What is your name? What do you do? Where are you now?

Vera Tussing 

I am sitting at my desk in Brussels, windows wide open, the summer has returned for some days this week. A friend is sleeping on the sofa next to me. I left early this morning to travel to Antwerpen to teach workshops, drawing from my artistic practice, at the Royal Conservatoire of Dance. This was my first teaching job wearing a mask covering my mouth all day long – alongside my new Covid-friendly teaching plan. By the end of the second day, I started to get used to it all – but by then the job was done. Most of my working life since graduating from LCDS/The Place has been on short contracts. Occasionally a working period might last a couple of weeks, but for the rest, it's a very fragmented existence.

Pathway

The idea that I would still be performing fifteen years after graduating almost surprises me sometimes – and maybe it also surprises some of the teachers and fellow students from my time at LCDS! It just happened that way. I stuck things out, had some luck, and stuck things out a little more. In particular, the first three years after graduating, leading up to receiving my first actual salary from dance work, required patience and trust that things would eventually turn out. We all did all sorts of odd jobs to get through this time.

What's not in your bio

There was plenty of cleaning and waitressing. At some point I had a job programming electronic fans for Stella McCartney at Gucci. That was certainly one of the more glamorous cash-in-hand jobs I did! Her company was distributing little hand fans as an invitation to one of her fashion shows. We programmed hundreds, possibly thousands of fans to say: “World of Stella”. Eventually we were all fired from the job. It turned out that when some high-up assistant turned on one of the fans it said “You cunt”, instead of the agreed slogan. It was clear to all of us that we had no part in this, but we lost some work over somebody else's joke. The best part was Jose Vidal, who at that point spoke very broken English, shouting back: "I don't even know how to spell cunt…why would I programme a fan with this?!".

What's your thing 

A couple of years later, Albert Quesada and I had our first commissioned piece for FIRST at the Linbury Studio at The Royal Opera House. For the creation period we had access to the studios of the Royal Ballet for one entire summer. I ended up sharing the corridor and the surroundings on that top floor of the Opera House with the Mariinsky Ballet, as they were in the studios next to us, rehearsing their programme of Romeo and Juliet… not short on drama! We were busy with a series of very small, repetitive undulating movements, very precise. While my collaborator at the time had other jobs, I stuck around... researching our moves next to those of the Mariinsky dancers. Two creative, embodied processes next to each other, inhabiting opposite ends of the dance spectrum. At times this felt intimidating, but with time and with hindsight I see this as a particular moment of embracing the place where you are at. Yes, sure it was a sweet location to dance - but there was always the perhaps-familiar temptation to let the spirit of the place get to you – to be in the Opera House, to abandon your small, undulating movements for some grand jeté on a diagonal followed by 32 fouettés… but I am very glad we had the determination to stick to our own vision…

I don’t want to turn this into some privileged heroic struggle, as we were very lucky to be there with our work at the time – but it was a valuable lesson for me to not get swayed by the (perhaps intimating) creative environment.

I also taught many years in a home for the elderly, again an environment very different from that which my training prepared me for. This outreach work in communities beyond usual theatre audiences has been very important for my work. I would recommend everybody (especially once Covid is not part of our daily struggle) to spend time in places where people with different bodily experiences are. We dancers are often glued to each other. Teach people who are really old, dance with people who are really young. Anyone whose sense apparatus is not attuned in the same ways as yours. Or maybe this has been happening already all along. These moments of expanding my sense of embodied knowledge beyond my own set-up has been integral to my thinking, and my way of working has evolved through them.

How to get through the shit bits….

As is so often the case, the community, old childhood friends, life partners and my family made things work. We shared bedrooms, at some point we were three people sharing one futon in Dalston. The rent was £270 a month. You can imagine how much space we had to move around in!

Once one of my closest friends passed on a work opportunity that she received in Brussels. Later, when I doubted that leaving London for some time was possible, Petra Söör encouraged me: “If you really want to go, you go. We will solve the rest”. Just the other week another friend, and a dear collaborator, left Europe to move back to the states, I tried to be that friend for him too. The type of friend that sees the other's desire and need for action, and then supports them.

Be there for each other, but don't assume that the people you give support to will give back to you. Support does not flow back and forth. Our community is more complex than that. I always try to acknowledge when someone supports me, when care and understanding comes my way – and for the rest just to be as generous as possible without assuming anything in return. I fail at this occasionally.

Make space

Invite people along, be generous, make space for others if you can. Opportunities come in many ways. Seeing a friend or a stranger succeed or find a place to grow in can be a source of pleasure and strength. Find ways to build a community with your actions, a community you long to belong to yourself. This needs constantly reiterating, and again, occasionally I fail here too.

Money

There were times I was also carried through financially by some of my fellow dancers. Sometimes people who earned more than I did would share their income or simply provide housing and food. Other times fellow dancers gave me money that they did not need at the time. I am trying to keep this generosity going as much as I can.

For many years my skills of asking for money/pay and for making budgets was very basic. Still to this day I think that these skills are essential for surviving in this profession, to make it through all the income asymmetries. But somehow I never manage to really level things out, I am constantly in and out of debt. Through certain privileges and support, such as the 'artist status' here in Belgium, I have kept afloat through the last couple of years.

Your individual way of knowing

In some ways I often think that a big part of my education happened after graduating, and this is certainly still going on. I know this sounds like one of those good old cliches. To give just one of many examples: For many years I developed an embodied discourse that focused on non-visually perceivable aspects in dance. I spent an extensive amount of time on ideas, methods and scores that focussed on sound. Eventually this trajectory moved into more tactile explorations. When bringing this ‘tactile work’ into a community that did not perceive visually I realised pretty soon how visually embedded my perspective, methods of communication and some of my collaborators actually were. This was a very clear reminder that there are as many ways to the embodied experience as there are people. When you think about how your work communicates, keep in mind that your own individual perspective, your way of knowing, only counts for a fraction of a sea of possibilities.

Communities

The asymmetries of the artistic-life schedule rip you out of the more obvious social fabrics. In a way, Covid has allowed me to enter relations with my neighbours and people in my community in new surprising ways. That is something that I treasure. It represents a very different way of being in the city that I chose for the work it offered me, but meaning I am away from my life partner, close friends and my family. An odd choice I know, but I have not given up on the idea that things will eventually merge again.

Audiences

…. I leave that one for you to discover yourself.