Karl Watson on Finding Balance and Seeking Transparency
By Madison Huizinga, DWC Blog Editor
Photos: Stefano Altamura & Bamberg Fine Art Courtesy of whimwhim.org
As dancers, we’re encouraged to push ourselves as far as we can, often until our breaking point. Finding the harmony between challenging ourselves and staying within our boundaries can be a tough balancing act. Karl Watson of Whim W’him gives insight into this challenge, his dance journey, and what he hopes to see moving forward in the dance industry.
Karl first fell in love with dance because his mom took him to see A Christmas Carol around the holiday season. “I freaked out within the first 10 minutes,” Karl laughs. His mom took him out of the theater and into the lobby of Playhouse Square in Cleveland, Ohio. She asked the employees if any other shows were happening that night, and they suggested she take her son to see The Nutcracker. As soon as he set his eyes on the show, Karl was mesmerized. Eager to learn dance himself, his mother enrolled him in a creative movement class. He continued dancing at The School of Cleveland Ballet, later floating between a couple of different studios. Karl later got more involved with competition dance, falling in love with jazz and musical theatre.
Towards the end of high school, Karl realized he wanted to pursue a career in dance and thus wanted as much training as possible. He soon began dancing seven days a week with a focus on ballet, jazz, and musical theatre. Around the time when Karl began his freshman year at Butler University, YouTube began taking off. He recalls coming across videos about Crystal Pite, as well as William Forsythe’s improvisation techniques. These online resources and the resources on his campus opened him to the range of dance that was happening outside his bubble.
During his time in college, Karl did two summer intensives summer intensive with Hubbard Street Dance in Chicago and a winter workshop with Doug Varone. At Butler, he also got the chance to take master classes from Gustavo Ramírez Sansano who was the artistic director of Luna Negra Dance Theater at the time. After graduating, Karl ended up landing an apprenticeship with Luna Negra and moved to Chicago. Karl ended up becoming a performing apprentice and toured with the company before it folded in 2013. He ended up staying in Chicago and performing with Visceral Dance Chicago as a founding member. Later on, while in New York, Karl ended up auditioning for Whim W’Him, as they were having a workshop and audition over there. He got the job with Whim W’Him in 2016 and relocated to Seattle where he’s been ever since.
Ever since Karl discovered dance, it’s been his most effective tool for self-expression and storytelling. He shares that as a child, he was fairly quiet. “I was the kid who liked to sit at the grown-up table and just listen...I was just a little more internal,” he says. Thus, he loves that dance can be a “very internal practice,” allowing him to be within his body and self-discover.
However, nowadays, Karl shares that he is most moved by experiences that take him out of his body and allow him to connect with his own or other people’s physicalities. “I think it’s just the physicality of [dance] in a world that feels increasingly less physical,” Karl says of what draws him to dance. He loves how qualitative the art form is, the meanings of dances are up for interpretation, making it even more compelling for audiences to watch. Karl also marvels at how technology and social media have given dancers new platforms to gain traction and share their work with the world.
While classical ballet training has been invaluable for his training, Karl shares that dance challenges he’s faced have come from the ballet world, specifically from ballet’s strict physical standards, as well as imposter syndrome. Karl is interested in the “decolonization of contemporary dance,” involving the decentering of European or Western standards. He’s eager to see different dance approaches being utilized, specifically those that center on the individualities of dancers through standardized modes of training. For too long, creating, training, and rehearsing has involved fitting his body into a rigidly pre-determined shape. Now, Karl feels as though he can pull movement out of his body in a way that challenges him but also works within the bounds of what’s possible for him. “I think it’s just about being in your body and finding what your body can do,” he says.
In the dance world, Karl hopes to see more transparency within dance education and more productive discussion about personal development and the realities of being a working dancer. While pre-professional and BFA programs have a multitude of benefits, Karl points out that they can be quite insular. Having holistic opportunities for networking outside of institutions would be helpful for dancers’ careers.
In terms of professional companies, Karl wishes to see more transparency and equity across the dancing hiring process. For example, he shares that the Dance Artists’ National Collective is furthering this agenda by “advocating for safe, equitable, and sustainable working conditions for dancers in the U.S,” as a way to empower dancers who are often underpaid and mistreated within the industry.
While Whim W’him is on its break, Karl is working on an outside project with the choreographer Emily Schoen Branch and fellow Whim W’Him member Liane Aung. The group is planning on making a dance film and hopefully performing at festivals later this season when more in-person events begin happening. He is also teaching in-person Dance Church classes in Seattle. Whim W’him released two new dance films with Mark Caserta and Rena Butler, available for viewing online. Stay tuned as Karl and the rest of Whim W’him continue phasing back into in-person performances this winter after a long-awaited break.
