Dancers in cap and gown: some leading California professors discuss what the present and the future hold for dance students.

Some leading California professors discuss what the present and the future hold for dance students.

Last September we brought you the results of our round-table discussion with deans of dance departments in the New York area. The feedback from that discussion encouraged us to take the idea out to the West Coast. Once again four department chairs, chosen for both the quality and disparity of their programs, were invited to speak out frankly about their problems and their passions. Those participating in the animated discussion were: Cristyne Lawson from California Institute of the Arts, a very small private conservatory with about sixty-five dance majors; James Penrod from the University of California at Irvine, with one hundred sixty dance majors within a huge state-supported university; Judith Scalin from Loyola Marymount, a medium-sized Jesuit liberal arts institution with thirty dance majors; our hostess for the discussion, Joan Schlaich of California State University at Long Beach, a state-supported megauniversity with ninety dance majors; and moderator Muriel Topaz. Here are some of the things they talked about:

How are we preparing our students,

and what are we preparing

them for? Are there any jobs out

there?

Schlaich: We really are preparing them to do just about anything. Dancers' discipline, focus, and willingness to work hard make people love them as employees.

Scalin: We try to train our students to be "awake dreamers." Because a lot of students at Loyola come from parental backgrounds in which they are expected to be practical and productive, they tend to abandon their dreams very much too soon. Being an awake dreamer means cultivating the skills that you need, finding out the talents you have, and yet not letting go of your dream of dancing. You have to be able to speak and write, not be a moron about technology, be able to work equipment, and connect to the community. Being a sleepy dreamer does not produce anything, either. For example, if I wanted to be a Las Vegas showgirl with my four-foot, eleven-inch body, that would be a sleepy dream. We try to keep them awake and planning concretely for careers.

Penrod: There are jobs out there in dance, but not all of the students have the necessary talent to get those jobs as dancers or choreographers. It is our obligation to prepare them to move in many different directions.

Lawson: We are really going into technology in dance, having computerized lighting boards to work with, giving the opportunity to be stage managers and even lighting designers. And we are moving towards having a computerized choreography program like the one Merce Cunningham uses.

Schlaich: Watching large companies fold is scary. Now our graduates are creating many small companies all over. That doesn't mean that they are supporting themselves by dancing - they couldn't possibly. But they are supporting themselves in other ways, sometimes dance-related, and are still dancing and choreographing.

Lawson: There are a lot of people who want to do their own work. They are going to do it anyway, no matter what happens.

Do you think we are changing the

field by helping our students to

make things happen themselves

instead of trying to walk into an

established situation?

Schlaich: Partly we are doing that, but I think a lot is the nature of the students. They are very determined.

Penrod: What is the university, college, or conservatory giving to its students? We are educating ours to think, to write-probably changing the nature of what dance is all about on some level. Not in terms of the big companies, however. The other thing we concentrate on is the science connected to dance. There are jobs out there for dancers who know about the human body and how it works. Some of our students find employment as rehabilitative people or specialists in dance injury prevention.

Lawson: Most of my students don't want to be in anybody's company. They really want to do their own work - the very good ones, the ones who are really interested in creating. It stopped being a dream for a majority of them about ten years ago. Maybe they don't see much that they want to be in.

What is the place of repertory in

your program?

Schlaich: It's critical for our students and is basic to whatever we do. We bring in at least one guest every semester.

Penrod: When I first came to Irvine, only original works were done. I shifted to reconstruction through notation and bringing guest artists in to create new ballets. Also, a number of faculty and many students are choreographers who produce new works all the time.

Lawson: We don't do repertory at all. We do have guests choreograph for the graduating dancers, but not repertory as course work. All the faculty choreographs and students audition to work with them on student concerts. We don't reconstruct dances. We look at them on video and we talk about them a lot, but we don't do them. I just don't believe in it because I feel that most of modern dance is a very personal thing. I don't know how much anyone gets out of doing something that Doris Humphrey did, in this day and age. This policy gives our faculty a chance to be creative; otherwise, they would not have anything to do. They want to create on the students whom they have trained.

Scalin: We don't do repertory because we can't afford to. However, within dance history, within technique classes, students learn little bits of repertory. As a kinesthetic learner, I am convinced that if students attempt things with their own bodies, even if they are not technically ready, there is a special kind of understanding. It stays in their body memory a lot longer than it would if they just watched it. The little excerpts that we are able to do are really important for my students. We will reconstruct some year, if we have the money to do it, because I think it really is a wonderful way to teach about where we come from.

Penrod: I really feel strongly that it is part of our heritage and that notation is our literature. It's a whole new way of learning, a way of making the brain work differently. It is important for students to experience choreographers who have moved in ways that are different from the contemporary ways.

Schlaich: I agree with Jim. I saw a big difference once we were able to afford to bring in guests and to reconstruct from notation - what directions students took and how they thought. They could never get from a video what they learn from doing a piece by Merce Cunningham or Jose Limon or Gerald Arpino, or from being exposed to the kinds of people who set these works. Of course, the faculty choreographs and so do the students. If you have enough concerts you can do it all, and each thing is a different experience. Students need to experience every one of these things in order to be more whole.

Lawson [ironically]: And ours are demented because they don't experience that. We are a very self-structured school, and we have decided what our priorities are. The priority is doing new work!

Are entering students prepared

for your program? Is the student

body changing?

Schlaich: The big difference is the rise of performing arts high schools. We really get good, well-trained students.

Lawson: There is a network of performing arts high schools from around the country at which we audition students every year. We also have open auditions at which we find that many would-be students are trained [only] in aerobics. Even in L.A. there are very few people teaching serious modem dance on any kind of continuing basis. The difference between the high school and the open audition kids is amazing.

Topaz: Once you get out of the metropolitan New York area there are very few places around the country where young people can seriously study modern dance. I am astounded by that.

Schlaich: It's up to us, to our graduates who go into teaching. The problem is that it's very hard to find jobs in schools right now.

Lawson: CalArts has a program which sends our graduate students into the community to teach, and that has been a big help. The students get paid for teaching, and they learn how to teach high school and junior high school students. This program has also made a difference in the way the community views us. It's always thought of us as "those weird people," and half of the community wouldn't come to see performances because they thought that someone would be naked.

Topaz: It seems to me that the ballet training throughout the country now exists on a quite high level; twenty years ago it did not.

Scalin: They are coming in with good training - organized, sequential, and systematic; lovely alignment, clean and not mannered.

Penrod: But they are coming in from the private studio schools. Precollege schools are not addressing dance.

Schlaich: The issue is K-12. How can we possibly get the arts - and dance in particular - to be an integral part of that education?

Topaz: Joan said the key thing: We have to encourage our graduates to do that kind of teaching and to recognize it as a worthwhile use of their skills as well as a valuable contribution to the community.

Scalin: At Loyola we were able to get a requirement of a year of dance for our elementary education majors. When they go into K-6 they're not so frightened about doing movement experiences with their students. They also have access to resources; our music center has some wonderful materials for classroom teachers. And they know where to get excellent artists to help them out when they need assistance.

Schlaich: The other thing we are doing along those same lines is to offer a dance concentration to liberal studies students who are going into K-6. This is under the new California multisubject waver credential. It might help change things.

How can we change the misconceptions 

that society has about

dance and dancers?

Penrod: We've got to educate the administrators. Show them that you can get jobs in dance and that it does lead to a fulfilling life. That's not getting through. Even at Irvine, where we have a strong program, the response is, "Oh, it must be so much fun to be in dance." They don't take it seriously.

Lawson: I think it's a bigger problem than that. People don't separate the dance from the dancers. The majority of people look at dance and think the person is making it up as he or she goes along. And that perception keeps us from being viewed as creative artists. It's awfully hard for people to understand that the product is separate from the person making the illusion.

Scalin: The best I can do is live my life in a way that other people can see. They are so surprised to hear an articulate, well-read, passionately committed person. We can't let ourselves be a secret; other people's ideas can be changed by watching us in action. And we can't just talk about it to the converted. Although I don't have the time, I do speak to the Jewish Community Center and to the PTA.

Schlaich: It goes back to the K-12 issue. If every person came through public schools with an experience with dance as well as with the other arts, there would not be an unconverted group.

How are we surviving the budget

cuts?

Schlaich: Some programs in California have been totally closed down. I am sure that's true of many other places, too. It is pretty scary because we are small to begin with.

Penrod: On our campus there is a task force which is recommending things like eliminating departments or merging schools together. We don't know what this task force is going to recommend. We hope we will survive, but we don't know. For the last three years we have had to cut seven percent each year. This year our dean came up with a $300,000 deficit, so we not only take a seven percent cut, we also have to make up the deficit. Where do you cut? We have already been cutting for three years.

Schlaich: Diversification is shot. You have to let part-time people go and [even] specialists in some areas. Then you simply can't offer certain courses.

Scalin: One of the things we are doing is connecting to courses in other departments. The fundamentals-of-music teacher now teaches our first semester music, and we have courses that help us in the philosophy, theater and film departments. Another problem is that the parents have been hit and are more nervous about repaying loans after students graduate - big loans. I feel we have a certain ethical responsibility to make sure that a student has been addressing what he or she is going to do after leaving.

Lawson: That's the big problem for us. Because the school is so expensive, a number of students leave owing $15,000 and $20,000. Particularly for dance students, it might take the rest of their lives to pay it back.

Topaz: I wonder what we are teaching our young people by sending them to start out in the world with a $20,000 or $40,000 deficit.

Lawson: That they shouldn't have gone to school in the first place.

Topaz: Either that, or the only way to live is in debt.

Lawson: That's right, and I don't like saying that at all. I think in some ways it's probably true for the majority of people in America, but I don't want to teach that kind of truth.

Schlaich: It's pretty sad. At a time when the parents' incomes are reduced, the tuition is rising. It is the end of the California dream of education for everyone.

Penrod: The fact that taxpayers do not want to take on any of the taxes to support the infrastructure of the state frightens me, and I can see why a lot of people are choosing to leave this state. It's not a very optimistic picture.

Lawson: People assumed that they could borrow money on their houses. That does not exist any longer because the equity on property has gone down. Frankly, there is something truly absurd if someone has to sell his house in order to send a child to school.

Schlaich: Students are paying more tuition and getting less; when the layoffs occur, the students get less for more money.

Lawson: We are always told to take all these students knocking on the door, but I can't do that. In the rest of the school the numbers have gone up tremendously, and that really has lowered the quality of education. The faculty doesn't have any quality time to spend together, and the students are not getting as much as they used to.

Topaz: I've never figured out the economics of increased numbers. Since tuition doesn't cover the education, theoretically the more students you have the more money you lose.

All: [laughter]

Topaz: I think there are a lot of things the university does that maybe it shouldn't be doing. I do worry about the fact that often the education of the student is not the primary thing on everybody's mind. And I think it ought to be.

Lawson: Definitely it's not. I couldn't agree with you more. When they say, "Get more people," what does that do? You can't teach the students. The faculty becomes frustrated; they have no time to spend with the students - they can no longer mentor all of them.

Schlaich: One of the things we've talked about doing in the California state universities is to stop having all of our twenty campuses doing everything and head for some more specialization. So far it hasn't worked because no one wants to give up anything, but in fact it may be the answer.

Muriel Topaz, a Dance Magazine editorial consultant, is the former director of the Dance Division at the Juilliard School (1985-92) and the former executive director of the Dance Notation Bureau (1978-85).