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Jennifer Archibald, On the Pulse

Jennifer Archibald’s choreography credits extend from ballet companies to commercial work, reflecting her signature ability to blend classical dance with hip hop. The busy Brooklyn-based, Toronto-born choreographer has a new commission for BalletX, which blends these dance languages and also twines the psychology of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs with themes from William Golding’s 1950s novel, Lord of the Flies. Archibald titles it “Maslow’s Peak.”

BalletX in “Maslow's Peak” by Jennifer Archibald. Photograph by Whitney Browne

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Maslow’s ideas are commonly associated with the pyramid designed by later psychologists (and corporate managers who use it for TED talks) but Archibald’s new work ought not to be confused with that. She loosely bases this ballet’s narrative on Golding’s 1950s novel of boyhood anarchy and Maslow’s theories, building it from the bottom—the physiological—not the peak, which would be self-actualization or transcendence, and between the breakdown of society in Lord of the Flies. BalletX presents the world premiere of “Maslow’s Peak” on May 2 at the open-air Mann Center in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. 

Last spring, Archibald gave us a peek at a section that included several BAX apprentices, expanding the troupe to 15 dancers. I recently spoke with Archibald at the company’s Washington Avenue studio. The view inside aroused my curiosity: Several thick white ropes hung from the ceiling, and two 10 to 15 feet-high formidable looking contraptions, one with a slide, sat on opposite sides of the dance space. Dancers practiced climbing the ropes, spinning their tours. Dancers leapt at each other to be caught in duos or trios.

The program notes on the music included music by Federico Albanese, Armand Amar, Sweden’s Forndom, Mickey Hart, and Zakir Hussain. That’s a pretty wide range between mournful, percussive, and ambient music. I asked Archibald how she chose them and if she had a background in music. 

Jennifer Archibald: No, but I know how to use the technical equipment so the music helps me navigate through the emotional arc of the storytelling. We listened to, maybe, 20 different tracks with about eight months of music research, and the soundscape does range from classical to percussion to environmental.

Jennifer Archibald in rehearsal with BalletX for “Maslow's Peak.” Photograph by Arian Molina Soca

So, are you choreographing the dance phrases contrapuntally? Will the dancers move with the music or against it?

That’s an interesting question because I’m always listening to music, but I’m not one to set movement and then press play. I am sympatico to the situation; so, I’ll set the music to try to force the ear to find different sounds within it—what is this tempo? How is the cello playing over the drums? It’s just creating an acute ear to make sure that you are embodying the full experience of the sound.

I spend a lot of time listening, but for this I fell in love with Japanese Taiko drumming. Their drive builds a lot of emotions for the dancers. There are also natural sounds, wolves howling, sounds when walking night, like trees blowing in the wind, sounds of insects, and Kodo, [the Taiko band.] I did a piece on them before.

What are you calling those apparatuses and how will you be using them or what they represent? In Lord of the Flies, the term “apparatus” primarily refers to Piggy’s glasses, which are used to start fires. Is this then a double meaning?

Functionally, they serve as playgrounds, battlefields, and observation towers, allowing for sliding, climbing, and dynamic spatial interactions that echo the dancers’ tension between play and power.

BalletX in “Maslow's Peak” by Jennifer Archibald. Photograph by Whitney Browne

Her nonconformist approach to selecting music from many eras and styles, and fusing classical ballet with street, house and hip-hop begins to emerge, as well as highly gymnastic and aerial work on the vines and apparatuses at rehearsal. (BalletX dancer Itzkan Barbosa ‘s father Javier Dzul, an aerialist and former Martha Graham dancer was tapped to coach them on the vines.)

In a recent promotional video, Archibald says, “It’s not a story ballet, but about the themes, about how people treat each other, savagery, finding order, resistance, trust, loyalty, all the things we struggle with in our day to day lives.”

Other symbols in Golding’s book are the conch shell, the signal fire, etc. Will they be represented? Are the characters actually represented? 

Symbols like the conch shell and signal fire are abstractly embodied through movement, light, and sound rather than literal props. Characters are present but not named; they emerge through physical motifs and group dynamics, allowing identity to shift and destabilize. Eli is on team Ralph, a protector and ally, and represents impulse and ignition, a kind of living spark within the ensemble’s psychological landscape.

I think I can see how Maslow's and Golding's viewpoints on human behavior are relevant to current events, in particular the chasm between the political left and right, but can you postulate on how you came to pair these two thinkers?

I was drawn to pairing Maslow and Golding because they reveal the fragile tension between hope and fear, between building and breaking. Maslow speaks to our highest aspirations, while Golding warns of our deepest instincts. That tension mirrors where we teeter between collective progress and individual power struggles. Dance became the perfect medium to hold those contradictions in motion. Maslow made it quite clear that we are always going back and forth in the hierarchy, and we can target multiple needs at the same time. For this ballet, it’s important to try to create a work that doesn’t lie in fantasy and escape. We’re just trying to challenge that formula in ballet story telling. Why can’t we make ballet that’s relevant?

You’re also premiering a new work for National Ballet of Canada later this year.

It will be a mental switch from this to that one, but I always do something with a pulse. That pulse is important to me.

Merilyn Jackson

Merilyn Jackson has written on dance for the Philadelphia Inquirer since 1996 and writes on dance, theater, food, travel and Eastern European culture and Latin American fiction for publications including the New York Times, the Warsaw Voice, the Arizona Republic, Phoenix New Times, MIT’s Technology Review, Arizona Highways, Dance Magazine, Pointe and Dance Teacher, and Broad Street Review. She also writes for tanz magazin and Ballet Review. She was awarded an NEA Critics Fellowship in 2005 to Duke University and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for her novel-in-progress, Solitary Host.

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