Joan Lazarus, co-founder of DanceArt Inc. and executive director of the WestWave Dance Festival, has begun a new adventure as the Executive Director at Perry Mansfield Performing Arts School & Camp.

Just less than year away from its centennial birthday, Perry Mansfield has a long history of providing young artists (grade 5-11) and pre-professionals (grades 11-college) with a unique opportunity to fully immerse themselves in dance, theater, and musical theater.

With public schools slashing budgets for the arts, now, more than ever, students need a space where they can put creativity into practice. Although she is no longer teaching, Lazarus hopes that students who attend Perry Mansfield will find inspiration in the amazing faculty who are providing instruction this summer.

You left the Bay Area to become the Executive Director of Perry Mansfield Performing Arts School & Camp. Please tell us about the program and how it is stands out from other performing arts programs. What do you hope students take away from their experiences here?

The basis of our program is the practice of creativity. So even though you will become a stupendous dancer, and have the opportunity to study with remarkable teachers in dance and theater if you come here, the real practice is one of creativity because there is an underlying belief that the practice itself, you know like the practice of yoga or the practice of dance, that creativity is a practice. That the practice of creativity leads people to a kind of belief that anything is possible, into a kind of sense of possibility. The underlying mission here is that people who have that frame of mind really become insightful and courageous human beings. So it’s about making better people, it’s not necessarily becoming a better dancer. That’s just a practice that can take you there. It’s kind of a big picture look at things.

And the students here, some of them are young, but some of them are in college, and in dance as you well know, that means that they’re actually already in their careers. You have a chance to really have an impact on people who may, just while they’re here, find out that they love to dance and they didn’t even know it because they just came to camp.

The pre-professionals who are coming here are having auditions all across the country to work with magnificent, magnificent artists and just immerse themselves in the practice of dancing, choreography …while they’re here, and even though they think of themselves as dancers and have been dancing professionally, some of them, they also have to take theater, they also have to sing, they also have to write. Of course you have to do the full circle of the curriculum. You have to be a person to.

What is your process for starting a new dance? What parts do music, choreography and theme play?

My practice for starting a new dance…it’s different every time. I mean there’s no formula, so different every time. You know, I believe there shouldn’t be a formula by the way. Or else it’s formulaic. I like to look at work that I know obviously is not a formula. You can tell people who start the same way every time can’t you? That doesn’t mean that I don’t like their dances, but I know what I’m going to see before I get there sometimes.

So I love seeing people, the same choreographer over many years, and not seeing that, that’s exciting to me. To realize that they’re still in their practice of creativity, they’re still experimenting. As opposed to, well this worked last time, let’s just do it with better costumes. So you know I think it’s different every time. I very often start with movement ‘cause I’m playing with it all the time, but its not a requirement.

Tell us about your past experience with Dance Anywhere®. Will you be participating again in 2013?

My favorite Dance Anywhere was… I just happened to be traveling to Japan to visit my sister who had been teaching there, so we go to dance in Japan. It was fun, you know I loved the concept that around the world everybody is dancing at the same…I think that’s really cool so that was a fun thing to just kinda feel hooked into that.
Probably, why not? Yay! Why not?

Do you think it is important to keep dance alive in the public mind through events like Dance Anywhere (or even Flash Mobs)?

Absolutely! I really believe that people you know, it’s like de-sensitivity training. People have a wariness around things they don’t understand. The more they see it and touch it, it just becomes part of the world they live in and the less they are afraid of it and the more they are likely to engage in it, you know? So absolutely, totally important. It’s why people like me are so saddened that there aren’t these types of classes in public schools anymore.

When I was younger we used to have all kinds of music programs and dance programs everywhere. And now when I go back to my hometown there’s nothing, they’re all gone.

Yes, I know and that’s my generations fault. It’s going to be your generation’s problem to fix that. Okay? Because we let it happen.

Hopefully we can fix it.

People who have children in the public schools, they don’t listen to people like me anymore, my kids are gone. You have to when your kids are in school, you have to say where’s the art program? And you just have to keep yelling at people until it happens.

To learn more about Perry Mansfield Performing Arts School visit http://perry-mansfield.org/programs/

You can learn more about upcoming events here: http://perry-mansfield.org/events/