Six-pack of Jo
Local dancer serves up six sets of steps in Rooms With a View
Jared Story

Jolene Bailie is consumed by dance. For her, dancing is far more than a hobby or job — it’s a lifestyle.

Because she feels dance lives inside her, Bailie never lacks inspiration.

“I don’t have a problem being motivated,” Bailie says. “You’re in the studio alone 90 per cent of the time working. Nobody tells me that I have to go in. Nobody gives me a schedule. It’s something I have to do.

“When I wake up, I have to work on the show. That is what my life is right now.

From April 27 to 30, Bailie will present six solo pieces in her Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers production Rooms With a View. Included are José Limón’s Primavera, Anna Sokolow’s Escape and The End?, Stephanie Ballard’s Mara, Hugh Conacher’s video A Short Voyage, and Bailie’s own Switchback.

The effort put into a production of this magnitude exemplifies Bailie’s commitment to her craft. We’re not talking so much about hours and weeks here; Bailie’s dedication is better measured in months, or even years.

“It is really an overwhelming amount of work. I’ve been working on some of these pieces for years,” Bailie says. “Mara I’ve been working on since 1999. Primavera I’ve been working on for over a year. The Sokolow solos have been for six months. Switchback I’ve been working on since the start of August last year.

“A show takes years to build and a little bit of thought of what will go together and what you want to say,” she continues. “I started working on this show full time at the end September. I devoted most of my time towards the show then. I was working in the studio for about five hours a day, Monday through Friday. It’s a lot of rehearsing.”

Lest you think five hours a day is not a big deal, consider this: productions such as Rooms With a View are not Bailie’s main source of income, even though she has produced over 150 solo concerts. Like the rest of us, she has to work a steady job on top of that.

“I teach at the School of Contemporary Dancers,” Bailie says. “I live on my teaching money. I don’t try to live on my dance money. I get government grants, which offset some costs, but it’s never enough to pay myself a salary.”

Bailie, 28, says funding her productions is a “nightmare,” but she didn’t into the business to make money. It’s just all about dance.

“It’s a labour of love,” Bailie says. “I can’t think that way (financially). That’s a downward slope and a bad, bad place. You can’t expect to live a posh living in the arts, and you learn that fast. You don’t do it for that reason.

“I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Dance chooses you. I don’t think anybody sits down and decides they’re going to be a dancer. It’s not on the guidance-counsellor’s list.”

‘Dancing’ may be an inadequate word to describe what Bailie does. Her art is not just about learning steps, although that’s of course part of the work. Still, large quantities of time and effort are invested in becoming familiar with a piece. Bailie speaks of learning a dance much the way an actor speaks of getting inside a role.

“You need a really deep understanding of the work you’re performing so you know the message you are trying to communicate,” Bailie says. “It’s not just putting your arm up here and lifting your leg here and doing a jump; it’s having each tiny milli-movement invested in embodying the character. I never feel like I’m doing a dance, I feel like I’m moving that way because that character in that piece does that.

“Once you get to that stage in the show, it should be natural, because that is what that character does,” she explains. “That comes in the rehearsal hours. You’re dissecting the choreography and the meaning and listening to the music over and over again to find connections within you to broadcast the message. It’s very much in the deeper understanding of the work and the things that come from the inside, not the outside.”

Rooms With a View promises to be a feast for the eyes and ears, and best of all for contemporary-dance virgins, the pieces have clear intents. Mara is about a mermaid-like sea creature and finds Bailie donning a long, majestic blue robe that moves like rippling waves.

The Sokolow pieces focus on the idea of looking into a person’s apartment when he or she is alone. Bailie uses chairs that she sits on, stands on and moves around to symbolize the comfort, restlessness, happiness and anger that may develop when one is left alone.

Because modern dance is sometimes misunderstood, Bailie says she wants her show to be accessible.

“The message in each of the pieces is pretty clear,” she says. “These aren’t questioning works because the characters do not question themselves. They are who they are. The audience will find it clear and shouldn’t be frustrated — which I know happens in many shows. The last thing you want is to feel like you didn’t get it.”

Another reason to go check out Rooms With a View is the opportunity to see works from all eras of modern dance. Limón’s Primavera was choreographed in 1971, while the Sokolow pieces premiered in 1955. Ballard premiered Mara in 1989, and Bailie’s Switchback is, of course, brand new.

“The range of works gives the viewer a perspective of where modern dance has come from and where it has gone to,” Bailie says. “As time has gone on, the choreography has gotten more abstract, and you see that. Having so many different works on the program shows the different looks at modern dance.”