For any dancer who has ever fantasized about becoming the director of his or her own company, UW dance program alumna Nora Stephens returns to Madison to show her young peers it is a dream that can come true with some love and perseverance, a dash of collaboration and an inflatable costume. Four years after graduating from UW, she has established herself in the New York experimental modern dance scene and her choreography is flourishing.
Modern dance, generally speaking, ushered in an expressive element to choreography that is sometimes more introspective than appealing to the audience. Stephens says striking the balance between the choreographer’s own personal creative inclinations and these global themes is often something that works itself out as a dance develops.
“Choreographing and creating dance is a very personal experience, yet at the same time a universal communicative tool. In my creative process, I try to focus in on my own experience, while at the same time [keeping] an awareness of how that is relating to our culture, to our society, to generally … the world.” Stephens further noted she was excited to present the performance in the context of America’s political atmosphere four days after the presidential election and believes with this particularly ubiquitous event fresh in their minds, audiences will perhaps perceive it differently than they had even a week ago.
After moving with her company noranewdanceco from Madison to New York in 2001, Stephens is glad to be back in the city of her alma mater, where she first began to focus her work and attention on dance. Like many college dance program students, she had her doubts as to whether dance was right for her.
“I started dancing in high school, and when I came to Madison I didn’t think I had enough training to pursue it, but … I really didn’t have a choice, and I realized this is what I was supposed to do.”
Stephens graduated from UW with her new company and an Interarts and Technology degree emphasis from the dance program under her belt in 2000. She enjoys exploring choreography for video as a means that “allows us to see movement in myriad ways” and feels it will continue to grow in popularity, but also says, “Live-performance dance will always be able to stand on its own as its own art form.”
She emphasized live dance performance is irreplaceable by video because it is necessarily different each time a person sees it. Though audience members who see a performance a second time often complain, “Oh, I’ve seen this all before. I already know everything that’s going to happen,” Stephens says this is rarely true.
“I hesitate to tie the two (live performance and video) together. I wouldn’t want to say that all of modern dance or experimental dance is going in that direction (toward multimedia), or is dependent on technology. That’s one of the great things about dance and live performance. It’s completely live and completely human.”
Stephens explained that her video work “Minimum Speed of an Explosion” slated for Saturday night was first performed live and made into a video piece for the concert.
“I first taped the dancer and edited it so it became its own separate work,” she said “It’s not just the piece videotaped, it’s a whole different piece. It’s recreated for video … it’s definitely not documentation of the choreography. Actually, a lot of the choreography was changed and redone for the video.”
Collaboration is another important aspect of Stephens’ work, and she works closely with fellow UW graduate Ryan Smith, who did the sound design for three pieces in the concert. Stephens has also studied with John Jasperse, and named choreographers Pina Bausch and Anna Teresa de Keersmacher as two other role models and inspirations to her work.
Stephens spoke about a fascinating costume collaboration with fellow UW dance program graduate Rebecca Davis. At The Old American Can Factory in March, Stephens danced in Davis’ piece wearing an inflatable costume. She agreed that it was certainly a curious experience.
“It was a very difficult piece physically and emotionally … she used the scientific aspect [of what happens when you have the bends], but related that to one woman’s inner psyche sort of unraveling. The movement was very challenging. [The costume] sort of limited my movement sometimes, because there were these bubbles in different parts, but that was the purpose of it. In her (Rebecca Davis’s) work, the costume comes first. It informs the movement. She really works from that place of material inspiration. A lot of her costumes are in my program, including the costume for ‘Minimum Speed of an Explosion.'”
Stephens’ final advice was “to keep making dances … and not worry about what everyone else is doing, or even how you’re going to do it necessarily,” and to not get caught up in what you’re supposed to be doing. Just do what you do. Surely the concert will explain it all.
Stephens’ concert will take place in the Margaret H’Doubler Theater in Lathrop Hall at 8 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 6. It is free to the public and will include the world premiere of “Finding You When,” along with three other pieces. Stephens will also be present at the Dance Friday Forum, 3:30 p.m. this afternoon in the H’Doubler Theater, to speak about her experiences as founder of New York-based company noranewdanceco.
