Today we’d like to introduce you to Katie Bruce Sorenson.
Hi Katie, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My story with dance began around age 4 when my parents enrolled me in a gymnastics class. Anytime music played in the gym, I danced, and paid no attention to the task at hand. I was enrolled in jazz technique classes so quickly, and that was my foundation of early learning in dance. I only went to one competition as a young dance student – it didn’t suit me, and so I spent the weekend watching episodes of The Simpsons in my hotel room. At age 16, I spent a summer at CSSSA/InnerSpark, which is a summer arts program for high school students at CalArts, the college that Walt Disney founded in Valencia, CA. The dance program was 6 weeks of daily technique courses in movement foundations, wellness, folk dances, dance history, the choreographic process, and performance. I’ve never really gravitated toward fellow dancers as friends in a social sense – in fact, dancers are a social enigma to my brain even now. CSSSA is an amazing cross-disciplinary experience. I went to every film and animation showing I could in those 6 weeks, as a secret lifelong cinema nerd. Finding friendships among filmmakers was meaningful because I could deep-dive facts on sound design, directors, costume designers, editing, special effects, and more – and none of those conversations were very welcome among the dancers I knew at the time. I had 2 wonderful summers at CSSSA before moving to Seattle, and becoming a dance major at Cornish College of the Arts.
The Cornish dance program was, for me, a precision fit. I pursued a BFA in Dance with an emphasis on Teaching, knowing from the start that I wanted to use my degree to become a teacher. While at Cornish, I had a lot of support from professors who encouraged me to use my photo and video skills for choreography projects, performances and for the school’s dance archive. I took some amazing film classes as well. I got a start in understanding film production, but the class that was most nostalgic and meaningful was called Survey of Animation. Every Friday, I sat with a few classmates in the basement of our campus, and we watched cartoons, and we discussed. So much of animation relies on both understanding laws of gravity and motion, and equally disrupting those laws. It was formative, for certain.
After graduating, I went to UC Irvine to pursue my MFA in Dance. The plan was to aim for a job teaching in higher education, but there were three major interruptions to that idea. For starters, the dance department at Cornish, a private college, was so unlike the dance department at a public university. I struggled alongside adjunct faculty to balance workloads, seeing how their employment contracts bound their time in so many ways that they couldn’t build trust with their students. There simply was not enough time in a quarter to attend to committees, grad students, clubs, and their own creative work, plus with a requirement to do projects out of the country every year, most of the faculty didn’t even memorize students’ names on roll sheets. The second rupture was my thesis topic. I researched ways for student modern dancers and skateboarders to collaborate physically and culturally. When I took my topic to my grad advisor, her response was “Skateboarders are typically very low-income, aren’t they?” I replied, “Aren’t dancers?” That was the start of an unraveling for me within the department. The third challenge was PTSD. I was suffering, and also punishing myself for how challenging everything felt. The equation was unbalanced, and unsolvable. I dropped out, 11 credits shy of attaining my MFA. I passed every class, but revoked my thesis project. I didn’t want UC Irvine’s name on it, and I was personally lost.
I got found at skateboard camp. Woodward West, an action sports summer camp, located in the mountains outside Bakersfield, California, set my life in a whole different orbit. First I taught dance to gymnastics students, then I was the GoPro girl, responsible for strapping small action cameras to kids flying off Mega Ramps. Later, I became a camp photographer, and even lived at camp in the off-season to help with special events. I met my husband, Skyler, at camp, and I fell in love with him while watching him shred a vert ramp. Skateboarding, and skate films, undid a lot of stuck thinking for me about movement languages, about how to relate with other movers in a space, about the definition of a body, a tool, a skatepark, a stage. In this chapter, I realized that it was ok that I’d never fit in with dancers. My identity as a dancer wasn’t defined by the other dancers in my orbit. My identity as a movement and visual artist was defined by what I could see, what I could make, and how I could evolve.
Skyler and I moved to Utah in 2012, and he began pursuing a degree in film at UVU. I taught ballet at studios, and loved every minute with my students. My teaching style is a blend – a little Bill Nye, a little Hermione. I first volunteered for the Utah Dance Film Festival in 2016 after Skyler entered a film to the festival, and I grew from Outreach to Education to Festival Director. Every year, I watch around 300 dance films, and work with a global jury to determine official selections. I organize an event with screenings, workshops and an awards ceremony, and the 2023 festival will be the tenth. I am also a live performance dance photographer, and travel the country shooting photos for dance competitions and performances, specializing in small modern dance companies, and high school dance companies. I have an awesome little family, with a daughter who is skilled with cameras, skateboards, ballet and relentless humor. I built a dance competition in Provo with a friend – she is the visionary, and I do all the web and graphic design, the registration and judging systems, and all the photography. Momentum Dance Competition is coming up on year 4, and my inner jazzerina child is really surprised that I built a competition, and also how easy it is to create equity in dance competition systems and technologies if you care deeply and genuinely about student dancers above all else. Living in Utah was definitely not something I expected from my life’s story arc, but it has been a beautiful journey.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Attaining healthcare has been a huge challenge. I have so rarely injured myself in a dance class. It is the regular living of life that has roughened up my road. I wrecked my left ankle with sprains, and ruptured a tendon in my foot on Christmas Day while sewing a quilt. I needed surgery to repair both. I actually left Utah for a year, and became a resident of another state to qualify for health insurance. If I had stayed in Utah, I would have been covered by the state’s health insurance – if I had been 6 months pregnant. Making that choice to leave my husband for a year to repair my body so that I could continue working at the job I’d trained for my whole life resulted in many supreme struggles. Fortunately, my surgeon was a trained ballet dancer. Having a care team that understood dance was so crucial to my wellness. There were no providers in Utah who could have repaired my ankle and foot in a way that would have allowed me to return to teaching dance. They compared my body to a soccer player, to a football player. “I’ll just whack a steel plate in.” Actual quote from a surgeon. I have never been offered health insurance by a dance studio. I was older than 26, and even with subsidies, couldn’t afford insurance on my own. I danced on an unstructured limb, without a functioning big toe, and worked long shifts in restaurants in a walking cast, for years before I had what I needed to be healed and well. I’m currently on the cusp of a hip surgery, and I’m thankful that my injury is more common than the last time around, and that I was able to find a surgeon who has done research on dancers, published papers on orthopedic surgery on dancers, and who takes the time to better understand how my range of motion and goals will affect our overall outcome. That last point is the big one – OUR outcome. Not just mine, but his as well. I never need to be able to whack my foot above my head again – I need to be able to walk up my stairs, instead of crawling. It’s not by chance that dancers allow injuries to go on for many years. It’s our circumstance. The relentless pursuit of seeking a care provider can wear you down, and make you want to give up on seeking treatment. Fortunately, dance taught me a lot about resiliency, and I hope that this surgery makes a difference in a positive way, too.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I specialize in shooting live dance performances. Live dance is one of the hardest things to photograph, because very often, you have fast movers, and low light. The skill set required is to assess choreography that you’ve never seen before and interpret movements before they happen, work together in harmony with your camera to push the sensors to get a clear image, and make constant adjustments for costumes and skin tones because the equity in imagery matters. As a dancer and dance teacher, I am really well suited to these tasks. When I shoot competitions, I almost feel like every kid could be my student. I cheer for them so hard behind my lens! Dance students now are so powerful, and so vulnerable. They’re really brave to take the stage, and take all the people in the room on a journey with them. I shoot a lot of photos for small, local dance companies like Wasatch Contemporary Dance Company, Fem Dance Company, and Creators Dance Project. I’m also really involved with Chilean folk dance, and I shoot photos for Viva Chile Utah, a company of performing artists in Utah from Chile who presents their culture through movement and music. I also shoot a lot of photos for high school dance companies, especially for student choreographers. I was that teenage choreographer a long time ago, and I know that the right photo can get an emerging artist momentum on their pathway to their future art education. I wish that more people who have dance training would pick up cameras, and try this job. There are very few live dance event photographers, and the industry really needs dancers to fill those positions! Learning the gear isn’t difficult at all. It is way harder to teach a photographer about what matters in a dance photo, than it is to teach a dancer how to dial in camera settings. If there are any curious dancers out there aspiring to learn live dance event photography, please send me an email or DM!
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
Utah has outstanding dance traditions, programs, and companies. There are so many people who didn’t pursue dance after high school, or who didn’t major in dance, who probably feel on the outside of their identity as dancers now. You’re not. Traditions, programs, companies – these organizations are not defining markers of identity. The best thing we all brought to class with us is our genuine selves. Dancers, as a social group, lend their sense of self to whatever teacher, choreographer or project they may be working on. Dancers will be whatever they’re asked to be. The thing you’re asked to be may not be connected to your genuine self. Your genuine self – he, she, they – is the best and most interesting part about you, and that is a source of your artistic desires, skills, gifts, and identity.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dancenerdphotos.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/dancenerd.photo
- Other: www.momentumdancecompetition.com
Image Credits
Katie Bruce Sorenson
