In this episode, NCCAkron's Executive/Artistic Director, Christy Bolingbroke enters the 'studio' with Miami FL-based choreographer and dancer, Pioneer Winter. Recognized in Dance Magazine's 2019 “25 to Watch," he directs Pioneer Winter Collective, a contemporary dance and physical theater company of allied bodies, who democratize performance in public spaces, museums, stages, and films. He develops work through local engagement practices with emerging LGBT+ artists and intergenerational labs and social activities with Lambda Living, a service program for LGBT elders. Outside of his company, Winter teaches in areas of social justice and art, epistemology, and dance at Florida International University.
In this episode, NCCAkron's Executive/Artistic Director, Christy Bolingbroke enters the 'studio' with Miami FL-based choreographer and dancer, Pioneer Winter. Recognized in Dance Magazine's 2019 “25 to Watch," he directs Pioneer Winter Collective, a contemporary dance and physical theater company of allied bodies, who democratize performance in public spaces, museums, stages, and films. He develops work through local engagement practices with emerging LGBT+ artists and intergenerational labs and social activities with Lambda Living, a service program for LGBT elders. Outside of his company, Winter teaches in areas of social justice and art, epistemology, and dance at Florida International University.
INTRODUCTION: Thanks for joining us Inside The Dancer’s Studio, where we bring listeners like you closer to the creative process. Inside The Dancer’s Studio is a program of the National Center for Choreography in Akron, Ohio, as part of our Ideas in Motion initiative. This episode was recorded as an ongoing documentation practice with NCCAkron visiting artists in 2023-2024. Today we joined Christy Bolingbroke, our Executive/Artistic Director, in conversation with Miami, FL-based choreographer and dancer, Pioneer Winter. Recognized in Dance Magazine's 2019 “25 to Watch," he directs Pioneer Winter Collective, a contemporary dance and physical theater company of allied bodies, who democratize performance in public spaces, museums, stages, and film. He develops work through local engagement practices with emerging LGBTQ artists and intergenerational labs and social activities with Lambda Living a service program for LGBT elders. Outside of his company, Winter teaches in areas of social justice and art, epistemology, and dance at Florida International University.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: How or when did you decide to become a choreographer? Was it a moment? Was it a strike of lightning? You know, I'm always curious how all of a sudden, we sort of step into these roles and positions.
PIONEER WINTER: I never considered dance. I've never not been dancing though. And I never considered it as a career, especially not choreography. I remember my comeback to my high school dance teacher whenever she would give me a correction was like, Well, I'm gonna be I'm gonna be an attorney. I know I want to be a divorce attorney at the time. It was one of those things where dance was always there. And I never turned and looked at and said, Oh, but this is the one thing I can't not have. The first time I knew I wanted to choreograph was when I realized that there were dances out there that I wanted to be in, but maybe geographically this wasn't where they were being made at the time. And so, I wanted to answer those questions for myself. I firmly believe that the reason why I choreograph is to make order out of the chaos for myself. And so, in 2010, I made my first work. And it was focused on reducing HIV stigma at the time, I was getting a Master’s in Public Health. That entire process was just so cathartic. And that entire process, realizing just like, what the arts can do and, and how maybe the dances that I had been part of as a dancer, were maybe a little superficial. But that's not the work that I wanted to make. And that I didn't want to just make decorative dance. That I wanted to, I wanted to be able to change my life through the people I was meeting and the people I could be in community with. And so, reaching the surface, yeah, 2010 was when I realized, Ah, this is, this is it. This is what I want.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: I mean, it's so beautiful too, you had alluded to answering the questions on your own terms, or if especially if you didn't see that that, was happening where you were, were based at the time. And was that in Florida?
PIONEER WINTER: Yeah. Yeah. I was in Florida and at the time, I was dancing and some pickup companies Horton-based Graham-based South Florida, contemporary dance companies Ballet, Modern, Jazz. I had grown up in a recreational dance studio, where this was about like, community, and it was about the recreation of dance and not like the competition of it or even the, the career path of it.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: So, what I was gonna offer to is that you were, you became the change you wanted to see. You wanted to create the opportunities to address questions to, I love this distinction to not just make decorative dance. And so, with that in mind, where do you start? Is it with an idea? Is it with a question? Is it with a certain passion or a theme? How do you begin?
PIONEER WINTER: Sometimes it's a name, sometimes it's a quote, uh sometimes it's a position of the body. Sometimes it's an, it's an image, an image, the only I can see, and maybe it's the endpoint image, and then I work backwards from that. There are a lot of prompts and questions. I think one of my most repeated questions in rehearsal is “what if? or “I wonder.” It always starts off with really intense curiosity. I think I let dances sit for a while before they're made sometimes for years, where they just occupy like my daydream. And then eventually, it gets to a point where they bubble up enough that they can't be ignored anymore, or maybe this is the right time. I find that dances happen when they're meant to happen and being okay, knowing that this dance exists, even if it's just in my mind, and knowing that eventually when the time is right, that work will surface.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: And you have worked with percussive movers, you have worked with singers, you've worked with original composition, maybe a little digital EDM or disco. How would you describe your dance making relationship to sound, to music?
PIONEER WINTER: They're so tied. I do have to say as a dance maker. The challenge of um folks thinking that the dance can't exist without music, I feel like that like makes dance this sort of this lesser art form. And so like, I don't think that dance needs music. I think dance can inspire music. I feel like the the sonic elements of movement, the effort of it the breath, the, the voice, uh the, the weight of the body. The way it tumbles through space, the sounds it makes when it comes down. The way it resists gravity. Like all of that is sound. And I've been really fortunate to work with some amazing sound collaborators, Juraj Kojš, Diego Melgar, Dani Amaro, Arsimmer McCoy and they've all had an element of what I see as choreography in their compositions. And so, it's, it's like, about, I guess, seeing, seeing the movement in each other. It's really important to me that the sound is uh in collaboration with the performers cuz so much of the choreography is. But like, if the sound isn't, then it's like this sort of veil between the sound and the performance itself.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: You sort of alluded to this with the original sound composers, and how you are working collaboratively with the performers too. What do you look for in dancers or collaborators?
PIONEER WINTER: I look for intense curiosity. When I say “What if?” I want the eyes to light up also and, and say, yeah, what if we tried it this other way? What if we ask just one more question? Reliability, consistency access to vulnerability, especially access to vulnerability in a way that um is not for an audience, but present in the rehearsal process. That it's not this sort of performative vulnerability, but it's an availability to giving your entire self to the process. I have to say that curiosity and reliability are two of the biggest things you need in order to establish that that trust and that bond in rehearsal. And I don't operate from auditions I've learned my lesson with that I need to know someone.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: One of the things I noticed and appreciate about your work is that there, it is very multigenerational, as well. Can you talk about how that is a part of how you, you seek out and collect the people that you choose to work with? Or if that's also part of how you're casting and developing your casts?
PIONEER WINTER: I think audiences want to see themselves on stage. I think that while we can be enamored with superhuman feats that dancers are so apt to do I'm curious how we can find out that superhuman quality, that virtuosity in other ways outside of just what we would consider to be the mainstream I want to find out that hidden dance. I want to pull dance out from like, everybody contains dance, every single body. And we've only been led to believe that certain bodies dance because of the way dance has been codified and kept exclusive. So, you know that the idea of a multi-generational dance company has always really been baked into the cake even, even since 2010. I established Pioneer Winter Collective in 2016, and we've, we've always been physically integrated, we've always been intergenerational. And it's not only in the work and the makeup of who's in the studio, but also the way we reflect mentorship and that lived experience, even in the way the, the company is, is run. And I think that's very much thanks to like what I learned through the CAR and NCCAkron too.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: The Creative Admin Research Program often is predicated on the idea of how do you like to work in the studio? And then can we build out administrative practices, it sounds like also company management practices that mirror that way of working. Focusing on your movement making, I am curious if you could talk to us a little bit more about how do you navigate between 20th century movement, you, you alluded to, you'd been doing some Horton work or some Graham work, and then what it is to be a 21st century dance maker? I'm very curious, since we, in today's ecology, we have fewer codified single choreographer techniques that are being perpetuated. And so, I'm curious, you know, as you're sort of building the future of dance, how you're navigating that?
PIONEER WINTER: Yeah, that's a, that's an awesome question. Yeah. I’ve trained in a lot of different dance forms, so all of them inform the work. I try to sort of take a dance theater approach to the work that it's by any means necessary. So, what is the cadence? What is the movement? What is the voice that is going to speak best in this moment in this way, in this situation on stage? Is it Flamenco? Is it Step? Is it Tap? Is it a lap dance? Is it an arabesque? You know, but why do an arabesque unless you're gonna comment on that arabesque? So I’m looking for dances that haven't been made yet there's a choreographer, Michael Kliën that I was fortunate to work with in my MFA program had this idea um of the excavation, and this excavation um being an assumption of something being there already. You don't go looking for dinosaur bones, unless you have a really good idea that they might be there. I feel like it's the same way with choreography that we go looking for something with the intention of knowing that it's there. And, and, or rather, the, the embrace of knowing that it's there because it can be so frustrating sometimes, and we sometimes lose our sense of direction. But I'm finding more and more that uh that we go through that so many times with every single piece and we just have to remind ourselves, you felt this before. The dance is there, and you just have to keep digging.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: I’m thinking back to what you had said about every dance happens when it's meant to happen. And then there's the world that we have to live and operate in, and its deadlines. And so, I'm curious when you're trying to operate in that spacious environment and let the dance unearth and reveal itself. But maybe you have a deadline looming. We've got a premiere date or a show date or a tech rehearsal. You know that in itself can be a driving force. But if you find yourself in a creative rut, do you have any practices or approaches that you take to sort of circumvent those or move through them, uh in a way? You know, what, what do you do in those moments as a maker?
PIONEER WINTER: Well recently I've taken more to writing, and just allowing myself to jot down what I'm feeling in that moment. Maybe if the choreography isn't coming out, I write down, I describe it. Maybe we need to take a, a break from it, maybe we step away. I have to say that I've been trying, trying a bunch of different ways of choreographing. Normally, and historically, I've done long periods of, of creation where like, we're maybe only meeting once or twice a week, but for several months. And more recently, I've had really positive experiences during these short spurts these sort of bubble residencies. And I used to carry a lot of fear with that, because that's putting a lot of pressure on us to create something in a short amount of time. But it's that intensity and that intensity of focus. And, and setting aside time to know that that's all you have to worry about. Like I have found that that's been really helpful. As far as different roadblocks. I kind of have a rule for myself that like, let's say, I'm working on a grant and I'm getting frustrated and if one of, one of our dogs comes up to me, and wants to be pet stop what I'm doing, turn and spend some time playing with this dog, you know. Or go outside and get some sun. Get a different sense other than just this, the question that's sort of looming.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Understanding more about what you value in the creative process. And often asking the question, “What if?” is also a set of muscles or skills with how to continue to navigate through the process. Not just when you're focusing on the task at hand, but it sounds also like, what if I pet the dog? What if you know we look at this in a different medium? And staying open to that is an ongoing practice.
PIONEER WINTER: Absolutely. And I'm even learning that like the dance studio where we rent space at now it's a double garage behind someone's house. I love having the garage door up because the backyard is right there, and the hibiscus and the mangoes and they have two dogs it's just very homey. And I'm like I don't need to be at this big theater where I, it takes me 20 minutes to get from my car to the studio door because I have to go through security and all these hallways and you know like if I leave something in the car, I can run out in my socks and go get it you know, like there's a freedom and a homeliness to, to it that allows us to be even more vulnerable than we normally can be.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: If someone were to be approaching you one of your students or otherwise in this idea of making a creative life, a creative career, what advice would you want to pass on to them? Or what's the best piece of advice that you yourself have received?
PIONEER WINTER: I would say the best advice is to know when to say no. To know when something is not for you to know when something goes against your principles. Also to be decisive. And there's a difference between like, being rude and just being clear. And that no is a full sentence. I guess my advice to other people would be to seek out virtuosity outside the mainstream. That there are a myriad of ways that we can appreciate someone's strength, someone's power, someone's potential in more ways than just maybe obvious physical expressions of strength. And so I want to you know rewrite what virtuosity is and what is it that, that we value in a performance and in a performing body. With the expanding of the definition of all that dance is and can be, can't we also be expanding the definition of what, what makes us go, "Wow"?
OUTRODUCTION: Inside The Dancer’s Studio Conversation Series is supported by NCCAkron, the University of Akron, the University of Akron Foundation, the Mary Schiller Myers Lecture Series in the Arts, and Audio-Technica, a global audio manufacturer with U.S. headquarters in Northeast Ohio. Our podcast program is produced by Jennifer Edwards. James Sleeman is our editor, transcription by Arushi Singh. Theme music by Floco Torres, cover art by Micah Kraus. Special thanks to Laura Ellacott, Sarah Durham, and Will Blake. To learn more about NCCAkron, please visit us online at NCCakron.org. And follow us on Instagram or Facebook at NCCAkron. We hope you enjoyed this episode, and we encourage you to subscribe on your favorite podcast streaming platform by searching for Inside The Dancer’s Studio. Please share with your friends and if you’d like to help get the word out rate us, and leave a review on Apple podcasts. Thanks for listening and stay curious.