Rachel Krische
Hello I’m Dr Rachel Krische. I’m at home writing this at my kitchen table. I live in a village in Yorkshire – most of the time my work happens in Leeds.
I dance (these days, pretty much exclusively improvisation), I make dances (usually structures for improvisation), I perform those dances (sometimes alone, sometimes with others), I collaborate, I talk and I write about this activity. This is the stuff I get to call ‘Research’, a part of my main job as a Senior Lecturer in Dance and Performance at Leeds Beckett University. I wrote and started the dance programme there 10 years ago. Before this I was a freelance dance artist in London for 20 years.
Within the university I work with Undergrads, Masters students and supervise PhDs – mainly in the studio, sometimes in the lecture theatre. And I still continue to work outside the university with professional artists and companies and organisations too. Kind of like a consultant. So of course I teach a lot. And mentor. And support. And direct. And think. And question. And offer questions or jokes as an alternative perspective or hopefully a helpful prompt. And push & prod. And cajole. And cheer-lead ……. cause I like doing this.
And generally, I like considering and offering questions (without always needing answers). My own learning continues.
I always run the careers module for the undergraduate students at university. I usually bring in a range of speakers rather like Understory. I like to bring in recent graduates to talk about how they got going, to talk about what professional life starting out is really like, right now. I tend to think that this is more relevant than speaking about my experience, because the dance world, and the world in general, plays by such different rules to thirty years ago. But now – even the more recent rules have all but collapsed. For everyone, not just dance. So maybe some of what I went through might be useful, as everything is potentially starting from a kind of scratch again.
A little back story, because to me, it is an important part of it.
I grew up working class, to immigrant parents (I am half Slovenian and half Catalan – my parents were refugees from WWII & The Spanish Civil War) and because we were very poor, my parents couldn’t afford to send me to dancing classes. Luckily, the local Dance Animateur of my northern town came to visit my GCSE dance group to say she was running a contemporary class every Monday night. And it was FREE. I couldn’t believe it – the free part.
Note 1: I am dismayed that still, today, poverty in our supposedly ‘first world’ country denies children and adults opportunities to access dance and art and education – this is truly a disgrace. Maybe you are interested in being a part of helping to change this? ……..
Anyway, I originally wanted to be a fashion designer but in that first free class, by the time I’d crossed from one side of the room to the other, doing triplets to the theme tune of Hill St Blues, I knew this was for me. Ditto when a few months later we performed in Oldham Art Gallery doing a devised-by-us piece about an exhibition of depressing but arty, black and white photos of derelict, vandalised and boarded up buildings. Oh God, I was ecstatic – this was me. I had found my tribe, my future.
The Green Room Theatre in Manchester (sadly, now a bar) became the epicentre of my world. My dance teacher took me, I just needed the 12p bus fare. I only saw live work, as there was no internet and therefore no youtube. She also got me a place (one of many) on a workshop in Ashton-Under-Lyne with Rosie Lee when I was 14. I love it that Rosie is now a friend.
Note 2: People and lasting friendship will be key to your future ….
Pathway into professional life ….
I left school at 16 and did a wonderful foundation course for a year at Swindon Dance before getting into London Contemporary Dance School. In my first year at LCDS I was in National Youth and met my new best friend, who was a year ahead of me at Rambert. Two years later, when he graduated (I was still a student) he got a job with AMP – which was still a small company at the time. So I would of course go and see all the shows that my best friend was in, and got to meet and so know the company and Matthew before he was properly famous. And one day he said come to the audition for a new show he was making, Nutcracker. So my first job overlapped with the last two weeks of my graduation. And at the same time, me and my friend from the Place set up a company called Bedlam. And also, I heard in the corridors of the Place that Aletta Collins was holding an audition for an arena sized production of Carmen, that was happening in between the premier of Nutcracker in August, and its Christmas run at Sadler’s Wells……
And so those were the first, right-place-at-the-right-time, steps onto the professional ladder, showing me what it was going to be like. And for the first couple of years I held down, at times concurrently, about 4 non-dance jobs alongside the dance jobs, some paid, some not. Until the project-based performance/company jobs and teaching jobs (better paid) and rehearsal direction jobs (better paid), overtook the need for non-dance jobs.
There was actually no plan.
Auditions were not my forte, but I went to everything else (no internet back then). I embedded and made myself visible (physically not virtually) in my community, as work back then was by word of mouth or on a notice board (I got my first mobile phone aged 30). I was seen watching dance as well as doing it. I worked part-time in the reception of dance buildings and theatres. I socialised with dancers. I supported my dancer friends (re-read how I got into AMP and do this on repeat). I made new friends. I just loved hanging out with and being with my tribe and in the places where my tribe congregated. Contact with choreographers, however fleeting, was often post-show in a bar, or café or technique class or workshop (never by email). Choreographers knew I was interested in their work because they had regularly seen me, out front, in the foyer after the show. I suppose I became a friendly familiar face. Not just to dancers and choreographers but also, as importantly, to teachers and lecturers and musicians and dance photographers and dance centre directors and people who worked in the back office, or filmed the shows that I went to see, or designed the lights or who worked the bar in the pop up venues, or who ran buildings, or festivals. I even ended up regularly cat sitting for the director of a major dance festival – who years later gave me a solo spot in said festival. So the right-place-at-the-right-time happened, probably because I was in-all-those-places-all-of-the-time, so the law of probability applied. And I think this stuff could apply again now more than ever, in our digital but remote networked age. Turning up for each other. Friendship and support through the always-turning-up kind of friendship. With the distance between us gradually reducing until the day we are allowed to hug again.
I think to start with, I wasn’t the best technical dancer. But I had a couple of particular skills that I exploited to the max:
I cultivated and became known as someone who was quite funny … both on stage as well as off.
And my best dance skill by far was picking up material super-fast, and I mean INSTANTLY (I was also a speedy mover). I could be shown dance sequences once or twice and know it. So I became known as the understudy go-to and the maternity cover go-to. I’d sometimes literally learn a show the day before the performance and go on stage and do it. And so I ended up getting into some companies (actually, one of the most ‘famous’ ones) in this way and staying on. I wasn’t always the first choice.
Now however, I can’t be arsed learning and remembering steps so that’s why I improvise.
Note 3: What’s your key skill?
AND Later On ….
In my late thirties, even though I had travelled the world through work and I was always in full employment hopping from one job to the next as a dance artist, the pay was still absolutely shit. I saw an Ad in The Guardian education supplement. There were 3 roles on offer at NSCD. I went for the one with the highest salary……… and so my next career path began. A year and a half later I was writing and leading the course at Leeds Beckett.
My salary immediately doubled by the way.
Ten years down the line I completed my PhD. This was by far the hardest psychological as well as intellectual and professional challenge I have ever faced thus far. Even though I am immensely proud of my working class roots, my class-based insecurities came back to haunt me. Yep …. Class? …. Really? …… Still? ……. Seems so.
So now I am interested in the socially constructed body. Is entitlement, and its opposite, embodied? Is poverty or working-class identity an unconscious, and potentially limiting, embodied construct for some? With our current bunch of Etonian millionaires in charge, who largely inherited their privilege rather than earned it themselves, this feels like a timely topic. Remember that currently, these, in the main, incredibly wealthy white men, control how our sector is financed …..
Also, if dance affords enough respect to be seen as a valuable subject and profession …..
Impacting on whether dance gets to be studied at school …….
Or if not, for those who can’t afford it, whether dance can be accessed at all …….
Note 4: Politicians directly affect your livelihood ………. VOTE
What is not in my bio?
Out of the blue, a week and a half before Nutcracker premiered my mother had a massive heart attack and died. It was profoundly shocking and devastating.
In my late twenties, in constant pain, a scan of the fracture in my lumbar spine prompted a cheery NHS orthopaedic surgeon to say that he was going to graft bone from my pelvis to fuse my entire lumbar spine. I would be bed bound for 8 months and I would probably never dance again. I politely refused. Instead I began Alexander Technique and Scaravelli Yoga. Within a few weeks I was pain free. Within a few years I was qualified as a Scaravelli Yoga teacher. As a result I became a much more physiologically intelligent and therefore more technically skilful dancer AND added another income stream to my freelance portfolio.
Turning forty, on stage, halfway through premiering a new duet in Bassano Del Grappa, I tore my achilles tendon. Again, a cheery NHS orthopaedic surgeon back home in Leeds this time refused to give me surgery and said, and I quote, “you’ll never dance again, devastating news huh?”. I promptly flew back to Italy. I was collected and ferried around by lovely ex-students and my dearest producer friend from my student days at the Place. I got surgery on my ECH11 card (NHS via EU membership). The budget flight was cheaper than a private consultation for surgery back home. My surgeon in Italy had done the same procedure on Michael Schumacher and Ronaldo. Lucky me. My father died a couple of weeks later. This time, I could be with him as he passed.
It was an exceedingly slow and painful recovery but I was performing 8 months later. And of course a few years later I campaigned, on the streets of Huddersfield with the Labour Party, to stay in the European Union ………
I am also a union member. Both Equity and UCU have advised and supported me in the past.
Note 5: VOTE
The two major injuries, amongst the host of minor ones, taught me about how remarkable the body is. Grief and poverty and the serious stress and anxiety that this brings, developed my resilience and tenacity, taught me to make both bold and pragmatic decisions and also politicised me.
This is stuck in an old notebook of mine. I don’t know who wrote it. It’s a fragment torn out of a newspaper:
“in Moments of Truth, you can’t have the work without the life or, more pointedly, the life without the work, nor the work or the life without the art”
Advice to my graduating self
Realise there is such a thing as mental health - take is as seriously and look after it as much as your physical health.
Don’t take off your favourite shoes in the back of a black cab – you’ll leave them there and cry for two days at the loss ………… however, you will eventually get over that loss.
Don’t go out with your best friend onto Clapham Common, in a thunderstorm, with an umbrella, in 1999.
Advice to graduates now
I have incredible, incredible friends, the majority from my dance community. Most of my closest friends from the early days remain. Some of my peers from my student days have even commissioned me 15 years later. I have even been on their board of directors. Because, apart from the occasional tosser, our dance world is full of wonderful, passionate, funny, generous, supportive and loyal earthlings.
Note 6: Look around you ….. at your friends right now …….
But for now, I am thinking that practically, in terms of how you get going, it might be a good idea to think local not global.
Start with your neighbourhood. Who lives in your community? Can you start projects – make/share/teach - in the neighbourhood where you live? What is happening in your local Primary/Secondary School/Wesleyan Hall/Polish club/Jamaican centre/Church/Library/Youth club/Care home/Refugee Centre/Creche/Yoga studio/Gym/Park etc etc.
Can you contribute to the things that are already happening in those places, or can you offer them something that they might be interested in?
And at the same time in your professional dance community, continue to make new friends (networking is actually really only making friends), cherish and deepen your existing friendships. Make things together, turn up for each other (This will also nourish your mental wellbeing). Think more actual contact, less virtual, even at a distance. Be kind. Don’t waste your time being bothered with what ‘success’ looks like – it’s a total bunch of bullshit. Instead, keep loving learning. Keep loving what you do. Believe in the people you work with. Believe in people.
Post COVID, question capitalism, question who has the power and by what right. Collaborate across communities, across margins, across power dynamics and across different types/sizes of groups and organisations. Build bridges, don’t burn them. And when you do get offered jobs, don’t forget to ask how much you are being paid (it took me until my late twenties to have the courage to do this - you don’t have to repeat my mistake because I did it for you already).
Practical info - If you want to teach dance in a university, the minimum qualification you will need is an MA. These days job specs are asking for a PhD, or that you are enrolled on a PhD. I don’t agree with this, but this is just how it is. It is different in the conservatoire sector, however, salaries are higher in the university sector.
An extra word for women. It’s a fact (I am on a Uni task force) that men blag far more. They’ll go for stuff they are knowingly not qualified to do (a sideways glance at the current cabinet in Westminster firmly confirms this), whereas women care that they tick every single box before coming forward. My advice - go for stuff, even if you think you don’t quite have all the skills/experience that the job spec is asking for. Women are amazing leaders - just look at the COVID death rates of the countries run by women.
Remember, our practice is good at adapting and inventing and improvising. Creativity is what your practice is. You are skilled in this. We can dance almost anywhere. We have been performing and sharing and celebrating in alternative spaces and outside and in nature for years. We know how to collaborate and how to support and how to build. We know how to listen and observe, how to communicate and how to share. We know how to touch. And this is going to be absolutely vital when we are all allowed to touch again. When everyone will need to re-learn how to touch again. The world will need this one day. The world will need you.
And Finally.
Note 7: VOTE
It is a political act to be an artist. It is a political act to reflect. It is a political act to question. It is a political act to resist. It is a political act to perform. It is a political act to teach. It is a political act to have empathy. It is a political act to care. It is a political act to love.
I am not going to tell you who to vote for.
But I will tell you this – I personally will NEVER, EVER, EVER, over my dead and decomposing body, vote Tory. EVER.
My hope for the future of dance
Along with operating with greater class, racial, gender, sexual, cultural, financial and environmental/planetary equality YOU are the hope for the future of dance. You really are. And there are loads of people, like me, behind you, cheering you on. Don’t make it what I hope it to be though …. make it what YOU want it to be.
PS: I got struck by lightning on Clapham Common in 1999. My best friend, who I mentioned right at the start, witnessed the whole thing. We are still best friends. One of the architects of this blog is married to him.
Also, I still love fashion.