Help! I Think I Want To Quit My Company

April 4, 2014 by Katie Sopoci Drake

Dancer: Eliza Larson
Photographer: Bill Watt

Goodbyes with Grace

by Katie C. Sopoci Drake, MFA, GL-CMA

There comes a time in every dancer’s career where they think about moving on to another company or just away from the company they’re currently in. Or to a desert island where they lie on the beach all day and bartend at night… But there are a few things to keep in mind while you are contemplating the shift:

Why do I want to quit? Is it because I’m unhappy with the company, the dancers, or dancing?

What does my contract look like? If not, do I have a verbal agreement or understanding?

And most importantly, what relationships do I want to foster after my departure?

If I only ever gave one piece of advice to my friends it would be, “Don’t burn your bridges”. Then right after that, I’d say, “Take care of yourself”. The two go hand-in-hand and there’s almost always a way to take care of yourself without burning bridges. Believe me, I’ve learned this all by trial and error through many regional modern dance companies (sorry, no union experience, but “read your contract” will apply doubly, and you could probably safely toss in “talk to your representative” in there too), and hopefully my experience will spare you some of the error!

First, why do you want to move on?

Is it the choreography? Then yes, it’s time to move on. Every company has a mission and a vision that they’ve put a lot of blood, sweat and money into. Try writing an artistic statement of your own, forming a company around it, fighting for funding, and then see if you feel differently about their particular vision. If you find that you are not jiving with the company’s direction, that’s probably not something that is going to change until you’re in a new company.

In this case, you should be able to have a conversation with your director about your interests and they may be able to suggest avenues to investigate. Just be careful how you use your words. Make sure you steer the focus onto your interests and away from their choreography. After all, there’s an audience for everyone, and someday you may be facing a young dancer who “isn’t interested” in what you’re creating.

That being said, you did make a commitment to the company and they are putting oodles of time, effort and money into you, so look at your remaining commitments as a time to grow and expand your range of appreciation.

Is it the way you are being cast? That could be your own problem. My first inclination is to suggest sticking it out for a couple of seasons to see if you can’t improve your standing over time. If this is an ongoing problem over many seasons, it’s time to have a conversation with your director about your future in the company. They may not see you in a leading role…ever.

Is it the dancers? Are they just awful to be around? Are any of them planning on moving on? You might outlast them. On the other hand, the dancers ARE the company. Weigh your options carefully, you might consider getting advice from your director, or another person removed from the company dancers. They can help you figure out your options as well as gauge the current company climate against the whole history of the company.

Is it you? Some dancers just need a break. You might be there. Are you finding that you have the same problems no matter what company you are in? Are you consistently unhappy whether you’re dancing for your company or guesting? In rehearsal or in class? You might need to turn your attention to just training, just making work or your own, going back to school, or shifting your focus entirely, even if it is just for a couple of months.

You’ve decided to leave. So, what do you need to do?

Check in with yourself. Have you identified why really want to leave? What does that tell you about your future options? Write down those goals and what people you’ll need to reach out to to accomplish them.

Check your contract. Read it 10 times. Then have a friend read it and tell you what you’re missing. Figure out the minimum and maximum you need to do to fulfill your contract and have it at the ready for your next conversation.

Check in with your Director. Or the level of administration that is directly above your position. Talking with them first, before rumors get around will let them know that they are your first priority and leave the conversation open-ended. Then schedule a follow-up check-in. This is important. You need to let them know that you haven’t made any final decisions before you’ve gotten their opinion and had time to process it. They’re putting their resources into you now (no matter your personal feelings towards them), so the least you can do is show deference.

Assess your options. Get a second opinion from other professionals who can be discreet. Their experience and inside knowledge of the dance community can be invaluable. Every dance company and history is unique. Use that history to help you make a graceful exit.

Talk to your allies. These are the people who you will actively keep in contact with. You may want to dance with them, for them, or work with them in another capacity in the future, but that won’t happen without a little work on your part. We dancers are busy. It’s amazing how much we rely on rehearsal time to be the glue for relationships.

But, don’t talk to them about “that rotten so-and-so.” Here’s where the bad blood may come in. I have committed the sin of talking too much many a time. Don’t you do the same. Focus on the good, and remember, less is best. Tell your family and your trusted bestie about “that rotten so-and-so,” but don’t tell your coworkers.

After you’re gone, thank everyone for their time regardless of your personal feelings. I know, you had a terrible time and feel like a jilted lover. Well, pull up your superhero Underoos, and make sure that people know that you know that you appreciated the resources that were expended for you. The dance world isn’t the corporate world, it’s a family, and every show is Christmas. Don’t make Aunt Mary regret the time she spent knitting that horrid sweater for you. Just send her a freaking thank-you card. It’s just how we do things.

Contributor Katie C. Sopoci Drake, MFA, GL-CMA, is a Washington D.C. based professional dancer, choreographer and teacher specializing in Laban-based contemporary dance. Holding an MFA in Dance from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a Graduate Certification in Laban Movement Analysis from Columbia College – Chicago, and a BA in Theatre/Dance with a minor in Vocal Performance from Luther College, Sopoci Drake continues to take classes in as many techniques and practices as she can handle to inform her work and life as a curious mover.

Katie Sopoci Drake Photo by Scott Pakudaitis — Katie Sopoci Drake
Photo by Scott Pakudaitis

Katie has been on faculty at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Nova Southeastern University, Miami Dade College-Wolfson, Miami Dade College-Kendall, Carthage College, and Lawrence University. She currently guest teaches and gives masterclasses around the D.C. area and wherever her travels take her.

As a performer, Sopoci is described as a “sinuous, animal presence of great power; watching her dance is a visceral experience.” (Third Coast Digest). Company credits include Mordine and Company Dance Theater of Chicago, Momentum Dance Company of Miami, Wild Space Dance Company of Milwaukee, and Rosy Simas Danse of Minneapolis. Katie has also made appearances an an independent artist with many companies including Brazz Dance, Your Mother Dances, The Florentine Opera, and The Minnesota Opera.

Katie’s choreography, described as “a beautiful marriage between choreography, music and poetry” (On Milwaukee), arises from her fascination with the idiosyncrasies of daily life, and the flights of fancy that arise from ordinary inspirations. Her work has been performed by numerous companies, colleges and studios across the country and her latest collaboration, Telephone Dance Project, will take her to states up and down the East Coast while investigating long-distance creation and connecting far-flung dance communities.

10 “Must Do’s” For Dancers In A New City

February 7, 2014 by Katie Sopoci Drake

by Katie C. Sopoci Drake

I’ve moved around a lot and boy has it taken a toll. It takes skill to land in a new city and hit the ground running, and considering I’ve lived in 6 states in 13 years, I’ve certainly had my fair share of stumbles. As my mother says, “You shouldn’t move to a new city unless you have a job waiting for you”, but we all know that life takes you where it wants, when it wants. I’ve moved because I had a job, because my husband had a job, because I’d hope I’d get a job, and because I just needed a change in a big way.

Whatever your reason for finding yourself in a new city, know that it’s hard and that you’ll be practically starting over in a career that is based on your known reputation. Now it’s time to pull up your big-girl/boy tights, put on your game-face, and be really, really patient all over again. Since it’s still considered gauche to have your resume printed on your leotard, here are some things I’ve learned along the way that will help you to hop into your new city’s dance scene as fast as possible: [Read more…]

Finding Balance: Transitions In A Dance Career

January 5, 2014 by 4dancers

by Emily Kate Long

A career in dance is full of transitions of all kinds…the exhilarating first leap from student to professional, the lapse between seasons, and the final (or in some cases, not so final) move from dance to another career. Some of these emotional transitions happen smoothly and with grace, some are rocky and uncertain.

Hearing my older friends’ stories of professional life when I was still a student put stars in my eyes, but it also made me wonder if I would be tough enough to handle a professional career. Since landing a job, I’ve seen friends transition from the stage to take on other pursuits. I’ve also been lucky enough to see some of my students enter the field and give it everything they’ve got. All that inspires me to make the most of every moment I’m given to dance. In this first Finding Balance post of 2014, change is the focus: in life, in habits, in attitude. Happy New Year!

Let’s start with a big one: landing that first job. The amazing thing about an occupation that flies by so quickly is that there’s no reason not to get the most out of every single second of it. That’s an incredible opportunity, and a huge challenge. Every moment wasted is a moment that you—or someone else—could be getting closer to the job or role you want. Five short years into my career, I sometimes catch myself forgetting that competitive hunger. It’s one thing that helped get me from wanting a job to having one, and I never want that to change about my dancing. What has changed now that I’m out of the scramble of trainee-ships and endless auditions is the extent to which the responsibility to stay eager falls on the individual. The more experience and freedom I gain, the more I realize there is to explore inside myself as an artist, and in movement and performance in the broader sense, if I’m willing to go for it.

Another thing the past five years have taught me is how and when to back off, something that’s hard for most dancers to do. Work—especially work that feels like play—is easy to get lost in. Both in my professional dance life and here on 4dancers, I’ve had the privilege to do work I love. I’ve also had to make the tough choice to put on the brakes sometimes, whether it’s staying out of the studio and resting my body, or posting less frequently to give my ideas time to take shape. Bodies don’t last forever, but I hope not to wear mine out for a long time yet.

Wendy Whelan, Photo by Christopher Duggan

The expenditure of one’s body, emotions, and nerves, or simply the decision to change one’s focus in life, are all reasons dancers choose to retire. It seems such a personal and difficult choice, whether a dancer stops at age twenty-five or age forty-five. Some dancers retire from full-time work but still perform occasionally; some leave the field altogether; still others bring up the next generation of artists as directors, teachers, or coaches. Wendy Whelan is one great example of an older dancer continuing to explore performance in ways other than classical ballet.

This article on Career Transition for Dancers makes an interesting point about second careers: they may not—in fact, probably won’t—provide the same degree of fulfillment as dancing, and that’s ok. That’s why dance was the first choice.

“And here, in essence, was the pill that many retiring dancers find hardest to swallow, and that Career Transition is nearly alone in dispensing: the sober recognition that, at least momentarily, a dancer might need to stop expecting a new line of work to match the deep fulfillment of professional dance.”

This line captures the feeling that hits me big time whenever I’m on a break from rehearsals and performance. There is just nothing that gets me going like dancing does, so it’s hard to take a rest even though I know it’s good for me. I guess some things really don’t change over the course of a dancer’s career, even after retirement!

dancer doing arabesque — Emily Kate Long, Photo by Avory Pierce

Assistant Editor Emily Kate Long began her dance education in South Bend, Indiana, with Kimmary Williams and Jacob Rice, and graduated in 2007 from Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School’s Schenley Program. She has spent summers studying at Ballet Chicago, Pittsburgh Youth Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, Miami City Ballet, and Saratoga Summer Dance Intensive/Vail Valley Dance Intensive, where she served as Program Assistant. Ms Long attended Milwaukee Ballet School’s Summer Intensive on scholarship before being invited to join Milwaukee Ballet II in 2007.

Ms Long has been a member of Ballet Quad Cities since 2009. She has danced featured roles in Deanna Carter’s Ash to Glass and Dracula, participated in the company’s 2010 tour to New York City, and most recently performed principal roles in Courtney Lyon’s Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and Cinderella. She is also on the faculty of Ballet Quad Cities School of Dance, where she teaches ballet, pointe, and repertoire classes.

Finding Balance: Expectations And Dance

November 18, 2013 by 4dancers

by Emily Kate Long

My last Finding Balance post discussed balance and alignment in the physical sense. I talked about how misalignments in the body can bring about sensory dissonance. In this post, I’ll look a different kind of alignment and dissonance: when our expectations of ourselves don’t line up with our work. Today I want to share some items that are not dance-specific, but very readily apply to the setting, meeting, and letting go of our expectations.

Labors of love come with high expectations, and high expectations demand a high workload. Dancers know this. Anyone who pursues art for a living knows this. The rewards can be huge, so the work is not easy. The first treasure I have to share is a list of ten rules for students, teachers, and life by Sister Mary Corita Kent, an artist and educator who gained reknown in the 1960s and 1970s. Merce Cunningham kept a copy of these rules in his studio. They are well worth hanging. Here’s the full list, from Kent’s Learning by Heart:

Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for a while
General duties of a student: pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students
General duties of a teacher: pull everything out of your students
Consider everything an experiment
Be self-disciplined—this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail, only make
The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all f the time who eventually catch on to things.
Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.
Be happy whenever you can manage it. It’s lighter than you think.
“We’re breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.” John Cage

Hints: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything—it might come in handy later.

This list sums up just about everything needed to pursue excellence. What I really love about it is the emphasis on allowing room for errors and questions, and leaving no stone unturned.

As a complement to Kent’s list, and to illustrate a challenge I and many other dancers face, I also want to share Sheri LeBlanc’s essay, “The Perfectionist Dilemma.” In it, LeBlanc sensitively teases apart excellence pursuit and perfectionism, which, as she puts it, are similar only as far as the results each can produce. One gives us a healthy relationship with our efforts and achievements, while the other sets up for feelings of failure and inadequacy, no matter what we achieve. Expecting perfection from ourselves or from anyone around us automatically misaligns expectation with outcome.

What we have so far are guidelines for the pursuit of excellence, and thoughts on the damaging effects of perfectionism. My third offering is a tool to help us let go of our attachments to any unreasonable expectations we may have of ourselves. If our creative work is inherently experimental, as Sister Corita’s list suggests, it requires us to throw out unsuccessful outcomes continually. If it is to be enjoyable, it requires us to experience our successes as fully as we can. A talk by Matthew Brensilver on clinging and letting go from Zencast gives a ton of insight on letting go of beliefs, identities, and the need to be right. It’s a forty-minute, free podcast that I highly recommend. To summarize wouldn’t do it justice, but the angle he takes is the Buddhist teaching that all things and states of being are impermanent, so all can be let go when they don’t align with the present moment. I feel that approach is apt for dance, a living art.

The final item I want to share is an episode of Radiolab (another podcast) that provides a thoughtful and humorous look at misalignment of expectations in history. “Musical Language” takes a look at what happens between the ears and the brain when we hear unfamiliar or dissonant noises. I’m including it here because it features, at around 26 minutes in, the legendary riot at the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. The whole episode has to do with how the brain orders unfamiliar sounds and looks for patterns. I think there’s a parallel here for the way we try to make sense of our bodies and physical capabilities each day, or seek patterns to learn new movement. It’s also pretty funny to listen to, if you need a short science break to liven up your day.

Readers, I hope these four treats provide some new perspective on the subject of measuring up to expectations. They are thoughtful, entertaining, playful, stark, challenging—words that also describe the artist’s work.

Three Training “Jewels” For Dancers

July 11, 2013 by 4dancers

by Emily Kate Long

I was reminded recently of a Zen saying about the three “jewels” of training: great faith, great doubt, and great effort. None of these attributes alone is enough to make an artist—all three must work together in harmony. This month’s post is a look at what happens when the three elements fall out of balance and ways to restore them.

Call it a rut, call it a plateau, call it a crisis—every artist has been in one. It can be as minor as a bad class or as major as utter creative paralysis lasting weeks or more. Whatever the extent, the feelings of being stuck, going backwards, or wandering aimlessly are frustrating. Frustration often begets negative self-talk, and negativity is anything but productive! What’s a dancer to do? Checking in with each of the three jewels is a great place to start when trying to get out of a stuck place.

Every dancer (heck, every person) has strengths and weaknesses. Some dancers love to examine technique but have a hard time opening up onstage. Some are natural performers but find it difficult to pick up or master steps. Yet, an artist needs a well-rounded set of skills, and he or she needs to be able to call on those skills as required. The good news is that we can tap into creativity systematically. We don’t have to be at the mercy of the muse…it just takes a little self-knowledge and self-listening.

Let’s examine the makeup of the three Zen jewels and how each can work in the dancer’s life.

Goodbyes with Grace

First, why do you want to move on?

You’ve decided to leave. So, what do you need to do?

Great Faith [Read more…]

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