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Tuesday, August 31, 2021
From Urban Bush Women to Robots: Meet Grisha Coleman
Dance Magazine: I first ran into Grisha Coleman in Dayton, Ohio, some 20 years ago, when she was touring with the Urban Bush Women. Even within a company of brilliant dancers, she was a technically inimitable, radiant performer.
2 comments:
Monica Tran
said...
Grisha Coleman is everything I aspire to be. Not the dancer part, but how she combined her art and technology together. Her dancing history is incredible but when she described her physical being as not wanting to work in a singular, I felt that. She talked about how when she got into Carnegie Mellon, it expanded her knowledge and experiences with systems, opening herself up to build upon the beautiful form of choreo-robotics. I can only hope I can get to that level of ingenuity in my time here. Not to mention her career journey is jaw-dropping, being able to make connections with her colleagues to design different passion projects turned professional shows. She talked about being motivated by what interested her, and made a great call out to the privileges afforded to her like no immediate hunger or homelessness. During these COVID times, I'm curious and excited to hear what else she'll do, with less bodies onstage with her, and more robots!!
I always find myself getting caught up in the idea of there only being one set path to take, I have this idolized goal in my head of where I want to go, whatever project I’m doing should end up as or take me, but people like Grisha Coleman remind me that that’s not the end all be all. I’m curious what weird niche things I could excel at with good theatre training. Even with things like playfair my initial thought will be that I should just practice what I think I want to follow but I really shouldn’t. I have the time and the opportunity to explore all of my interests and the ways to get them to work together.There is also that distinction where inside of theatre I love that people have different expertise and interests but I never quite made the connection that those skill sets could be based in something totally outside of the normal realm of theatre, such as robotics and that difference is just as valuable and insightful a contribution.
2 comments:
Grisha Coleman is everything I aspire to be. Not the dancer part, but how she combined her art and technology together. Her dancing history is incredible but when she described her physical being as not wanting to work in a singular, I felt that. She talked about how when she got into Carnegie Mellon, it expanded her knowledge and experiences with systems, opening herself up to build upon the beautiful form of choreo-robotics. I can only hope I can get to that level of ingenuity in my time here. Not to mention her career journey is jaw-dropping, being able to make connections with her colleagues to design different passion projects turned professional shows. She talked about being motivated by what interested her, and made a great call out to the privileges afforded to her like no immediate hunger or homelessness. During these COVID times, I'm curious and excited to hear what else she'll do, with less bodies onstage with her, and more robots!!
I always find myself getting caught up in the idea of there only being one set path to take, I have this idolized goal in my head of where I want to go, whatever project I’m doing should end up as or take me, but people like Grisha Coleman remind me that that’s not the end all be all. I’m curious what weird niche things I could excel at with good theatre training. Even with things like playfair my initial thought will be that I should just practice what I think I want to follow but I really shouldn’t. I have the time and the opportunity to explore all of my interests and the ways to get them to work together.There is also that distinction where inside of theatre I love that people have different expertise and interests but I never quite made the connection that those skill sets could be based in something totally outside of the normal realm of theatre, such as robotics and that difference is just as valuable and insightful a contribution.
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