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Patty Arrieta
October 15, 2012
Patty Arrieta- dance, passion and pain

Danza Arrieta Dance

Patty is in motion. Even at rest her body suggests movement, what has been, what is coming, a promise or a reminder. Dancer, choreographer, teacher, she expects and expresses a lot from herself. Our interview, conducted in the courtyard behind Starbucks, brought me to the verge of tears as Patty chronicled the commitment, discipline and struggle with which she has pursued her art. "'Passion,'" she reminded me, "means 'suffering.'" There are, she told me, one hundred different ways of moving your arm away from your body, and I reflected that there are also one hundred different ways of measuring success.

Patty has the great advantage of knowing who she is, a dancer. There was, no doubt, a cellular memory of dance passed to her in the womb from her mother who was herself a professional dancer. Dance is what she does. She practices, but how to make that practice practical in the world, how to make her art financially sustainable is for her an ongoing exploration. She has been successful at that, but she continues to adventure, continues to age, continues to grow, refining her art and her person.

Patty is a good friend of my daughter and some months ago was helping her pack for a trip. The process involved her taking articles of clothing one by one from the bed a short way across the room to where the suitcase rested on the floor. She performed this repetitive task, lift, transfer, forward bend with a joyful body, feeling each nuance of position and transition, transforming the ordinary into art. It is a part of her and she of it; "I've been told," she confessed, "that I point my toes in my sleep."

Stay in touch with Patty:
arrietadance@gmail.com
Danza Arrieta Dance Facebook

- Dr Dave (Fialkoff)

suspended woman
photo by Duncan Tonatiuh
pose in archway
photo by Duncan Tonatiuh
I was born in Guadalajara. At five we moved to San Francisco Bay Area, which is where I grew up. I started off doing competitive gymnastics as a kid. That taught me a lot of discipline. A year before high school, I started dance; my mother had been a professional dancer with the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico de Amalia Hernandez. I danced through high school and went off after to New York City, where I received a scholarship to study at Alvin Ailey. My whole world opened; I really was exposed to the kind of dance that passionately inspires me- modern and contemporary. I spent 13 years there.

I started coming to San Miguel de Allende in 2006 to work with Carly Cross in her summer arts program, MexArt. Every summer since, I'd stay a little longer. Two years ago now I decided to leave New York and more fully pursue my vision as a choreographer and an artistic director of my own work. Doing that in New York is very expensive.

I had already been involved working with Gravityworks and Nisha Ferguson. She contacted me to teach her son dance. I had wanted to try aerial work for a long time, so we made a trade. After a few months she invited me to be a part of the company. Gravity Works is an aerial troupe. We perform in San Miguel, all over Mexico and internationally, specializing in new circus arts, silks, hoop trapeze, straps, etc. It's really helped my dance and to face my fear of heights. I'm constantly challenged by the work. It's something new to explore. It's good to start at the beginning of something and see yourself growing, getting stronger and better, little improvements every week. That's an exciting process.

At this point I'm extending out to the dance community in Mexico and really all over the world, taking the next steps in my career as a professional, both as a dancer and a dance maker. It's a lot different when you're a young artist in your 20s, versus an artist in your 30s. It will continue to be different in my 40s and my 50s. I'm finding ways to continue as a professional and growing in that as I develop in age and in my artistry.

There are auditions in New York where you don't even dance a step. The first thing they do is put you in a line. They walk down the line and they say yes, no, no, no, no, yes, no, no… That is their first cut, just based on the look of the dancer, the body type that the choreographer needs. There's a lot of rejection, getting knocked down, picking yourself back up, getting out there and doing it again, letting go of your ego.

Having danced professionally in New York for so many years, being in that demanding world, you're dancing with the best of the best, being able to hold your own in that situation, for me I know I've already proven to myself, what I'm capable of. So I made the decision to leave New York. Why keep in the rat race, not just in the dancers' world but in what New York demands of you. It is such an expensive city and you do have to be constantly producing in order to keep up. I stepped out of it and moved in an unknown direction which has possibilities for me to grow as an artist, to take the next steps that will help me become the person that I am meant to be. I didn't come to SMA to retire. I am looking to make connections within Mexico and reach out to the professional dance communities where there are more people doing what I do. San Miguel is this wonderful place where I can come and give and teach and create but not necessarily have to be concerned with making a living here.

leaning back
photo by Holly Wilmeth
long shell
photo by Luc Bedard
In these last few months I've been looking to renegotiate and reprioritizing what's important in my personal and professional life. It's very important to be ok with where we're at in this moment. Sometimes I think to myself, oh you're not pushing yourself far enough. While I think it's good to challenge ourselves and keep ourselves accountable, at the same time we need to accept ourselves, to accept that this moment is important, to not have expectations but to really accept who we are and what we have to offer, and be clear on that so that we can move forward and offer that in a clear and productive way.

After leaving and finding myself in this totally new situation I had to question myself; did I make the right choices? am I falling behind? do I need to get back there so I can keep up with the best of the best? I'm somewhat still going through the transition of leaving. So it's a gift to sit with you today and reaffirm that this is all a process and this is who we are as people and this is how we share who we are and to keep that as the truth and integrity of our work and not worry about the outside message or circumstance. Nowadays on the internet everyone can be a star. Really it's about the quality of your work. Hopefully when people interact with me and come to my classes and see my work, that stands out for itself.

xxxx

Now here in San Miguel I'm teaching one master class every month, a different movement style every month. It's a 3 hour class, very focused and complete. Last month it was jazz with a modern twist. This month (Sunday Oct 21) we'll be doing hip-hop. so that’s fun. Next month it will be contemporary.

It's wonderful to get positive feedback from people. Hopefully, I bring integrity and knowledge and experience to my classes and my work as a dancer and choreographer. I'm seeing what other opportunities there are. I'd love to travel around Mexico teaching.

In your 20s you're more accepting of being broke. You're fighting harder. You have to scratch your way and make a name for yourself. As I get older my needs have changed. The woman that I am at 33 is different than the woman I was at 23. It is definite that this is what I do in my life; I'm a dancer. This is who I am. This is the course that I've taken. The question is, how do I sustain myself doing it professionally from here forward. There's a change in my body. I am getting older. Things don't come as easily to me. I have to take care of my body in a different way as far as warming up, cooling down, paying more attention, managing pain. As a woman, if and when does a family fit in? If I do have kids, how do I become a mother and still be a dancer? It's about figuring it out as the years go by; how do you keep moving forward and pursuing not only your passion and your first love but also this thing that you make money doing?

I've had the great fortune to work with amazing teachers.. They're not on the frontlines; they're not always seen or known, but their importance is huge. I really enjoy teaching, the giving, the exchange. It's been such a blessing for me and hopefully for my students

It's really hard to make money as a working artist. It's really hard to separate this thing that you love and is so personal to you and then put it out there as a way of making money. Sometimes those two things come into conflict. Financial stability is unpredictable as a working artist, so teaching has been a blessing. It allows me income and challenges me in ways that promote growth.

The definition of "passion" is "suffering" and that's certainly true, not just in an emotional or an esoteric sense or in the sacrifices one makes, but physically, mentally, in every way.

The amount of time that I have dedicated to being in class and learning my skills and my trade. so that now it comes naturally… I have been told I point my toes in my sleep.

portait with wilflowers
photo by Nisha Ferguson
framed in arch
photo by Duncan Tonatiuh

My foundation is in technique, ballet and modern. I use technique as a tool when creating my choreography along with improvisation. There is a freedom of movement, but it draws from the technical principles of dance, like a classically trained musician who is then able to play different genres of music

All dancers should train in classical ballet. It's the foundation of dance, the basis of everything. It teaches you the body awareness needed to move your body in intricate, subtle, dynamic, different ways that are interesting when creating a piece of work, choreographing or performing and connecting with an audience, or just experimenting at home or in a dance studio with a group of people where you're all improvising together, to be able to listen to the cues. Classical ballet gives you all that. I love it, but when I first started doing it I hated it. I found it boring, doing the same exercises over and over again.

But practice makes perfect. You have to teach your body how to do these 25 different steps and be able to put them together in different sequences. It's not the most exhilarating thing in the world to go in and do your plies. But then once it starts clicking, and you start feeling your turnout, and you start implementing the approach into your dancing, and noticing how it's changing and how it's developing, it gets really exciting. Then it becomes a game; how can you best accomplish the task at hand? There are so many things you have to think about in the simple plie; thinking about all those things and implementing them, but then also making it look effortless; thinking about your technique and dancing through it; expressing yourself as a dancer and not just as a technician; taking the technique and expressing it in an artistic way.

Two dancers express the same step in different ways. That is artistic nuance and sensitivity. You can take an arm movement and do it fast, in staccato or do it slow and soft or do it with energy extending out through your fingertips or bringing the energy into your body. There are hundreds of different ways of putting your arm out to the side. Why do you move your body in that way? What are you expressing? What in the music are you trying to express? What inspires emotion from an audience member?

One of my favorite things is walking into the studio on the first day, as a dancer or as a choreographer, walking in with nothing but a clean canvas, a blank slate. It's a great opportunity. There's no limit and no boundary. You can just create, just have fun. I go into the studio and record and dance and dance and maybe out of that there's a 30 sec segment that I'll put in a piece of choreography. It's the freedom to walk in like a painter with a blank canvas and go at it, let go, not thinking about it, just moving and feeling what feels right to your body in that moment, developing that work. It's such a wonderful process and like we were saying I feel very blessed to have that outlet.

I've seen dancers go on stage, professionals, and fall out of their turns, miss a step, but their intention, what they were giving in their spirit and expressing as artists was so much richer and greater than the couple of missed steps. A professional has to let go of the expectation of going on stage and being perfect. I had to let go of that because I started out in competitive gymnastics where you have to be perfect, to hit your routines. But as a performing art, dance is not about how perfect your steps are, it's about you giving your spirit and expressing a point of view as a dancer. It's not about being the perfect technical dancer. It's about reaching the people in the last row of the balcony with your energy, spirit and really who you are as an artist.

***
swirled blue dress
photo by Luc Bedard
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