Research Catalog

Interview with Nancy Stark Smith

Title: Interview with Nancy Stark Smith, 2019/ Conducted by Lesley Farlow on September 27 and 28, and October 19, 2019 in Northampton, Massachussetts; Producer: Dance Oral History Project
Author: Smith, Nancy Stark
Publication: 2019

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Audio	Restricted use	*MGZMT 3-3491	Offsite
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Performing Arts Research Collections Dance to submit a request in person.	Audio	Supervised use	*MGZMT 3-3491	Performing Arts Research Collections Dance

Details

Additional Authors

Farlow, Lesley

Description

Online resource (4 streaming files [approximately 7 hr. and 11 min.]) : digital +

Summary

Streaming file 1, September 27, 2019 (approximately 1 hour and 59 minutes). Nancy Stark Smith speaks with Lesley Farlow about her family background and childhood including her birth in Brooklyn, New York (on February 11, 1952); her parents and grandparents including their origins in Eastern Europe; her mother's death when she was five and its effect on family life; how quitting smoking (when she was around 33) led to greater emotional maturity, including with respect to her relationship with her father; her involvement with school and extracurricular activities including sports and summer camp; changes after her father's remarriage (when she was 10) including the departure of their beloved housekeeper Ernestine Mary Baker Gomez Harris; her often-strained relationship with her step-mother; her daily rituals and entries in her diary as a way of coping; her relationship to writing including her use of glyphs in the place of language; exercises in which she has her students write with pen as a way of intuitively translating experience onto paper; her half-brother, David [Chaim Smith] including his study of the Kabbalah; her introduction through a study group with Diane di Prima to [Kabbalah] related metaphysical concepts such as the sephirot; the many reasons she decided to attend Oberlin College; how she felt about the dance field and dance classes at this time; creating an independent writing and dance major; participating as a freshman in Twyla Tharp's (1971) on-campus dance residency; entering the Oberlin College modern dance program at the invitation of Brenda Way; Way's founding of the Oberlin Dance Collective, in particular its long gestation period; the residency at Oberlin College of Grand Union, which included Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, Barbara Dilley (Barbara Lloyd at the time), and David Gordon; Smith's choreographing at this time including her work Page 48; Way's repurposing of a men's gymnasium (Warner Gymnasium) at Oberlin College as a dance studio and its use as the site of Grand Union's residency; Steve Paxton's pre-dawn technique class, in particular, his standing-still practice (later known as the "small dance"); how this practice related to safe contact improvisation and its influence on her to this day; Barbara Dilley's day-long, mandala-based dance [no title found]; Paxton's method of creating a frame for [compositional] investigation; her belief that the so-called first rule of contact improvisation, "take care of yourself," has been misinterpreted; contact improvisation and the MeToo movement including with respect to the creation of "safe spaces" and the role of the jam coordinator; her perception of the concept of community at this time (early 1970s) including with respect to the artists in Grand Union; Smith describes (to illustrate her perception of community among Grand Union members) performances by Barbara Dilley, David Gordon, Douglas Dunn, Nancy [Topf], Yvonne Rainer, and Trisha Brown at the Joe LoGiudice Gallery; speaks about works she was in or saw by Gordon, Dilley, and Paxton during Grand Union's residency at Oberlin College, including Paxton's Magnesium; reasons she was attracted to these works; Paxton's series of contact improvisation performances at the John Weber Gallery in New York (in June 1972) in which she performed; the ethos at the time of risk-taking (as opposed to making everything "safer and safer") and how she views this in hindsight; the immersive experience of living with the other dancers and practicing, performing, and watching video tapes (filmed by Steve Christiansen) of themselves for hours every day; the showing of films, including George Manupelli's Dr. Chicago, between performances at the Gallery; her complete absorption when performing.
Streaming file 2, September 28, 2019 (approximately 1 hour and 43 minutes). Nancy Stark Smith speaks with Lesley Farlow about Brenda Way, her dance adviser, and Stuart Friebert, her writing adviser, and her desire to continue both writing and dancing; the summer of 1972, which included the performances at the John Weber Gallery followed by her work with Way and the establishing of the Oberlin Dance Collective at Martha's Vineyard (Massachusetts); her moving away from a more choreographed style of dance toward the improvisational approach of Steve Paxton and David Gordon; more on Brenda Way and how she shaped the Oberlin Dance Collective including her decision to leave Oberlin College; Robert [W.] Fuller and his support of Way and the arts during his tenure as President of Oberlin College including the funds for Grand Union's residency; her dance-related activities during her sophomore year at Oberlin College including how re-watching Steve Christiensen's videotapes of the John Weber Gallery performances led to her better understanding of the dynamics of contact improvisation; Steve Paxton's role in guiding performers toward an instinctive understanding of contact improvisation's dynamics; how this in turn, resulted in smoother (and safer) collaborations on stage; Smith's image of this collaborative spirit as a kind of third mind or intelligence; her experience on tour with Paxton (and Christiansen as videographer) in California in January 1973; performing at the L'Attico Gallery in Rome, Italy in the summer of 1973; (briefly) the funding of these tours including the support of Bob [Robert] Rauschenberg; anecdotes about her travels alone in Italy and in Tunisia; her last year of college including dancing with Paxton and attending a lecture by Ram Dass; attending the first summer session (1974) of Naropa University (newly-founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche), to develop her writing; an anecdote about a performance by John Cage during this summer session; Barbara Dilley and her long association with Naropa University, which began that summer; Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche including her thoughts on his teachings; meeting Diane di Prima and moving to Marshall (California) where she worked for her; moving to a spiritually-oriented, "priests" commune of gay men; how working with Di Prima, a non-dancer, on a demonstration of contact improvisation led her to develop the "supported roll"; the conundrum of how to preserve chance and spontaneity once certain movements have become standard; reconnecting with Nita Little, which led to a series of concerts and demonstrations, with Little, Curt Siddal, Steve Paxton and others, performing under the name ReUnion; Lisa Nelson, including her background as a modern dancer and as a videographer; the reasons Smith and others took steps to copyright contact improvisation but ultimately decided against it; how this led to the founding of what became Contact Quarterly (initially titled Contact Newsletter); the first issue, in spring 1975; eventually instituting paid subscriptions and changing the title to Contact Quarterly; the role of Di Prima in introducing her to metaphysical studies including visualization practice; the significance of her study of the [Buddhist] elements (tattvas) to her work with contact improvisation and her development of Changing States; examples of the relationships of specific elements and sub-elements; the difference between prescriptive and descriptive states, including with reference to the Underscore [the long-form improvisational structure developed by Smith beginning in 1990]; using elemental visualization (in the context of contact improvisation) to create the atmosphere or mood conducive to certain physical movements; an anecdote about using her visualization training to read a scroll at a meeting at the gay "priests" commune; describes a meditation method and related exercises based on Murray Korngold's adaptation of the Silva Mind Control method; her embodied practice of the elements as compared with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen's organ-centered Body-Mind Centering; Bainbridge Cohen's experiential anatomy; how these practices relate to her exploration and practice of contact improvisation; the publishing [of Contact Quarterly] as a means of disseminating information about contact improvisation; her own writing, for Contact Quarterly and in her notebooks, including her longtime use of symbols; more on her mother including how her financial legacy gave Smith the freedom to pursue her work.
Streaming file 3, September 28, 2019 (approximately 53 minutes). Nancy Stark Smith speaks with Lesley Farlow about her peripatetic life during the period of 1975-1978 when she was teaching at Naropa University in the summer, working with Steve Paxton on the East Coast in the fall, living in California in the winter, and touring with ReUnion; moving to Northampton, Massachusetts in 1978 to work with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen (and Lisa Nelson) at Cohen's school [School for Body-Mind Centering]; the role of Contact Quarterly in the development of the contact improvisation community; contact improvisation as a form that inherently involves sharing; more on the newsletter [Contact Quarterly] including how it helped to empower the contact improvisation community; (contact improvisation) jams and their progeny including the increasingly popular festivals and retreats; the intrinsically innovative spirit of contact improvisation; Contact Quarterly as a record of the progress and development of contact improvisation as well as other disciplines such as Authentic Movement and Body-Mind Centering; where and how Contact Quarterly was compiled, printed and distributed including Nelson's role in the process; her approach to contact improvisation (as a performer and teacher) at Naropa University and elsewhere, in particular the freedom to follow her own path with respect to methods and topics; touring in Europe with Paxton, Nelson, Daniel Lepkoff, and Christina Svane as the Freelance Dance group and how this led to her teaching regularly in Amsterdam (Netherlands); A Capella Motion, a series of workshops held regularly at Smith College for about 15 years (approximately 1983-1997); changing her teaching methods in response to her feeling of being trapped within the confines of her own pedagogy; how certain events in 1990 led to her realization that the Changing States (which evolved into the Underscore) underlay her methods; how these concepts, including the descriptive and prescriptive states, manifested themselves concretely in her practice, for example in a participant's determining when to end; her focus on the reporting of an experience rather than summarizing or interpreting it; the interactive effect of hearing other people's experiences (or truths) including in the assembly (of the group) stage; the transition back (after the end of Underscore) into the social world.
Streaming file 4, October 18, 2019 (approximately 2 hours and 36 minutes). Nancy Stark Smith speaks with Lesley Farlow about her life during the mid-1970s through 1980 when she was dividing her time among California, Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and the East Coast; more about touring in France and Amsterdam in 1980 with Steve Paxton and others as the Freelance Dance group; Pauline de Groot and her role in bringing modern dance back to the Netherlands; Smith's annual teaching residency in Amsterdam during the next five years or so; more on the A Cappella Motion workshops including Larry Myers' videotaping of faculty performances; the ongoing production of Contact Quarterly including the role of the photographer Bill Arnold in providing permanent office space and aesthetic guidance; the beginning of her romantic relationship with Arnold in 1984; more on Changing States and how it developed out of her work with contact improvisation; the interactive relationship of emotions and movement in Changing States; the concepts of flow and continuity in contact improvisation; during this period (the 1980s) making work she characterizes as scored improvisations; examples of what she means by a score, including images; how she coped with the sudden break-up with Bill Arnold in 1990 including teaching the Underscore at Naropa University and working intensively in novel ways in her studio; Raku, the work she created for a shared program with Simone Forti including how it developed out of her exploratory work in the studio; the inspiration for the title Raku; later versions of Raku including as performed with the musician Mike Vargas in a joint work titled Asterisk; her view of this work as a product of her study of the elements with Diane di Prima, the experience of experiential anatomy with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, and her visualization work at the "priests" commune in California; her collaborations with Cohen on Cohen's articles in Contact Quarterly and Cohen's resulting book Sensing, feeling, and action [: the experiential anatomy of body-mind centering, 1993]; other examples of authors whose articles in Contact Quarterly were anthologized: Remy Charlip, and Irene Dowd and her Taking root to fly [: articles on functional anatomy, 1995]; more on Cohen and Sensing, feeling, and action; Contact Quarterly as a "field-facing" journal, that is, by and for practitioners; reasons she found working on Contact Quarterly so satisfying; her preference for working in immersive, retreat-like environments including her workshops in Arlequi, Spain and her January workshops (initially in Florence, Massachusetts, later at Earthdance, in Plainfield, Massachusetts); Simone Forti's characterization of contact improvisation as "art sport" at a time when its status as dance was being questioned; why Smith found this label so apt; the dance reviewer Elizabeth Zimmer and her immediate enthusiasm for contact improvisation after first seeing a performance around 1975; Zimmer's American Dance Guild conference in 1980 titled Dance as Art Sport [Improvisation: Dance considered as Art Sport]; (briefly) the movie Art sport made by Frix Movix (the film company of the gay "priests" commune); more on her January workshop at Earthdance, in which she taught contact improvisation as well as non-contact improvisational practices including (inter alia) Changing States, contemplative dance practice, listening practice, and the Underscore; body time versus clock time; her regular conversations with Forti in the course of which Smith spoke about her desire to bring the various strands of her practices together; her use of the term pod for each different area of practice including the Underscore as a giant pod in itself; an anecdote about Soares and a listening practice workshop led by Vargas at Barnard College; other pods including contemplative practice, composition, Changing States and the elements, articulation, human skills, and the mystery pod; how her discussions with Forti seeking a central connection among the pods resulted in the term States of Grace; the first Glimpse, a residency and retreat-based program with community-directed practice and performance aspects; subsequent Glimpses (beginning with Glimpse 1, in San Francisco), which focused on the Underscore, in particular exposing it to the community; various aspects of the Glimpse held in Turkey and Glimpse 3, held in Seattle, Washington; additional examples of how the Underscore is practiced in the context of Glimpse; the transition of the Underscore from a research tool to a prescriptive form as well as its worldwide dissemination (as the Global Underscore and otherwise); how the Underscore differs in practice from contact improvisation jams, in particular the greater sense of group awareness; Glimpse 2, held primarily at the 92nd St. Y, in New York City including an anecdote about an audience member's gratitude for a satisfying nap; her pleasure in observing the practice of skinesphere; Glimpse 4 held in 2018 in Salt Lake City (Utah), which was led by Brandin Steffenson and Nelson, and was the first Glimpse she did not attend; various aspects of her direction of a Glimpse including choice of a color scheme; the problems that arose at Glimpse 4, in particular with respect to leadership and power struggles among the organizer/participants and race-related issues; the community festival Underscore organized (in summer 2019) by the two participants most involved in the race issues of the previous Glimpse, including their addition of the section Arriving Socioculturally; CI 25, a collaborative event, commemorating the 25th anniversary of contact improvisation held at the Warner Gymnasium at Oberlin College in June 1997; the archival project known as the reference room; CI 36, which celebrated contact improvisation's 36th anniversary, at Juniata College in 2008; collaborating with David Koteen on her book Caught falling [Caught falling: the confluence of contact improvisation, Nancy Stark Smith, and other moving ideas, 2008]; more on CI 36 and its many parts including satellite events; envisioning a possible CI 50 or CI 49, in particular her idea that it should be decentralized and diverse; the Round Robin project [initiated in September 2008], conceived as an online forum for the global contact improvisation community to share information and an archive; the launch (in April 2019) of the online calendar of events and the ongoing work on the archive; the transition of Contact Quarterly from print to online; the Triangle Arts project including its conception as a triangle of cultural exchange among the United States, Indonesia, and Japan; the structure and goals of the program; her role as the dance artist and that of Laura Faure as the dance manger, representing the United States; various activities engaged in as part of the program, from the group's attending the Bates Dance Festival in the United States to visiting a monastery (Koyasan) in Japan; her (yet to be completed) documenting of the program in writing and photographs; her writing including more on the book Caught falling, her editor's notes [for Contact Quarterly], and various approaches she has taken or considered to writing projects; her continuing exploration (through the Underscore and otherwise) of the relationship between kinesthetic absorption and compositional awareness; how she often finds herself toggling between simplicity and complexity.

Alternative Title

Dance Oral History Project.
Dance Audio Archive.

Subjects

Genre/Form

Sound recordings.
Oral histories.

Note

Interview with Nancy Stark Smith conducted by Lesley Farlow on September 27 and 28, and October 19, 2019 for the Dance Oral History Project of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, recorded on the occasion of the Somatics Festival 2019 at the Werner Josten Performing Arts Library at Smith College, in Northampton (Massachusetts).
For transcript see *MGZMT 3-3491
As of March 2023, the audio recording of this interview can be made available at the Library for the Performing Arts by advanced request to the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, dance@nypl.org. The audio files for this interview are undergoing processing and eventually will be available for streaming.
Sound quality is excellent.
Title supplied by cataloger.

Access (note)

Transcripts may not be photographed or reproduced without permission.

Funding (note)

The creation and cataloging of this recording was made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

OCLC

1280348616

Author

Smith, Nancy Stark, Interviewee.

Title

Interview with Nancy Stark Smith, 2019/ Conducted by Lesley Farlow on September 27 and 28, and October 19, 2019 in Northampton, Massachussetts; Producer: Dance Oral History Project

Imprint

2019

Playing Time

071100

Type of Content

spoken word

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

audio

Type of Carrier

online resource

volume

Digital File Characteristics

audio file

Restricted Access

Transcripts may not be photographed or reproduced without permission.

Event

Recorded for for the Dance Oral History Project of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts on the occasion of the Somatics Festival 2019, at the Werner Josten Performing Arts Library of Smith College 2019, September 27 and 28 and October 19 Northampton (Mass.).

Funding

The creation and cataloging of this recording was made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Added Author

Farlow, Lesley, Interviewer.

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