The cast of Thank You For Coming: Attendance
From looking at choreographer Faye Driscoll’s zany, exploratory work, you wouldn’t guess that she has any trouble dealing with uncertainty. But Driscoll says she didn’t realize it was OK—and even encouraged—to ask questions about dance until college. At New York University, she studied with Gwen Welliver, who urged her to embrace questioning and the unexpected.
“As a young person coming up in traditional dance training, you learn to say yes to a teacher and thank them when you get a correction. Gwen was very clear and articulate. But she had this beautiful, humble, constant way of questioning even the ideas that she was presenting. She taught me to ask questions. That was really powerful and made me a thinking dancer and artist, learning how to ask a question and live in a question.”
Faye Driscoll Group will present Thank You For Coming: Attendance at Danspace Project in New York, January 9 at 8 pm and January 10 at 5 and 9 pm.
Left photo by Maria Baranova; right by Sophie Morner, both courtesy of Driscoll