emily kate long

Dracula, Choreography & Artistic Ownership

October 10, 2012 by Ashley David

by Emily Kate Long

ballet quad cities — Ballet Quad Cities dancers Lauren Derrig, Kelsee Green, Margaret Huling, and Emily Kate Long

Last month I had the opportunity to return to the role of Mina Murray-Harker in Deanna Carter’s Dracula. It was the season opener for Ballet Quad Cities when I joined the company in 2009, and my experience then was radically different from now. The process of re-learning got me thinking about the dancer’s function in the existence of a role. To remember and pass on steps is one thing, but what about the aspect of characterization? We must preserve, but we must also advance. Interpretation and personalization are inherent in live art. How can we go about our work in a way respects the choreographer’s wishes?

Mina was the first real character role I ever danced, and Dracula was the first ballet I ever performed as a full member of a professional company. It was the beginning of my awareness of the huge clash between the academic, black-and-white (or, perhaps more appropriately, black-and-pink) framework I clung to as a student and the messy, splatter-colored, pick-your-own-adventure world of a professional career.

My professional performing experience up to that point had consisted largely of being the third-shortest girl in a line of umpteen in hundred-year-old tutu ballets. Conformity was the order of the day, and I quaked in my pointe shoes at the prospect of sticking out—being noticed usually meant you had done something wrong. We had a saying at Milwaukee Ballet among the trainees: “Know your role and shut your hole.” Great for staying out of trouble, not so great for artistic self-discovery.

I had anticipated that professional life would just be an extension of what I already knew: take class and do as I was told, learn choreography and do as I was told, perform choreography and hope I didn’t get reprimanded afterwards. Feedback or not, there was always the nagging question of whether my work had been good enough. Little did I know that being an artist has a lot more to do with being honest and generous and responsible than about being right by arbitrary standards. [Read more…]

Finding Balance: Dancing Through Summer

August 15, 2012 by 4dancers

The town of Minturn, CO taken on a hike in the mountains

by Emily Kate Long

2012-07-09 to -12 SSDI Fun & Classes 128 — Fun & Classes 128 Partnering class at SSDI (photo credit Susan Blackburn)

As I wrap up my summer travels, I’ve been working to identify a theme for the experiences I’ve had over the past two months. It’s been a summer of learning what to do and what not to do: in the studio as a teacher and student, onstage and in the audience, and in how I interact with other people and with myself. How do I take everything in during class while holding on to what I know works? What about carving out time for physical and mental rest and recuperation? How can I be an open yet critical audience member, and how can I more easily drop personal hang-ups and anxiety to fully experience each moment of performing?

To begin with, a great aid in approaching my physical needs honestly was Dr Linda Hamilton’s most recent book, The Dancer’s Way (St Martin’s Griffin, 2008). Hard science wrapped in compassion and empathy, The Dancer’s Way was a timely reminder that I’m not the machine I’d like to believe. My body—and everyone else’s—needs what it needs, period: fuel and rest. That means sufficient calories, macronutrients, and fluids every day. It means 8-10 hours of sleep each night. It means time each week for restorative activity. It means giving muscles a chance to forget about dancing for a little while and repair themselves every few months, and then giving them enough time to return to a full rehearsal schedule. Put simply, we are people first—physical beings with physical needs that must be acknowledged and met before we can demand anything more of our bodies or minds. The Dancer’s Way is the collection of information I would have loved to have when I was a student, and I plan on sharing a lot of this information with my students.

My strategy this summer was to avoid the trouble of getting back in shape by not planning any rest. Bad move. I would have avoided serious physical and emotional burnout, along with a lot of guilt and self-judgment, if I had just built rest into my schedule to begin with! It’s still a process, but realizing my body can’t take care of itself enabled me to relish being completely immersed in dance all summer.

Being present at two summer intensives (Saratoga Summer Dance Intensive and Vail Valley Dance Intensive) as both a student and a teacher allowed me to analyze every aspect of class. It was wonderful to take multiple classes per day and test endless hypotheses on myself and on others. On an interpersonal level, I got to observe and engage in many different communication styles, classroom organization strategies, and the particular learning processes of different age groups. Being in classes of mixed ability shone light on the importance of teachers’ knowing all the building blocks and progression of technique in order to accommodate students of different levels. [Read more…]

Book Review: The Cranes Dance

April 17, 2012 by 4dancers

by Emily Kate Long

Meg Howrey’s novel The Cranes Dance (Vintage Contemporaries, on sale May 15) is the twisted portrait of New York ballerina Kate Crane, as told from Kate’s point of view. She is funny, stubborn, jaded, guilty. She is a dancer. She has a sister. She lies to herself. She questions her own sanity. She is trying to decide what she wants and who she should be. Even when I didn’t like her, I still liked her because I knew her. Reading this novel, I felt about Kate the way you would feel about your sister or a longtime friend, which is appropriate considering Kate’s love/hate/jealousy/admiration/guardian/saboteur relationship with her younger sister Gwen.

The reader is plopped down right in the middle of what turns out to be a pivotal season in Kate’s career. Howrey opens her novel with a hilariously irreverent description of Swan Lake: “…here we are in the Village Green of Wherever filled with people who like to greet each other maniacally every ten seconds and then in walks Prince Siegfried…” Kate’s description is that of someone who has become disenchanted with ballet’s magic on the one hand but on the other hand cares desperately about her work, although she isn’t always sure why.

We are introduced bit by bit to Kate’s sister Gwen, though Gwen as a character is never fully fleshed out. Kate alludes to Gwen’s final breakdown, at which point Kate feels compelled to call their father to take Gwen back home to Michigan where she is treated for an unidentified psychological condition. As the story progresses (related as Kate’s day-to-day mixed with flashbacks and background information concerning the events leading up to Gwen’s departure) Kate’s world is turned upside down with each discovery she makes about her role in her sister’s breakdown, her own mental state, and whether or not any of her relationships actually matter. [Read more…]

Finding Balance: An Introduction

February 3, 2012 by 4dancers

Today I’d like to give a warm welcome to Emily Kate Long, 4dancers latest contributor. Emily Kate will be writing about “Finding Balance”…something every dancer struggles with in one form or another…

Balance is an integral part of dance: in technique, physical appearance, partnering, staging, casting, injury prevention…and on and on. Balance is what makes dance beautiful, and imbalance is often what keeps the audience on the edge of their seats, tense and excited. In our day-to-day, balance—or the lack of it—can provide comfort, frustration, boredom, serenity, or stress.

Physical imbalance reared its ugly head in my life throughout December and January. After nothing but Nutcracker for November and early December, three weeks of layoff seemed welcome at first. By about day four, though, I was longing for full days of rehearsal again! How was I supposed to keep myself in good shape while still allowing time for recovery?

Two months of promenades on my left leg had not only eaten through pair after pair of pointe shoes, but had also done noticeable damage to the muscles in my hip and calf on the left side. Prevention, correction, and maintenance all played a part in physically rebalancing my body before rehearsals started up again.

Pilates Reformer work was, and continues to be, a really effective way to maintain balance and alignment in my body. It was also useful as a preventive measure. My trainer and I had been working to stay on top of the one-sidedness of classical pas de deux work in weekly sessions during Nut rehearsals, so by the time the run of shows was over I had a repertoire of exercise remedies to practice with her and on my own.

A visit to the chiropractor kicked off the corrective steps. He’s always telling me to reverse one-sided choreography, even if that only means one time reversed for every ten times I dance it. I think there’s validity in that, though in a company of nine dancers with one full-size studio there is not always time or space (or, more often, quite enough self-motivation) to take on that extra project, however small. I did begin doing the left side first for class exercises during the layoff, which was an interesting and helpful experiment.

Long, busy days in the theater meant that I wasn’t able to stretch as much as I would have liked, and dancing on a hard stage meant that I needed it more than usual. So I ended up tighter in general, especially in my hips and lower back. Hot yoga was a nice fix for that. The heat allowed me to stretch more intensely, and the combination of turned-in work and plenty of twisting relieved a lot of the tension that had been living in my back and hips.

Maintenance, in addition to continued Pilates work, involved taking lots of time to do class on my own and really simplify things, going back to the basics and re-examining those steps for quirks that could lead to bigger problems later. I also indulged my love of running outdoors, something that I avoid during rehearsal weeks because of the impact.

Now that rehearsals are back in full swing things are starting to get crazy again—just the way I like them! Full days at the studio plus planning classes and choreography make me really appreciate any opportunity I can find for pastimes—currently, reading Jane Austen and Stephen Manes. But that’s fodder for another post!

BIO: 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. Ms Long attended Milwaukee Ballet School’s Summer Intensive on scholarship before being invited to join Milwaukee Ballet II in 2007. She also has spent summers studying at Saratoga Summer Dance Intensive, Miami City Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, Pittsburgh Youth Ballet, and Ballet Chicago.

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 the title role in Courtney Lyon’s Cinderella and the role of Clara in The Nutcracker. Prior to joining Ballet Quad Cities Ms Long performed with Milwaukee Ballet and MBII in Michael Pink’s The Nutcracker and Candide Overture, Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty and La Bayadére, Balanchine’s Who Cares?, Bournonville’s Flower Festival in Genzano and Napoli, and original contemporary and neoclassical works by Tom Teague, Denis Malinkine, Rolando Yanes, and Petr Zaharadnicek.

The Break-In Saga In Three Chapters – Emily Kate Long

January 5, 2012 by 4dancers

Throughout the month we’ll be hearing a variety of things about pointe shoes–from what they do to the feet, to how they are made. Today we have Emily Kate Long with us to talk about how she breaks in her pointe shoes…

I wear Freed Classic Pro, “Anchor” maker. Since I’m unable to get special order shoes, I do a lot to mine to make them just right.

First things first: ribbons and crisscross elastic go on. I sew the heel ends of the elastics slightly towards the outside of the heel seam so the shoe won’t twist in and sickle. Then the back nail comes out, I bend the shanks and step on each shoe, and they are ready to break in with some releves.

Once the box is a little more pliable, I take a cotton drawstring (stockpiled from when I wore Chacott or borrowed from other dancers; Classic Pro have elastic drawstrings) and twist it into a little rope to sew around the platform of each shoe. I use the wear pattern on the satin to inform the placement of the darning–usually I make it so the stitching pushes me a little farther over the shoe and a little to the inside.

Darning also helps correct any lumps or imperfections on the pleats or platform and quiets the shoes down. I also sew the sides of the shoes down so my foot doesn’t look like it has a turtleneck sweater on. I think pointe shoes should look like a beautiful evening gown, complete with plunging neckline!

Step three: noise control! Loud shoes are my worst nightmare, so I mush up the box more and do lots of changements before I glue them. Then a light coating of glue on the inside, mainly on the pleats and along the shank. Once the glue cures they are ready to go. I usually keep three or four pairs ready: harder for class and classical rehearsals, softer for contemporary work, and one really dead comfy pair for rehearsals that involve a lot of standing around.

About the dancer:

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. Ms Long attended Milwaukee Ballet School’s Summer Intensive on scholarship before being invited to join Milwaukee Ballet II in 2007. She also has spent summers studying at Saratoga Summer Dance Intensive, Miami City Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, Pittsburgh Youth Ballet, and Ballet Chicago.

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