Schaffman, Karen. Interview June 6, 2025.

00:00:01Jennifer Fabbi: Hello, this is Jen Fabbi, and today I am interviewing Dr. Karen Schaffman for the California State University San Marcos University Library Oral History program. Today is June 5th, and it is 2:10 p.m. This interview is taking place at Karen's office on the CSU San Marcos campus, where we are guests on traditional unceded Luiseño/Payómkawichum land. Karen, thank you for interviewing with me today.

00:00:29Karen Schaffman: Thank you.

00:00:31Fabbi: So to start off, can you tell me about your experience with dance as a child and adolescent and where you got your passion for dance?

00:00:41Schaffman: Great, thank you. And first, I'd like to begin by also thanking you so much for the opportunity to share my story, and it's really truly an honor in this moment of my life to have this interview.

00:00:47Fabbi: Absolutely.

00:00:49Schaffman: Thank you so much.

00:00:54Fabbi: You're welcome.

00:00:56Schaffman: My childhood story began with dance. So I've been dancing--I'm a lifelong dancer. And I began dancing as a kid. And very young. My mom, there was, we lived on the end of a street, and there was a summer creative dance program. I must have been two or three. I don't have the exact date from my mom. And that's where I fell in love with dance. I have some little picture somewhere stored away with me like in some kind of end of something performance. But it was on the playground, and it was outdoors,and that's where my dance career began. Dance for me--should I just ramble? Is that good?

00:01:30Fabbi: Yeah.

00:01:34Schaffman: Dance for me was always a sense of a place for me to belong and I'll say survive. I was very supported to go to dance through my whole childhood, but we were a middle class family, and so I relied on scholarships, I usually got them. I was seriously into dance. So I danced until I was probably in seventh grade, No, maybe sixth grade, like twice a week. And then I got into a dance company, and I had a child's part in the Connecticut Ballet, regional Ballet Company. So very early on was I in a very kind of intergenerational environment, and you'll hear through this interview that that's really important to my work and maturing as a still as a performing artist. So it was really, uh, that was like a turning point for me to be in that company. But it was also a time in my life where I had been studying ballet where--my body started to change and I knew that, and then peer pressure and things like high school and things like that. So I changed to modern dance and jazz. So at the time, jazz dance was really predominant. So that's my, just my, like, early days. But I think I'm really not getting to the heart of it with my mom, because my mom really shuttled me back and forth. She was a nurse and, uh, full time, so I had a lot of chores at home to do and things like that. But I always knew that after the chores, my mother was coming home from work and basically going back to the same neighborhood. And so, yeah, it was a really important time for me. My brothers were very into sports and at the time we didn't have Title IX, and I was not encouraged to do sports. I think I probably would've been a good athlete, actually, but I wasn't really invited or included. So dance was really a natural place for me to be physical. But I loved going to dance class. I loved--in the ballet--I was in a ballet conservatory. It was called the Hartford Conservatory. Again, I was one of the young ones there. And there was a live pianist. His name was Julius. And I just remember just loving going there. And I had two older brothers, and it was really, it wasn't a great home environment. My brothers were pretty rough on me to put it lightly. So going to dance was always a place for me to just go and be. And I had really, really good training. I have to be--I'm so grateful that I landed in those places because my teachers were very supportive, but they were also slow with me. They were like--I was called Little K--Little K, we're not putting you on point shoes yet because your ankles aren't strong enough. So I actually had really, really, really good training. So I'm very--I'm very, very grateful for that. My mom, later in life, showed me a letter that they were encouraging me to go to a performing arts high school, and my mother didn't want me to go. And it was after I got my PhD and a career in dance that she said, You know, I need to--it was like she needed to make amends. So she showed me the letter from the Hartford Conservatory encouraging my mother to put me in a professional program, but she didn't. So, but that's interesting. So I don't know where my career would've went at that time. But I stayed in. So, my time with dance was--but I was very, very shy, I have to say. So I grew into not being shy as I got older, but as a kid I was a very shy, and so people asked me to dance in front of them. I'd always be like, no, I--it's like I didn't, I wasn't one of those kids who would be like, get up on the table or get up in front of grandma and grandpa and show them what you do. So I was very, very shy as a kid. So dance was a place where I-- and performance was a place for me to go. Yeah. I could go on and on about that, but.

00:05:45Fabbi: Well, maybe it'll come up in some questions. Okay. So you have substantial formal education. You earned a BA in Dance and Literature at UMass Amherst, and an equivalent degree in experimental dance at the European Dance Development Center in the Netherlands, and also your PhD in Critical Dance Studies at UC Riverside. And please fill in anything that I missed. How did your formal education impact who you are as a professional?

00:06:22Schaffman: So I only applied to three schools for undergraduate, and it was not a given, but pretty much where I grew up in a very middle class family that I would go to college. I didn't get into Cornell. That was my first choice. I didn't know how I was gonna afford that anyway. And then University of Connecticut was my backup, but they didn't have a dance program, so I didn't really want to go there, but my parents encouraged me. And at the time, there was this five-hour radius of driving, like, it was very strict where we were gonna apply back then. And I was on my own, actually, my grandmother was very ill, and my grandparents had moved from Brooklyn to be next to my mom. So I got into a dance major program at University of Massachusetts, and it's a very good program. They had something called the Five College Dance Program, which is part of a consortium with Smith College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke, and Amherst. So I got to pay, it was still outta state, Massachusetts, but got to take advantage of the five college dance program. But even finishing my first year, I was like, something's wrong here. I didn't really like the dance program. It was very competitive. And even though I didn't have any issues with what they thought would maybe be too much weight in the wrong places or anything, they were very critical of other dancers. And I knew right at that age that I wasn't really jiving with that program. Though I was even teaching my first year 'cause I was very advanced. So they gave me the work study teaching, like for the university. So I kind of gave up that opportunity, and I dropped out of the dance program, and I did what was called a bachelor's degree with an independent concentration. So I did dance and literature. So I always continued dancing, but I took all of my dance classes in the five college area. So I kind of got this semi Ivy League or alternative school 'cause Hampshire is a very alternative education. And then I took other classes at UMass, but UMass just opened my eyes up to many things. I did musical theater there and, but my dance and literature was really, really important because I did a lot of, what we called then, well, was--it was UMass had one of the first women's studies programs. So I did a lot of women's literature and I did, I learned about feminism, I was like, this was like my awakening. Yeah. I took a lot of what we call then third-world women's writing and literature courses. So I'm not from the third world, but we don't even use that phrasing anymore. But UMass was in the forefront of politics in the body at the time. So, it's interesting how that became, came back and around. So I had a great education there. I did take what we call now a gap year at the time 'cause I needed to get out into the world. And then I went, I lived in San Francisco for a while and then I knew I wanted to live overseas or go overseas, but I didn't wanna be a tourist. So I got in--there was no internet or anything then. So I was studying in San Francisco with Joe Good in a summer workshop. And this woman who's now well known in New York, Sarah (now I show my absent mind). Sarah Mickelson said, you should go here. She was British. and so there was a school in Holland, and they take two guests a year, and they accepted me with like my CV and a cover letter and a letter of recommendation. And I had no money. My parents were not supporting me at all in this phase of my life. I was waitressing in San Francisco and doing dictation. I worked on the first little Mac box. And I got a loan--I think I'll share this--from the Hebrew Free Loan Association. They gave me $2,000 up front, but I had to pay, start paying back $50 a month. And off I went to Europe, and I paid my tuition. And so I had like, I don't know, I had only like $500 left in my pocket, and I went to the school in Holland. And that basically just changed my life. So it was very alternative. And it was very much based in improvisation, but many of the teachers were coming from either England or the United States, from New York. So it was kind of the New York, the downtown scene, all of the people who were working with somatics in the body. So really doing deep research in terms of inner sensation and anatomical release it was called. So it was a very particular kind of dancing. And I was just like, I would just, I was just mind blown. I would stand there in the studio and somebody would do a performance where they would just take ten minutes to raise their arms. And it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life. I was like, okay, what is this? And then the school split. They opened a new school in the town called Arnhem, and I went to Arnhem, and I spent two years there. And I had an amazing experience there with many amazing artists that I'm still, some of them I'm still in touch with. And I've curated, actually, here at the school and in summer arts. And so I went to there, changed my life. And then I got a job teaching in Germany before Germany had master's degrees in dance. And I worked in a conservatory environment there in a clown and dance school, So I taught at a clown and dance school for three years. And that was a great experience. But at the time I was involved with someone. I had to make a decision. So I decided to move to California. And, I was, What am I gonna' do here? And that's a longer story, but there was a brand-new program that I was thinking about getting a master's, but because I became so open to this other way of dancing, there was really no master's programs at the time that I was interested in, except maybe in New York. And I was like, Well, I live in California now. But there was a brand-new program at UC Riverside. It was the third year, and it was one of the very, among the very first top three universities that gave a PhD in dance. And so when I saw the poster in the back of one of these magazines called Contact Quarterly is how I found out about it, I was like, Oh, wow. So I went and I sat in on a few seminars and I was like, I wanna go there. So I applied. And so then I went to UC, Riverside. And it's really a groundbreaking program in terms of dance studies, the field of dance studies, which is different than just getting a degree in dance. Yeah. Dance studies is really about the political, social, and cultural impact and of the body and dance in the world. So that's what I did. And then I have one more education that I did that's very extensive called the Feldenkrais Method. So thank you to this university who partially funded that education. Yes. It's a four-year program, and it's based on the somatic educational method. And it's based on research of someone named Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, and he was part of the human development generation. Yeah. He was also born the same year as my grandfather in the Ukraine, which was interesting. But he had a knee injury. He was one of the first white people, men, white men, to learn judo. And he learned judo, and he brought a lot of Eastern philosophy into this body modality. So it's not a dance training, it's really about finding ease in your own movement. So I still do that now. I bring that into all I do. And so I have, those are my key big degrees.

00:14:14Fabbi: So following up on that your focus for your career for the last several decades has been on somatics, perceptual improvisation, contact improvisation, and performance and cultural theory. Can you tell me a little bit more about these areas of focus?

00:14:34Schaffman: Yes. So you had somatic, perceptual improvisation, cultural theory, and contact improvisation? Yeah. So a somatic approach to dance, or the body, has to do with more about feeling than how it looks. It's really about inner sensation and really getting in touch with oneself on a very cellular level, if I can speak that way. It's more about embodied and lived experience and of course, that has cultural and impact culturally and through people's cultural history and ancestry. But it--and it really includes this very sensorial based way of dancing and through the world. So it's not about how it looks like, for example, like ballet where you have to look a certain way or something, but really about an inner sensorial world that brings forward the dance or the healing or whatever. So it's, it's an ancient way of being with oneself before we had technologies and things like that. So that's the somatic piece. Is that clear kind of? It is? And then perceptual improvisation really has to do with, again, responding to the conditions. So it's a little bit more related to the visual art world. And one of my areas that I researched, well, probably since I'm a kid, but is visual art. And I also studied--I took Harvard summer school one summer way, way back when, and I did video when it was a three-quarter inch and you sit down (unintelligible). So I did some--I've studied some videos. So I'm, it's really about--how do I explain perception improvisation on an interview like this? Let's see. Something about how do we, how do we perceive the world? So it's, it really does relate a lot to visual arts in terms of perspective and visual field and responding, but could be your auditory field as well. So it's related to somatics in that way. It also is really, really related to Eastern thought, which is about inner perception and meditation and things like that. So I've cultivated a more contemplative way of approaching dance as well. Yeah. It comes from, I wouldn't say I am a Buddhist or anything like that, but I've studied Eastern philosophy. I've done a little bit of martial arts, just a little bit. So I've kind of come at it with that. And then cultural theory is dance and cultural studies. Dance studies is really a blend of dance and the field of cultural studies. So we're really looking about diversity in dance, and we're considering not just a European perspective of dance, which becomes very stereotypical. And so it's changed so much then. But it's really the dance studies field really emerged out of celebrating and analyzing, honoring the histories and practices of diverse cultures across the world. I mean, there's so many dance dialects that around the world. So dance studies really opened my eyes up to how big the world of dance is and how much of an impact it has politically and socially on our identity and things like that. So everything we learn about dance can be applied to (unintelligible). Dance studies can be applied to any field, really, in my opinion, because it has so much to do with the politics of the body. Yeah.

00:18:27Fabbi: That's really interesting.

00:18:28Schaffman: Yeah. Yeah. And I bring that here to Cal State.

00:18:35Fabbi: So how have your areas of focus benefited your students? Many students over the years?

00:18:43Schaffman: Well, and I did talk about contact, so I'll bring that back 'cause that's what my area of research was about. I think I should say something about contact now. Is that okay? So my PhD was based on contact improvisation, which is, brings together all of those other practices--somatics, perceptual improvisation, dance technique, and then cultural studies. So I was looking at something that emerged from the fifties and sixties, which was a huge art movement in New York and really influenced a lot of people. And it was based on gravity and momentum and touch. So contact improvisation. My dissertation was really also a lot about touch and how contact improvisation, which is a touch-based dance form. It's like what happens when two bodies move together? And with gravity and momentum? Now we do this, people do this, not me, in tango, in salsa, and all sorts of dance traditions around the world. But contact has a particular aesthetic. And so it might look like something, but it's so much based in sensorial awareness. So this was--has been--a big part of my life is contact improvisation. And so--but contact improvisation sometimes universalizes this idea of what the body is. So my dissertation also took that apart and down a bit that said, No, this is very particular as a particular way of moving. It's not universal. Not everybody does it, you know, things like that. So anyway, it's a longer discussion, but I bring all of that into San Marcos when I--CSUSM--when I came here there was no program. And so it was clear to me that I was starting in a very challenging place but also really exciting place. One of the reasons I took the job here--I got an offer at a school that was already established as well. Because dance, dance for here, the byline here is that dance is for everybody and every body. And that this would be an inclusive environment and that this would be an environment that welcomes all students. So it would not be conservatory driven or even wanting to go in that direction. Even though we would be working on our technique, on our awareness--we would use words like awareness rather than virtuosity. You know, virtuosity is great, but would be more about awareness. So it's a very inclusive environment. And I think I was highly successful at that. And that is actually happening. So I think that's the biggest thing. But the students always are like, it's really different here. When people come to visit or high schools come always like, oh, it's really different here because it's really about community and there's a lot of support. We don't just dance. We talk about where we're at. We take a weather report. What's going on? One word, you know, everybody share a word. How do you feel today? We talk about access needs. We don't make assumptions in the class that everybody's gonna do everything. So there's a lot of that. So it's really with what my friend, Anya Cloud, collaborator, brought the phras--she was a lecturer here for nine years--"Dancing with the body you have." So yeah, no assumptions. No assumptions. Yeah. And also adaptability. access needs, cultural backgrounds, what's going on in the world. We don't ignore, we don't go, you may get a great escape in a dance class, but dance studies is not about this dream. that dance helps me escape the world. It's basically the opposite. It's really about grounding in the reality and what am I dealing with and what are the conditions right here and now? So I've cultivated those kinds of values here. And then the other big thing is because I went to Riverside, early on I brought in that students need to relate whatever we're learning in the class. almost every, and almost--not all classes, but many classes are like--how do you relate this to your major or something you care about in the world? Because dance is always in dialogue. We're always in relationship to the world.

00:23:12Fabbi: That's really, it sounds very unique.

00:23:14Schaffman: Yes, it is. (laughter) It's a unique program that that emerged. And, um, yeah, see where it goes, too, so I'm hopeful.

00:23:28Fabbi: So what has scholarship and creative activity looked like in your career as a professor of dance?

00:23:35Schaffman: Um, in my career? Or just, what was, can you repeat the question? I'm sorry. I was looking at my note up before that. I just said at the end, I wrote myself a little note about my area of focus. "It's fun and entertaining, but it's also much more than that." I talk to students. First of all, it's more than just the steps. We're not gonna just learn phrases in here and look in the mirror. I wanna add that students freak out 'cause in many classes we're like, let's close the curtains. Like, we don't always have to--and that's the somatic aspect, okay, is can you feel this movement? Why are you staring at yourself in the mirror? The mirrors can be very helpful, but, so I just wanted to sort of add that.

00:24:20Fabbi: So the, the question, the question was, as a professor of dance, what does scholarship and creative activity look like to you?

00:24:33Schaffman: Oh.

00:24:36Fabbi: And, and one, so in your CV, you also give example, a lot of examples of curated performance processes.And so are those things related?

00:24:47Schaffman: They are, for me, but in terms of teaching, I think it relates again to students who find--for our students here--is to find the connection of what dance does for the world and how it is universal. And if it's not, it's because it's being policed, right? By a government that won't allow dance. And like, where are we going now? So the scholarship in dance is about the awareness of what the body can do, like in music or visual art. You know, like we have art history, but we only have dance historians that take it really seriously. And there's tons of books now about dance. But in terms of curation, that's like a separate thing. Yeah. So my own scholarship has been that I've done a lot around--writing about contact improvisation and presenting on that. But I often combine my creative projects with political and historical research. So, for example, a project that was before--that I didn't curate, that I was invited on was like a European project based on a fictional choreographer named Veronika Blumstein. So I ended up spending like two years on that. And then she comes back every now and then, came back during COVID. I was like, okay. Somebody invited me 'cause they were interested in my work with Veronica. And so these Polish and German artists and one person from Slovenia came together in a research project. And they didn't know what to do. And for some reason, at the time, the zeitgeist at the time was a really, like a lot around healing in terms of World War II and the European Holocaust and genocide there. And so, and then the Polish people were so impacted by the war in another way. So this opened up a huge pot of research for me by looking into Veronika Blumstein. And I lived in Europe, but I had never gone into some of my own personal roots. And so I did a lot of ancestral work at the time. And then through that project many things came up because they wrote a fictional--they wrote about a fictional character who happened to be a Jewish woman who escaped and went to New York and studied with all these people that were like part of my own dance lineage. So it became a lineage project. So in that way, I was like weaving together all of these different things. Now, like curation is kind of, I'm, it happens globally, but I know it because I've spent so much time in Europe, like this kind of careful 'cause curation--because they have different funding sources. So in the US, our, the field of dance curation has grown so much and it's--there's so many amazing people doing great projects. But my work in curation, well, I just recently did this Think Gravity Project, which we'll talk about. But I did a big project called the Live Legacy Project. And so I was invited by a former classmate of mine from the school I went to in Holland Center for New Dance Development, which became European Dance Development Center. And we did a whole cultural history on how dance migrated from US and Ukraine, uh, Ukraine--US and the UK through the Dutch school into Germany. So she was living in Germany and the German government gave a huge sum of money to this curation. So we had a symposium that resulted in a film, but we brought together many dance elders and then the younger generation. So it was a big intergenerational project. So we had workshops. So we did everything at the symposium. It wasn't a talking symposium. We had the workshops, intensives alongside the talks, alongside the films. But everybody went to everything. So it wasn't like, I will choose at a conference, it would be like a symposium for a hundred people. And then they came to everything. It was very, very well documented. They all experienced everything together. Yeah. So it's like educational and creative all at once and people got to share their work. Okay. So in that way, like the curation is a way to bring about a living archive. So I'm interested in curation that's very much alive. Does that make sense?

00:29:24Fabbi: It does.

00:29:26Schaffman: Okay. There's a lot of topics we're we're hitting now, so I hope they're making sense.

00:29:35Fabbi: They are. So, you talk, have talked a lot about, you know, previous to this interview about your involvement with Arts and Lectures on campus.

00:29:47Schaffman: Yes.

00:29:48Fabbi: And so, like a more broad question is what does campus and community service look like in your career over the years? But I know that Arts and Lectures, you know, we talked about as being a substantial--

00:30:02Schaffman: Yes. Well, before I get into Arts and Lectures, what's interesting is I'm flashing now to David Avalos, who was a mentor for me. And, he really helped me when I arrived here, especially with my file, because I, like my service and my scholarship and my teaching all intertwined. And the committees at first didn't really get that. So he had me write this intro and it was really helpful. And so I also share that forward with other people I'm on committees with because it's known now. But even twenty years ago when I was a PhD student, we didn't do a practical PhD. Now there's many practicing dance PhDs. And at the time, one of the most famous godmothers of dance studies, my mentor, Susan Foster, said, Karen, you need to put dancing aside for a while. Get reading, get writing. And I didn't really do that at the time. I still was, I had a very active performing career, and I was curating with a group called Lower Left in San Diego. So it's just like doing way too much. But that's what I did for a large, most of my life. So it's that intertwining of these things that I think is really important. That my service here was always intertwined with my own work in the classroom. Because also, I was performing with students or creating performances with students both at the, in the early years. And it was like, that was my service. I didn't get course release or it wasn't counted as a class, even though I was teaching a class or a project that added another ten hours a week for six to eight weeks. So that's what we do, though. We dance. You gotta make the work. It doesn't fit into a four hour a week class. So my service really got intertwined entwined with dancing. But then I got involved right away because I had been curating in Europe. I had been cur--you know, when I was teaching at the clown school was my first curating. And then I, when I arrived here, I got involved with Bonnie Biggs from the Library, who was running Arts and Lectures, and she invited Mtfiti Imara, Dr. Imara, to do a performance. So that was another big project. He did a--he created a song that was called Power to the People. And I had a group of dancers. It was all extracurricular in our first year. We did a big performance at Center for the Arts in Escondido. It was amazing. And then Bonnie--oh, and then another curatorial thing was happening was Dr. Andrea Liss, who I collaborated with a lot, and Dr. Kristine Diekman. I mean, excuse me. Not Dr. Professor. (Kristine. I love you. You know, it's just as important. what you've done.) Okay. So they were doing a women's rights symposium. So in my second year or my first year--I can't remember, it's in the flyer (points to flyer). It was a really wonderful symposium. So I made a student piece for that, intergenerational. I was on a panel and then I also performed, they invited me. I did this piece in the late nineties called Monster Girl. And it was a very pop piece, feminist piece. And I wore, like, you know, I was standing on a Tide box and doing my soapbox and dancing to Mission Impossible. And it was just like wild. Blue wig--

00:33:42Fabbi: I saw the box up there--

00:33:43Schaffman: Oh yeah. Blue wig. Oh--

00:33:44Fabbi: --that says Monster Girl.

00:33:45Schaffman: Oh yeah. It has the handcuffs in it, too. I mean, it was just like this kind of rant about women's rights. And so they knew I did the piece. Kristine had actually seen it at Sushi Performance and Visual Arts in '98. So they invited me to perform that. So I kind of came off and running, like performing, early on a lot. I performed a lot less as the years grew on, and I became more administratively driven. So yeah, so that was a curatorial piece. And then Meryl Goldberg picked up Arts and Lectures, and I was on the committee when she was interim. And then she got started in Center ARTES, so I came on and that was a big part of my service for the University. I worked with Marilyn Huerta for many years and for about--I think I was running it for five years. I used to call myself the unofficial Director 'cause they didn't give me that position. That's what--didn't really didn't compensate me. It was just my service, but I can tell you it was more than nine hours a week. And we did between thirty-nine and forty-two events a year for many years. And even the language that's on the website, I'm like, maybe you should update it. No offense (no shade there, Gina, or the committee). Hey, if it's still working, I'm honored. You know, Meryl also came up with some of those, uh, invoke, inspire. So, but I really brought so many performances to this campus. I mean, Dance has always done at least two a year, but I could tell you this year, we got an IRA grant this school year. We did, I don't know, but there must have been--but I have other faculty working with me. So, but Dance Studies probably hosted at least twelve major public events open to the public. So a lot. So it's big. And then my other service to the campus was, I mean, I created the program. I wrote twenty-eight courses. Of course, they're not all offered. There wasn't any, there was a, few courses on the books, and I did keep one called Global Modern Dance, which I think is very sophisticated. Don Funes wrote that when he founded the program. And, I mean, I guess you probably have knew, you already know the history of this program. It started off as an interdisciplinary program, and then there was the desire to branch out into our own disciplines. But there's always been a desire to work cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary. and Dance always does. We work with theater, we've worked with visual art, we've worked with literature and writing, we've worked with women's studies, we've worked with theater. And so I've done many projects with all of the faculty. I was actually hired as a collaborator that wasn't going--the job description was to be a collaborator. Even though it was for somebody in dance, was to be a collaborator. So I did that. I definitely did that.

00:36:43Fabbi: Yeah, you did.

00:36:44Schaffman: Yeah. Am I talking too fast, also?

00:36:48Fabbi: I think that you are doing just fine.

00:36:50Schaffman: Okay, great. Okay. It's a lot.

00:36:55Fabbi: Okay. So you've done a substantial amount of international work, and you talked about your desire to live overseas and not be a tourist. And--but how has that work outside of the United States contributed to your development in the field? And you've already kind of touched on this. But if there's anything else you'd like to say.

00:37:13Schaffman: Well, to lift up our campus with the, especially with what's going on right now in the world i--the goal is for us to be global citizens. Isn't that part of our mission still? And so learning about other cultures and living elsewhere gives one that lived experience of intercultural exchange, opens your world perspective. It demands one to be flexible and adaptable. I'm open to new ideas. So it's really enriched my life a lot. And it's given me a lot of empathy, compassion, inspiration, all of those things for ways of being in the world. And, I mean, I've primarily worked in Europe, but I've also--I've been to Mexico a few times on some big projects. And those were really, really wonderful experiences. And because our campus is in, you know, our demographic is so Latinx, that it's really important for me to have firsthand experiences there. So I've traveled personally there, but I've also done artistic project projects there. And it's been an incredible experience. Most recently, I went to Pachuca with Kristine Diekman. And we did an incredible project with sound and movement and electronic art. It was really amazing. So that was so great. And it was based on Day of the Dead. And even though I'm not from that culture, people are super open, and I learned so much at the time. And in fact, my mom had just passed, and so they were like--there were ofrendas everywhere. It was very meaningful for me. I got to learn a lot. So it's like just stepping out of one's, where one's from, you know. So yeah. I mean, I think it's super important and I--really sad to hear that programs like that are in jeopardy right now in our country. 'Cause it's like huge. It's a win-win for everybody. So, but yeah, I've had really amazing experiences overseas. I mean, the school I went to in Holland, we were seventy students from twenty-three countries. So it was on one hand chaotic. But on the other hand, we were from a lot of different cultures, but our language was dance. So we were really in the room together and just, and, you know, there was a lot of nonverbal relational experiences. And so that's where dance comes in as its own language. And it's not a universal language, even though we all have, you know, not all, but many of us, or most of us who are fortunate enough to have our four limbs and or five limbs if you count your spine and your whatever, you know, count many, many limbs. But it was, it was a life changing experience for me. And I had traveled one year. I had traveled in my gap year as well, too. So it was an experience. Yeah. Very big travels (unintelligible).

00:40:30Fabbi: Okay. So now turning in earnest to your time at CSUSM--you've been a faculty member on campus for twenty-four years. You already talked about what brought you to CSUSM, but what has been the evolution of CSUSM for you and your time here? For example, what did dance on the campus look like in 2001 compared to now?

00:40:56Schaffman: Okay. Yeah. Like I mentioned, I had another offer in Idaho. I mean, I had a lot of interviews, so I was very fortunate for that. I got two offers, and it was kind of like no brainer. It was like, ah, this is just opening. There's so much potential. There were a few courses on the books and they were taught by a lecturer named Terry Sprig, to honor her. She's a dance artist, local. I don't know if she's making work still. So she taught a few classes, but I don't even know to the extent. But as soon as I came in, they gave us, it was, days were different. They were like, okay, you have ten days--they don't tell you us before you get hired--you have ten days to get the courses you want to teach on the books. We're gonna be fast tracking those in in UCC (University Curriculum Committee). I'm like, okay, I don't even know what it's called then. So I wrote some quick courses, and one of the courses I wrote was Women in Performance: Choreographies of Resistance 'cause that really came out of my research and my dissertation. And I did a lot of work on circus when I was in grad school. Even though I did contact improvisation, I did a lot of work on physical culture, the turn of the century, the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. So I got to put that class on the books. I put on a technique class and--but there was like, there was only like three classes. One was Global Modern Dance, which we kept, or was it Cultures in Motion? There was a few. Cultures in Motion we kept, too. Upper division general ed. And then, you know, Bill Bradbury was the chair, and he was like, you need an intro course, so write it. So we like--literally, I'm teaching three courses and then I had to write--

00:42:50Fabbi: --this curriculum. All this curriculum.

00:42:52Schaffman: Yeah. Yeah. So it was a lot. But now it's, now it's really challenging. It's great. We don't get a lot of allocations because of how the students have a shopping cart and how they, how they go through the system. 'Cause we're still a Dance minor. So when I got here, there were only a couple of classes on the books. And I was offered the opportunity within the first ten days, faculty when we arrived, you jump in, you teach your three courses and you get on a committee and then we'd like you to write the courses you'd like to teach in the next ten days. I'm like, okay. So I did that. I know that one of the courses I wrote was called Women in Performance: Choreographies or Resistance 'cause I was really fresh outta graduate school. This was my research of feminism and performance. And so I taught that class for like twelve years. Really exciting. And it became a general--upper division general ed class. And I'm looking forward to teaching it when I come back FERPing (Faculty Early Retirement Program) actually, 'cause I haven't taught it for a while. And then I put technique classes on the books, and then we all were putting in these intro classes. So I put an Intro to Dance class on the books. I think at that time, it might have been a year or two later. It's hard to remember, but I wrote twenty-eight classes over time.mI am grateful to the Dean's office when Michael McDuffie was there and Ranjita Basu, and Michael gave me great advice on how to create curriculum that would satisfy many things. So I had a lot of topics courses at the beginning and things like that. So, I've also--one of the most popular classes--the program has grown in just so many ways. So we were just me. And then there were me one lecturer. And then at one point there were me and like five or six lecturers. And then it was down to just me and like two lecturers, you know, with the ups and downs of the, of our economy. And now we are just--it's been a wonderful group of people. We're five people. In fact, two of them are, one of them just got their PhD as well from UC Riverside. And another one is getting their PhD, Cuauhtemoc Peranda. And Dava Hernandez just got her degree too. So, and then we have Nhu Nguyen and we have finally got a new hire because that was supposed to be related to the development of our own major. And so after many years, Dance got another tenure track line. And so I'm working with Cheri Hill, doing great job and will be the next leader of Dance Studies. I'm really excited about that. Sheri comes with a lot of experience as a teaching artist, and she's worked in the field of arts and ed and dance and education. So before she came, I had already been working with Liberal Studies and Meryl Goldberg on creating a class that would feed Liberal Studies. So we do actually six courses a year that feed Liberal Studies. So that's great. But it's also, we are losing some of our allocations. So it's hard, but it's great. It's great for the field, it's great for the students. And I'm really excited about the way that's really grown. The other area of the program that's grown is like, the diversity of the kinds of classes we wrote, that I wrote, over the years. So I really tried to--we're not doing, like--we're not doing ballet, modern, and jazz, you know. We had hip hop. It declined. We're gonna have--Cheri just wrote a new course. We're gonna have a wonderful new intro to hip hop class coming on that's related to, it's called Hip Hop Fundamentals. So it'll really meet the criteria of general ed. And then we will learn about the history of hip hop and alongside the commercial aspects so, and the very, the strong politics of the field. So we're really doing a lot. And then I'm really proud of a class that I co-wrote called Contemporary Folklorico. So that course has been on the books for almost ten years now. And I wrote it with Alfonso Cervera, and he was a student over at UC Riverside as well, and now is teaching at Ohio State. Amazing job. Amazing leader in dance in terms of Latinx work. And so that class is one of our most popular classes. We teach five or six sections a year, too. And I'm really proud of that because it really meets our demographic here and serving our Hispanic service--our Hispanic learning institution goals. So I just think it's very important that dance just stays--it's an alive field. So it's also, it's not the course--like there were other institutions where you might go work and they would--at least 20 years ago--they would just hand you the book and they're like, here, teach this dance appreciation class. But I've always been like, no, you teach what you know, I'm gonna trust that you're gonna teach some breadth. So when I hire faculty, I make sure that they can teach the breadth of the field and touch on many things, but they can really focus in on their, on their areas of research. So Cuauhtemoc, for example, is really--their p PhD is on voguing. And so they're really teaching the students like the history of voguing, the roots of voguing, the political significance of voguing. And so it touches on a lot of different things in terms of sociology and political science and history. And so we do all of that. So all of the dance classes have built in a practice-theory component. So there's always something, whether it's just a project that's embodied--so the students step out outside of the box and have to do something physically--that you know, that they're able to do. So it's a very active learning environment in Dance Studies. And that's really different here. And I think school--other schools have grown into that, but I was able to start that off at the ground. And so I'm actually really proud of that. This program really fosters that way of learning. So we're not just like watching a movie, we're gonna, at some point you're gonna get up and either make a movie or do a documentary and step into what the work is. Yeah, so we're moving towards a major. Unfortunately it didn't pass UCC, and Cheri is leading that and I'm working with Cheri on that. And we're looking at it as really like a degree that meets many branches of the field. So we still wanna' be creating and nurturing those that wanna' be dance makers. We're also meeting the field of arts and education, integrative arts and learning, and also social justice. So, we could say that word (unintelligible). Social justice.

00:49:49Fabbi: Absolutely.

00:49:50Schaffman: Yes. All of those things are a threat today, so--

00:49:55Fabbi: Yeah, of course.

00:49:55Schaffman: But that's what we do. And you know I will say like every course that got passed here has the word diversity in it because that's what we do in dance. Dance is a diverse field. And even though I'm a white woman, I mean, from the beginning I always started with Black dance in America because when I taught lower division general ed, because our country is built upon the history of African people. So, dance is so infused with the migrant experience from so many different cultures. So, and then over the years, we have done a few things with American Indian Studies as well. So we're, we're working, we're working it here on our campus. We do a lot of outreach. So whoever we're bringing in is working that way. It's very integrative. So just this semester I'm really proud of a project. Can I say a little bit more about that? In terms of curriculum? So, I always brought guest artists here. And because it's really important for students to meet people working in the field outside of the institution--even though I am working outside of the institution in the summers and in general with my research. But, so I've always brought in guest artists through Arts and Lectures but also through Dance Studies through grants and things like that. So we started off with a very small lab budget, and it's grown. So I have a little line item to bring in guest choreographers. So I've brought in some amazing people. Many of them my teachers. And so those projects really influence the curriculum. So even though we might offer a choreography class, students can take it three times because it'll be different every time. Yeah. And this year, we brought Dancing Through Prison Walls, and it was just a very profound experience. So, I got a nice grant from IRA (Instructionally Related Activities fund) and Arts and Lecturers, and they came, and we did a residency. So again, in terms of like the hours with dance--and I my offer students alternatives if they're working and they can't make it--but they, I always, for the last, before COVID, there were three years and, yeah, three years of artist residency projects. So artists would come and they would either stay with me or friends, or last year we got a little grant money, they could get their own Airbnb. But I put up several artists over the years and they'd make a piece with students and they would leave and then either I or another faculty member would nurture that. And Anya Cloud and I did that for several years together. We did that for three years, where artists would come for a week and then they would leave and then we would rehearse and nurture the piece all the way through the spring dance concert. So yeah. The spring dance concert is our culminating event. Yeah. It's amazing. Very big event. Did I answer your question?

00:52:55Fabbi: You did. Okay. So this is a little bit more general, but ,it sounds like, from what you've talked about and your history, that you could have chosen different paths when it comes to dance. Different career paths in terms of what you did with that. Or even back to the high school, right? Like what would've happened if you had gone to the performing arts high school? But you chose a career in higher education. How has that lived up to your expectations?

00:53:30Schaffman: Wow. Good question. I have to say I'm super grateful because at least in the U.S., there's not very many jobs in dance. I'm extremely grateful to have a salaried position in the beginning, a pension. So I don't take that lightly. And, yeah. That's big. And there's not that many jobs in dance and higher education. So I feel very, very fortunate that I got this job as well. And that's why when I got it, I mean, I take it very, very seriously. There's a lot of work to be done in the field. And this--I don't even like the word fighters--but everybody working in dance and higher education is, we're fighting for it all 'cause the resources are less and less, unless you're in certain institutions. But it's a lot. It's a lot of work. So I worked really hard, I realized. My mom used to even say--'cause I, when I was chair also of VPA (Visual and Performing Arts) for a year and a half, almost two years. Interim chair. And I would go see my parents on spring break 'cause they're from the East coast. And so I'd bring my computer and my mother would be like, You gotta' take a break. You gotta' take a break. You gotta' take a break. So, yeah, I mean I worked a lot. I worked way more than forty hours a week in this job, like way more. And I don't have any regrets. I'm a little tired, maybe, but I know I'll refuel. Hence retiring a little sooner than I thought I was going to. 'Cause we'll probably get to that question, I imagine. Somewhere along the way. But, you know, our campus has grown a lot, but we all in the School of Arts are working hard. You know, we, how do I say this? Lots of gratitude, but we've all, you know, we've all talked about how we need space, how we need a theater. Our university has grown to a size that we're really ready for--I'm not so fixed on dance has to be in a theater. But we do need a place. So I think dance could grow more and could have grown more had we had a space. So we have a beautiful studio that doubles as a black box theater and we share it with Theater. But that's all we have. So, and then we use--Music, Theater, and Dance share the theater, the performance hall that was designed for music. So that's been hard. And so it's like, it gets to be, I used--I don't even use the expression anymore, but for like five, the last five years, I'm like, broken record. Like, we cannot, how, you know, what do you need? Or, you know, if I'm writing with Cheri, the needs that we'll need to have a major, and just because we write we need space doesn't mean that that should halt the major. We have to keep moving forward. But it's that whole what what comes first. It doesn't really work in today's economy, but dance is more important than ever, I believe. And I think the, our SoCal and our nation's culture around dance has changed so much in positive ways. With social media and many things. I'm like, wow. You know, and when I, you know, there was like ten years where people are like, do you watch Dancing With the Stars? When it came out. And I'm kind of like, no you know, like I don't have time to watch that show. Or, you know, like, oh I'm going to the theater this weekend. Because I'm really into promoting for students live art, live dance. Students, when they go and see a show here, they've never been--so many students.have never been to the theater. And it's like, so I really, I'm so grateful for my parents that I had that experience. And again, we weren't, I was from a very working class family, but it was a priority for my parents. And my mom used to take me to Brooklyn College. So I saw like really traditional, amazing Black dance in America throughout the seventies. I mean, my dance education was really opened by having my grandparents in New York and going in and out of New York. And my mother would just take me to these things that I probably would never have seen before. So, I just think the live art experience is really important, and I think our University could be cultivating that more. So that's an expect--that's one criticism. Like we had a President who called it the crown jewel, and it really is, and it could be more of a cultural hub. So that, but otherwise, you know, like I'm super grateful. It took me a long time to get to the pro--dance program. So I worked for fifteen years just doing what a program director does but not compensated for that. I just built the program because what else was I gonna' do? Everybody else was building around me. So I'm like, okay, well build a program. So I kind of floated around a little bit. So I reported to Visual Arts for a while and, but I was still doing the work of being a director. So it's really my--the art. When we sent things up to CAPC (Curriculum and Academic Policy Committee), there was a year that, my colleagues stood up for me and said, It's now time for dance to get a hire. So, to be a program. And then there was the moment where to get a hire--so I was, dance got ranked finally for a hire--but that took like five years once the School of Arts stood behind dance, moving up the line. So there was just many, many years where I was carrying everything. You know, I had a great colleague in Anya Cloud did a lot, and Cherie Hill is doing an amazing job. And all of the lecturers right now are above and beyond. But I also, and I also give them autonomy to do what they want. First of all, I can't do it all on my own anymore, but it's like, in terms of positionality, you know, we're very, we've got a wide spectrum of cultural identities and ethnic identities in our makeup of our program. And that's really important. And so for me, it's like I need to step aside what other people bring, people who they wanna' bring. Even though we always had conversations, I was kind of carrying it. But that now I'm able to find a little pot of money so that they can get a little stipend for curating something that they wanna' bring. So I'm really--contact improvisation at it's heart is about horizontal politics, so I lead with horizontal politics here. And I always have too much information. I send too many emails after the Dean's meeting, even though they're lecturers, I'd send them what's going on because we're, we say we're small and mighty. So in order for the program to grow, let the young people come forward as well. Though I do believe in intergenerational, but I also believe, you know, let the young people come forward. And Cheri is doing and also she's gonna do a great job. And she's already done so much since she's here. So, I trust that it's gonna carry forward. I don't know in what ways, but I'm open to that. You know, and I think I, I believe and have faith that the School of Arts is in full support of Dance. I have great colleagues. I've done many things, but we're all working really hard so--but it's just a great group of people. It always has been. So what was the question? Has CSUSM lived to my exectations? Well, yeah. I would say yes. And yet we know we really, we do need some more space, and I wish we had more allocations 'cause we can't build the min--we can't build the major unless we get the classes. And then you can't get the classes if you can't offer them. And you can't get, you can't offer them if the students don't sign up for them. So there was that moment where the shopping cart card came forward for students. I don't think that was great. I liked when we used to do--it was a lot of work. And even I didn't have a program I used to advise for Visual and Performing Arts. So I would have my own list. You know, the chair would say, Karen, here's your list. You're gonna advise all these people. Okay, what, what do they need to take? You know, they're visual arts students. But these halls used to be full, lined up, you know, when we'd be registering for classes. So you'd get to really meet the students, but then you would ensure that all these classes are gonna be full. But now the students, it's a different climate, but, you know, I can't change the system, so--

01:03:00Fabbi: Bringing on the technology and you know, having--

01:03:04Schaffman: it's great. But it's also, I think students, they need the advice and the opportunity to sit down with not just advising, but here. I think I'm taking a tangent from the--okay. So I hope, I hope that the, I hope that, yeah. I've also, the other thing that I've done with the curriculum that I've been en enabled to do with some amazing colleagues on our campus is create community engagement projects. I didn't really talk about that, but I did a few highlights. I did-- I started the collaboration with A Step Beyond, and our dean is now on the board, a fairly new dean, Dean Leora Gubkin. And for five years I taught a class over there. So, and that really ties into our dance and education pathway that may or may not grow into directly into that, but it's a great opportunity for students. And Meryl is working with Cheri and other faculty on this big arts and education certification. Arts certification project. So we're really in that already. And then I've gotten a few students jobs over at A Step Beyond. And so that was great. And I worked with Community Engagement. I got a little stipend at one point to work with them and create a course that was specific to working with them called Dance in the Community. That was inspired by Kristine Diekman as well. She did a big video in the community project for many years that always inspired me. She made public service announcements with like, so many underserved communities in our area. And so she's always been like, how do you do that? So she, she lit the way for me, so I wanna' acknowledge her also in this interview. So there was that. And then I did, I worked with Veronica Anover and worked at the Glenner Town Center, which is an Alzheimer's day center. And we did a whole project there. And then I did another fundraiser over at the Conrad Prebys theater in La Jolla. So I've done a few big community projects. I worked with the Museum of--it was called Museum of Man then--at Balboa Park. And I worked with Judy Bauerlein, and we brought guest artists there, and we did big project there. So I think those kinds of experiences for students are so important.

01:05:40Fabbi: Yeah. And a lot of like community feelers and outreach.

01:05:45Schaffman: Yeah. And bringing community to campus, too. I've brought a lot of community to campus 'cause I brought some well-known artists here. So different schools would come here. I worked with NCHEA (North County Higher Education Alliance) as well for like five years in my early days. And we did some really big projects. We brought legendary Donald McKayle here. He was at UC Irvine. He was already in his late seventies, early eighties when he came. I think it was early eighties. And he was the Alvin Aileys teacher. And so we've done, we've done some big things. I'm sure there will be more big things. Yeah. So to our little campus, we've done some big projects.

01:06:24Fabbi: That's right. Okay. So this is changing gear a bit. Okay so my, the overarching question is what did you do during Covid? But in our pre-interview you mentioned, you talked about the double pandemic and that the Covid-19 virus increased awareness of systemic racism. So the question really is what did you do during Covid? When we were all kind of locked inside--

01:06:59Schaffman: Well, I did a lot during Covid. I--with the rise of Black Lives Matter and the murder of George Floyd, you know, everything stopped in certain ways. And I immediately, you know--for a moment--and then I immediately gathered with other colleagues in School of Arts, a few of us, we worked the entire summer to create a series. We got some money from the dean's office through some donors, through the Wagner family. And we used all of that money to program online lectures and performances. So that was like a big project. I don't know. We did at least nine, ten events per semester that was open to whole campus. But we really geared it towards School of art students to get them, to get them going. And it was, at that time during COVID, too, there was a HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) project that I worked that Mtifiti Imara invited me to be part of. So I worked with a faculty member.So the artist that we worked with was T. Lang. And we also worked with Melicia Taylor, who's become a friend and collaborator Melicia was a lecturer here in Music. So Melicia was also hired. So these are significant Black artists. Melicia is a sound designer and an opera singer. And Melicia came here and brought compositions. And we did a piece with, I think it was my choreography class. It was choreography or improvisation. We did a dance film called I Am, and the students did their own choreographies at home. And then she worked with a filmmaker to sew it together. So we did a film. I brought another artist. We were still in--well we were just opening--Jose Abad from San Francisco, another Black artist. So I brought a lot of--working with a lot of Black artists to campus. I was doing that. like I said, I've been doing that all along. But it was really a focus on that with HBCU--our campus relationship grew with that. Cheri just did that project this year. So yeah, I was really amazed at that. And we worked with students. We came in even though the campus was on lockdown. We got permission to come in and students got to work with some of these choreographers over Zoom and made their own works. So Skyla Miles and Minnie Atkins both made work, both alum from Dance Studies with, during this HBCU project. Also brought, Mayfield Brooks, who was very known in New York and in Europe and South America, and well, globally, for her work with--she calls it improvising while Black. And she has written a lot and did a lot of projects around Black culture and survival and things. So yeah, it was very, very prolifically busy and happening. And then at the same time, I was gearing up for my sabbatical application. And so even though we were in, still in Covid, I wrote my application to do this project called Think Gravity Dance Tank. So that was really involving--it was happening still during Covid. And we had a symposium and it was taking on the 50th anniversary of contact improvisation. So that's my, it was almost a continuation. It's kind of is a continuation of what I wrote about in my PhD in 2001 about contact not being universalist and who writes the history. So we brought forward some less recognized histories. So Ishmael Houston-Jones was my teacher in Holland way back when, in 1990. No, 1989. 1989. That's his brick (points to brick on window sill). He has a very famous bit called White Hope that he dances with this brick and he's danced with a brick internationally. And he's a very well respected artist. So it was a very creative way to do a curatorial project, where we invited four people, and we let them invite four people. And then we brought students. So Anya Cloud got a job at, in Boulder, University of Colorado. So they have a much bigger facility. So we did it there. And we had a week-long symposium, and we called it a reckoning with contact improvisation. And we stepped back 'cause we're both white women and we let everybody else lead. And, but we held the container and things like that. And then from that, we created a film because we had so much stuff. We had interview, we interviewed everybody, and then we had incredible footage. So we made a documentary. That documentary won best documentary at the Toronto Dance Film Festival. So we were happy with that. Or Contact Festival (Contact Dance International Film Festival) was just recently. And we've screened it in a few places, and it's gotten really good feedback. So it's a bit of a reckoning with the history in terms of who's identified 'cause contact improvisation is historicized as very white. Whereas its influences are very much based in African American culture, history and ways of working in jazz music and things like that. In terms of what is a jam, what is it to improvise. And then also there is a history of Eastern Asian American and Asian art influences in terms of what is yielding, what is gravity, what is meditation. So we brought in other voices to speak about cultural histories and positionality in terms of race and culture. So it was really, it was really productive and it was a deep experience. And it was cool 'cause we brought--I got student success funds from here and Anya got some money from her institution. So we involved, we were about twenty-six people, something like that. Between twenty-four and twenty-eight. But half of them were students. So it was really important to bring the future forward. So again, this was another project that really is based in intergenerational community and containers. And I'm really happy 'cause Makisig Akin is Philippinx and they took the model of curation and they did a whole BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) dance festival in Berlin, probably one of the first or of the first. And they used that model of curation and they were really, really excited that, to learn that way of curating. So there's that curating piece of mine, too, that yeah. People, if nobody curates, then you're not gonna' have the work, you know And we're, it's strong to curate one at a time, but it's also strong to curate symposiums that bring people togetherfor some time. Yeah.

01:14:20Fabbi: Okay. So do you have work, a work that you've accomplished in your career that has been most impactful in your opinion?

01:14:32Schaffman: Impactful on the field or--

01:14:34Fabbi: To you.

01:14:35Schaffman: Oh, to me or to the field?

01:14:42Fabbi: Or both.

01:14:46Schaffman: Well, in terms of my training, my work with Debra Hay affected my perceptual improvisation very greatly. So Deborah Hay is a, still working artist and dance elder. And I studied with her, I saw her perform in Holland, but I wasn't in her class. And then I brought her with this group Lower Left that I worked with for many years in San Diego. So I've dipped in and out of her work. And I'm really proud that I recently got to perform with her in her work at the Getty. It was a re-dance, a recreation of a work from the sixties. So she was a very significant artist that emerged in the sixties. And she's continued to emerge internationally. So she really had a great impact on my career of how I dance. But I think--I don't know, it's such a hard question. I guess--now I'll get a little emotional because I guess creating the program is probably my biggest impact. I mean, it was a lot of work.

01:16:17Fabbi: A lot of work. A lot of really important work.

01:16:19Schaffman: I hope University continues to support it. I mean, I think it had the greatest impact 'cause I--thousands of students have taken dance classes here. And I'm sure, because you can read it, some of them was whoa, but most of them always write in the evals, I didn't know dance could be like this, or I didn't know--I just can't imagine that we would talk about dance like this, or dance could be this way or this class--even if I'm not teaching it. But creating a program where the people are invited to teach what they love to teach, to teach what they know and but to also really keep bringing in this idea that we're gonna embody the learning. I think San Marcos is unique like that, and I think the way it's open has and its opening, is pretty unique. And, but I guess, you know, I've, and I've done Summer Arts as well, so I've worked within the system and I did six summers with Summer Arts. I did two as an artist. One was during my hire, one was before my hire. And that program is over. It just got closed. 'Cause one of the biggest things the State of California did for the arts was like, oh my gosh. But I think it's, I guess I never really thought about that when you said is there some favorite work? And I was like, favorite, I mean, you know, Think Gravity was enormous. Veronica was enormous. Live Legacy was enormous. You know? I had a big practice in San Diego with people for seven years. We met every Thursday researching dance, and then I'll show you after on the wall. Lower Left was huge part of my life. Holland, Riverside was huge. But I guess the biggest accomplishment or impact, the greatest impact would be I guess this Wow. I never thought about it like that. When I visited, when I was doing, um, the Deborah Hay work--Deborah Hay is friends with Susan Foster, who's the, who I referred to as the godmother of dance studies. I don't know if she'd like that title, but I'll give it to her. She was like--I went to visit her house. She was like, You did it. She, because I think when they took me into that program, I was a bit of a wild card card 'cause they took a lot of scholars. They didn't--at the time wasn't practicing PhD, but I was dancing, like really committed to dancing and performing still. And so I was a bit of a wild card. I didn't get the, I didn't get the scholarship, you know, the first year. I didn't get the teaching the first year. They took me, but they didn't give me the, they didn't give me the scholarship. And, but I was like, I'm gonna do this anyway and see how I like it. And so that, but she looked at me, she's like, You did it. 'Cause you know, I guess I did, right? There's a program here. So time to let it go to the next people.

01:19:24Fabbi: Well, that comes to the last question--

01:19:26Schaffman: --the last question, I imagine--

01:19:28Fabbi: which is--

01:19:29Schaffman: now you got me going.

01:19:30Fabbi: Oh it's. We want to, we want to get your feelings in there, too. What do you plan to do both personally and professionally in your retirement?

01:19:43Schaffman: Well, the first thing I want to do, and I am doing it, is slowing down a bit. I'm coming off of a season of lot of loss, too, a lot of loss of family. So yeah, I wanna' slow down. So I'm gonna slow down this summer and do some organizing. Continue to clean the office a little bit. And also, um, yeah, do some organizing. And then planning for my fall. I'm gonna go to Austria. I've been invited by my mentor, Donna Ray, who's a top-level Feldenkrais teacher. And she runs the institute in Vienna, the training institute. So I'm gonna' go with, there's a brand-new cohort starting. So I rented myself an apartment overlooking some park in Vienna, and it has a beautiful view of a park. And I'll walk through the park every morning and I, I'll be an assistant in the training. That means I'll be working basically. And I'm hoping that will really hone my skills even more so as I transition into retirement, I'm still gonna' be working. I'm not like retiring. So there's a woman who, as a dance legend, there's just many dance legends, you know, who work into their nineties. It's not like you stop. I really think I will always be working in the field in some way. I don't know what that is yet. I would like to curate in a theater, but they don't have those kinds of spaces in San Diego anymore, where you can just have a studio like that where you can. That's one of the things I would, I could imagine. So I'm gonna' do that and I'm gonna' go to visit a former student who's now a well-known Swiss actress and has a wonderful family. So I'm gonna' stay with her and watch her on the big stage and take a walk in the Alps. And then I'm going to do a vocal training. And it something--it's called Roy Hart. And I studied with them in San Francisco, one of their proteges. It's in a long line of lineage from the thirties and forties. And it's a vocal technique that was used in theater, like experimental theater, in the fifties and sixties. But it's also like, I'll use the word therapy. I'm not afraid of that. It's therapeutic as all art can be therapeutic, healing. Like let's transform. That's what we do in the arts, we transform. So I'm going to study some voice. And then when I come back, I'm already invited--there's a, I used to, I put myself through graduate school as a Pilates trainer, even though I'm not certified at Pilates. But I'm gonna bring Feldenkrais into their Pilates studio and do like a little one night a week class. And then, my friend Anya is up for--Anya and Mcsig are up for a big, NEFA, the New England Foundation of the Arts is one of the few funders that give fairly big money in dance in our country. They're a finalist if they get that they're doing an interdisciplinary dance project. And I guess I'll be performing. So that's the goal. The goal is to keep doing yoga, dance, walk, social activism. And I also like to paint and write.

01:23:27Fabbi: Wow.

01:23:27Schaffman: We'll see. There'll be a little more time for that. Yeah.

01:23:33Fabbi: I love that. You're gonna keep busy.

01:23:36Schaffman: Yeah, I'll be busy, but I've also, this summer, I'm gonna slow it down.

01:23:41Fabbi: And that's really good, too. So is there anything else you'd like to talk about in this interview?

01:23:51Schaffman: I think what I would like to do though is we talked about taking a few photos. And I'm really happy--I guess what I'll say is that I'm really happy that the University's interested in this interview and maybe scanning some of the posters and all things that were presented. Maybe they can even use it to use it as fuel to get a theater or a bigger production venue. Or, or a unit that would like to take care of some of these things so that faculty don't have to do all that work, But I also, I guess I wanna' really honor the founding faculty. Maybe just take a moment. I could close with that. Everybody worked really hard, and I'm really honored to have been part of the upstart. And I hope and believe that our campus will keep on during whatever's going on in the world. And I really hope that the arts can really stay strong here. Yeah. I think we are such an incredible group of artists in the School of Arts, so I just wanna' wish everybody well and to keep on. And I really, I hope that students will--and faculty and committees and the administration will--see really the value of what Dance does. 'Cause dance is really, plays a big role in the world. And like I said, it can be a lot of fun, but it goes way deeper than that.

01:25:411: Well, that's a really great note to end on. Yeah. Thank you. And I just want to thank you for allowing us to celebrate you and your career and every, all the hard work that you've done all of this time. And I know there's a lot more to come for you, but kind of at this milestone--

01:25:57Schaffman: Thank you.

01:25:58Fabbi: --you know, moment for you. Just thank you for sharing with us.

01:26:01Schaffman: Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Yeah, thank you.

01:26:09Schaffman: There's a few projects that I'd like to highlight that were highly sponsored by the University and that had a great, also had a great impact on my life. And the first one is a project called United and Severed. I think that I will reach for the pamphlet to refresh myself on how important this project was. So I did this with Professor Kristine Diekman, and actually this project was really personal, but I was able to take a very personal experience--this is what artists do if you don't write memoirs, and they take it out into the world. And so it was following my own--I had a very severe traumatic injury while I was employed here. Lived through that. And I stood in as like a surrogate body on film for the topic of that window of time. So it deals with women and traumatic injury and PTSD. So at the time, I was also in close relationship with somebody who is working as a active--not active duty--non-active duty for the military, who was working around soldiers and PTSD and the Afghanistan and Iran and Iraq aftermath. And so Kristine and I looked for alum and students from our school, who were survivors of traumatic injury and how they dealt with it. And so Kim Anderson is--was in it and she was a CSUSM Liberal Studies major. And Ivy Kensinger was a student of mine and also Veronica Anover. She survived a horrific car accident on the way to campus. And turns out she is now a PhD in psychology. So very--came through in a miracle way. And we did a project that was a very poetic representation of movement and understanding disability. So that was featured. And we also worked with Butoh dancers because it was also during the time of some wild fires out in East County. So we took a group of students and we took down a tree from the extremities down to the trunk that was burned. And Richard Keeley is a professor, was a professor at San Diego State--is retired. and Anna O'Cain is a professor, visual art professor, who was working at Miracosta. And we did a huge project together that was featured at Center for the Arts Escondido. So I really wanted to highlight that. It was a very deep project. We have beautiful video footage. Kristine did an incredible job editing. I was sitting alongside her. She pushed all the buttons. Of course, it was really her editing that made the project so spectacular. And our work was featured in many film festivals internationally. So I just really wanted to mention that we have this beautiful artifact from that. And then the other project that I wanted to talk about was, um, wait a minute.

01:29:28Fabbi: Your palliative care work.

01:29:30Schaffman: Oh, my current work that I will continue when I'm, that I actually have a meeting in ten minutes for, that I'm working with Palliative Care--that's a pilot project--that's run by Michael McDuffie. And I'm working with Ranjita Basu and Andrew Spieldenner. And now we have a cohort of people from the Mindfulness Center working on it. And we're working with Elizabeth Healthcare Center, Elizabeth Hospice Center. And we're doing a once-a-month project on mindfulness. And so I'm bringing in the somatic piece. So really it's been a great, We've been working on that together for about a year and a half. And now we're enacting it over there in Escondido. And next week we'll have our third monthly session, and it will go through the year. So I will be still staying involved as a volunteer for that, while I'm off the books. And so I'm very happy to be doing practical applications in different fields. And that connects as I interweave everything that I've said today, that you know, that what I do with dance and what I believe dance can do in the world has a great impact because we're working with the body and compassionate empathy. We all have a body. We're always moving, even if it's, we're just, we're down to the breath. Breath is movement. And so with that, I'll just take a breath and say thank you.

01:30:59Fabbi: Thank you. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION END