How Do You Choreograph a Life? Vanessa Cook and Her Ballet Premiere

Choreographer Vanessa Cook discusses her newest work, A Brief Collection of Moments, premiering at the Utah Metropolitan Ballet. Cook explores how dance combines with music, text, and visual art into this ambitious new piece, winner of the 2025 Ariel Bybee Endowment Prize. The conversation ranges from philosophy and choreography to the power of a single voice, echoing Bybee's own, growing into something much larger.

What begins with a single voice becomes a duet, then a group, then something larger than any one artist. In this episode, choreographer Vanessa Cook takes us inside the making of a new work blending dance, with LDS collaborators in music, text, and visual art. Along the way, she reflects on curiosity, creative processes, and why movement can sometimes say what words cannot.

Music: "Please Only Tell Me Good News” by Stephen Anderson; used with permission.

Transcript

Glen Nelson: Alright, here we go. The first dance work I ever saw by Vanessa Cook was a compilation of video snippets of dancers suspended as aerialists. They were close enough to the ground that they could spin and crawl in pools of light on a darkened stage, but they were liberated from that perpetual adversary of dance, gravity. Titled Creature, I had no idea what the full piece was about—actually, I still don't know—but I saw that it was using flying in gymnastics circus-like theatrical ways, but it was thoroughly committed to dance and exploring new ways of moving. It was stupendous. I said to myself, who is the maker of this work? I have to know them. If they can make something this cool, what else are they making?

Hello and welcome to an exciting episode of The Center’s Studio Podcast. My guest today is choreographer Vanessa Cook, a British artist working in Switzerland. The occasion for our conversation is the premiere of her latest work, A Brief Collection of Moments, at the Utah Metropolitan Ballet in Provo, Utah. Hello, my friend, how are you doing?

Vanessa Cook: Hello Glen, really well thank you for that mention of Creature, yeah I'm doing well thank you.

Glen Nelson: I have to see that piece live sometime. I don't know how that's gonna happen, but you can make it work and let me know and I'll be there. You just got off a plane yesterday from Europe, so I want to thank both you and jetlag for making this interview possible. Are you completely wiped out or are you pacing yourself?

Vanessa Cook: I'm kind of storming through. It's good. Maybe I'll crash in five days, but right now we're really doing well.

Glen Nelson: Yeah, are you excited about the premiere? Well, of course, we're going to talk all about that. But I wanted to introduce you to our audience first. The bio on your website, VanessaCookDance.com, talks about your training in ballet, your detour into the study of philosophy and English literature, and then your career as a dancer and aerial artist. You established your own company in Switzerland in 2016, and since then have an impressive roster of works performed mostly in Europe.

Vanessa Cook: Yes.

Glen Nelson: I was struck by the last two sentences of your introduction. “Vanessa Cook Dance creates fresh, surprising dance theater, renowned for being reflective, moving, and humorous. The work comments on human interaction at an individual and social level in a way that is inwardly pointing, non-accusatory, and characteristically British in its humor.” So what does that mean to you? Why did you choose those words?

Vanessa Cook: I think we can be overtly political or we can make comments about how humans behave and sometimes it's more easy to consume that or absorb that when you recognize yourself a little bit than when it's explicitly or in more challenging ways political. So I think that art by its nature invites people to think about themselves and how they are in society, how they interact. And I've noticed living in Switzerland that British humor is a thing. So I do, and I think that there is place for humor in life. There has to be place for humor or we're all a bit lost really. But yeah, I think that there's there's always place to smatter. Even the most, maybe that's what the British do, even the most serious of things, we give it a touch of humor. And I observe that that's what I like that's what I do.

Glen Nelson: I'm not sure how you would describe what your dances look like. In a general way, what kind of dance are we talking about?

Vanessa Cook: Okay, so I'm working with lots of different kinds of dancers. The last few large pieces of work, I've worked with a mixed age cast, so sometimes I'll work with a performer, maybe it's professional dancer who's in her 60s, along with 20 year old break dancers or 40 year old contemporary dancers. Sometimes a younger person, even younger than 20, is in my piece. So I like to use a mix of age and range because the bodies say different things and mostly my piece is I want to often I want to say that the body can be so many different things. Yeah.

Glen Nelson: Okay, as you know, we're friends now, I come to dance from the world of ballet, which has a moderately strict vocabulary of steps and a lexicon that choreographers draw from in endless new configurations. Modern dance and contemporary dance have some elements of that, but I guess I want to ask you about movement generally. How do you define contemporary dance?

Vanessa Cook: That's a wonderful question. So my spring point into dance was also ballet. So it was pretty clear. The vocabulary and we learned that. And I enjoyed the challenge of the technical, yeah, the requirements of ballet. That's where I began. But I also had a lot of physical, athletic desires as well, physical more… Well, of course ballet can be very athletic as well, I did a lot of sport as well. So when I discovered contemporary dance, think that contemporary dance can really benefit from the technique of ballet. can, it's served very well by learning line, by knowing where your center is, by being able to isolate, to be able to stretch. But then contemporary can break that as well. It is absolutely served by ballet. But I think, you know, the nature of being turned out in the legs, of course we can turn them in again. The nature of having full extension can also be more relaxed. We can try to integrate our spine a whole lot more. Ballet is so good at holding and being able to, the legs can go at 50 miles an hour whilst the body holds. And then contemporary dance can kind of challenge that. So yeah, I think it can, it's kind of like the rule breaker and there's so many different styles. Yeah, it's the cheeky rule breaker, served by ballet and then you can break it all.

Glen Nelson: I wasn't aware of your university studies in philosophy and literature, but knowing you a little bit, they certainly are part of your personality. You're a deep thinker and like to draw from a wide range of ideas. Those two fields rely on language primarily to express ideas. What can movements say though that language can't say?

Vanessa Cook: Very great question. What I love about movement is that it kind of speaks to its audience from a visceral place and an open place. It's very good at doing human emotions. It's good at emotions, relationships.

Yeah, feelings. In a way that maybe words can fail or in a way that's different than words. But then of course words are so wonderfully precise. Of course dance can be precise, but it's not the best art form for a political manifesto. And of course words can be so, precise. So it is true that I do definitely draw on my love of text, and it definitely comes more into play more and more as I choreograph more but I think texts can. I love the marriage of the two I think that texts can supplement dance where it's staying abstract and I think dance can supplement words when words are trying to find a feeling dance can do it like this so that they are very complementary but also quite difficult to marry together without duplicating.

I do love them both. Two loves, their movement is, movement will always be my love and texts, I love texts too. So I'm constantly trying to marry the two together.

Glen Nelson: I've had this conversation a lot with painters and composers in particular, who sometimes have a difficult time describing what it is that they're doing because, because, you know, a composer, words aren't necessarily their primary way of expressing themselves. Some arts actually kind of step around language to get to ideas and truth. But with you, you were mentioning your love of text and, and does text help generate ideas in movement for you? Or is there some other connection between words and their ideas and dance in the creative process for you?

Vanessa Cook: Hmm, yeah, I think that words are really good for me. They're a really good starting point. Words can give ideas and ideas can generate movements. So it's a really good starting place, but I've also often worked with text which is also really great because it's got meaning, like it's got individual meaning and then it's got a more, like the sentence has a meaning, but it also has rhythm and of course dance is very much about rhythm. So sometimes I like to use them in both of those ways. The rhythm of foreign language, for example, I made a piece called Babel, and we used a lot of foreign languages and used the cadence of the language as a soundtrack. But of course, there's this massive trove of semantic as well. And so how to use the semantic of it without duplicating and without simplifying, without miming really—a sense and a little smattering of meaning is helpful inside the rhythm. The two work together well I think.

Glen Nelson: I've been in studios working with choreographers sometimes where the choreographer is not primarily verbal. Like it's a lot of showing, you know, do this like me or, you know, manipulating people to get them what they want. But then on the other hand, I've been with people who are very expressive verbally and give like, instead of saying, okay, this position or get to this movement, they're using analogies and symbols and visualizations to help a dancer get to that place. Have you noticed that in your own career that you're one or the other or a combination of them?

Vanessa Cook: I think as time goes on, because I'm working with dancers who have got a different movement vocabulary than I have, as time goes on, I like to use words. I feel like giving some material as a building block is really useful. But even if I was to choreograph every single move for every single dancer, they wouldn't do it as I do it because my body has its own, it inhabits movement differently because of the patterns I have in my body—the forms that I've learned and who I am, my energy. So sometimes it depends how expressed the process is. If you're in a fast process, it's quite useful to have building blocks and then they'll transform it in their own body. But then if you've got a little bit more time, or if you've got less time, sometimes it's easier for the dancer to generate material with stimulation words and ideas because they can really inhabit that movement quickly. So I think a mix of both is really good and depending on how long you've got and depending on how the dancers respond, I'll tweak that accordingly.

Glen Nelson: Let's jump a little bit to A Brief Collection of Moments. It has text in it. So could you maybe describe a little bit about the piece and how it came together conceptually?

Vanessa Cook: It does. Yeah, absolutely. The beautiful thing about when you start a new piece is the parameters that you're already given. And these are great because otherwise you're just, How would you begin? What do you choose of everything? And so the parameters for this piece were very clear. We needed a sopranist, and we had access to a dance company and a length of time and there was access to an orchestra. So I really searched some music to find what I would choreograph to, what would be my dream piece of music for these parameters,  and I didn't find the piece of my dreams because also if someone is going to sing I think it's very very important to pay attention to the words they're singing. I'm not a fan of using any old track and I don't really know what they're singing but I like the melody, like the words are important. So because I liaise with Dylan, or maybe more about the collective in a moment, but because there are six artists who've all been in the residency at Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, we have taught a lot about working together, and we were already in the process of let's collaborate together. So inside that collective of six artists is Dylan Findlay, who is a composer, a musician, and we'd had lots of conversations in that last year. And the more I thought about it, I thought, I need new music and I said to him, “Can you help me find some music?,” and his response was, “Of course. Don't use dead people's music use live people’s.”

Glen Nelson: Spoken like a true composer who's alive.

Vanessa Cook: Ha! So we started a conversation, and it became apparent that I couldn't actually find a piece that would speak to these parameters and to the topic that I was interested in. So that's how Dylan and I started in terms of music. And then, of course, needed what was the singer going to sing? So there was a lot of discussion about what was the topic. And then we drew on Darlene Young, who was also part of our six artists. And we worked last summer, over the summer, with long distance. Darlene writing to a theme we would give her. We had lots of different themes that went through the piece and Dylan writing according to those themes, trying to capture the essence of those themes musically. Me dreaming about choreography and so the three of us would meet and talk and discuss and really try to find a common language which in itself is really interesting. When I say, “I'm feeling the base of this is too heavy,” what that means to me and what that means to Darlene and what that means to Dylan is really different. Lots of examples of how the same work can mean very different things. This is where we began really last summer. Hot summer nights, windows open, long distance Zoom calls.

Glen Nelson: I'm so glad that you're talking about collaboration because that was the way that I first became familiar with you. I think the first time that we had ever spoken was the Center did a virtual seminar or something, and you were there. And after it was over, people were asked if they wanted to, they could just hang out and network and chat and whatever. And you were there. And the thing about you that jumped out to me was your curiosity and friendliness. Like, you wanted to meet everybody, and you wanted to probe pretty deeply as quickly as you could about what they were all about. And actually, I have to tell you, Vanessa, this is not how a lot of artists work. A lot of artists in a situation like that would be eager to tell how amazing they are to get the respect of people who are listening to them, and you were doing the opposite thing. You were like, “Yeah, yeah, I'm here and I'm relatively nice, but tell me all about you.” And you were really, really digging into that, which I loved about you—so giving, so communicative. I suspect you've heard this kind of comment about yourself before. Is that just how you're wired to be somebody who can collaborate?

Vanessa Cook: I think it is. Yeah, I absolutely love to collaborate because ideas breed ideas, and if I just stay with myself I'll just generate same-ish ideas, and I just love having a conversation with somebody to share something and my brain just kind of goes vroom vroom vroom. It's more that I'm genuinely interested in having myself be bent, be twisted, be like challenged, and yeah I'm definitely a bigger fan of having new ideas offered by other people than regurgitating my own. Yeah I mean I think that's city life like you can have fast exchanges when you're in the city. You meet people fast. Living in London for 10 years definitely showed me this. But you can have a great conversation. You come back, it transforms you. And ping, ping, ping. I don't have to follow every single idea I have, I definitely love people to be inspired. I'll take their idea and find a Vanessa-way of it. But I do really enjoy... I always have… I think it makes life really rich to have someone challenge you, twist you, yeah.

Glen Nelson: I find it really not just inspirational, but it's just infectious, this attitude. Later after I met you, you were awarded the spot on the Artists Residency at the Center. You had mentioned that a little bit, but I think it might be interesting to kind of ask you like, what was that experience like for you? Maybe if you could describe it a little bit.

Vanessa Cook: Yeah, with pleasure. So I arrived, one of six artists, and one feature that's really beautiful about the residency, there are so many, is that you're from different artistic backgrounds. So I'm not in a room with six choreographers. This would be a very different experience. I'm meeting different disciplines, and so there is already a vast wealth of experience and different ways of entering art approaches. So there's this massive overlap because you make, you're makers, you create. Some creative processes, are some crossovers, but there are a lot of differences. So there's already masses to talk about and to learn from. And guess if I'm interested in other people's ideas, this was my idea of heaven—people just telling me what their processes are and what they do. So we arrived, and we had a week together to follow our own projects that we'd proposed. But more importantly, I think the cross-pollination of the experience is so rich. So every evening we came back and from whatever the activities were, our own projects and the Center's activities were with theatre. We went to galleries, had presentations, we met artists, and then we would come home and we would have amazing desserts at home.

We'd enjoy that whilst sharing ideas and a question every night that was proposed from the Centre from Glen. And we would really start with these questions, and we would discuss, and we had notebooks, and we would go late into the night really discussing our crossover. What is it be a maker? What is it to connect to your audience? What do you think about? What's your challenge? All these questions that are relevant to everybody and yet differently.

So these discussions were just magical. And I must say that the six of us, I felt really, really lucky to be with this six because they are good people. They're really good. And in every career there's, like you say, there's this desire to present what you are, whether you're an artist or whether you're a lawyer or whether you're a doctor. And what was beautiful about this experience was that these were six people who wanted to learn about each other and also incredibly curious people open—interested in feedback what someone had said to them say I'm feeling this or you said this yesterday so really engaged human beings high level emotionally available emotionally intelligent individuals. And for me perhaps the highlight another highlight was that I come from Europe where my spirituality and my creativity they don't really talk I don't connect them externally of course—internally I do. So in this environment I was able to connect them externally in my conversation which was very very rich for me and kind of paradigm shift for me.

Glen Nelson: That's just music to my ears. I just love hearing that. That's what our hope is for this residency. But you you kicked it up a notch. I think of you, and don't take this the wrong way, you're a bit of a ringleader. And that's not a sense of control, but you're a gatherer. And you are saying, and you're bringing people in and making sure that everybody was feeling something and contributing. I just love that about you.

I remember really pretty clearly toward the end of it, you announced, “Yeah, we've all decided that we're going to work together sometime and we're going to do something.” And that's kind of taking things like to this next step. You know, you've met everybody, you kind of get them together, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to make something together. And then I heard through the grapevine, also called WhatsApp, that after the residency, you continued to meet, like you'd hang out and talk to each other. Did you have regularly scheduled meetings or something like that? But anyway, tell me about that and why that was important to you.

Vanessa Cook: Yes, so we still meet every month on Zoom, and it's a Sunday night. We always schedule it at the end of the meeting. Have we got the next one? And we just check in with each other. What's interesting is we like each other, for sure we like each other, and we are friends, but we've all got our own friends and our own circles where we live. So the primary reason for meeting isn't really to check in about how your life's going. It's more to check in with each other's work. And of course life comes out of that, but particularly Darlene Young, she's very good at sometimes offering a question in the group and saying, “Hey, I was really thinking about this, and we come back to being creators, and so we really celebrate what each other's doing and the challenges sometimes there's more happening sometimes there's less sometimes there's a little more about life spoken and sometimes there's more about art spoken but also with six people, there's a lot to be discussed between six people's lives. And this means a lot to me because this is a unique setting. I can find myself in many social settings with different people, with different backgrounds. But this is a unique one for me because this is my artistic connection. And these are my LDS artists friends who I have invested—we've invested a lot of time discussing things already. We've shared. So I consider myself very rich to have this group, I value it a lot, I think we all do. And we actually decided, “Let's make some work.” So we were kind of talking about Dylan playing over in Ohio a piece whilst I hung on the wall of this massive bridge in Bern, whilst projecting some images that Justin and Michelle had generated with some text that would be on the projection from Isaac. And we were kind of in this process, and then the opportunity came to make a proposal for the Ariel Bybee commission. So it just felt like, “We weren't doing this anyway, shall we do this together? Here's a platform, here's a framework.” So that's how it evolved. And also to say that I was inspired from, I think it was during COVID when you were doing these, the Center was doing different webcams, what do call them? Web seminars. And there was a presentation by Jackie Leishman and Steve Peck. And they were talking about how they had collaborated on a large project, and they met, I think it was monthly as well, and they just met, and they just talked. And that captured me and I thought, I want that. I want to have an artist meeting. I want to meet with artists that I'm working with but then that's really goal orientated, and I would love to meet with LDS artists and I would love to have a regular date and that's what we've created so thank you for that inspiration.

Glen Nelson: Well, and also thank COVID. The happy byproduct of COVID is we're all quite comfortable getting on a video chat with each other. Okay, so tell us a little bit more in depth maybe how the Utah Metropolitan Ballet premiere came to be and who are the collaborators and what those people are bringing to the piece that we're going to see soon.

Vanessa Cook: Okay great. Utah Metropolitan Ballet have got a dance company that invited the Center to choreograph a piece on behalf of the Ariel Bybee commission. So we decided to take the parameters of the project and to make a new piece of music. And Dylan was thrilled by this opportunity and to make it also with a sopranist. Darlene took up the challenge to write some text for us. And we decided to have Michelle Nixon and Justin Wheatley create something. These two artists are—I just to say that each artist, I must say, or the six of us, are really established in their own right. I have so much respect for each one of them. I think that they are all in their own circles, in their own worlds, just established and doing their own work.

Justin and Michelle have never made work together and make very different work. So we invited them, we asked them if they would be willing to collaborate. And the beautiful thing is everyone was so open. “Yeah, yeah, sure, if we can, yeah.” There was an openness and a willingness, which is already really beautiful. And Isaac, who is an incredibly succinct and precise writer, I invited him to write about the project. So less at the beginning, but more drawing and towards the end, which he's now done. And then I had the idea of, at the core of this proposal is Ariel Bybee who has since passed, has passed. The fact of her existence has created this voice, this person is now creating more work, more art, the opportunity to create something new. And to me it felt like this absolutely needed to be acknowledged in a piece. The power of a voice passed on or out of the darkness coming and creating more and reflecting on the power that this one person has literally had. Now I'm here, a generation later, making art because of her. But it felt like the whole work needed to come from this singer. So I wanted to really put this sopranist on stage and have her begin her voice and have a dancer connect. So we have this solo voice, then a soloist, a dancer. And so the solo becomes the duet but also this singer is kind of this dancer so she represents, physicalizes this body, this voice and then to kind of go through—Well, because we have the access to a large dance company and a large orchestra, this idea of the single voice augmenting, becoming more than its singleness and becoming bigger and bigger and bigger and growing. We grow from one, which becomes two. We follow the Fibonacci sequence. We go from one to two to three to five dancers to eight dancers to 13 dancers. And then it would be 21, but we have 17 dancers at the end. And the same with the orchestra, with the voice—a little bit of orchestration to grow that. So this was the idea—it’s really the power of a single voice. And what we did then was take the numbers, and we said, “There's a single and then what does that say?” Well, one is just the singleness of discovery, a discovery of the self, of the place. This person is here, the soloist is here. And then another person comes along and what's different about the number two than the number one? And it's like, yeah, there's push and pull and there's now like connection, I can experience me through you. So we've laid this idea, and Dylan tried to explore that musically. And then what's the difference between number two and the number three? Now we've got asymmetry and there's more, something's a slant, it's not symmetrical anymore.

We've always got a two and a one and what does that mean? So we tried to make the music a slant and the words that Darlene uses is something a slant, a tickle and a tangle and a triangle. And then what's the difference between three and five? And then five for us seems like this, it's a group now. It's not just a three, it's a group. And in a group we have power and we can dare to do more things and we're pushing and we're trying.

We're in our daring section and then the five becomes eight and what's that number? Number eight for us is really solid, it's harmonious, it's like the round number of music often. So we want to go into a moment of harmony. What happens for this one person when she's in a group of eight and we find this harmonious moment. And then we jump from 8 to 13 and 13 feels really asymmetrical, awkward. It's not fitting, it's not... it's the odd number. And here we talked about tension and we go into the text talks about not having the demands of life basically and the conflicts and the not having enough resources and modern living. Then we jump to the next number, which actually is seventeen, but for us it's the crescendo. Then in this last section, it's the idea of discovering all these different moments, these different qualities of moments. We find it's rolling, it's working. We've figured it out. We've been on earth long enough to know, okay, I can roll, this is how I am—a kind of a summary of all those stages or ages or whatever and then we get to a place of it works. I get this. I know how to work, I know how to connect, how to be part of a group, how to manage tension. We are working together. It's kind of, so really it came from the numbers, like what do the numbers mean? So the text reflects that and Dylan really played with that musically, so section one is a little bit a rhythmic expiration. Section two we go into a two rhythmically, then into a three, and then when we go into a five, we go into five eights, which is really interesting to work with as a choreographer. And then we go into eights, which is round. It's regular, more regular. And then we go to the 13/8s, which is again, it was really interesting. It is a really interesting time signature to work with. Yeah, and we, don't think at UMB, they'd worked with 13/8s before, I haven't either, so we're enjoying that. And then at the end of the piece we kind of reverse everything, and we use a little reverse mise en a beam, so like a mini summary of everything that we did or that this life, all these chapters of this life, and we reverse it all but fast. So you revisit every section in reverse. And at the end we're left with a single person. It's a little bit, you know, we're born alone, we leave the world alone.

And on the way we have all these collections of moments with different people. And at the end we're back to the single again. But there's now an image that has slowly, hopefully imperceptibly appeared at the back of the stage, projected. And this is the artwork from Michelle and Justin. And they photographed their artwork. And then we've made a film of it. hopefully you won't see it as you watch the dance, there's no object, there's no subject in the painting, they really painted a space and a place and the subject of the painting are the dancers and the changing constellation of dancers but at the end you've got this single dancer and the single soloist looking back and there's this sense for me that as we're living, as we're collecting moments and collecting groupings and social connections, we don't really notice necessarily the fabric or the artwork of our life that's created. But at the end, there's a wonderful thing of retrospect. When you look back, it's like, this stuff happened. Yeah, I didn't really notice, but there's this, this creation. My life was created. And hopefully that's the intention of having this slow reveal of this painting, which starts really with Michelle's sketch and then have first bits of very wide kind of space, place, lands. And then Justin comes in with these very strong vertical lines, much more urban. So we have this kind of tabula rasa at beginning, which becomes a very slowly a kind of space, and then more clearly a space, and it's a more natural environment which becomes more urban, and in the end you have this the mix of these these axes and these these feelings from these two artists and hopefully the thought that yeah life unfolds without us noticing it and it creates this incredible complex life work artwork yeah that's the piece.

Glen Nelson: I love how you described that. I can't wait to see it. Well, that does really sound so exciting to me. I can't wait to see it. Tell me about Utah Metropolitan Ballet. It's a company that I didn't really know too much before. How did you get to meet them and how did that process work developing something together?

Vanessa Cook: Yeah, Utah Metropolitan Valley were introduced to me through this commission. And we first met online, Jackie Colledge. She's the founder of the UMB. We met, she invited me to do some Zoom sessions actually last autumn. So this was interesting because I've never really. So I watched—

Glen Nelson: That was like company class or something? Teaching, you mean?

Vanessa Cook: No, actually it was I watched company class just to meet the dancers and then she invited me to choreograph on Zoom before I came here, and so I prepared a lot of material with the music that we'd already finished. Actually I think we'd finished the music already by September, and then I choreographed for kind of two weeks on and off with the company which was super interesting. I’ve probably got Covid to thank for that as well that I can come really really close and I can look at the whole room and then say, “Enzo at the back stretch, your leg a little bit more.”

Glen Nelson: Hahaha.

Vanessa Cook: You know, it could kind of spot on the—our eyes are quite trained on light. So somehow running back and doing stuff and then running forward and watching them, we found a way together to choreograph on Zoom, which was a first for me. But then arriving here this year, for a few weeks of choreographing in person, it was invaluable time, a really great move from Jackie to propose that she had some time. And I'm in Switzerland. So why not start start choreographing already, and this was really smart, and then about Jackie I think that Jackie is incredibly open, and I what I feel from her is I feel a lot of support from her which you don't always feel but I really feel like she she supports me. She also really understands what I'm trying to do, and she asked really good questions. She's rehearsed the company-wilst I haven't been there, but she was in all the rehearsals really really watching what I did and checking in with me about what I want because obviously she would take over when I'm not there.

Yeah, I think Jackie's really incredible actually because she has these dancers who are very technical. They've got great ballet technique, unquestionable. And yet I've come in, and I'm not doing just ballet. I'm trying to tip them off their axis a little bit. I'm trying to integrate their spine a little bit more. And she's really supportive, and the dancers themselves are also incredibly respectful and hardworking.

I must say it's not always the case, and it makes work really a pleasure. They just go, and they keep going, and they keep going and yeah, there's not a lot of pushback and often there's pushback with artists. They'll have more opinions but there's not pushback. They just try it and I really appreciate that about them.

Glen Nelson: When you're trying to give them movement that might be different from what they know, how do you know how far to push them? If somebody were to try to get me to do something and my first try might be kind of awkward, but eventually I might kind of get it. But like, how do you do that balance of trying something new and getting people to see your vision a little bit and mix what they already know with some things that they don't know?

Vanessa Cook: I think the Zoom sessions—these two weeks during September, in September last year—they were really useful because for sure we tried more things than are in the piece. So this was, it's always almost my favourite stage of any making process is the early process when everything's open, everything's possible, you're just throwing everything out there. So I tried a lot of things with them then and my job isn't really to turn them all into contemporary dancers, but at the same time, my movement is definitely coming from a contemporary place. So it's about trying to find out where we can meet in the middle. And there is an absolute willingness from the dancers to try, absolutely to go in and—Also my job is to see what are their strengths and now let me try and find a balance between what they are immediately good at and they're immediately strong, they're very precise with counts, they're very good at creating unison together because of their precision, they understand themselves in space very very well. So I wanted to draw on that and work with the big group and also challenge them.

We've got a version, something in between. think ballet dancers will say, that's not ballet, contemporary dancers will say, that's not all the way contemporary. We're somewhere in the middle.

Glen Nelson: Right. I think most people in an audience don't exactly know how a piece is constructed. I mean, how it starts and develops. They probably imagine that a choreographer walks into a studio with like this book of step one through step 4,000 or whatever, and just teaches the people all the way through. In your situation, I have a feeling that that's not exactly how you choreograph. So I would be curious to know how you come up with steps.

Vanessa Cook: I definitely bring the big book. I love a good notebook but that's full of ideas and then once we start the first stage is I do give building blocks. I did give quite a lot of building blocks to them and then we looked at the quality of what they were doing but probably more interesting to me as a choreographer is when I give them tasks to create things themselves. So for example, there was a moment where I wanted to create some duets and so I asked the dancers, I did give them some words, I said I really want you to intertwine. So we talked a little bit about a negative space so if two people are together I'm here, other person is here, we've got some negative space right in the air that's not used so I said I really want you to try and intertwine is the word—everything’s possible, use what you want to use but also nothing is too ridiculous so let's just see what you come up with and and they make really some really beautiful material everybody because everybody can make whether they're younger in the company or older in the company they when they just don't think about using just the steps that they've learned all through the technique. They can mix it up and they make really beautiful stuff and for me these are the most beautiful moments to see what they come up with, and then I feed back on what they've done, and then they feed back, and it goes a little bit more back and forth ,but then I went just kind of went around the room which is also a pleasure to have so many people in the room and really picked bits from each person and then we learned we cross-pollinate and they learned this and then we add that to here. So this is the most interesting part of choreography for me. It's a mix of what they do and what I think and growing it together. I like doing this a lot. I appreciate UMB diving into that with me very much.

Glen Nelson: One of the things that I like about dance is the awareness that they are doing stuff on stage that I could never do in real life. You know, I don't know what that is exactly. If it's a leap, if it's a pirouette, if it's a partnering, like, you know, if it's balanced, if it's what extension, all of those things are things that I can do. So in a sense, it's like virtuosity, the question of virtuosity. They can do things that are amazing to me.

Vanessa Cook: Yes.

Glen Nelson: When you're working with these dancers and you have such a limited time, how do you even decide—do you intuit what virtuosity is like for this person, what they could potentially do? How does that work?

Vanessa Cook: Yeah, well, yes, you're watching all the time. Everyone's in a different stage of their creativity and technique. So sometimes, yes, I had definitely a sense of who can inhabit this movement like I can imagine it. And so obviously I've chosen a single dancer at the beginning and I've chosen Jessie who I think has got a really she's got really a lot of movement in her body. She manages to really integrate a lot into her spine, and not just Jessie. I had to choose one person, and there were a few I could choose, but you're watching and you're trying to see who gives you something back in how they give you the material back. And at the same time, I do want to use their virtuosity.

And there's no point trying to make them do completely new stuff and not be comfortable in that. So the virtuosity is definitely what they can do. I established quite quickly what they can do really well. Like for me, I am always moved. I love it. The last section, the crescendo section, I call it the rolling section where all the dancers are on stage. I love the words. I love the sense of the words it talks about ride out your life like just you know who you are at this kind of have it yourself basically—I should read the words, I'm not doing justice to them. The words are really strong, and I believe in them, and the music is very inspiring and it's kind of like getting on a train, and it goes and it goes and it goes, and it builds and it builds and it builds. And in this section, I really wanted to have a strong Allegro section so I really wanted to see quickly who's jumping, who's jumping high and how are we jumping? And let me find my jumpers and then just use everyone and then to make the patterning interesting so that the audiences I kind of can't really understand exactly what's going on. I want them to not understand what's happening. I want them to be surprised. I want them to not grasp it. So trying to make the—use their skills in a complex interesting way with the patterns. Yeah. And finding those that can... can do what? What can they do?

Glen Nelson: Yeah. And that's of course, aside from all the stuff that they're bringing internally and their energy and you know, that all that kind stuff. You know, I wanted to jump back a tiny bit. So it has 17 dancers, a singer on stage, an orchestra—that's pretty…, that's doesn't happen every day. That's really a luxury—

Vanessa Cook: Yes.

Glen Nelson: And then you're one of these collaborators of visual and music and text. So that's quite a big group. Many of those people are LDS people. So let's talk a little bit about that. You're an LDS person, your collaborators are LDS. I presume that some of the dancers in the UMB team are as well. What does it mean to you to have members and colleagues who share this thing with you? This probably hasn't happened that many times in your career.

Vanessa Cook: It's never happened, it's never happened before. Rachel Morris is going to be the singer, and she came into the studio a few weeks ago, last time we were together. And what's wonderful is that we haven't, I haven't heard the orchestra yet, and I can't wait because they are, they will be rehearsing separately and then we will come together. So what's beautiful is we're coming together in part, like slowly. And when Rachel came in, we just had a short exchange and of course she's, she’s juggling her life as a woman who happens to be a mother as well, and I just I recognize that creature—I know these creatures, I don't know them all, we're different, but we've got this commonality and I find that beautiful. It aligns me somehow, it really aligns me because I don't have to compartmentalize anymore, and I'm working with these people in a way that I would anyone in Europe. It's not just that. 

It's okay because they're LDS. These are artists who are excellent in their own rights, and so we're working in the same way that we would rigorously, hard. We're interrogating, we're really trying to find what it is we're exploring together and we're LDS and this is, I find it very beautiful.

Glen Nelson: Well, this was my vision for this whole organization. And sometimes people don't get it and they'll say, What does that matter? You know, what does that matter if they're LDS? Or the flip side of that, you can only call it, you know, LDS-related art if they're making devotional work, if it reads automatically as a religious piece. And I'm like, that hasn't been my experience in life. You know, that's not me. And so what you're saying feels very validating to me. So I really appreciate it. And I really think that what you were saying about in Europe, how you have a religious life and you have a professional life and you haven't really drawn on the two of them often to make artwork. That's probably not entirely true. My guess is that you're bringing quite a lot of values into your artwork.

Vanessa Cook: Yeah, yeah.

Glen Nelson: But in an obvious way, it's probably not apparent to the people around you that you have a religious connection as specific as it is. They probably just ascribe to you good things and not give credit to the religious side for the creator of those things. 

I can't wait for this premiere. We're talking on April 14th, and the premiere is the 23rd. I'm going to be there the 23rd, flying in, and I'm going to see it the 23rd and the 24th. But you know, this is a pretty high profile premiere. I'm doing press for it later today. How do you approach it? Like, do you have a set of goals? you have a vision for its conception?

Vanessa Cook: Yes.

Glen Nelson: How do you decide if the thing was successful? I mean, what does success look like? I have so many questions, as you can tell.

Vanessa Cook: Yeah, wow. What does success look like? Well, I just read some notes from when I was last here, and I wrote a list of things about this project that I'm grateful for and what success. There's a longer discussion to be had, but in terms of if a successful project is a successful collaboration, I think that we've been successful, and I thank you actually for creating the opportunity from the Center. think it's, you know, you and me exist, I exist, you exist, but we don't connect and we're connected through this and I find that really beautiful and I'm very grateful for that.

Have the artists learnt something from each other? Yes, absolutely. Have we considered our audience? We really have. But have we tried to stay true to what our vision is? Yes, we have. We're trying to. Will it be successful if everybody loves it? It could also be unsuccessful if everybody loves it. It would be a very lovely byproduct. I hope that the audience can connect with some of what we're doing. It's for sure not Tchaikovsky, it's a new piece of music. It's for sure not classical ballet. But I hope that something can be communicated. I hope that some people can recognize something in it that touches them. We're trying to be true to the ideas and we definitely generously collaborated and feel utterly supported from the opportunity. So I really thank the Center. I cannot say enough good about it. There's amazing work happening and yes, it wouldn't be happening without a vision. So thank you, Glen.

Glen Nelson: Well, you're very welcome. This is why I get out of bed in the morning. So everything that you said just makes me feel really proud of you and your collaborators and the work that the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts is accomplishing. 

The Center Studio Podcast is a monthly series of extended interviews with artists who are LDS now in its ninth year. It's become a repository and oral history for some of the culture's finest and most interesting people in all of the creative arts disciplines.

A quick look over our roster of interviews will certainly grab your attention and I invite you as listeners to check out additional interviews. think they're pretty amazing. Recent interviews are also on YouTube and I'll post Vanessa's website so you can check that out. Thanks to you all for your support. The Center is a nonprofit arts organization that receives funding from important foundations and philanthropists, including many individuals who contribute to its diverse events, programs, and publishing. Many of our offerings are free to the public, which is quite amazing and you can learn all about it by going to our website: centerforlatterdaysaintarts.org and visit our platforms on social media. 

Thanks again, Vanessa. I am so excited to go to the premiere and also just to talk to you. And I can't wait to give you, you know, probably the world's largest hug. I have a prediction that that's happening. All right. Take care. Goodbye.