In this episode, NCCAkron's Executive/Artistic Director, Christy Bolingbroke enters the 'studio' with Brooklyn New York based choreographer, Brian Brooks. Brian's work has toured internationally since 2002 with presentations by BAM, the Joyce Theater, Jacob’s Pillow, the American Dance Festival, and Works and Process at the Guggenheim Museum, among others. He has developed and toured work with former New York City Ballet prima ballerina, Wendy Whelan, titled Restless Creature and appears in the film by the same name, with Whelan.
In this episode, NCCAkron's Executive/Artistic Director, Christy Bolingbroke enters the 'studio' with Brooklyn New York based choreographer, Brian Brooks. Brian's work has toured internationally since 2002 with presentations by BAM, the Joyce Theater, Jacob’s Pillow, the American Dance Festival, and Works and Process at the Guggenheim Museum, among others. He has developed and toured work with former New York City Ballet prima ballerina, Wendy Whelan, titled Restless Creature and appears in the film by the same name, with Whelan.
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 at The University of Akron, as part of our Ideas in Motion initiative. This episode was recorded in the presence of a live audience in February of 2020. Today we join Christy Bolingbroke, our Executive / Artistic Director in conversation with New York City-based choreographer Brian Brooks whose work has toured internationally since 2002 with presentations by BAM, the Joyce Theater, Jacob’s Pillow, the American Dance Festival, and Works and Process at the Guggenheim Museum, among others. Brian has developed and toured work with former New York City Ballet prima ballerina, Wendy Whelan, titled Restless Creature and appears in the film by the same name, with Whelan.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: How did you know when you wanted to be a choreographer?
BRIAN BROOKS: Well, thanks for having me, thanks for participating in class this morning too. I was a pretty lonely kid and found myself, like, in, in visual arts. I was a, I would draw, and I would do architectural drawings like crazy as a kid. My mother was a little concerned at a point. There were blueprints after blueprints after blueprints. And I got into Junior High and started high school still drawing and I started sculpture and was able to be, I guess, generative and creative, but in a really isolated way. So, I was very comfortable with that. In my freshman year of high school, one of my friends was a dancer and started, like, teaching me tap and teaching me dance and very quickly, I decided, like, that I wanted to have a dance company. And we formed…
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Freshman in high school?
BRIAN BROOKS: Yes.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Ok.
BRIAN BROOKS: And we, it seemed, so a lot of things happened, but it, it, freshman in high school. So, we started a dance company, so it was a student run dance group at our school, and we did annual shows and we got Massachusetts Council for the Arts funding on it, so student run, but I was really ambitious and we, like, made it into a thing. And four years later, I took my first dance class. So, someone was like, ‘you like to choreograph, you should learn to dance,’ right? Nan, Nan Keating from the Boston Ballet told me that. She was like, ‘why don't you come take class?’ So, for me, I’m still a very, I’m very uncomfortable performing. I still feel like a novice as a dancer. I still feel like I’m learning what to do and I, in class today even with all of you, I’m, like, watching and absorbing, and I’m always kind of engaged and in love with that constant process of learning in dance. But it feels like that constant process of learning. Choreography felt very definitive to me very early on before I knew anything about dance, was like, that’s what’s gonna happen. I mean, I think it was, for me, dance is an art form that’s living and breathing and passed between us in the room as it was this morning, as it always is. So, the heart of that never changes no matter what you’re doing, or how many people you’re working with or what city you’re in. You’re always, like, on a Marley dance floor, with people, sweating, sharing, like, range of motion.It’s just, like, very simple and very immediate and that has been the constant that I’ve loved so much. But I guess choreography for me has always been more comfortable than dancing and, I don’t know, I just knew something. I guess it also, it brought, it brought me into that room, and into the studio and into friendships and I, for the first time in my life through dance was finding community. So, I think as a lonely kid, that was the moment that I got, like, really confident. So, a lot kind of followed through once I identified that artistic output for myself, I guess.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: That’s beautiful, and so human too, thank you. So where do you start? Like, what inspires you, some, every artist, you know, maybe you start with music or an idea. Do you have it all figured out before you step into that studio?
BRIAN BROOKS: No, never figured out. I mean, I guess the inquiry is what’s so fascinating to me, so I came out of the postmodern lineage of construction of dance and of kind of rethinking how to construct dance, and what is dance, and I danced for several years with Elizabeth Streb. Kind of a daredevil choreographer that came out of postmodernism like Trisha Brown, but she uses equipment like trampolines, and bungee cords, and breaking glass. So she takes, like, our idea of exploring physics to a wild, kind of, circus-like extreme. So, but there, but her process was very much based in inquiry and discovery. So I guess that sort of rubbed off on me where I always go into the studio as an open pallet. And I kind of come in and think, ask the questions in the open room and they always start, I think I could honestly say, they always start in physical. So it always, it’s always about, again, kind of heritage of Elizabeth Streb and looking at action as event and action as dance. So, I kind of walk into the studio and move around and try to, I guess, I find I can respond to things once they’re in the room. So rather than coming in with a lot of ideas that you have to translate into movement, I find that like backwards design. And sometimes the ideas aren’t good or they’re carried over from something else, so I try to kind of rid myself of that and walk into an open room and look for the action event. And try to move and improv and pursue time and space and rhythm and movement and follow through and, and to the point where it captivates me. So I kind of create a laboratory for myself and my dancers, where we’re just exploring and kind of non-judgmentally throwing things and responding to things and following things, very scientific. And then eventually you find like, ‘oh! Penicillin!’
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: You just find, ‘there you go, Penicillin!’
BRIAN BROOKS: Look at that, yeah, yeah, look at that, kind of. But it’s kind of the experimentation and waiting for something to speak back. So I hope that makes sense, but I, I’ve held onto that and my best work has come out of that method also. So I’ve also tried, like, leading with a lot of context and coming into the studio with a lot of research and a lot of, like, titles and all kinds of things ready to go. And those, that, it kind of devolves for me. That, I find I discover so much honesty in the physicality with the dancers that is usually speaks louder than any content I brought into the room. To try to find that, like, physical form in an honest way and then I let the content follow. So it usually, like, something will really feel true in the action of the dancers and I’ll see metaphor, and then, then bring in the music and the context and kind of build out from there. But I found more strength in going that direction.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: So, in talking with some of our choreography students, where one of the biggest blocks tends to be is how do you name something and do you have a, a process or just by de facto practice, how do you name a dance?
BRIAN BROOKS: I wish it was getting easier to do. Sorry to tell you. For me, it’s just been, it’s, it’s, it’s a tricky one. Because you’re, you know, also in the type of work you make, I’m making work that’s contemporary and it’s of my individual voice and I take a lot of liberties about how I construct it and what I’m trying to say with it, but I like to leave it open for you to get a lot from it. So my narratives are really loose, you know, it’s like we’re, so we’re coming in. So I find the title is going to give you a stand, it’s gonna give you, like, there’s your entry point. So I fear it because I feel like it locks down other opportunities. So I, I feel like I went through a phase, I thought I should just do ‘Untitled 2020, Untitled,’ you know, ‘2021.’
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Visual Arts does that.
BRIAN BROOKS: They do.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Yeah.
BRIAN BROOKS: But I’m not doing that, so I have been titling my pieces very late. Like, after I’ve made the piece I tend to title it. So I keep a journal and I write down all the titles and ideas. I usually have a title going in, I just don’t tell anyone, as David knows. As I was commissioned to make a piece on Groundworks last season, and he’s like, ‘What’s it, what is it? What’s the title?’ I said, ‘I’m not telling you. No title.’ And I made the piece, and then, it was probably dress rehearsal, ‘I have the title.’ It’s very late. I told the dancers before I told David. Terrible.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: They were on the inside.
BRIAN BROOKS: But there’s, so I guess I’m not, so my answer is kind of time based, right? It’s like it’s not subject based. It’s really influenced by time and, again, responsiveness. So like, once the dance for me is made, I’ve thought about so many things kind of coming into it and learned so much in the building and the making of a thing that there’s more there than I could have imagined, hopefully, if it’s a good piece, there’s more there than I could have imagined before I started to make it. It’s one of the reasons I make the dance in the first place. To make something that hasn’t been made before.That I haven’t made before, maybe nobody's created before. And then you look at it for the first time and then have a response and maybe it’s like a new doorway with a new title, that’s kind of where I’m working. Kind of this, looking at titling it more at the end of process when I’ve made the piece, captioning it. So, it doesn’t work well for marketing.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Or grant writing.
BRIAN BROOKS: Right. So I’m trying to just explain where it’s really coming from and what it supports in the work and hopefully people are interested in that kind of process.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Well, but speaking of trying to make something that hopefully no one has seen before. I’m curious what the term ‘21st Century Dance Practices’ meant to you when we introduced this idea and, and made the invitation. And for those that maybe don’t practice dance or as much, that exception or assumption in that is that throughout the 20th century, we had a lot of ballet, a lot of modern, a lot of our most prolific dance makers were creating techniques in their own names. You have the Cunningham technique, you have Taylor technique, you have Graham technique. And that is a very 20th century idea, also rooted in the idea that you could, you know, actually afford to have a full time dance company and pay your dancers 500 dollars a month and they would have enough money for rent and maybe coffee for that month. We’re now in the 21st century where payment for artists has not kept pace with inflation. And so I do find that dancers are finding different ways of making work and less so in their own image. So I’m curious, what does 21st century dance practices mean to you and how you might relate it to your work.
BRIAN BROOKS: Yeah, I mean I, thanks for the set up too. A little history so succinctly delivered. Well, we’re at, just at the beginning of that century. So I just, I hear it and first think of like placement in time and it feels exciting and daunting to, to call something 21st century dance practices because it’s like, is it established? What is it? So it, I, I think for me immediately that’s what I get most interested and excited about is this idea that it’s not fully formed. And I think that speaks a lot to at least where dance is, and dance in America. Of like, both creatively and generatively, artistically, aesthetically and also logistically and financially where the, where dance is this practice in the United States, they all kind of work together. And so thinking of naming it not contemporary dance, but saying like 21st century dance practices is like, ‘wait a second, it’s just the beginning of that century, there’s so much to be created.’ So it looks like an opportunity, it feels to me like an invitation to make it up.So I feel like that really speaks to where I’ve come from in dance and training and the people that I work with. This idea of innovation and invention. So that feels thrilling, also daunting.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: No pressure.
BRIAN BROOKS: Yeah totally. But there is like, I suppose, the way I’ve been working in recent years is I, I have my company based in New York City, that I create work with the same dancers frequently throughout the year, but I also take on several commissions throughout the year all over the country. And they have been in Broadway shows, they’ve been with major ballet companies, they’ve been with regional repertory companies, like Groundworks in Cleveland and Hubbard Street in Chicago and a big variety of like dancers and kind of guest artists, so the big variety, kids, I feel like that filters into 21st century dance practices. I feel like it also, like, art and politics and kind of this parallel a little bit of, like, how we are interacting and engaging with each other. And it feels, I can’t tell what comes first or what follows what, but it just feels like there’s an order of things that are happening of inclusiveness and opportunity and in a dance studio, again, it’s what I rest my career on. Is like coming in with people I don’t know and everybody was so generous and honest and available and daring today, and you spend time in this room with people that you don’t know and you take a chance in 90 minutes and like all of us left probably most of us, maybe somebody didn’t, but hopefully most of us leave with, like, one, at least one idea, new idea. So there’s an openness and receptiveness. I find it in the class and I find it in the dance practice at large. Working with my company, but also traveling throughout the year. I feel like choreography and dance practice in this century has become a, a collection of exchanges with people and artists and communities to inform. Again, it’s kind of my work is coming from inquiry and, and discovery and I feel like if I don’t get to know you in Akron and what you’re looking at and noticing and thinking about the work I’m doing, I’m going to be very ignorant to you. I’m just like, ‘well, this is my piece.’ And there’s something about this current dance practice, I feel like is, maybe, if I was to summarize it and not do a long-winded answer like I'm doing, maybe 21st century dance practice is flexibility. It’s the idea of like, malleability, right? We can morph. Like, my, my work has been one thing, but maybe today I learned something from you, and it can be something else. I feel like there’s, it’s almost like we want to escape identity sometimes. Like, in finding our identity we almost want to be able to be something else too.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Or categorization, you’re not just one thing.
BRIAN BROOKS: Not just one thing, limitless. So that’s a little rambling of an answer, but I feel like it’s because a lot of dance practice for the way I see it is about imagination and it’s about thinking forward of like, what could be. I don’t think this century and this dance practice right now is about what was. Usually when we look at what was right now, we think it’s moving too quick. It’s like, ‘oh yeah, well that’s, that’s been done, let’s go here.’ It feels like we’ve reached a point where that’s really celebrated, the idea of inventiveness and…
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Well, where I think there’s tangential to inventiveness, cause you also talked about innovation. We have also acknowledged in our previous conversations; there’s a certain athleticism and language fails us sometimes. So, one of my other questions that we’re asking all of our choreographers is how do you define virtuosity in dance?
BRIAN BROOKS: It feels like an…
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: You can demonstrate too.
BRIAN BROOKS: Thank you. I love it. Thank you for that invitation. I mean, yeah, because if, for me it’s all virtuosity. It’s only virtuosity.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: I mean, even when you were describing your most recent work, ‘Closing Ground,’ and how intimate it is, and I, I won’t do this right, but you were like, ‘it’s here and it’s here.’ And I was like, ‘oh.’ Just the meticulousness of that, which is something that we’ve also talked about resonating in your work, that’s a different approach to virtuosity than maybe in a 20th century practice, it is 32 fouettes at center stage.
BRIAN BROOKS: Well, I spoke to my dancers a lot while we were, this new piece is called ‘Closing Distance,’ and we made, it just premiered two weeks ago at the Meany Center in Seattle, and it will go to Jacob’s Pillow this summer alone with another new work. So, I’m right in the midst of creating a bunch of new work, which is really a thrill, it’s thrilling to be done with one of them also and kind of in between right now. And it went really well, so that’s also good. But I was speaking to the dancers, it’s usually the range of motion is kind of like, finite and we did a lot of rule-based systems on partnering and where the body can touch and not touch. And it kind of, I was obsessed with the detail of it, as I am, and the precision of it, but also when I step back and I have my mentor Risa Steinberg come in and she’s like, ‘it’s really small.’ So, you know, thinking about the range of motion and the actual size of space, I’m not making work that’s, like, frontal presentational, like, large range of motion, lots of obvious jumps. I have, but not right now. But it is presentational. We played a 1,500-seat theater and it held up very well. So, but, because what we’ve worked on in the virtuosic sense of my aesthetic is making a lot about a little. So, I was speaking to the dancers about that, it’s like, it’s not this apologetic, like, small fold of space, like, ‘hold on we’re getting to the big thing.’ It’s actually like, that is the, that’s the point. Like, kind of bringing the eye into the body and to the real folds and form. We found the music for ‘Closing Distance’ is the Pulitzer Prize winning all-vocal score by Caroline Shaw, Partita for 8 Voices. It’s so marvelous and so challenging, but there’s moments where she uses breath as rhythm. And you hear, like, just the lung. And so, it brought us into the small kind of corners of the anatomy in a way that magnified something small. So, I guess for me virtuosity can be that. Like, kind of the magnification of, of something. For me, it’s like, in this new work it’s often the small intimacy between two bodies. It’s the whole 30-minute piece is all partnering, but then making it something, you know, making a big deal, pronouncing it in a way. So, I guess some of the other ways it becomes virtuosic, it’s like, the, the detail and precision and complication and coordination of the, of the partnered sequences are a little dumbfounding. So, for me that’s a, that’s a hallmark of virtuosity in my company is like making sections with five or six dancers, where everyone’s partnering everyone else, but it’s all, like, right on a dime. And like, it looks almost like a graphic animation or something. Cause the, there’s so much going on but it’s very articulate, and in this case synched to the score in a way that it’s highlighted. So, it’s not just a blur, but it kind of looks like this really complicated little Tetris game. I find that virtuosic knowing the, the challenge of the performers. So, like, you know, when you hear someone play a violin quartet, a string quartet rather, of like a Philip Glass, if you watch them play it, I feel like you know the virtuosity in the challenge of the coordinations for the performer and the speed and the syncopation, synchronization of a Philip Glass, to play that. That is always virtuosic to me. And I feel like I construct dance versions of that a little bit, where the, the synchronization of all of the ensemble players has to be exact, if someone’s off a little, the elbow, everything unravels. So, for me, the virtuosity is in the performers’ ability to complete the obvious tasks at hand.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: So, I’m glad to hear that the last piece went very well, but what do you do when you’re in a creative rut?
BRIAN BROOKS: You want to talk about my failures?
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Well, just those moments when you feel like a failure, and yet you still need to make a piece. You’ve got a deadline, I think we all can identify with that, when some days you’re up to it and some days it’s not working. Ok.
BRIAN BROOKS: I love a good fail. I love a good fail. I, I do, I love it, I hate it, but I love it. Like, you have to have good support systems around you to survive failures. And it’s basically like it’s, it’s what you do from it. So my greatest works have come out of unfortunately failures, you know, like, my last company piece wasn’t very good. So, I think that, not that you need to make a bad piece to make a good piece, but I’ve accepted that there’s, like, there’s a mix of things and circumstances.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: An ebb and flow.
BRIAN BROOKS: Yeah, there’s an ebb and flow. And each time try to capture what was successful in a process and what was disruptive in a process. And I make changes to my methods in studio and kind of go forward. So ‘Closing Distance’ resulted from a lot of introspection and changes to my methods and my rehearsal studio. So, my practice and process directly effects what ultimately gets on the stage. It’s my day to day and how I’m talking to people and where and when I’m making the decisions that affected the work. So I, I guess the failures and the ruts are interesting and like, how do you get out of it? I mean, the I’ve collected like strategies in studio of like, like right now I’m using my option method. So I’ll, I’ll get stuck. I’ll be in a rut while I’m creating and be like, ‘oh, what do we do next? We could go here, we could go here,’ you know, it’s like infinite options. It’s like totally numbing. Right? Paralyzing.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Overwhelming to have so many options.
BRIAN BROOKS: You could do anything, and as soon as you decide one, you can’t do all the others. It’s very disappointing. So, I guess also a little like voting and politics. Ok, so, I, I'm using this option thing now. So, one way I’m getting out of a rut, and I’ve used it in the past, I’ve been using it a lot more now, is I choreograph all three of those options, and I just take the time with the company, and we do this, and we go back the same place in the music, we could also do this. We make this whole elaborate section, musical counting, lifting, going to the ground. We could also do this, this other whole thing where we like exit quietly, like, that’s a new idea. But like, that was effective, the timing was so good. So, I actually would go with that. Like I had my not great gesture toward the sign, which is, like, a little embarrassing, and then I had a little, like, broken idea, and then we had this like other person exiting the room. That seems like a bigger idea. So again, kind of what happens in my dance studio, just respond quickly to what’s in front of you. But that really like, things like this will happen when you’re making dance. Like, there’ll be another choice that, like, changes the context of even what we’re kind of discussing right now. So…
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: And you don’t know it until you see it.
BRIAN BROOKS: I didn’t know it until she left. She was like, ‘I’ve got another class, I just.’ But, but exactly, so there, in my studio, and just the way I am. Kind of, I’ve built my own character and then it serves my art well to be responsive to my collaborators. So, if I had just decided like, I’m in a rut, well, we’re just gonna do this phrase again, or whatever we’re gonna do. But instead, like, creating a few options and being open to what might and then we find, like, ‘oh, she’s just gonna leave and then, now we have more possibilities next.’ So, I guess the kind of pursuing a few different, I call them forks in the road a lot in the room, it’s silly, but the dancers know what I’m talking about when I say it. They’re like, ‘ok.’ They know they’re gonna have to memorize like three very intricate things to the same music. They do it so well. I take full advantage of talented, trained dancers. But that’s one way to get out of a rut, is just, like, detach myself as much as I can personally from the situation and just make, just do. There’s other things sometimes if I’m not as inspired and it really is a rut, I’ll just force myself to continue to make things all day in the rehearsal. So instead of just sitting with the one thing for too long, I’ll just be like, ‘Ok, well let’s keep going, let’s make you a solo, let’s make another duet.’ And just generate, and video tape everything, and usually that night after dinner I watch the videos and I’m feeling much better about life and all those things look fantastic, and I can kind of reenergize. So, kind of, detaching myself, again, in a different way from the situation and just getting the work done. Both ways, lots of options, generate more, and then finding in, kind of a new way to look at it again. That’s a dangerous dance making, like, it costs a lot to make dance and you have to have a lot of people, like, well, with well-balanced food before they come in, trained and healthy, like, agreeing to come into the room. And you have to pay for the room, and, you know, etc., etc. That’s expensive and takes a lot of you have to get everyone on the same schedule. So also, if you’re in a rut, you’re just like…
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Feel that pressure. Yeah.
BRIAN BROOKS: So, I think ways of just, finding ways to, to keep generating and producing whatever that means for you, even if you’re not quite feeling it. And then you have options, and you can go in the next day or two and see, like, ‘oh, well we made all these things and one of them might help us get to the next place.’
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Thank you. One last question. In making a creative life, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve received, and would you mind sharing it with us today?
BRIAN BROOKS: For 99 cents each. That is my best advice, go corporate. No, no, no! It wasn’t. It wasn’t. It wasn’t.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Some of the Arts Administrative students in the front row really responded to that. Diversified revenue streams.
BRIAN BROOKS: Exactly. Exactly. Well, ok, Martha Sherman who’s a very good friend of mine and a great advocate for the arts and sits on a lot of boards in New York City and had done consulting in banking and then found contemporary dance and it’s changed her life and she’s changed our lives. And that’s all been really amazing, but years ago I was, you know, asked her. We were talking about company structure and methods and kind of build, there was, I was starting to take on a lot of commissions and trying to figure out this new way that my world was gonna work. And she said, ‘well, there are people you admire, and other choreographers that work and do things that you admire,’ so she said,’you should learn from them and steal their best practices from your perspective and throw away everything else you don’t need to know.And then you collect best practices from all of your heroes, and you can use them in ways that you want.’ So, kind of a simple idea in some ways. It was kind of the first time I had heard it quite like that though. I was really on the path of like, ‘Elizabeth Streb is my goddess. I will do as Elizabeth,’ you know…
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: That’s what worked for her.
BRIAN BROOKS: It’s like follow the legacy of like, you know, an idol. And I realized, like, oh, you can just do this part of what she does. And like, I started to, I thought that was, that was advice that kind of stayed with me still cause I try to kind of, like, try to learn from others.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: And that’s kind of what we’re doing this week too. The other half of Brian’s time here on the ground is another practice that NCCAkron does. A creative administration residency. Because we do have so many of our artists who don’t have a huge board, a huge staff to support them, but that we can also afford the same kind of space and time to ask those administrative questions what’s working and we don’t, you don’t have to do everything that looks like what they’re doing. But to appropriate, to borrow.
BRIAN BROOKS: I mean I guess that’s the, the thing I wish I had had more of earlier. Is like, how do you value the kind of meandering place you might feel you’re in at a given time? Like, it seems like we’re on this road to like achieve something. We’re kind of waiting, like, I’m still learning and then later I will produce, but I feel like there were so many things in the learning process that it becomes such, the, the crux of my work. That I was doing the whole time. That I, I wonder, I wish somebody had illuminated that, or I had found that for myself earlier. To see that like, the simple day to day practice of that two hours in the studio, there’s so many aspects of that that are the full value, of, of contemporary dance work. No matter, again, what the venue or the commission or the audience or the city. There’s like some basic, very human things that are embedded into the art form of dance that are so simple and so beautiful and so profound. And I kind of missed a little bit of that along the way. Like, lately I’ve been like, ‘oh, that’s the practice I’ve been doing.’ I don’t know if that makes sense, but I guess the thing that was, that I’d like someone to tell me when I’d started was like how to value the choice making and indecision that you have as a, as a, as part of the process. As not a fault, but the kind of, right. I don’t know if that makes sense, but there’s something about. We kind of build, we’ll all build our own pathway from all these different pieces, so I always, there was a long time I thought I had to follow, like, a certain path and all these other things wouldn’t happen, and I just committed to my path. But then I ended up, my first commission was with Wendy Whelan, classical ballerina, and I never really thought I would end up in ballet, and that’s become like a major part of my career now. So, I guess just funny that the roads met eventually, so I think I just would have been a little calmer when I was younger thinking like, ‘oh I could still go down that other road, but that could still happen.’ This is kind of like, I don’t know.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: I love it.
BRIAN BROOKS: Yeah.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Everyone, please join me in thanking Brian Brooks. And in true NCCAkronn form, we are having a fill your dance card, you're all invited to join us upstairs in our offices. We have a very informal reception and an opportunity to unveil our commission of Micah Kraus and we'll get to hear a little bit about his process and our discussion too. So, I hope that you'll join us upstairs. Thank you again.
OUTRODUCTION: Inside the Dancer’s Studio lunchtime talk series is supported by NCCAkron, The University of Akron, The University of Akron Foundation, and the Mary Schiller Myers Lecture Series in the Arts. Our podcast program is produced by Jennifer Edwards, Ellis Rovin is our composer and editor, transcription by Madeline Greenberg, theme music by Flocco Torres, cover art by Micah Kraus, and Julian Curet and Kat Wentz are our artist coordinators. To learn more about NCCAkron, please visit us online at nccakron.org and follow us on Instagram or Facebook @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. Thank you for listening and stay curious.