BWW Interviews: Naomi Goldberg Haas

Naomi Goldberg Haas is a dancer, master teacher, choreographer and director of DVP. She is the creator of Variable Pop Expressive Dance Method and Movement Speaks - a Community Collaborative Dance Program. Highlights from her work in theater, opera and film include collaborations with The Klezmatics, composer Michael Nyman, playwright Tony Kushner, directors Brian Kulick and Oskar Eustis and Disney animation. Her work with the Silesian Dance Theater and persons with disabilities was presented in 2010 at the International Contemporary Dance Festival in Poland and in 2011 at Chutzpah Festival in Vancouver, B.C. Recent projects include Golem with the Czech American Marionette Theater for the 50th anniversary of La Mama etc. She formerly danced with Pacific Northwest Ballet and holds an MFA from Tisch Dance at NYU. She has taught dance at Cal State, Long Beach and Loyola Marymount University and currently teaches at NYU, the Harkness Dance Center at the 92 Y and in DVP's programs.

Dances For A Variable Population (DVP) creates theatrical dance with diverse communities and professional dancers. Directed by Naomi Goldberg Haas and based in lower Manhattan, DVP has been working with senior populations since its founding. Through performances, ongoing classes and community collaborative programs, DVP is recognized as a company who erases the border between dancer and non-dancer. In 2010, Friends of the High Line awarded its first dance commission to DVP for "Autumn Crossing," which joined the company with neighborhood residents and was the first dance performance on the High Line.

Broadwayworld Dance recently interviewed Ms. Haas.

Q. When did you first become interested in dancing?

A. As long as I could remember. When I heard music, my first impulse was to dance. And it could have been anywhere! Music is pulsating; it can be classical, modern, Broadway-it doesn't matter. Music takes your body to places you never could have imagined.

Q. Given your career, which would you say had more of an influence on you, ballet or modern?

A. My first career was as a ballet dance. A funny thing: my grandmother was a yogi from her teens (in the twenties), and she scorned the idea of point shoes. So I had a good basic technique. Modern dance was not a problem. It's different, yet it calls on dedication, coordination, intelligence and, yes, your ability to respond to music.

Q. You've worked in theater, opera and film. Which is the better medium for you?

A. Choreography in theater, opera and film is interlaced with a team of creative collaborators. You have the voices of the writer in theater, the composer in opera and the director in film. In these areas, movement often plays a lesser role. In concert dance, the choreographer is the originator of the work and is able to have a greater voice. The dancers of the company become your primary collaborators and they are movers.

I have learned a tremendous amount collaborating with theater artists; the best ones taught me to constantly seek ways to move the action forward. The work of my husband, director Brian Kulick, inspires me to think about the total picture of the action and its development.

Q. How did you get to work with the Silesian Dance Theater?

A. In 2009, I was asked to bring Movement Speaks to the Silesian Dance Theater's Festival of Contemporary Dance in Bytom, Poland. At the Festival, I was teaching a team of dancers from all over Eastern Europe interested in the use of dance as a form of social service in communities with teens and adults who had developmental disabilities. This program, which I developed with my company and currently in NYC senior centers and various communities outside NY, was very successful. During the weeks I was at the Festival, over 100 people experienced this work, including dancers, movement therapists and folks in institutions. Poland has a great respect for "dance as therapy."The Silesian Dance Theater, artistic director, Jacek ?umi?ski, is a leader in this work, and Movement Speaks was well received. The following year, I was asked to come back to teach and create a work for the Festival.

Q. Would you say your teaching career has been an influence on you?

A.As I teach every day, most definitely. Teaching has been essential in looking at what is important to me in movement and how to share that. My interest in working with many kinds of bodies and ages requires a study of how the body moves and how to inspire movement in people.

Q. You founded Dances for A Variable Population. How did that come about?

A.I trained at the School Of American Ballet, where only certain body types could study and eventually dance with a ballet company where particular physical traits were accepted. Soon after I transitioned from ballet, I traveled with a caravan of performers, led by the Flying Karamazov brothers, through folk festivals in Western Canada and the States. I experienced the power of bodies of all types and sizes. DVP is an example of the discipline of ballet and the freedom of a cross pollination of people moving.

Q. Why do you focus specifically on seniors?

A. When I was a mid career student studying for an MFA at NYU's Tisch Dance program, I was offered a job through the department of Sports and Recreation to teach senior strength training. I had studied physical fitness and senior strength with my mentor, David Nillo, in Los Angeles, so it was a good fit. My senior students made such huge improvement the first semester that the class tripled in enrollment the next term. The key was teaching the seniors an awareness of working with one's body as a dancer, using alignment, grace and discipline.

For the past twenty years, I have been investigating new movement vocabularies for contemporary dance. I've worked with a wide array of populations new to dance, from children, street performers and athletes, to artists with disabilities. With the founding of Dances For A Variable Population, I have been working with senior populations, mixing this community with young modern dancers, exploring how these disparate groups can learn from one another about the nature of movement and expression. This has led me to realize that those with limited movement ability can often find maximal expression in the movements they are capable of creating. Limitations in the physicality of these older dancers have expanded my own choreographic vocabulary.

Q. Where do you see the company going?

I hope in the next few years we will be able to stabilize our programming in senior centers to run free classes year round. This year, we are beginning that effort with our Movement Speaks program at two sites in Harlem. We look forward to replicating this program for older adults communities nationwide and sharing our methods internationally. Along with our mission to work with seniors, we will continue to produce site related public space work in interesting environments, where people from all walks of life can experience dance with diverse bodies and abilities moving together.

Q. Can you tell me About Hudson River Dances?

A. Hudson River Dances will be our fifth site-related public space work and our first collaboration mixing a group of pre-teens and older adults. Working with Hudson Guild Fulton Center's senior program and neighborhood youth from 5 middle schools, our company dancers have been bridging the generations through choreography that embraces diversity of experience, bodies, and abilities. In this new collaboration, we are excited to see the cross-pollination happening. Kids are learning to take the lead, and the dancing of the seniors has absorbed the young people's energy.

In the park, the project will make full use of the 150 x 180 foot space, a natural meeting place for conversation and exchange within the hubbub of the city. Composer Jascha Narveson has created a shimmering, glistening tapestry of tinkling melodic sound that will move through the park via portable speakers controlled by the dancers. The dance will inhabit the park in the same way that a parade lives comfortably in a city street.

Our partners include the Hudson Guild Fulton Center, the Beacon Afterschool Program at Hudson Guild, and Hudson River Park. Hudson River Dances is made possible with partial support by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, and Council member Inez Dickens, 9th Council District, speaker Christine Quinn, Hudson Guild Adult Services, SPARC, a collaboration among the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Department for the Aging, and the City's five local arts councils. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the Department for the Aging and Hudson River Park.