An Interview With Dayna Hanson, 2010 United Artist Fellow

Each year, United States Artists honors 50 American artists with fellowships of $50,000 — unrestricted funds awarded across eight disciplines. With the news that local dancer, choreographer, musician and filmmaker Dayna Hanson had been named a 2010 USA Fellow, Hanson's long career of art-making in Seattle got a massive vote of confidence.

Hanson has played heavy with the performance scene here for more than twenty years, first as a dancer and choreographer, then as co-creator and director for dance-theater company 33 Fainting Spells (1994-2006), starting to dabble in dance filmmaking somewhere in between. Last year, Hanson was back with Gloria's Cause, a "dance-driven rock musical", which premiered at On the Boards in December.

How, then, will Hanson make use of her USA Fellowship grant? Read on to learn more about the Gloria's Cause feature film project and Hanson's ongoing fundraising efforts through USA Projects.

What was the USA Fellowship application process like?

It’s actually not an open application process. I had received notice from USA that some wonderful person had nominated me. The grant application process involved quite a bit of writing and putting together the longest work sample that I have ever been asked to do for any grant. Normally you have to limit it to five minutes or less, or draw from work that is 2-5 years old or something. In this case they wanted up to an hour of material from any point in my career. I had segments that were three minutes long, I had segments that were twenty minutes long.

How much time did you have to put the application together?

I had a good amount of time. I had about two months to put the whole thing together.

Did you ever find out who it was that nominated you?

No! Now I can’t decide if I want to try and find out. Of course I would love to thank that person, but I’ve gotten comfortable with the mystery, too.

So it sounds like both the process and the result of putting together this application has brought wonderful things into your life.

The application process for this particular grant -- looking at choreography that I had done fifteen years ago -- allowed me to take a survey of my own work. It really allowed me to tap into some of my roots as a choreographer and as an artist. In Gloria’s Cause, for example, there is a trio that was adapted from a piece I did fifteen years ago. That came out of that archeological expedition into my own work through the USA fellowship application.

For the past several years I haven’t been involved in dance-making or performance or music or film in a full-time capacity by any stretch. I knew that I wanted to go back to being a full-time artist but I wasn’t quite sure if I could take the risk. So this opportunity came at a pivotal moment in my career. Having just premiered this massive new work, and then right on the heels of that to accept this grant, this incredible honor ... it’s hard not to take it as a confirmation that this path, going back to art-making full time, is the right one for me.

How do you plan to make use of the grant award?

I want to leverage this grant to take Gloria’s Cause into the next phase, which is to transpose the work into a narrative, feature-length dance film called Improvement Club. I’ve made a lot of short dance films but have never made a feature film, and I’ve been wanting to for years. The grant will finally allow me to focus on making that happen. I just need to be strategic and smart about the kind of structure that I set up, so the concept for the project can carry on into something sustainable.

Can you clarify what you mean by dance film?

The focus in dance film is on the choreography, allowing the parameters of the medium to really go further than what you can do on the stage, using editing and angles and location to amplify the impact of choreography, of dance. It’s a format that really uses the medium of dance to explore narrative or emotional or thematic areas through camerawork.

Tell me more about the group you worked with for the Gloria’s Cause project.

Some of the folks that are in this group are close collaborators. Peggy Piacenza was part of 33 Fainting Spells, and a dear friend, and an artist in her own right -- just a fantastic performer. Dave Proscia is my partner both in life and art -- we’ve worked together for a long, long time. Actually, Gloria’s Cause was kind of a joint idea between us, even though in the end I took the Artistic Director role.

I first decided back in 1987 that I had to make dances and be a choreographer, and ended up auditioning for Twelve Minutes Max (12MM) with a really bizarre little piece. Wade Madsen was the 12MM curator at the time; he was the one who let me in. People know Wade as a choreographer and a beautiful dancer and amazing teacher. But he’s also an incredible actor -- just this immense talent, an immense depth as a performer.

So there are nine of us total in the show. Along with Dave, Maggie Brown and Paul Moore have been my band mates in Today! for the last four years. Some of the others are really new to me but it’s just been this discovery of treasures in the Seattle community. So, Jim Kent and Pol Rosenthal, Jessie Smith, they’re all fantastic people who I feel very close to now.

Have you already started thinking about the other collaborators you’ll bring in for the Gloria’s Cause film project?

Yes. For example, Ben Kasulke, who is just a magnificent Director of Photography, has worked with some wonderful directors, including Lynn Shelton from Seattle. I’ve known him since my entry into dance film, which was in 2000. We’ve collaborated many times over the years, and he has shot many of my short films. He’s definitely my DP on this feature version.

Do you have any kind of a rough timeline in place?

The first phase is script development. We have a budget of $63,000 for Improvement Club, so I’m actually raising money right now to further support the script development phase. Along the way with Gloria’s Cause we’ve had an awareness that things could go in that direction; we’ve even done a bit of documentary footage already. Another thing I’d like to do is schedule some retreats for the group. Just go out to the country (part of the film has to do with city versus country) take everyone out to a retreat-like setting and just brainstorm, and have the cameras rolling the whole time, and really just kind of collect the high points, the areas where there are some deeper emotional resonance, or aspects of grappling with our national identity, which is a big part of Gloria’s Cause. Then, looking at the dynamics of the group itself and trying to tease out narrative threads from the lives of the people involved. So it’s going to be kind of rich, and it could be a little chaotic as well.

I would like to start shooting in May. I hope to shoot the film over a more concentrated period of time. I feel like I have the opportunity, especially with this fellowship, to make the shooting happen in a condensed period.

As Gloria’s Cause is described as a “rock musical”, do you have plans to make your musicians characters in the film as well?

Yes, it has a very powerful rock score, although it’s fairly non-linear, it has some absurdist shadings. It’s a dance-theater work, and the original rock-music element of it is pretty strong.

But yes. And that’s because in the show, pretty much everyone moved back and forth, so it wasn’t like the band was relegated to the corner. People came and went from the bandstand. Maggie Brown spent most of her time behind the drum kit, but at one point she came out and dances. Jessie Smith, who people think of primarily as a dancer here in the Seattle community, plays guitar on two or three songs. Jim Kent goes back and forth constantly. Wade Madsen picks up the trombone. People were using voice and instruments throughout; it’s a very multi-talented cast in that regard.

Do you have any plans to workshop the film development process to see how people respond to it?

I may. I think a lot will be defined within that script-development phase in the next couple of months. But I think there’s a strong possibility that even before we start shooting that we will try to share stuff and get feedback. We did that for Gloria’s Cause; we took some scenes down to TBA in Portland and got a LOT of feedback; it was very helpful.

Are there any other smaller projects that this grant also might fund for you?

I do want to continue to refine Gloria’s Cause in the context of its touring life. I’m pursuing some residency situations with other presenters throughout the country - we’ll see. There’s also some choreography that I didn’t have time to develop as fully as I wanted to.

And of course, within the film there may very well be some dance film solo or duet that really steps outside the brackets of Gloria’s Cause - maybe it’s site specific, maybe it’s a dance that takes place on a country road. I’m really trying to keep open to the ways in which something might form a scene within this film.

But I’m also interested in smaller-scale work. I’m going to have something in 10 Tiny Dances at Velocity this February, and I’m really excited about that. I like small things!

Yeah! I’d really like to make it to Ten Tiny Dances, because I’m a big fan of some of the other artists that will be there as well.

Oh yeah. It’s gonna be a good one.

Dayna has until midnight, February 15 to meet her fundraising goal of $4,500…visit her project page for more information.