of our challenge is shaping movements to match the dancers at hand. This prepares you more for the real world."

Hodgins, a critic, composer, and music director for college dance programs, says he brings more than 150 CDs featuring music from traditional to non-Western, medieval to rap, and assigns each choreographer a separate selection.

"Dealing with the music is hard," said Jonathan Tabbert, 20, a choreographer from Charleston, South Carolina. "The staff concentrates on choosing music that you wouldn't ordinarily use, but it forces you to break your own patterns and find new ideas."