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Interview with Septime Webre

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Interview with Septime Webre

August 20th, 2006

Rob Bettmann – Septime Webre, you have been artistic director of The Washington Ballet for seven years, and prior, Artistic Director of the American Repertory Ballet. You have created choreography on your own ballet companies, and also on Pacific Northwest Ballet, Ballet Austin, Memphis Ballet, Dayton Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theater. Can you pick an example, a moment, that you can cite as your favorite experience?

SW-  There really are so many.  But I can go with this one: the first time the Washington Ballet danced my Carmina Burana.  In Jason Hartley’s first solo, there’s a moment where he stands in sous-sous, and executes an entrechat six to grand plie.  And I remember chuckling from the back of the house with excitement.  Because it seemed to combine so many things that I value in one moment.  Great ballet technique.  A haunting emotional content.  Fantastic music.  Wonderful visual design.  A powerful architectural sense.  Beautiful music (there were 120 singers in the scaffolding, including a gorgeous baritone soloist.)  Truly remarkable lighting design (there was an angel above shining light on Jason.)  So all of these things that I value about the theatrical experience, and what can happen on stage, seemed to coalesce in one brilliant moment.  An entrechat six to grand plie.

What made that moment particularly satisfying is how 1,100 people – across the footlights – were actually on stage with Jason.  He has a gift for moving very fully with the audience. It was not just a “theatrical experience” – the design, and the moment visually – but the communication and communion with this audience – that remains a fulfilling experience for me.  But I could also pick as a favorite experience the rat toss in the party scene in my new nutcracker, which never fails to get a true belly laugh.  Belly laughs in ballet are hard to come by!

Interview with Fabian Barnes

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Interview with Fabian Barnes

August 17th, 2006

Rob Bettmann- Fabian Barnes, you are Artistic Director of The Dance Institute of Washington and Reflections Dance Company. In a few months your company will move into a brand new building that will be the home for both school and company. In all of the experiences you have had as a dancer, choreographer, company director, and teacher, is there one you can cite as a favorite experience?

FB- I’ve been involved in the dance world for thirty-four years. And I think the most valuable experience I’ve had to date, in totality of all the incarnations I’ve had in the field, from student to professional dancer to trying to work as a choreographer to facilitating dance for future generations would be just that: trying to give opportunities to dancers and choreographers who are coming up today.

RB- Can you think of a specific experience representing that?

FB – I’ve had a lot of students who have come through my program who have decided to pursue dance. To have been an integral part of their dance upbringing, the person who largely gave them their first exposure to dance, that would be the most fulfilling part to me. A student who graduated last week – when his mom brought him to me he had no dance. He danced with me for the four years of his high school. He started late. He came to me last week excited about preparing to go to Scotland with Suzanne Farrell, and that he was joining the American Repertory Ballet once he got back from Scotland. That was one of those moments. And there are many of those moments, but the one that sticks out most recently is that one. To sum it all up and say what’s the most important thing, or the most rewarding thing for me is that ability to facilitate future generations of dancers. As we all know there are not a lot of opportunities. To be able to offer that is a very meaningful thing to me.

Interview with George Jackson

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Interview with George Jackson

August 15th, 2006

Rob Bettmann- George Jackson, you began writing on dance while at the University of Chicago as an undergraduate. A PhD and forty years later you have published in innumerable books, journals, magazines, and newspapers. Your work has required close attention and connection to the field. Out of all your experiences, might you offer one as your favorite experience?

GJ – I was an ice skatter as a child, and also saw all sorts of performances. I don’t recall the year exactly, but in high school I saw Alexandra Danilova, on a not very good night of the Ballet Russe De Monte Carlo. She was fabulous! She did a version of the Black Swan pas de deux that Balanchine had adapted for her. And she did it in dark purple, not a black tutu. I had never seen such elegance, such sophistication. in a way such wit with movement as she showed. And I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen it again.

Interview with Vincent Thomas

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Interview with Vincent Thomas

August 14th, 2006

Rob Bettmann–  Vincent Thomas, in addition to teaching at Towson, your choreography career as director of VTDance is taking off.   You recently returned from performing at the Edinburgh Festival.  You’ve had a number of years working as an artist, and I know it’s something you love to do.  And I was wondering if you could tell me about a favorite experience you’ve had working in the field?

VT –  Well there have been many favorite experiences.  But you know one that stands out is: I had been performing at the Goose Route Dance Festival in West Viriginia, Shepherdstown, and there was a lady who came to this pre-show lecture about text and movement.  And she was expressive, but not so much a mover.  Had a strong interest in dance.  After the talk, she came to me and said: “I don’t understand!”  She wasn’t a dancer, she was a writer, but was really intrigued with how text informed movement, and movement text, and she said, “I wish you could give me another example.”  And I told her – the show is in like ten minutes – ‘hopefully it will be clearer when you see the work!’

And at the end of the show I was in the lobby selling t-shirts and greeting people and whatever.  And she came in to me with a well of tears in her eyes and said, “I got it, I got it.”  That was so powerful.  Foremost I think she was emotionally moved by the content.  What the dance was about.  Which was a portion of the “Grandmother Project”.  One window that people can come in through is their personal stories.  Everyone can relate to having a grandmother, or a figure within their family that was a matriarch for the family.  And what has been really beautiful with this project is that there are so many similarities between the stories that I hear – nationally and internationally. The slogan for VT Dance is “Universal, Tangible, Essential.”  And I feel with the Grandmother Project, and with the experience in Shephardstown, that we get there.

Interview with Suzanne Carbonneau

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Interview with Suzanne Carbonneau

Rob Bettmann – Suzanne Carbonneau, you have been a dance critic for over twenty years. You’ve seen more dance than many dancers. What has been your favorite experience in the field?

SC – I think all of my favorite experiences in dance have to do with the way they make me realize how much I don’t know about the world.  I know that’s why I keep going to dance.  Because it reminds me of the limitations of the experiences that we have in the lives we lead in the twenty-first century world.  They remind us that there is more out there for us to see, think, do, feel.

One big epiphany I remember was going to see Merce Cunningham for the first time.  I was just starting out as a dance viewer, and went to see Merce at City Center.  I had read and heard that he was one of the great masters of our time.  And I had my expectations of what that would imply from what I had seen before, which was mostly at that time ballet and what I would call classic or historic modern dance – Graham, Limon, Ailey.  When I saw Cunningham I was completely taken aback because it didn’t look like anything I had seen before.  Not in structure, or timing, or content.  It was not what I had thought Art would be.  I was bewildered.

I think that experience meant having to face the unknown, having to expand my own world or worldview in order to take in how Cunningham saw the world.  Normally, my first reaction would have been to be angry with the choreographer for not fulfilling my expectations, for not giving me back the world the way I already saw it.  But I think that what Merce taught me at that moment is that the world is much larger than the way I had understood it.  And from that experience, I knew that I would have to be willing to follow what artists said was taking place in the world if I was to understand their work.  Having to go off and try to figure out what Merce was trying to do – what he was seeing – has encouraged me to see the world from viewpoints that take into account different philosophical as well as theoretical ideas.  It has meant having to do research in things like Buddhism and physics.
Seeing how Merce brings the contemporary world onto the stage makes me see the world differently when I walk out of the theater and encourages me to see the urban world as a source of beauty, not just of noise and chaos.

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