Artist Story: Asimina Chremos

It took me a long time to figure out the business of being a dance artist in the U.S. Outside of NYC, there is very little useful training for independent choreographers in the realms of professional development. Entities like Fractured Atlas and Kickstarter.com provide wonderful services, but “services” do not equal “training.” Training, in my mind, means education, mentorship, and direct human-to-human support.

Trial, Error, and Observation

When I was a very young artist in Philadelphia, around 1990, I won a performance grant from the Community Education Center. The grant was called Independent Performing Artists Project (IPAP), and it included a few hours of rehearsal time, 15 minutes of stage time in a fully produced show with other artists (in the CEC’s white-box studio theater), and a professional photo shoot. Ariel Weiss was the program director, and she was very helpful in talking with me and critiquing my artist biography. This small gesture of personal attention was very meaningful to me.

Mostly, I’ve learned by trial, error, and observation. When Headlong Dance Theater established itself in Philadelphia, the three artists of that group (Amy Smith, Andrew Simonet, and David Brick) pretty much blew everyone away with their creative and focused approach to engaging audiences and building their company. They really used their network of friends and peers to great advantage, researched, and went for opportunities. They thought big. Headlong is still thriving, and all of its members lead full lives outside the company as well. It’s very inspiring.

When I was new to Chicago in 1998, I worked with several other artists on the creation and presentation of the Movable Beast Dance Festival. Rebecca Rossen, Sheldon B. Smith, a few others, and I wanted to create a platform for young dancer-choreographers from around the country to perform in Chicago and see each other’s work. I remember faxing pages and pages of the Moveable Beast artists’ biographies to the WBEZ Radio office, hoping to generate interest for some kind of coverage. I was so proud of, and excited by, the accomplishments and aesthetics of artists like Pedro Alejandro, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Li Chiao-Ping, and I thought for sure some arts-interested radio journalist would be, too. It didn’t occur to me that a few well-considered words on a single page would be more enticing than a barrage of language and paper. I also didn’t realize the value of personal connections. Now I know these things.

Since 1997 I’ve been on several sides of promotion and representation: I’ve been the artist being represented; I’ve been the journalist getting the press release; and I’ve written tons of releases myself. My jobs have included artistic director at Links Hall and dance editor at Time Out Chicago, I’ve consulted for Canada Council on the Arts and the Driehaus Foundation. I’ve also served on committees, including a dance advisory board at the Chicago Community Trust.

What Dancers Need to Thrive

In general, I continue to be disappointed by the kinds of support structures I see that exist for dance. Most structures are aimed towards organizations, not the actual needs of artists themselves. What does a dancer need to thrive? What does a choreographer need to thrive? The answers to these questions are so obvious: money to pay for rent and groceries; health care; clean, warm spaces in which to train and create; and presenting organizations that will mount the finished works and bring them to the public.

Yet very few so-called service organizations or grant programs support the nuts-and-bolts needs of dancers or choreographers or even dance companies in any kind of direct, significant, and ongoing way. It is very difficult to support the everyday expenses that are needed to form the ground on which dance can grow. At this level of exploration, we get into territory about the nature of money, capitalism, and so forth. I can’t say I have any answers to this, but I do feel it is important to name the challenges as succinctly as we can and move forward with creativity and fearlessness.

I’ve created a life that can support the kind of creativity and exploration I want to do, on my own terms. I think it is very important for artists to make their needs known and to find ways to meet them, rather than trying to "fit in" to pre-established structures. As artists, we are a powerful creative force for change. We show people what it is like to have an idea and make it happen. We model creativity. Ideally, the artistic and the organizational aspects nourish one another.

It’s been my guiding philosophy to be part of creating the kind of world I want to live in. Since 2005, I’ve operated a home and studio, Silverspace, out of a rental loft in Wicker Park. Since August ’09, I’ve also rented the adjacent loft (called Outer Space) that has become a rehearsal resource for other dance- and body-based performance artists.

I was recently having a conversation with Mary Abrams, a New York City-based somatic educator who came to teach a workshop in Outer Space on Continuum Movement. She was asking me what is going to happen with Silverspace/Outer Space when I give up the lease at the end of July. I’m pleased to say that The Moving Architects, a dance company led by Erin Carlisle Norton, is going to start a new lease and continue to provide affordable rehearsal rental on the site. In talking to Mary, however, I realized that this city has almost no dance studios that are dedicated purely and primarily to creative process and rehearsal. In fact, aside from Outer Space, I cannot think of one. So I am very proud of what I’ve created here.

Into More Radical Realms

My own journey of integrating organization and creation started rather conventionally. I began as a dancer with Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, a union troupe, and became a member of the American Guild of Musical Artists. That experience exposed me to the notion of dancing as work: AGMA guaranteed us certain wage scales as well as regulations such as five minutes off per rehearsal hour, overtime when rehearsing more than eight hours per day, and special rules for performance days and touring. It was interesting to move from seeing dance as my all-consuming passion to seeing it as a job. Ultimately, though, this path didn’t feel right me. It was, in fact, work—and not creative work at that. Despite the intense decade of training I did to prepare for my ballet career, after three years, I forayed off that track. I walked out of rehearsal and never came back.

Over time, I found my way into the more radical realms of experimental dance and improvisation. These forms not only constantly question the nature of dance itself, but they also tend not to have unions (hopefully, you realize that’s a joke!). The organizational structures for improvisation and experimental work are lighter, more agile, and sometimes completely nonexistent. However, it is here—with no history and no future—where I feel possibility, potential and tremendous energy exist. Even artists who create intricately choreographed works rely on this space of creative possibility, where nothing has yet been written and everything is possible.

At this point in time, I feel full of information to share with other artists. I'm interested in working together, to continue to make our field of dance vibrant and evolved. I’m hoping to do more consultant work through a portal called Silver Artist Services, conducting rehearsal visits to provide constructive criticism, meeting one-on-one to discuss individual career paths and choices, and reviewing any written materials for grants, websites, or publicity. I’m interested in working with people and organizations that want to rethink the usual ways of sharing dance with the world. This includes reconsidering what a dancer is (creating self-definitions) and how we teach dance, choreograph, and present performances.

I care a lot about dancers and what we have to offer the world. I think a lot of us give ourselves short shrift by buying into the view that what we do can’t earn money and that “people don’t get it.” These are our own issues. As dancers, we hold the torch for honest, embodied expressiveness. Ideally, we are what people look like who are sensitive to their physical selves and allow ideas and emotions to flow through their spines, fingers, faces, and toes. We are the people who allow information to move from the body to the mind, not just from the mind to the body. We revel in the exquisite preciousness and wonder of this mysterious, beautiful creation called the human body. What we have to offer—and I feel that dance as an art form is still waking up to this—is a vision of the world where the body is not something to be used up or transcended or ordered around by a dominant mind, but something to be loved, felt, and set free.

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This story includes editorial support by CAR Dance Researcher Meida McNeal

Asimina Chremos was born in 1966 in Toronto, Canada. Her mother was raised in Virginia, and her father is a native of Central Greece. Since childhood, Chremos has brought playful curiosity and incisive intelligence to her exploration of dance as a creative practice, lifestyle, career, and evolving philosophy. Current projects include daily dance vlog, CircadianDancer; site-specific performances as microgig with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm; and Echo Den, a sound-and-movement duo with vocalist Carol Genetti. Over the years, she has gained depth from study and practice in Bartenieff Fundamentals, Butoh, Body-Mind Centering, Contact Improvisation, Feldenkrais Method, Klein-Mahler Technique, Shambhala Buddhism, and various styles of yoga. Her classes and workshops are open to anyone who would like to explore body movement and creativity.