Introduce yourself, where you are and what you’re doing now

Hello. I'm Janet Smith. I’m pleased to be part of this thoughtful initiative to support dance artists heading into their working lives at this time. 

I’m writing from my home in Leeds, where I recently stepped down as Principal and Artistic Director of Northern School of Contemporary Dance. Before that was Artistic Director of Scottish Dance Theatre. I’m taking time now for some neglected activities - including pottering and daydreaming! I'm also enjoying still being involved in various projects in the field of dance.

What was your pathway from study into the professional field of dance? 

After studying dance and drama at Dartington College of Arts, Devon, followed by a year’s linked teacher training I spent over a year continuing to study in New York, the then centre of gravity and innovation for contemporary dance (modern and post -modern). I'd had a wonderfully mind-opening education at Dartington and now I wanted an additional year's intensive dance training where I could also get exposed to a wider range of current practice. In New York I found inspiring independent artists who taught and were also choreographers leading their own small dance companies from studio lofts where they sometimes also lived and I got to see a range of performances in different settings.

On return to Leeds I still felt very much at the beginning but that I now needed start forging my way. In a receptionist day job I managed to access the space to do daily class in the lunch break and a school hall at the end of the day to begin assimilating, exploring then gradually developing and rehearsing solo work. This structure and routine for my practice helped me with the discipline I needed to begin my first project and to start to see myself as a dance professional.

I made a mostly solo programme, in collaboration with a more experienced musican/composer who encouraged and challenged me with a different perspective and art form background to bounce things off. A much-needed initial performance platform and feedback opportunity back at Dartington led to an introduction and invitation to perform at The Place Theatre, London. Amazingly, Sir Robert Cohan, founding artistic director of The Place, London Contemporary Dance Theatre and the London School of Contemporary Dance, attended, introduced himself and generously invited us to come back again and perform especially for his wonderful company of inspiring dancers. This generous early support helped give me the nerve to continue.

I also gradually connected with the then small, scattered but enthusiastic regional dance community and met supportive people in FE college settings (there were no dance degrees back then) I was able to begin teaching as a freelancer and to gradually get regular part-time work. Teaching was really important as a way to both learn and earn. Chances to do this came initially through volunteering or one-off workshop invitations that led to part time teaching within teacher training and then to a rehearsal base, supported by an educational dance champion, Jean Williams, Head of Human Movement Studies at the then Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds.

Tell us about the bit of your journey that’s not mentioned in your bio?

Not featured in my bio is that I did unskilled shop, factory, warehouse, clerical and reception work, cleaned studio floors and spent over a year as a live-in mother’s help at different stages to fund this stage of training and the early part of my working life or ‘career’ (That word can feel more like careering about the place in the nebulous structures for dance). I also lived back at home and dependent on parental support for stretches, though my patient parents, both teachers, had no idea what it was I was trying to do or if it was a thing that could ever earn me a living. A biog or cv. can impose a clear linear developmental story on what in lived experience feels far more uncertain, random and chaotic.

This variety of jobs provided valuable formative experience and insight I wouldn’t be without and broadened my mind. I realised I was privileged and lucky enough to have had the opportunities that made it possible for me to be able to discover dance as a child and choose to work, however precariously, doing something I love.

What didn’t go quite as planned? How did it feel? How did you navigate it? Did something else come out of this encounter?

Here’s one example:

I badly tore my hamstring early in my key training year New York - and couldn’t step up a curb for the next three months. It felt initially devastating then seriously depressing. I couldn’t afford physio or to get medical advice about the hole in the back of my thigh. I just had to be still, learn patience, listen to my body and - when it would let me - find a way to begin to gradually move again. Someone recommended a book called The Thinking Body by Mabel Elsworth Todd and I ended up working slowly on my own discovering how to rehabilitate myself instead of taking those exciting classes with the great teachers and artists I’d discovered. Though I didn’t get all the further training I’d hoped for I did find a therapeutic way of working with my body. I built my daily practice and a sustaining friend of a discipline that supported and grounded me whenever I turned to it. I got back into training after four months with more embodied understandings and a transformed sense of the dance practice I wanted to pursue.

What advice would you give to your graduating self?

Just follow your passion and trust that what you put into dance will be reward and enrich you. (though not necessarily financially!)  

Invest in building the confidence you need to be bold and don’t confuse this much needed friend with being self-absorbed and egotistical. You need self-esteem so you can keep going, be open to critical feedback and understand and learn through failures. So crack on with this work early. Harness your sense of humour and it will help you keep things in perspective. Learn to smile, too, at the ever-niggling defensive ego.

Oh, and read that book about accounting so can manage your finances and tax returns. (Argh!)

What advice would you give to a graduate now?

We are rocked by these ‘unprecedented’ times of the pandemic but somehow we will manage it. History shows us that his too will pass. It is also a critical time for reflection and learning with huge potential for re-imagining and creating better as we go forwards. Know that we will need our artists and their creativity and voices more than ever in this.

While we’re in this separated and isolating environment take the opportunity, if you can, to give focus to your daily practice and tap into that discipline that grounds and sustains dancers and other creative professionals and builds resilience. This practice within our discipline is a fundamental, resource and a bit of a magic power. Not sure if Aristotle or Oprah said this but it resonates for me: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

'There are and will be multiple ways to forge a pathway into your working life. Though a way may not be clear for you at the moment, start somewhere, keep working at it and to stay open and flexible in your approach.

Seek out opportunities that bring you close to your work interests and offer yourself into collaborative opportunities that may be low paid or volunteering at first but look to situations where you can continue to learn and develop, with collaborators whose work genuinely interests you and whose approach does not compromise your own integrity.

Reappraise and update your goals as you go so you don’t waste time following dreams you have outgrown. As Joseph Campbell says, 'we must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned so as to have the life that’s waiting for us’

Our dance community is a generous network of support. I certainly needed those who helped me back at the start of my working life. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Connect with others around you. Know that you can contribute in further strengthening this community. Generationally our community can only get better and stronger as everyone contributes, in the spirit of Ghandi’s “be the change you want to see in the world.”

Be courageous!

Share one hope for the future of dance that could come out of 2020?

My great hope is we use what we have learned in the managing the pandemic as impetus to go forwards in tackling global warming and that the arts can help lead the way. We can clearly harness technology as part of this and travel less and more responsibly, while broadening our global community and reaching audiences across the world. We can also innovate in our settings for live performance and I see this already. We have so much innovation in dance and the creative arts I hope can help lead radical change to start the urgent long-term repair of our planet’s ecology.