The art of choreography and movement
Insights into the life of a choreographer, and ten artists across the motu The final instalment of our Art Work series, featuring Sarah Foster-Sproull, a dancer, choreographer, and senior lecturer at the University of Auckland. She shares her experiences as a senior lecturer, artistic director and founder of Foster Group dance company, and choreographer in residence at the Royal New Zealand Ballet. She also discusses her work with the university and her plans to create a choreography in New York with the New York Choreographic Institute. The team also discusses the importance of supporting art and artists in New Zealand, highlighting the need for a more robust arts funding model and a more thorough education level.
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This story is from the team at thespinoff.co.nz.
In the final instalment of our Art Work series, Sarah Foster-Sproull shares what it's like working as a dancer, choreographer and senior lecturer, just a few of her many artistic roles. We also recap the biggest takeaways from the Art Work series, reflecting on what we can learn from the 10 interviewed artists about how we can support art and artists to thrive in New Zealand.
Sarah Foster-Sproull is a dancer, choreographer, and the artistic director and founder of Foster Group dance company. She is a senior lecturer of dance studies at the University of Auckland, and a choreographer in residence at the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Foster Group's work Double Goer (2023) was recently performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and will make its New Zealand debut at the Nelson Arts Festival this month.
What does her average work week look like
Every week looks quite different. The thing that tethers my work week to something, that gives it some structure, is the work I do at the university. I'm often negotiating research leave that enables me to engage in my practice.
If someone comes to me and says, "Are you available to do a workshop in January?" then I'll say, "Yes I am … in these weeks!" and hope that we can lock something in that's agreeable to all parties, so that I can do all the things. I find that I often have to negotiate for time to jump backwards and forwards, to things here and things overseas.
I feel thankful that there are opportunities to work overseas and make locally, that's certainly something I've been working towards for a long time, but it comes with another layer of administration which is visas, negotiating time off my work at the university and all of the things that come with that.
How she negotiates making work with her academic career
Sometimes it works really well, and sometimes it's really hard. It's to do with figuring out how one thing bleeds into the next, and how I can use the skills or the interests from one zone to the next.
I'm going to make something in New York with the New York Choreographic Institute. I'm really excited about that, but I am not currently working with ballet dancers in Auckland, so I'm figuring out what structures I can engage in that environment, so I can shorthand some process, because it's quite fast! So I've made an arrangement with my third year students that we're going to work on some of the structures I might look at in New York in our choreographic intensive time, as a mechanism of the learning environment as well.
They get some real world experience of what it might be like to work in a studio to create a choreography in that sort of environment, and then I expose some of the thinking around why I do certain things, and that's a reciprocal exchange. Through that, they can adopt any of the things they find interesting into their own practices.
What makes it all worth it
Sitting in the audience and having that overwhelming feeling of contributing to authorship, contributing to something new, contributing to something that allows the world to be seen in different ways, and feeling an interconnection between the idea that lives up here, in the ether, and comes through me, in collaboration with the people I work with, to come to fruition as a real thing. A thing that can sometimes open a portal where you can see the unimagined.
It's a deep sense of interconnection with the otherworld, and the ideas, and my ancestry, and the future. That's, ultimately, having touched on those experiences as a performer, and experiencing them, that is the church that I go to. That's what I'm always trying to touch – the edge of the void where anything is possible.
Throughout Art Work, we have interviewed ten artists across the motu. Our current poet laureate, choreographers, crocheters, multi-disciplinary artists and musicians have shared their stories of what it takes to make work in Aotearoa in the current day.
Those ten artists have taught us many things about the way they work, and the wells they draw from to create that work. The roads that these ten travel to bring their creations to us are as varied as their art. All of them, however, mentioned the importance of structure. Whether that is a regimented schedule, a job that allows them scope to create, or the whanau around them, that structure is more than just a frame. It's support.
They have also shared what would make it easier for them to make their art. A high trust model from funding bodies, a less metrocentric lens from those same funding bodies, a more robust investment in arts education at all levels were all mentioned.
Policy change, however, is also vital. We all live under the spectre of government policies, and artists are no different. In this election, only three parties – ACT, Greens, and Labour – had visible arts policies. There are a number of artist-led groups advocating and campaigning for arts policies at this time, including Arts Makers Aotearoa, Arts Action Now, D.A.M.N, Artists Make Auckland, Te Taumata Toi Iwi, and Action Station Aotearoa.
"It's wonderful to see Australia establishing an agency to look after artists' rights. There is much in the Revive policy we can look to", says Stephen Wainwright, Chief Executive, Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa. "Our government has made steps towards artists' protections too – including the artist resale royalty scheme – but as a country we need to go further than this. Our research shows that artists continue to earn much less than the median salary for their creative work, meaning career sustainability is incredibly challenging.
"New Zealanders support arts, culture and creativity more than ever. They see the positive impacts in their communities every day – on health and wellbeing, building vibrant and connected places to live, supporting their identity, and so much more. Creative New Zealand supports moving away from an idea of artists being resilient and trying to get on with things and shifting towards valuing artists' intellectual property and supporting them in more meaningful and sustainable ways, so that we make steps towards an Aotearoa where arts, culture and creativity truly thrives."
The stories these artists have shared with us backs up, for better and for worse, the research carried out by Kantar Public on behalf of Creative New Zealand and NZ on Air. Although most of the interviewees work exclusively in the creative sector, many of them are juggling multiple jobs within that sector to make ends meet.
Throughout Art Work, however, the big takeaway has been how important it is to value art, and the artists who make it. Put simply: When you value something, you show how important it is to you. If we, as a country, value art, we show how important it is to us.
This series started off by asking the reader to think about a painting in a gallery, and to consider all the steps it took to get that painting there. We'll end it in a similar place. Whenever you listen to a piece of music, watch a piece of choreography, or see a piece of public art on your commute, think of all the work that went into creating it – and how much more beautiful, and vibrant, our country could be if we had more of it.
Our artists are already world-leading. Our arts sector can be too.
This content was created as part of the Art Work series, a campaign by The Spinoff and Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa. The views represented are those of individual writers. Read Creative New Zealand and NZ on Air's research, conducted by Kantar Public, on the sustainability of careers in the creative sector here: Profile of Creative Professionals 2022. Read the Art Work series here.