Arc of Life

On one of the first spring-like days this year in NYC, I arrive at Barnard College to observe rehearsal for John Jasperse’s new piece, “Tides,” which will open the LaMama Moves! Dance Festival on April 10. Jasperse, tall and lean, introduces the dancers who are warming up, and asks me to imagine the deep tunnel shape that is the Ellen Stewart Theatre stage instead of this light-filled studio. Composer Hahn Rowe attends to an iPad where his original score is recorded. The hour-long “Tides” is delicate and quirky, fascinating to watch. It interlaces a contemplative pace with sections so active they leave the dancers panting. At the end, Jasperse has one note—the whole “garden section” has gone really wrong. He doesn’t know what exactly. He’ll watch the video. Right now they need to try on some costume options. Nothing seems to work. Opening night is three weeks out.

Jodi Melnick in “Tides” by John Jasperse. Photograph by Rachel Keane

As founder of John Jasperse Projects and director of the Sarah Lawrence College dance program, Jasperse’s choreography has toured widely and been commissioned by such celebrated companies as White Oak Dance Project, Lyon Opera Ballet, and Batsheva Dance. “Tides” will be his twentieth evening length work made during the nearly four decades of his career so far. It celebrates the arc of life in dance with a cast of five, some of whom match or exceed Jasperse’s longevity alongside newcomers just starting out. All are connected by a web of mentor-protégé relationships.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about gratitude,” Jasperse tells me when we talk via Zoom several days later. Our conversation (edited here for length and clarity) ranges from hero worship for Trisha Brown, to ageism and sexism, to what it means to make art during challenging times.

I love that you’re working with a group of dancers whose ages span a range of 40 years. Sometimes when companies work intergenerationally, there’s a divide between the qualities of younger and older that is off-putting. I didn’t notice that at all here.

One of the things that made me want to make this from the beginning is the ageism but also the sexism that ironically is in dance. It’s one of the only fields that when you walk into a classroom of young aspiring dancers, there are still 27 girls and 2 boys. Obviously that’s a little more complicated now that we think of gender not so much in this binary, but still there is this history. That ratio completely changes when you end up in a professional context and suddenly fifty percent of the jobs are going to men, if not more. You get to company directors and most of them are cisgendered men, myself included. And yet, the power of the dancing form is full of things traditionally thought to be ‘feminine’—responsive, rather than reactive; knowledge that isn’t about cognitive knowing, but rather intuition and sensation. So to me, the idea to center women and femmes is that over these many, many years of doing work, who are the people who show up? Vicky [Shick] goes to the studio every day. Jodi [Melnick] is very much that kind of dancer who would live in the studio if she could. Sara Rudner was completely that kind of a maker. There’s something astounding and powerful about that commitment. Dance is for me more and more about what is the bubble I want to create in order to be in that space on a daily basis. Who do I want to be in a room with.

Vicky Shick in “Tides” by John Jasperse. Photograph by Rachel Keane

This piece looks like it derives from the movement styles of Jodi and Vicky.

Well maybe, but it’s all me. Believe it or not. All the phrases. I make all the material. I am making things with an eye toward who’s doing it. And I feel like there’s this undeniable thing that goes back to Trisha [Brown]. When I first came to NY I studied with Vicky because she was teaching with the Trisha Brown company. I’ve known her since 1985. Then I became close friends with Jodi, who has been close, close friends with Vicky for decades. Maria [Fleischman] was mentored by Allysen Hooks, a grad student at Sarah Lawrence, who danced with Jodi. Jodi’s taught at Sarah Lawrence, and Jace [Weyant] and Maria know each other from North Carolina School of the Arts and followed each other to Sarah Lawrence. I first met Jace because she was a Young Arts finalist in choreography and she ended up coming to Sarah Lawrence at least in part because of me. There’s this real life chain of transmission through the dance world.

Can you say more about the influence of Trisha Brown?

When I first came to New York, I was obsessed with getting into the Trisha Brown Company and that never happened, thank God. I don’t think I would have developed the voice I have if I’d been inside somebody that I revered to that degree. It was only by not getting it that I had to grapple with the idea that, yeah well, that’s what she’s doing and I’m not that. I have another project. I’m much too crazy to have the smoothness and suppleness. I mean there are idiosyncrasies within Trisha’s work, but it’s about a world that feels psychically not as fraught as the world that I tend to inhabit. Later in my career, I once told Trisha how much she meant to me. “I just wanted to let you know when I saw “Set and Reset” as a college student in 1983, it really changed my life. It was the moment that I knew this is what I want to do. It was so clear to me and so powerful.” She didn’t skip a beat. She said, “Yeah, and you’re doing that for other people now.” In some way, everything works out. There is this spectre of Trisha that lingers in everything that I do. I think I’ve taken what I needed from it and went somewhere very different. But there’s something still there.

Including an actual costume piece for “Tides,” right?

Yes, it’s a little short cape that Jodi will wear only in the beginning, and no one will know that it’s a gift that Trisha gave her. It’s not so much that it’s an inside joke, it’s more like yeah, Trisha is really there. It makes me think of something I remember from Lisa Kraus, who danced with Trisha and who gave me my first dance job. She’d been to Southeast Asia and was talking about these Balinese and Javanese shadow puppets that are very intricately painted but the audience never sees them. They see the shadow the puppets create, but the painting on the puppet itself is solely for the puppeteer.

Jodi Melnick in “Tides” by John Jasperse. Photograph by Rachel Keane

Given how long you’ve known Vicky and Jodi, has anything surprised you in making “Tides”?

I’m always mystified by things that I think will be totally fine—with Jodi, for instance, and she’s like, “I won’t be doing that.” So you know, we wrestle with it and something comes out of that. I do think that once I give a phrase to somebody, you have to have a kind of grace. I have to let go of a desire for it to be one thing when I can see it’s gonna be this other thing. The decision to work with somebody as a collaborator, whether as a composer, a musician, a designer, or a dancer, is the most important decision that you make. After that you have to fully trust the person and you have to embrace the situation. If odd things about balance are important, you might not want to put somebody on one leg again and again. There was a moment that came up in the rehearsal you saw. A lot of the unison has to do with weight—not “wait,” but there’s also cues to watch for. If the anxiety of being together in unison takes away that quality of weight because you’re trying to meet the impact at the same time, there’s no utility to it. We need to soften up about it: yeah, we’re going to try to be together, but we have to accept the qualitative is a more important piece.

I think it’s wonderful that we continue to see these gifted dancers onstage late in their careers. I find both Vicky and Jodi intoxicating to watch.

When I look at somebody like Steve Paxton, I’m like yes I see you’ve been in this your entire life. Where you arrived at in your 70s is completely different than when you were 20, but I see the presence of a lifetime commitment. That’s what I’m interested in.

What makes you keep going as an artist?

There was a moment a couple weeks ago when I was like, oh wow, that moment in the studio today. That’s why I keep making. I have moments where I wonder if the work will be legible to other people. And then we have a run where it happens. Enough of the pieces come into alignment, and then there’s a gravitational pull that sucks the other pieces along.

With so many worldly challenges to amplify the already difficult project of making art, I find it interesting that gratitude has been on your mind.

Despite all the challenges and questions that make art feel like Sisyphus pushing a rock up the hill, I still have a gratitude that I can be involved with this. At a moment when there’s so much coming at us, rage is understandable. I’m not saying we should be contemplative and not strident in our resistance to things that are about fundamentally dismantling the world as we know it. But in the midst of that, there’s an activist stance within art making itself that is paradoxically about having a gratitude and respect for those spaces where I can be in a kind of associative play, and how that changes me. To invite people to contemplate their humanity and what it means to be here is a big part of my goal.

LaMama Moves! Dance Festival runs from April 10 through May 4, with ten distinctive programs curated by Nicky Paraiso with Martita Abril, Blaze Ferrer, and Adham Hafez. Tickets and more information here.

Karen Hildebrand

Karen Hildebrand is former editorial director for Dance Magazine and served as editor in chief for Dance Teacher for a decade. An advocate for dance education, she was honored with the Dance Teacher Award in 2020. She follows in the tradition of dance writers who are also poets (Edwin Denby, Jack Anderson), with poetry published in many literary journals and in her book, Crossing Pleasure Avenue (Indolent Books). She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Originally from Colorado, she lives in Brooklyn.

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