Meadows on the Mic: Parisa Khobdeh – Dance Professional and Artist-in-Residence

Andy: Welcome to Meadows on the Mic. I'm your host, Andy Draper, and I'm here with Division of Dance Visiting Assistant Professor of Practice and Artist in residence, Parisa Khobdeh. Parisa, welcome to the show!

Parisa: Thank you! Thank you for having me.

Andy: We're going to be talking with her about her time at Meadows. She's an alumni from the dance program, her fabulous career with the Paul Taylor Dance Company and returning to teach at Meadows. So, let's jump right into it. Parisa, where did you grow up and how did you first get into the arts?

Parisa: I grew up in North Texas, specifically Plano, Texas. I went to Chamberlain School of Ballet, then I went to Southern Methodist University, Meadows School of the Arts.

Andy: And what kind of spurred your interest in dance, as opposed to music or... other artistic outlets?

Parisa: Good question. I think I…growing up, I did it because both my parents worked full-time. It was a form of childcare. I think the, probably the truth of it was my mother was concerned about, you know, so many things. My brother was a latchkey kid. She wanted me to be organized and safe, whatnot. So she put me into dance classes. It was convenient. I ended up doing it because I didn't know anything else. I ended up, the school that I was going to, actually, they ended up closing shop. They merged with another school, Chamberlain School of Ballet, when I was in middle school and probably got very lucky there.

The training was very ballet specific. It was about the Balanchine method. It was the first time that I was doing feature length, evening length ballets, like the Nutcracker and Coppélia, we had really, and at that time where we were based in Plano, but we were performing at McFarland. And Kathy Chamberlain was bringing guests artists that were, you know, heir apparent to Mikhail Baryshnikov.

She had brought in Carlos Acosta from Houston Ballet, Cuban dancer that was a principal dancer with Houston Ballet for a few years before moving to Royal Ballet and sharing the stage with him and others like Philip Broomhead, Tiekka Schofield, Lauren Anderson, just to name a few. It was…it was mesmerizing.

I ended up deciding to go to New York, as a high school student. And I started, you know, seeing other forms of art, other forms of modern dance, and again, I was coming from a very classical ballet background. So that was sort of my introduction foray into, dance, but I didn't want to be a dancer. I should make that really clear. I wanted to be a doctor.

Andy: That it's interesting how that, that happens sometimes, kind of arts and medicine kind of intertwined like that.

Parisa: Absolutely.

Andy: So, so you went to a school in the New York area. So, what drew you back to Dallas and Meadows? There's a lot of schools, obviously in New York. New York and also around Texas, the North Texas area. So, what specifically drew you to Meadows?

Parisa: So, at the time, I think the director of the school that I was at, she was occasionally adjuncting at Meadows. And whenever we had a Nutcracker performance or, uh, you know, where we needed men, male dancers, she was hiring the dancers from the Meadows dance department, specifically men. It was almost always men that were guesting with us. So, some of those high school years my first partners were George Smallwood and Jamal Story, and they were really, they were about four years older than me…four or five years old. We were about four years apart. So, when I was a junior in high school, they were a junior at SMU, when I was a senior, you know, so forth. So they, George was the one that actually said, like, I think you should go to SMU. But if you go, make sure you live on campus.

So, Kathy Chamberlain actually was the one that encouraged me. She knew that I wanted to be a pre-med student. I wanted to be a doctor. So she said, you know, she was adjuncting at the time at SMU. And she said, why don't you audition? They're, they're very generous with their scholarships and their funding, and it might help you be able to go to school. I was a scholarship student at her ballet school, as well. It's worth noting. So I did. I auditioned for the dance department. I applied to the school. I got in, and they were generous with their funding. So, I decided to…I decided on SMU. I was a pre-med student, and I declared a dance major as you needed to, in order to keep funding.

And when I got to SMU, I had no idea who Martha Graham was. I had no idea who Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Pina Bausch, Twyla Tharp, Meredith Monk, none of these names meant anything to me. And when I got there, I just, a whole new canon of dance was introduced to me. And very quickly, I was cast in lots of main stage productions where I was working with some of the resident choreographers and outside choreographers. And it's just one foot in front of the other. And it's…I have I haven't really looked back. It was like I had no choice.

Andy: Right. So, you were getting a ton of kind of performance opportunities while you were an undergrad and new to the new to this…new kind of, like you were saying, canon of dance and artists and the choreographers.

Parisa: Absolutely. The performance opportunities just doubled, tripled when I got to school.

Andy: You very quickly joined the or got an offer from the Paul Taylor Dance Company. Can you tell us a little bit about what was what it was like receiving that offer and what what kind of made you stand out and or what kind of caught their eye that they wanted you to join them.

Parisa: So, when I was at SMU, again, like Martha Graham, the Graham technique was all we had back then. And we had four years of it. And I had I had even gone to New York to study Graham, during the summers and winters.

And then I saw a Taylor performance. It was the second company that was performing out in McKinney. And I saw them, they're a six member company. They actually no longer exist. They shut it down during COVID, but I saw them perform Company B and Images, and I just thought, 'Wow, what extraordinary dancers! And, it's worth mentioning, in that six-member dance company, three of them were former Meadows graduates. So, at the time it was Shanti Giro, Susie Dodge and Joe Gallarizzo, yes.

So, that was part of the draw. I thought, “Wow, look at these SMU dancers. That's phenomenal!” I think that might've been my first year at SMU. So again, I had one foot in the door and one foot out of the door, but then I started studying the Graham technique. I started going up to New York. And then I thought, I wanna take a Taylor intensive. And I did. SMU in fact helped me attend that summer. I even remember I got a job as a working in a law office because I thought, well, if this doctor thing doesn't work out, maybe I'll go into law.

And, that helped me pay for that summer to go to the Taylor intensive. And again, it was: “Wow!” I was dancing the works of Paul Taylor. We were doing Piazzolla, Caldera, we're doing the drunken duet, the drunk duet and Ayres. I was learning from Joao Mauricio, Susan McGuire, who were both Taylor, god and goddesses. It was extraordinary and I was surrounded by by really talented dancers. I came back to SMU. I continued studying I went to the American Dance Festival and while I was at the American Dance Festival, I saw the premiere of Actually, it's worth nothing.

I was dancing the works of Paul Taylor. We were performing Piazzolla Caldera, the Drunk Duet, and Airs. I was learning from João Mauricio and Susan McGuire, who were both Taylor god and goddesses. It was extraordinary, and I was surrounded by really talented dancers. I came back to SMU, I continued studying. I went to the American Dance Festival and while I was at the American Dance Festival, I saw the premiere of… Actually, it’s worth noting! I did, it was my junior year, and then I had auditioned for the Second Company, for Paul Taylor's Second Company. I remember traveling there, that summer, or that spring to audition, and my mom said, “If you got the job, would you take it?”. And I said… I paused, and I said: “No?”. Because I knew I had, I still had, like two years of school left, and she goes, “Then why are you going?” And I thought, “Well, it’s experience, and I really like his work, I think I will like his work” But there was still some hesitation in my voice, so I went — but I got cut right away.

Then I went, I came back to Dallas and then I went that summer to the American Dance Festival and who opens the festival is Paul Taylor Dance Company. I will never forget June 6th, 2002. They premiered. The evening is, it looks like three different choreographers. Now, it's also worth mentioning Paul Taylor was a Meadows Award recipient in the mid 90s. They had done, prior to my tenure at SMU, Esplanade and had staged Airs, but they didn't do any Taylor works while I was there. So that's why I was going up to New York. We didn't do any Graham works either, which is partially why I was going up to study. But that summer, that night, I saw Cloven Kingdom, Piazzolla Caldera, and the premiere of Promethean Fire. This was post-9/11, and while Paul would never admit to it, Promethean Fire was the work that, when I saw that dance from the back row of the Page Auditorium at Duke, I thought to myself, “I don't want to dance for Paul Taylor. I have to dance for Paul Taylor!”

So that summer, I studied for six weeks at ADF. And, I think I learned how to fly that summer. It transformed my dancing. I came back to SMU. I had this just new found like, I knew what I wanted. I went up to New York again to study at the. Taylor school, and they announced, you know…it was, it's a company that people, you know, they said like somebody has to die to get into that company and it's true. Dancers, artists spend most of their careers once they got in. And Paul really truly valued his dancers and treated us really well and you didn't want to go you wanted to keep dancing for him and keep improving as a dancer and help make his masterpieces.

Andy: I want to chime in and say it's an incredibly challenging thing that an artist can, a young artist can face when you're kind of in the middle of your schooling and education, but you're, you're starting to get the possibility of opportunities and kind of what do you do with like, when you're saying I still have a year or two left, but I'm starting to get some exciting opportunities. And that's a real challenging thing, but it's also very exciting that that was happening at that time.

Parisa: Certainly. And, you know, I went into SMU going one direction and I left SMU going a different direction. And I will say, if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't change a thing. My parents sent me to SMU thinking, “oh, wonderful, she’s got this hobby. She dances, you know, whatever. But she’s going to be able to get a second degree.” And that’s good because my parents literally looked at me and said, “what if you break your Achilles? What if you break your ankle?” That’s what they said to me. Little did we know, 10 years later, I would end up rupturing both Achilles tendons. But that aside, I was focused on having this diverse education. I didn’t realize that Meadows was going to become this, just this dance exploratory. Just this…it was absolutely…it was just this playground of dreams. It felt like the, you know, you felt like you could have the world and the technique, the foundation that I got from Meadows, I will say made me a meteor dancer.

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Having that Graham foundation really transferred very well into the, the Taylor cannon. So, all that to say, I wouldn't change a thing. It started me on this path and I had a glittering career. So I am, I tell everybody I can, I really encourage them to go to SMU for, for all of the reasons that I just mentioned.

Andy: It's really interesting how then at Meadows you were getting, like you said, this really solid foundation and also opportunities with other companies or just to get in touch with other people in the larger community that can provide you with more opportunities. It's networking. It's not just the education that you're receiving. I wanted to ask, what were your first few years with the Paul Taylor Dance Company?

You're out of school. You're not a student anymore. What were those first few years like while you're still learning and developing, but you're a pro now?

Parisa: Andy, could I just mention one more thing? Going back to your previous about the networking. I think it's worth mentioning that there were those three dancers in the second company, but there was also at the time, Anne Maria Mazzini and Michael Truss-Navek, who were in the main company. Then I joined, I was the third person to join the main company. Then after that, I think...George Smallwood, Lee Duveneck, Elizabeth Bragg, I mean the number of SMU graduates who have gone through Taylor is actually, it's impressive. So that in and of itself, I think it's worth noting that the training that you get at Meadows, you know, it's really this trifecta of jazz, modern and ballet, lends itself really well for, you know, American modern dance for, and specifically the Taylor rep.

Andy: Right, so there's almost a lineage of SMU grads that we're going through there.

Parisa: 100%, 100%. Now to answer your question about those post-grad years, those first years into my career, correct? Yes. So I actually, I auditioned for Paul Taylor for the main company in April of 2003. I got the job and I was already set, all of my credits were done for my BFA in dance. I just had my, I ended up switching to the computer science degree at some point. I convinced my parents that this is a young man's sport and I need to, I need to do this. I have to do this. Let me, let me do a computer science degree and, you know, I'll go work at Google while trying to find a dance job. And I got hired in April 2003. I came back to SMU a couple of weeks later. I graduated and then I moved up to New York two weeks after that. So I started in the Taylor company in June 2003. And I will say I was a baby. I was 22 years old. I was coming from, you know, SMU, which is, you know, did everything to give us the most professional experience possible, but it was still you know, it's it's an education still school.

Andy: It’s still school

Parisa: Yeah, absolutely. So, I very quickly learned that you know, it really takes two years to make a Taylor dancer You are you are touring the world the stages change You know in you could be performing at Q-tip Queens Theatre in the park and a little postage size stamp, and then the next week you're performing at Herod Atticus on the you know, the Acropolis in Athens. So, I remember that first summer I was dancing at Hollywood Bowl with Leonard Slatkin conducting, you know The LA Philharmonic, right?

Andy: Yes, of course!

Parisa: First time I had ever danced with live music and it was a Bach festival I mean is extraordinary. So, it was it was a fast and furious...you know, I but I learned from Paul really Mr. Taylor really valued seniority, and I looked up to those, to the dancers, all of the dancers that had come before me. It was really a sense of like, you always had like six pairs of shoulders to stand on. It was just, you know, it was a family, it IS A FAMILY.

So that's all that said, the touring was probably the hardest thing for me to get used to. We spent about half the year, sometimes holidays. I remember my first Thanksgiving, we spent that November, that month in Italy. And, you know, just being hard, being away from my home, my family. But I loved what I was doing. And I loved sharing Paul's work with audiences. You know, it was incredible. It didn't matter what language, you know, we were performing from Thailand to Dubai, Oman, it just didn't matter what language people spoke.

Andy: Right, movement is movement.

Parisa: Movement is movement. Yeah, so it was a lot of learning. In the beginning, Paul didn't create on me. So he gave me time to kind of learn how to manage my life. And he gave me lots of roles to work on.

And so I was, and then, you know, and then performing in New York is a whole other beast. We are dancing, you know, you're teching shows during the day with the New York Times photographing, then performing for, you know, this hometown audience, the New York audience, just it's, you know, critics.

And then getting mentioned by the critics being, you know, contending with all of that, all of that information. It's a lot, and it's, you know, but here we are.

Andy: Right, right. It's a part of the career you don't often think about because you're so focused on like the, you know…dance itself, movement itself, and then all the, yeah, the photographers, the critics, the audience. That's a whole challenge in itself.

I wanted to come back to something you mentioned, and I know this about your career that you did suffer a very severe injury and recovered from it as well. Can you kind of talk about what happened and what your recovery was like?

Parisa: So, I think I didn't take very good care of myself. And back then, you know, I think I got a massage. You know, it costs money, you're a student. It's, you can't afford these things. And I will say that I'm really pleased to see that the students now take better care of themselves. SMU offers physical therapy for the students on a weekly basis. There's just better self-care than I had access to back then.

So, my calves just got really really tight and there was a lot of output but not a lot of input into my body and you're in New York. So, you're walking and what ended up happening, I got to the point where I was just, I was literally, I was dancing. I remember I was dancing dandelion wine and it's my role had a lot of jumps in it and we were at city center and I was landing out of my jumps on one foot to save because my left foot was just, it was agony every time I landed. And a couple of times it kind of felt like someone had hit me with a baseball bat in the back of my leg, the back of my Achilles to the point that it's like you kind of look back to see, did somebody just hit me?

I went…eventually, I went to go see the…Hamilton, he was the New York City ballet doctor and he was a wonderful, wonderful doctor and surgeon. Who told me that Balanchine taught him everything he knows about dance. And he looked at me and he was like, “you've got a 70% tear in your left and you have a small tear in your right.”

And I had gotten, I had taken six months off to repair and I got the, but you know, until they actually get you on the table, cut you open, they don't know, you know, how bad it's going to be. I was young. I was young enough. I recovered within a couple of months. It was the body, just the body wants to heal and it did. And I thought, okay, the doctor said like: “You've taken this time off. Do you want to get the right one done?” And I went back and Paul was not as keen. It was like, I want you back. So I came back. I came back to dancing. Three years later, the right one completely ruptured and rolled up my calf like a mini blind.

Andy: Oh my gosh.

Parisa: Yeah. And it was in the middle of rehearsal. And I could just tell, I can still remember like the company surrounding me while we were waiting for the ambulance to show up. And I could just, I could see the fear, every dancer's fear on their face that that could be, that could have been me.

So, but at the time, at that time Hamilton stopped doing surgeries. He sent me to his protege, Philip Bauman, Dr. Philip Bauman, also the New York city ballet doctor. And he did a phenomenal job. And I will say that where these injuries were career ending…they are now career threatening, because the science, the medicine, the physical therapy, everything is better. And I remember my first performance back at the Dorothy Chandler Theater in LA. It just, it took some time, but I came back.

Andy: That's really incredible. A lot of people would not be, a lot of people don't come back from things like that. My background is in music and there's ways that you can engineer yourself as a musician. And a lot of people just give up if certain things happen because there's just like the recovery is just too much. That's really inspiring.

Parisa: Yeah, and I think I learned how to not quit. I think at some point I, and Paul was very, very, he at one point, I think he wanted to fire me at one point because I kept getting injured. And Betty told him, she was like, “you can't fire her”. And he was just so mad. He's like, “I told her not to jump”. And I had torn my calf. This is previous to the Achilles injury. It was just a ticking time bomb.

Andy: Right.

Parisa: And she said to him, she goes, “you've hired someone just like yourself”. And Paul was, Paul was the same. He just, he danced until there's a performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music BAM at the premiere of American Genesis where they had to bring the curtain down because he just, he collapsed on stage and he couldn't go on.

Andy: Oh, wow. So anyways, but I think what's important injuries are their lessons, their lessons to be learned. And Paul came after that second injury, he called me. out of the blue. And he said, you're a mainstage and I want you back. I want you back as soon as possible. As soon as you can dance, I want you back”.

And I came back and the first, first work, he made a, he made a feature role for me and it was great. It was just the fear just melted away and you move on, you move past it. It becomes part of your DNA. You learn something and onward, onward and upward.

Andy: And how much time was that from the, from the injury to you coming back to that role?

Parisa: Uh, the, I think that Achilles injury, which was pretty severe, it was about six months from the point in which I had the operation to being back on stage. That said, they, they didn't just throw me back on stage. They, you know, they incrementally.

Andy: Right.

Parisa: He got me back on stage. So I went from doing, you know, a smaller role to one performance a night to two performances to three. And, you know, we always text during the day. So you're actually like, if you're doing one, one of three dances in the evening for the performance, you're teching it during the day. So, you're actually doing two shows. But, you know, they, they were very strategic in bringing me back safely.

Andy: Right. So they slowly kind of ramped it back up over time. My final line of questioning is, so now you are back at Meadows. You're, you're now in a teaching role. What, what kind of drew you back to, to come and teach at Meadows? And what's that been like to kind of, you know, go from being a student to now you're one of the faculty?

Parisa: Well, I, I will say that one of the, one of the things that, that took me back, I was recruited back. I was like, just postpartum. I just had a baby. And Carter Alexander was actually the chair at the time. And he called me up and said, “Hey, would you, would you be able to do this?” And I thought, you know, what, what initially I said, “Yes, I want to get back into the studio. I want to do this.” It was my professors, my professors, Larry White, Nathan Montoya, Karen Crete, Shelley Berg, Patty Delaney, Max Stone, Sabrina Madison Cannon, Joe Orlando, Bob Beard, Dick Abrahamson, you know, and all of the accompanists, they became my, they became part of my DNA.

I heard them when I danced, when I rehearsed, when I created, when I had fallen, you know, when I hit rock bottom, I heard my professors and, you know, in a way I thought, okay, I want to give. back what they gave me. And then I got into the studio and I started working with the students and I have to say, when I danced Paul's work, it wasn't him dancing those dances, it was me dancing those dances. And I loved it. I loved it. It was beyond anything I had ever imagined I would do with my life. And now I'm in the studio with these dancers and I see them, and I see them doing, having these light bulb moments where it just, they make connections and they're doing the Taylor work. And I get goosebumps all over my body. I'm just like, “this is the next best thing to doing the work itself, is seeing those dancers do find their voice and blossom and turn into artists. That's why I'm here.”

Andy: That's such an exciting part of being on on the teaching side is seeing like that kind of growth in in your students and seeing them become the artists of their own- Absolutely.

Parisa: 100 percent!

Andy: My final question is what can they what can students expect in in your classroom and in rehearsals?

Parisa: They can expect that…they can expect to be challenged. You know, I'm, I'm not a teacher that I'm, I'm not an artist that will lower my expectations. I have integrity, and I'm here to move the art form forward.

So, I think dancers can expect to get an insight into, you know, professional expectations. And I want to give them a holistic view of, of, of the world and support them in their discoveries.

Andy: Right, learning those professional standards. It can be so shocking and so different from, especially if you come even from a good program. A lot of times students have trouble when they're, you know, they were the best at their high school or whatever program and they get to college training and it's a whole different league.

Parisa: Absolutely.

Andy: Parisa, thank you so much for coming on to the show. It's been incredible to hear about your time at Meadows and your career with the Paul Taylor Company. And it's exciting to have you back teaching at Meadows.

Parisa: Thank you, Andy. Thank you for having me!

Andy: Thank you for tuning into Meadows on the Mic and a big thank you to Parisa Khobdeh for coming on to the show! You can see her work in action at the Fall Dance Concert on Wednesday, November 20th, where she's restaging Paul Taylor's Esplanade along with a new work from fellow faculty member Carter Alexander. If you're interested in learning more about the Meadows Dance Program, check us out online at smu.edu/Meadows. We offer a BFA and a minor in Dance Performance.

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