Other Things
“If only you knew what I was doing four hours before this, how much art I was creating.”
Welcome to Other Things, an interview series where I talk to restaurant workers about the other things they spend their time doing. So many people I know lead double lives, waiting tables to fund their creative pursuits, often unbeknownst to coworkers and patrons. Working in hospitality often demands a sort of flattening of the self—we exist in service of the customer, as a gesture in a landscape, a momentary presence. In this environment, it can be difficult to feel connected to one’s creative practice and the version of the self who participates in it—the other things seem less real than the work that actually pays the bills. I wanted to give my friends and fellow servers, bartenders, etc. an opportunity to reveal themselves as real people with thoughts and interests and ambitions—to talk about the work that hospitality serves. Mostly I wanted to figure out how everyone else is doing this and when they find time to eat breakfast.
This week’s interview features my friend Emily, a dancer and server who I met a few years ago when we both worked at a Brooklyn wine bar. I was very excited to ask Emily about the body as a medium for both art and restaurant work, and also to catch up on some important industry gossip.
So the point of this is to sort of create a space where people can merge their work work and their creative work. So, to that end, do you want to just give an overview on your current job and what your creative work is?
Yeah, so I’ve worked in hospitality for a total of… Holy cow—8 ½ years. I’m currently serving at a restaurant in the lower East Side—it’s very easy, it doesn’t take a lot of brain power, so it’s kind of nice just to serve guests, take drink orders, clock out, and then be able to use a different part of my brain for my other work. There’s a lot of different terminology for it, but I consider myself a freelance dancer—meaning, I’m not with the union, I’m not with a management company, I don’t have a talent agent. I do a lot of improv work or in-studio exercise.
I would consider myself freelance, so that means I can... search for work or be hired and set my own rates and kind of make my own decisions about what I want to do with a project. I have more of an artistic opinion. When I’m not working on a project or not working on a show with others or for myself, I’m in the studio. I take class way too frequently, but I think it’s good because it keeps me in shape, but it also kind of puts me in a position where I’m surrounded by a dance community all the time, and I think that conversation really creates inspiration and makes connections that can foster future projects.
But when I’m not taking class, I’m also in the studio just doing improv, which means kind of navigating or researching different things, different movements. It’s like—I don’t know how to best describe improv, but it’s kind of like free writing, in a way—it’s really natural, and you kind of find a groove and create something out of this form of self-expression. I do that four days a week, even though I’d like to be able to do it more. But when you’re dancing so much and working in hospitality, you run on different levels of exhaustion. It’s nice to use two different parts of your brain at different times, but both careers are so physically demanding that I think that a lot of the times I have so much more in my brain than I’m not able to, like, articulate physically because I work in a restaurant four days out of the week. And I dance four days out of the week, and there aren’t eight days of the week, there’s only seven, so it kind of makes for a fun little balance.
But it makes it fun. Because then I’m always challenged in a different way. Like, whether it be someone’s food allergies on a Thursday night or trying to figure out how I can, like, make this thought, like, a show.
So how do you take care of your body so that you can work that much and also dance that much?
My schedule at my restaurant is Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Monday always is—I call it my housewife day. So it’s the one day that I do things to take care of myself. So I’ll go and take yoga or do a Pilates class. And then a lot of it’s just cleaning up my own personal space, getting groceries, doing laundry, having a night in. And that one day does a lot for me. I know that if I don’t have that, I get really overwhelmed. But a lot of the days, I’ll go into the studio a little bit earlier and and then go to work in the later afternoon.
In terms of taking care of myself, I don’t know if I’m the best at it, because it’s just—you never have enough time. I think that’s what I always like struggle with. I would love to stretch and I would love to ice my feet every day like I did when I was younger and I would love to do this and that, but mostly how I take care of myself is just, like, getting enough sleep. Or eating well—because we’re in an industry where food and alcohol are so easily accessible, I have to be a little bit more aware of the choices I’m making with those things, but the rest of it just can’t be as important. If I was able to dance seven days out of the week and just live off of that, I think I would conduct how I take care of my body a lot differently. ‘Cause there’d just be more time. You know what I mean?
I wear compression socks—that’s another big one. Highly recommend—it’s life-changing! Get on it. I should create a compression sock brand for service workers. That’s how I’m gonna make all my paychecks from here on out.
I know you sort of already said this, but can you tell me a bit about what it means to be “freelance” as a dancer? You’re taking classes, but then you’re also working on projects? With other people and also on your own?
I have a website where I can sort of advertise or use as a sort of outreach platform, a place where people can contact me. And I’ve had people write in and be like, “We would love for you for this, like, video shoot, or photo shoot or whatever.” And to be honest, a lot of freelance right now is either being part of a film or somebody’s photography portfolio, because that pays really well, oddly enough.
But in terms of shows, you get those opportunities via word of mouth—it’s all about how you network in the dance world. So if I wanted to be a part of a show, I would ask a few different people that I know who get work—unfortunately in this industry, it’s a lot of men who actually get this kind of work—and then follow those leads and see where it takes me.
I typically do more self-produced things because I just find it to be a little bit more aligned with what I like to do and how I like to control things. But freelance really depends on where people are at in their artistic career—I’m only transitioning back into the dance world after taking a year off. So the freelance world is very different than it was 3 years ago. It’s no longer people in the audience who are hiring; it’s more like the people teaching or taking classes. So that’s why I think taking class is so necessary—that’s where a lot of people who are creating these shows are. It almost feels like when you take class, it’s an audition. It’s no longer something that you can do for yourself, it’s no longer a part of your routine. But you have to make yourself really available and present in the dance scene, and that’s how it turns into someone being like, “Oh, I know Mel and she would be great for this piece—and I know she’s capable because she shows up to class every Wednesday.” But those conversations only happen if you’re within that ecosystem of people that are creating work.
And there are so many classes, and there is so much access to the dance world here, and being present in those communities is what has allowed freelance artists to find work. Like, there’s a bulletin board with ads for projects that need dancers. And you’re not necessarily going to be chosen for these things all the time, but being able to just get in a room and be seen proves you’re serious about managing your art and your time.
So you submit your materials and see if you get called for an audition. You’ll go, and there’ll be like 300 people be there. It’s this mass call. And you get three minutes of their time to show them what you can do. And then sometimes you get it, and sometimes you don’t, but I think the more times that you show up in a room like that, the easier it is to get work, because they’ll recognize you. And that’s the pro and con of being a freelancer—it’s all up to you. You get to choose your schedule, but you also have to be really adamant about showing up for yourself, which I think is the hardest part. It’s just like—I’m tired today, but, you know, no one is going to do this for you. So you have to continue to go to class and go to rehearsals, even though it doesn’t always feel fulfilling.
There are a lot of weeks where I’m like, I don’t understand how I’m gonna be fulfilled artistically if I’m the only one who’s driving this.
But then there will be weeks where I’m like, this is so great—I’m able to take class, and I’m able to research and dance on my own, I have a photo shoot on the horizon, and I’m doing all these things—and it feels great. In some ways I think it’s just like any job. The difference is that it’s just you doing it. Artists crave a lot of validation, and we don’t get it very often because the art world is so saturated, and with social media there is such easy access to so much art, and to capture someone’s attention for more than 10 seconds is really hard. So it’s like, if I’m freelancing and it’s just me doing all of this, how am I supposed to compete with people who have talent managers or are part of a union or have a whole team behind them?
I always play what it’d be like if I had it my way—if I had a manager to help me curate the opportunities I want, the rooms I want to be in, how would that be? But I don’t know, I kind of like working for myself. But I flip flop. It’s always a balancing act, and some weeks are worse than others. Sometimes I’m like, “Who is steering this fucking vehicle?!” And other times I’m like, “Don’t tell me what to do, I’ve got it!” You know what I mean?
Yeah, totally. You want to feel like there is some shape to this thing you’re trying to create, like you have some sort of trajectory. But it’s hard to create that on your own, and then often it just feels like you’re floating. How does working in a restaurant affect or interrupt your sense of having a through-line with your dance work? And then as a follow-up question, I’m interested in how dance and restaurant work influence one another.
On the days that I do both dance and serving, I find it really hard to have to be at work and not be able to continue whatever thought or process I was doing in the studio. The beauty of having studio time, at least for myself, is that I’m never repeating the same thought—I’m always investigating or moving in a way that feels really organic. And when you go to work, you’re asking the same seven questions to a thousand different people. Which is nice some days, but often it feels very repetitive and not super fulfilling. Like I’ll be in the studio for five hours and I’ll journal and improv and I’ll be sort of investigating what certain words mean to me, and then I get ready to go to work and I ask people about allergies, I explain the menu, I tell them about a cocktail, about food. And I can’t help but feel really far removed from what I was doing earlier that day. It feels almost like an alternate universe. Like I’m cosplaying somebody. And so I feel like I have to complete the thought during that time in the studio. Like, I have to have a purpose because once my time is up and I have to go to work, I can’t keep thinking about it because I won’t think about it the same way. Because I’m so far removed from that world.
Does that feel difficult to not have that freedom to just kind of explore, without any pressure?
I mean, if I could explore all day and make enough to sustain myself, I would.
But on the other hand, I work with a lot of other creative artists at the restaurant. No one else dances, but I work with two painters, and hearing about their processes is so informative and influences what I bring to the studio. But at work it is really really really hard to not feel like: “If only you knew what I was doing four hours before this, how much art I was creating.”
The problem with serving is that you’re catering to other people’s needs. And a lot of people don’t treat service people or servers with kindness or understanding—they don’t realize that we have autonomy outside of this job and if we had it our way, we probably wouldn’t be doing what we were doing to help you right now. So it feels a little demeaning and frustrating because I feel like I get so far creatively on one day and then I immediately have to shut it off.
But then again, if I’m having a really shit day dance-wise where I’m feeling really frustrated, it’s really nice to be able to switch it up. Sometimes it’s nice to go to work and just be like, fuck it—nothing else matters. I’m paying my rent.
So even though it sometimes interrupts my dancing work, having a consistent schedule at the restaurant is nice. That way my creative world is the only one that’s teeter-tottering. I need structure in a workplace because nothing else in my life is structured. That’s kind of the point of working in a restaurant—you want reliability, you want a paycheck, you want to know what your hours are. If I can’t do that, I might as well babysit or dog walk or something.
Yeah. I always think about restaurants as existing on one side, in this space that is so physical, so of the body—just the materiality of life—you’re eating, you’re among friends. And then art is this private space that’s not quite physical in the same way. But I’ve always sort of thought that dance complicates this binary. But you’re talking about dance as a way of thinking—can you say more about that?
So what I’ll say first is that dancing feels very different to a lot of people. The program I went to in San Francisco really pushed me to think about dance as play—we did a lot of improv work there, and I think, having come from a very classical background, it really split my brain in half—like, holy shit, there’s this whole other world where I have the power to manipulate my movement based on the way that I think or feel.
So my thought process affects how I manipulate my movements. I’ll journal before I start dancing—whatever’s on my brain, whether that be how I’m feeling about the day, or words that feel very like tactile for me, or puzzling over my emotions, or whatever. But then when I move, I’m not really thinking of anything. I’ll put on like blank music and it’s almost like a whiteboard—that’s how I imagine it. I write down one word and I move to that word. And my brain will create a spider web of, like—let’s say sun is the base word. Then I could move toward ray or yellow. If I’m not feeling those words, I can go toward something else entirely, like, say—garage. It becomes these different networks, these totally new thoughts, and that’s what changes my movements. Sometimes thinking of words related to touch does a lot—like soft, bouncy, fluffy, rigid. Or body parts—pinky, the back of your ear. It creates a different headspace, but I’m not thinking about how I want to move my body; I’m thinking about words, and those words translate to movement.
Do you feel like that way of moving is different from the way that your move through the world at work. Or even just walking around town?
I would like to think that I could translate the way that I improv and think into my everyday life, but honestly it doesn’t translate at all, because it’s so particular—I think what it is, is that you’re creating a safe space. Like, in the studio, I know that I’m in a container. If I were to have that sort of thinking in the real world, it would almost feel like I was having extreme ADHD or something. And people would be like, shut the hell up. It’s this kind of zigzagging, and it keeps me on my toes and it feels extremely present, but I don’t feel like I can do that in everyday life. I mean, especially with serving—you’re not really active in your thinking.
Yeah, it is interesting because it does feel like serving and working in restaurants is so technically “embodied.” And yet it is also very disembodied. When I’m serving, I’m just on autopilot. I’m really not thinking. Whereas, you’re saying that dance is totally involved in thinking and also in moving, how these two things work together.
Yeah, and it’s a completely different experience than the mundane actions that make up our work, like, when I’m serving, I always end up almost cutting people off, like I know what they’re going to say. I’ll say “you’re welcome,” before they even say, “thank you.” It becomes so anticipatory, like I know the next step already. And I think that’s what’s so nice about art or maybe about the kind of dancing that I do—you have to be so in tune with reality, and you’re gathering information as it happens in real time.
But that’s what feels so fun and exciting to me about improv—and also what makes it hard to create a show or project from that because it’s so organic and it’s hard to repeat it. And if you do, it won’t feel the same. With improv, I have to record myself because sometimes I don’t even really know what my body’s doing. It’s like you’re blacking out but also you’re just entirely in your body such that it almost feels like your body is another part of you that’s separate from you. Like, there’s no way I’m doing this with my body. But then that’s so hard to make a show that I can sell people on because, like, I don’t really have “a concept.” Some people are like: this is John, Mary, and Sue; John and Sue and together and then they have a child. But I don’t work like that.
Or I’m just so indecisive. Like, I never feel my ideas are concrete, and if I want to sell some sort of concept to someone, it has to feel really complete in my own head first. I think that’s probably why my creative process feels so chaotic—I’m just sort of all over the place as a human. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to do this show I’ve been thinking about for a while, and it was going to be a duet with a really dear friend of mine. But just finding the time to investigate what it would look like with someone else is really hard because I work in the service industry. They work as an assistant. You’re not only navigating your own schedule, you’re navigating a bunch of other people’s schedules as well. And also, like—we have a personal life outside of all this. You know what I mean? It just never ends.
Okay, one final question—my Substack was originally about food and eating and restaurants, and as a way to sort of connect things back to that original impulse, I like to ask people what they eat for breakfast. Do your days typically follow a certain schedule? And how does breakfast factor in?
So if it’s just a day that I work at the restaurant, I’ll get up, probably late morning, and the first thing I do is have water with lemon—people say it’s useless, but I think it works. I don’t know what works about it, but it works for me.
And then if I’m not dancing that day, I’ll probably have avocado toast or like an egg sandwich. And then I leave for work at three. If I’m dancing, I have to get up a lot earlier, so I usually get up around 7:45 or 8. And coffee is the first thing that I’ll have, followed by my lemon water. I won’t do a lot of carbs because they make me feel sort of sick, so I’ll do yogurt or fruit, and then I bring a bunch of snacks with me because I find that I get so much hungrier on the days I’m dancing. If I’m dancing and serving, I’ll dance for a shorter amount of time, come home, like, swallow a hard-boiled egg, and then go to work. So it’s kind of chaotic.
But it’s nice to have that first meal of the day as a way to sort of prepare my body for what I want it to do that day. Like, if I’m dancing I want to feel light and airy, so I’ll have almonds, dried mangoes, lots of protein; whereas if I’m working, I need more carbs for energy. And if I’m at work, I’ll just eat whatever, like potato chips or fries, I don’t give a shit—I should, but I don’t. It’s there, you know?
So I have structure, but not really; I have a schedule, but not really. Today, if I hadn’t come here, I’d probably have worked on my website or tried to read a book to generate ideas or looked at different shows or performances. If I feel like I have a cohesive or complete thing that I want to use to apply for stuff, then I’d work on that. But I have found over the years that if I put pressure on myself to hit certain markers based on everyone else’s idea of success, I obliterate myself. So I just try to let it all kind of ebb and flow.
