BWW Features: Jill Guyton Nee Brings Momemtum to Memphis

I first met Jill Guyton Nee last fall shortly after she arrived at the University of Memphis as an Associate Professor and Director of Dance.

Exceedingly youthful, unassuming, and soft-spoken, this award-winning performer and choreographer has brought fresh focus and energy not only to the U of M Department of Theatre & Dance, but also to the local arts scene.

I first saw her stunning choreography in the University's fall production of "The Wedding Singer" at the Mainstage Theatre on campus. Shortly after, she was kind enough to give up her lunch hour to help Doug Herndon and me stage our duet for our voice teacher, Rachel Black's holiday recital. We loved what she brought to our performance, as well as her efficiency and ease in making it happen. However, it wasn't until I saw her perform in a show at Studio688 in Memphis' Cooper Young Neighborhood that I got a stronger sense of the depth of her passion, vision and talent. The excerpt from that performance (below) doesn't fully capture Jill's facial expressions or the intense connection between audience and artist, but it's all I have. Her physical interpretation of Patsy Cline's 1962 hit, "Crazy" (the song she later explained had been her late grandfather's favorite and sung by his six children at his deathbed) conveys a poignant longing--particularly when she continues to dance to the scratching and crackling of the phonograph needle on vinyl long after the last strains of music have faded away. Her body, at odds with gravity loses balance and recovers -- an extended metaphor for the character's state of mind.

After seeing Jill perform, I asked her to grab a cup of coffee in the midst of a busy day, and tell me more about her creative process for that song. She explained, "I was asked to do a performance, and had only a week and a half. It was easy to use a familiar song in terms of timing on the body. I started with 2 improvs a day - improvising in silence with the song in my head--the score with a theme. This song allows for freedom outside prescribed material. The movement is a foreshadowing of what could happen if only that certain man were to ask the character to dance."

Jill comes by her creativity honestly. Growing up in Apex, NC, her maternal grandmother was an organist. Her father's side of the family had musicians, dancers and actors, as well as an aunt in Oil City, PA who owned a dance studio. It was that aunt Jill's mother consulted when she saw the first inklings of her daughter's talent, though she didn't enroll Jill in tap and ballet until she was in the first grade.

"I wasn't able to sit still," Jill says, which is why she went to a multidisciplinary magnet school. "I was the youngest of three children," she continues with enthusiasm. "We were encouraged to play instruments. I read music and sang in high school and college, too!"

After high school graduation and a summer dance intensive, she enrolled in Meredith College, in Raleigh, NC as an undeclared major. It was there that she had her first exposure to Modern Dance. "I said, 'that's not dance!'" she admits with a chuckle. "I thought I knew it all, but then I learned that there are other forms of dance."

By the spring of her freshman year, she auditioned for Meredith's Dance Theatre--the college's Modern Dance Company. "That's where I started to understand that I knew nothing," she says. "And I stayed. I still confer with my mentor, Meredith's Director of Dance, Carol Finley and the three dancers who joined that company with me that same year. I feel supported."

Among those close colleagues is dance choreographer and teacher, Courtney Lucille White, with whom she founded the dance company CJ40 Productions. The C&J are their first initials, and 40 is the highway that connects them, though they currently live about 700 miles apart. Thanks to the internet and video, Jlll and her trusted creative support group can easily weigh in on each other's work.

"I think it is so important to bring outside eyes into the rehearsal process to see a work in progress and get pointed, actionable criticisms because we lose objectivity when we're immersed."

In addition to years of education, training and the input of fellow artist's, Jill's first job after college helped hone her fine sensibilities. She graduated Meredith with both a BA in Dance and a BS in Business Management and then joined the full time staff at American Dance Festival the organization founded in 1934, that has since become the "World's Greatest Dance Festival" according to the New York Post. She stayed for two years, reporting directly to Jodee Nimerichter Nimerichter and being overseen by the legendary Charles Reinhart. Through that two-year career start, Jill was exposed to the best performances by the best dancers in the world and in her words, "came to appreciate the visceral physicality as an audience member." Clearly a plethora of stellar influences come into play when she brings her own visions to life, as well as when she performs the works of other choreographers.

"My top priorities," she goes on to say, "are to make the audience feel something, and to create choreography that challenges the body. I want the audience to be entertained, and I bank on the fact that people are watching the show will take into account the meaning behind the movement. I love to break the fourth wall. I don't believe t in hiding anything onstage because we, and the audience, are all human beings living and breathing in front of one another. I want to connect."

She is teaching her students to connect as well, not just in class, but by sending them videos to work with and giving them the mentoring and inspiration they need to develop as artists. "I want them to understand the sensory, corporeal . . . . As in work within," she tells me, as if she understands that those words only hint at what she is feeling and thinking. "There are times when I visualize the entire piece onstage in advance - including the color palette of the production, but that all might change when I am in the process of making it happen. The vision only takes me so far . . ." she continues and then trails off in thought. We both glance at our watches. The hour has flown and we each have someplace to be.

But before we head to the door, her characteristic momentum shifts and she's back in high gear telling me about some of her inspirations for incorporating media into her productions. I won't spoil any of the surprises, other than to say that when she pulls them off, they're sure to be fascinating. She isn't afraid to break new ground.

Though Modern Dance is navigating a sea of change, and splitting into subgenres, the next generation of emerging artists are going to take the art form places no one has dared venture before. While a lot of people are busy debating the future of Modern Dance, emerging artists like Jill Guyton Nee are busy creating it! This choreographer and dancer is someone to watch. She has many years ahead of her, and many meaningful things to tell us through the language of movement.

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