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by Linda Shapiro

Carl Flink bounds up 34 concrete steps in the main lobby of the Barbara Barker Center for Dance like a man on a mission. After dancing professionally for over a decade—and practicing law—Flink joined the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance as an associate professor in September 2004. One year later, he took over as dance program director, bringing to his department and to the West Bank Arts Quarter his curious but very apt mix of legal and artistic savvy.

Flink typifies what he calls "the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit that dance artists manifest." This spirit, he says, means the dance program is "uniquely positioned to be a leader in the WBAQ. The program is a training ground for flexibility and for getting at new ideas."

One of those ideas is partnering with dance organizations and connecting with community artists. Through the Cowles Land Grant Endowed Chair, the dance program has been importing internationally renowned artists and scholars since 1989. But Flink believes that the "flowing-in-and-out process" between the program and the local dance community could be significantly expanded and enriched.

"The dance program is an artistic engine for the dance community," says Flink. "We are graduating students who are phenomenal technicians, scholars, choreographers and performers. Those students and their teachers are building two-way artistic bridges, helping us become a center for people to find resources and build community."

The Arts Quarter, Flink emphasizes, is about "creating a conscious space where artists from different disciplines thinking about the same problems can find a collaborative response. It's also about developing more fluid boundaries by inviting people from local, national and international communities to come and exchange ideas."

Last fall, Flink forged a partnership with the Southern Theater near Seven Corners. The theater now offers reduced-rate tickets to University students. And working with the Southern, Flink has brought McKnight Artists Fellows into the program to teach master classes and talk informally with students. Flink's goal: "I want students to see the vibrancy of the Minnesota dance community, and local artists to experience the vitality of the program."
Dancing to different drummers

As a dancer and choreographer, teacher, attorney, and community activist, Flink brings to his several public roles a lively mix of imagination and logic, passion and precision. He began dancing in 1985 while working on a B.A. in political science and women's studies at the U. While taking modern classes in the dance program, he studied ballet at a local studio. Soon he was taking two to three classes a day, seven days a week. At the same time, he was playing serious soccer and considering trying out for professional teams in England.

In 1989, visiting Cowles Artist Susan McGuire convinced Flink to make dance a career. She had come to work with dance program students to mount Paul Taylor's work "Esplanade." The intense physicality of Taylor's work meshed with Flink's athletic training and his desire to "fly through space and take risks. In Taylor's work, I found a dance form where I didn't feel my athlete's body was getting in the way," says Flink.

Postponing plans to enter graduate school in political science, Flink moved to New York, where he was soon on full scholarship at the Paul Taylor School. He danced with a number of small New York companies for the next few years, and in 1992 was invited to join the internationally acclaimed José Limón Company.

Flink had always been active in political and social justice causes, and up to age 23, he had assumed he would go into politics. After the Limón Company performed at the White House in 1996, he decided to make the leap from dance to law. "It was a stunning experience to walk into the White House as 'the entertainment,'" he muses.

But he "never got close to leaving dance." Accepted to Stanford Law School in 1998, Flink continued to teach dance and choreography as a guest faculty member in Stanford's dance program. He returned to Minneapolis in 2001 to join the Farmer's Legal Action Group as a staff attorney but soon was choreographing, performing, and teaching as an affiliate faculty member in the U's dance program.
Merging career paths

After the birth of his daughter, Willa, in 2002, Flink found it increasingly difficult to manage what had become two full-time careers. "The dance program gave me the perfect opportunity to combine my experiences as a lawyer and an artist," says Flink.

As a lawyer with an artistic bent, Flink saw cases as human interactions, not just as applications of law texts. "The classic lawyer's approach is that everything is a legal problem; my approach is that law is one of an array of problem solving tools."
As an artist, teacher, and administrator, Flink brings his legal training to problem solving. "I can help people 'talk down' from emotions and look at concrete things that need to happen," he explains. "I try to analyze a situation as a series of critical components that can be moved around to solve the problem."

Whatever his role, the ability to connect with people is crucial, says Flink: "Whether you're with a client, a dancer, a student, or an audience member, you need to feel what that person feels, and respond to that. You need to bring people to a place where they can go deeper into who they are. It's just the stage that's different."