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Episode 12 | Innovation II: James Wainwright
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In this episode of At the Barre, we go behind the scenes with Madison Ballet company member and emerging choreographer James Wainwright.
James shares how he transitioned from years of playing football into professional dance after starting ballet and musical theatre as a teenager. He reflects on growing up around his mother’s dance studio in Chicago, the sense of belonging he found in the studio environment, and the journey that eventually brought him to Madison Ballet.
We also get a sneak peek into the inspiration behind James’ Innovation II piece, Heure de Fermeture (“Closing Time”), which was sparked by a transformative family trip to Scotland and a memorable evening spent immersing himself in the Edinburgh community.
About James Wainwright
Born in Chicago, Illinois, James Wainwright grew up around his mother’s dance studio. James started his professional training at the School of Ballet 5:8 under the tutelage of former Ballet 5:8 Ballet Mistress Lauren Ader-Cumpston, Trainee and Studio Company Director Brette Benedict, and Artistic Director Julianna Rubio Slager. In 2016, Wainwright trained at The Nutmeg Ballet Conservatory Summer Intensive, learning from Tim Melady, Eleanor D’Antuono, and Kirk Peterson. After graduating high school, James joined Ballet 5:8’s Trainee Program in 2018, then became a Company Artist 2020. James joined the company in 2023..
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/brollerina/
See Heure de Fermeture by James in Innovation II @ Overture Center Promenade Hall May 8-10, 2026
🎟️ madisonballet.org/innovation-ii
Join the conversation!
MBSP WEBSITE: https://www.madisonballetspecialprojects.com/
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/madisonballetspecialprojects
Questions/comments? Email us at hello@madisonballetspecialprojects.com
Credits
PODCAST COVER PHOTO: Matthew Ulrich
DANCER: Madison Ballet Company Artist Lauren Thompson
MUSIC: Capet String Quartet - Ravel (Col. D 15057-60) 1928
JAMES HEADSHOT: Lexia Frank Photography
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'At the Bar' Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
I'm Chris Ferenthal, director of Madison Ballet's Special Projects, and this is At the Bar, your behind-the-scenes look at the ideas, stories, and creative processes shaping Madison Ballet's work.
00:00:18
Speaker
Each episode brings our community a little closer to the dancers, choreographers, and collaborators who are making ballet in Madison right now. Whether you're a seasoned ballet domain, current or former dancer, or simply curious about how dance gets made, we warmly invite you into the room where it happens.
00:00:41
Speaker
Welcome back to at the bar with Madison Ballet special projects.
Discussion on 'Innovation 2' Program
00:00:45
Speaker
I'm Chris Ferenthal director of special projects. And today I'm joined by James Wainwright, a company dancer at Madison Ballet and also a choreographer of one of the pieces of innovation to our upcoming program at promenade at Overture center, May 8th through 10th. James, thanks so much for joining me. I'm really excited to talk to you.
00:01:07
Speaker
Well, thank you for having me. It's wonderful to be on. I'm anxious to talk about your piece, which I saw in rehearsal in person today, which was really lovely. And also, i think already setting the tone of we're playing
James's Dance Journey Begins
00:01:20
Speaker
with things. It's Eure de Fermature and it's our opener, right? Yeah. I'm curious to to know how you got the title closing time. But before we get to the piece itself, I'm curious to talk about your journey both into dance and into Madison. Where are you from and how did you first begin dancing ballet?
00:01:41
Speaker
I am from Chicago, Illinois, and I started pretty late. I started when I was 16. So that's 2016. I have had a longer history of being around dance than actually dancing. My mother was a dancer. um Growing up, I was always around dance studio because after her career, she went and got her master's of arts administration at Columbia College in Chicago and then decided to open her dance studio on the south side of Chicago.
00:02:09
Speaker
So from the age of five on, i was always a around dance. It was never really an integral part of my life. It was just something that was always around and abundant, but it was something that I was always given, which was wonderful, the choice to be a part of, where I would take a class here or there, but then I would always go do my own hobbies of sports over the summer or classwork and clubs through that. It wasn't until I turned 16 that I started doing musical theater after one too many football injuries, because I played football for eight years growing up, that i was actually reached out to by a dance company that was looking for guys. And i Had a series of unfortunate events happen in my life that sent me to start training professionally more than I was actually going to high school up until my senior year. So by my senior year, I was going to school from like 8.30 to 12.45. And then I would dance 2 to 7, sometimes 2 to 9.
00:03:17
Speaker
I would drive into the city and I would take my classes and do my... um rehearsals and was part of a small touring company in the South side of Chicago. I remember my junior year of high school, it was homecoming week and everyone's like, Oh, are you going homecoming? And I remember like there's the classic saying of I can't, I have dance, but I couldn't go to my homecoming because I was going on tour that week. I can't. I'm on tour. Yeah. that's yeah better It was fun. i stayed with that company for about seven years from 2016 to 2023.
00:03:50
Speaker
And I decided that was going to be my last season with that company. And I wanted to spread out creatively and see what else there was and what else I could do with my career.
Transition to Madison and Community Building
00:04:00
Speaker
sent some resumes out as you do. i mean, not to get too personal with it, but I was was actually in a medium distant relationship at the time. They were working at Epic, as a lot of people do in Madison, and i was still in Chicago right off of the pink line in the city. And I would make my drives up and they went, hey,
00:04:21
Speaker
you know there's ballet company here and we'd be closer and i went yeah i'll send that out and i had seen some stuff and i looked even more and i was like okay i could see myself going here and then i auditioned and i got in and then the day after i moved up that relationship ended oh wow the day after you moved up yeah so i moved to madison knowing a person that i wasn't really in speaking terms with anymore. So I moved here and had a couple months to figure out work and stuff. But a really big thing that I was missing was community because I had chose to leave mine in Chicago that I really cultivated into a good space. But i realized the one thing that was missing was the art that I was making and the creative process that I was involved in wasn't where I wanted to be.
00:05:13
Speaker
So I made the leap that a lot of dancers do, which is up and moving. Community is a really big thing for me. And one of the biggest things that i tend to do very well was form a community here. And I was absolutely awestruck with how I was accepted.
00:05:31
Speaker
into the community here and also brought in to this company, but also like Madison as a whole. And I think that was really just a big thing for me on top of doing this wonderful work and being able to not only like push myself creatively, but also experiment creatively with these two innovation programs that I've been a part of because actually the first innovation program was the first program I did with Madison Valley.
00:05:56
Speaker
The first piece I ever performed with the Madison Valley was a piece choreographed by one another one of my coworkers, Sarah Martin. For that one, that was really cool to step in and be able to work with and for my coworkers and also meet all these people through that way. And I've met A lot of very good friends in this company that I still hold dear, I also live with. So that's really cool. From that first year, and it's just expounded every year of just wanting to build a foundation, but also cultivate this community that I get to be a part of here in Madison. That to the core of myself, not only as a person, but as an artist is so important to me.
00:06:33
Speaker
So I'm really just grateful for that year after year to be able to have that here. Oh, that's really beautiful. You have quite an interesting journey that sounds a lot like a lot of other dancers in some ways, but not very much like others. There's not a lot of football that I've been hearing and, you know, other interviews. And it's interesting that you had a mother who was a dancer and ran a studio, but she didn't dance mom you and force you in What does it mean to be around the dance studio if you're just taking the errant class? Is that maybe where some of the love of community or first experience of it comes from?
00:07:08
Speaker
Yeah, most definitely. i from a very young age, remember spending a lot of weekends just lounging around a studio where not in many classes were taking a part in, but also like going with my mom to her work, which was this dance studio. And like, sometimes I would take a class and get to know people and I'd see them around and i made passive friends that way.
00:07:33
Speaker
But it was just something that I was always radiating towards because my mom ran this thing. It was inherently a part of my life. It was a community that was very...
00:07:44
Speaker
easy for me to connect with because dancers are very emotionally communicative people. And before I was a dancer, I had that quality, I would like to say. And that's a very large part of my personality that I enjoy and take pride in that I just got to expand upon by learning more and more about dance through this musical theater than just taking that and realizing that maybe singing and acting weren't all that's cracked up to be. And maybe I just want to do this dancing and being welcomed into open arms into a familiar space of a dance studio was really great.
00:08:22
Speaker
It was actually like one of my first jobs because I had nothing better
Family Influence on Dance Career
00:08:26
Speaker
to do. So on the weekends, my mom would be doing paperwork or doing like upkeep around the studio. And I would be,
00:08:33
Speaker
sweeping the floors or oh I was real good at cleaning mirrors oh I got so good at that and I did it so often because gosh you have classes from 5 to 25 like those mirrors are gonna get dirty so somebody's gotta clean them that was my spending money and that was my allowance for a while which I really appreciate and i don't see it as a push into dance but I do really appreciate I appreciate a lot of things about my mother and a lot of things that she's done for me into this place in my career. She's helped out in so many ways, emotionally and logistically. But one of those major ones was just kind of passively corralling me into the studio and helping me understand that this is a very safe and fortunate place.
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, I really enjoy being in not just our studio, but the concept of the dance studio itself where there are classes of multiple ages happening throughout the day. if there's a professional company attached, then that adds kind of another facade of, oh, okay, there's a company dancer.
00:09:41
Speaker
And it feels very much like a place I can imagine once you get that sense of community, you can recognize it in a locker room, you know, and in other places. Or i think it's interesting that, you know, the sport that you played is some might say the most choreographic sport, literal plays drawn up. Was there anything to that? Or is it just football was more fun than the others?
00:10:04
Speaker
ah For me, it was a sport. that for some reason just kept making sense. And
Parallels Between Dance and Football
00:10:11
Speaker
I started when I was eight years old and stopped playing when I was 16. For a long time, that was like the sport that I played the majority of my life. And it's not only like tactile, it's physical. You can't deny that it's a physical sport, but there is a kinesthetic coordination that you have to connect with not only yourself,
00:10:31
Speaker
But like the offensive line is a court of ballet. It is a camaraderie of people working together to achieve a common goal, which in a competitive sport like that, the common goal is scoring points. And in a court of ballet, the common goal is to dance and create art in the way that they've been tasked.
00:10:50
Speaker
But it is a core of people working together synergistically to get the job done. And I think after a while, I realized that my brain appreciated the physical logistics, but it was missing something. And I think that was really the art of it all. Sounds so weird saying, but I think sometimes there's a poetry to American football that can sometimes be glassed over as it's just a brutish sport. But I mean, even Shakespeare wrote about Brutus, the brute that we talk about. It has a flow to it that stops and starts like an intermission, an act one and an act two. It has quarters for a reason. it it has a similar structure because that's what people like to watch.
00:11:35
Speaker
A lot of people don't like the pauses. And I think there's something to having a break to high octane energy that you're seeing as a spectator that sometimes you need to take a break. I think that's very important.
00:11:48
Speaker
I think you put that beautifully, i better than i even first thought. Not just the kinesthetic awareness of the dancer in space and you know the athlete in space, but even the pace and the intermission. and Even in choreography, dance choreography, something very fast needs to sometimes be followed by a breath. What positions did you play?
00:12:10
Speaker
Most of them. My father told me all the time when I was making the transition from football to ballet because he very much is mostly on the sports side and can watch a ballet but it's not going to get the most out of it. I love my father but my mother has a master's degree in arts administration. My father has cheered for them since the 1985 Bears won the Super Bowl. I remember countless times growing up of hearing you know Walter Payton also did ballet and it it was for a reason. I started off when I was eight years old as a center
00:12:44
Speaker
I still believe I haven't done in a bit, but I still believe I can long snap 13 yards. I did that. And then as I grew older, I lost some of the baby fat and slimmed up and got taller. And I ended my career playing defensive end tailback.
00:12:59
Speaker
Undefeated sophomore season, go Warriors. I actually, over the span of those eight years, suffered a decent amount of concussions. And that was one thing that really started to take contact sports off the table for me, not just physically in my own body, but also like there are checks and balances and a lot of not even like professional sports, but high school sports. TBIs are very scary things and a real thing that happens to a lot of people and not only just athletes, but people in high contact situations. And if we can prevent that by
00:13:33
Speaker
understanding how much trauma and damage your skull and cranium has taken it's going to have to be an avenue that we take and i made that choice for myself it was a lot i needed to find a new alternative and find a new opportunity away from just contact sports and not to say i have received two concussions in my professional ballet career though So i would also argue that I did take one contact sport and go to a new
Choreography During the Pandemic
00:14:04
Speaker
one. There are a fair amount of injuries in ballet as well, but they're usually a different kind of repetitive stress you know injury. Were you kicked or did you hit the deck? I was on tour with my previous company in Memphis, Tennessee at the Orpheum Theater. We were in a black box style theater, but they still hung wings from Drake.
00:14:25
Speaker
So these wings that we had were extremely short with droplet. So in the piece that we were touring, there was a eight...
00:14:38
Speaker
that normally I would have an eight free to get to the other side of the stage through a crossover. For some reason in this theater, there was a not a quick enough crossover.
00:14:51
Speaker
So we made the executive decision as a company that in that eight, I would sprint across the stage. It was a sneaker piece, very contemporary, so it would fit the mood. In the dress rehearsal, I stopped myself by grabbing the wings.
00:15:08
Speaker
But during the performance, somebody decided that they were going to be a good Samaritan and opened the wings for me. That unfortunately took away my indicator of where to stop.
00:15:21
Speaker
So I kept running and ran into the wall forehead first. Oh, wow. Falling back onto the stage where someone had to kick out my knees and drag me off into the wings.
00:15:35
Speaker
I then did finish that two and a half week tour. We had a little bit of time off and I took some time to take care of myself. Absolutely. I did. I did have to figure out what the rest of those shows were like, but we were on the road for a couple more weeks. And yeah.
00:15:49
Speaker
Well, fortunately, I guess dancers, Once they learn choreography, it seems to not just like live in their brain, but already live in their body almost reflexively. So hopefully recall. Oh, it's not absolutely. affected Oh, no, not at all. Sometimes i think muscle memory is a little bit more strong and a little bit stronger than my mental memory. I do want to talk about the turn toward choreography or making up dances. Was that something that you did as a child, just creatively? Or was that after your first few years of ballet training, you decided to compose?
00:16:26
Speaker
Growing up in this dance studio, I can still remember having some time of my mom had some busy work to be doing. My brother was probably reading because he is absolutely the studious and smart one. I love my brother very much. And I would take that time to go through a lexicon of CDs and pull out one that I recognized the artist from, put that in the CD player, and then just...
00:16:55
Speaker
jam out for what felt like hours, which was probably 15 minutes before I got tired and needed a snack. But six-year-old me was... cutting up the floor with nobody to watch in those dance studios because it would be the weekend and nobody was there to take classes or or there would be an opening. And I would absolutely take that opportunity and just, I guess, secretly find improv dance at a very young age on my own because absolutely no training and just feeling the music compel me.
00:17:26
Speaker
i guess i I found composing my own movement before I actually found technique. And when I found that, I was like, oh There is a vocabulary to that. And I have always appreciated in my own brain improvisation with parameters. Sometimes it can help you think outside the box to think inside the box. I think improvisation really flourishes with an idea of parameters set around it. of asking a group of dancers to just figure something out, you're gonna have 30 different choices with 30 different dancers. But if you have go, but make it purple, you're gonna have 30 different personal ideas of what that looked like. As a colorblind person, I don't know why I chose colors, but everybody's gonna have their own ideology of what that is going to look like, even if you're just setting a boundary of a very big idea. And then you can slowly reign that in
00:18:22
Speaker
and then you have something. i had the opportunity to first choreograph during the pandemic actually. Once again i was on tour, I was finishing out a trainee contract.
00:18:35
Speaker
My final trainee contract, well also long story short, we were in Atlanta, Georgia and were going to perform in university. We get down there and we are told everything's closing.
00:18:48
Speaker
You can't perform. And we were also going to hit Nashville and St. Louis on the way back, but slowly but surely we got all of these closed. So we drove the 16 hours back to Chicago and on the way back, the artistic director and executive director and all the dancers are, everyone's trying to come up with ideas because we still have two months left in our contract.
00:19:10
Speaker
What are we going to do if we have to go into even a two-week shutdown, and obviously it was more than that. But during that, around the final month of our contract, they asked anybody if they had any ideas.
00:19:27
Speaker
And I was living with one of my fellow dancers, And we would, after our class, and then I would have my contracted trainee classes. After that, we would then take an hour to keep spirits up of just doing something.
00:19:46
Speaker
And something that we would schedule out in our weeks is we would just take an hour to improv. I would be in the kitchen and she would be in the living room or she would be in the kitchen. I'd be in the living room. We'd be distantly improv-ing and just taking notes. And then that turned into James, have ever thought about choreographing?
00:20:06
Speaker
I was like, I mean, yeah, but I don't know what that would look like. So then she sent an email to my artistic director and she went, that's a great idea. James, you should choreograph something.
00:20:17
Speaker
I went, okay. now So I made a five minute ballet with nine dancers completely over Zoom.
Support for Madison Ballet's Pointe Shoe Fund
00:20:29
Speaker
Wow. This is the time when we didn't get the extension. So I would have 30 minute meetings with each of the dancers and i would be in my bedroom and I would go try this.
00:20:42
Speaker
And they would try that in their kitchen or basement or living room. And I'd go, okay, keep working on that. Tie these two things together that i'm in. And then I'd go to the next meeting. And then I'd go to the next meeting.
00:20:53
Speaker
And I'd go to the next meeting. And then... I compiled all of that together in a 30 minute call in my like little square boxes and went, okay, you go, you go, you go, you go, you go, you go. And then, okay, great.
00:21:10
Speaker
Now all of you film that, send it to me. And then I edit it together, splice the video and audio and the company posted it on their Instagram just as something for us to do.
00:21:21
Speaker
Oh, wow. On a technicality. That's my first ballet. And that's not a technicality. That's a ballet. If you have ever watched a ballerina float effortlessly across the stage, you've seen the magic of pointe work.
00:21:35
Speaker
But what you might not see is everything that happens behind the scenes. For our dancers, pointe shoes are not just costumes or accessories. They are essential tools of our art form.
00:21:47
Speaker
Professional dancers can go through a pair of pointe shoes in a matter of weeks, and sometimes even in a single performance. With each pair of pointe shoes costing about $100, the annual pointe shoe budget at Madison Ballet exceeds $25,000.
00:22:03
Speaker
But did you know that you can help keep our dancers on their toes? When you donate $100 to the Pointe Shoe Fund, you're directly supporting the dancers, helping them stay safe, perform at their highest level, and bring incredible artistry to the stage.
00:22:16
Speaker
And as a thank you, you'll receive something really special, a signed pair of pointe shoes from a Madison Ballet company member. Every pair of pointe shoes tells a story, and with your support, that story can continue. Visit our table at the upcoming performance of Innovation 2, May 8th through 10th the Overture Center to take home your one-of-a-kind keepsake and keep our dancers on their toes.
00:22:38
Speaker
It's always fun to see when an artist of one kind, you know, realizes they're also an artist of another kind. And I wonder if there are any through lines between your approach of, you know, go but purple or, you know, improv from the other room to the piece that you've composed on the ballet for this program.
00:22:58
Speaker
How did you come up with the idea, the basic idea for your piece? And what is the music that you're using?
Inspiration from Scotland Trip
00:23:08
Speaker
as a lot of things that I start off with. This starts with a story.
00:23:13
Speaker
The music and the idea for the piece happened while I was with my family on vacation in Scotland in summer of 2024, actually. This was the summer after my first season here.
00:23:26
Speaker
This was a trip my mother had been planning for a long time because her two boys had moved far away from home, including she had moved away from the home that she raised us in, back to be closer to family in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
00:23:38
Speaker
And then her oldest son, my brother Dan, followed her and then moved himself after graduating from Western Michigan University to Detroit to be an engineer. And then I now here. And she had been planning this since we had all been separate now by at least three hours each way. My brother and I are now eight hours away.
00:23:57
Speaker
This is the longest time we had been separate from each other for a while. So she wanted to do a trip and she loves to travel. She's always loved to travel. We spent 14 days in Northern Scotland, Edinburgh, and London with a day layover in York.
00:24:12
Speaker
It was a wonderful trip. One of my favorite vacations I've ever taken, but also the longest time i had spent with my family in about five years since I graduated high school.
00:24:25
Speaker
There were some trials and tribulations. We started the trip in Kylaskoo, Scotland, which is about 30 minutes from the northern coast. This is the Highlands, and it looks like every fantasy novel you've ever thought about in your head. It was beautiful.
00:24:42
Speaker
We stayed in the cabin and sheep would graze on the roof and the front lawn. It was absolutely wonderful, but I'm not an outdoors person. My mom can be, and my brother absolutely is, but I was ready for the city.
00:24:56
Speaker
And when we got off the train to Edinburgh, I immediately stepped off the train and went, oh yeah, I could live here. I could live here in a heartbeat. This is beautiful. It's a wonderful city from the history of it being built around this castle where the King's Road now stretches from this castle that's still standing, where all of these buildings now and these normal modern buildings are built into the sediment of the hill built up after ages of generations of people living there. This King's Road now goes down to what used to be the former Queen of England's like vacation home and what she grew up in and the socio-political dissonance involved in the Queen of England's summer home looking up at the previous former ages past King of Scotland's
00:25:44
Speaker
castle to the people were wonderful too. I had never experienced a city like Edinburgh. Everything about it was magical. And then we all got sick of each other as sometimes happens on trips. No offense to my family, but we kind of got to great point of, wow, we've spent so much time together after not spending time with you each other.
00:26:07
Speaker
I'm going to take an evening off. So i went For a walk, a favorite thing of mine to do a very extroverted person.
00:26:18
Speaker
The thing that charges my social battery is people watching because I don't need to talk to them when I'm socially drained, but I do need to be around people when I'm socially drained. It's not good for me to be alone for too long. And I recognize that and working on that. But I went and I just walked around and I got some food and had some drinks and i just...
00:26:41
Speaker
experienced the community that I was getting to visit. And that's a really integral part of what I was going for. And on top of that, the Edinburgh Jazz Festival was happening there the week that we were there.
00:26:55
Speaker
So we are walking around Edinburgh and on every corner you can hear jazz, whether it's over their speakers or there's live jazz happening abundantly.
00:27:06
Speaker
I sit down in a bar. They're about to close. a very early night for this bar. bartend in Madison. It's a passionate profession of mine, I like to say. It is my speaking job where ballet is my passionate non-speaking job.
00:27:19
Speaker
And i just sat and I went, don't mind me and kick me out whenever. And I just watched this man who's probably closed this bar thousands of times be in his space and obviously tired from serving a hundred people and dealing with the same people and maybe his friends or maybe regulates that have come in doing the same thing of having this exhaustion from chaos through monotony of that job that I also can recognize and doing all of these tasks and working in a circle to then
00:27:56
Speaker
know that it's almost over. And then I'm watching this and the back door swings open and who I'm assuming his wife comes in around similar age, before the door even hits the wall behind it is already speaking a mile a minute in the deepest brogue I heard about everything that happened about her day. And he just, while still doing his thing,
00:28:23
Speaker
grows the largest grin along his face. And just the lactic acid seems to wash out of his system. He's still felt this day, but he's renewed by this community that he knows that he's going to have.
00:28:35
Speaker
She regards me and keeps talking to him and goes on their day. And I listen and I say goodbye and I go on and I go next door to a live music bar. Shout out to Whistle Binkies in Edinburgh, Scotland. One of the wildest bar names I've ever heard in a great live music bar. They were having, of course they're having a jazz night.
00:28:53
Speaker
And i sit down and i start talking to this person at the other side of the table. And he's like, oh yeah, these guys are great. Huge up and comer in Scottish jazz, which I had never heard that sentence before. And I don't know if I ever will. I didn't think that was possible. He was like, oh yeah, of course. I also play jazz. And we keep talking, we're listening. And he goes, oh yeah, and this is the saxophone soloist playing.
00:29:16
Speaker
His name is Matt Carmichael. They finish their set, my extroverted person, Walks up to the saxophone soloist and goes, that was absolutely wonderful. I'd love to pick your brain. We talk for another hour as the the next set goes up.
00:29:30
Speaker
And he sends me his Spotify. And I listened to this album, Maram, M-A-R-A-M. For the rest of that trip, it really like became synonymous with the spirit of Edinburgh. And driving through these highlands or climbing one of the cairns with my brother. The song that I picked, Horizon, it reminds me of the daybreaking because...
00:29:59
Speaker
Of course, that next morning, I was out and about, but my mom and my brother wanted to make amends and keep doing our family things together. So we got up bright and early at 630. And I remember listening to that song as I saw that sunrise and just embodying this idea of community and the support that community can bring, whether you've been involved in it for my entire life, like I was with my family. And I went back to them and we had a wonderful time for the rest of that trip. Or meeting new community like I did with jazz.
00:30:35
Speaker
Yeah. That's wonderful. And I can now see, now that I know a little bit more of the backstory, some of those elements in your piece. How did you compose the piece? Are you someone who finds the movement in the studio? Or do you wait for dancers to experiment? Or is it something that you do in your head?
00:30:53
Speaker
So for this piece, as soon as I got back, I remember when we started that next season, I asked the staff in the front of the when are we doing innovation again? When are you letting us choreograph? I want to put my hat in the ring because I just got this seed and I started working on it. I didn't lay out every count in eight and six that there is in the piece, but I immediately started laying down ground lines I would just take some time whenever I was feeling ah jumpstart of creativity to just doodle or think about this section. And I'm a big fan of the mind palace technique.
00:31:33
Speaker
Very big fan of embodying. Sometimes it's a dance studio. Sometimes it's just a ballroom, but embodying and visualizing a physical space in my brain that I can then conceptualized dance, whether that's choreography that I'm getting for myself or choreography that I'm giving to another person, of sitting with that in my head and then working on that and enacting it in a room with dancers. But I think also it was very specifically special for this piece of being so important to make it about community that I also pull my dancers, my colleagues, my coworkers, and my friends
00:32:14
Speaker
into it and involve them as well. And a lot of that came down to their personalities trying to shine through the work, but also seeing them as not only the dancers that they are, but also the people that they are and they're bringing to this piece and involving that. I think that also even extends out to Coming back to Madison, when I came back, a big thing was to just keep building into and cultivating this group of community that I'm not only being able to involve myself in, but that that I love to be involved with and support and be supported by. There are things in there that have become part of my life outside of dance and inside of dance.
00:32:54
Speaker
that I really want to show through the choreography. There's some fun things, but there's also things that I've really tried showing an artistic respect towards things in my life in Madison. And that's not just like getting to have both of my roommates and good friends in a piece that I got to choreograph on them, but also having dancers that I've known since I've got here are also dancers that I've grown very close to within this season itself that
Choreographing with Friends
00:33:22
Speaker
have just joined. I really appreciate not only the time, but the gift that they've given me of giving their personality along with their sweat time and technique into this piece. It's involving these dancers as dancers and as the people involved in my life.
00:33:36
Speaker
That is something unique to a program like one of the innovation programs. You are choreographing on your friends and neighbors and colleagues. And I think that that probably helps embody that idea that you're going for, especially all the way back to the jazz clubs in Edinburgh. The people there, regulars, friends, neighbors, I can see that energy as well here. What's it like being at the front of the room?
00:34:02
Speaker
giving choreography to your colleagues who are used to having people fly in or the boss himself choreograph on them. Did you do anything different?
00:34:14
Speaker
Oh, I hope not. That was my biggest fear, actually. It's scary. it is shoes that I'm not used to wearing that I then have to step in front of my friends and colleagues wearing.
00:34:27
Speaker
i was very nervous. I was very nervous about the perception that I would present as being the choreographer. But then i think I just kept coming back to the people in my life and being like, am I being too much? Am I being angry or am I stressing anyone out? And I just kept getting back up.
00:34:50
Speaker
No, we can tell that you're stressed, but also just keep being you. That really helped ground me into being in that situation. space and being in that position because it is yeah it's a very hard relationship to translate of normally we share a bar and now i am telling you the steps that you have rehearsed forever to create and make look good in my perspective and giving notes oh gosh notes are very difficult because i think easiest ones
00:35:28
Speaker
are this person, this thing's on seven. Everyone's doing it on seven. We said it was on seven. This is on seven. Those ones are easy. The ones where it's, I need this step to look more like this and not this, when it gets subjective,
00:35:46
Speaker
That's hard because it's a communication thing. Being able to translate that in a positive light is always going to be productive as long as it is efficient and moving towards an end goal.
00:36:05
Speaker
I tried my best not to sugarcoat things, but also not bare fangs, which think I did a pretty good job at. I'd say so.
00:36:16
Speaker
Your dancers, i think, responded very well. And watching you in the studio today, I thought you were very chill. So nothing to worry about there. I think it also helps where the piece is. It's very me.
00:36:28
Speaker
I'm not doing something out of left field. So I think there is a ah mutual understanding of where I'm coming from that really helps. I bet also dancing with you every day, they kind of you know know what that is and that's helpful for them too. Can you talk a little bit about the arc of the piece, at least the musical arc, if there is one, or if there's not a story per se, then what happens at the beginning and how do we get to the end in terms of the music and movement that you've chosen?
00:36:57
Speaker
So I really see this piece as it is a like a strange metaphorical artistic pre-game to a party.
00:37:10
Speaker
If you could like extrapolate emotionally and spiritually all of the feelings of getting ready to go to a party or go out on the town or go to a dinner with your friends, all of those steps, all of the good ones and the bad ones, the stressful ones, the grading ones, all of those feelings, and then finally...
Emotional Expression Through Dance
00:37:37
Speaker
locking up and going out and getting the ball rolling. i think it was very fun to be able to have that piece go first with that idea in mind. But the piece very much starts off as pedestrian connections to each other that slowly extrapolate into this middle freeform jazz section where all of those musicians go into high form and really lay it on. It really...
00:38:07
Speaker
extrapolates out and then everyone comes back together with the same idea and really brings that home where it calms down in that last portion to really just send it off into that next act.
00:38:19
Speaker
Why is it called what it is? Why en français? Is that a ballet homage? The two hardest things for me to find for this piece were what they were going to wear and what the piece was going to be called.
00:38:32
Speaker
I had a couple ideas. And I was sitting around the living room with my partner and my roommates who were in the piece. I was separate from the community, which already they were like, well, James is stressed. And I'm like on my phone and my notes app, typing out five ideas and deleting three and putting two more and deleting three. And I got to this idea of closing time, even though it is a
00:39:03
Speaker
preamble to a celebration or festivities or just going out and having a ball. It is the closing of those emotions. The piece and the choreography in my head is all esoteric and all up here, but the name, I picked it to be in French because if I named it Closing Time in English, everyone would think of the song Closing Time.
00:39:26
Speaker
Fair enough. you know Necessity, mother, invention, all that. I completely get it. We'd all go to Semisonic first and then whatever else second. It's also, it sounds beautiful. So, you know, there's also that.
00:39:39
Speaker
or deferator It was almost in German.
00:39:44
Speaker
The translation is a lot more, the music and choreography way too flowy and looping and circular for a lot of those German consonants. As somebody who took three years of German, I looked at it, heard it in my brain and went, gotta be French.
00:40:01
Speaker
Talking to the choreographers I have both for our previous program and this one, it is interesting to me that it seems fairly common for dancers to have trouble naming a piece because i mean, I say this as someone who comes from, you know, the literary world where there's poets,
00:40:19
Speaker
writers like take a lot of care and you really care about the title and sometimes you know writing a novel you've had the title for five years and the novel you know and doesn't come but the main medium of your art being movement that's the thing the ballet is the thing and so I remember Alana Goldman on the last piece. It was fairly late into the production before we knew what it was called. That's not an Alana Goldman thing. that's a I hear this a lot. So you're not alone. And I like hearing these stories because so many of them do have a, and I went with this and that. And I think that's that's a really lovely aspect of dance.
00:40:59
Speaker
Yeah. There were a lot of nicknames thrown around the studio and I'm very happy with the title that I went with. Yeah. For someone coming to let's say their first mixed rep show ever, your piece will be their first introduction to whatever we call contemporary ballet.
Encouragement to Experience Ballet
00:41:17
Speaker
So what do you think both a never been to a show before person can expect to get out of your piece? And also what would like the deep ballet nerd also really appreciate from what you've created on the ballet?
00:41:34
Speaker
Oh, that's such a good question. May I just say that? That is such a good question. For somebody coming for the first time, and I hope to have some, I'm trying to invite as many people as I can. And as soon as I hear, oh, but I've never been to a ballet, why should I come to this one? I go, this is exactly something that you should come to because these are dancers.
00:41:56
Speaker
making pieces on dancers who are friends with the dancers. And I think my piece is to be about community. I want that sense of community to be seen for those those newcomers. I want it to be welcoming.
00:42:13
Speaker
And I want the dancers to be welcoming. relating to each other and be hopefully, i can't guarantee it and I'm not going to force it to, hopefully smiling on stage to be a welcoming thing to see and have a idea and an ideology for the piece be understood at a glance enough that they can accept that welcoming into them.
00:42:37
Speaker
And I think for a welcomed patrons of the arts, I would say I hope they understand the quirkiness of where I'm going in some of the, dare I say, absurdist lines and form that I have in the piece. The statement by Crystal Pipe was a very big inspiration of mine, mostly in mood and line, not of actual choreography. I hope they find some of the absurdist lines in choreography to be fun and peculiar and not campy and strange. And also, i hope they enjoy the line and the pedigree of my friends. I hope they agree that i showcase their technique in a wonderful form. Wonderfully put, James. And I think a very great introduction and invitation to the whole show itself. And I'm really glad that you're going to be welcoming the audience into act one. And I am so grateful that you joined me tonight. This has been a thorough pleasure. Well, thank you so much for having me.
00:43:45
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in to At The Bar with Madison Ballet Special Projects. If you enjoyed this episode, we invite you to experience Madison Ballet in person by joining us at one of our upcoming performances or community events.
00:44:00
Speaker
From accessible, innovative productions to in-depth conversations with artists, our goal is to create welcoming spaces where everyone can experience ballet in a meaningful way.
00:44:11
Speaker
You can find performance dates, event details, and ticket information on our website and social media platforms. Whether it's your first time attending or you're a long-time supporter, we'd love to see you in the audience and share the experience with you live.
00:44:26
Speaker
Thanks again for listening. We hope to see you at the ballet soon.