Stop & Talk

Singer 0:00
Stop, talk to me.

Grant Oliphant 0:10
Okay. Crystal,

Crystal Page 0:12
hi grant, how are we today?

Grant Oliphant 0:13
We are good. I think, yeah, I know we have a really interesting conversation today with Molly Glynn Puryear, who is the head of Malashock Dance Company, and this conversation is going to be a lot of fun. I think we're going to talk a lot about their work with our healing through arts and nature work, and we're going to get some insights into dance. You and I are not actually going to do any interpretive dance.

Crystal Page 0:48
Come on,

Grant Oliphant 0:49
maybe later,

Crystal Page 0:49
a little bit,

Grant Oliphant 0:50
maybe later, maybe later. Yeah, I think this Molly's, uh, Molly really brings an interesting perspective to some of the work we're doing.

Crystal Page 0:59
Yeah, I met Molly on the day we announced the healing through the arts and nature grants. And just the way in which she explains neuro dance and all these things that you'll jump into is not only insightful, but it makes a lot of sense. So I'm looking forward to hearing the full conversation

Grant Oliphant 1:15
And just so everybody knows. And for those who aren't familiar with it, the Healing Through Arts and Nature. Initiative that the foundation has done has launched, is taking a hard look, with money behind it, at how mental health, particularly with youth, is improved through exposure to the arts and to nature, and how they actually both those things help with wellness in general, and there's so much evidence behind it, but I it was just such a pleasure to launch that line of work and then to get to work with organizations like Molly's, who are really experimenting with how to put that thought into action.

Crystal Page 1:58
Shall we dive in?

Grant Oliphant 2:00
I think we should,

Crystal Page 2:01
Okay, see you on the other side.

Grant Oliphant 2:02
All right. All right. Molly Puryear, thank you so much for joining me.

Molly Puryear 2:09
Thanks for having me.

Grant Oliphant 2:10
This is, this is going to be a fun conversation. I'm going to confess up front that I am a very nervous dancer. Can't dance, so hopefully you're going to help me get over that by the end, by the end of this conversation.

Molly Puryear 2:26
Definitely my advice to you is that humans have always danced, and humans will always dance. It's just part of our DNA

Grant Oliphant 2:33
Have humans always been embarrassed?

Molly Puryear 2:34
Yes,

Grant Oliphant 2:35
okay. All right, good. All right. So let's talk about this extraordinary work that you're doing, and let's start with neuro dance. Tell us what that even means and what Malashock is working on.

Molly Puryear 2:53
SD Neurodance is an incredible program that is working with folks that are living with certain diseases like CP or sclerotic diseases like ALS, stroke victims that are in recovery, Parkinson's disease, and we are addressing the folks who are living with those diseases, as well as their caretakers and their loved ones and families to provide opportunities through dance for them to reconnect not only with their body, but also redefine the connection between the relationships. Oftentimes, what we've noticed is that folks really lose their predefined relationship. So as someone's body starts to deteriorate, most of the interaction becomes very clinical, and we lose these moments of joy. And so thanks to the incredible program manager who really dreamed this up. Her name is Lexii Alcaraz, who is a movement artist and a physical therapist who has an incredible personal story that launched the dream of this project. We have, as an institution, Malashock dance, been able to support this work because of the healing through the arts grant.

Grant Oliphant 4:21
So tell us a little bit about Lexii's personal story, because I know that's important in terms of how this came about.

Molly Puryear 4:29
So it's really a beautiful, full circle situation. So Lexii, I happen to be her very first dance teacher.

Grant Oliphant 4:38
Oh, okay,

Molly Puryear 4:39
that's where we started our journey together.

Grant Oliphant 4:42
So she was how old? When you

Molly Puryear 4:44
she was a teenager, yeah, and her father passed away of ALS, and some of her favorite moments of connection with him during what was a very difficult and fast deterioration were the memories of dancing with him. So as a physical therapist and a dancer, she was able to, yes, be giving him therapies at home, but she was infusing music and dance, and her sister was engaged, and so she led the family in these interactions with his limited mobility, and then learning how to use his his standing wheelchair to learn how to dance. So she and her sister got to dance with their dad at her wedding before he passed.

Grant Oliphant 5:36
Oh, my God.

Molly Puryear 5:37
So she knew in that moment that this was an experience she needed to share. This was really the culmination of all of her passions, all of her talents, and this really beautiful, deep, profound moment.

Grant Oliphant 5:50
So did she come to you and say, hey, I want to do this.

Molly Puryear 5:53
So she came to me we were looking at the Healing Through the Arts grant, because Malashock dance had been doing some work with individuals with cognitive disabilities, and we've been working on redefining our programs through these very growth initiative words. So cultivate and seed are some of the names of our programs, and our artistic director, Christopher Morgan and I started talking one day about growth is often the roots underground, and it's about deepening your work, and that's also growth. And when Lexi came and proposed working with these very specific conditions and incorporating physical therapists and the neuroscience and lots of scientific research on how dance and movement can be beneficial, we said this is the perfect definition of deepening our practice in making dance an inclusive environment where maybe the most unlikely folks are going to benefit from dance. So when she came and said, This is my dream program, I said, we have a grant that would really be perfect for this. And so we started planning and working to kind of dream up what this program could be. And that's how it started

Grant Oliphant 7:13
Did you did you have any sense for what the benefits could be for participants?

Molly Puryear 7:28
There's a lot of research done on Parkinson's disease. So Dance for PD is a really well known organization with very codified classwork and trainings. There's a lot of research on how beneficial dance can be really as as sort of a therapy, and there's a lot of deep work that's done in expressive arts therapy, but this particular program is more focused on the relationship building between family members and folks that are living with these diseases. So it's really about finding a pathway to reconnect and find joy and movement outside of a very clinical therapeutic session. So we knew the benefits were there as the foundation, and then we wanted to explore the really qualitative aspect of what this work could do.

Grant Oliphant 8:25
You know, I'm thinking about what the types of conditions that you you mentioned, mean in terms of a person's relationship to their body, and certainly with ALS, what I've heard from ALS patients is they begin to feel disconnected or from their body and lose control. Obviously. How does dance help deal with that?

Molly Puryear 8:54
There's a few different things that that I've learned I had the benefit of going through the 24 hours of training that we provide to our instructors and the physical therapists. Some of the things that I've learned were about the differences, let's say, between someone who has cerebral palsy, this is the body they've known their entire life, right? So they're very comfortable. They know what to expect. They know their limits. They know they're used to being sort of pushed, and what that means when we work with, let's say, someone who has a spinal cord injury, that's a really traumatic, abrupt,

Grant Oliphant 9:29
alien experience, right?

Molly Puryear 9:31
And so in order for dance to really enter the picture,

Molly Puryear 9:36
it's really about exploring what your body can do, as opposed to focusing on the limitations or what's what's deteriorating. It's really about if we can find and define ways that we can lead a dance class listen to music. We all know that music has such a beautiful emotional immediate effect on our mood. And so do things like partnering, mirroring, making eye contact, touching, dance really facilitates this safety and a safe space for folks to explore different types of music, but setting it to rhythm, moving like I said, in unison, really creates cohesion. And one of my favorite things that I learned a long time ago was there was a study done with when armies March, heartbeats start to sync.

Grant Oliphant 10:37
Oh, yeah, right.

Molly Puryear 10:38
And so there is even a physiological sense of connection in the room that happens, and I think that's why dance studios are so sacred and amazing and really inherently build community in such a special way.

Molly Puryear 10:52
So to be able to invite folks into that magic that quote, unquote, dancers have experienced their whole life is really cool.

Grant Oliphant 11:01
I am delighted. We're doing this with a video component. I normally don't say that because it like, turns radio into TV, but the reason I love it in this context is because people can see how you glow when you talk about this, and the sparkle in your eyes, which is infectious, you know, it's, it's, it's wonderful to be around. And I'm looking at, you know, one of the quotes that one of the participants in neuro dance said, that I feel at home in my body. I'm curious. No wonder you have that glow, no wonder you you feel the way that you do. Is that a typical reaction? What have been some of the types of reactions that you've heard from, from folks who are engaging this.

Molly Puryear 11:46
Yeah, it is a typical reaction. People have entered the class with apprehension, right? So, as you mentioned, Grant, right? The the sort of embarrassment, or

Grant Oliphant 11:59
did mention that

Molly Puryear 12:00
it's vulnerable. It's extremely vulnerable, even for professional dancers,

Molly Puryear 12:05
dance is vulnerable because it's not a piece of art that you hang up and look over here and here it is. It is you right, that you're presenting. And so it's really incredible to see just that shift in comfort level with coming in being unsure. What am I going to experience? Am I going to feel dumb, or is everybody going to know what to do and I don't know what to do? All those things are very normal. And then at the end of class, people are like, I feel so good. My mood has changed, and so we're measuring some of those qualitative things about people's moods being uplifted, like I said, even just the taking the time and creating the space to have eye contact that is fun and meaningful. And you're sharing this moment with your caretaker, who is normally very clinical with you or with a spouse or a child. Those are the things that people are reacting to emotionally. And then, you know, some of the participants are just like, I feel really energized. It was the right pace. It wasn't exhausting. It was, it was energizing for me. So those are some of the reactions that we get.

Grant Oliphant 13:17
You know, it's funny, on the day we announced the the launch of our Healing Through Arts and Nature program. Yeah, a group of us were at a one particular location, not the one where you were, but we ended up having as a group to dance. And yeah, it took a while for all of us, me to participate, but the mood of the room afterwards was extraordinary. Was like completely transformed, and everybody had a smile on their face and and yet there is a feel forgive the term an art to that you're you're blending not just the art form, but you're bringing in some clinical science and some therapeutic science. How difficult was it to achieve the right balance of those disciplines for a structured program?

Molly Puryear 14:17
That's a great question. I think Lexii because it's so personal to her, and through our vetting of the teaching artists, which are the dance teachers that are leading the program, as well as knowing the physical therapists who were going to join the program, helped create that balance, because the physical therapists were also that was another sort of unexpected experience that I had during the training, is the physical therapists were having aha moments, yeah, that oh, we're get, Oh, that's great. This is, this is something very similar to what we would do in therapy, but setting it to music, or clapping a rhythm along with it, or speeding up the tempo. Those are dance concepts that they immediately notice they could apply and and make it a little bit more interesting and fun. So it's, it's really the balance, I think, is because we have the right people and that we went through the right training to fill the gaps. We knew that the dance teaching artists were not all of a sudden going to be neuro neuroscientists and physical therapists, and that the physical therapists were not going to be professional dancers. But if we got everybody in the same room for enough time and built that trust and provided the right type of knowledge, it created an even playing field where we could prioritize the goal of the program,

Grant Oliphant 15:40
the funding from Prebys for the healing through arts and nature initiative, important in terms of Malashock's evolution in this work?

Molly Puryear 15:51
critical. Critical, absolutely, the specificity, I think, of the grant and the research that went in on to the PrebysFoundation's credit, to seeing this as a unique need and that the arts can fill some of these gaps is really what we needed to inspire us, like I said, to deepen the work that we were doing. The grant that we received was $65,000 that's significant to a mid size organization like ours, and allowed us to do a very thorough and comprehensive, you know, pre research training, making sure everyone's paid well, actually, you know, providing the classes, renting space with a wonderful partner, which Is monarch school, the chrysalis center down in Barrio Logan. So we're using their space, which is extremely accessible. So the grant really allowed us to cover all of those aspects, and then also we're doing a documentary on the process. So we have a fantastic videographer based in Los Angeles, who is also an RN and an artist, and so again, sort of like the right people in the mix, this feels like a passion project, but everyone's being taken care of, and that's that's made this so special. And for Malashock to be able to deepen this type of work, we've gone through quite a transition organizationally over the past few years. So this this really allowed us to kind of walk the walk we've been talking about wanting to do this type of work for a really long time. So getting this grant really allowed us to kick this off and with restrictions in funding and kind of the climate that we're in right now, arts organizations are going to start to need to look outside of just arts funding and look into health and human services and how the arts are affecting folks in different ways. So it's also a good highlight on that.

Grant Oliphant 17:57
You know, can I say, and you're very kind to say $65,000 is significant for a mid sized organization. I understand that. But everything you just described is an extraordinary amount of work. And you know, you mentioned the times we're in, in the climate we're in, I just would point to our listeners, to all the work that's being done for an organization to adapt to a new opportunity or challenge, which is something I think that is unique to the nonprofit sector, where we see this kind of adaptation. And willing to dive in, you're doing a lot for that $65,000 so I just want to honor that.

Molly Puryear 18:43
Thank you.

Grant Oliphant 18:45
Tell us a little bit more about malashock so that we understand the organization and how you came into this leadership and what motivated you personally.

Molly Puryear 18:58
Yeah, so /malashock was founded in 1988 by John Malashock, our founder and its primary impetus was to be a professional dance company and

Grant Oliphant 19:10
kind of a traditional view,

Molly Puryear 19:11
very traditional and to support John Malashock artistic vision and art as the organization evolved and grew. Kind of the second big landmark was moving into our space and liberty station, and that was in 2006 and that was right around the time that I joined the organization. And because we had a home space and a studio, we were allowed to start really building education programs. And I was in the arts education space. I had been teaching and managing a private studio, and it was I was picking up these gigs on the side to go out and do outreach in different communities through other organizations, Malashock being one of them. So they had hired me to do program in Balboa Park for fifth graders that were coming, and it was a beautiful program, and I loved it so much. And I really felt like this is this is what dance can do, right? More than sequins and tutus, that's all fun, but there's really

Molly Puryear 20:12
nothing against sequins and tutus

Molly Puryear 20:14
but really that was that was hitting home for me and igniting my my passion with a dance degree, it was like I didn't even realize there was this whole other scope of work that could be done outside performing and teaching. And it really was about community building. And so I was just thrilled when Malashok started to build education programs in the school, and I said, Pick me. Let me get a full time position, and let go of all of this gig work and just focus in this place where I felt so supported and connected. And John was such an incredible is such an incredible leader and a wonderful mentor to me. So I was able to take that position. I became managing director, and then John Malashock was awarded a paid sabbatical by the wonderful Fieldstone Foundation. And when that happened, he was gone from the organization for about four months, and I had this really cool, unique opportunity to step into the shoes of Executive Director, knowing that, hey, it's only four months. I'm not going to lose my job if I fail. Let's see how this goes. What a great, cool opportunity, right? It was like a low risk step in, and I loved it. And when John came back, he said, I don't want to do any of that anymore. And I said, Great, I do. So then I was promoted to executive director. Worked with the board through our first or our third big milestone, which was John retiring, and us really re defining the vision and the mission of malashock dance without John Malashock, and we hired Christopher K Morgan, January of 2024 and he has been just an incredible partner and an artistic leader for us. So the organization is working in the education space, both through our school at Liberty station, in in partnership with schools throughout San Diego, in community with things like neuro dance, and then also in the professional development space. So finding the gaps for

Grant Oliphant 22:32
say more about that. What is that

Molly Puryear 22:34
it's so important we've spent a lot of time exploring, and it's wonderful to have Christopher, sort of as an outside I come into the San Diego dance ecosystem, and we think of it as scaffolding, and where are there steps missing from an artist who may have great experience and great talent but can't afford to go to college? What? What can we do to fill that gap once you've created work, and have your own artistic vision, and you want to produce work. How do you do things like build your portfolio, write an artist statement, apply for grants, understanding what funding is. So we're filling those through all sorts of different workshops, and then we're doing things like space residencies. And I know you're well aware that venue in space is

Grant Oliphant 23:21
an issue,

Molly Puryear 23:22
an issue, and so even just giving our space to artists this year, three different artists had two weeks of residency in our space to create and really do whatever they needed to do. But just have the luxury of having that space was so fulfilling for the artists and and for us as an organization to just see what talent is thriving just underneath the surface, and our organization, under our new vision, is really there to be a platform for those folks.

Grant Oliphant 23:55
Yeah, you know, I'm struck in listening to you that that transition, and it's interesting because you did it kind of on the heels of COVID.

Grant Oliphant 24:03
But that transition from being a founder led organization for of long standing to a new leader and a new set of priorities is one where organizations very often fall apart, and how did you not fall apart during that time?

Molly Puryear 24:27
What a great question when we started, when we took our time, we took our time and we engaged every type of stakeholder that we could imagine, from donors to students and have youth voices in the mix, to parents to patrons, to new folks to old, you know, donors who had been just purely John Malashock fans and really had a wonderful amount of board engagement as well and board leadership around really seeing how the community defines male shock dance and the work we do, and then taking it from there to say, Okay, if this is where we are, then where do we want to be? What's important to us? And we went through a long process. It took us about three years to really figure out where we are, where we want to be, and what those steps are doing that work before we even started a call or any of that was critical. I think it allowed everybody to have buy in and feel like their voice was heard and that they're part of the new organization, as opposed to we're a new organization, now get on board. Also just the the grace and the readiness of John Malashock. It's emotional. It's not like a another job where you quit and somebody takes your position. It's just not. It's if, if you're not John Malashock of Malashock dance, who are you? That's a really big sort of existential question for him, and so allowing the space and the time and the care to support him as an individual, as a human, also is really, really critical,

Grant Oliphant 26:13
you know, I forgive me, but I keep thinking as I'm listening to you talk about that, that if I'm sitting, you know, if, if if I were sitting with John Malashock, asking him what his vision is, you know, sort of like the movie Being John Malkovich. You know, it's like, I'm John Malashock. That's what I need to be. You're not that. And, and, and you went through this process to think through what the organization needs to be in the post era of of him. So what emerges, you know, as you talk to people about, here's what we are today, what is, what are the key ingredients of being Malashock today?

Molly Puryear 26:57
I feel like, really, it does come back to our mission. We want to really let people understand that dance is a critical part of the human experience. It, yes, can seem performative, but it's part of what it is to be human, to dance, to enjoy dance, to participate it, in it in many different ways. And so to me, it's really what has emerged through this is making dance accessible to anyone who wants to access it.

Grant Oliphant 27:35
And that's much more of that experiential component.

Molly Puryear 27:38
It's much more of the experiential component, component. And then it's also, we always use this vision of a triangle. And Christopher Morgan had sort of this dawned on him that he's, you know, this, this triangle, these three legs, you can rotate it, but it's always interdependent. And one one side falls, and the whole thing collapses. And so we think of education, community and performance and our company as those three legs, and that that really is what emerged in its most elegant, simple form.

Grant Oliphant 28:17
So I I want to press you a little bit on your personal connection to this work, because there is such passion in you when you talk about it. And you know, I think part of what I want to ask you is to make the case for why dance matters. You know, we're living in this very cynical era where the arts are, I think, under threat and under question and under scrutiny all the time. Help our audience understand why dance matters, and then tell me why it matters to you so much.

Molly Puryear 28:53
Dance has been part of my life in every phase that I've gone through. So I took my first dance class at three years old. So it's I don't know life without dance in a certain way. And I love visual art, I love theater, I love music, I love all of those things.

Molly Puryear 29:12
But there is this kinesthetic, human, unique, genuine component to dance that I think, gets to the soul of who a person is and allows them to express themselves and to experience something that is so unique. Dance is so ethereal and so fleeting. There is there are never two performances that are the same, and there are never two audience members that have the same experience. It's so personal and so vital and so effective. It allows us to connect to a human being on stage who is so vulnerable, right, right? And it's. Awe inspiring to watch what people do. It's an escape, right? It can take us out of our lives, and it can be performed in all different environments, right? So you see something unexpected, some site specific improv happening in a park. And, you know, we just did the San Diego airport residency last year, and to see people's surprise as they're walking through the airport and our company is dancing. You know, it's, it's storytelling that completely expands over language restrictions or differences. So it's to me, that's really why dance centers me so much and inspires me so much. I've seen children absolutely transform and become empowered.

Molly Puryear 30:51
There's nothing more beautiful than seeing a child who is proud of themselves, right? If you just envision that, it's so moving, and I want adults to have that experience, right? One of the things that we were discussing earlier, we unlearn joy as we get older and we stop taking risks and trying new things and be vulnerable. And dance provides this, this great opportunity for us to get back to our natural state and and enjoy the humanity that that we are, and I think that's why it's so important as an art form. It's the hardest to fund. It's the most underrepresented right now. It's the poorest attended of all of the professional performing arts. So we do need people to show up. When people say, Oh, it's such a challenging time. What's something I can do? Obviously, donate, but show up and let performers know that you still care. That's that keeps us going, right, all of us who are working so hard.

Grant Oliphant 31:03
I'm so glad you said that, because I think, I think sometimes we undervalue the way we can contribute just by being present and expressing support through our presence and our attendance. It's a lovely thought. So thank you for contributing, adding, adding that as well. I am really taken with this phrase you used a moment ago about we unlearn joy, and I think we do. I mean, I think it's part of becoming an adult as you you stop coloring outside the lines, you stop thinking you can be an artist, you stop thinking you can write or whatever it may be, and you start feeling the pressure of social expectation and and part of joy, I think, is stepping out of outside of all of that. Do you find that this is something that you you really think you unleash in not only the participants in the dance, but also the people who attend?

Molly Puryear 32:57
I do and sometimes it's sometimes it's not just joy, right? Sometimes it's it's also courage. It's stepping into something that's unknown and learning something new about yourself. It's a really interesting conversation over a cup of coffee or on the drive home that you never would have had with your partner, whether you agree or disagree or about about the work that you just saw. It's it's a wonderful catalyst for conversation and thought and reflection.

Grant Oliphant 33:32
That's great. So speaking of unlearning joy, I I want to touch on the federal cuts that are happening around the arts, and while I know malashock has been very good about managing its resources and that, I think this is right, that you're minimally affected by the cuts that you've seen at least so far, but do the cuts to the broader arts arena affect you in other ways. Are you beginning to feel the pinch in any way?

Molly Puryear 34:05
Yeah, we are minimally affected as an organization, but like I said, a lot of the work that we're doing is focused on being a platform, especially for underrepresented artists and communities. Those are the folks that are going to bear the brunt of these first cuts. So fellowships for individual artists and small grants like the challenge America grant, those being taken away, the primary recipients of those grants are marginalized communities and underrepresented artists. So in terms of our dance ecosystem in San Diego, we, the bulk of the dancers and the artists and the working individuals are are really independent artists. There are only a few dance organizations that are well funded in San Diego and that can hire dancers with meaningful wages and jobs. So in that sense, it creates more pressure on institutions like us, with our very limited resources and a small to mid size organization to step in and start filling those gaps and make sure that those artists aren't forgotten in the process, because what they have to say right now is so critically important.

Grant Oliphant 35:29
Are you? Are you worried about any of their voices being silenced for lack of resources?

Molly Puryear 35:35
Yes, always. I think it was something we were that we're all very aware of, especially in just the art form of dance, we are still struggling against, sort of the Eurocentric patriarchal hierarchy that ballet and modern dance are at the top, and hip hop or street dance is something else for someone else. And so I think the art form of dance on the national scene has been doing a lot of work to change that trajectory and to change people's opinions. And I even see presenting organizations bringing in much more diverse companies than they used to. So I am afraid that some of that is going to start to deteriorate.

Grant Oliphant 36:28
How do you try and talk to people about why this isn't either or, you know, I think what's so interesting about the national conversation on this is that it tends to cast anything that isn't the traditional art forms, although I think art in general is being targeted, but anything that isn't traditional as being outside the norm somehow. And I think what I hear you embracing is an all of the above approach to celebrating all the many ways we are. And why do you think that we're, we're seeing this destructive conversation about either or,

Molly Puryear 37:08
I think it's symbolic. Things like cutting the NEA from a federal government, it is such a minuscule drop in the bucket, right? It's, it's sending a message. It's symbolic. When these things are put on the chopping block, and it's it's saying the arts are not valuable. This is fluff. This doesn't need to be important. And so I think that creates an environment where people go to the binary of, it's all or nothing. I was so inspired by Dr Rosario Jackson.

Grant Oliphant 37:44
You were at her. I'm sorry I cut you off. I know you attended her when, when we when she was in town to to speak in San Diego. You were inspired by what she had to say.

Molly Puryear 37:59
Yeah, and her, her real focus on artful living really spoke to me, because if we're going to be nimble and flexible and survive and thrive, which we're really good at, the nonprofit sector, but especially the arts, as

Grant Oliphant 38:20
evidenced by all you can do for a $65,000 grant.

Molly Puryear 38:23
Yes, that may be something we really need to dig into and hang on to, that we may be sneaking art into people's lives and making it part of the norm versus we're going to do really giant productions that are really well funded, there may need to be some of that shifting, but never forgetting that artful lives make happy people and make engaged communities work

Grant Oliphant 38:56
before we come full circle and Talk about that, which I think really connects to the mental health work that you're doing through neuro dance. What do you say to purists who who say, Look, that's great, but dance is about dance and putting on productions and having people come and watching the artistry at its at its apex of performance. How do you help them come to grips with the idea that maybe it's also about artful living,

Molly Puryear 39:29
that it's a yes and yeah and I always, I always say to anyone who, oh, dance isn't for me, or I, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't come see a production. You could probably name a bunch of people in your life that took dance classes. It's there. It's in, it's in your world. It's it's a part of you know, every little girls, you know, it's somewhere in their arc wanting to dance or dance around the living room. It's everyone who's ever. On the hokey pokey and laughed at a wedding. It's there. You may just not recognize it. And I think it goes the other way, folks who are so and I think it is absolutely a yes. And the talent and dedication and culture of professional dancers is incredible. It's so inspiring. I love to be around it. I love to see it. But if we really want to keep the art form going, we have to work backwards, right? We have to start with with community, with honoring traditional dance, right, and understanding the roots of dance and where they come from, and really up just lifting up all the different ways that art affects communities individuals, and that it is an inherent part of bonding, and it's a part of all of our cultural celebrations. So it has to be all of those things in order to create a healthy ecosystem. I love the definition that culture is just a container in which things grow, whether that's a petri dish, right? Yeah, and so we have to create that container, yeah,

Grant Oliphant 41:13
fantastic. So let's do bring this full circle and think about Dr Maria Rosario Jackson's notion of artful living, which you've spoken to so well just now, and bringing it back to community well being and mental health. What do you hope people will take away from this conversation in terms of thinking about the art form that you celebrate differently.

Molly Puryear 41:44
I hope that people have an aha moment somewhere in there that that they have connected with dance and been affected by dance. It may not be on the surface. You may not realize it, but I hope that people walk away with some personal example or Aha, of maybe a different way of approaching the art form. When you go into a theater, you don't have to get it, quote, unquote, you just have to witness it and be there and let it affect you and be open to it and have a conversation about compare and contrast what you liked and what you didn't like. That's okay, but you're going to learn something about yourself as you explore that notion. And it is a critical part, I think, from from my own personal experience, I know that it has affected me in so many different ways, like I said as a kid, letting me be wild and get all my energy out, and it was athletic and it was expressive as an adolescent, grounding me, helping me to stay on a really good routine schedule, and making incredible friends. It's given me mentors that have lasted a lifetime. Getting a degree opened up all sorts of different possibilities, and then, of course, working in the arts, education and in the management space has allowed me, I get to work with the coolest people every single day of my life

Grant Oliphant 43:07
Well, I usually say I get to but okay,

Molly Puryear 43:09
well, we might have some overlap there, but really it is just such a fulfilling and meaningful experience to me. Personally, I want other people to walk away knowing that they they can have those experiences too,

Grant Oliphant 43:25
which I think is the answer the last question I was going to ask you, which is sort of, what's the actionable agenda for people? And I think I heard, go and participate, be present for arts performances, for dance performances express an interest and this whole idea of artful living, I really want to bring it back to youth, or to the notion of how we are well in community. I keep thinking that we live in an age where the answer to everything is either technology or a clinician. So you know, if you if you feel that you're mentally unwell, you have to have a therapist, and you might need to, in fact, and you might need clinical attention. But there is also an opportunity, potentially, to find tremendous power in physicality and art. And as you, as you think about what you want people to take away from this conversation about that, what would you hope they'd remember on that score?

Molly Puryear 44:35
You know, I think coming to things with curiosity is so important. Just stay curious. Children inherently are more open and curious about trying things. And believe me, I've walked into middle school classes in schools with a bunch of boys with their arms crossed saying, dance is not for boys. Mm. And by the end of an hour, they've changed their attitude. It's totally possible for adults to have the same experience. And when you're talking about, you know, going to therapy or, you know, of course, I'm a huge advocate for mental health, and I think that giving yourself the time and the space and empowering yourself to be, as one of the participants said, at home in your body, is a practice that will allow you to absorb, reflect and amplify, maybe what your therapist has been working on with you.

Grant Oliphant 45:38
Fantastic. Well, I love the I love the the admonition for us to to be curious and to be open, to find a way to be at home in our bodies, I think, is also a beautiful thought. This has been a lovely conversation. I have to say, Molly, you, you. You so embody the joy you're trying to help people to learn and thank you for the extraordinary work you're doing in the community we're we're fortunate to be associated with it.

Molly Puryear 46:10
Thank you so much. Thank you for your support and for this lovely conversation. It's so nice to be able to share these thoughts with a broader audience.

Grant Oliphant 46:19
Pleasure. All right, welcome back. Yeah,

Speaker 1 46:24
so many things were touched upon in this episode

Grant Oliphant 46:27
well, so let me ask you a question. So you suggested Molly

Crystal Page 46:32
yes

Grant Oliphant 46:32
for this for the program and, and, and you were thinking about the healing through grantees, but also who she is and who that program is. So tell me a little bit about what you saw in the interview. Right away from it,

Crystal Page 46:53
I think the biggest thing is knowing how they developed the neuro dance work and how it helps people, whether they have ALS, all these different things, physically and mentally, are improved by that and that. You know, I think most of us, if we're real with ourselves, are sometimes scared to get older. So the the idea, yeah, so, you know, just the idea that there are ways to keep keep moving and being well, that's what I really loved about what she said, Yeah,

Grant Oliphant 47:27
I was actually, it's such a such a good point. And I, you know, it reminded me that I tend to talk about healing through arts and nature as a mental health approach. But it is also about physical health and our physical well being. You know, we are human beings, are a package, and you can't actually disarticulate the way we think and how we feel and how we're experiencing the physical world. And I loved how she spoke about dance helping to put all of those pieces together. I thought it was a fascinating window onto how an art form which has legitimacy in its own right. I mean, obviously, but how it can also be a way of engaging people in new ways, reminded me a lot, actually, of the conversation we had with Chris Appleton in talking about the prescribing of arts and well, arts in particular experiences. And here's a great example of prescribing an arts experience that helps people navigate the world with a condition that they might otherwise not benefit, not benefit from, from that additional help.

Crystal Page 48:49
Yeah, I think along those same lines, the other thing that I found incredibly powerful in your conversation with Molly was really the idea that she listened to her staff as an executive director, listened to her staff, and that staff member this program came out of a personal experience with the loss of her father. So to let people's lived experience, let people also I imagine it was also a form of grieving for that staffer, but to use those personal experiences to improve our community and how we connect with folks. I just it just gets you in the heart. You know, it's pretty amazing.

Grant Oliphant 49:27
It really does. I was struck also by how hard it is as an executive director, to succeed a founder and help an organization move forward and become successful in a new way that impressed me a lot. Her talking about how she had navigated that transition, but to the point that you just made the way in which she is now using that platform and being open in that role to suggestions and ideas coming from others. This really is, it's consistent with the with the the art form, I think, you know, it's sort of a monument to interpretive dance in action. And I just love the idea that they're using this, this arts organization, to help people navigate a very complicated world with a lot of scary things happening and helping them to be well in their own right,

Crystal Page 50:27
right? And to go back to how you pulled out the piece around the transition from founder to her leadership, actually, it felt to me, very consistent with what I recall of our own story is Prebys Foundation, right? Because you asked her, you know, how did you make that transition? Transition? And she said they spent time out in community, talking and getting feedback. And so the pattern I'm noticing with a lot of our guests is they spend a lot of time engaging stakeholders, getting very real feedback, and adjusting based on that, with a very clear vision. So that was the other thing that really struck me about Molly, yeah,

Grant Oliphant 51:03
well, I think this is something we've learned, right, that really good leaders are not just making it up as they go along or deciding in their own heads what needs to happen. They're asking their constituents, and they're engaging them, and they're listening, and they're feeding that back into the work, and it makes for profoundly better work. Crystal, I don't know if this resonated for you listening to her, but you know, we often tend to pigeonhole, not we, not you and I, but society tends to pigeonhole nonprofit organizations, and they're allowed to exist in very narrow lanes. So you're allowed to be an arts organization, but you have to do that art thing and and what we're seeing more and more, I think, with some of our more creative nonprofits, and I mean that creative broadly, but you know, what we're seeing is that they're willing to expand the boundaries of what it means to be doing the work and and they are bringing a whole new way of thinking about their art form or their educational form or their engagement form, because they're blurring the lines. And you know, I love the fact that Molly talks so eloquently about the ways in which malashock is blurring the lines.

Speaker 1 52:29
Oh, me too. And I think someday we may have to go visit them. But I do think

Grant Oliphant 52:35
you make that sound painful, we promise it's going to be so good.

Crystal Page 52:39
But I do think seeing dance, like you said, from that other lens of not just performative for but as as healing, as a way to express yourself through your body, and then the collaboration that happened with her and partners and things, I think those were all very powerful things that we can learn from. And it seems like her collaboration also allowed her and her team to prepare for this difficult moment in in society where, you know, grants are being cut and things like that as well. So it was incredibly impressive.

Grant Oliphant 53:10
Yeah, her her honesty about that the challenges that the organization is facing, or that the the whole field is facing in terms of cutbacks, this is a scary moment for the arts as for a lot of other nonprofit fields and organizations, but I think what I am impressed by is the focus that Molly had on continuing to do the work, continuing to establish value. And I think again, you know, can continuing with our theme of we do what we can control. She's modeling that in her organization by focusing on the things that are important to malashock and to the people that they're working with.

Crystal Page 53:59
Yeah, and I love that, and I hope they continue that work, because I think there's a lot we can learn alongside them as our grantees, but there's also a lot of benefit for San Diego overall in the work that they're doing. You know? Well,

Grant Oliphant 54:13
you know What? What? What keeps coming up for me, or kept coming up for me in the interview, was the connection between our healing through work, which is really all about reconnecting people with sources of joy and inspiration. And how Molly spoke about dance as an art form doing that. And you know, I have to say, I'm going to admit I'm a Philistine on this that I am not the best judge of dance, but, but when in talking with her, I felt like, oh yeah, I get it. Now, you know that the way in which it anchors a person in their body and lets them experience the world, not through an I am broken mindset.. Physically, mentally, but by feeling embodied, literally the and and and to experience the world through movement that's extraordinarily empowering. And if you just stop and think about how most of us take that for granted, she is helping people not take that for granted, and I love that.

Crystal Page 55:21
Yeah. I mean, even if you ever do couples dancing, when they work on your posture and stuff like that, just how you carry yourself feels different. So I can only imagine, if she's working with you on how to express yourself through your body, how beautiful that is. I used to actually work as a stage manager in high school for our dance shows, so even the taking in of the show would just bring me joy, like the different movements and expressions and things. So you know, just as we're winding down grant, I would also encourage folks to, like, get out there, see a show, or go dancing somewhere, because even if it's not in this clinical or dance space, practice of a nonprofit, we all know movement makes a difference, right? Yeah,

Grant Oliphant 56:01
absolutely. And I, I guess I will add my voice to yours, saying that we, we I include myself. Should get out there and patronize dance and and also see the opportunity that so much of the arts represents in terms of helping people heal and develop connection and all the things that we need right now. I love it. Thank you.

Crystal Page 56:27
Yeah, thank you everyone, and we'll see you on the next episode of stop and talk.

Grant Oliphant 56:31
Really appreciate you being here with us.

Grant Oliphant 56:40
This is a production of the Prebys Foundation,

Crystal Page 56:44
hosted by Grant Oliphant

Grant Oliphant 56:46
co hosted by Crystal page

Crystal Page 56:49
CO produced by Crystal page and Adam Greenfield,

Grant Oliphant 56:53
engineered by Adam Greenfield,

Crystal Page 56:56
production coordination by Tess Karesky,

Grant Oliphant 56:59
video production by Edgar Ontiveros Medina,

Crystal Page 57:03
special thanks to the Prebys Foundation team.

Grant Oliphant 57:06
The Stop and Talk theme song was created by San Diego's own Mr. Lyrical groove.

Crystal Page 57:12
Download episodes at your favorite pod catcher, or visit us at prebysfdn.org

Transcribed by https://otter.ai