Catherine Walker Interviews Kaleena Miller:
CW: How did you find yourself in tap dance?
KM: My family moved to St. Cloud MN in the early 80s, and my mom found some part-time employment at a local dance studio, assisting the director/teacher. I would hang out in a stroller as dance classes went on, and eventually Karla (the director/teacher) said something to the degree of “Let’s get her in some shoes!” I was 2.5 years old. I studied Ballet, Jazz and Modern as well, but Tap Dance always was the most satisfying form for me, and it always abstractly felt like home.
CW: In this moment of broadening your artistic expression, what are you excited about? Material? Subject matter?
KM: I am excited to solidify some new directions…my head is everywhere right now. Fabric! Wood! Graphic scores! Video! Audio! Costume! Don’t get me wrong - considering the endless options is exciting, but it’s a little exhausting.
With / within all of these possibilities, I’m thinking about the expansiveness of sound and movement, and how it can materialize in a physical, non-human form. I’m thinking about the implied sound that material and shape have; how looking at an object and considering it is a form of improvisation - it doesn’t necessarily formally become a song or dance, per se, but I feel like observation and thought swim around like bits of abstract movement and dance.
At the end of the day, I’m invested in Tap Dance as a medium to explore, and I’m hoping that these more material pursuits can complement or expand the practice that I’m really devoted to. We’ll see where I’m at in 3 year’s time.
CW: Will you talk a little more about the relationship between movement and sound?
KM: It’s my understanding that all sound comes from movement: the noisy air conditioner is spinning moving parts, humans vocalizing is body parts working together to sound, a nail getting hammered is loud and comes from a big movement and two hard objects meeting.
I think it’s important and interesting to care about sound, and that means considering the action behind it.
I just read an article about the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra - it said their work requires “a type of social virtuosity: virtuosic listening and virtuosic decision making and problem solving”, and I think this resonates because of the care and thought that goes behind the movements that will ultimately sound. And also the care and thought that the audience needs to hold as well - removing expectations of what music needs to sound like.
CW: Please say more about American Apparel disco pants and why they deserve a funeral!
KM: Ha! They were SUCH A THING in dance performance as (I think) social media was just starting to pop. They were stretchy, high-waisted, and form-fitting - they stayed in place, you could move in ‘em, and they looked great on pretty much everyone. They became ubiquitous, and, for me, sort of attached to this idea of promotion for promotion-sake, just as an incredibly accessible platform for self-promotion (instagram) was starting to sky rocket. So it’s a slice of dance culture that I’m just ready to be done with: ego, self-promotion, narcissism. Plus, Dov Charney (American Apparel CEO) is a creep.
CW: In your reflections, you talk both about the acts of breaking and building. Breaking down yourself and your work, and building spaces for listening and community. I think this is an interesting dichotomy. Do you see them as connected and why or why not?
KM: I think 2019-2020 was sort of a breaking point for me - I was really burnt out and had lost scope of why I was doing what I was doing. And then, pandemic. And I moved to a new city. And there was re-building all around. I knew the structure of my previous version of life was not right, and, honestly, I’m still working it out. So I’m distilling…figuring out the elements that make my existence tick and feel meaningful. Breaking down my life to re-build it again.
’m doing the same in my medium of tap dance. I’m in a mode of thinking about the basic elements of tap dance steps and phrases - toe, heel, ball, slide, flam, etc - and using a run on sentence/“daily making practice” alongside chance operations to create new and unexpected patterns. I’m working to find an “elsewhere” / find new pathways / go against expectations of the form.
I ran 2 organizations in Minnesota - I ran them for “the community” - but I don’t know that I / we did it right. Was it to prove something for myself? Or was it TRULY for other people. Probably a little bit of both.
Both orgs are being re-imagined at the moment - trying to set up structures and carve out space that feels akin to our values, and not just based on what similar orgs have done before us. Focusing on setting up spaces, opportunities and programs that REALLY feel like the listening, sounding, and caring community that we’ve always dreamed of.
So, yeah! They’re connected for me - I can’t get to the re-build of work or the ideal community space without completely breaking down what IS or WAS.
Kaleena Miller Interviews Catherine Walker
KM: How did you find yourself in painting?
CW: My path into painting was slow and kind of indirect. In most American schools, kids start understanding themselves in middle school as either good or bad at art. I was no different. I remember my middle school art teacher looking at a drawing I made, and her comments were more like a diagnosis of whether I had what it takes to ever be an artist, rather than advising how to see what I was drawing more clearly. From that point until my senior year in high school, I saw the identity of Artist as binary. One in which I didn't belong and one over which I had no agency. I finally took a 9 week art class at the very end of senior year. I was actually decent enough and I loved it. From there, I took a few classes in college, a few community classes when I got out of college, and tried to paint when I could. I was still too afraid to really commit to it, for fear of failure, and the need to support myself financially. I had demanding jobs that were creative, but that also absorbed all my energy, leaving very little for painting. It wasn't until my later 30s and after my youngest baby turned one, that I finally took the time to commit to painting more consistently.
KM: In this moment of broadening your artistic expression, what are you excited about? Material? Subject matter?
CW: My subject matter needs to get less broad! I've got these massive topics that have always interested me, but I'm hoping to distill some of that through this MFA experience. I'm very excited about experimenting with new materials. I've been craving to work with fabric for years now, and I'm finally getting the time and resources to wade into the possibilities that media offers. I've also always loved relief and screen printmaking, but It's been a long time since I've done it. I'm excited to have the chance to play around with that too.
KM: You write that your research topics are huge right now - I agree! "Patriarchy in the history of the church, white women in racial and social structures in the American South, Feminism, Fashion, Control" Can you talk a little bit about how you landed on these topics of investigation - what led you here?
CW: These topics are deeply layered and personal. Both of my parents grew up in a tiny town in north Mississippi and my dad studied to be a pastor in Jackson, MS. The cultural traumas related to the evangelical christian church and gender in the south always affected my relationship with my mom. It wasn't until my dad left my mom much later, that I started being able to unpack how the particular flavor of patriarchy in the southern american church had wreaked psychological havoc on my family and on me personally. So this research feels important for me to unwind the strands of my own experience.
KM: Branching from the conversation on your current research topics, can you talk about what your work has researched/thought about historically?
CW: There has always been an element of the feminine and nostalgia in my work. When I went to NYU to study Art Education, I started looking more specifically at mother/daughter relationships. Some tough dynamics were surfacing between my mom and me at the time and I was working through those. I was in my late 20s then, and hadn't found my partner or had my children yet. So in some ways it was a very one-sided study. But even then, I remember coming to the conclusion that mothers were under an enormous amount of pressure to create the perfect home, children, family. And that this pressure produced a lot of the rage and resentment I saw in my own mother. Now that I am a mother, and have a lot more context for my mother's life experience, I have a similar, but much more whole understanding of my mom and for what motherhood in patriarchal culture means.
KM: Is there anything that you can anticipate these 6 weeks having an effect / carrying on back into your life back in New Orleans?
CW: Six weeks is too short for anything to feel resolved at the end. But I feel like I've been walking around for years with unopened cans of ideas and that these six weeks have been my can opener. So yes, hopefully I'll take everything I've started, related to research and materials, back with me to keep exploring.