Artslandia at the Performance: Portland Playhouse Nov/Dec 2014 | Page 49

Claire Willett: Linda, in addition to your
company Linda Austin Dance, you also
direct Performance Works NorthWest,
an interdisciplinary, artist-run hub for
new work, which you and your husband
Jeff Forbes co-founded 15 years ago.
How did this come about?
LINDA AUSTIN: When I moved back to

Portland from New York, I knew I wanted
to have a space in which to create my own
work, which was made possible by selling
an apartment that I had bought for an unbelievably cheap price in the ‘70s — would
you believe $2,000? — when the East
Village was considered a very dangerous
place to live. I decided to form a nonprofit
to support my work. Little by little, I began
to also create programs to support other
artists, mostly because I had a space, and I
wanted the space to be used. I also simply
wanted to surround myself with creativity
and to create experiences for others that
were similar to the experiences that formed
me as an artist.

very year, the
Regional Arts &
Culture Council
gives Individual
Artist Fellowships of
$20,000 to one or
two artists whose body of work over
at least 10 years has had significant
effects on the community. The
awards rotate among the arts
disciplines each year, and in fall
2014, the category was dance. The
Council chose two extraordinary
women from Portland’s dance
community: Anita Menon, founder
and director of the Anjali School of
Dance, whose work blends ancient
Indian dance techniques with
Western music and story; and Linda
Austin, a visionary choreographer
and creator, whose company
Performance Works NorthWest has
been incubating experimental new
work for 15 years. One has built a
career on breaking the boundaries
of the traditional. The other is
reinventing classical traditions for a
new generation.
BY CLAIRE WILLETT.

CW: Anita, in addition to choreography,
you also run the Anjali School of Dance,
teaching students of all ages the
ancient art form of Bharatanatyam. How
did this company come about?
ANITA MENON: I moved to Portland in

1995. When my neighbor found out that I
was a dancer, she wanted her daughter to
have a connection to India through dance,
music and culture, and asked me if I would
consider teaching. I started teaching with
one student in my garage and have, over
the years, grown into one of the premier
Indian dance schools in the area. As a
dance teacher in America, I’m expected
to not only teach dance, but to also pass
on traditions, history and other aspects of
the Indian culture. Dance classes are not
focused on mastery of technique alone, but
also historical stories, cultural references
and life lessons. Students are also taught
how to tell stories from all over the world
— Little Red Riding Hood, [the myth of ]
Pegasus, The Wizard of Oz, etc. — using
traditional Bharatanatyam hand gestures
and movements.

CW: Linda, your upcoming work
(Un)Made is incredibly unique in
its structure, with pairs of soloists
watching one another work and then a
month later creating their own version
of it, and then another pair interpreting
the second pair, and so on, like a relay
race or a game of telephone. What do
you look forward to seeing emerge from
this creative process?

LA: (Un)Made is actually a three-phase

project dealing with the making and
unmaking of dance material and of our
own sense of self as a separate and overly
defined individual. The first two phases
function as works in themselves, as well
as sources of material for the succeeding
phase. In Phase 2, the dancers and I create
a score for a large group of 10 to 20 community members that can be learned fairly
quickly and performed by almost anybody. This score will be derived from the
experiences of the solo relay series, as well
as by any new material we come up with
in the next phase of research — keeping in
mind, of course, that the dance should be
able to be performed by an average person

This do-it-yourself Portland
thing is both a strength
and weakness. It speaks to
people’s drive and longin