Dr. Timony, Author at Welcome

Supporting Creativity Pt. 1

Several years ago I was in a beautiful position. As the chair of a small fine arts department in an urban independent school I was able to push, pull, advocate, and influence. The faculty around me were supportive. The administration was trusting. Our budget was enough and our facility gave us room to grow.

Times like these you learn to live. Again and again we would consider our methods and how well we served the students, the mission of the school, the faculty, and one another. We were open and looking for ways to make everything meaningful and memorable for our students. One gaping hole in our curriculum was dance.

Now everyone knows that there are standards for dance and that they are never fulfilled for many reasons. If you can imagine that, historically, arts programs are the first to be cut you can trust me that dance may not be an area that even gets onto the schedule. How could we make this work? Another challenge is that the certification process for K12 dance is essentially a technical certification–categorized with shop classes and the like. Earning the certification is one thing, maintaining it is nearly impossible. For this reason, many dancers and dance educators do not even bother. As an independent school, this was no real concern but this meant, from a practical standpoint, that there is no significant pool of dance educators to draw from in the same way that you may be able to tap into student teachers or practicum students in other content areas.

Having been a co-founder of a NYC dance company and having worked with professional dance companies in 5, 6, 7, or 8 past lives, I knew a little bit about the field. I knew that dancers had a few things in common. One of those things was a love of available space–often the more austere and forgotten the better–and a need for space. My company used to rehearse in a Julliard studio on odd weekends when classroom reserves were thin. We rehearsed in loft bedrooms with furniture stacked on end. We rehearsed in performance spaces like PS 2 in between performances of popular theatre programs, in church basements, and in performance venues–they thought we were performing but we ran it like a rehearsal.

The final frontier.

Our students needed opportunities to express themselves creatively.
Dancers needs space. We had space. I started searching. Alphabetically.

Miller Rothlein–then Miro Dance Theatre–was the first company who had a functioning web presence, a functioning phone number, and a functioning director who answered it. I told them what I had in mind. We have space and you have dance. We want to share. And that, as they say, was the beginning of something beautiful.

Years later, we reminisce on the amazing work they have done with our students.
It is nothing less than beautiful.

This year, at their annual fundraiser, two of their first students will be presenting a duet.
Seniors. Going where no man has gone before.

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the seed, the soil, the water,

the care, the shoot, and the growth.

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Three Uses of the Knife

Education is a blade.

Nourish. Clean. Protect.

“The subject of drama is The Lie. At the end of the drama the Truth…”

–David Mamet

All that learning
used under creative commons license photo by Wim de Jong

Education nourishes. Tell me how knowledge cannot be the cure for your hunger. You can learn to plant, reap, and prepare. One can learn to do the same and then learn the virtue of caring for others. One can use their learned skills to earn money and buy food or they could give that money to another. It is the conservation of energy, the conservation of matter.

You matter.

We matter. Conserve. Us.

Education cleans. Heals. We remember what we were like. Experimenting with our prejudices. Loves and hates. We learn. Change. We are cleansed of our experiences that can perpetuate hatred, harm, and discord. Education is the space where we can be. It is our darkroom. We dodge or we burn. We develop and we change. Emerge new and then repeat the process. After a few years we begin to get good at it, even. We are new. We are healed. We are clean.

Education protects. Every act of learning is a victory against ignorance. Minimum. I do not say this lightly. The decisions that a child/adolescent/young adult faces in this age are no more life-threatening as they may have been decades ago. Save for the fact that actual life/death decisions are being made. Education isolates us from the ignorance and pain of the world. Lonely? Safe. Move on.

On Dance

For the last few years I have served as the president of the board of directors for a dance company in Philadelphia. I am often asked how I became involved in dance. Some ask not knowing about my life as a musician, performer, and composer. Some ask knowing me only as a musician.

In my third year of college I was asked by a friend of a friend if I would be willing to play for a dance performance. They needed the guitar part of Susanne Vega’s Song of Sand and wondered if I could learn it and play it live on stage with them. It seemed like a simple enough request and I obliged as we were all friendly and what else did I have to do? This experience became like many of my experiences in dance. Dance begins with an invitation.

We rehearsed a few times. Most of the work was done without me as I learned the tune as was on the record. The evening of the performance came and I was asked to remove my shoes. This was a matter of fact due to the marley flooring but it was not explained to me that way. It was explained as a manner of stepping into the dance space. I will not say ‘sacred ground’ but ground, no less. Lights dimmed and bodies rushed. The buzz of audience behind the thin muslin curtain. Funny that I remember the audience being behind the curtain as if they were to perform for us somehow.

We began, that is, I began and was taken with the movement to my playing. With my playing. This was not moving to a flat line but to a pulse. It became immediately clear that this was necessary. I describe nearly every experience in dance as my having tunnel vision. It is not so much that I become alone as an observer but that periphery disappears.

Such a powerful expression. It does, with intent, what you assume individuals are doing all the time–part of the reason that you may watch people at all. As you approach one another. As you speak. When you mention a sensitive subject. Strong words.

Dance purposely speaks through motion. If observation is how we interpret the intentions of those around us, then dance closes the emotional gap that exists between verbal communication and the physical tell that is telegraphed to us.

Make no mistake.

Dance is saying something.

To you.

Becoming Nobody

Online chess. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It is a stretch to say that I like losing but I consider myself game. Gamey? Gamer. Willing. Much more willing to lose than not to play. Grow or at least have the experience. That will pave the way one pebble at a time.

So often you will hear in a conversation or read in a blog or social media outlet that someone considers themselves a “lifelong learner.” I wonder what they are learning? In my informal survey of these statements, it is typically a statement about one’s willingness to improve or change their current skills. Is that not what everyone does or is expected to do? Formally, I would enjoy gaining more information about genuine levels of objective growth and change rather than anecdotes about life-changing events and decisions that “really moved (institution X) forward.

As one who enjoys martial arts, I look at all areas of my life to reveal my training partner. It changes by day and by context but the function is the same. By working together, each one has the goal of improving their skill and they cannot do it alone. Regardless of your training partner, you can only have one competitor. Self. Choose how much practice takes place, quality of food, level of hydration, and intensity of work. Make the decision to be present. Aware.

Before I step onto the mats I determine my attitude and I am sure that it influences who obliges when I offer to pair up for a session of training. So many would love to say that “any given Sunday” I may win a match or lose a match; have an up day or a down day. That is not the case. My training session begins the night before when I decide to get a decent night’s sleep and moves forward with decisions throughout the day. There are not many decisions to be made. There is one. Then another one.

Me and Relson — Mugging for the camera with Relson Gracie

Watching the documentary “Bobby Fischer Against the World,” I heard David Shenk saying that there were 40,000 moves on a chess board after the first move. If you know anything about chess, you know that this is inaccurate. From both a mathematical standpoint as we as a meaningful standpoint, it is inaccurate. The only one with thousands of moves before them in a chess match is a fool.

Every decision made through the day determines an analog success or failure on the mat that evening. However you may score it. We all score it somehow. That is how we measure growth. I will not pretend to be one of the “all for fun” types. I will not claim to be a technician or analyst of the game but I know this–there are necessary and sufficient conditions in order to achieve growth and most of them depend on me.

Become nobody. Be humble. Serve. Give. Leave your ego at the door. I will take it one step further…maybe several steps. Those decisions that you make all week determine the type of training partner you will be for someone and reciprocally, they will then be for you. Rather than simply preparing yourself to respond and react, prepare yourself to be your best for someone else.