What is collaboration and what does it teach us when it flourishes, falters, stretches, or resists?

This conversation gathers two groups of artists: Belinda He and Karla Quintero, who collaborate under the shared identity alloyed mettles, and Sara Rudner, Risa Jaroslow, Wendy Rogers, and Diane Frank, who collaborate as a larger ensemble. Whether we practice dance differently or similarly, it remains within each collaboration a shared space of inquiry.

Many of us know each other and have worked together over the years. Belinda participated in the ensemble’s practice for many years, Karla for a few months recently. Our overlapping histories and continued relationships are part of what draws us to this conversation, a reflection on the shared labor of sustaining collaboration and dance practice over time.

Our exchanges are shaped not only by desire, skill, improvisation, form, and music, but also by distance, circumstance, and the uneven rhythms of our lives. Sometimes we are together in the same space; sometimes we meet through screens, words, or embodied memory. What persists is a curiosity about what dancing with one another continues to reveal.

We think of age not as decline but as duration: the measure of time spent inside the field, the practice, the body. Each of us brings different histories of dancing, teaching, performing, and observing. Collaboration becomes a way of noticing how those experiences intersect, how they diverge, and what they make visible about the act of continuing.

This gathering is about reflecting on collaboration, what it offers, what it challenges, and how it quietly informs the way we understand ourselves as artists in this moment.

Presented by alloyed mettles with support from SenseObject’s A&AIR residency and Bridge Live Arts. Documented by Charlotte Buchen Khadra.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Sara Rudner, born and raised in New York City; AB Barnard College; MFA Bennington College; participated in the development and performance of Twyla Tharp’s early repertory, and for six decades collaborated with dance, musical, and visual artists to create and perform occasional dances and marathons in conventional and non-conventional venues.  She taught and directed dance at Sarah Lawrence College, and remains devoted to dance as a way of knowing, being, and relating.  Sara is currently improvising and problem solving with her peers.  She understands dance as a lifelong endeavor seen or unseen. 

Risa Jaroslow put down roots in Oakland thirteen years ago after 40 years based in New York. Her work has been presented in the Bay Area at ODC Theater, CounterPulse, Oakland Theater Project and, in New York by the major venues for new dance, among them Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, and Central Park Summerstage. She has performed abroad at, among others, the Dublin Dance Festival in Ireland and OpenLook in Russia. Jaroslow brings together trained and non-trained dancers in performance and has led many community based projects, most recently as co-founder and Director of the Elders Project at Destiny Arts Center in Oakland. She was a guest choreographer at Sonoma State University and Mills College.

Wendy Rogers - "My quest is deeply rooted in California, grounded in the radical pedagogy of Ruth Hatfield begun in childhood, Berkeley, 1957. Years of study and/or performance with Modern/postmodern artists (e.g. David Wood, Margaret Jenkins, Merce Cunningham, Carolyn Brown, Sara Rudner) led me to a neo-experimental approach, to set and improvised work. In 1991 I replaced the Berkeley-based Wendy Rogers Dance Company (1978-1990) with ten-year projects that frame ongoing creative process with collaborators. Work as a college dance educator intertwined with artistic work since 1968, notably 20 years of activist inquiry at UC Riverside. Honors include Fellowships from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. The greatest honor are collaborations with dancers over the years, as in the case of Sara Rudner and Risa Jaroslow, 1975 – present."

Diane Frank's career in dance spans over 5 decades as dancer, choreographer, and teaching artist. She holds a BFA (Theater) Ohio University and MA (Dance) U of Illinois. In NYC, she danced with Douglas Dunn & Dancers for eleven years, touring nationally and internationally.  Choreographic awards include 7 NEA  Individual Choreographic Fellowships, and her work has been presented at Dance Theater Workshop, St. Mark’s DanceSpace (NYC), Dance Place (Wash,DC), Riverside Studios  (London), and The American Center (Paris).  She trained extensively with Merce Cunningham who invited her to join his studio teaching staff where she taught all levels of technique for 8 years.  She relocated to the Bay Area in 1988.  A Dance Lecturer at Stanford University from 1988-2022, she taught technique and choreography, creating inter-departmental works for concert stage, museums, site-specific locations, and screen. She has been a rehearsal director for repertory by Merce Cunningham, Anna Sokolow, Brenda Way, Janice Garrett, Hope Mohr, Parijat Desai, and Ann Carlson, among others. She was honored to have her work performed in the 2012 ACDA National Gala at The Kennedy Center.  She returned to performing in Ann Carlson’s “Doggie Hamlet”.  For Diane, the best part of dancing has always been  “dancing with…”.

Belinda He is a Singapore-born dance artist of Chinese descent who received an MFA in Dance at Sarah Lawrence College under the directorship of Sara Rudner. She utilizes pedagogical and improvisational structures to support her creative processes, which often reflect her deep concern of the weaponization of “fake news” as propaganda, and desire to diversify ways of seeing as an antidote to the violence of erasure. She thrives in collaborative relationships, and enjoys current collaborations with Karla Quintero, Mohammadreza Akrami, Wendy Perron and Barbara Forbes. She co-directs alloyed mettles with Karla Quintero.

Karla Quintero's cross-genre improvisation performance practice is informed by contemporary, club and partner dance, somatics, and a deep love of genre (ie. horror, telenovelas). Across her 14+ years performing, she has danced works by Gerald Casel, Hope Mohr, Catherine Galasso, Robert Moses, Alma Esperanza Cunningham, Aura Fischbeck among others. Karla collaborates closely with dance artist Belinda He under the shared identity ALLOYED METTLES, recently in residence at Dance Nucleus (Singapore) & featured by MR at Judson Church (NYC). She explores the intersection of dance and horror in film and media with Shareen DeRyan through the collaboration GRUMN. In development as an evening-length work, Karla’s current solo project, STAR LIGHT, is an improvised piece in which she is swallowed by a pop song—a vortex through which she traces its grip on desire and identity. Karla is based in Huichin/Oakland.

Image: Belinda He & Karla Quintero perform FAD|B at Movement Research at the Judson Church. 10.23.23. Photo by Rachel Keane.