INTRO
Claire: In 2020, Chloë Zimberg was hired as creative director of ODC Theater in San Francisco, California.
It was a huge achievement for the 27-year-old, and represented years of work.
Her first job at ODC was part time when she was in college, checking people in for dance classes at the front desk. She held a lot of different roles at the organization over the years and found that stepping into a leadership role was more fraught than she expected.
Chloë: Within the organization, I was still on the younger side of our senior staff. In all of these moments, when I experience conflict or challenge with artists or with anyone in the field, I feel young, know, is, is someone doing this because I'm young, because I'm a young woman? Are they not? Is that something that I'm doing to myself? I don't know. You know, there's a, there's a lot in that.
Claire: Amid the chaos of starting a daunting new job during a pandemic, Chloe was also navigating internal strife.
Chloë: I have this background and identity as a dancer that my mom was dancing until the week before I was born and that there's not really, there's not really a version of my life that exists without dance.
Both in concept and in the field, but also physically in my body. I feel like it's my first language.
Claire: Chloe has always considered herself a dancer through and through. She majored in dance in college, danced professionally for years, but then suddenly she's making decisions behind the curtain instead of center stage.
Chloë: I realized that not everyone was just going to be seeing Chloe as dancer, as artist first, and that feeling pushed to identify as either a dancer or arts administrator.
I was really struggling with my own subscription to this almost spectrum that was being projected onto me. And I was accepting it, and I was feeling torn between it, and feeling like I kind of had to pick. Do I need to go all one direction or all the other direction? And is that what people expect of me?
Claire: A big step was signing up for dance classes again. The first time she stepped foot into a studio after lockdown, Chloe felt re-invigorated
Chloë: Don't try, do. Just do the thing. Go take the dance class if you want to be dancing. Like, it's easier said than done, I will say that sometimes it's challenging coming to ODC to take drop-in classes, right, because it's my place of work, but I do think that there are some really practical ways to just break down what can feel like a lot of tension and say, well, you've been dancing your whole life. You know the moves, go take a ballet class. Like it'll be hard. You'll be out of shape. It'll be fine.
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Chloë: What is exciting to me is that in this moment, sort of revisiting some of this process has caused me to be like, “Oh, perhaps this whole spectrum of dancer versus arts administrator slash leader is just the wrong way to think about it.” Perhaps. Those things are all smashed together. And it's because I'm a dancer or I, you know, have been a dancer that I am now an arts leader.
Like that wouldn't have happened without growing up being a dancer, being embedded in that work, loving to help produce things, starting a dance company with my best friend, learning how to produce, so I think that more than anything, what's exciting right now is being like, “How do we just like free ourselves from these kind of label mindsets or this-or-that mindsets?”
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Claire: You’re listening to ARTS. WORK. LIFE., a podcast from the Association of Performing Arts Professionals.
I’m your host Claire Caulfield and today’s episode: Through The Looking Glass.
Often, our sense of self can feel rigid. Like who we see in the mirror is who we’ll always be.
Maybe it’s because of something that happened to us when we were young, or industry norms that molded us into who we think we should be.
But how we see ourselves is changeable, and today’s stories all focus on dramatic changes in perspective.
Starting with an artist who was not only forced to re-evaluate her entire career, but see her mother’s life in a new light, too.
Then a story about a musician whose student helped him find a new sense of self-acceptance.
And lastly, the story of a dancer whose artistic work was turned head over heels.
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ACT ONE
Act one: Parallel Tracks
Claire: When Heidi Latsky was eleven years old, her mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Watching her mother navigate this diagnosis shaped Heidi's childhood. Her mother's illness, and the resulting responsibility Heidi took on, made Heidi tough -- but also hard. Dance was the only time Heidi embraced her vulnerability, which led her to a career in dance.
Years later, Heidi created her own dance company and met Lisa Bufano, a bilateral amputee and visual artist. The two collaborated on a dance performance together, and this experience inspired Heidi to pivot her company to include dancers of all ages, ability levels, and diagnoses.
Heidi: Working with her was one of the most incredible experiences of my dance career. She was so vulnerable. Her vulnerability was fierce.
We created something that I was really very happy with, and it just changed my whole trajectory. I learned a lot because I knew nothing about the disability community. And that was when I was asked by a friend, “Why are you doing this, Heidi?”
And I said, “Well, because I I believe in inclusion” and she said, “No, come on, why are you doing it?” And that's when I realized my mother had been disabled.
I had always seen her as sick, but she was really disabled, and she became quite isolated. And when I thought about it, I thought, “Wow, she, her friends alienated her.”
I think they were afraid. And so, you know, working with people with disabilities and including that, including people with disabilities in, in my company, was not only a shift artistically, but it was also for me, this realization that I had grown up with a mother who was disabled.
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Heidi: There was a time that I felt really ostracized from the disability dance scene, that because I was non-disabled, my voice was not appreciated, even though I had trained so many of those voices.
But I started feeling ostracized. And I started questioning, you know, I'm older also, it's not like I'm a young choreographer, and I started questioning, “Well, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. Like maybe it's time for me to step down.”
Claire: About two years ago, Heidi started struggling with constant exhaustion. Then, she lost her sense of smell. Her husband and daughter were concerned about her erratic decisions, decisions that she often couldn't remember making.
Heidi: And I was just getting worse and worse. And finally, a friend of mine said, “I think you should see a neurologist.” And we did, and I got an MRI and sure enough, I have the same kind of tumor as my mother.
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Heidi: Maybe because my mother had had brain tumors, I wasn't afraid, and I'm always afraid, especially as a dancer when it comes to your, my body. Like when I get injured or I had to get my gallbladder removed, and I was a wreck over losing an organ, but this, not afraid. Had to do it, had the flu in the hospital. They still did the surgery. Got through it. Now I'm in recovery. It's been three months.
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Heidi: I mean, there are disability activists who have said to me, “You are definitely disabled and you have been without you realizing it.”
But I think there's a lot of people who would say, “Well, you got it taken out. You're dancing. I mean, you're moving. So you're not disabled.” And then I think, “I don't know if I'm disabled or not.” I really don't. I don’t know what that really means.
I mean, that's what's so interesting about where I am right now, so many misperceptions about that, upholding the disability community. There are a lot of misperceptions about brain tumors. And I also want to expose people to that. And that's coming from a very personal place.
My mother was clearly disabled. Am I? I will not identify because I don't believe in identifying, period. And that's something I've come to. Like my art is all about working together, accepting who we are, honing in on the unique attributes of every dancer I have, whether they're non-disabled, disabled, or different body type, different age. And so I'm doing that with me now. And the big fear on social media is I do not want to exploit myself or my condition. But I also know that I believe in being honest and truthful. And that's so much a part of my art. And it's going to be what I work on this whole year. And I was thinking about art, work, life. My art is what saves me. It always has. That creativity is what's saving me now.
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Heidi: As a dancer, there's incredible uncertainty. You don't know when you're going to get hurt. We all get injured. That used to paralyze me. And I would say now, like to dancers and even choreographers, like it, so what? And it's been great. It's been really productive.
Somebody said to me when I told them I was doing these posts for the National Brain Tumor Awareness Month, and she wrote back and said, “You're so brave.”
I don't feel brave. I don't feel brave. I really don't. I feel like I'm doing what I have to do. And so it's feeding my soul. It's feeding my artistry, and that's what I mean, like the misperceptions of illness and disability and aging, all so many things in the art world that can be strikes against you, but actually there's a whole other side of it. There's a whole other side of it that can be mined to make very powerful work.
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Heidi: The last month I started crying a lot. My mother cried a lot, and I didn't understand it. And what I didn't say was when I was in the hospital, I talked to her because I wasn't sleeping, and I don't usually do stuff like that, but I really, I felt so much respect for my mother.
And I began to think we were tracking parallel. And I'm making a piece now called Tracking Parallel. I want this to be a deep piece for me. And that's not always easy for me to go there. and I'm very excited about that, too. And challenging myself to dance again. That's number one, if I can. And to dance with, you know, a vulnerability that I always preach to my company. You know, that fierceness of being vulnerable, and hoping that the work will be impactful.
Claire: Heidi Latsky is a dancer, choreographer and artistic director of Heidi Latsky Dance. She lives in New York City.
ACT TWO
Act Two: Striking A Chord
Claire: Some of Azadi Amaan’s earliest memories are of their grandmother at the piano. As a young child, Azadi would sit on the piano bench, feet dangling, transfixed as their grandmother’s hands danced across the keyboard.
Playing piano was always a joyful experience for Azadi, and this love for music defined Azadi’s childhood and provided an important outlet.
Azadi: Music has been a big part of my life, even before I could speak. I was born at one pound, eleven ounces. So, super premature, really tiny.
What the doctors did was they did a surgery where they took a piece of my rib and put it in my throat to prop my airway open. And the great news was that surgery worked, and I was able to come off of a respirator and breathe normally. The bad news was that the surgery damaged the nerves on my tongue and my face.
And so that made learning how to speak really challenging. So literally like I started playing the piano before I could speak.
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Claire: As a teenager, Azadi started with a new piano teacher that didn’t share their grandmother’s focus on learning songs for fun.
Azadi: In the classical musical music world, there's the idea of, things have to be done a certain way and there's certain rules that need to be followed, and there's not necessarily a lot of flexibility for artistry or creativity or self expression, depending on who you're studying with or how you're approaching learning music. And with this particular teacher, it was very much needed to be by the book.
Claire: This new teacher was incredibly strict, and said that Azadi’s inability to read music must mean they didn’t take piano that seriously.
Azadi: It was painful because music, up until that point, had been such an integral part of who I was and how I expressed myself. Music really, like, was my voice and allowed me to express my deepest emotions, especially when I didn't necessarily have words to articulate what I was feeling.
Claire: This rigid focus on classical training, and insistence that there was only one correct way to approach piano, eventually pushed Azadi away from music altogether. They quit playing the piano, graduated high school and enrolled in college as a psychology major.
Azadi: One night, one fall, yeah, I was studying for finals in my apartment that was on campus and was feeling really overwhelmed, and the music building was a fairly short walk away from my apartment, so I put my coat on and walked across campus and got into the music building and sat down at the piano and just played, just improvised for hours. And the music just poured out of me. It was, like, it had never left.
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Claire: Playing music again after years away from the keys was transformative. Azadi started playing small performances, and then started teaching piano lessons.
It was then that Azadi met a student named Taylor who reminded Azadi a lot of themselves at that age. Taylor loves piano, but had dyslexia, and was struggling to progress.
Azadi: With my background in psychology, I have always been super interested in figuring out what makes people tick and how their brains work. And through getting to know Taylor, we were able to figure out, do some experiments and tried a couple of different things and the thing that we finally landed on was adding color to each of the notes on the staff.
Claire: Using their research skills, knowledge of psychology, and patience, Azadi was able to craft a system for Taylor to read music.
Azadi: It struck a chord with me. To have the ability to sit with someone through their struggle and then support them and guide them to a solution that really worked for their brain and to empower them. It was really emotional, and it made me wish that I could give that same experience to the younger me.
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Azadi: I have this underlying fear that I'm not a real or valid musician because I don't read music. And I think that if there had been someone along the way to be like, “Hey, that's okay.”
There's multiple paths to being a musician that could have been really transformative.
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Azadi: Late one night, I couldn't sleep. And I went down an internet rabbit hole researching [laughs] dyslexia and music. And I figured out that I have a form of dyslexia that makes it really challenging for me to read music.
I've known that I have neurodivergencies for a long time and have stuffed them away or tried to hide them. And, I think that there's real power in knowing that and really naming and loving that, that part of myself.
>> Music: Freedom Beckons
Azadi: I recorded an improv album last year, and I'm starting to release singles from that.
I'm getting choked up just thinking about it, honestly.
I think that the song that most embodies that is “Freedom Beckons”.
“Freedom Beckons” is an improvised piece that really plays with the tension between feeling stuck and what happens if you take that leap and trust. And I feel like by being more open about my neurodivergence and my own journey, that in some ways freedom is tugging and calling at me.
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Claire: Azadi Amaan is a pianist and composer in Shelton, Washington.
CROSS PROMO
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Claire: Before our next story, I want to take a moment to tell you about another podcast: The Art of Mass Gatherings.
The Art of Mass Gatherings Podcast flips the script on festivals, transforming community events into hubs for disaster preparedness.
Artists and event workers already play a vital role in their communities, and are a powerful latent force when it comes to building climate resilience. Since 2017, the Art of Mass Gatherings has turned beloved festivals and venues across the country into hands-on classrooms where people could come together to plan for the best and worst of times through the four pillars of safety, accessibility, sustainability, and community engagement.
Now, they're bringing top luminaries, fresh tips, and groundbreaking ideas of 'creative resilience' straight to your feed. Tune in for inspiring interviews and to share your own stories.
Ok. Back to the show.
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ACT THREE
Act Three: Body Signals
Claire: In February of last year, Maura García was having the absolute worst week. She had to back out of an exciting nine-month dance contract due to a scheduling conflict. Then she and her partner of three years broke up, and Maura was in the middle of moving to an Airbnb when she developed a fever.
Maura: And I just kept on getting sicker and sicker. My fever did not go away, and got to 104.5, which, don't ever let your fever get to that point, but it's a very dangerous point, and awful things can start going wrong in the body.
And I guess the culmination of that was that I had a febrile seizure. And because of the seizure, I ended up breaking my leg. And I was in a Airbnb, and I was sharing it with someone. And when I had the seizure, I made so much noise that, you know, the other person, rushed out of their room and asked me if I wanted them to call 911.
And I was on the floor. I couldn't move and I said, “Well, if I'm not okay in five to six minutes, we'll think about it.”
And I had been trying to be small and not problematic, which now I kind of laugh at it. Obviously, it was not funny at the time, but you know, I didn't want to bother anybody and ended up having a huge, loud, banging and clattering of body parts against hard surfaces in the kitchen, which of course was a lot more noise.
And so when I finally gained more consciousness, then I dragged myself up the stairs, and convinced myself that maybe it was all going to fix itself in the morning. Nothing was fixed in the morning. Uh, my leg was huge, swollen. I still had a fever.
And at that point it was actually being a dancer that made me take action. I thought to myself, well, you know, you hear about people having injuries and then they keep on going and it turns out being a permanent injury. And if they would have had it taken care of, it would have been fine.
And I said, you don't want this to stop you from dancing. So that's what made me go to the hospital.
Claire: Maura called a friend to drive her to the hospital, but it was a frigid winter day, and the sidewalk in front of the Airbnb was completely iced over.
Maura: So I put those reusable plastic bags on the floor, and I set my butt on the plastic bags, and I scooted myself on the ice to the car.
So in that moment, I was, I was giggling, you know, because even though I hurt, and this was like kind of an awful situation, it was funny.
Claire: Maura ended up having to have surgery on her leg, and moved back home to North Carolina to recover.
Maura: Now, once I started feeling a little better, that was the difficult part, among physical therapists, there's some saying if you ask any athlete, which is worse with an injury, the pain or the muscle loss, people will say the muscle loss.
And so, I started thinking up of all these ways to train and work out and move that would not make me be on my feet. I started inventing these movements to get around. I had a kind of rowing movement. Imagine if you are sitting on your butt with your legs out in front of you, and you put your hands behind you, and then you push.
So I would do that sometimes. To get off the floor, I would do a type of flip over with my leg in the air, and then I would push up and walk back into downward dog and do all of these maneuvers. I had a three legged bear crawl that I did.
And so that's, that's what where it started.
And sometimes I would get tired, and I'd just sit there and be on the ground. And when you're close to the ground, you see a lot more than when standing up. I started really thinking about the movements underground. I wanted to incorporate the movements that I had created while injured. and start thinking about how that might correlate with beings moving under the ground, with the way that the water moves under the ground, with the way that roots might cross.
So all of those things really interested me and, I ended up making a dance film about those ideas. And the name of it was called Hawin Dihla, which means in Cherokee language, underneath.
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Maura: And I spent two weeks looking at all of these themes, looking at all of these ideas, playing with the movement, exploring the movement, and then another week in studio with the dancers.
Claire: Maura incorporated the plastic bag scoot, rowing, and three-legged bear crawl into the final film, and found that the constraints of her injury actually sparked joy and innovation.
Maura: It has really been beautiful to have this time of exploration of these movements created while injured, these ideas of the underground time all explored around the same time that I was starting to walk and make my way towards a full recovery.
If the injury had not happened some of the movements would never occur to me as interesting or dance worthy.
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Maura: Something else that I learned is the importance of really listening to body signals. As a dancer, people always say, “Oh, you're very in tune with your body.” And yes part of being a trained dancer can mean that you are conscious of every movement.
But, there is another type of body information that unfortunately a lot of us in the performing arts are taught to ignore. The pain, the tiredness, the exhaustion and discomfort. “The show must go on, the show must go on.”
However, at what expense? And so I really became aware that there were body signals that I was not listening to.
So paying attention to the signals, you know, that I'm receiving from every part of my body is something that I have tried to embrace more. And it's something that I would love to see other people in the industry be able to embrace more, as well as the people who are in control of directing, running rehearsals, embrace that as well. It was a hard lesson, but important lesson.
Claire: Maura García is a dancer and choreographer. They live on the homelands of the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation in Texas.
CREDITS
Claire: Thank you for listening.
ARTS. WORK. LIFE. is a production from APAP – the Association of Performing Arts Professionals.
APAP is the national service organization for the performing arts presenting, booking and touring industry. You can join APAP at APAP3-6-5-dot-o-r-g.
I’m Claire Caulfield, your host and producer.
Jenny Thomas is our Executive Producer.
Music today from Blue Dot Sessions, Azadi Amaan, and Maura García.
This podcast wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of The Wallace Foundation. So thank you.
Other thank yous to Grace Asuncion, the APAP staff and board of directors, our storytellers today, and the hundreds of thousands of arts workers across the world.
Your stories matter. and arts workers ARE essential.
Speaking of stories If you work in the performing arts and want to submit your own story to this podcast, visit APAP-3-6-5-dot-o-r-g-slash-podcast.
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Carolyn: Arts, Work, Life. that’s real *laugh*
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