When you’re making a dance are you thinking, what information do I need to convey to the audience with this solo? Or are you thinking more in terms of movement?
Every choreographer has a different motivation and sort of underlying reason for doing what they do. For me, the real reason to make any dance is about dancing itself. I think dance is a very profound subject. But you can’t just make a dance with steps alone. You have to find reasons to put that dance together. When I make a dance, I’m trying to find a way to dance that paints a picture of the music. And it’s the dancing itself that is a profound part of what’s taking place. To me, that’s the message.
I’m struck by the diversity of your music selection for the Works & Process solos: Alexander Scriabin, Meredith Monk, French art songs, Tom Waits, Robert Schumann. You’re working with a broad palette.
Yes, I always have. Something that intuitively grips my imagination is the sound of music. Each of these has a very different physical response, and my interest has always been to find precisely a way to behave that this music is describing. And that’s going to be a different vocabulary, a different way of moving each time.
What does it take for a dancer to be a good soloist?
They have to have the innate ability not to dance to the music, but to be the music. There is a subtle difference there. I think Balanchine has commented on that: To dance to the music is to be one step away from the music. But to embody the music and play the music with your body—that is the step further that grips the imagination. That’s the dancer I want to watch, and that’s the dancer whom I want to choreograph.
Can you talk about your process in working with the five dance artists you’ve selected for Works & Process? Other than Danchig-Waring, they’re all learning solos originally made for other performers.
For a dancer to overtake a solo to make it their own, it doesn’t have to be choreographed on them. But there has to be room in it for them to own it. So my guidelines can’t be so stringent that they’re straight-jacketed. These solos are different on different people even though the steps are essentially the same.
I think people, if they envision a dance rehearsal, picture someone in the front of the room telling a dancer what to do with their arms or how to kick their legs. It’s almost never about that. We discuss how to feel when you do that—what the dance is about, what it’s expressing, how it relates to the music, what energy to use, what dynamic we are dealing with.
If I’ve invited a dancer to do a solo, I’ve already known something about them that, in my mind’s eye, makes them qualified for this particular solo—something they bring into the room. They apply it to this dance that I’ve already pre-envisioned belongs on their body and on their spirit. And so I watch what they do to it. And then I advise.
You’ve had a prodigious career. Doing this for so long, 60 years, how do you maintain your interest level? What motivates you to continue the work?
It’s a little bit of a mystery. I’m 82 now, and my body is pretty well wrecked. I can’t project physically on that level anymore. And I really don’t think I can create dances anymore because of my particular way of making a dance, which very much involved my own body. I still care about it a great deal. Seeing a great dancer dance has the same effect on me today that it did when I discovered dance. It’s something I love to watch, I love to see, it’s thrilling to me. Painters’ paintings last forever. Musical composers’ works go down on paper. What a choreographer has done, video is no remedy for that. When the choreographer’s done, they never get to see again unless it’s being danced, and I like to see my work. I like to see what I’ve done. And so if companies ask me to set a dance, I’m eager to do it because I get to see my work again.
comments