Coming Home Changed

Written by Collaborator Bonnie Brooks

Plunging in to work with the Dance COLEctive and Margi Cole on the production of REboot feels mighty familiar.  It’s a new way of working with Margi, yet it’s on familiar (and nearly familial) ground.  Ms. Cole and I have gotten used to working together.  Yet each new time we take up a new shared assignment, I am struck again by the good fortune of finding a collaborator who offers so very much.

Bonnie at work! 

We met in 1999, when I moved to Chicago to chair the Dance Department at Columbia College Chicago.  A grad of the program (who’d gone on to earn an MFA at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Margi was already teaching part-time and had spent a number of years working with Julie Simpson managing the Dance Center’s presenting series before refocusing her energy on her own dance company and on her work as an educator.  Through a series of what I’ll describe as fortunate circumstances, she advanced within the Dance Center team to become associate chair of the Dance Department for several years, giving me the “first round” of close collaboration.  We discovered we balanced each other out remarkably well.  I was often out fighting institutional admin battles, Margi keep the operation running back in the office.  I came quickly to appreciate her exceptional work ethic and the dedication she brings to what she does.  And I felt awe observing her juggle sustaining her small modern troupe, her teaching duties and student mentoring, and her admin work without, it so often appeared, missing a beat.  As time went on we came to be friends, friends who could actually work together (it’s kind of like being able to cook with someone, either you can or you can’t). 

When it came time to decide, post-chairmanship, if I would accept our Dean’s request that I take up leadership of the dance presenting series, I answered, “I can do it…if you’ll let me hire Margi to do it with me.”  She was the only person I knew who, I was certain, would be able to hit the ground running and who could read my mind as fast and accurately as I could read hers.  And so we did it – the relentless work of fundraising, producing, scheduling, keeping the internal bosses updated on all things financial, and doing our best to keep our guest artists informed and happy (that latter isn’t do-able at the Dance Center without the amazing Kevin Rechner and his tech crew, it truly takes a village).   Today, Ellen Chenoweth now runs the presenting series and continues to benefit from all the knowledge, skill and history that Margi brings to that work.  All I can say is I could not have done my part in those challenging years without her.

Last summer in beautiful Maine!

Mind you all the while Margi sustained her artistic project with the Dance COLEctive.  When she told me three or so years ago that she’d decided to re-imagine the Dance COLEctive’s mission and re-orient towards project work with a wider frame of participating artists, I remember thinking, “that’s gutsy and generous and practical.  Just like Margi.”  Giving up a steady ensemble of dancers for is no small decision for a choreographer, but Margi wanted a bigger and more flexible world.  Since making that decision, she has forged through several years of testing the waters and new short-term collaborations, she has added several solos to her personal repertory choreographed by the likes of Margaret Jenkins and Deborah Hay, and most recently she participated in a three week international residency at the Art Omi Art Center in Ghent, NY.  You can read about that in her blog posts here.

Now we are a few short weeks out from the first public performances of the Dance COLEctive since the big change.  It’ll feature Margi’s choreography plus work by Colleen Halloran and Pete Carpenter.  I’ll write about the concert in more detail an upcoming blog post.  But what she’s doing, in a way, is coming home changed.  She’s working with familiar dancers and collaborators.  The concert will be in a relatively new space dreamed up and realized by an old friend.  She’s dancing as well as choreographing.  And she’s got a back-up producer in Third Way Projects (that would be yours truly) who is also doing some re-inventing in post-institutional life.  This time I get to work on her project.  How grand is that?  It’s definitely different, but it’s also definitely like coming home. 

Opening September 14.  We so hope you will be there!