Tag: Choreographer

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Raimund Hoghe, Choreographer of Power and Frailty, Dies at 72

Raimund Hoghe, Choreographer of Strength and Frailty, Dies at 72

In it he offered meditative, meticulous deconstructions of well-known images, with the slow, sometimes enigmatic gestures of the performers referring to the original works, as if the movement had been broken by a prism. Mr. Hoghe, indifferent and a physical contrast to his dancers, was a constant but deliberately unemotional presence. This kind of juxtaposition was a common theme in his work.

“You could say that not much happens with“ Boléro Variations ”,” wrote Claudia La Rocco in a 2009 review in the New York Times. “The performers lead beautifully crafted, often simple, phrases into a series of powerful recordings.” But in the end, she noted, “rich worlds of intention and regret blossom in every act.”

In another work, “Pas de Deux”, created in 2011 for Takashi Ueno, Mr. Hoghe offered the slow ceremonial donning of kimono sashes and a vision of the young dancer’s physical control and strength that was neutral to his own weak body.

“I brought this vulnerability to the stage that we should always be aware of,” and not just in times of crisis, he said last year when asked about working during the pandemic.

Raimund Hoghe was born on May 12, 1949 in Wuppertal. His mother Irmhild Hoghe, a seamstress, was a widow and had a 10-year-old daughter when she met Mr. Hoghe’s 15-year-old father. Mr. Hoghe never knew his father, who married another woman, although his parents continued to write to each other – letters he published in a book, “The Price of Love” (1984).

His mother, he said in interviews, always accepted his appearance and believed that she could go her own way. “She often said there were worse things than a back like mine,” he said in a 2004 interview in Le Monde.

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A Choreographer Finds His Approach, Getting Misplaced within the Stars

A Choreographer Finds His Way, Getting Lost in the Stars

Kyle Marshall’s pandemic year was all about change. He turned 30. He moved into his own apartment. He now depends on his dance company, which he formed in 2014, for his livelihood. And he’s working with new dancers, a major shift for a choreographer whose works were populated by close friends and roommates — fellow graduates from Rutgers University.

“That transition felt like a lot, but it also felt absolutely necessary because it brings new ideas forward,” he said in an interview. “It keeps me accountable to how I want my ideas to come across. I have to communicate in a different way. I have to work with less expectation, and I think that’s really healthy.”

In this next step of his career, he said, he’s more focused and more comfortable making decisions. But the pandemic made also him realize something else: Just how exhausted he was. Before the shutdown, in December 2019, his company performed two works exploring Blackness at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. “It took a toll on me,” Marshall said. “One thing that came out of Covid that I was grateful for was just the time to rest.”

“I wish I was better prepared,” he said of dealing with the stress of his dancing life, which also includes teaching and being a member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company. He added, “I wish I was in therapy sooner.”

The experiences of the past year have shifted both his work and the way he works. During the pandemic, Marshall started to embrace improvisation; he also found himself drawn to jazz, which led him to think about the role improvisation plays in Black art.

“I also thought improvisation would be a helpful way for performers to get back into material after not being onstage for so long,” he said. “I was in such a place of improvisation that it didn’t feel quite right for me to start dictating to people what to do with their bodies.”

This month, two new dances — one a film, the other live — will have their premieres. “Stellar,” a trippy piece inspired by Afrofuturism, jazz and science fiction, is a digital work for the Baryshnikov Arts Center, available for two weeks starting June 7. The other dance, “Rise,” is a celebration of club music that will be performed live at the Shed on June 25 and 26.

In each, there is a sense of elation, of wonder. “‘Stellar’ was thinking about something that was sci-fi and still rooted in Black culture and Black art-making, but stemming from other things besides just pain,” he said. “There’s more that I want to explore and more that I want to sit in to make work.”

For “Stellar” Marshall conjures a universe, meditative and otherworldly, in which three dancers, Bree Breeden, Ariana Speight and Marshall himself, move to a dreamy score by Kwami Winfield, featuring the cornet, bits of metal, a hand drum and a tambourine. The dancers, in painted and dyed sweatsuits designed by Malcolm-x Betts, practically glow, lending a sense of mysticism to the darkened stage where Marshall’s circular patterns and revolving bodies, seem to regenerate the space over time. There’s a weightlessness to them; at times, they seem like particles.

“Stellar” unfolds in five sections, each a different grouping or exploration. “The first opening, as we call it, is ‘expansion,’” Marshall said. “I was trying to create a body that was floating.”

The work has a ritualistic quality, which owes much to the music. Before he started working with the dancers, Marshall spent time figuring out the structure and the concept with Winfield. Sun Ra, the avant-garde musician with a passion for outer space, was a big influence.

“Sun Ra represents an alternate vision of the future — the potential to be more than what we’re born into as humans and specifically Black people in America,” Winfield said. “Sun Ra is sort of in between traditionalism in jazz and expanding it outward into noise. And something that Kyle and I talked about specifically was the way Sun Ra treats his keyboard like the controls of a spaceship.”

Marshall was also inspired by other jazz artists, including John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane and Albert Ayler. The sound that they produced felt out there to him — in a good way. And it also came as a surprise: His knowledge of experimental music was linked to the composer John Cage. But “these people were also working on breaking down boundaries of sound, creating distortion, creating noise, working in dissonance,” Marshall said. “That was not a part of my education, and I found it very empowering: Here are Black artists working in a very radical way.”

It led to him to consider his own improvisational practice as he tried to explore new ways of moving. The transcendence of Alice Coltrane’s music was particularly meaningful. “It’s just not playing to perform,” Marshall said. “It feels like she’s pulling something out of her. It felt like it held me and kept me feeling that I can access that for myself.”

And as Winfield — a former roommate of Marshall’s — worked on the piece, he also participated in the dancers’ warm-up. That gave him, he said, “a holistic understanding of my role in reference to everyone else — just knowing the energy and focus required to maintain connections to the material, time and each other in space.”

“Stellar,” which the dancers hope to perform live in the future, creates a world where even the makeup (by Edo Tastic) is a space for Marshall to explore Afrofuturism: “I thought it added a little royalty to it,” he said.

But nailing the right makeup — or anything related to the look of a dance — doesn’t come naturally to him. “I’m a very, like, structural, embodied person,” he said. “Everyone asks me: ‘What about hair? What am I doing with my hair?’ And I’m like: ‘Don’t. I don’t know.’ Hair and makeup and costumes don’t come last, but they’re not my strengths. I’m trying to embrace that a little bit more and to get more people involved and see how it can inform the work.”

The music for “Rise,” his first live group piece since the pandemic, is composed and performed by Cal Fish, and inspired by house music. The feeling Marshall is going for? “It’s what you get both in the church and the club — that kind of opening and uplift,” he said. “I’m thinking about uplift as both an energetic feeling, but also a choreographic idea that the work ascends: It goes from a low place to a high place. Leaning into that expectation is something I’ve never indulged in choreographically.”

Again, it’s all about change. “Creating something that actually feels joyful,” he said with a smile.

It might seem odd, but Marshall’s embrace of joy is in response to the death of George Floyd and his aversion, he said, to displaying more pain. “A lot of my work was thinking about trauma and either displaying it or showing it,” he said. “I just think that cycle is toxic. I think about displaying Black violence: What does that do for the viewer?”

And what, he wonders, do we need coming out of this time? “I need a bit more space in my life, a bit more dreaming,” he said. “More affirmation and positivity. I just don’t think that right now for me is the time to sit in my trauma. I need more joy in my life.”

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Overview: A Choreographer Seems to be Again on His Pandemic 12 months

Review: A Choreographer Looks Back on His Pandemic Year

Choreographer Stephen Petronio became veteran after founding his company in 1984 and since then creating a steady stream of dances. But when he first found out, Trisha Brown – he was the first male dancer in their company – gave him what every young dance artist needs. She rented him a place in the basement of her loft. “I had 5,000 square feet for $ 100 a month for many years,” he said during a virtual discussion at the Joyce Theater in April, “and that started my career.”

Now he’s dedicated to giving back: one way is to pay tribute to postmodern dance mentors like Brown by showcasing their early work on his company’s Bloodlines project. He also founded the Petronio Residency Center in Round Top, NY, which this year hosted bubble residencies for his company and other artists. All of this plays a prominent role in its new digital season, presented by the Joyce Theater, which runs through May 26th.

For “Pandemic Portraits”, a film, Petronio’s dancers talk about their experiences in bubbles; it’s not particularly revealing, you are grateful. A drone filmed performance of Brown’s “Group Primary Accumulation” (1973) shows four dancers on their backs moving together on a small bridge over a stream. The theme is clear in each one: the past year pushed Petronio and his dancers out of their element.

But didn’t we all feel that way? This program is less introspective than repetitive as it deals with now worn out ideas: isolation, longing for touch, longing for big movements. Sometimes it turns into sentimentality. Another challenge: in order to get the most out of the first three works, it helps to have a penchant for Elvis Presley.

Two versions of the duet “Are You Lonesome Tonight” are included, one in the film and the other for the stage; and Nicholas Sciscione, articulate and buttery, plays “Love Me Tender,” a solo created in 1993. The duets show Ryan Pliss and Mac Twining in the stage version, which was shot in the Hudson House, and Lloyd Knight with Sciscione in the film, which was also shot there as in nature.

To the “Lonesome” lyrics “Now the stage is bare and I stand there / With emptiness all around”, Knight and Sciscione, with bare chests, bend their heads back while water (from a waterfall?) Drips onto their faces. There’s a point where the capricious combination – the dancing and Presley’s voice – feels like lead. For me, it helped track down and watch the “Elvis Drunk” version of the song. It lightened the mood.

This program seems to come from a filmmaker’s point of view rather than a choreographer’s. The simple power of Brown’s “Accumulation,” a great piece of work in which dancers perform gestural movements on their backs and eventually rotate 360 ​​degrees, is diminished by the overhead shot. I got dizzy; The cast – including a male dancer for the first time – looks like ants.

Part of Petronio’s goal is to put postmodern dances alongside his own works. How was he influenced and shaped as an artist? In the premiere of “New Prayer for Now (Part 1)”, three men with bare chests and black panties repeat the tethered dancers from “Accumulation”. Although they are standing, their movement is contained; Her arms contract and straighten as her torso flexes and rotates, even as the choreographic flow pulls her to the ground.

While “New Prayer” develops, which is set to music by Monstah Black and the New York Youth Choir, other dancers join in, whose bodies grow together into physical sculptures. There are close-ups of hands on legs, back and shoulders. In other moments, dancers unravel like silk spools across the room.

In “Absentia,” a limited collaboration book about the company’s past year, Petronio writes, “I’ve taken steps all my adult life, but this simple act of getting together in the same room and doing what we do is just as joyful and enjoyable full of strength as I can remember. “

Petronio’s new work is, as the title suggests, the first step for a choreographer to find his way back to his craft. What will his next steps be? It’s hard to know about this program; it already feels like a time capsule.

Stephen Petronio Company

Until May 26th on joyce.org.

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Liam Scarlett, Famed Choreographer Accused of Sexual Misconduct, Dies at 35

Liam Scarlett, Famed Choreographer Accused of Sexual Misconduct, Dies at 35

Alastair Macaulay wrote in 2012 for the New York Times about “Viscera,” the piece Mr. Scarlett later created for the Miami City Ballet, that its “images, constructions and textures” showed why Mr. Scarlett had “achieved the status of an important choreographer of classical ballet. “

Speaking to The Times about Mr. Villella in 2014, Mr. Scarlett said, “I owed Eddy a lot because I was very aware that American executives would all watch to see what the outcome would be. After this piece everyone called. “

Mr Scarlett ended his dance career in 2012 and became the Royal Ballet’s first artist in residence that same year. Over the next seven years, he not only created numerous pieces for his home company, but also choreographed works for the Norwegian National Ballet, New York Ballet, American Ballet Theater, England National Ballet, San Francisco Ballet and the Royal New Zealand Ballet Queensland Ballet, BalletBoyz and Texas Ballet Theater.

Although he was invited to create abstract works as a guest choreographer, his pieces for the Royal Ballet showed his fondness for storytelling. With works such as “Sweet Violets” (2012), a story of Jack the Ripper and murder in Victorian England, “Hansel and Gretel” (2013) and “The Age of Anxiety”, a ballet on the subject of war based on the poem by WH Auden based Mr. Scarlett, who had the same title and was seated on Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2, showed that he was part of a long tradition of dance drama at the Royal Ballet.

In 2016 he created his first full-length work, Frankenstein, a retelling of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel based on a score commissioned by Lowell Liebermann. It received lukewarm reviews both in London and when it was performed by the San Francisco Ballet in 2018. His new version of Swan Lake, performed for the Royal Ballet in 2018, was received with more warmth.

“It’s far from a radical reinvention – the setting and choreography remain close to the nineteenth-century original – but what sets it apart from so many other swan lakes is its attention to dramatic detail,” wrote Judith Mackrell in The Guardian.

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A Choreographer Diving Into Grief Appears to be like to Whales

A Choreographer Diving Into Grief Looks to Whales

For the film, a collaboration with composer Everett Saunders and cameraman Suzi Sadler, Brooks also thought of “Moby-Dick”. However, the main focus has been on the black body throughout history.

Whales “carry all of these toxins because of their bacon,” Brooks said. “There is a completely different aspect that has led me to how many black bodies died from Covid and how many toxins black bodies carry, whether it is trauma or whether they live near fallow land or the cost the poverty. I felt that the whale body is very similar to the black body. “

For Ali Rosa-Salas, the program director at Abrons, virtual work has its advantages with such dark themes: the viewer is responsible. “You can pause if you need to, you can play, you can come back to it,” she said. “It takes a slow pace to process grief and all the emotions that are supposed to arise in connection with what Mayfield’s research will produce.”

Brooks, who calls her practice improvising, while Black, a roof that encompasses both teaching and choreography and dance, finds connections between “Whale Fall” and “Letters to Marsha,” an earlier work based on danced and written notes to Marsha P. based. Johnson, the transgender activist whose body was found in the Hudson River in 1992.

“I think a lot about their bodies in the Hudson River and the cellular existence of bodies in the water,” said Brooks. “Like even if the body breaks down, the cells can still survive” and the idea that “their molecular structure may have communicated with some of the whales that surfaced in the bay last year.”

Recently, 50-year-old Brooks spoke about an artist’s lonely life during the pandemic, the black body, the whales, and somehow the whole point: that there is life in decomposition. Here are edited excerpts from that interview.

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A Choreographer in Quarantine (the Sort With a Guard within the Corridor)

A Choreographer in Quarantine (the Kind With a Guard in the Hall)

The last time I was at Kennedy Airport was a year ago, almost to the day. My dance company was performing our “Four Quartets” in Los Angeles — our last show for a live audience before the pandemic shut everything down. Now, it’s Feb. 15, I’m heading for Sydney to work with the Australian Ballet.

My calendar for spring 2020 was a color-coded puzzle. I’d wanted to take advantage of every opportunity that came our way, knowing it wouldn’t be like this forever. I didn’t know it would all be over so suddenly.

Traveling reminds me of my dad, who died in 2018. If he were alive, we would have talked all week about what time I was leaving for the airport. I can hear him now saying “leave earlier … it could take an hour just to get across town” in his Brooklyn accent. He was early to all of my performances. He would show up, opening the theater doors: “Pammy, can you believe I got a parking spot?” Or he’d tell me how he took the express bus from the Bronx all the way down to the East Village. It drove me CRAZY; I was getting ready for the show … but I should have savored it.

At J.F.K., I talk to David Hallberg, the artistic director of the Australian Ballet and an old friend. He tells me things are normal there. I’ve been in New York since lockdown started last March, experimenting with how to make dance, collaborate with artists and keep the art form alive while not going stir crazy. I’m scared for dance; I’m scared for the arts and I’m scared for New York. The city is wounded.

I’m traveling halfway across the planet to walk into a studio of unmasked dancers to create a dance for a real live audience. It’s incredible — heartbreaking — and I will not let this moment pass unsavored.

When I get to Sydney I’ll have to quarantine for 14 days in a hotel. Real quarantine. Lockdown. No going out for a walk or to pick up a few groceries. Maybe this will help me with the new dance. Limitations and boundaries have always focused me. I like rules, but also like to break them — and quarantine is a rule I can’t break.

Sometimes I set limitations for myself on purpose. I purged walking out of all my dances for five years when I realized I was relying on it too much. I had to re-earn my right to walk in my dances. I also banned entrances and exits for a while. What will I ban after quarantine?

Credit…Pam Tanowitz

I have no structure for my day. To keep focused, I’ll make a schedule, and start following it tomorrow.

I FaceTime with my daughter, Gemma, at college. I miss her. I’m still wearing my Pink Floyd T-shirt and sweats that I put on last night … yesterday … two days ago … in New York.

The reality that I just traveled 24 hours and can’t leave my room hasn’t hit me yet. There is a guy posted in the hallway, making sure no one leaves. The Australian Department of Health is also going to call every day to ask after my health — both Covid-related and mental.

Before I left, I ran around trying to remember everything. I forgot a notebook, which had notes I took while talking to Caroline Shaw about her score for the ballet I’m making, “Watermark.” Darn.

The beginning of making a dance is my favorite part — the research. While in quarantine, I’m going to start drawing the dance, scoring the space first. (It looks something like football plays — birds-eye views of the stage space.) Separately, I keep track of movement and rhythmic ideas.

The more organized I am, the more I can go “off book” when I actually get in the room with dancers. Then process becomes part of the dance. I love watching dancers warm up and am always on lookout for “mistakes” they make. I like incorporating these into the design of the dance — little glimpses of humanity within the abstractness of the choreography.

I’m making two dances at once — one for Australian Ballet and one for Singapore Dance Theater. The Singapore dance will be made on Zoom and the one for Australian Ballet in person! Both dances will be performed for a live audience!

I’m jet-lagged and thinking in fragments. So much to figure out, including what time of day it is and whether I should be awake or asleep.

I’m up at 3:30 a.m. to teach my choreography class at Rutgers on Zoom, 4:30-7:30 a.m. (That’s 12:30-3:30 p.m. in New Jersey.) I’ve showered and put on a shirt and a little makeup, so I don’t scare my students. They’re making dance films and rehearsing on Zoom, so I’m talking to them about using limited resources as an advantage — inspiration from limitation — just like I’m dealing with now.

I give them problem-solving movement exercises, and I try to give them hope. The trajectory of dance in America is forever changed after these months of isolation, cancellation and reconsideration. I believe dance is — and will have to continue — reinventing itself for the post-Covid world. The students will be entering a much-changed creative environment than the one I entered after college. I grapple with how to prepare them when I have no idea what’s coming.

I try to do a few different kinds of exercise a day. Something aerobic, something for arms. I brought my own weights.

Credit…Pam Tanowitz

The novelty is already wearing off and it’s only Day 3. I still haven’t made a schedule, but the time gets filled with the routine calls and door knocks of quarantine.

The nurses call every day to ask if I have any Covid symptoms and if I need to talk to a doctor about anything. Today, the nurse asked me where I had traveled from, and it turned into a 25-minute conversation about how he loves dance, how he used to dance, and his trip to Africa. It was nice to chat. I loved hearing his Australian accent even though I only understood half of what he said.

I had my Covid test. I had to stand against my opened door in profile while they swabbed my throat and nose. Brain tickle.

Food delivery, a.k.a. “Knock and Drop”: They deliver meals to me twice a day — no ordering or choosing. (I’ve opted out of breakfast since they bring hazarai, bready junk food.) I don’t know who “they” are; they knock on the door and leave.

It’s nice not to have to order. Choreography is a series of choices I have to make so to get a break from that is OK.

The food has been a mixed bag. Today’s lunch: a “New York beef sourdough sandwich” and a banana.

I had the worst dream last night. I was trying to move my body but couldn’t — stuck in one place. My daughter was with me, running ahead of me and I couldn’t catch up.

I’m still jet lagged, I still have no schedule, still get confused by the time difference, still need to choreograph two dances. And I should call my mom.

I brought “Swann’s Way” with me. I’ve tried reading this maybe 10 times. I thought I could try again in quarantine. I want to be a person who can read Proust but I guess I’M JUST NOT. A writer friend suggested that I open the book and read a sentence or two randomly. That is the only way to do it, like a John Cage/Merce Cunningham “chance procedure.”

Today, I made four phrases of “ballet” steps using chance as a starting point for the structure. I want to go deeper with the dancers when I see them. That’s the collaborative part and most satisfying part of making dance — doing it in the moment, relying on my intuition.

I had my first Zoom rehearsal tonight with Singapore Dance Theater. Melissa Toogood, a good friend and the longest collaborator in my company, came from New York to be my assistant. She helps out from her room on Zoom. I’m excited to start, though I’m not sure yet how I’m going pull this off.

Credit…Pam Tanowitz

I woke up later today — 6 a.m.!

And a major change: I moved my computer location from the desk facing the wall to the table facing the windows.

The thing about making two dances at once is if you get stuck on one you can change to the other and still feel productive. I have two new notebooks bought from Amazon Australia. Each dance gets its own notebook for ideas and stage drawings.

I know it’s a little corny, but I like having quotes from artists I admire with me. It’s spiritual company, making me less lonely and giving me something to aspire to. I write this Robert Creeley quote on the first page:

“Content is never more than an extension of form and form is never more than an extension of content.”

As concepts, movement ideas and structures form first. These then inform the dance, so I never have to “decide” what movement goes into which dance if I’m working on two at the same time — the dance tells me.

While on a FaceTime call today with Gemma, she tells me about her writing class. Her assignments deal with a strict form. This is fascinating to me, so I question her more on the specifics and ask her to send me the writing prompt. It sounds so similar to what I do — making similar prompts for myself and creating movement within its structure.

It’s 2021, it’s a pandemic, and I’m in Australia. I’m not “well-traveled” but making dances has given me the opportunity. My first time to Europe was for my honeymoon in Paris. I was 28. It was 1998 — we made our hotel reservations by fax. After that, not much else, only little trips.

The first 25 years of my dances were made and performed in New York City. In 1992, my first show was at CBGB’s gallery. We danced barefoot, so I would go around before the show pulling nails out of the floor with a hammer. We were treated like a band and we got a cut of the door.

Now I’m 51, getting hot flashes and still making dances.

The halfway mark! And a day off.

Watched Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel series (“The 400 Blows,” “Antoine and Colette,” “Stolen Kisses,” “Bed and Board,” “Love on the Run”).

It’s 5:45. I’m waiting for the knock. I wonder what’s for dinner?!

Credit…Pam Tanowitz

I did not work on any projects yesterday. I feel guilty. My first therapist used to say, “Pam, you wear guilt like a sweater.” Guilt is a cozy place for me, and it’s not productive.

Today I’m more productive. I took a shower.

We had a good rehearsal with Singapore. Translation and articulation of movement is tough and tedious on Zoom, but the dancers are picking up the steps quickly.

I’m still trying to capture a “real life in the studio” feeling. When the dancers created an amazing tableau — all were looking at the camera to hear what I was saying — I had to include it in the dance.

It’s a busy day in quarantine: two rehearsals; a costume fitting on Zoom; and an interview about the new ballet. I’ve never been so busy without leaving a room. I’m also going to do two Glo yoga workouts, cardio and a 20-minute arm sculpt. I read that middle-aged women need to lift weights and do strength training, so I try to do this every day.

My rehearsal with Australian Ballet, the first, goes well on Zoom. I started plotting it out with 14 men and three women — 17 altogether — my homage to Balanchine’s “Serenade” (minus the principal roles). My dance will be sandwiched between two Balanchine ballets on the program and I’m trying hard not to think about this.

I explained a little about my work to the dancers, but I could hear the reverb of my nasal American/New York/Jewish accent. I hope it didn’t scare them. Melissa and I got through one phrase during the hour. It’s good prep work for when I see them in person next week.

My Pink Floyd T-shirt is still in heavy rotation.

Melissa is leaving quarantine. I will miss her! Even though I never actually saw her, knowing she was here helped. Reid Bartelme (costume designer) is here now, so I call him on the landline. He says, “Pam, we have cellphones,” but I like the land line.

I just signed into Zoom for my noon rehearsal but no one is there. Ah, noon Singapore time, 3 p.m. for me … oy! Working in three different time zones, I’m surprised this hasn’t happened before now.

Feeling unfocused today.

Another beef pie for lunch … bummer.

I try to say hi to the guard in the hall. That’s me, trying to connect. One thing my dances are “about” is disconnection — missed connections and making that disconnection work.

After being isolated like this, I’m curious about how being confined to this space will (or will not) affect my work.

See ANY day, 1 through 11. It’s all the same.

“The house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” (Gaston Bachelard)

I can hide here in quarantine.

At 9 a.m., I open my door to two police, two border force guys and a hotel guard. I say, “Wow, I need five guards to check out?” And they laugh and say, “We heard you were trouble.”

I’ve realized in this room that when I meet the Australian Ballet dancers I will have no rules. I will make a dance. Freedom.

Pam Tanowitz is a choreographer and the founder of Pam Tanowitz Dance.

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A Choreographer and Her Women Retell a Tragedy By means of Dance

A Choreographer and Her Girls Retell a Tragedy Through Dance

For the choreographer Tiffany Rae, dance is a language that is deeper and clearer than words. “I can show you better with dance what I have to say than actually talk,” she said in a recent interview. “You will understand how I feel.”

Part of what drives Ms. Rae – aside from her innate love of dance – is exploring issues rooted in social justice and black culture. Dance is a way to demonstrate both artistry and activism, and last summer she did both during a protest at Borough Hall in Brooklyn, where she preferred to dance than talk, and to her surprise, the crowd paid attention.

“Everyone sat down,” she said. “We didn’t even have to ask. It was just amazing – thousands of people sat down for everyone to see. “

At the protest, Ms. Rae, 24, presented a version of “Underground” that explores the trauma resulting from the struggle for racial equality and the continuing cycle of pain in black communities. She said, “The power that we had in our hands, in our faces – there was a kind of silence for everyone to say, OK, this is the time to focus, this is the time to listen.”

Gillian Walsh, a contemporary dance artist who interviewed Ms. Rae for Movement Research’s online publication Critical Correspondence, wrote, “Seeing this dance unexpectedly, so seamless between people making speeches and marching, really set me on fire.”

Ms. Rae, who grew up primarily in Brooklyn, has also created videos on Instagram and YouTube, some political and others for fun, such as The Parkers, her jubilant homage to the television series. Intended as a Thanksgiving gift for her followers, it went viral; Missy Elliott, whose music is featured, has republished it.

Her latest Rae Beast production, Unearth Birmingham, is more urgent: a response to the bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church by members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1963. Four young girls were killed and many others injured. Ms. Rae’s film, shot in Gymnopedie, the basement of Bushwick United Methodist Church in Brooklyn, brings girls’ perspectives to life through an inventive, lively dance floor – full of hip-hop, modern, jazz and moments of improvisation – and music beginning with Cheryl Lynn’s “Got to Be Real” and ending with Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”.

14-year-old Naomi Southwell, who portrays one of the late girls, Cynthia Wesley, knew nothing about the Birmingham bombings before the project began. Ms. Rae let the girls see Spike Lee’s documentary “4 Little Girls” (1997), but her own narrative is more impressionistic than linear.

“She wanted to show people history through our movement,” said Ms. Southwell, a freshman at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music, Arts, and the Performing Arts. “She wanted us to express how we might have felt if we were these four little girls, if we were in their shoes.”

Towards the end, the four girls find themselves in a place they have never been to: a gym. Startled and confused, they stand close together as more young dancers enter, some dressed as schoolgirls (from the Dancers Dreamzzz studio where Ms. Rae teaches) while others cheerleaders with the Brooklyn Diamonds (which Ms. Rae was once a part of). . “The other girls come around,” said Mrs. Southwell, “trying to comfort us and show us that we will be fine.”

And then they all dance, superimposing shapes that reflect Ms. Rae’s eclectic background. She has trained in many genres including ballet, jazz, modern, West Africa, Horton, and hip hop. Thanks to cheerleading, she can move large groups.

And there is something else: she was the only player on the soccer team in middle school. (She was a cheerleader and soccer player at the same time for a while.) “I feel like soccer helped me be a strength dancer,” she said. “To dance softly and subtly, but still have that power behind it. ”

Her first time in a music video was Beyoncé’s “Let’s Move Your Body”. She was in elementary school. “Instead of paying attention to the dancing mostly, I was paying attention to what they were doing,” she said. “I would watch the choreographer.”

Now young girls are watching them. In a recent interview, Ms. Rae spoke about the Birmingham bombing, why it was important to show the innocence of her cast and how joy wins in the end.

What follows are edited excerpts from this conversation.

When did you first find out about the bombings and how did it affect you?

When I was little, I actually played one of the girls in one piece. It always resonated in my heart and I wanted to do something on my own.

That moment triggered so much. After this bombing, there was unrest – just like today. Even then, people who were racist, they realized: Oh my god, these are four innocent children. I have the feeling that this triggered the turning point a little.

I like the way your video jumps between grief and boisterous dancing.

I want you to know these girls are alive. Not to make it so sad, but to show the brightness at the end of this tunnel. I wanted to show that these are young girls; You have fun. Like they could have, but it was taken away. I always wanted to grab feelings.

I thought of studies that talked about how black girls are perceived as less innocent and more adult than other girls their age. Was that part of it too?

Yes / Yes! It’s so important. That’s why I made her so funny. And of course they did that themselves – these kids are really fun and full of energy and they are really girly girls. And innocent.

How did you develop the choreography?

I had to make sure I knew every single girl – her character. I don’t like to force choreography. I don’t have to take a thousand steps, but I want to do choreography, not just for the dancer’s eye, but for normal, everyday people so that they can feel what they are feeling.

Sometimes you don’t have to do everything so technically because the message doesn’t appear. So I knew I just had to be any girl. I’m fine – it has to be our turn here or she has to jump here. Or that has to be a kick. OK: what am I feeling?

You ask yourself

Sometimes I just have to sit back and not be a dancer for a while and just be a normal person. So sometimes it’s good for me to be on the train and just listen to music and just say, OK, if I wasn’t a dancer and I saw a show, what do I want to see? What do i want to feel And how can this movement relate to what I could convey? I think that’s how I was able to create this choreography.

How did you come up with group dance in the gym?

I knew I wanted something simple but loving. Something that would be simple but subtle. We don’t have to be sad forever. We have to grow and move forward. They look down on us and they shine. And it’s like we’re dancing That’s the point I’m trying to make. Dance is everything.