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when they visit their land born and I am
an assistant professor clinicalassistant professor of ethnic rheology
and also the curator for cross culturaldance resources collections at ASU I was
a graduate student at the University ofArizona in Tucson I came there with the
interest of working on solo choreographyand I discovered there was at that time
anywayInteruniversity Arts Fellowship that
would allow me to come up here to ASUand study with Daniel Negron so I
applied for and got it I came up in 1986and worked with him I took kids
Composition course and also his dad jazzdance styles course I ended up doing a
full concert of me performing my ownchoreography so it was a big challenge
big undertaking at that time and I knewthat that was one of his one of the
things he’s famous for his solochoreography and it is an interesting
thing that solo choreography is aspecial challenges to it if you’re
choreographing with a lot of people ifthis part of the stages and that
interesting that’s ok you can dosomething over here you know balance
things out but if you’re a soloistthere’s not really any place else for
the audience to look and you have toreally crafted well you have to know
what you’re doing so so I wanted to gethis input on that for me I kinda entered
into ASU with interloper exactly butjust an outside person who showed up so
compared to the other graduate studentsat ASU I I wasn’t really connected with
what they were doing I was mainlytherefore the composition quarters and
his focus his intensity was very welcometo me I just really wanted that kind of
felt like one-on-one engagement eventhough of course it was a class right
but it was still very intense and veryvery very fruitful I thought there was
oneI was working on at the time and what I
took away from what he had to say aboutthat had to do with not just
representing something in a sort ofpictorial way but making sure that even
if you were representing that that therewas action underneath out that there was
something that happens and I don’t knowhow to explain it any better than that
but it’s but it was very useful becauseI think I was caught up in a more visual
approach at that time and can help mesee some other ways of going about it
and plus in a composition class likethat being able to hear what he had to
say to other students was reallyimportant as well as part of that inter
university Arts Fellowship I set it upso that he would also come down so he
came down to the University of Arizonaand I think what we did was just showing
people came from certainly the lakecampus but also no far and wide but it
was sort of like a lot of peopleconverged for the opportunity to have
him pretty quick they were working on soI think that would that sort of stands
out as a as a special knowledge yeah Iguess I wanna I would want to say
something about how tough he was becauseit was not unheard of for people to
leave his core classes in two yrs youknow you invest so much in a particular
down to particular performance at yourartwork at your heart your soul and then
there he is saying yes but and he couldbe as kind as he wanted to be in saying
but he was also a hard line about it aswell and actually I saw a similar
quality I had the opportunity wants towork with Lucas holding and at the same
generation and they’re just a toughgeneration says they they were there at
the first emergenceof modern dance and contemporary dance
and they have standards they haveexpectations and and understandings I
think of how movement communicates thatsometimes gets lost in the in the flurry
of other other kinds of things yeah Ihave his books and I think I have used
them a little bit but not a lot not alotI i feel like they’re sort of my more of
a personal reference for me I did when Ifirst met him tell him who might very
first modern dance teacher was who wasElizabeth waters who was a soloist with
a high near Hong company and it was kindof fun because he said oh she was my
first teacher too so that was aninteresting connection and and her
approach had a lot of improvisationcoming from the run and hide your home
tradition so I appreciate that aspect ofhis work I never did a lot of
improvisational work with him I alsonewly Connor who did work with him quite
a bit because we Connor was at theUniversity of New Mexico and I’m also
from Mexico’s top jazz before so I was Iwas very interested in and I really
appreciated the emphasis that he putalso on the qualities of it it wasn’t
just do this movement to that movementbut it was really how you did it and
understanding the context of it I tookyour scores his composition class I
think there was only about I’m gonnaguess seven graduate students I think in
that class all of them working ondifferent materials seems like they were
also laws I don’t really remember anygroup works in that in that class which
is interesting and I i don’t know whatto tell you about it he had he wanted
you as the observer you know that you’regonna see this soloist and you’re also
going to have your impressions to sharein conversation with the other students
and he would have everyone close theireyeseyes and then the performer would save
window open them so that was sort of atechnique in this chaotic studio
situation to do you really have somecontrol over first impressions which are
important and some control over how thatwas going to the dance was gonna first
presented itself so I remember thatabout how he worked I took his critiques
on his advice too hard but I can’toverstate I don’t think him as a role
model just for being a solo dance artistbecause that’s really what I didn’t know
what I have been I’ve done a lot ofother solos since then a lot of
performing since then and that has beensomething that I come back to over and
over again as a place where creatively Ican I can do what I really want to do is
sometimes I mean within my own personallimits I guess but working with a group
of people there there’s a lot moregiving take a lot more things that are
not entirely under my control of whatwhatever happens but with a solo I feel
like I can really make sure that thepieces what I wanted to say so I really
grateful for him as a role model to knowthat that’s something a person can do in
the artists be a solo dance artists andI also have shifted from contemporary
into some encode the flamenco dancestyle which is very much about solo
performance and I i guess I could givehim some credit for that too in terms of
role modeland support you know 444 being able to
do that and I saw a recently issomething that mentioned his own Spanish
dance so long I have to go back and findthat haven’t seen it and a lot of what
he was coming from was really theelectrical kind of viability of dances
on stage how is that really gonna workhow are you going to make it workyou think it’s going to work this way
it’s not working and helping you tounderstand how to work through issues
like that