Becca Hoback
Photo in graphic by Andrea Behrends
“I feel like there are a lot of parallels between a dance practice and a meditation practice,” dancer and choreographer Becca Hoback says. “Being embodied, and being present, and being in the moment, and being sensitive not only to the physical space around, but … being sensitive in a more emotional, more relational kind of way, as well.”
She is in her Nashville studio, preparing for a new solo work, Enactor, premiering at OZ Arts on June 24. Though she’s based in Nashville, where she’s a founding member of Banning Bouldin’s New Dialect, Hoback’s network is international.
That’s on display in Enactor, which features pieces choreographed by Romanian/Canadian/International artist Ana Maria Lucaciu, Israeli dancer and choreographer Roy Assaf, and Tel Aviv’s Ben Green, who works with both Batsheva and Gaga dance companies.
“The whole solo project overall started with me just showing up in this very studio with a lot of questions for myself,” she says. “I wanted to figure out who I am specifically as an artist, and very specifically, my relationship to my body and physicality … It really just started with a lot of questions about identity, and specifically physical identity, and how to incorporate that into a society where it feels like ‘I’ is always the mind and always the brain. What does that mean for me, and how do I more wholly incorporate my body into my sense of self?”
2020 was a year of contraction and expansion for us all. We retreated into our homes, but also found the potential for communication and collaboration on a national and global scale, thanks to Zoom and the massive amount of art pushed to the internet in an attempt to stay relevant and continue working.
This intensified Hoback’s explorations of the embodied self and how it takes up space in an increasingly isolated and digital world.
“During the pandemic, I was getting the impulse to move,” she explains. “Sometimes setting up a camera, sometimes just dropping to the floor and working on a section of a solo pretty impulsively, and trying to really follow the creative and physical inspiration when it came … I feel like when I am in a more physical space, I'm much more present and much more connected to the sensations and the views and the textures that are around me, which is something that we work so hard to cultivate in a studio practice.”
Last November, Hoback worked with Ana Maria Lucaciu in a small residency sponsored by OZ, and developed the solo piece Is This Good?, which opens Enactor.
“This work definitely plays with the idea of being present and private, but then also the other extreme of being presentational and very public,” she says. “Playing with formality and hilarity. There's a lot of interesting text that weaves throughout the entire piece. And you see me as this character — honestly, it feels pretty genuinely a sort of exaggerated version of myself — going through these different phases of self-realization and self-doubt.”
Hoback’s second piece in this new work is Ben Green’s Offering, which could either be seen as a solo or as a pas de deux … with a bucket.
“That's kind of my partner for this for this piece,” Hoback laughs. “It's both dark and playful, in a way. But it's definitely a very intimate look into a very private sort of ritual. The idea of being vulnerable, and using vulnerability as a way of cleansing shows up a lot in this work.
“Ben creates really beautiful works of dance theater. He just has a really clear visual art sense. And when he's looking at the stage, it feels like he’s looking at it as if it's a painting.”
Roy Assaf’s collaboration with Hoback, A Girl, closes the evening.
“This piece is one that I've had a relationship with for many years now,” she explains. “I saw [Assaf’s] Boys way back in 2015, in Montreal, when he had staged it there. And then I was a part of when New Dialect did Girls a couple years ago. Then that summer following, I went to Tel Aviv to just be in the studio and be on the side as a part of his re-staging process for the hour-long work.
“I'm so grateful to have the chance to do the solo version, which definitely feels like it pulls from the group versions but also feels distinct. It feels like its own sort of work, and I think this one more than any of the others has a feeling of different vignettes and different little puzzle pieces that he pieces together, and edits, and changes the order, and sort of plays with each time that he re-stages it.”
Dance requires a balance that transcends the physical. It demands a balance of the body and mind (or heart), and the ability to fully embody intellectual and emotional points of view while performing demanding physical movement. It’s like juggling wine glasses while performing Shakespeare.
Hoback, as with much of New Dialect’s company of dancers, strikes a riveting balance of the physical and emotional. Audiences familiar with her work already know her long, angular Pina Bausch frame and limbs, and the way they carve space. This frame is animated with vivid interiority and an actor’s mind for point of view.
But, no matter how much we wax poetic about it, dance is, at its core, about the body. It’s a primal expression of our need to move and to celebrate our bodies. To inhabit them fully.
“A big theme in my work and what I'm interested in is connecting to the animal of ourselves,” Hoback says. “The reaching out and connecting with someone physically and having that in-the-moment, in-person connection. I think our minds have enabled us to evolve so amazingly and drastically, but I think we're leaving something on the table if we're totally releasing the physical.”
While dance was one of the most successful art forms to make the in-person to digital pandemic leap, its physicality really needs live spectators to cohabitate the performance space, bringing its own energy and creating a full communion between artist and audience.
“One of the most important things, for me, that art does both in the making of it and experiencing it, is [that] it really brings everyone in the room, into the presence,” Hoback says. “It really is able to shed the distractions and anything that's happening outside of the walls outside the moment, and really find this nucleus of presence, both in time and in space. We don't have many outlets anymore that really enable, and in some cases require, that kind of that kind of focus.
“I also think that human expression and creativity are coping mechanisms for difficult times. Physicality, as a means of processing emotions and experiences, is a big thing for me. I really try to move into my movement practice with everything that I'm working through and working on and kind of filter it through exertion.”
Returning to live performance is much like our cautious re-entry into the public after pandemic isolation. It’s a little scary, and a little awkward, but also a rich opportunity to reimagine community and to re-engage our empathy in new and deeper ways. Hoback hopes that art can be a catalyst for this richer engagement.
“I think it's also something that enables us to thrive,” she concludes. “I think we are at our best when we are creative, because with that creativity comes community, comes this more empathetic self, and especially with physicality comes that exertion and a connection to music, to all of the things that I personally feel are like the most meaningful.”
