Cherylyn Lavagnino On Teaching Dance Remotely and Personalized Warm Ups

It's been a challenging year in all kinds of ways - assumptions, preconceived notions have all been upturned. It’s reflected in our communities, in our homes, in our city, and in our dance studios. This was never going to be an easy process. We are all struggling to learn new ways to communicate and trust each other. Dance provides a unique creative space for rebirth, which can be both painful and joyous.  

I am relieved to say that this period of daunting challenge has encouraged me to sharpen my creativity and practice as a dance artist/educator, leading me to reconsider so many essential aspects of a daily routine.

Just having finished my dance company’s premiere of Tales of Hopper at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in late February 2019, I returned to NYC after a few days of rest in California to discover that everything was coming to a standstill. I was now faced with teaching ballet from my living room via Zoom sessions. I immediately thought I would not be successful looking at 20 miniature squares of students in their cramped personal spaces. Fortunately, a note from the Provost’s office suggested the departmental chairs allow their faculty to teach in a manner utilizing Zoom that would best meet their individual needs. I welcomed the fact that I could fashion a form of instruction that suited my abilities in support of the continued technical and artistic development of our students. 

I enjoyed creating a format for this teaching period. I felt it would be important to address both the students’ physical and emotional well-being. I sent them a link to a Feldenkrais session each week along with a pre-recorded ballet barre and adagio. This allowed the students to take the class in a convenient time frame (as many were now on the west coast and 6am ballet seemed a bit unreasonable). I then asked them to record themselves taking the class and send a video to me for feedback. In essence, they were having private instruction with me. 

The Feldenkrais session in advance of the ballet class was intended to help organize and warm their bodies as well as to help center and focus them by way of a concentrated quiet physical practice with attention to their breathing. I find the Feldenkrais methodology to be very supportive in advance of a ballet class. Its concepts are influencing and guiding my pedagogical intentions more deeply and successfully over the past several years. Supporting the principles of the Feldenkrais lessons, I asked the students to pay close attention to transitions, breathing, coordination and economy of effort – aiming to encourage grace and ease of movement. Most of the students appreciated the effects of the Feldenkrais lesson followed by the ballet class. They found they were able to access a more full-bodied ease and articulation.

I also asked the students over the 7-week period to begin developing their own warm-up practice. They each built a floor sequence and then a ballet barre. It is essential for dancers to have the ability to prepare themselves for rehearsal and or performance. We dance artists cannot be completely dependent on others for our personal maintenance. An important part of self-care is learning to prepare a personalized warm-up to address the daily demands of our profession. It is advisable to maintain a practice that ensures the best efforts towards injury prevention with an eye to supporting a long career trajectory.

I found myself examining and deepening my own practice during this period of quarantine. The space limitations demanded a new approach to teaching and preparing materials for my students. I realized they might not move through space again for months. I would need to counteract this fact through creative movement choices. I began to construct barre sequences that emphasized weight shifts, full-bodied movement and distinct musical phrasing. This effort kept them moving fully and fluidly. I began to sequence the barre material to move directly from one side to the other with a focus to maintaining aerobic exertion. As we could do almost no material moving through space, I tried to create a barre that satisfied the demands of moving fully through space with the contrasting qualities of say a big waltz across the floor, a petite allegro and/or a turning combination. This effort sharpened the choreographic and pedagogical intent of my material.  

I worked directly with the musicians – Sending them recordings of my barres each week so that they could create a playlist made specifically for the week’s material. I then recorded myself teaching the barre and sent that video to the students. They experienced less distortion of sound as it was not a live Zoom session. This was one of the advantages of a pre-recorded class. We would meet on Zoom during our 2 class/week sessions, to discuss their experiences with the Feldenkrais lesson and the barre. This proved to be a very rich learning environment for the students and myself.  I also had the opportunity to know each of them more directly and with much more room for interesting conversation around the development of technique and artistry and their lives in this heightened moment.

In September, Tisch Dance returned to in-person classes for all studio work – dance technique and composition. This ongoing process will serve another conversation in the future.

As I mentioned earlier, just before lock-down my dance company, CLD, performed our 20th Anniversary season at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music. For this significant milestone we created our first theater-dance work, Tales of Hopper, with transparent set pieces and live music composed by Martin Bresnick. The piece is a series of vignettes based on eight paintings by Edward Hopper that Martin and I were especially drawn to. Tales of Hopper marked a departure for CLD, as it compelled my dancers to step into the new role of actor and collaborator in our company’s most character-driven work to date. We so enjoyed sharing this vulnerable, deeply personal creative process. Our performances were sold out in advance and were met with terrific critical and audience response. We left the theater with a deep sense of satisfaction and the plan to meet the following week to celebrate. 

The COVID lockdown began just a little more than a week later and suddenly we could do nothing in-person: Certainly, we were no longer able to celebrate our season with a cast party.  It felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under us - a feeling most people experienced for a myriad of reasons at the onset of the pandemic.  

For a few months CLD company members tried to stay in touch via Zoom cocktail hours. We became increasingly aware that Edward Hopper was often cited as the artist that best evoked the isolation and loneliness of the COVID quarantine. We realized that Tales of Hopper was a relevant and poignant artistic expression that we should begin to reinvent within the confines of our current crisis. 

We began with one of the sections entitled Nighthawks, originally a trio about a male figure unable to decide between 2 women. Our male cast member was not available to continue rehearsing. We three ladies focused on exposing the female perspective in this complicated relationship. Women often make choices that are not in their best interest concerning matters of the heart. We explored the personal reflections of each woman in this sadly misguided involvement with a man engaged elsewhere. His emotional inadequacy left the women unresolved and longing for him. Oddly enough we were able to express a raw sense of loneliness and regret in our many recorded Zoom rehearsals - Claire in upstate New York, Corinne in Florida, and me in New York City. We met twice weekly through Zoom, developing a new duet with the male figure dominant in our minds/hearts, but absent in our imaginary lives and rehearsals. This was such a different way of working with my dancers, yet we managed to create something very potent and effective. How was this possible when we were so used to being in the same room? Somehow, we transcended the limitations and found a new form through gesture, repetition and filming from a multitude of camera angles. The dancers’ internal lives were revealed in a manner that would be difficult to achieve in a traditional performance setting. We were gratified that we could continue to work in the midst of such severe restrictions. And we found that we were forced to push beyond the known, into vulnerable and uncomfortable places – the very thing that led us to something new and special.  

By December we were able to actually meet in-person and rehearse in Hunter, New York during a residency. I traveled safely with four male company members, to create a section for our next work, Songs of Ligeia (formerly titled Monsters of Grace). We required negative COVID tests just prior to leaving town, practiced social distancing, hand washing, and wore masks in all rehearsals and in public. Our accommodations provided us with separate rooms and personal bathrooms. We had a wonderful rehearsal period, fabulous dinners, and quality personal and company time in the evenings.  

We managed to create a first draft of the male section in four days, knowing that in a few months we will return to refine and develop this section. What a treat it was, to give my dancers a ballet barre and then rehearse for a few hours in a wonderful theater after so many months of having little to no space to move and very little personal contact. We will happily return to Hunter in June and July to continue creating Songs of Ligeia. We are extremely grateful for our relationship with the Catskill Mountain Foundation that continues to provide the rehearsal and living spaces for our residencies, and appreciative of the generous funding from the O’Donnell Green Foundation for Dance and Live Music, and our generous donors who have made these creative research residencies possible. 

This past year has heightened my awareness of how fortunate I am. I continue to have the opportunities to develop my skills as an artist and educator in a time of many obstacles and deprivation for others. I am surrounded by talented, determined, and like-minded collaborators that make such a difference. So often I think “Thank goodness for my work!” as it has surely kept my sanity -- my family and dance community have been a rock for me.