Audio transcript

Charlotte Twitchell

JOANNE KING: The dance team at the Arts Unit of the NSW Department of Education have produced this podcast as part of the 'Listen @ The Arts Unit' series. This podcast is produced on Gadigal and Cadigal land of the Eora nation. We pay our respect to the Traditional Custodians of the land with further acknowledgment of the many lands this podcast will be listened to across Australia. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, storytelling, music and dance, along with the people, hold the memories of Australia's traditions culture and hopes. Let us also acknowledge any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders and people in our presence today who guide us with their wisdom.

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ANNOUNCER: Listen @ The Arts Unit.

[upbeat music playing]

JOANNE KING: My name is Joanne King, and I am the dance performance officer at the Arts Unit for the NSW Department of Education. This episode, the hosts, Evie and Summer, spoke with the NSW Public School's Primary Dance Ensemble tutor, Charlotte Twitchell.

In 2016, Charlotte moved from Pennsylvania, USA, to Australia. Charlotte is an experienced performer, choreographer and teacher and currently works as a pilates instructor, choreographer, and for the past 3 years, as a tutor with the NSW Public School's Dance Ensemble.

Charlotte attended Indiana University completing a bachelor of science in kinesiology, majoring in dance, and is currently studying a bachelor of clinical science at Macquarie University. Through her teaching, Charlotte aims to provide awareness and confidence in students' own artistry and movement. During this episode, we learn more about Charlotte's experience in the dance industry and what it's like working with the NSW Public School's Primary Dance Ensemble. Thanks for tuning in.

SUMMER: Hi, my name is Summer, and I attend Bondi Beach Public School.

EVIE: Hi, my name is Evie, and I attend Bondi Beach Public School.

BOTH: Welcome our tutor, Charlotte Twitchell.

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: Hi, guys.

EVIE: How old were you when you decided to pursue dance as a career, and why?

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: I think I was about 11 years old when I was realising I was serious about dance and envisioning a career, because the school that I trained at was pre-professional. And I got into the upper level company at that age. And so it was clear to me that I could actually do it.

SUMMER: What inspires you to come up with the theme of choreography for the Arts Unit dancers?

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: It's hard to say where it comes from. Sometimes it's the music that I'm choosing. Sometimes it's current events. For the piece that I'm choreographing this year, I based it off of climate and climate change, and your guys's future in the world, because that's really relevant and important to me.

Sometimes it's a silly theme. Sometimes it's a serious theme.

[laughter]

But it's really just what I'm interested in. And so a lot of it has to do with sciencey themes and topics of interest to me.

SUMMER: How long have you been teaching at the Arts Unit?

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: I have to think about that one actually.

[laughter]

I think I started back in-- 2019 was when I was hired on. But then unfortunately, my first year was 2020.

EVIE: Oh, yeah, COVID.

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: I know, yeah, so there was a little bit of a hiccup starting off. So it's been about what, 3 years now that I've been here?

SUMMER: Can you tell us an interesting fact about yourself and your dancing career?

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: I think the coolest thing that I've done dancing-wise was when I studied abroad in Israel, and I got to work with Ohad Naharin and his dance company, Batsheva Dance Company. And we did his choreography and got to spend like 10 hours a day just dancing. And that was really, really cool.

SUMMER: That sounds fun.

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: Yeah, it was super fun.

SUMMER: So how old were you when you were in Israel, and was it hard to live without your family?

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: I was 20, 21. And at that point, I had done a fair few summer programs away from my family in America, so I was pretty used to it. But my family and I are really close, so it's kind of weird that I feel more comfortable travelling abroad and living abroad, because we are so close. I think if we weren't, I'd be a little bit more worried about it. But we have a great relationship, so we see each other for a couple of weeks and we're really happy, and then we don't have to see each other for a long time. And we're still the same people on the other side of it.

But it was a little bit hard. I did miss them a little bit. I still do. But they're visiting now, so I don't have to miss them right now.

[laughter]

SUMMER: What is it that you love about teaching dance at the NSW State Dance Ensemble?

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: Personally, my favourite thing is the kids, you guys. You guys are the best part of it.

[laughter]

SUMMER: Of course we are.

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: Of course you are.

[laughter]

Because you guys really want to be here. And what motivates me the best is seeing really enthusiastic, self-driven dancers who are creative minded and want to learn. That's really important.

EVIE: Have you had any major injuries during your career?

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: Yes, nothing crippling but definitely show stopping a few times. When I was doing lots of ballet, I had lots of stress fractures. And then I pulled my hamstring muscle over stretching one time, and that took a while to heal. It was a pretty nasty one. I think that's what actually started me getting into anatomy, too, because I was so injured. But the rest of it's been little things after those big ones.

SUMMER: When you come up with the choreography, how do you organise the spacing in different timings? Do you image you're in the audience, or like a dancer in the dance? How do you organise the spacing of everyone?

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: That's a good question, Summer. Oh my goodness. My brain tends to come up with a bird's eye view of floor patterning, so I kind of can see the above picture. And I work with dancers around the stage and where they're going to travel.

And then afterwards, after I've planned out how the floor patterns go and the travel patterns go, then I put in the vocabulary, like the dance moves. And a lot of times I'll use your guys's dance moves to create the phrases, so that it looks really nice, because you guys can dance your way the best, right? [laughs]

So me creating something really my style isn't going to be necessarily the best looking thing on you. But then I get to put you guys into little sections and make it look into the piece that I like to see personally, which is cool patterning.

EVIE: What is it that made you want to teach dance at the Arts Unit?

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: Well, I love that this place is driven towards the artistic side of dancing. It's really important for me as an artistic contemporary dancer to kind of keep that alive, so that we have both the competitive side of dancing and the artistic, non-competitive side both living symbiotically in the city. I think the Arts Unit is really, really useful for that, so you guys can pursue your dance career whichever way you want to and have all of the options at your feet, you know what I mean?

And the other thing that in the past and I hope continues in the future as well now that COVID'S over is the international kind of awareness, where you guys at this program get to have dance teachers and people coming in, guest teachers who are international to show you what's going on currently, because Australia is very insular sometimes, so we need a little bit of outside influence to bring about some new ideas, and just so you guys know what's going on in the world with dance, because there's a lot of options out there.

SUMMER: Your current mission is to provide a better awareness in performers as well as confidence in their own artistry and movement. Can you please tell us a little bit about how you can achieve your mission with aspiring young dance students who join the Arts Unit?

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: You're just nailing the questions.

[laughter]

Yes, so my tactics for emboldening artists-- I like to call you guys artists, because kids are really good artists-- is to facilitate as much as possible your understanding and to give you guys as much creative tasking as possible.

I think imposing my will upon you guys is not really helpful all the time. There's things like safety things that you need to know about, technical safety things. So we go over that stuff, so that you can feel safe in your dancing.

But then the rest of it should really be driven by you guys feeling like what you have to do and what you have to say as an artist is valuable. And so that's why we do things like improv, right? We do the tasking work in the choreography class, so that when we do choreography it's not just my stuff that I'm giving you, but it's you coming up with the phrases.

And I think those skills are super, super helpful, because if you do go into a contemporary dance company ever, that's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to know how to task work. And the director will expect you to understand what type of movement they want. And so if you're not used to doing that stuff, it can be really scary. So I'm giving you ahead of time, as early as possible.

EVIE: We do a lot of task work.

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: Yeah, we do.

EVIE: It's very fun.

[laughter]

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: You get to team work with your friends, too, which I think helps build relationships. Yeah, we want to have those relationships for as long as possible, because they help you in dance to know people.

EVIE: So this is a bit of a different question, but what activewear brands do you recommend to us as young dancers?

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: Well, in general, I think the ones that last the longest are really helpful, because you don't want something that's going to immediately wear and tear.

[laughter]

So probably a little bit nicer quality, things like Lorna Jane and lululemon and stuff like that. I would recommend typically staying away from bright, colourful things, because teachers like to look at lines. So you can do single block colours or just black or grey. And that's usually pretty helpful.

But yeah, I would stay away from-- I mean, I know Kmart can have some cool things. But I don't think the quality is super nice, might fall apart if you do a slide or 2. But those would be the ones I recommend, really.

EVIE: I recently got my new package, that I got a new dance package from the brand CosiG dancewear.

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: Oh, I've never heard of-- I'm not actually super familiar with Australian brands, because I grew up in the US. So I am diehard lululemon wearer slash aficionado. Are you an ambassador, Summer?

[laughter]

SUMMER: I'm wearing lululemon shorts right now.

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: They're just so comfy.

SUMMER: Yeah. This is also kind of a different question. But what is the funniest experience or moment that you've had during your time dancing?

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: Oh, another big question.

[laughter]

Well, with the dance company that one of our other tutors, Miss Angela Hamilton ran that I was part of here, the process with which we created pieces was similar to what we do in my class where it's task work. But we would all as a big group do it together.

And those rehearsals would end up with us rolling on the floor laughing super, super hard, because I don't know if you've ever met Miss Angela, but she's very goofy. So her ideas are very goofy. And we would get really silly with a lot of the things.

And so one of the latest ones that we had done before COVID was this tea party, where we had to come up with this movement phrase of silly tea gestures, like eating spaghetti, sipping the tea, spilling it on yourself, picking it up, eating something really fast and having your mouth too full. And we just kept cracking up over and over again, because it just was so silly. We couldn't keep track of what was going on, so that was pretty fun.

SUMMER: If you could talk to your 12-year-old self, what's something you would tell her?

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: I feel like my 12-year-old self was really scared in all classes I took. But I would probably tell her that what you're doing is a really good job. And the criticisms that you're getting from other people and that you're telling yourself are not true. You should be confident and just keep learning and keep your mind open and always try hard, but always know that you trying hard is enough, you know what I mean?

You're both in my piece. So let's maybe ask you guys, how have you been finding classes and choreography?

SUMMER: I really like it, because we get to add our own choreography or movements and work with other people from other schools that we've never danced with or met.

EVIE: Yeah, I like how we get to collaborate with our other friends. And also, I feel like Charlotte gives us challenges when we're dancing with her. And I find it really helpful.

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: Good, what part of it is helpful?

EVIE: Like when we get to make up our own steps, and you give us helpful tips.

CHARLOTTE TWITCHELL: Oh, good, I'm glad that it's helpful.

[laughter]

It's hard to know sometimes, because we just go so fast in all those things. So I'm a bit crazy.

[laughter]

I feel like all my brain is all over the place, but I'm glad that you're enjoying it.

JOANNE KING: Thanks for tuning in to 'Listen @ The Arts Unit', our series introducing the 2023 NSW Public Schools Dance Ensemble tutors.

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ANNOUNCER: For more information on our programs, explore our website at artsunit.nsw.edu.au. Background music licensed by Envato Elements. Copyright, State of NSW (Department of Education), 2023.