Conversations with Creators: Meet Creative Duo Nattie & Hollis

Nattie Trogdon + Hollis Bartlett are partners in both life and their creative endeavors. Based in Brooklyn, NY - they construct dance works, films and research-based practices aimed to disrupt assumptions of performance and personhood. Their choreography has been presented by The River to River Festival, CPR, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Coffey Street Studios, Future Dance Festival at the 92 Y, Duo Multicultural Arts Center, SCDT,  The 14th street Y, and Gibney. They have held artist residencies at LMCC, The 14th Street Y, MAD Arts, Marble House Project, The Atlantic Center for the Arts, The Visionary, MOtiVE Brooklyn, Chapman Steamer Arts, Monira Foundation, Mana Contemporary, and Leimay; and have received support from the FCA, Rauschenberg, and the Howard Gilman Foundation.

In 2023, they were the first collaborative pair awarded the New Directions Choreography Lab development program at The Ailey School. As performers, they’ve worked with Kathy Westwater, Doug Varone, Brian Brooks, Joanna Kotze, David Dorfman, Kimberly Bartosik, Raja Feather Kelly, and Catherine Galasso. They’ve been guest artists at Princeton University, NYU, Swarthmore College, Rutgers, and SUNY Brockport and received commissions from SJSU, The Ailey School, SUNY Purchase, Roger Williams, Montclair State, University of Maryland, and Salem State University. Nattie + Hollis are graduates of SUNY Purchase and NYU Tisch respectively. www.nattieandhollis.com

 

How did you both originally enter the world of performing arts?

Nattie:  Like many people, I began dancing at a very young age. I was born and raised in rural North Carolina, and there was one very small dance studio that I started taking ballet, jazz, and tap classes at. I absolutely fell in love with it. Even at my age, I was already conscious this was something I wanted to do. With the help of my wonderful mother, I got enrolled in more serious ballet classes, eventually attending the North Carolina School of the Arts for high school. My junior year, I was introduced to modern dance for the first time, and I hated it, I didn’t want to do it. Modern was the opposite of everything I had been training in, which was primarily ballet. I also began to think about my life, knowing I wanted to be out of North Carolina and that New York City is the place to be for dance. I started looking at colleges and applied to a bunch of different schools. I attended SUNY Purchase, which ended up being some of the best four years of my life, it completely changed me. It radicalized how I thought about dance and sparked an interest in choreography. I realized I didn’t have to be ‘one thing’, that there’s plurality inside dance for me. I knew I wanted to be a freelance artist rather than joining a company. I began bouncing ideas around, and worked in lot of different areas, and began making work with Hollis in 2018.

Hollis: I also started at a very young age. I grew up north of Chicago and co-ops and like moms, collectively, there's a group of eight or so kids that are all the same age, and they all go to kind of the same activities, and the moms kind of share the responsibilities of picking up kids and those kind of things. Everyone else in the co-op went to dance class so I followed the group to dance class. I was a very energetic little kid, I think my parents were happy to have me blow off some steam. After my very first performance, my parents realized ‘Oh, he likes to be onstage’. Being a young boy in dance wasn’t the most popular thing at school, so I dropped some classes to do more sports, but my sister continued training at the studio. I was just dancing in my living room and my sister was like, ‘you should just come back and take classes’. By the end of elementary school I came back to dance. When the Giordano Dance Company came to my school and taught a master class, I opened my eyes to the possibility to having a career in dance. It wasn’t just a hobby or an activity I did, but was like, ‘oh, yeah, I could have a life in this’. In that moment I made the choice to pursue that path.

I moved to New York for college and attended NYU, where I opened my eyes to modern and contemporary dance. I studied abroad in Austria during my time at NYU which brought a lot of new information about what’s happening in Europe and other forms of using the body. When I was at NYU, I met Doug Varon, and did piece for him while I was in school. A year or so after graduating, I joined Doug’s company and danced with him for 12 years, which was an amazing experience. I grew a lot as a young artist and began staging Doug’s work, teaching a lot as well. Natty and I met making our own work and loving all aspects of dance: teaching, making, and performing freelance work in addition to dancing. A couple years ago I left, and we've been focusing more on our work together.

Can you share a little bit about how your original collaboration began?

Nattie: We met in 2011, but began making our own work together inside of our collaborative voice in 2018 and 2019. A lot of what drew us together was our dancing and being in the studio. We were exploring what it was to dance together as life partners, as people who care about each other in this other way, and what was it like to care about each other inside of a dance practice. Initially, it wasn't, it wasn't anything serious. We weren't like, ‘Oh, we're going to be a collab duo or choreographers together’. It was more just getting in a studio and trying some things out, and then in 2018 we started making a work called Transmuting, which was the start of seeing how our two voices can come together and create one thing.

Hollis: We started to really understand our collaborative ideas and how we push each other grow together, and our individual interests are in dialogue together. That first piece was really a moment we realized there’s something here that we're both interested and excited about.

Once you created your first work together, how did your mentality in collaboration evolve? How has it been to grow together and approach opportunities together artistically?

Nattie: I think what was beautiful about our first work together, as Hollis mentioned, is that we had to get clear about how we work together. It also provided clarity in who we are as makers and who we want to present ourselves as. I think there’s authenticity to us already having this romantic life relationship that's translating through the work we make together. I think our growth was organic; we got a lot of touring and festival opportunities to present this work at. Gibney used to have a program called Workup, which was a board of marketing artists where we could present work and meet presenters. Eventually, it was time to put it away and start something new. In the last year we’ve expanded to more group works and pulling ourselves out of work as well. While building our brand, we try not to shy away from who we are as humans, with all of our flaws.

Hollis: When talking about our histories, we both use the word multifaceted. We realize dance can be so many things and the human body can express so many different things. We’ve been trying to push ourselves outside of one box and strive to not be one kind of singular artist. We’re following where our curiosity leads. In the past year or so, we started to expand our making outside of us. We brought in more dancers, other collaborators, sound designers, costumers, and for us it felt like a very natural expansion. We welcomed new voices in that moment of expansion. The works we’ve been building with larger groups still start from us, but it’s been nice to fold other voices and see how much richer, larger, and more complex the work can be with new voices mixed in.

Was there a single moment when you realized in creating together, it was meant to be, so to speak? Was there a moment where you both committed to the idea or was there a more gradual approach?

Nattie: I think it's a little bit of both, which is funny. I mean, it was a terrible time during the pandemic. We had this first work which was super successful. We were excited about making the second one and began digging into it, and then the pandemic hit and we lost everything. It gave us a lot of time to sit with ourselves and be like, ‘if we’re going to do this, we need to commit to it.’ I think knowing the progression that happened the next few years after was almost solidifying the choice for us. We thought about it more on the business side of dance, and where we want to see ourselves. Once we were able to get back on our feet, we gained more opportunities to share our work, and it started to steamroll a little bit.

Hollis: As a result of the pandemic, we started a project series called Unconventional Dance because we didn’t have studios or venues to show work. Everyone was dancing in their little living rooms or outside, and we made this film in front of an abandoned Kmart. We didn’t have the things you may find necessary to make a dance film, but something really magical came out of it. We were really excited. We were curious and questioning dance and its relation to space. We were all using space in different ways during the pandemic.

How would you describe your movement, and the inspiration or framework for your physical movement?

Nattie: We often say that our movement is our lineage, like an accumulation of all the forms we’ve trained in, as well as the forms that were trained out of us when we entered rigorous conservatory and performance settings. Our movement is pulled from every dance style we’ve ever done, from being a three-year-old baby jazz dancer to a 16-year-old dancer trying to do a Sleeping Beauty variation. We pull them together and apart and something starts to happen with us inside of them. Our work has a very structured, formalist, technically rigorous, and a blend of modalities. I think one thing that’s interesting about our choreography is how we push against assumptions of gender and expectations around dance. Each audience member has individual assumptions of what’s going on in front of them, and we often like to push up against that which opens more possibilities in the work of our choreography.

What does your work look like in terms of your process? How do you go about generating movement in the studio?

Nattie: There is a beautiful magic to making that is not often spoken about. We both have a commitment to the practice, so we’ll go into a studio with floating ideas. We gain inspiration from lots of things, digital art, movies, film, and sound. There’s a lot of failure and trying things out. There’s a lot of pulling movement from improvisation. We have this game we play called ‘In the Kitchen Sink’ where we give a move and have to say yes to it, with no self-editing. We go back and forth through creative praise. Recently we’ve bene using word prompts from a piece we did this last summer. I begin to see where the idea can go, how I can craft the work, and watch all the ideas fall into place, which would be wild to watch from the outside.

Hollis: We talk about making art as if we’re gathering ingredients for a soup, like, ‘what do I have? What’s here?’ We talk a lot, question a lot, see things in the field and are curious about other dances. We’re always in conversation and find seeds for a piece or a question we want to hold on to. It starts with a lot of gathering: questions, prompts, phrases, and images. The other thing which informs our making is we’re both teaching artists, and a lot of the questions we’re asking we begin to research in class. Sometimes we try out phrase material or exchange ideas in class, and play around.

As you're creating and evolving a work, is the conversation between the two of you inside and outside of the studio continuous?

Nattie: Yes. We have no boundaries and we’ll start talking and go off on tangents, get on the subway still talking, get back home, make dinner, or even still be talking about things laying in bed. It’s a constant dialogue for us. It’s nice having someone else in the room to bounce ideas off of. It’s almost like having a built-in dramaturg inside of a collaborative pair, because we can share when something isn’t working with each other. As much as the industry is crowded, it can also be a little lonely sometimes too. I think it’s really beautiful to be able to share the practice of dance making, teaching, and performing with someone.

Hollis: And it's vulnerable, sharing work. Having someone right next to you that can be your cheerleader is important. Sometimes in the studio we’re making something and one of us feels unsure if its right, and finally one of us will be like, ‘yes, this is it.’ The support system is so important.

Is honesty vital in your work and process?

Nattie: Yes, we both love feedback. It’s nice to ask for honest opinions on the work. Sometimes they may say yeah this is good, or this sucks, or present a surprise or a different thought.

Hollis: We can both be brutally honest, which is good. I think all artists need that type of conversation to share, debate, and defend choices. It’s so nice having the back and forth as well. Sometimes you have to defend your point or idea, or give it up.

Your recent work Vessels includes themes of bodily memories. Can you explain your approach to the creation of the work?

Nattie: We’ve been making a lot of group work and have been stepping back into our own practice after a year and a half of not being dancers inside of it. The work started from a seed of an idea that’s been in dialog with a lot of the work we’ve been making. We actually went back and watched all the old videos of ourselves as younger dancers, some on VHS and some DVDs. We started pulling movements from these videos, went into the studio and began sorting three or 14-year-old Nattie and Hollis. We began building phrase materials from our youth. We got into cycles working on them over and over again, with lots of repetition. It because a beautiful way of moving through history and memory.

Hollis: There was a lot of process of bringing those histories to the present and our current bodies, and noticing the changes, shifts, and how our bodies seep in and out of the forms. The body is a container and vessel which holds all of its history. And so how do we allow that? How do we show that? How does that fill out through these forms?

When do you feel the most powerful?

Nattie: I feel my most powerful and authentic when I’m performing. I feel like every essence of who I am is when I’m onstage. It’s very vulnerable and powerful at the same time.

Hollis: That's mine as well. I think that’s why we’ve dedicated our lives to this. The magic of performance holds so much power. The power is in being aware of your body, being so in tune with the present moment and other people you’re dancing with, and the environment you’re dancing inside of. There really is nothing else in life like performance. I love feeling on the edge of possibility, there’s an excitement and presentness in performance.

What are you most excited for next?

Nattie: It's been a very abundant, fruitful year for us, and we are heading out the day after our shows, heading out to San Jose, California to make a work on students at San Jose State, we get back and I have performances with a choreographer, Brendan Drake, in Brooklyn, we go back to teaching at the colleges that we teach at. I think this whole year has been really exciting, and it just feels like the next, the next, the next thing are all really exciting. I’m also looking forward to  taking a break at some point, even though it's been so wonderful yet and fun thing after the next, after the next. So I will say I'm excited for all the things that we had up, and I'm also excited to, like, have a little downtime, sort of like, sit and and be with all the things that have happened. I feel like we haven't had a moment to be like all these amazing shows. We've got to be inside of all these things we've got to choreograph, you know, like we haven't had sort of just sit with that

Hollis: I’m excited to keep expanding. The past year has been fruitful, we’ve worked with some really incredible dancers and have had expansion in our work which has been really exciting. I’m excited to see where that continues to lead. I feel like we’ve always struck questions and research, and if we ever arrive at answers, we get new questions. I’m curious and excited to follow those curiosities as we continue to expand.

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