One of the things I love most about dance is how collaborative it can be. Dancers and choreographers are constantly guesting with companies other than their own (my favorite example of this is Benjamin Millepied, who is a principal with New York City Ballet, but has recently choreographed a piece for Mikhail Baryshinokov and will premiere a new work for American Ballet Theater in October); and it really expands the lexicon of dance. You can imagine how excited I was to see choreographer Cristina Jansen in a rehearsal with Sarah Rosner. Jasen has been working with her own company Sawtooth, but managed to find the time to drop in on an improv session. Enjoy her lush movements as she helps Rosner work on her solo piece.

1. What is the first creative moment you remember?

While psychoanalytic feminists who inspire some of my work might say my inauguration into the creative process began with my first defecation, I would say my first creative moment was making little roses out of the aluminum foil from a half-eaten sandwich leftover from one of my grade school lunches.

2. Where did you grow up and how did you end up where you are now?

I grew up in Buffalo, NY and spent a year in Boulder, CO after highschool. I studied and choreographed with local dance artists in Boulder, Denver and Colorado Springs, and later travelled back east to attend Sarah Lawrence College. The SLC dance curriculum is incredibly stimulating, and trekking in to NYC was such an educational experience, exposing me to all kinds of experimental and envelope-pushing art. I moved to Brooklyn upon graduation, and I’ve been happily nesting and making work in Brooklyn ever since.

3. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why?

Monk, STOMP and Buffy the Vampire Slayer have all had a significant impact on my work, but it was really performing in a restaging of Meredith Monk’s Plateau #3 at Sarah Lawrence College that launched a host of new aesthetic interests for me.  It was the rich musical human drama of Monk’s work that inspired me to experiment with my own kind of storytelling. I always find I come back to the elements of human drama, rhythm and dark humor.

4. What is your ideal creative activity?

I have two: walking meditation and riding the subway. Generating concepts or conceiving of new movement material is always best for me when I’m moving.

5. How do you begin your day?

Early, and always with coffee. Coffee is just one of those things that gives me permission to start the day, a daily reset button, and waking earlier than I need to gives me the illusion that I have an infinite amount of time to accomplish an infinite amount of things.

6. Have you ever had to make a choice between work and art? What did you choose, why, and what was the outcome?

I’ve never had to choose between the two, but my paying work (or lack of) certainly affects how my art develops. I improvise many times because I am unable to afford certain necessities, such as X amount of rehearsal space. When I can’t afford X amount of rehearsal space for example, I’ll rehearse in my apartment; some pieces have become truncated as a result, or movement vocabulary smaller and more contained than originally intended. Group pieces have evolved into duets or solos because I am unable to compensate additional dancers.

7. When you work, do you love the process or the result?

I am also always trying to edit and revise pieces, so all my works feel like they are in process. Even pieces closest to “finished” works are adjusting to a new stage/ performance venue every time it is performed, or adjusting to new dancers performing it.