We recently connected with J Michael Winward and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, J Michael thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
For the past seven years, the financial backbone of my dance/movement practice has been Steps in Time®: adaptive partner dance programming for assisted living and memory/mind care communities. I began the program following a seven-year career with the Fred Astaire Dance Studios. Seeking to become self-employed, I started calling around to senior centers and elder congregate living communities in my area, offering a complimentary dance lesson (cold calls and the offer of a free trial lesson are both techniques that I learned while working for the Fred Astaire Dance Studios). Early on in the practice, I found myself adapting dance programs to serve a variety of community settings including: senior centers & adult day health centers, as well as residential living communities, including: independent living, assisted living, dementia care, and continuing care. From 2016-2019, Steps in Time grew to serve 70 community sites in the Greater Boston area. While Covid-19 dealt a significant blow to the practice (a practice not easily adaptable to zoom), the past three years have seen gradual growth, and the introduction of two other facilitators. In 2024, we are scheduled to bring programming to 78 communities, and our schedule is at near-maximum capacity. I believe that part of what makes the whole thing work is a commitment to intergenerational partner dancing as mutually beneficial to both the facilitators and their dance partners: a practice that frames mutuality as a core value and goal. This framework has evolved gradually over time, and so in certain ways, I would not have wanted to speed up the process of growing the program–happy for it to grow incrementally, and with intention.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
As an interdisciplinary artist, my work takes place at the intersection of movement and memoir, memory and care. In addition to being director of Steps in Time®, I am also a lead coordinator of Dancing Queerly: a platform for LGBTQ+ dance & performance artist support. My own performance practice weaves dance and storytelling, centering queer themes and futurity. Insider Ballroom is the most recent work: a collaboration with Holly Stone, blending gender expansive ballroom dance routines with stories about our experiences as queer people, navigating an industry that is as spectacularly heteronormative as it is heteronormatively spectacular: franchised Dancesport.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
When people see ballroom dancing in elder care–dementia care in particular–it can pull at the heartstrings, and lead a person to think that what’s happening is an act of benevolence, rather than a kind of movement research. The spoken and danced exchanges that occur here follow neither the usual rules of ballroom dancing nor the usual rules of casual conversation. The suspension of these rules can offer a breath of creative fresh air, and provide fertile ground for new interpersonal and embodied possibilities. I learned early on that I feel infinitely more at home dancing in a dementia care community than I ever felt on a competitive ballroom dance floor.
I’m not sure if I entirely believe in the idea of a “non-creative,” but I certainly see how misunderstandings can happen in the course of creative work. An example: when the marketing departments of certain residential care companies that we visit learn that ballroom dancing will happen that day, they deploy people to take pictures for the website and social media. Of course, photos of this sort can provide great comfort to residents’ family members–people that hope their loved one is having a positive experience. But what happens time and again is that the person with the camera phone prioritizes the photograph over what’s actually happening–two dancers working to maintain balance together (and one of them probably usually uses an assistive walking device). Over time, I have seen a plethora of photos of bad sides that I never even knew I had. I understand that I am not the most noteworthy component of the dancing partnerships being photographed, and yet still–sticking my bad side up on Facebook (in part) to sell their product. I know it’s nuanced and all, but that’s how it can start to feel. Conversely, I also feel a palpable difference when the photographer centers consent, and care for the dancers’ experience. Interestingly, I also think this makes for a better picture.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jmichaelwinward.com
Image Credits
Shawn Marquis, Steps in Time, Michelle Schapiro, Olivia Moon Photography and Jazz CVitan