10 Aug Guest Blog | Ephrat Asherie Dance
KSF Artists of Choice is open to artists across the disciplines of dance, theatre, musical theatre and film. Over the next few weeks, we will post guest blogs from some of our 2016 grant winners about how the grant has impacted their work. Applications will be open in early 2017.
Name | Ephrat Asherie
Project | Riff This, Riff That
Year Awarded KSF Grant | 2016
What does the KSF grant mean to you and your project?
This generous KSF grant will give Ephrat Asherie Dance (EAD) the opportunity to bring it’s most recent work, Riff this, Riff that to FiraTarrega, one of Spain’s biggest street art festivals. With a cast of six dancers and four musicians, traveling overseas is a big undertaking and this support is making EAD’s first full company international premiere a reality.
What inspired your project?
Riff this, Riff that was inspired by my interest in vernacular jazz dance and jazz music. My brother, Ehud Asherie, is a jazz pianist and for over a decade we’ve wanted to collaborate on a project. I was also very much inspired by Mura Dehn’s film, The Spirit Moves: A History of Black Social Dance on Film, 1900–1986. In many ways this film is a sort of bible for members of the underground dance community because it is a rare visual record of the early jazz dances from the 1920s to the 1950s. Much of this footage gives visible evidence of how vernacular jazz forms the roots of what we do today as house and hip hop dancers. Abstracting, deconstructing and taking a hybrid approach to creating movement has always interested me and I was very much inspired to do so in this particular musical and movement-based context.
Talk about your journey prior to the receiving the award. What kind of difficulties or roadblocks did you encounter along the way? How did you overcome them?
Living as an artist in New York City requires the ability to juggle multiple gigs at once. Everyone is working to pursue their art and pay their rent, which usually entails having numerous different jobs at once. When directing a project it feels almost impossible to find time when everyone can be in the room at the same time to rehearse together. An hour here, two hours there. This is possible if you have access to free space, but when you are paying to rent space this becomes financially impossible. I ultimately had to change my lens and view these limitations as breeding instead of impinging creativity. How can I make a section that I initially envisioned for five people, work for three people? Can this piece exist as a solo instead of a trio? Changing my point of view and approaching this issue not as a shortcoming, but rather as one that will inherently elicit creativity, has helped me have a more positive mind frame.
What would you say have been the most defining moments of your career thus far?
It is difficult to specify one defining moment in my career. I don’t know if I believe in the idea of all artists having a big break. But I will say that the first time I received a commission to create an original new work, my mindset shifted. In 2012, Dixon Place in New York City awarded me the Mondo Cane! Commission and I created my first evening length work. Much like the KSF grant is doing now, this commission gave me a vote of confidence, a reminder, an earnest nod that said, “keep making work, you have something important to say and people are listening.” This was and still is the necessary encouragement that is so essential to so many artists.
Do you have any advice for emerging artists?
I always go back to movement and music. If I can’t get out of my own way, my own head or thoughts, I dance around in my living room or I go to the club. It sounds trite, but it is my way to remember why I fell in love with making dances in the first place. It is a way to remember that all things start with one step or one word or one note. I think it is almost impossible to not become overwhelmed in today’s hyper-paced world, but having a way to reconnect to your art on the most fundamental level is something that can be extremely grounding and re-invigorating.
Read more about Ephrat’s project here.
Ephrat discusses her projects here.