Janine Harrington
Please find the podcast transcription below if you need it.
Transcription
Hi everyone my name is Janine Harrington and I am speaking from London. Before I answer the understory questions I just wanted to echo something that lots of people here are saying about welcoming new graduates into the field. There are so many warmer voices here than mine so you should definitely check out all of those chats! What I want to add is that while this year and these times are crazy, I don’t think there has ever been a time when all of us felt welcome in our chosen fields. I’m saying this not because I want to downplay what’s going on and how it feels. I want suggest that these times are showing us all the more how we each differently suffer in the systems that we have each in different ways participated in, and continue to participate in and contribute to. I want to say to the people listening to this who might feel really terrible about the state we are in, and all the ways in which it is specifically terrible for you, that nevertheless you are not alone and the ways in which many people are coming into greater awareness of how to support each other and exchange resources is something that I really think that you can be part of. You are welcome and please get involved. I think this needs all of us and you know a lot of stuff.
My pathway from study into the professional field of dance was long. I graduated from a BA at Laban in 2006 and an MA in Visual Arts, which was from Camberwell College of the Arts in 2011. Without saying a huge about about it, but maybe just to make visible how it is for some of us, I had many years where I was mainly working in service industry jobs: cafes, catering, events work then admin roles, reception things like that, a bit of teaching. It took me what feels like a long time to find confidence in my potential to work in the field of dance and I struggled to feel part of it or to even be part of it. I’m not sure I could have said what the it was. Having said that, there were a few important moments for me, such as when I accepted that there was a lot that I’d received about a career in dance that was going to hurt me to ascribe to, and there was a lot that I didn’t want to do. It caused me and others some pain I think. I did what seemed intuitive, so I tried to live and I found ways to work and make that possible. I studied massage and I tried to make that work as a side career, which for me it didn’t because it had to be a whole career to make it work. A lot of where I am at now has happened because I chose to take a swerve into studying in an art school. This helped me to understand that actually I knew some things and had some ideas and intuitions about what I might want to do in my work. For me, being in dance training and then looking towards dancing as a career were very far apart. They didn’t feel connected for me. I didn’t find ways to bridge a gap. I was really bad at audition and interview situations and I still am and I didn’t feel equipped with the tools, connections or really the support that might helped me to thrive perhaps. I also had a lot of background family precarity to navigate and not so much capacity to articulate that at that time.
I could tell this story in different ways. I think for this audience, what might be most useful is to hear or to highlight maybe that not all of us come from security and privilege. Of course, I do have a level of privilege and lots of other ways in which my background has made my journey and where I’m at now as an artist quite unlikely. Whilst I don’t think we can emulate anyone else’s trajectory, I do think that talking a little about where we’ve come from can help others to feel they aren’t alone, so I guess that’s also an invitation for contact from any of you who feel moved to talk more.
Important landmarks in my trajectory were: the programs at Independent Dance (in London) where I accessed classes, performances and possibilities to be in spaces with people with different experiences and questions to my own. So artists from different places, different ages, different background. Many of my professional stories lead back to ID actually, and specifically to Gill Clarke who made me feel in a way visible and possible as a young person.
Through ID I encountered Simone Forti’s work and then found that she was leading a residency programme in Italy in 2008, which I someone managed to get to. There I was exposed to a broader group of International artists, many of whom I’ve crossed paths with since.
Around the same time I also saved money and I went to New York to visit the Cunningham studio, encounter Klein technique and to take part in a workshop with Miguel Guitierrez at Earthdance which is in Massachusetts. Some of that time helped me to understand where I wanted to place my energy, and also importantly, what I wanted to move away from. There was a lot that I experienced that felt really not right for many reasons. I think that’s a big part of it in the beginning. I sort of thought I was leaving dancing at that point. I’d applied for an MA and wanted to concentrate on developing other skills and other interests in writing and bookmaking. I’ll say a bit more about that in a moment so will skip on.
Other important landmarks in the transition between study and work for me… I actually think of each of my works as a kind of home school for myself, to develop really specific knowledge and skills. So, I want to say that I think the divisions as I experienced them between work and study aren’t really true but Eleanor Bauer has a lot to say about that. Which is really great. So, you should check out her chat, rather than me trying to say something about that here.
When I was finishing my MA, I saw that the BBC performing arts fund (which now doesn’t exist) was offering fellowships for young artists to work alongside an organisation. I asked Gill Clarke if she thought that might be something I could do, alongside ID, which at the time she was running at the time. I started that fellowship, which was a choreographic fellowship, around the time that Gill died and somehow I kind of used the sense of companionship I felt that Gill had with my development to figure out how to work choreographically and to just sort of keep going in a way. And I developed, from the work I was doing on my MA where I had been thinking about structures, something unexpected happened where through being in relationship to people who had questions that were different to my questions (coming from dance), I understood more clearly what my questions were. And I developed that through this fellowship which involved some studio space really and a bit of money. I developed a work on the Millennium Bridge.
And what I really want to say about that is that at the time I was full of the sense that no one really knew what was possible for me (what I could do). And no one was really asking me to do anything, I had asked Gill if we could apply for this fellowship, I wouldn’t have been I think a selected candidate. And I felt a mistrust maybe with the support systems or I didn’t know about them, and I felt mistrust but I did feel compelled to try to find ways to make things possible. And I had a kind of trust in myself and the project which really was only truly possible because many other people also desired to make it happen. I don’t know if it would be possible now to do what I did because only a core team of collaborators were paid and I don’t think I would run things that way again, but for it’s time it was something very big and formative in my journey. And sort of interesting in thinking about what people expect us to be able to do and what we are actually capable of. There’s a lot of waiting to be asked that never comes and I’ve been quite bloody-minded in pushing through that, which is actually quite detrimental to my general character in some ways, but I’m saying it to you because I think in times where we might feel that asking for and being granted opportunities are the arbiters of worth, there is something to be said for finding different means, scales, spaces, places and possibilities.
So that’s a lot. The other thing I’ll say is that you probably won’t know me as a performer. I don’t get asked to work in that capacity in the UK but I worked quite a lot in other places from 2013 to 2017. I danced a solo work in museums across Europe. I dance and sung in works with lots of different people, children and adults, older adults. I was good at it and I also learnt a lot about the ways that power and esteem are exchanged, how we are made impossible by each other and ways in which I don’t want to operate. So it’s a bit of a hard thing but I think it’s true that we can also learn a lot from what we don’t want to be part of. There will be many people listening to this who already know that. For many different reasons and I guess I’m saying, beware. And also, that I got involved with Engagement Arts which is a campaign to end sexism in Belgium, but it’s networked with some other activist groups in the Northern European scene and in Germany and in France and in Italy and some other places now I think also maybe Canada. So that’s a great resource to think about power.
Other brief things to say about my trajectory are that; I learnt how to write ACE grants. I did that over some time and with a bit of help which included looking at a few other people’s grants and understanding a bit about that system has really helped me to build a practice which is currently supported. So, I graduated from dance in 2006, I graduated from a visual arts programme in 2011, I first got funding in 2014 or 15, so that’s quite a long time. You could possibly do it sooner. But just to give you a sense of how my work has been possible.
So, to be a bit more up to date about where I am now and what might be interesting or helpful for new graduate, including some advice I would give myself or translate back in time if I could.
During the last 6 months I’ve been working remotely so online with a team of co-workers, collaborating artists in a gallery work of mine which was supposed to have some performance dates this year. Which were of course postponed. One of the things we’ve been doing is reading and discussing texts, amongst watching videos and talking and making baskets and all sorts of things. I wonder if there is something from one of the texts that might be useful for you to hear. So we were thinking about being together, joining in, unison and the extremes of that. One text that we were reading and talking about spoke about joining in with a potential more like parts of me or some of my actions joining in with other people and their doings or parts of what they do in partial ways. So a kind of joining in without subscribing to a club or identity as being perhaps more spacious and able to hold difference whilst also doing things together which feels to me like activism that I have been involved in. I’m really paraphrasing this with my own synthesis but for me, in these times there’s something in it that I find really helpful. It makes me think about solidarity and coalition building across groups with different identities and some shared interests. It also makes me think about sameness and difference and about being part of a group or a movement and if and how and who and what that looks like from different positions. So, thinking about you graduating now and maybe feeling alone or maybe feeling part of a graduating group or a class identity in a sense that you have been with peers perhaps in a class, although maybe you also feel part of a class identity. So how might an inside or edges look or feel different and if an inside even ever feels like an inside and what that perspective has to do with time, with looking back and saying that now I see that I was aligned with a movement or doing something similar to whoever and it was part of what led to where we are now and I feel that a lot of that has to do with time. And I am saying all this because I think part of the invitation to do an Understory is to speak to you all in some way as if I were speaking to myself in the past. I am splintered through false continuities that suggest that I am where I am now because I did things a certain successful way earlier. It’s not the case really, I am sort of in the same position as you and as I was previously and I am also moved because time kept going, I was able to be tenacious and some alignments happened for me in ways that are disappointingly I’m sorry quite random. What I mean to say is that, the advice I would give to my graduating or younger self is only possible because I have gained some experience, and it would be the same advice I give to myself now. I hope that makes some sense. Thank you for entertaining me in speaking to you like that. Here is some other things that I’ve got right now that are maybe more concrete that I’ve been thinking about:
Be alert to internalised ageism and to how you speak of and think of the people you perceive as being further on in their journeys than you. If anything, this Understory endeavour shows me both how randomness and privilege and in that I include access to experiences and education affect a persons’ ability to develop a career in our field. There are many challenges and barriers that you are going to each experience differently. One which you can immediately do something about is your attitude towards age and ageing. I mean this is lots of ways. Firstly, I wish I had been braver in pursuing or developing some interests earlier. I was afraid that I was already too late. That just future-loaded more self-disappointment and maybe sabotaged aspects of my development and well being at the time when I was afraid to follow things. I think it relates to an idea about a dance artists career’s being a certain length or needing to be or look like a certain type of thing. I went personally from believing that to rejecting it without really anything inbetween, and this meant I was harsh on myself and other people. I berated myself for wanting other things but also for not fitting into what I perceived was the expectation. I guess an advice I would give myself is just to listen to that and understand that that doesn’t have to be way I think about things. So, In 2010, I’m going to tell you about this because I think it’s maybe nice for you, I made myself a friendly banner which said “NO ONE GIVES A DAMN ABOUT WHAT YOU DON”T DO” and it’s made of felt as a kind of reminder to myself that ultimately I had a degree of choice about what my biography might hold through what I risked to do or not do. Of course many things will happen along the way but the way I operate, and what I’ve understood about my perfectionism and attention to detail, I have to force myself to begin doing things that I don’t know how to do or don’t understand, otherwise I am in a perpetual state of paralysis and that is a really terrible place to be. So I guess the takeaway from this, in a way is something that my friend Laura Burns once said to me, which I find really beautiful, so what she said is that ‘the unimaginable is nevertheless always possible’, which I take to mean that I can limit my capacity or what might be possible by believing that only what I imagine is possible. In other words, I want to try to believe that my future contains possibility beyond what I can imagine for myself or maybe what I have seen people . . . well maybe I haven’t seen people like me do things - so it’s about limits. And I also think it contains a sense that the needs and questions of any future are somewhat unknown, and actually I think it’s is healthy to remember this. So to loop back to ageism, for me, this feels to be something about allowing ourselves to be at whatever stage we are and opening and striving from there and not be prejudiced against our future selves, which is the core paradox I guess of ageism. For me it also means to nourish relationships with people of different ages, knowing that connections to multiple coordinates in life feel like they make everyone’s lives richer. You might disagree that’s ok.
The next thing is something about looking out for the people who make you feel like you are possible or that you’re possible in the future. Maybe many of us see ourselves represented and others of us don’t and I think it can be quite subtle. I think that it can mean many things. For me, I had a bit of a rough time really through education and the earlier career experience with a too-late diagnoses of quite an extreme cognitive profile and Aspergers. I got a lot of feedback about how I didn’t fit or how I thought or put information together or my questions or how I worked or worked stuff out wasn’t very welcome, but as I reached beyond this narrower and what I now understand as ableist and fairly unexamined way of offering opinions about difference, I found that there are many models and a lot of information about ways to work out there. It’s just that I didn’t find a lot of that in dance. So, I guess I’m saying that you might find communities, ideas, methodologies, appropriate growth challenges including places to rest beyond your chosen field. I think we can think about this in a generous and expanded way which can also be to not waste a lot of energy on the people who tell you that you don’t fit because fitting is long over basically isn’t it.
Some further advice I think would be to be in conversation about your ideas. This could mean writing or recording your voice to listen back to or being in conversation with other people and going beyond the point where you feel fearful of speaking. Allowing yourself to go further than that in a space that feels supported. To allow yourself to risk not knowing what you can say about it, and to scramble for language until you figure out something, or maybe using drawing because I think part of our work is to find the right questions and I think that is worth reminding ourselves of. Not to look for the way to fix things always but to maybe ask the right questions or the appropriate questions.
A piece of advice which I was by an MA tutor which has stuck with me, and which I would pass on (though maybe with a caveat) is that it is always better to go out than to stay in. What he meant by that was that we should expose ourselves to experiences. I liked this because I tended to lean towards shutting down experience because of fear or really fear in part of not understanding or maybe not really knowing how to understand or not understanding how others were understanding. So that’s real and we can talk about that some of us. But I found his offer quite helpful as a reminder or caution to myself rather than as a prescription, so not to isolate within what is already familiar. So yeah sometimes I just think about that and it helps me to expand my frames of reference through maybe experiencing things that I don’t feel are meant for me or addressed towards me. And it can also mean permission to do something other than work. To just go out. Go out. Leave it do something else.
And then finally I think you can hear something about who I am in my answers to these questions but maybe to end with something definitive maybe because I’ve jumped around a lot in answering this. The final question is about a hope for the future dance that might come out of 2020. I think I’d hope that the way that this year has further exposed how things happen and happen differently for different people might lead to real changes in how dance is resourced and programmed. It would be great if independent artists were better supported and resourced and there was greater equity across the roles within organisations and that those of us who are working as freelancers are better supported actually. And then my overall hope is that I hope that this field does better in addressing what is now we can’t not know anymore about the injustices of systemic racism and then I would also add ableism and sexism and maybe other things alike. So that’s quite a lot and maybe a bit of a ramble and I hope that it’s at least helpful for one other person out there and thanks Understory for inviting me.