Her Broadway Debut! A Conversation About "Making It" with THD Alumna Nicole Benoit

Meg Kirchhoff is a modern dancer, educator and choreographer. She is invested in the exploration of somatic understanding and dance collaboration. Recent projects include a cross-country dance-theatre collaboration that utilized projection to join audiences in Philadelphia and Minneapolis. Meg holds a degree in Dance from St. Olaf College and certifications in Yoga and Pilates Instruction.

Though the production is collaborative, Kirchhoff is the director of this fall’s MFA Dance Showcase at UB Katharine Cornell Theatre on November 19 and 20, 2021. In the days leading up to the show we interviewed Meg about her dance work, research interests, and ongoing studies at UB as a third-year MFA Dance candidate, towards her thesis work in spring 2022.

Theatre and Dance (THD): From your biography on the THD website you’re a self-described modern dancer, educator, and choreographer, and interested in the exploration of somatic understanding and dance collaboration. For the lay person, can you elaborate on what somatic understanding is?

Nicole Benoit (NB): Somatic comes from the word “soma.” Soma just means “body,” so somatics are body-centered practices. And they're not just dance. Things like yoga, meditation and Tai-Chi are all under the umbrella of somatic practices. When I say somatically-focused what that means for me is sensation: touch, hearing, taste, and sound.

THD: When you say that I feel like I see it in your choreography because, as a non-dancer, I might almost describe it as mix between dance, yoga, and meditative practice. And that's where your interest lies?

MK: Totally, yes. And I think my interest in performance is pushing the boundaries of how entertaining a performance needs to be, or what it means to perform somatic movement, because often it's a tool that's used in studio practice. It's a solo practice and very internal. I think it's beautiful to do, to facilitate, and I like watching that sort of movement too. That’s always where (I am)–“How do I make somatics a performance event also?”

I want my work to be something that non-dancers are interested in watching or feel like they have access into. I also feel that part of what I’m trying to create is an experience where the audience brings themselves and their experiences and perception of the world to it, and (I) leave space for them to make their own connections about what they're seeing.

I don't work very narratively. (The meaning) is whatever the performance makes you (an audience member) feel, and that's valid. I’m interested in slowness and pushing the boundaries of how long I can have somebody watch, because I think it’s interesting to think about attention and how long people will stay invested.

THD: Is that in any way a reaction to the pace and noise of our modern sci-fi world?

MK: Oh totally. I have a separate project with a friend; we have a “slow forms” collaboration that we're always working on. We go on different social media platforms and use them in a not-intended way. We’re trying to slow it down. Tik Tok now lets you make one-minute long videos, but they prefer that they're fifteen seconds. You feel it when you’re on it (Tik Tok)-that quick pacing, and as soon as you feel bored you can (immediately) swipe to the next one.

So we've been making these very long, slow videos, like one of the rain for a minute and a half. Not a lot of people are watching them, but some are. I'm investing in that in that idea of attention, or disrupting that. We're bringing people's attention to the fact that we're (as a society) in a very set pattern and it's very quick.

I'm interested in whether performance can facilitate different sorts of physical experiences for the person watching. For example, do you feel like you’ve slowed down after seeing it?

THD: It's a timely thing because of where we are with technology and social media. Which is kind of making us all quick fix addicts. On a related note, there seems to be a running theme in your work, whether intentional or not, of this desire for reconnection with nature. I see it in your video piece Fleeting and Unfolding, on the beach (see embed below), and then in another video in nature with winter imagery. Most of your dance films / videos have a heavy outdoor element.

MK: Totally, yes. I think my interest in somatics led me down this more niche somatic world of “eco-somatics.” Specifically thinking about the body in relation to the world. I guess the more I've gone down that path it’s important to think about the natural world as not separate from us, or that it’s this thing outside of us, but that we're always interrelated with our environment. The effects that we're having on the people around us, but then also the physical landscapes and ecologies in very subtle and constant ways.

For example, breath is something that I think about all the time. How we're always exchanging with the world. With breath, it's something you don't have to think about to be doing, and the pandemic has made this very clear, like just being in a space and breathing around other people has a very real physical effect. Then the studio is also an environment, and the stage is an environment. I think of those spaces the same way and (by) putting dancers in natural spaces in dance film I try to make that point clear to the audience that I'm thinking about the spaces that we're in.

THD: You also recently did a cross-country dance theatre collaboration. Please tell me about it.

MK: Yes, that’s the same person I make the slow Tik Toks (videos) with. I did the project a few years ago, before video meetings became a regular thing (during COVID-19). My friend lived in Philadelphia and I lived in Minneapolis and we devised a live show where the other person was projected on screen through Google Hangouts. It was two shows happening at the same time, and the other person was videoed in.

THD: You were remote on each other’s show from a distance?

MK: Yes, and it was the same show, but obviously both of us were in that lead character role (based on location), and we played with that element, chance operations, and by using interaction, including having the audiences in both spaces interact. It was super fun and we did it at a few different fringe festivals, so they were intimate spaces.

THD: Was it a dance show?

MK: It was a dance theater piece; there was movement and there was also text. It was kind of a piece about the making of the piece. The text was about remembering what it was like when we created the initial movement phrases and then put them back into our bodies. There was an element of memory and friendship. We had some lines that were set, and some of it was just kind of our (improvisational) back and forth.

That's more and more my interest in choreography. It’s less that I come in with a whole (pre)set work and more that I give prompting questions or imagery or structures that we build upon. Those are my favorite moments, in the moment. Kind of magical, performative moments.

With live performance the show always varies, but I think when what you're trying to accomplish is so strict (with entirely fixed choreography) there's a different kind of anxiety for me like, “Am I going to be able to do it?” Whereas “improvisation anxiety” feels exciting to me! Again, the feeling is, “Am I going to do it?!” But it’s open, and exciting.

THD: Yes, there’s always an aspect of “playing a character” in the piece you're presenting, but you can use a little more of how you actually feel in that very moment on stage.. You can put it right in, and that feels truthful. It's closer to how you actually are then being fully preset.

I think that speaks to what you're doing in your videos too because, especially with Fleeting and Unfolding, that definitely feels like a reconnecting with nature, and kind of peaceful. Some of the movement reminded me of what might be considered a ritual or something from the past. Something pre-technology. It also seemed to be largely improvised.

MK: Yes, concept wise I came into that thinking about the idea of “contact zones.” If we can create spaces to say, “This is the exploration zone,” and the dancer (should be) thinking about the texture of sand and then allowing that encounter to unfold instead of trying (for a specific result). You’re not trying to be the sand, you’re trying to authentically respond to the feeling of being there. We played with structures about how to get into these improvisations but everything we filmed was improvised.

I felt that if I set material in the studio and then brought it out to the beach that would be one thing, but what movement is generated when you start on the beach? So that it really comes from a relationship to the place.

THD: Again, it's more about being in the moment, in the space, in the day.

MK: I think of the editing process as the choreography. The other movement thing that I’m coaching is a stripping away of this contemporary technical aesthetic. I hope that it feels, as you were saying “ritualistic,” or it feels (connected to the past). I’m hoping that's because it's coming from a deeper place. It’s not just, “This is how I show I’m a dancer. I lift my leg up really high.” Which is entertaining and beautiful and I also want to watch, but I’m interesting in that deeply human, non-stylized movement, which is the style which I’m cultivating. But I don’t like to use the word “natural” or “authentic” movement, because that’s very culturally coded.

THD: Is that style that you're talking about-do you feel at this moment that it's more unique to you-or is there some kind of broader “movement” with more people embracing this approach?

MK: I place that in the somatic. That to me is what makes it somatic movement. And I think the more somatics develops as a field, the more (we may) see trends in terms of movement.

All humans are dancers, because we are all movers. We all have a sense of recognizing movement and interpreting movement. What dance has done is given me the vocabulary and the skills to be really good at that-but everyone is capable of it-so I think when you watch dance, you will naturally have a reaction to it. If you can let yourself go to that level of just sitting in not knowing what it means.

THD: The composer that you're working with for this piece-did that that come from the Public Humanities grant you recently received?

MK: Yes the grant is in support of the thesis project, so I’m using some of the grant money to pay Thomas Little. He’s a PhD student in composition in the Music Department. The music is more electronic / abstract. It’s funny too, because Thomas and I really gelled on the initial idea and then I’ve sort of shifted while he’s still going down that path, and it’s still working! (laughs)

He’s working with an old synthesizer and a theremin. It’s fun. He runs it through a computer program to create loops, and then a lot of it is in the moment because the (sounds the) theremin makes are based on where your hands are in space. It's been like a lot of trial and error which feels fun because there's this surprise, not-quite-set-ness to the music.

THD: So again, it fits your improvisational model, where you have a foundation of it set, but he's going to perform aspects of it live, including the theremin?

MK: Yes, and that environmental, in-the-moment reactivity is also at play; it's specifically honed to the music and the lights in the stage space. By the spring it’s going to be 25 minutes for the thesis concert, but right now it's about 12.

In my process it’s important for me to be up front that I don’t make this by myself. I can only do this because I’m in the room with these eight dancers. Yes, I’m the choreographer, but the role (can be very) broadly interpreted. I have four first year students, and then four other MFA students in my piece.

THD: How do you get a Public Humanities grant?

MK: It’s a SUNY system thing. We’re a cohort of people who have received the grant this year. I think there's five or six of us. We meet once a month and take turns sharing what we're working on. All the other people in the cohort are PhD students working on dissertations.

I was excited about this grant coming from a Humanities Institute, as opposed to an art specific organization, because the feedback I get on the work from people outside of the field is really useful and I like hearing about what other people are doing across the humanities disciplines.

THD: Right, because the recipients are not necessarily all artists or maybe you're the only one?

MK: Yes, I’m the only one. That's my trick! (laughs) I apply for things where I’m the one where they (the funders) say, “Oh, I don't know about that, tell me more!” It was the same thing with the Homestead National Park residency. I was the first dance artist they'd ever had. And they asked, “What are you going to do?” And I said, “I’ll show you!”

Homestead wants artists to come and be visible and work in the park and to present some sort of public program. What I proposed was somatic experience. I worked on site specific dance, and then I lead people through a kind of eco-somatic experience and hopefully gave them embodied tools for experiencing the park to coincide with the historical legacies that they're upholding and the ecological stories they're trying to tell and give people other access points into the park.

So I got to just hang out in Nebraska for two weeks, and I learned a lot about prairies and the Homestead Act, which was interesting.