MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Program
I believe that art-making is about questions. If I know what I’m doing, what can I learn by doing it? If the process begins with answers, how interesting can the outcome be? The mentors I have valued most have all, in one way or another, asked me not “what are you trying to say,” but “what are you trying to find out?” Staying in question-mode is not easy. Like scientists, every artist is tempted at some point to fudge the data to match expectations or dearly desired outcomes. But the reward of sticking with uncertainty is discovery, and in my experience, it’s always been worth it. I love the story about the child watching a sculptor chip away for months at a block of marble. When the work, a beautiful horse, is finally competed, the child asks in wonder, “How did you know that was inside there?” As an artist and a teacher, my greatest joy comes from finding things that I didn’t know were in there – that nobody knew were in there. Once or twice in our lives, if we get lucky, we make something so simple and clear that it seems it must have been found, not created. If epiphanies like that are rare, it is because they are the result of hundreds and thousands of little experiments, tiny joyful discoveries, frustrations, fragments reshaped, fragments discarded, and accidental slips of the chisel. I am not a sculptor by the way! My background is in dance and performance art. I’m interested in the stories the human body in motion can tell – not only the trained dancer’s body, though I find virtuosic movement captivating – but real people walking, standing, and gesturing in daily life. My work is sometimes abstract, sometimes narrative. Sometimes I incorporate text; sometimes I am interested only in the form and structure of dance. For the past three years, I have had a dance company called Screech to a Stop, made up of women between the ages of 25 and 75. Our process is experimental and varied, and the results have been just as varied. Most recently my work has been guided by my fascination with two unrelated things – the 15th century, and the serious music of Peter Schickele. No doubt these two streams will eventually merge, but as yet at I have no idea how. As a teacher, I try to offer artists what I find valuable myself – questions to jog my thinking, deadlines to keep me moving, enthusiasm and genuine interest to keep me believing in the project, and a little bit of help seeing what I’ve done. I believe in challenging students to examine the implications of their work and to take responsibility for what they present to the world. We can never be accountable for how people see our work – but we are wholly accountable for what they’re looking at. Details of my bio are: I received a BA in Russian Language and Literature from UMASS Boston, and an MFA in dance from California Institute of the Arts. I have presented choreography and performance art in Los Angeles, Boston and Providence. I currently work as Director of Residencies at The Yard, an artists’ colony for choreographers and a performing arts presenting organization. I have taught dance, choreography, performance art and movement for actors at the college and high school levels as well as in non-institutional settings. I am a single Lesbian mother -- and that is the fact, right now, that shapes my identity and my experience above all others. I live in Providence with my daughter. Educational Background: MFA in Dance, California Institute of the Arts, Dance; BA summa cum laude in Russian, University of Massachusetts.
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Lise Brody, MFA