Bay City News
The ancient practice of dance connects people across language and cultural barriers, so why not generations? That's the question asked and answered by dancer, educator and choreographer Liv Schaffer.
"We are living in the most age diverse society in all of human history. Dance is a really accessible way for people to connect across difference," said Schaffer, a contemporary dance instructor at the University of San Francisco and director of a unique troupe called Dance Generators. The company pairs young adult students in their 20s with adults as advanced as 90 from diverse cultural backgrounds for explorations in conversation, movement and performance, onstage and off.
"We can dance alone anytime we want, but there is something about dancing together, especially across ages: It turns the volume up on the power," says Schaffer of Dance Generators, which is participating in a Berkeley Ballet fundraiser this month and workshops and events in San Francisco in September. She adds, "It's a dance class, but it's never really been a dance class for me."
Experienced and novice dancers, embodying and studying free motion, find the way forward together by expressing themselves with the support of dancers like Schaffer.
"Say, you're a San Franciscan and I'm a San Franciscan and we are 40 years apart. Or we're in different political parties in the United States: How do we connect across that difference without it being a tumultuously charged thing?" she asks. "I hope it's training to connect across greater chasms of difference."
Schaffer came west from Chicago to study dance at the Alonzo King LINES bachelor of fine arts degree program at Dominican University in San Rafael. Working as a community engagement artist with Jacob's Pillow, the longest running international dance festival in the U.S, she developed her knowledge of community-based dance practice. But when the pandemic hit and performances shut down, she began to consider options away from the stage. Upon receiving a fellowship for intergenerational work, she started programming activities for seniors living in affordable housing, while still dancing professionally.
"I look around and see friends in the dance sector or in the social impact sector, and I have to continuously make myself a Venn diagram of the work I'm doing. It doesn't look like either."
And yet it's both: "A direct mirror of the creative process," she said as she combines her performing and community-based practices.
Schaffer tells the story of an at first hesitant business major she encouraged to join Dance Generators.
"He had some shyness, then joined the company and blossomed," she said. "Having the support of older adults, he came out of his shell. I believe he's at the beginning of what I believe will be a long [professional] dance career."
Another member of the company, a 92-year-old retired carpenter, started dancing when he was 80.
"He said, 'When I dance with younger folks, I see them blossoming into life and it reminds me I can still blossom into life and of what it means to still be fully alive.' To watch him be so fully engaged at such an age is really inspiring," says Schaffer.
Dance Generators was founded in 1997 by Amie Dowling; Schaffer came to direct in 2018 and carries forward the original idea of bridging gaps with dance. The company is presently working to connect different parts of the USF campus--schools, clubs and the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning. There's also an effort to deliver Dance Generators to San Francisco's main stage dance community.
"A lot of people who look like me--people with fancy training and studies--are onstage performing. We bring a diverse roster of bodies and movement experience to public eyes," she says. "'Who gets to dance?' is the question Liz Lerman asked with Dance Exchange," says Schaffer of the pioneering company where she continues to perform.
"The work we're going to make this coming year with Dance Generators in collaboration with the university ministry, faculty and staff, is redefining God, faith and what that feels like in the body -- what it means to have faith, and hope, or a thread of belonging."
It might sound esoteric or new age-y, but dance and the sacred are as connected as mind, body and spirit are said to be.
"Dance Generators has been a spiritual container from the beginning," says Schaffer. "We're being confronted with mortality in an intergenerational space, the life cycle visually represented in front of us. That takes us to the ephemerality of things every time we meet, even though we aren't talking about it."
"Older adults and college kids can feel invisible, for different reasons," she says. "Seeing and being seen is what's happening in the room when we're dancing together."
"Liv Schaffer & the Dance Generators: Changing the Generational Narrative" is at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 5 at the Commonwealth Club, 110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco. Tickets are $22 at commonwealthclub.org.
Intergen Dance Lab, a drop-in, donation-based class open to all hosted by Dance Generators is at noon on Sundays, Sept. 8-Nov. 17 at the University of San Francisco School of Education, Room ED040, 2350 Turk Blvd., San Francisco. Contact Liv at aschaffer3@usfca.edu for details.
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