The truth? Dance is great but can feel like an “expensive hobby,” even when working at a professional level. The competition for work in dance is steep. It’s easy — and valid — to complain (preferably over a favorite beverage), but let’s talk solutions right now.
When you make your own opportunities, particularly as a dance artist or choreographer, you dance more often and elongate your career. As a choreographer and artist-in-residence, I’ve been featured in publications like the New York Times and received funding to keep dancing. Whether you’re considering choreography as part of your dance path now or in the future, you need to know what choreographic residencies are and how to apply for them.
Click to read in full at Dance Advantage.
From teen celebrity, to art school dropout, loser misfit, and rebel-clown choreographer; my dance talents, for better or worse, have yanked me through life.
As a shy little Oregon boy, literally living on a dead end, in the middle of a forest, just off a pissant town, I was completely hidden from the world. When not quietly making friends with local trees, I was hungrily consuming movies that dared me to live large... by performing.
These films weren't just entertaining. Their greasy hands reached through the screen, pressed into my soft skull, and told me that performance (especially dance) could...
Our skin is scorched. A set of divisions woven into the founding of a nation, and remnants of a civil war clearly without closure, the friction created by the U.S. melting pot is boiling over once again. A torrent of toxic tribalism splashes down, burning and re-blistering old scars. The most current facade of American altruism is crumbling, a scaffolding built on racism and misogyny unmasked. With painful, high definition clarity, this new-old reality is seen in the rise of modern day white nationalism/nazism and a crushing wave of sexual abuse stories starring some of the world's most visible and powerful men. We can hope that these dirtbag demonstrations are dramatizing a near-final gasp of wasted privilege. We can hope that we live in a world that's -finally- growing too tired to tolerate asshole-ism. I'm personally old enough to know better. Considering this, I'm proposing that those of you reading this, while cussing aloud in solidarity, join me in some creative group therapy.
Click title to read in full.
Moons and moons ago, while adrift in a sea of gay men at Seattle’s Timberline bar, I tripped into the city’s first lube wrestling championship, and won. That night, lonely exhibitionists were given the chance to be lathered up in KY Jelly and slammed against the floor of an inflatable, lube-loaded pool. What did I win again… um prestige maybe? A story for the grand-kids? I certainly didn’t get a trophy for my efforts. That being typed, it was a stellar night. As I get older, dredging up more and more fodder for #ThrowbackThursdays, I find myself reflecting on lesson’s learned. Here’s some stuff I learned that’ll likely help you too.
How often and in what kind of situations do you perform?
Boy every day of this wild existence is so different, but I seem to have one or two performances / screenings a quarter on average. That being typed, I’ve had three separate performances within the same week before too. In the past, performances mainly occurred in black box theaters, but in recent years I’ve adjusted to performing site-specific work almost entirely (invading streets, piers, parks, museums, bathrooms, bars, etc.). Theater performances are a bit too removed from the guts of my work, which conjures situations and themes experienced in daily life. I’m also transitioning from doing more live work to more film work in order to access a larger online audience.
Click for full interview at Stance on Dance.
Lights come up on a lone ballerina, innocently perched on stage. You recognize the scene, from one of the many Nutcrackers we inevitably endure, but this time it’s different somehow. After leaving her lofty throne, you see an elegant pointe shoe flush what was a toilet all along. And then, IT happens. A dancer, dressed as dung (head-to-pointed-toe), claws his way to the ballet beauty and incites a dance battle for the ages. This satire-drenched ballet, called Bowel Movement, was part of my first show as a choreographer. The whole thing, called Bathroom Follies, remains a seminal part of my strange dance revolution. Below, I’ll set the stage (pun intended) for how such a thing came to pass (also pun intended).
