A promotion is generally reason to celebrate, yet sometimes the satisfaction needs a little tempering.
For Melbourne based dancer, and 2013 Green Room nominee, Jayden Hicks, his new role as Artistic Director and Head of Dance at the academy started by his longtime friend and collaborator, Paul Malek, has come at a cost. In short, he is replacing his friend, who has had to step back for health reasons.
“He’s still involved, he’s still the owner, but he’s just had to hand over the operational side,” Hicks reveals. “I’ve been very much a part of everything and building the whole thing with Paul. We’re not unaligned in our mission, so I’m not coming in to turn it upside down, but just bring a different approach.”
The academy in question, Transit Dance, grew out of Malek’s earlier performance based work with Project Y and Collaboration The Project. Since opening its doors in 2015, Transit has evolved into a renowned nationally accredited provider of both Diploma level courses and a dedicated High School stream. From their Brunswick campus, they train and mentor roughly 150 enthusiastic students a year.
It’s a formula that has worked well, and so the change of on-site leadership is intended more as evolution than revolution. Yet, as Hicks says, “I’m very fortunate they have moved this role into an indefinite position; so I am able to move things into a new era. I’ve been given permission to do with it as I will.”
The immediate challenge for Hicks (and from a whole-of-business perspective), is to stay energised and nimble. As a decade old established brand, Transit Dance finds itself at a point where torpor and complacency could set in. We often see this with businesses as they move beyond the initial set-up phase; energy and motivation can drop and things can start getting stale.
However, as a training provider in the ultra-competitive, hyper-fluid arts sector, the company can ill afford to tread water or go into cookie cutter mode, and has no plans to do so.
“We never look at one year as being a replica of the last,” the new AD emphasises. “We’re always thinking: what’s the most important, the most relevant? Because the industry itself is changing rapidly. It’s the nature of the arts. Different things become trendy or important; so we’re always looking at those things and adapting our training model.”
Like educational institutions everywhere, Transit Dance operates in a world where the future of the labour market is increasingly uncertain. “You have to be ahead, because you need to train people not for what’s happening right now but for what’s going to be when they graduate,” Hicks points out. ”You’re literally always looking at what are the newest trends coming in, the newest expectations, and that’s what you try and train them for.”
For instance, as we contemplate what AI might mean for us economically and socially (and perhaps existentially), and we try to imagine what will survive its disruptive impact, and in what form, we could be excused for a degree of pessimism. But not in the arts. Or so Hicks argues.
“The thing we can hold onto is that art is not really replaceable by AI,” he says. “It’s mimicable but not replaceable. What we create with live performance, and by being human minds making human connections through storytelling, cannot be taken over by technology. If there’s anything we can take from the world evolving so quickly in that respect, it’s that we’re sitting somewhere that is really grounding. In a way, it’s the crux of humanity — storytelling.”
At the dance school level, he adds, there is little reason for technophobic overreaction. “We’re the ones with the creative minds to figure out how to make this new thing feel included; and we’re not against it. We’re in a place to not let it scare us…So, how do we use this tool?”
A similar pragmatism is embedded in the Transit approach, and from there it flows into the way students are mentored. As Hicks explains, “At the end of the day, if we start thinking as both artists and businesspeople, because they need to somewhat coexist, then we can be, like ‘Yes, I’m an artist and I have skills I can offer, but I’m also a professional who knows how to create my own business and my own opportunities with the skills I have.’ Most of the people who are now choreographers or directors or the people putting on shows just started out doing the thing they’re good at, but from a different perspective. Not just being a performer.”
Fortunately, dance offers a diverse ecosystem, one that Hicks himself is thankful for. “That’s how I navigate my career. I work here as a lighting designer, stage manager, I do the live sound and venue management. My whole goal when I was training was, ‘I don’t care what I do in dance, so long as I’m in it.’”
Now that he finds himself leading a renowned academy, his job is to turn all that experience into practical outcomes for both Transit Dance and the young dancers in its care. “It’s about not relying on the fact that we’ve done it before and we could just get through the year. It’s always about adapting and being creative,” Hicks affirms. “And now that I’m in the position to decide whether or not we do certain things, it’s going to be exciting!”
Having been with the school since 2015, Hicks is ready to choreograph its next steps. And maybe dance them, too.
By Paul Ransom of Dance Informa.
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