10 Minutes with Claudia Schreier
The emerging choreographer is making waves.
Schreier rehearsing with Ballet Academy East. Rosalie O’Connor, Courtesy Schreier
Claudia Schreier has burst onto the ballet scene seemingly out of nowhere. She graduated from Harvard University with a passion for making ballets and, since winning the Breaking Glass Project in 2014, the freelance choreographer has been enjoying an accelerated and atypical career trajectory. She is the latest recipient of the Virginia B. Toulmin Fellowship for Women Choreographers at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University, which she will start in the spring. In the meantime, audiences can sample her latest visually layered, neoclassical work on August 8 in the Vail International Dance Festival’s NOW: Premieres evening, among big names such as Matthew Neenan, Lil Buck and Jodi Melnick.
Congratulations on receiving a commission from Vail! How did that happen?
I met Damian Woetzel in 2006 at Harvard, when he was at the Kennedy School and his wife, Heather Watts, was my dance professor. Heather came to a dress rehearsal of some of my early choreography and told Damian about it. I’ve been close with them since. Last year, I helped out with the program book for the festival. So when he told me he wanted me to do something in Vail this summer I thought, Okay, I can take over the program book. My jaw dropped when he said he was thinking of a duet or something larger.
What are you creating for the premiere?
Right now I am rehearsing with four dancers, three of whom Damian has invited as guest artists (Joseph Gordon, Unity Phelan and Zachary Catazaro of New York City Ballet) and Da’ Von Doane (Dance Theatre of Harlem), whom I’ve worked with before. The quartet will be eight minutes, with two movements
danced to two different piano concertos from Russian
composers Dmitri Shostakovich and Alfred Schnittke.
What does it feel like to be featured on such a celebrated evening?
Everything feels new and exciting for me and I don’t want to lose that feeling. After winning Breaking Glass, suddenly my work, which originally was just a passion project I couldn’t let go of, turned into something bigger than I could have ever envisioned. There is a certain pressure as a ballet choreographer because there is such a push towards new movement, and always the question of “How are you going to transform the face of dance?” But I don’t think I should try to answer that right now. I just want to make my kind of ballet.
How will you use your NYU fellowship next spring?
I will have the rare opportunity of a lab where the only expectation is an informal studio showing, so I left the proposal open-ended. But I do feel strongly in having an end goal, and I plan to commission new music from living composers, including Dutch composer Douwe Eisenga.
How are these new opportunities changing your life?
Since 2009, I’ve worked full-time at Alvin Ailey in the marketing department, and I will be leaving at the end of this year to take on the fellowship. It has required a lot of time management. I wake up very early and choreograph before going in to the office. As soon as I leave, I’m running to rehearsal. I’ve used all my vacation days to do commissions and present work. When I got this fellowship the decision was made for me—it states I am not allowed to work anywhere else—otherwise I would have probably tried.
How will you pay your bills?
I will have a $35,000 stipend, and will be using some of it to pay the dancers and musicians. After that, I have a small amount saved, but I’m just taking a giant leap. I have these panic moments, because it has been a long time since I have lived paycheck to paycheck, but it is immediately followed by the euphoria of getting to do what I want to do.
