Kate Sherman is a multi-disciplinary performer, performance maker, choreographer, movement researcher, educator, and yoga teacher. She’s always been a mover through the world. In a theatre sense, performance started quite early for her. Then, while at the Newtown High School of the Performing Arts, Legs on the Wall came to run a workshop and Kate fell in love with the physical mode of expressing. She trained with them for a number of years, then went on to pursue acting and filmmaking, but came back to working with Legs and with movement because physicality, as she says “has always been the most authentic form of expression.” She loves working in the realm of improvisation (she studied dance improvisation and choreography with Deborah Hay) and creates site specific-works that take the audience outside of the habituated patterns of being and modes of seeing, initiating a disruption that allows for something else to emerge.

Podcast with Kate was recorded on 26 January 2020, on the Gadigal land of Eora nation, traditional custodians of the land on which we live, work, and dance. We pay our respect to their elders, past present and emerging.

Podcast image is by Lena Kramaric.
Music used is by Trevor Brown.

Artemis Projects production, commissioned by Delving into Dance and Critical Path for the Interchange Festival.

Podcast with Kate Sherman (full transcript)

Ira Ferris: What three words come to your mind when you think about dance?

Kate Sherman: Freedom. Connection. And... Healing and activism. I'm gonna say four.

Ira Ferris: Why did you choose to say four?

Kate Sherman: Because I feel like those four words are important. And, actually, some of those words are saying the same thing. Healing and connection are the same thing, I think. So, I could maybe say: freedom, healing, and activism.

Ira Ferris: How is healing same or similar to connection?

Kate Sherman: Well, I think healing is connection. I think healing is finding a way back to ourselves. So, healing is finding a way back. And connection is finding a way back. I think they're the same thing.

Ira Ferris: So, connection that you are referring to is connecting to yourself rather than connecting to the wider environment?

Kate Sherman: I think we need to connect to ourselves in order to connect to others. And I think we need to heal ourselves in order to heal on a wider level.

Ira Ferris: And what does dance do to help that process?

Kate Sherman: I think that dance allows us to be in our bodies and to connect to our spirit. Dancing allows us to get out of our heads and to connect to ourselves and to others on a deep level.

Ira Ferris: Tell me a bit about your trajectory through this world of dance and movement. Is it something that started when you were very young or something you discovered later on in your life?

Kate Sherman: I've always been a mover through the world, I guess. Even as a little kid. And performance started quite early for me, in a theatre sense. And then I discovered movement through Legs on the Wall. I went to the Newtown High School of the Performing Arts and they came to our school and did a workshop, and I just fell in love with the physical theatre at that time, the physical mode of expressing. I trained with Legs on the Wall for a number of years and then I went onto an acting pathway. And then after the acting pathway came straight back to working with Legs on the Wall. Even when I was doing acting, I was really interested in being an artist. And I guess physicality for me has always been the most authentic form of expression. And so over the last twelve years, maybe 13 years, I've really been interested in movement as definitely the primary form of expression, in an improvised way and in a site-specific way. In the full-length pieces that I've created, text has been there but the body has always been at the centre of the work.

Ira Ferris: What would you say is the biggest lesson that working with dance or being a dancer, or working with movement has left on your life? And how would your life be different if you haven't had that journey?

Kate Sherman: I think... In the last six or seven years, I've become a yoga teacher and I'm now studying mind-body therapy and actually dance and I guess free dance in lots of different settings is something that's been a really big part of my life and makes me feel alive and well and joyous and connected. And I think that dance and yoga have kind of saved my life, in some way.

Ira Ferris: In what way?

Kate Sherman: Like most of our society, I can get very in my head and that's not a really useful place for me to be in. And in the last few years, I've definitely suffered quite severe anxiety and depression and mental health issues. And dance and yoga and movement and body have always been a way back or a thread back to this idea of coming back to the present, of resetting, of being in the now and also being connected to something much wider than just ourselves.

Ira Ferris: It is again, as you were saying, that connection that is a state of coming back to the centre of yourself, and I love how when I asked you what three words come to your mind, you actually closed your eyes and went inside in order for the words to come. What was that about?

Kate Sherman: Well, I was trying to listen to myself, to listen to my body rather than my thoughts. So, trying to kind of allow the words to emerge rather than placing something on top of them.

Ira Ferris: In that moment, when you closed your eyes did the images of yourself dancing come in order for those words to emerge?

Kate Sherman: No, it was more a sense or a feeling. Which is the same thing that happens when I'm moving and dancing. It's... It's that I feel really authentically connected to myself without any of the extra layers that we sometimes hold or present. So, it's usually a sensation and then expressing through movement what that sensation is, how that sensation is arising.

Ira Ferris: In your biography, I read that amongst many other things, you are a movement researcher, and I wanted to ask you, what are you interested in researching when it comes to movement and whether that has been changing over time?

Kate Sherman: I'm really interested in creativity and I'm interested in creativity because I think when we're deeply connected to our creative self, we're deeply connected to our essence. So I'm fascinated in reading and researching how different people make different thoughts on creativity, on a cognitive level or on a bodily level. At the moment, I'm really interested in mind-body therapy so, I guess that's what I'm researching currently. And that's absolutely connected to dance. I study Embodied Flow yoga and that really looks at somatics and psychology and philosophy. And I'm really interested in the human condition and humanity. So I guess when I say movement research, that's a simple way of giving it a lens. And to answer your question if it is always changing. Yes it is always changing, in terms of where I'm at and what I'm interested in or maybe what the project is I'm working on. At the moment, I'm working on a writing project with a fellow collaborator and we are researching about practice and what is practice. And so, yes, it absolutely changes as I go along, depending where my interest lies.

Ira Ferris: And what does Embodied Flow yoga look like in practice?

Kate Sherman: Well, there's many different parts of it. So there's long meditations with very specific images or mantras. And then there's a lot of free movement very specifically guided to these five principles. So it's very specifically and delicately guided by the facilitators. But it's basically a way of exploring your own consciousness and going deeper into letting old patterns go and things that aren't useful anymore, and going closer and closer your essence. So, it looks like free movement. So, people moving in whatever way or however they feel, and really kind of pouring yourself into each moment. So, it's a practice of being completely present and completely authentic in each moment. That's the central practice of it. And then there's also science and psychology. So yeah, it moves between the free movement and the structure. So sometimes it's a structured asana practice and then sometimes that practice turns into free movement, or there's an option to move between the two. So it very much looks at structure and freedom.

Ira Ferris: Talking about that kind of freedom, and freedom was one of the three words that you mentioned at the beginning. So, one of the things I would like to ask you is what you meant there, but maybe also in connection to that I'd like to bring in the idea of improvise. And I know that you in your practice are quite interested in site specific dances so in being responsive to the site. Maybe I'm asking three very different questions but maybe they are somehow connected: freedom, improvisation, and responsiveness to the site and to the environment.

Kate Sherman: I think freedom and improvisation are very closely connected. And I'm pretty interested in these ideas of structure and freedom. Frantic Assembly said that limitations breed creativity, and I think that is a huge part of my dance making, performance making practice. So, I'm interested in site-specific performances because that's perhaps the structure or the context, and then the improvisation is very much responding, sometimes with mapped choreographic moments or sometimes completely free, but there's usually scores that we're playing with. I've done two works with Ryuichi Fujimura, one at Performance Space which was called '30 Ways Time and Space' and the other 'Under Harry's Circumstances' at Australia Square. The audience is given a specific context and then we respond to that, and what I'm really interested in, in dance making, is offering some material that the audience can interface with and bring themselves to the work in this kind of dialogic capacity. So, they're not passively sitting back and just watching. We're offering some material within a specific context that they can then bring their experience to. And, I guess I'm also interested in alternative spaces because I think that theatres and black boxes have very specific connotations and the audience as soon as they go in and they sit down, adhere to all the conventions and structures, there are already so many habituated patterns of being and modes of seeing and putting on very specific lenses. So, I think taking the audience outside of that can offer something new and perhaps be a disruption or allow something else to emerge.

Ira Ferris: When you work on those kinds of performances, I imagine you respond to ambient sounds rather than having music played on the set. Is that how it works?

Kate Sherman: Yeah, I mean, in those two specific shows, we didn't have any set music and there was no musicians in the space. So, we were responding to the sounds of the space, the sounds of each other, the sounds of the audience. We weren't overlaying a specific tone over the performance, it was more about allowing the sounds of the space to be another element in the performance.

Ira Ferris: How would you compare those two experiences, dancing to music where the movement is very much inspired by the sound of music to dancing to the ambient sound of the space? And, would you say that you have experienced dancing in silence?

Kate Sherman: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I guess there's not really ever silence, is there? Because we're also then listening to ourselves. I mean, I love dancing to music. In some ways, I think it's much easier, you know, because you're dancing to an external... it's something that someone else has created. And you're also not listening to your patterns so that can allow you to go with someone else's provocation. Whereas dancing in silence or just with the sounds of the space is perhaps more subtle. But in these cases, it's maybe easier to listen to the sensations in your body and to feel and be more responsive to the other person that you are perhaps performing with or practicing with. So I think both can offer really different things.

Ira Ferris: Talking about sites. I'm curious how would you as a performer, dancer, a person working with movement in various ways, reflect and define this concept or a term 'spatial awareness'? How is it featured in your life and how would you observe what it means to others around you?

Kate Sherman: I think special awareness is... I mean, it kind of astounds me how spatially unaware a lot of people are. You know, they just bash into you in the supermarket and they don't even notice that they do that. I always find that interesting and funny and strange. I think spatial awareness is really being deeply connected to yourself spatially. So, to be able to kind of navigate your internal landscape and then to also be centred and know where your ground is and where you're moving from. To be connected to your body. So, if you're always in your head, of course you're gonna be spatially unaware because you're not really in your body. I think special awareness is kind of about presence; coming back to presence again. Being conscious, being mindful, being mindful of your environment.

Ira Ferris: And you seem to be making a link between body awareness and spatial awareness?

Kate Sherman: Yeah, well, I guess we're a microcosm of the macrocosm. So, if I start with the awareness within myself, then I can be aware of the space around me and then I guess the ripple effects of bigger and bigger and then potentially, you know, of the room that we're in, the space that we share together, these, you know, interpersonal space and then the space of Sydney as a city, of Australia as the country, and then of the world.

Ira Ferris: That kind of, for me, goes back to that question I asked you earlier about what lessons have dance left on your life. Because you reflected onto the fact that some people don't have spatial awareness at all. And when I think of what has dance made possible for me, it is this awareness of being within the body and being within the space.

Kate Sherman: Yeah. I mean, I think dance is also the practice of relationships. So, the relationship with ourself, the relationship between myself and the other dancer, the relationship of the ensemble. And then also, I think it's the practice of getting out of ourselves, getting out of our habits or our patterns. To notice, to discover.

Ira Ferris: Is it connected to trust?

Kate Sherman: I think dance is deeply connected to listening and perhaps there is a relationship between trust and listening. I guess there is a trusting of what we are hearing.

Ira Ferris: I think this is connected a bit to something you said when we spoke about Embodied Flow in terms of allowing for different states to emerge and not controlling the movement completely. In talking to another dancer in relation to this podcast, one thing that she said is that for her dance is the space to practice being in the unknown, or being able to be in the unknown. What do you think she meant by that?

Kate Sherman: I think... I mean dance can be many, many things, but I guess for me, the practice of dance is an emergent process. It's a process of following a moment by moment presence. And, you know, that doesn't always happen. Often you can get into your head. But I think, when you really feel deeply connected and are in this state of flow, your body doesn't need to know the end result. It's our minds that need to know the end result, it's our minds that need to know a narrative or a story or to make sense of things. Our bodies are quite happy just to be in this unfolding emergent unfurling presence. And I think there's an incredible freedom in that because that's actually our natural state. But our world doesn't work like that. So, in that way, the practice of dancing feels like returning home, being in synchronicity with life, with the essence of ourself. From a tantric philosophy, a deep consciousness wants to know itself. That's all that consciousness needs and wants. It doesn't need to know where it's going. It just wants to be in this process of expanding and exploring. And, I think it can be really hard sometimes to be in the unknown if we're in a battle with our heads because our minds are really scared of that and don't understand that and kind of go into a terror, or wanting to analyse it or rationalise it or all these things. But once we can find the way to actually be in that state of the unknown, it's incredibly liberating and freeing and pleasurable and joyful and expressive. And yeah, emotions can arise, real silliness can arise, being quite strange can arise. It can be quite dark. But, you know, when we're in that state, it can be everything without the limitations of what it is to be human or what we should be or what it is to be normal, clever or successful. All those layers are taken away and we're just left in this ...

Ira Ferris: Pure state.

Kate Sherman: Yeah, this pure state of essence of being.

Ira Ferris: Is that the way to deal with judgment? And I'm raising that question of judgment because there are just so many people out there who don't feel free to dance, are afraid to move because of the fear of being judged. And therefore they remove themselves from their essence. And we are conditioned in this world to be removed from that state of the unknown, if that is the state of our essence, and to always have an answer to something. And there is that beautiful podcast you have shared with me, where David Whyte speaks about this idea that we are rewarded for having an answer but that is a problem because the actual essence of things is that there is no answer, that things are in constant flux. Which, as I was listening, made me think of dance, because dance is movement, things are in the flow. That is almost the definition of dance.

Kate Sherman: Which makes dance quite political, an act of activism. Because there's nothing capitalistic about being in essence. And yes, I think that judgment is so far away from that state. Judgment seams so silly, so small. But, I think yeah, I think it's really sad that a lot of people can't find the access into a real embodied state, and there's so much fear and so many things around that just inhibit people from entering into that state.

Ira Ferris: If you were to come across that person or a few people like that, what would be some of the things you would want to pass on to them, whether it's in the form of words or maybe suggest an exercise to help them combat that state?

Kate Sherman: I often lead students through processes of... Like, I'll give them an image or a state or I'll give them something that's much bigger than them so they can hopefully enter into that image or that state, or could be an element or the state of being lost or fire or water or earth or an image of the ground cracking or whatever ... So, they enter into something through their imagination and they lose themselves and they're no longer inhibited because they're not thinking about 'me' and 'I' and the ego. They're actually getting lost within a much bigger realm of material.

Ira Ferris: Imagination is quite a powerful tool, isn't it?

Kate Sherman: Yeah. Absolutely. I saw Gurrumul Yunupingu show last night and it was just so... it was so many things but I cried for the first half an hour. It was so powerful. It was so emotionally beautiful and generous in this context - today's the 26th of January (Australia Day) and they were up there. The dancers were so beautiful and so present and they were in this, in their sacred meeting place which is the Opera House with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra behind them in the background. It was so beautiful on so many symbolic levels. And they were so clearly in something much bigger than themselves. There was soul and there was essence and there was spirit and there was no ego. And there was none of these smaller things. Which, I think, is what dance has a capacity for. Like music, to really reach us in a really raw place, in our essence. So, I think students or people that are feeling inhibited or feeling small or feeling judged or are thinking and are stuck in their minds, ... If we can give them something, some kind of access point that will allow them to kind of trick themselves, to enter into something with joy and being playful and being curious. If they can find that, that kind of bridge into this other world, then all of that judgment will just fall away. So I think that's kind of the responsibility of a facilitator or a teacher or a director to allow the student to find freedom.

Ira Ferris: That makes me think of that healing you were talking about at the beginning. I mean, that's the thing that I feel we need to heal. And you used the word being 'tricked', but when you think about it, we have actually been tricked to think opposite. To think that we can't dance. Because dancing, and you've mentioned indigenous cultures, has been a part of our nature and it connected us with the nature, it is a part of the ritual that connects us to the Earth, we are literally connected to the Earth with our feet. So, rather than being tricked out of that, we are actually awakened out of it. Out of this nightmare that we have been put into, of that fear and inhibition.

Kate Sherman: Yeah. There's this thing in yoga called 'maya' which means illusion. Illusion of the mind. So, the tricks that our minds play that basically cause us to suffer, make us think in a dual way 'this or that', make us contract and feel small. So, as human beings born into this world, we're already tricked so we need to find a way to untrick ourselves.

Ira Ferris: As I was just saying, dance is obviously something that we associate with movement. But I also feel that pause and stillness are integral parts of dance. I would love to hear what's your relationship to stillness and pause both in dance, in movement, and in life in general? And whether the two experiences have kind of infiltrated or informed each other?

Kate Sherman: Yeah, I mean, a real stillness is not really possible. There's always some kind of movement. I've spent many, many years just moving, always just moving, and then in the last five years I realised the importance of stillness, and now I have a meditation practice. And speaking to this idea of giving and receiving, I think it's in this stillness where we allow reflection or learning. In the stillness there's a possibility of deepening whatever it is that we're in, even allowing our particles to come back to us. Stillness is so important for me personally and I think that in our collective consciousness at the moment, the pace of everything is getting faster and faster, and so I think there's a kind of collective shift or a collective need and desire to find these spaces of stillness in yoga, in mindfulness, in meditation.

Ira Ferris: In just not returning that call straight away.

Kate Sherman: Yeah, yeah. In the discipline of not checking your phone. Yes, there's so much stimulus that I think there's a real need in our society, or real want to find stillness. I think in dance, in performance and practice, I think sometimes the stillness can be the hardest thing to do and the most vulnerable, because in stillness is where we are really seen and we can really be witnessed, and I think that can be challenging and confronting and really courageous thing to do because people can deeply see where you're at. If we are always moving at song, if it's not conscious, it can be a way of escaping. And I guess, it's good to always have both - stillness and movement, Not just having one or the other. Both of them have a really beautiful relationship and both of them are really needed because if we're always just still then stagnation happens or we are not moving forward or we're not being courageous. There's times for actioning and there's times for being still. And so I'm learning as a dance maker and a movement research, the importance of stillness and movement.

Ira Ferris: That's a beautiful metaphor what you were saying that when we are moving, we are kind of escaping this idea of being seen, but also seeing. So, that makes me reflect on why we do it in life. Because to confront everything that is going on is difficult. So, we decide to move quickly, in a fast pace. And then everything blurs and we can't actually see what's happening. Which is contributing further and further to things falling apart, because there are these subtle changes like climate change for instance that require stillness to be seen, to be perceived before it ends up in where we are now.

Kate Sherman: Yeah, moving can be a form of denial, not wanting to see or a way of pushing something away, or a way of numbing or just busying ourselves for the sake of it so that we're not really dealing with anything and we don't have to be responsible for our environment or ourselves.

Ira Ferris: On the other hand, UK dancer and choreographer Akram Khan says that the only time he is still is when he dances.

Kate Sherman: Mm hmm.

Ira Ferris: Does that resonate?

Kate Sherman: Yeah. I mean, when I'm dancing and when I'm deeply connected in my dancing, I feel incredible connection to the center, to my essence which is incredibly still. So, the dancing that is coming from such a conscious place and following this thread of each present moment, yeah, it feels so expensive. There's such a clarity and it feels like I could just do it forever. And I feel so deeply connected with the entire universe and everyone else that's in the space that I'm in, if there's other people. Yeah, I do definitely understand that experience of kind of... Well, I guess going back to this embodied flow idea of just pouring yourself into the experience and when you're so deeply present in a moment, that's all there is. And it's kind of timeless. There's so much space in each moment and there's so many possibilities that it's... Yeah, it's beautiful.

Ira Ferris: And I guess building on this idea of stillness, it's kind of connected to intuition and therefore that improvisation that we spoke about and that responsiveness to the site, that real responsiveness to the site, to the sounds, to the shape, to other people. The meaningful movement comes from stillness. Intuitive movement.

Kate Sherman: Yeah, it's coming back to listening. Stillness is maybe a space of listening. Because improvisation for is responding to our internal landscapes, or the external landscapes. Maybe you could equate stillness with space, the space to listen and to allow something to emerge.

Ira Ferris: Is it connected to silence as well?

Kate Sherman: Yeah, I guess, the space and stillness and silence, in order to be able to listen. To be able to follow the body's intelligence without following an idea or a thought or a human intervention or something of what we should be doing or should do, a clever idea that we might have of what could look interesting.

Ira Ferris: How would you engage with this question, why does dance matter now? And I'd like to separate it into two questions. Why does dance matter in general, always? And then, I'm intrigued actually with this temporality, with putting the word 'now' at the end. Why do we even find it necessary to ask this question: why does it matter now, in this specific time?

Kate Sherman: I think dance matters because it goes back to our human roots of being tribal, human beings, creatures that are social animals. You know, this idea of connection and of ceremony and of creating ritual and expressing... And I mean, dance is also a form of grieving. Dance matters because it's at the essence of who we are, if we let go of all of the stuff that we've created around what it is to be human. Dance sits at the core of what it is to be human. It's a way for us to connect to life. It's a way for us to connect to ourselves, to each other and to the universe. And if we're connected to ourselves, to each other and the universe, then I believe that everything can really be in harmony. And, I guess, maybe why it matters now is that we are in a huge climate change emergency, our earth is dying and we're killing it. And I think that's deeply because we're not connected to ourselves, each other and the universe, to Mother Nature. And I think if we deeply loved ourselves, each other and Mother Nature, then this would not be happening. And also I think it's so important right now because there is so much mental health issues and loneliness and depression and disconnection. And I think if we came back to our bodies and we came back to finding spaces to be with one another, to dance with one another, to be able to express whatever we need to in those spaces, and that we feel free to do that, whether that's joy or a state grief or anger. If we can do that in these healthy, connected ways, then I think that we would have a really healthy, beautiful society. And, I mean, today's the 26th of January. Our indigenous culture has been here for sixty thousand years and in such a short amount of time we've managed to make such a huge mess. And I mean, in seeing that show last night, ... seeing embodied beautiful humans dancing together and feeling everyone else in that space, feeling their connection to spirit and our connection to spirit, it was complete harmony. And so I think dance matters now because if our society is so in our head and we are so rational and so disconnected from our bodies, then I think that if we kept coming back to our bodies and back to our hearts and back to that connection, then there's real hope for the future to save our world.

Follow Kate’s practice:

Website: kate-sherman.com

Photographers:

Image on the home page: Jun Ming