How I came to Fulbright as a Jamaican dancer.

Growing up on the island of Jamaica in the 1960's, I got to watch and learn from the founding dancers of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC). Their standards were rigorous and reflected professional training in ballet and modern dance forms gained mostly in the UK and the USA. At the same time, the founding directors grounded their choreography in current island events, cultural history, and Jamaican folklore; blending in the Afro-Caribbean movement and rhythms of our island history. Yet none of these exceptional dancers might have been considered as "professionals" by today's definition. They all had "day-jobs" to pay the bills as university professors, bank tellers, school teachers, mechanics, fashion designers, visual artists, et cetera, but none could say that their performing careers were how they made-a-living.

1991 Richard Chen See in performance. Photo: James Murphy

My own advanced training that would lead to my professional career in the dance field had me moving England in 1977. Then as I sought to make dance my career, I would eventually land in the USA in 1981. My dance career here began in Florida, then California, and finally I moved to New York to join Paul Taylor Dance Company in 1993.

Ironically, my early performing career was filled with a good percentage of job offers in many different countries. However, it was my Jamaican passport that prevented a long term career in countries that sustained dancing as a legitimate and sustainable profession. As a young global itinerant dancer, I would become intimately familiar with consulates and geopolitical bureaucracy. As global communications have become ubiquitous in our day-to-day lives, I have enjoyed the privilege of maintaining, and building new, international connections. However, finding ways of affording to share my advantages and long-lived experiences both within and outside of the USA became a part of my professional ambitions. 

I was introduced to the Fulbright Specialist program as I completed my Masters of Fine Arts in 2011 having retired from performing in 2008. The terminal academic degree, my US citizenship, and my expertise in the field of performing arts over thirty five years at that time, all meant I was eligible to apply for and to be placed on the specialist roster, which was established in 2001. If accepted, specialists typically remain on the roster for three years, and may be paired with only one project at a time.

The unique aspect of the Fulbright Specialist program is that institutions outside of the USA must apply to their regional Fulbright comission with a project for which a specialist from the US could be paired with them to participate with their expertise. An additional difference with this program, from other Fulbright grants, is that the project be between two and six weeks in length, allowing full-time professionals to minimize leave as well as lengthy visa approvals for longer international stays.

    Jamaica - Coat of Arms              Great Seal of the USA              New Zealand - Coat of Arms

Ever since I left Jamaica to pursue a dance career, I have done what I could to bridge international and economic barriers that might inhibit access to Dance that I did not know about, or maybe wasn't available, when I was growing up. 

James William Fulbright authored the Fulbright Scholars Act of 1946 which provided grants for academic international exchange at the graduate and post graduate levels. My reading of his goals for the Fulbright Commision was in the interests of international diplomacy through the lived experience of advanced intellectual exchange. 

Those of us who have performed as dancers around the world, have always known that Dance can be a non-verbal form of communication for both building understanding and sharing different persectives on life and culture. This is a gross oversimplification, but an evolution in the field of dance during my lifetime has been its elevation as an academic field providing access to academic based grants and jobs beyond a short lived performing career for the vast majority of dancers and choreographers.

To be a professional implies economic viability of the jobs available within a field. Understandably, in turn, dance directors and institutions need to be able to fund overhead and wages. The role that performing arts organizations hold in a country's gross domestic product (GDP) often reflects the resources available for international exchange. Added to this limitation are the comparative costs-of-living, currency exchanges, political unrest, and so much more. So being approved for a Fulbright grant of any kind, has been a welcome boon to building and continuing my professional dance connections with both New Zealand and India (you can visit my other blog on this site https://dancingkayak.blogspot.com/ ).

Emblem of India

This blog (FNZdance25.blogspot.com) is not an official site of the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of its author (Richard Chen See) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations.

My Fulbright adventure in New Zealand!!!

 I am thrilled to be embarking on my third Fulbright adventure, which will be taking me back to New Zealand later this year. This is a Fulbright Specialist grant that will afford Black Grace Dance Company, based in Auckland to have me, Richard Chen See, in country for six weeks to engage in projects that will hopefully ripple far into the future of dance in NZ. I also hope to highlight a few of the human connections between NZ contemporary dance and American modern dance genres, particularly through the acclaimed choreographer, Paul Taylor. I rejoined the Fulbright Specialist roster in 2022, in hopes of participating in just such an opportunity!

Wearable art which I snapped a shot of back in 2016, my last visit to Aotearoa.

Fulbright does request that I post the following disclaimer, as I am not officially writing as a representative of Fulbright, but as an independent individual. I will try and remember to copy this at the bottom of each post going forward.

"This blog (FNZdance25.blogspot.com) is not an official site of the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of its author (Richard Chen See) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations."

My host organization will be The Black Grace Trust (aka Black Grace Dance Company) who applied for a Fulbright Specialist grant with a focus on the choreographic work of Paul Taylor. I have been intimately associated with Taylor's work for more than thirty years, and I have been reconstructing Mr. Taylor's dances for companies since 1999. That also happens to be the very first year I met Neil Ieremia, the artistic director and founder of Black Grace. Now, twenty-five years later, I will be staging one of Taylor's iconic dances, Esplanade, for Neil's company to perform in NZ and abroad. Esplanade is currently celebrating the 50th anniversary of its world premiere in 1975, and continues to garner acclaim from critics and new audiences globally.

Black Grace marketing photo from their 2022 visit to perform in NYC.

Alongside transferring a dance, I will be investigating with Black Grace the many ways that American contemporary dance training evolved, through the lens of the life and choreography of Paul Taylor (1930-2018). Contemporary dance, as it is considered today, builds on much of the modern dance choreography and training methods of Taylor's generation and earlier. Yet, Taylor uniquely eschewed the development of a singular "technique", in favor of observing and utilizing the abilities of dancers from vastly different backgrounds and training disciplines. This meant that to dance Taylor's varied works, the dancers had to also access skills that may not have been common to their specific training. This versatility in turn pushed the breadth of technique and performance craft for which Taylor dancers are recognized internationally. With Black Grace, I hope to participate in developing curricula that builds on what is unique to their heritage and culture as I learn more about their training methods. And we will broaden the versatility of the young dancers with exposure to the standards and demands expected of working dancers in America.

I am looking forward to sharing the journey with you, as Black Grace and I discover how this project builds bridges artistically and culturally into the future. I will also take some time to provide more context to my Fulbright Specialist designation, and the players who brought and bring New Zealand and the USA together in this confluence of dance and Art.

Performing Esplanade shortly before I retired from the stage in 2008.