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Dancing for Joy
by Cynthia Shyev Riskin

You’ve no doubt seen or heard of the Pacific Northwest Ballet, but did you know that Seattle is a center for dance that many say rivals major metropolitan cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles? In fact, Seattle’s thriving contemporary dance scene is drawing dancers and choreographers from around the world and has earned Seattle the distinction of having the highest per-capita dance attendance in the country. Still, surviving here as a professional dancer or choreographer is no small challenge.

“Seattle is a very hot spot,” says Velocity Dance Center artistic director and Lingo dancetheater director KT Niehoff. “Next to New York, it’s one of the biggest centers for contemporary dance.”

There are strong dance programs at Cornish College of the Arts and at the University of Washington, where dancers can earn degrees in fine arts and choreographers can find teaching positions. There are also lots of smaller schools and venues, as well as a large number of independent choreographers who give dancers unprecedented opportunities to perform.

“Part of what makes Seattle an exciting arts community is that dance is so well represented here,” says Lane Czaplinski, artistic director of On the Boards, a 27-year-old contemporary performing arts organization with its own theater on lower Queen Anne.
The city has a vital contemporary dance (sometimes called “modern”) scene along with burgeoning hip-hop and jazz training and a vibrant and broad cultural community devoted to various forms of ethnic dance, often called “world dance.”

Contemporary Crowd

Washington State has produced some of the most famous modern choreographers in the world, such as Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown and Mark Morris, all of whom went on to found successful dance companies based in New York City. Many talented Seattle-area dance artists – too many to name them all here – are influencing modern dance today. Some of these artists run or direct independent dance companies, like Donald Byrd, artistic director of Spectrum Dance Theater, Pat Graney of the Pat Graney Dance Company and Amy O’Neal, codirector of the dance group locust. Others have academic affiliations, like Mark Haim, artist-in-residence at the University of Washington, and Wade Madsen, who has taught at Cornish for over 20 years.

The list of dance companies is equally long. Most companies tend to perform the work of several choreographers while using the same dancers from piece to piece, says Czaplinski. Local modern dance companies to look for include: 33 Fainting Spells (Gaelen and Dayna Hanson); BetterBiscuitDance (Freya Wormus and Alex Martin); Chamber Dance Company (Hannah C. Wiley, UW); Crispin Spaeth Dance Group (Resident company at Open Flight Studio); d9 dance collective (Amie Baca, Lori Dillon, Pamela A. Gregory, Jody Kuehner, Linnea Simmons and Julietta Compagno Skoog); Degenerate Art Ensemble (Butoh dance—a modern dance form created after World War II as a response to atomic devastation, led by composer Joshua Kohl); Fankick! (Jess Klein (Dazzle) and Alianna Jaqua (Spotlight)); Foot in Mouth (choreographers Alice de Muizon and Amelia Reeber with improvisational singers Ivory Smith and Eryn Young); Lelavision (multidisciplinary dance theater group led by choreographer Leah Mann and composer/sculptor Ela Lamblin); Lingo dancetheater (KT Niehoff); Phffft! (Cyrus Khambatta); SOM Performance (Allison Van Dyck) and Spectrum Dance Theater (Donald Byrd).

Jazz and All That

Although the big genre in Seattle is modern dance, which can vary from near-ballet to near-theater, other dance forms also thrive in the Seattle area. Sheri Lewis, who directs Westlake Dance Center, offers programs in jazz, modern jazz (modern technique combined with jazz), hip-hop, ballet, lyrical (a balletic, emotional form), improv and tap, as well as Pilates and yoga. Jazz forms are set to contemporary music and are faster – more like what you see in commercials or on MTV, she says.

Of all the forms Westlake teaches, hip-hop (some believe the proper term is “b-boying”) is the hottest. A description of a hip-hop class on the school’s Web site calls it “a funky beat, 60-minute class of sweat, soul and street.”

“The hip-hop scene is huge, and it’s on fire right now,” says Lewis. “Hip-hop is the biggest thing in our studio.” The Center alone has spawned groups such as Breed (Anika Miura), Cruz Control (Daniel Cruz), PhyZiKaL GraFFi-T (Andrew Faulkner and Kolanie Marks) and Swerve (Mindy Lu and UW students). Other up-and-coming hip-hop groups include Breaking Point (Anna Matuszewski and Wade Sugiyama), Circle of Fire (Alfredo Vergara), Konkrete Dance Company (Ron Smith) and Massive Monkees (Benito Ybarra).
Some dancers in that genre are starting to get professional recognition, says Cruz Control’s Daniel Cruz. Besides ballet, it’s the only dance form in the area that regularly packs its venues.

Around the World…
and Beyond

Other dance companies base their art on unexpected dance forms such as swing, the waltz and baroque. One group, Light Motion Dance Company, comprises disabled and nondisabled performers. Dance groups, which don’t fall under other categories generally, come from the folk, cultural, traditional and ethnic genres – they’re put in an artistic soup sometimes called “world dance.”

Most of these groups are not professional companies, but are comprised of dedicated amateurs who love to dance. Etienne Cakpo is one exception. A professional dancer for 20 years, he participates in ballet and modern dance and is a master of traditional and contemporary African dance, says his wife, Siri Wood, who manages their Gansango Music & Dance Company and school. Professional world dancers are hard to come by, says Cakpo, from Benin, because they cannot afford to dance full-time.

Seattle has scads of amateur, intergenerational world dance groups, however: Just about every cultural identity has music or dance training to carry on their traditions, says Vicky Lee, director of education at Seattle Theater Group. For example, in addition to African groups from such countries as Eritrea, Ghana, and Senegal, there are Arab, Argentinean, Balkan, Bavarian, Brazilian, Cambodian, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, Eastern European, and English groups – and the list could go on. Most local world dancers perform at community centers and at local festivals, such as Seattle Center’s Festál, Folklife Festival, Winterfest, Winterworld Fest, or Cultural Crossroads. Others tour nationally or internationally. The Korean dance group Morning Star has performed at more than 1,000 events around the world.

Although many of these groups are not high profile, some have spawned dancers of renown. Seattleite Mark Morris, for instance, got his start locally in flamenco and Balkan dance groups.

Hot or Not

The modern dance community in Seattle is so vibrant because “A synergy of excellent schools… plus such venues as On the Boards and Spectrum make for unprecedented opportunities for young dance artists to try out their ideas,” says Cornish’s dance department chair Kitty Daniels. “All the ingredients are here artistically.”

After studying dance at Cornish, Amy O’Neal settled in Seattle to codirect the company locust with Zeke Keeble. Seattle is big enough to learn in, but it’s small enough to try out her ideas, she says. “People hear about the scene, that it’s happening, that it’s a good place to come and do your own work, and it’s exciting,” says O’Neal. “If you have an idea you can go for it.” By contrast, in New York there are multitudinous outlets for dancers and choreographers, but it could take years of waiting tables and commuting to rehearsals to get a break … if a break ever happens, says On the Boards’ Lane Czaplinski.

Spectrum Artistic Director Donald Byrd disagrees. Seattle may be an excellent place for young people to train and try out their wings, but it’s a misconception that it’s a dance center, he says. With few paying opportunities outside of teaching, at On the Boards, Spectrum, and, of course, Pacific Northwest Ballet, 99 percent of the dancers work multiple jobs to pay the rent.

“Seattle is not a dance mecca in the least,” says Byrd. “People can make something happen anywhere without getting paid for it, but how long can they keep doing it?”

Labor of Love

Beyond Pacific Northwest Ballet, other dance forms are poorly funded, and almost no one can make a living in dance without scoring a plum teaching job. Artists have to make their livings other ways. To perform without outside funding, many dance artists self-produce – that is, they foot the performance bills themselves. And coming up with the $15,000 (give or take) takes an awful lot of waiting tables.

“Seattle has a vibrant modern dance community operating in a funding vacuum,” says Daniels. “It’s a paradox: excellent art with minimal funding.”

For example, very few of the 15 or so area hip-hop teams earn money, says Cruz. It’s hard to find sponsors, he adds, because most people don’t know what hip-hop is and some don’t like the music.

Although there is a little paying work for hip-hop dancers, such as performing for the Sonics Dance Team, modeling for Microsoft’s Plus! dancer software, or dancing for the occasional business opening, corporate party, or fashion show, dancers often go to New York or L.A. to survive, says Cruz. He makes his living teaching, performing in musical theater, and going wherever the money is – from L.A. to Japan.

There are only a few ways to make a living and dance in Seattle, says choreographer Pat Graney of the Pat Graney Company. You can teach, work five jobs, tour, or leave unless someone promotes you. So for the most part, dancers don’t get paid – at least not enough to live on.

On the Boards, the World Series at University of Washington’s Meany Hall, Town Hall, the Paramount Theatre and the Moore Theatre – as well as community centers and Seattle Center – all provide performance opportunities for world dance groups, says Vicky Lee. But Seattle’s world dancers get less funding than contemporary dance, says Gansango’s Siri Wood.

“It’s difficult for modern, but there’s still more of a market than for cultural performing arts,” says Wood. “It’s functioning down below the poverty level for income brackets.”

The Funding Dance

Artists often have to go begging for funds. Although Seattle has more cultural arts projects and more arts-related businesses per capita than anywhere else in the country, per capita contributions to the city’s arts organizations were comparatively low, at about $65 per capita in 1999, according to the Boston Foundation’s 2002 report, “Funding for Cultural Organizations in Boston and Nine Metropolitan Areas.” Except for Chicago, other major dance centers such as San Francisco, Minneapolis and New York got more outside contributions – as much as $160 per capita in New York.

In Seattle, the arts are funded by federal agencies, such as the National Endowment for the Arts; state agencies, such as the Washington Arts Commission; local agencies, such as King County’s 4 Culture and the Seattle Arts Commission; foundations, such as the Allen Foundation; corporations; and individuals. Seattle Arts Commission awarded about 14 percent of its nearly $1.5 million arts budget to dance artists for the 2005 and 2006 biennium.

Although Pacific Northwest Ballet gets very little of its revenue (about $272,000, or 5 percent) from the government, it got a tremendous amount of support from individual contributions (about $3.5 million, or 67 percent) in 2004. In addition, it made more than $9 million in ticket sales that year – a figure other dance companies, with often-low attendance, can only dream about.

Overall, public funding accounts for only a small, although integral, part of arts organization budgets, says Melissa Hines, director of Civic Partnerships, Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs. So no matter how big the organization is, it has to scramble come budget time.

“It’s significant, it’s important, and every dollar lost is pain inflicted, I can assure you from personal experience,” says Hines. “It’s a challenge. I don’t care where you fall along that continuum.”

Even in a funding vacuum, artists will dance simply for the opportunity to perform. But the notion, dating back to the 19th century, of artists suffering for their passion, is outmoded and only perpetuates the problem, says Byrd.

Boosting the Audience

To make more money, artists must provide for themselves. But Seattle audiences undervalue dance, particularly less conservative forms than ballet, says Byrd. And that makes it hard to fill the seats. Even major international modern dance companies, such as Netherlands Dance Theater, couldn’t give its tickets away when it visited Seattle. The majority of dance supporters go to the ballet, secure in the belief that if it’s ballet, it’s good, and if it’s not ballet, it’s not worth investing in or supporting, he says. He wishes that ballet patrons would also support other kinds of dance, as they do in New York.

The problem goes beyond Seattle. Many artists agree that people have a hard time relating to dance. They may feel intimidated or alienated – as if they should have understood the choreographer’s intentions but somehow failed. In addition, most grade schools lack dance training; therefore, very few people know how to respond to the language of dance, says Molly Scott, artistic director of Mary Sheldon Scott/Jarrad Powell Performance. “Without any kind of [dance] vocabulary base or experience base, it’s hard to bridge the gap between performers and artists.”

A choreographer’s job is to “teach the language and tell the story and inform them all in this hour and a half production – in a language they’ve never seen before,” says Wade Madsen. “It is a challenge to get up there and create because you’re not just creating, you have to inform. People aren’t going to understand it.”

When, for example, he did a piece on coming out as a gay man and “learning to love the things you’ve hated yourself about,” one audience member accused him of misogyny, while his friend was convinced the piece was about Hiroshima. He thought the point of the piece was almost “pantomimically obvious,” even using the song “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” which he calls “a total gay anthem.”

And not all dance tells a story; sometimes it’s inspired by an emotion or even something more abstract.

“It’s a little challenging to watch sometimes,” says Madsen. “For me, even, sometimes, I go ‘What the hell is going on? Why are you showing me this?’”

Byrd believes that dance artists need to help audiences understand what is going on and recognize that it has value for them – at least it has to be worth what they’re paying for parking or the babysitter, he says. Pre- and post-show talks help toward that end.
Also, Seattleites have a tremendous interest in physicality, so that’s where choreographers should start, Byrd says. Then they can engage audiences intellectually and show how dance is relevant to their lives. He challenges choreographers to provide “some sort of mirror” for audiences so that “they can recognize themselves in some way – intuitive, unconscious, whatever way.”

Originally, dance was participatory, so connecting with audiences was inherent. Daniels has a dream that someday dance will find a way to connect with people on a very personal level.

“I think we have to find a way to take dance out of the theater and [put it] back into their lives, and then they might come back to the theaters more,” Daniels says.

Cynthia Shyev Riskin is a freelance journalist living in Seattle. Her personal experience was wearing a fabulous pink tutu in ballet class at age 8.

©2005 Caliope Publishing Company