Dance Unscripted

Ep: 11 The Importance of Dance Preservation and Archiving with Meg Brooker

• Season 1 • Episode 11

Share episode

In this episode of Dance Unscripted, host Amy Elizabeth engages with dance artist and scholar Meg Brooker, exploring the rich history and evolution of modern dance, particularly focusing on the contributions of Isadora Duncan and Florence Fleming Noyes. The conversation delves into the significance of preserving dance history, the role of gender in dance representation, and the integration of somatic practices in dance training. Meg shares insights on how somatic methods can cultivate resilience and enhance creative expression, emphasizing the importance of allowing dancers to connect with their bodies and the larger community through movement.

Season One of Dance Unscripted is brought to you by a grant from the Lamar University Center for Resiliency.

Meg's Links:

Social Media - @duncandancesouth, @usmdance

Website - www.duncandancesouth.org

Send us a text

Amy Elizabeth:

Welcome to Dance Unscripted. I am your host, Amy Elizabeth. On this episode, we are joined by Meg Brooker. Meg is a dance artist, scholar, and university administrator holding an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA from Yale. As a professor and director of the School of Performing and Visual Arts at the University of Southern Mississippi, Meg is a dance maker and performer with a history of interdisciplinary collaborations. She is a direct lineage Isidore Duncan dancer and has taught and performed Duncan works throughout the United States, Europe, and Russia while presenting her own creative work as Duncan Dance South. Meg is also a founder of the Isadora Duncan International Symposium. Her current scholarship frames noise rhythm as an early 20th century somatic practice. She received a national endowment of the Humanities Preservation Assistance Grant for her work with Noise School of Rhythm Arts. I am looking forward to understanding more about the foundation of early dance practices and somatic dance as a practice for training resilience. Specifically, the early modern dance practice noise rhythm developed by Florence Fleming Noise. Meg, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. Oh, hi,

Meg Brooker:

Amy Elizabeth. It's so great to be here. I'm looking forward to talking with you.

Amy Elizabeth:

Yes. So your historic preservation work is commendable. Thank you for helping to maintain and share the legacy of Isadora Duncan and earlier others. So for those listening who may not know Isadora Duncan, can you give a brief history of her contribution to modern dance practices?

Meg Brooker:

Absolutely. So Isadora Duncan is actually most famous for her death. So people may know that story. She's the one who had the scar in the convertible and had a very famous and a very tragic death. But there was a lot that she contributed during her life. And I first got really interested in her when I was living and dancing in New York City and pursuing a path for what my creative unfoldment was going to be. And I found the Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation and studied and trained trained for many years with with Lori Bella Love. I was so Isadora Duncan. taking a step back. So, so Isadora Duncan's contributions to dance history are pretty, are pretty broad. Many people consider her to be a modern dance pioneer. Sometimes she's referred to as a mother of modern dance. She was one of the first concert dancers to look at bringing subject matter from her own life into her artwork. She made dances that reflected joy that It reflected grief. And she really created work in a way that enabled audiences to actually identify with the performer on stage. And that was a big move away from ballets that were more romantic or escapist in nature. She was really bringing real-life subject matter to the stage. And she worked a lot with breath. She took her... She took off the ballet shoes. So she's very famous for being the silk tunic draped barefoot dancer. She looked back to ancient Greek ideas about performance. She looked back to ancient Greek artwork and studied the line and shape of the body and Renaissance art and developed a pretty specific movement technique based on her study of what she was looking for as kind of quote unquote natural movement. So she was really interested in developing a dance practice that was, she wouldn't have used this language at the time, but that had, you know, kinesiological anatomical integrity to it. And that was enabling artists, dancers to express through movement, through danced movement, the experience of being alive, the full range of human experience and expression.

Amy Elizabeth:

Yeah. So what drew you to this work? Like you said, you're there in New York, you're experimenting, you're kind of learning what path you want to take. So what was it that drew you to this?

Meg Brooker:

I was tired of waiting for somebody else to discover me as a performer. For real. I was in my early 20s. I also had a lot of theater training. I was going to a lot of auditions. And I wanted to take control of my own creative agency. And I had never given her a second thought as a figure from dance history. Most of what I knew about her, I thought she was just an improviser, that she was kind of a really inspirational historical figure who hadn't really left a specific body of work behind. And I was thinking of artists who had carved their own pathway and really created their own work. And And so I had a moment, in all honesty, walking down the street near Union Square where there's a big Barnes & Noble and I kind of stopped in my tracks and Isidore Duncan's name popped into my head and I walked straight into the Barnes & Noble. I purchased my life. There was a new biography by a man named Peter Kurth that had just been released. This is in the early 2000s and it was on display. So I bought those two books. I got on the subway, started reading She was the first dancer that I had ever encountered who talked about having a reason to move, that dance was not just road exercise, but that it was a physical manifestation of an expressive impulse. And that spoke to me. And so I was lucky enough to live in New York. I Googled Isadora Duncan and I found Lori Bellalove and the Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation. And within six months, I was a full-time Duncan dancer, which was great. I used to tell people I skip for a living.

Amy Elizabeth:

It is buoyant, that is for sure. The Duncan technique has a very lovely buoyancy about it. And referencing kind of what you mentioned and your perception of Isadora Duncan and her contribution, I feel as if that was similar to what I was taught, is that she was categorized as a forerunner for modern dance. She was the first to do these things that kind of fall in line with modern dance, but she didn't codify a technique. And so the... the modern dance pioneers are those categorized that formalize the technique. It's about this. This can be repeated over and over again and kind of sit down. And so I'm curious, can you speak a little bit to that as you talk about a lineage?

Meg Brooker:

Yeah.

Amy Elizabeth:

And so what is the difference between this codified technique and what Isadora offers?

Meg Brooker:

Well, you know, that's a really good question. But Yeah, absolutely. Mm-hmm. artist to strengthen the argument that she contributed something real and lasting. So training and the work from a technique perspective, there is, you know, her work has a lot of sequential movement. We work with a high center. She talks a lot about the solar plexus. We often guide or cue anatomically from the base of the sternum, the top of the diaphragm. We're working with breath. And so that is the center of the body. where most of Isadora's movement vocabulary is initiated from. And so there is a training practice that has been passed down that even includes bar work. But there are also a lot of dancers who have cross-trained in other movement forms to supplement the dancing. And in Isadora's schools, the students who she trained, all of the development of their body as a physical instrument didn't just come from dancing. They also did a lot of the other physical movement practices, like the Swedish gymnastics. There were many other body training practices that were part of the physical culture movement of the early 20th century. So they were developing an instrument and they were dancing and that was a cross-training model. There's one other piece of your question, though, that's really interesting to me. And I think that the generation of teachers who I've worked with were really strongly trying to say, Isadora wasn't just an improviser. She had technique. And that's also based on this idea that technique and improvisation live in two different worlds. With my generation of dance makers and practitioners, we've really created more context for understanding that there is also technique to improvisation. And so part of my practice and my pedagogy and the way that I teach and work with university-age students within these early modern practices is also a lot through the improvisation. So the imagery that gets handed down that supports the intention of the movement that is also rich from an improvisational landscape is a huge part of what I would consider to be the legacy of being a dancer within Isadora Duncan's technique

Amy Elizabeth:

and I would say in my in my training and in my experience as as a professor I actually teach improvisation we have an improvisation class and it's for our theater and dance emphasis and we consider it a seminar it does it does it's not I mean it's an addition to what we consider and we classify as technique I find this very fascinating now I do know that I have incorporated because I also teach modern dance and I incorporate improvisational aspects into it but I do I do see these things and they have been introduced to me in my practice as influential to one another and yet separate so that's a new idea that I had not considered before intriguing to me but I'm going to hesitate from getting stuck right there that could be its own topic. It can be. It can be. So why do you think preservation, history, and archiving are important work in the dance field?

Meg Brooker:

Oh, well, I mean, you know, we all talk about the ephemerality of dance, right? So that, you know, dance lives in time and it lives in space. So how to, and there's a human impulse to capture, to record, to hold on to, you know, the evidence, the trace of that experiential moment. I, you know, loved the idea in dance practice of the body being an archive. So I think that the sense of oral and embodied history that we have as dancers, that what my body memory retains from the training that I've gotten from my teachers, that I'm then passing on to my students, to future generations, that sort of continuity of information, I think is also really important. And then also understanding that's filtered through the lens of everybody's individual experience. So, you know, with regard to, you know, I also love history. I think that, you know, as an artist, or, you know, as a person in any kind of discipline, to know what questions people have asked before you, what experiences, what conclusions they've arrived at, what verbal They have tried to use to describe experience. Photographs, if photography existed. Films, certainly, if that's a medium that existed at the time to capture any information. Those are all really valuable resources for better understanding what the artists were originally doing. And it also gives us information for, you know, how we might, you know, how to, and I'm going to pause on this just a little. taking a step back because I think that the work that I'm doing isn't just historical where it would live in the past and history, living practices. And so the archival information also gives us an important perspective on how those practices change over time. That is also something that I've looked at. And for how contemporary generations who are practicing these work This work that originated a century ago. What are the questions that were being asked then? What are questions that were being asked now? What's the relationship between this practice and our contemporary cultural, social context? And how can these practices be relatable to people now in a way that's bringing what's unique and important and Yes, forward.

Amy Elizabeth:

That's the word that kept coming to mind when I was listening is this idea of forward motion and that the study of the past is what helps us to move forward. Yes. to inspire us now absolutely but I think also too the second thing that came to my mind is this idea of questioning and how recognizing that the questions of now are not necessarily different from the questions that happened in the past. So what are the recurring questions? What are the recurring themes? And if they are recurring, are we actually moving, learning, and growing from them? What is the role of the questions that we are processing in that moment? That's

Meg Brooker:

such a great thought. And I mean, just, you know, a few, you know, topics and some of this could be food for thought for later as well. But, you know, with regard to both Isadora Duncan's Dance Legacy and Florence Fleming Noyes, whose work I've been deeply invested in for almost as long as I've been in the Duncan work, you know, the question, you know, the idea of gender, you know. Whose body is the dancing body in this dance? What does that communicate to an audience? What does that represent? Isadora spent a lot of her time writing and thinking about freeing the woman's body from the constraints of the Victorian corset and the metaphor of that being free expression. We're in an interesting context now. We could have a whole other conversation around that. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. towards a performance output. Those are also big themes in the work of both of these dancers.

Amy Elizabeth:

Yeah. I will publicly admit my shortcomings. I would be remiss if I didn't begin with my own understanding and knowledge regarding early somatic dance and practitioners. I am sad to say, as an instructor of dance history, that I've never heard of Florence swimming noise. So can we begin with a little background on Florence and how you became familiar with this practice? Because I don't feel as if she's as readily known as Isadora Duncan is in the dance history world.

Meg Brooker:

Absolutely. And you're not alone. And that's been a big kind of thrust of my work as a dance academic has been to try to create more visibility for Florence Fleming Noyes. And what she created and also to bring her out of Isadora's shadow. They lived at the same time, but their practices don't have a direct relationship. The only relationship really is that they were both influenced by the work of Delsart, which would probably also be another topic. So Florence Fleming Noyes, she was a dancer, a performer. who also lived at the turn of the 20th century. She was born in 1871. She actually was college educated. She studied at Emerson College of Oratory with Charles Wesley Emerson. She studied Del Sartre there as well. So she was a woman of that, you know, late 1800s. who was also really looking at creating an independent and public performance career and teaching career and profile. So she was... I'm pausing just a little bit so I don't get too... So Florence Fleming Noyes studied at the Emerson College of Oratory, and she also studied with a woman named Lucia Gale Barber. And she was tapped by Mrs. Barber to... I'm going to pause that one. Sorry. There's too much for me to say in response to this. Okay, hold on just a second. Let me just get more of the, like, you're not reading a whole book that I haven't published yet. So, Amy, Elizabeth, you are not alone in not knowing who Florence Fleming Noyes was. She's another early 20th century dancer who lived at the same time as Isadora Duncan. There was not a relationship between their schools. And she actually studied at the Emerson College of Oratory. So she was trained in Delsarte there. She also studied with a woman named Lucia Gale Barber, who very interestingly taught Alice Bentley, who later taught Margaret Dubler. So there's context for the work that she was doing within some larger narratives of more known dance history. What Florence Noyes did that was really unique and interesting, she established a school in New York City in 1912, and she had branch schools at the height of her career up to 12 major U.S. cities. She was bringing this movement practice to You know, two dancers and there was a noise group. They did professional performance work. But she also was really interested in creating a school that wasn't only about training dancers. There was work for children. There was work for adult women. There was work for men. So she had this very broad-based approach to really bringing this movement practice forward that had what they were also framing at the time as psychological benefits. was within the context of the progressive education movement. She and her dancers and teachers attended progressive education conferences. But she also bought property in Connecticut in 1919. And the reason her school still exists is because she purchased this 100-acre property 10 years before Tad Sean purchased Jacob's Pillow. And they knew each other. They were in the same landscape. I've got archival documentation that they crossed paths, but she purchased this property called Shepherds Nine as the summer home of her school. And the way that the school worked, there were teachers who were teaching in these branch studios all across the United States, and then they would come back to this property in Connecticut and live and dance and create together during the summer. And so she Her technique is called noise rhythm. And in her movement practice, we're also similar to Duncan drawing on nature imagery, drawing on ancient Greek mythological imagery. But her work is really taught all through imagery. So there's an open air studio on the property. We work with all live piano music. It's an incredibly transformational space to be able to spend time in a retreat capacity in nature and to be in this very image-driven practice that really also invites the practitioners to look at nature, to observe nature, to learn from how growth is happening in the natural landscape, and to really deeply kind of take in the sort of rhythms of growth, renewal, and transformation of matter through natural processes. All of that's embedded in her work and in the teaching.

Amy Elizabeth:

So speaking to the elemental forces that noise rhythms utilizes, how does this enable movers to feel or process those dynamic energies? And I believe in our prep work, the word depersonalized and to do this, to feel and process dynamic energies in a depersonalized way. So can Can you talk a little bit about what these dynamic energies are? What do we mean by depersonalized?

Meg Brooker:

So in the noise work, it was important to her that the dancers and the movers get out of their heads. And what she would say is shed or drop off personality, drop off the personal. And I think that there's a way in which this is, Also in the somatic space, it's a dance somatic practice. There was a performance component, but it's not necessarily about performing. And there's also a deep part of the work that's about this idea of group movement and connecting to other movers in space and connecting to something that is larger than one individual person. So the dropping off of the personal would be similar to kind of letting go of the idea of the ego. It's letting go of the part of the personality that is attached to its own individual desires and wants. She talks a lot about letting go of the will and dropping off a sense of willfulness in a way that would be kind of grasping for something that would be held just for one individual. So there's a way in which it also works with physics. So there's the idea of instead of working with the body, even as a human body, if you let the body just be, and she wouldn't necessarily have talked about this in quite this way either, but just be matter. She talks a lot about the idea of we're moving into imagery that might have a cosmic relationship. It's thinking about lines of energy. We have have a long center line. We talk about the body as units and spaces. We feel into the body and feel into just a vertical alignment sense as units and spaces. That we talk about as an axis of being. There's a horizontal axis that extends. You put your arms out to the side, you would feel it. That's an axis of doing. In the kind of philosophy of her practice, we're dropping off the doing, which might even be the over-efforting, so that we can rest in the being or in what she would talk about as kind of like the natural intelligence that the body if we're getting out of our minds if we're not trying to overly place ourselves as dancers that there's we're feeling into that deep somatic knowledge that the body is going to find a healthy and effective alignment and that's in a very simple place but Yeah.

Amy Elizabeth:

Okay. So noise rhythm is described as a somatic method that cultivates resilience and strengthens participants' abilities to withstand change. So can you, for our audience, describe or define what you mean by a somatic method?

Meg Brooker:

Absolutely. And I'll also say that I've been bringing this term somatics kind of forward to my older teachers in the noise community. In the noise rhythm work, there's actually a term that we use that is really kind of cool and I love, which is sentiency. And the idea of sentiency is this sense of kind of the aliveness of organic matter, the aliveness of all living things. And one of my older teachers, when I started using somatics, actually said to me, you know, why are you trying to make us like everybody else? We're, you know, like, like, Like, you know, what's wrong with sentiency? And I was like, well, you know, there's nothing wrong with sentiency and sentiency is incredible. And, you know, my work has been to bring context for the noise rhythm work so that more people are aware of it. But this idea of sentiency, of aliveness, I think is really important. And then with regard to resilience. In the noise work, we teach a class structure that... that we talk about as a three-part class, and we look at it as the whole, the parts, and the whole. Within the structure of that class, there are two deep rest opportunities that are, you know, there's a whole and a deep rest. There's a technique piece that happens in the middle and another deep integrative rest. And then there's another whole that has a feeling of a send-off. Our nature imagery often draws on big, Big elemental forces. There might be a huge rainstorm or a volcanic eruption or glaciers that are melting. It's not always that dramatic. But in that space where we think about transformation of matter that does happen through natural processes in the environment, then there can be a letting go of attachment to one shape or one experience. Just, you know, one simple example might be a pile of leaves. Maybe we have a big windstorm and fall, and then the pile of leaves is disintegrating and becoming earth. And so for the participants to go through this sort of image-led experience in a deeply restful way, you can let go of that element of matter, and then there's room, there's space for There's something new to come through. that you couldn't have, that is coming from a deeply creative part of your consciousness. And then you allow that new creative impulse to unfold. So we talk a lot about this idea of allowing or following. We are training that experience and putting our bodies and our nervous systems through the experience of being able to let something go and then allow something new to come through. And from my perspective, I think that that it's actually a technology, a training practice for developing resilience, for being able to go through an experience that that is a lot of effort or energy behind it and to allow the body to find stillness and deep rest and then and to allow something else to come and to move forward. So we're training the ability to come back from that kind of deep dynamic experience and to be able to trust that. And I think that it creates strength, it creates endurance in a flexible, adaptable way. I think it's a tremendous gift that that practice has.

Amy Elizabeth:

Yeah, I'm just thinking about moments in my life my life in practical terms of moments where because most of the time you don't think in a moment I need to employ my resilience now no no We don't really have that. I don't have the wherewithal to say this is going to need resilience. But looking back on those moments and thinking, I felt resilience in that moment. I was able to get through this through a sense of resilience, perseverance. And so... Because there's not really a conscious effort. What I'm connecting with is the ability to stay present and or go deeper. And being able to take that pause to allow... more grounded thinking for forward motion. The ability to step out of that moment, because a lot of times that high energy, that dynamic situation is happening. And so it almost, it seems like a mental exercise and being able to pause and take a deep breath, recognize that it's just a dynamic moment. There is another space that I can go into. And if I can go into that space, then that will help me in my forward motion. That's how I'm interpreting that.

Meg Brooker:

to do. But I think if we, by going through that process in this deeply creative kind of image-driven way, you know, in a space that is safe, right? It's a movement class with, you know, people who are welcoming and inclusive. So to be able to have that experience of having, you know, an extreme experience, letting it go, And then really allowing some kind of new unfoldment come through that you're not predicting that we then build up the endurance for in order to be able to do that, you know, quote unquote real life in the outside world when something happens because you've been through that process so many times. And so, you know, I do think that in my administrative work, I've I feel like these practices are something that have prepared me to to, you know, withstand, you know, stress in a work environment. There's all kinds of application of of that that skill and that experience and other kinds of contexts.

Amy Elizabeth:

Yeah. So let's speak of other kinds of context of context. And what I'm thinking about now is that you were a are. what we would consider a traditionally trained dancer that then found her way to this new way of thinking and new approach and right now you're in a higher education experience training dancers and As I mentioned earlier, in my higher education experience, technique is something separate. It is something different. And so how do these two ideas of what we will, for the purpose of this conversation, classify as traditional technique versus this more somatic approach work? What is the relationship like for the dancer, for the student that you're working with? I'm going to stop there.

Meg Brooker:

That's a really great question, too. So, you know, I'll say, I mean, I have I've taught noise rhythm as as a somatic practice as part of a dance curriculum that then it's, you know, considered one of those more supplemental courses.

Amy Elizabeth:

Yeah.

Meg Brooker:

I also bring some of the vocabulary and the alignment principles from the noise rhythm work into how I would teach my sort of traditional ballet class and my traditional modern class. The modern application is easier because we've got a lot of technique exercises that follow developmental movement principles that are very, very similar to the Barteneff work. And so there are many modern dancers who are bringing Bartonia fundamentals into how they shape and structure, especially in a, in a warmup space, a modern dance class. And so, and so there, there are, and we have a technique, we have a technique book for noise. There's technique books for Isadora's work too. So I, you know, that's a literal way that I bring it in, but I'll say, you know, I bring the noise rhythm vocabulary into how I teach my ballet class. And, and this also has to do with just, just a very, And I think the dancers respond to it, I think, because it's an invitation for them to feel into their own body structure and to figure out how to meet the aesthetic of a dance style that a more external aesthetic and a way that is integrated and connected sort of in their own body. But one specific way that I have actually talked talked about at ballet classes is instead of focusing so much on correcting from the pelvis or the shoulders and the rib cage and the noise work, we consider the core, the middle of the body and our vocabulary of units and spaces, it's the fifth unit. And we talk a lot about strength at the fifth and the fullness of the fifth and being full in the back of the fifth. So when I do some work with those students that is, you know, in a sort of core strengthening way that enables them, instead of maybe moving the pelvis forward, filling up how to move the back of the fifth unit back. So I'm sometimes adjusting from that space in a way that can bring some deep integration and connection between the upper body and the lower body. So, you know, I have found that most of the dancers that I've brought this work to, you know, enjoy it because there's also, if I teach them a traditional class, it's fun. You don't have to worry about what you're thinking, you know, what you look like. There's, there's, there's some agency that they get to develop in terms of owning their own experience as a dancer. I actually had a student one time. This is funny. When I taught a Duncan technique masterclass for a centennial youth ballet and Nashville Tennessee and we got to the end of the class and and so like openly and and you know this one dancer said that's what I thought ballet was supposed to feel like because the Duncan work is you know it's using a lot of you know beautiful classical music and imagery in line too but it's it has there's a release in the expressive part so I love it I love that story.

Amy Elizabeth:

Yes, it almost seems like bringing in a freedom to, you know, again, use this term codified technique. And we know that ballet is very much a codified technique. And my experiences of ballet have really encouraged a right or a wrong. You either have it right or you have it wrong. It's like, this is the line or this is out of line. And I think that that's what kind of pushed me more towards modern dance. You mentioned Bartini Fundamentals a moment ago. And I will say that our institution for any of languages used in our ballet and our modern classes. And it is very important to us that. the body is first is that you live in your body. And the only way that we, you are going to find maximum success in whatever capacity is when you find that success in your body. And we also try to incorporate a lot of individualism and that we don't want every dancer looking exactly the same because no two humans are exactly the same and trying to empower that sense of autonomy, identity, all of these, things because that's your essence and that's what's going to propel you forward in a sense now I'm going on a rant but I haven't really just this idea of expression It brings up the question, can you fully express yourself inside of a codified technique? And it sounds as if bringing in the Duncan and the noise ideologies makes space for that inside of a codified technique. You're allowing that dancer to find their autonomy, to find their self-expression, to find what is unique to them and how that technique flows to their body. And it just, I just get the word expansive. That if we're not trying so hard to find that line, that we could really expand into that moment and it creates breath and space for options, for exploration. Yes. Yeah.

Meg Brooker:

Yeah.

Amy Elizabeth:

You just got my brain turning.

Meg Brooker:

You know, so I, that sense of you're absolutely, you're absolutely like, yeah. So this sense, and I actually, even when I was thinking about talking today, I was like expansion and contraction. This work is, it is about being in a space where the energy is expanding. You know, if you look at the old Wachowitz drawings of Isadora, the artist didn't even draw the ends of her fingers and toes. It was just an expansive line that went out into space. Another colleague of mine, when I taught a master class years ago at UT Austin, where I went to grad school and I was still based in Austin, I remember my friend who brought me in said, oh my gosh, this is like ballet meets release technique. Because there's classical line in it. And now if we're performing, we might be rehearsing where we're like trying to get people, you know, like there's always that thing when you're putting something on stage where refinement or something external comes in. But in the practice of the technique class and certainly, you know, in the noise rhythm work, which is not all, you know, which is more of the people who are in that work are teachers and artists and musicians and, you know, folks who are coming to that work as a source of creative inspiration more so than even a physical training. But it's a lot, it's about being in that space of expansion. It's not a contracting energy. And I think that's where the somatic piece is so important It's not creating patterns of tension in the body. And I think fear comes in sometimes with a sense of holding from the outside in. It's really about that yielding, releasing, expansive energy so that you can overcome. The body is sort of, you get the body integrated. You lead from a high center. You overcome inertia. You fall into momentum. You trust the gravity because there's the yielding and the rebound. And then the image, the music can carry the expression and you get out of your own way. And it's just really fun. It's

Amy Elizabeth:

freedom. And I just had the image of a roller coaster. But a roller coaster I actually went to get on. Yeah. That I am the roller coaster, not just experiencing it, but I am the roller coaster and I am the one diving and swirling. And I mean, I don't like roller coasters at all, but maybe I would like to be the roller coaster. You know, this idea of just falling into it and allowance. I don't know, right now there is an excitement in me. that I feel like I need more space. Like I need to find this space. Whatever this is, I need to find this space. I don't know what this is. I admit

Meg Brooker:

it. Come to Connecticut and dance in the pavilion.

Amy Elizabeth:

Yes. Yeah. I mean, I admit it. I had no idea what this was, but I mean, it's... Where has it been?

Meg Brooker:

Well, and this is so we we dance in a space that's called it's it's an open air pavilion that that is that's that's large. It was built by a really well-known architect. The first one burned. This one has been it's been we've had it since the 19 since 1930. And it has a huge vaulted ceiling and no center beam. So architecturally, it was a really special structure because it's got the vaulted ceiling and it's all open in air. There's a grassy lawn next to the pavillon called the Rhythm Ground. And we do, we have structured classes in the morning, but we have improvisation at night that's actually called playtime. And the pianist plays unbelievably beautiful pieces. It's all live music. And the practice is just that you're listening. And then when you feel moved, you're dancing, you're improvising, and we try to limit talking. And you can dance out into this grassy area or back in But when I first went up there, it was really one of the first times I can remember when I was dancing in a space as a trained dancer with no mirrors. And not only was there no mirror, there was no sense of reflecting what the visible form looks like back at me, but there were no walls. And so I remember being able to move into this long balance and feel like I could stay there forever. because there was a sense of moving through. And it was the impulse, the reason for the movement, the musical impulse that was carrying the movement. So there's a lot to be learned from being able to dance in a space like that.

Amy Elizabeth:

Taking you outside of the normal, I mean, confinement is the word I want to use. I mean, when we when we take classes we have our walls you're going across the floor oftentimes the expansive dancers run out of room they run out of space they hit the wall they hit the dancer in front of them if they're not paying attention and so there is a limitation to that it creates it has a potential to create a limitation or to cut off an energetic line is what it sounds like it sounds like a really wonderful beautiful experience and I hope I do get to experience it and I hope that some of our listeners will check it out and will also experience that for themselves. Meg, this has been... A masterclass for me. Thank you for coming and teaching me today, for expanding my knowledge on dance history, the connections between improvisation and technique, and the possibilities. It's just the possibilities of how things can be so much more expansive, expressive. And I do feel, and I hope that our audience who's listening understands this idea of a dancer and that if you are a moving, breathing being, you are a dancer Thank you so much. our thought process, our daily practices, and our overall enjoyment and fulfillment in life. Like you said earlier that there are a lot of people who come for creative experiences. So if you're a writer or a musician or whatever your creative outlet is, or just a creative person who enjoys maximizing that beauty and wonder within yourself, it seems like such a... An avenue to open up new doors and new possibilities. Yeah. I know you were worried about you going on a rant, and there I go.

Meg Brooker:

Well, what you're reminding me of, though, is that, you know, I mean, we, you know, dance is a beautiful and important and very vital art form, but it is also social and communal. And for, you know, dancers who are training in a professional dance space to have opportunities to be reminded of how deeply social, deeply communal, deeply communicative what we do is even in their training technique classes. That's tremendously important.

Amy Elizabeth:

Absolutely. Again, thank you so much for bringing your history and knowledge to our audience. It has been a joy learning more about our foundation as movers and as humans. So we do have one question. Final task. And this is our rapid round. These are two sentences that we're asking. Great. All of our audience, all of our participants to complete. And it's kind of the thread line between season one. So if you're ready. Answer these as fast as you can. Yeah. Yeah. Here we go. Ready? Resilience is...

Meg Brooker:

Resilience is... The ability to withstand loss, challenge, and to develop endurance, to come back with renewed energy, flexibility, adaptability, and strength.

Amy Elizabeth:

Okay. Number two, dance has taught me.

Meg Brooker:

Dance has taught me to never stop moving.

Amy Elizabeth:

Absolutely. They're very big questions or very big thoughts, as you say. They're not questions. They're sentences. They're big

Meg Brooker:

questions. Yeah, the dance, that just came out of my mouth. I didn't think about that ahead of time.

Amy Elizabeth:

Meg, again, thank you so much.

Meg Brooker:

I had something else. You had

Amy Elizabeth:

something? Go ahead. I'll let you.

Meg Brooker:

Oh, good. Well, dance has taught me... Dance has taught me that art is a through line, that being in movement creatively with other people is core to human experience.

Amy Elizabeth:

Absolutely. Wow. This episode felt like a masterclass for me. There's so much information packed in and we only brushed the surface. I hope you found this episode as inspiring as I did. We will link sources to find Meg and more in the show notes. Be sure to click the subscribe button and share with a friend or colleague. Leave us a review on Spotify for a chance to win Dance Unscripted merch. Thank you for joining us for this episode. We know you could have chosen any other platform, but you chose us and you chose dance. And for that, we are incredibly thankful. A special thank you to the Lamar University Center for Resiliency for making season one possible. Dance Unscripted is presented by Aimed Dance.