By Bruce Grover

Not only is Kate Digby a genius—she’s my wife. How cool is that? I was singing in rock bands, playing shows up and down the east coast, getting solid reviews and tons of college radio support. I thought I was making real art. Then I met Kate, who at 21 had already been dancing for 17 years.

By 23, she incorporated Digby Dance as a not-for-profit organization with a board of directors. At 25, she’d been named one of Boston’s "artists to watch" by Boston Magazine—twice: “Digby strives for variety and achieves it beautifully!” At 27, she received a choreographer’s fellowship at the Yard on Martha’s Vinyard (very prestigious), was commissioned to make and perform a piece in World Music/Crash Arts Dance Straight Up (very high-profile), got a number of phat grants (Digby Dance now pays its dancers), and was called a “stunning mover” by the Boston Globe and “sensationally weird” by the Bay Windows (see digbydance.org for more).

The number of intentional choices a dancer like Kate makes is mind-boggling. The skill she brings to bear on a piece is intimidating. I know because she invited me to write music for two of her pieces and text for another one. Tonight, she’s sitting on our red velvet couch sewing a fraying antique costume and stressing about an upcoming fundraiser.

Do you feel weird being interviewed by me?

We haven’t started yet.

Oh. Do you consider Papí Ortiz’s batting ritual to be choreography?

No.

Why not?

I consider it a compulsion. But don’t put that in there ‘cause that’s not very nice. Do I get to approve this before you publish it?

No.

I don’t want to participate.

How old were you when you when you started dancing?

Four.

What made you want to dance?

I watched The Nutcracker on TV. The one Baryshnikov was in.

Why was that significant?

I don’t remember. I was four. But that’s what my mom says.

Then you did ballet till you were 16 or so and started into modern, right?

I still do ballet.

You do?

Yeah silly. I just danced on pointe last December in Cracked. [NYC-based David Parker & the Bang Group’s hilarious modern dance take-off of The Nutcracker.]

Oh, right. Sorry. What was it like being on pointe again?

It was great! In the last ten years they’ve made big advancements in pointe shoe paraphenalia so it was actually easier—and much less painful.

What was it like dancing for David Parker?

It was fun. David comes off as slightly reserved and serious but actually he’s hysterically funny and down to earth and really kind. I was really intimidated by him when we first met, but it was one of the most relaxed, friendly rehearsal environments I’d ever been in.

I thought Cracked came off amazingly well. The theater was packed and people loved it. It was the first time I’d ever seen a modern dance audience laugh out loud for most of the piece.

For the entire hour! With funny stuff, you never know in rehearsal if it’s gonna work or if you are about to make an ass of yourself. In this show because I was one of several extras from Boston joining this New York company, we didn’t even see some parts of the dance until the show. When you put it all together, it was hilarious!

What about humor in your own work?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot ‘cause tomorrow we’re doing our fundraiser with four new pieces that are all kinda funny. Which is a new thing for us. I don’t think I’m a very funny person. When I was little I was always really serious. I was a nerd and didn’t have many friends.

You’re not a nerd.

I said I was. Anyhow, I think that, partly, humor comes with maturity or what I’d like to think is maturity. Self awareness. My stuff from college and right after was more angst filled, and looking back that’s kind of funny—in an awkward way. I think I’m going to be really embarrassed to read this.

Well. [Pause.] I mean. [Pause.] Ok. Angst.

Ha. Now you sound inarticulate.

I’m thinking.

Angst…humor…

Right. Some of your most successful pieces—Absolute Zero, Massive Departure, Llama Dreams—are serious but without being self-consciously angst-ridden in a way that makes my palms sweat in embarrassment…

I don’t think they’re angst-full. Do you?

No, but how would you describe them?

I don’t know. Read the reviews. [Pause] I would say it’s because the angst is balanced with hope. The progress out of despair is what saves them from the angst, but then you run the risk of being cheesy and trite. I’m not really in a place to judge them, but that’s what I’d like to believe.

One of the reviews, in the Boston Herald I think, talked about your choreography as landscape. What do you think that means?

Um, I’m not sure what the reviewer meant. And I’m not terribly articulate verbally, which is why I make dances. What do you think it means?

I think it means that your work transcends individual dancers and that the dancers fit together in space to make something almost sculptural—kinetically sculptural.

That’s nice. Want to be my publicist?

I think your pieces do go beyond just dance to something deeper that moves people in ways they don’t fully understand. How do you do that?

Well. I think if people are being moved in ways they don’t understand it has nothing to do with me—it happens at some sort of spiritual level. I think that making art is a very spiritual act. Our souls are constantly trying to figure out what we’re doing here on earth, and art is their attempt to figure that out. I think about this with rock songs as much as I do about choreography. I guess what I’m trying to say is that art asks questions, and if they’re good questions they’re going to resonate with people and that’ll be moving.

So what are the questions you’re asking and how do you work that into choreography?

One of the questions in the newest piece I’ve made, Gear Shifting, is what’s more important—art or babies?

That makes me nervous.

You’re just saying that to be funny.

I don’t want you to have to give up Digby Dance for babies. And I don’t think you have to. Do you?

Well. I’ve seen pregnant women perform in dance pieces but it’s usually in some kind of reduced role. Understandably so. You don’t want to hurt the baby or the mom. Then it takes some time to get back in shape after having the baby. Then they require 24-hour supervision at least till kindergarten. We can’t afford a nanny. Running a dance company, choreographing, dancing, working with the Board of Directors, doing the promotion on top of teaching at a couple of colleges means I work over 60 hours a week. You do too. So if we had a kid something would have to go. And what would go? The art. That’s what I’m saying. I mean I would hope not but I imagine that your priorities shift when you have a kid. It’s one thing for us to have cereal for dinner five nights in a row but we shouldn’t do that to our kid.

We’ll have to figure all that out. Other people have done it somehow.

Not really.

What do you mean?

Name one successful female choreographer with a kid.

I don’t know that many choreographers…

Actually, I can think of one. But she didn’t have the kid till she was around 50. I don’t want to wait that long.

So we’ll carve some crazy new model…

…For all of womankind. [Bursts out laughing]

Right. What made you want to start Digby Dance?

I don’t exactly know. I liked choreographing dances. I was getting good feedback from my teachers and thought that maybe I actually had some skill with it. I was getting disenchanted with how dance companies work and didn’t want to join a big dance company. My experience—especially with ballet—was almost militaristic. You did what they said, when they said it. You were in pain all the time, worried about your weight… I thought that if I was in charge I could change the rules. The original plan was to make a collaborative with two close friends from college, which I still think would have been ideal cause I don’t like being in charge. I just like making dances.

But it didn’t turn out that way and now you are in charge.

Right, and it’s exhausting. But the grass is always greener.

What is greener for you now?

Well, all of this is exhausting and I wish I didn’t have to make all the decisions—find money to pay everyone, organize everything. But then I’ve danced for other people lately and when I think of how things could be done better I get frustrated and want to be in charge.

I think that’s funny.

Doesn’t everybody?

Doesn’t everybody what?

Everybody complains about their boss. But being a boss is really hard—figuring out how to keep things going and help the dancers and the company.

Where do you get your ideas?

Oh, heavens. Really? I don’t know!

They come from somewhere.

Ask my husband.

Haha.

It’s true. I ask you.

For what?

For ideas. You help me concoct ideas for grant proposals. It used to be much easier. I’d go into the studio and start moving and I’d begin to get ideas. I write some, look at some images. I didn’t have to understand it or articulate it. It just made sense in some way. But now, we’re getting into the funding cycles and you have to be able to explain a piece in words about a year before you’re actually going to make it and that’s impossible. So, basically, I come up with something vague that interests me and that I think will still interest me in a year. Then I start making the dance after we get a grant and ignore what I wrote about in the proposal. But then somehow the original idea filters back in. It’s like tapping into some sort of collective unconscious. But it’s my collective unconscious.

What does that mean?

[Laughing] I’m not sure. The original idea just comes back in ways I don’t fully understand. I don’t know. It’s almost midnight and I’m sick of sewing this costume and I have a show tomorrow. Can I go to bed now?

No. Who’s your favorite choreographer?

Bill T. Jones. And Maguy Marin.

What’s your favorite dance?

Wow. I have this feeling from watching video excerpts of Bill T. Jones’s Last Supper At Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land that that would be it. But, I’m going to have to go with Bill T. Jones’s We set out early…visibility was poor.

Why?

It moved me in ways I couldn’t understand. Ha. How’s that? I don’t know.

What was it like working with Bill T. Jones?

It was wonderful—in fact one of the first things I learned when I went to work with him was We set out early… It was a very strange experience. It was totally boring from the inside. For some reason it was like learning an old ballet piece. It wasn’t really interesting, which was odd because I love that piece so much and had seen it several times. It was really stressful. I had to learn so much info so fast. I was understudying so I was learning multiple parts. We’d rehearse for eight hours and then I go home to my tiny sublet in the west village and practice it. When you watched the piece, it was this gorgeous transcendent experience but when you’re doing it you’re just counting the steps …15, 16, 17…running off stage…trying not to run into people…it’s intense.

Do you think your dancers feel that way about your work?

I know some of them have felt that in some pieces. It’s like being one color in a painting when you’re one person in a dance with nine people.

So it’s really different than what the audience experiences?

Well, yeah. If you’re red on a roof in a painting you don’t get to be the green in the grass and maybe that’s what’s really cool. So you have to just be the best red you can be and trust that as a whole the painting works. In one of my pieces in particular I know the dancers have struggled with this. It’s Bound, Boundless, Bounding—a quintet with three sections. In the second section, which bridges the tight and constrained first section with the freedom of the third section, there’s a duet. So, three dancers are just waiting in the wings. They kept saying they didn’t really get the freedom of the third section—that they didn’t think it made sense—that their characters weren’t ready for that big of an emotional leap. But it is an abstract piece, and the duet carries that transition. After we talked it through, the dancers were able to use their time off stage to make the transition and come back on ready for section three. Also, we eventually taught the duet to everyone so that they could experience the feelings of that movement and then recall it while waiting in the wings.

That’s really interesting.

I’m done sewing. I’m going to bed. I love you.