Exploring Dance in Academia as a Parent
CarliAnn Bruner Recounts Her Dance Journey
Name pronunciation: Carlee-Ann B-run-er | Pronouns: she/her
By by Madison Huizinga, DWC Blog Contributor
Photo by 127th St.
The role dance plays in a person’s life can vary immensely, from taking community classes, to professionally performing, to becoming a trained educator in the practice. Dance artist and educator CarliAnn Bruner has experienced this wide range of dance roles throughout her journey and currently works as an adjunct professor of dance at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. Read on to learn more about CarliAnn’s dance journey and experiences exploring dance in academia and as a parent.
Some of CarliAnn’s earliest movement memories are in gymnastics lessons, which her parents enrolled her in at age two. She loved gymnastics but felt especially drawn to the dance and style aspects of the balance beam and floor routines. After participating in competitive gymnastics until she was thirteen, CarliAnn dove head first into dancing and fell in love with it.
“At fifteen, I was like ‘Mom, I’m going to be a dancer when I grow up!’” CarliAnn recollects. At sixteen, she began regularly driving herself two hours from her hometown of Yakima, Washington to Seattle to take dance classes at Velocity Dance Center, Spectrum Dance Theater, and Westlake Dance Center. “My parents were so trusting,” she laughs about her younger self driving so far for dance.
CarliAnn attended Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, where she received her BFA, majoring in dance and minoring in kinesiology. While in the Vancouver area, a standout moment for her was getting to perform in the closing ceremonies at the 2010 Winter Olympics.
After college, CarliAnn auditioned for some dance companies in other cities, eventually landing a job with 127th St. Dance Company in Seattle. “That was my jumping-off point, my entry into the Seattle [dance] scene,” CarliAnn says of the job. “I met a lot of people who I’m still good friends with.”
CarliAnn later danced with Khambatta Dance Company, where she performed at venues around the world, including India, Brazil, Mexico, and Lithuania. She also danced in the inaugural season of Intrepidus Dance, with DWC Owner and General Manager Samantha Weissbach and former DWC staff member Holly Logan Livingston.
Through Khambatta Dance Company, CarliAnn was introduced to fellow dancer and DWC Director of Marketing Ethan Rome. The two artists were drawn to the art of choreography and desired to create their own dance company. So, they started Forthun + Rome Dance Theater in 2016, which created and showed work around Washington for about three years.
In 2018, CarliAnn and her husband found themselves itching to live in a new city. After some searching, they landed in Spokane. CarliAnn got connected with Gonzaga University Dance Director Suzanne Ostersmith and became a guest artist at the university, choreographing work for a production of theirs.
Photo by Audrey Parks
Teaching at Gonzaga prompted CarliAnn to think about getting her master’s degree. In 2021, she earned her MFA in dance at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Her thesis focused on indigenous contemporary dance, a subject personal to CarliAnn as a descendant of the Colville Tribe in Washington. “It was a nice way to use my art to reconnect to my heritage and my ancestry,” she says. Due to COVID-19, much of CarliAnn’s master’s program took place over Zoom in Washington, while she was pregnant with her second child. While this virtual format posed many challenges, she appreciated having the opportunity to interview family members for her thesis research, an opportunity she may not have had if she was living in a different state.
“It’s my personal way of processing and understanding the world,” CarliAnn says of why she loves dancing. She describes herself as a kinesthetic person, using physicality as a way to connect with others and share experiences. CarliAnn also appreciates what a great medium dance is for storytelling, as communicating stories through the body can utilize a richness that simple text cannot, making it an accessible storytelling tool.
Currently, CarliAnn is working as an adjunct professor of dance at Gonzaga University. She’s in the process of creating a curriculum for a course on arts leadership and administration with a specific focus on art management in the nonprofit sector. She’s passionate about making sure organizations are conscious of the voices that they are uplifting and hopes to bring attention to that through her teaching. CarliAnn also recently launched a course on dance improvisation, something that many of her students had been seeking more education about. She’s also planning on being the rehearsal director for the Gonzaga University Repertory Dance Company. This season, dance artist Ashley Menestrina will be setting work on the Gonzaga dancers, which CarliAnn is greatly excited to see.
In addition to her academic work, CarliAnn has been making a greater effort to slowly come back into the studio for herself for the first time in a while. She’s created a couple of pieces largely inspired by her thesis and personal research. She shares that being able to travel and tour her art around the world again is a long-time goal of hers.
Photo by Tabor Cote
“It’s interesting being an artist and a parent,” CarliAnn says. Not only has she had to re-acquaint herself with her body after having children, but she also says she’s learning where her place in the dance community is again. She says that in many ways, due to COVID-19, dance opportunities have been made more accessible to her as a parent due to the abundance of online options. At the same time, there are also many opportunities that aren’t as accessible due to time and distance limitations interfering with her important role as a parent. She shares that she sometimes feels like she has to hide her children away as an artist when in reality, they are an important part of her art-making. CarliAnn is excited to see discussions about being an artist and a parent beginning to happen more and hopes to see more holistic acceptance of artists and dancers as whole beings.
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