Critical Correspondence

Trajal Harrell in conversation with Thomas DeFrantz

Thomas DeFrantz, MIT Professor of Theater Arts, speaks with New York choreographer Trajal Harrell. Trajal discusses Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church, a multi-year, five part project whose second and third installments, Extra Small (XS) and Medium (M), will premiere at The Kitchen February 9-13.

 

Interview Date: January 14, 2011

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Thomas DeFrantz: I thought we could start by talking about how your project is re-imagining history. What is it that you are looking to be produced by this idea of re-imagining history in these kinds of ways?

Trajal Harrell: We could say that it’s part of this kind of operation of working with the historical imagination. I’m interested in impossibilities because this is the proposition that all these projects share—Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church—What would have happened in 1963 if someone from the voguing dance tradition would have come downtown to Judson Church to perform alongside the early postmoderns? It didn’t happen. So we can see that it is an impossibility and this really interests me in a way to rethink an impossibility through performance. By calling attention to an impossibility and by presenting it as a proposal, it’s not in a way to reenact. I’m not interested in this kind of fictionalized sense of history. I’m not trying to recreate this, but rather to pose certain questions about what has been omitted from history. Why certain things were impossible. Because then I think that through performance and the distance between what we think would have happened [and what] we see happening today, it poses a lot of questions about future possibilities. This is what kind of doorways and vistas art can open up.

Thomas: It’s remarkable because it’s not nostalgic, is it? One of the things that the new historicity tried to bring forward back in the 1980s, or even a little bit earlier than that, was this idea that history is a moving target and it’s always about how you’re willing to use history. Queer theorists talk about making the past usable or making something that’s actually helpful today as we’re imagining history. But there’s also something that doesn’t allow us to be nostalgic about “Oh, if only we could go back to that moment when Judson Church was so pure and wonderful or when voguing was really—you know, before Jennie Livingston discovered it, or Madonna discovered it—when it really was kind of answering its own needs.” But you’re not interested in any kind of nostalgia here between these seeming opposites.

Trajal: No, not at all. I’m more interested in how together as an audience we can use this historical imagination to see future possibilities. This idea of imagining together is something that performance can provide, a kind of venue for that to happen. That’s what I tried to do in the piece. It’s a very active kind of viewing. It’s not just a show. The show proposes a certain way to activate the viewer to be in this negotiation with me. It’s a very present, active, engaging way of watching performance, and that’s what interests me. I really want to give the people, the audience, the chance to really work with me in a certain kind of way and that’s the work I try to do.

Thomas: Do you bring expectations for this active audience to know something about—I don’t know if we want to say genres, but at least modes of performance? Is that how you expect the audience to come to this particular work? Do you think they might know something about Judson or about voguing? Does that matter?

Trajal: Well, there are definitely two sides to that. Because of the places where I perform the work, I’m aware in some ways of what the demographic is of a lot of the people that come in and perhaps what their experience is. But taking that aside—especially in these pieces and in the two pieces I’ve made so far—there are guides, so I provide information as well. I try to give a very brief sense of what basic information you need in order to activate this engagement. You can come in knowing nothing, but I certainly don’t assume, based on my experience with the venues where I perform, that a lot of the people are coming in with nothing.

Thomas: It’s a very smart way to work. So people may come in with a sense of voguing, but at least have some sense of Judson, because as you say in a very clever way, this is who the audience is for the venue that you’re working with and they would probably know a little something. But then part of the project is about expanding. It’s not information-based, I get that, but could you talk a little about how you hope for it to re-imagine history in a future capacity? And almost like not correcting omissions, but looking back and saying, there are omissions?

Trajal: I think that there are always omissions. We know that about history. We know that history is a kind of fiction. So this is always operating. Maybe everyone doesn’t know that, but I think that that is always on the table. For me it’s not so much. I’m not at all claiming to represent voguing. I’m not carrying the voguing flag, nor the postmodern dance flag, to say this is what you should know, and this is what we should correct. I’m interested in aesthetic possibilities, how aesthetics move through the world, what possible meanings—political, social, cultural— emanate from them and so, it’s more about the possibilities that bubble up. We can become perceptive of that can be in the world and I can only, in a way I’m talking very abstractly but for me, let’s say in Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church Small (S) it’s all made up. All of this is fictive in some kind of way. The way the piece operates is that there are twenty looks and you have the guide—this little brochure that I give you listing the twenty looks, each with a different name. But the names are completely made up. In the making of the work, I’m inspired by these certain aesthetic ideas from both early postmodern dance and from the voguing dance tradition. But I use them in any way that I want to. And so it’s quite a kind of guessing game that people have to do. It’s what is what, and this is that, and you think that is this, but through this kind of repetition of doing it together, we begin to create our own kind of signification, and it’s only based in the moment that we’re in there together. We make it up as we go. It’s this ‘making it up as we go’ collectively that interests me because then this creates a certain kind of potentiality, a certain experientiality that points to what aesthetic possibilities are out there and how limited they are. Where are the borders? Where are the boundaries? I think that these are the kind of things that get enacted in each performance, and they’re not answers. It’s not scientific and rational, but I do feel that when the performance works I know that there’s a certain kind of collective understanding. What is it based on? I don’t know. Is it because half the people know something about Judson and they feel that they can read it the same way that I’m intending them to read it? I don’t think so. I think it is about a certain kind of we-get-into-sync, a certain kind of collective imagining. We let go of certain things and we hold onto certain things together, and it’s that kind of synthesis and synergy that’s really exciting for me and the performers.

Thomas: Beautiful. …What’s interesting is that there’s a way that voguing and a lot of the African American arts are about gathering performance to mobilize presence, to make things visible. In the case of voguing obviously it’s about making queer lives of color visible in performative venues so there’s a way for a community to recognize itself as itself. One way to read postmodern aesthetics was about dissolving presence so that we don’t have dancers who are stars. In Rainer’s very famous No Manifesto, she says don’t look at me as a goddess. Don’t look at me as a specialist. Don’t see me, in some ways. Anyone can have my dance. So there’s this great kind of tension between these two forms. And as you talk about the work, it’s also this expectation that you’ll work with the audience collectively to navigate this sort of veering between these two idioms.

Maybe you could talk a little about what attracted you to each of those sort of modes of being, sort of generating presence so that people do see you as a performer or see the work, but also dissolving presence by making something that’s in a way less recognizable as dance per se. Maybe something that some other choreographer would do on a stage with a bunch of people. It’s more something that’s like fashion or like something “not dance,” if you will.

Trajal: Well part of it is just how I came into it. I came into dance from a theater background and an art history background. So I was introduced in some ways—I mean I know of course I was aware of dance and modern dance—but really I began as an academic and as a student. In a way I was introduced to postmodern dance before I was introduced to modern dance. This was very eye opening to me; the kind of experiments and the kind of ideas that it promoted. A lot of them were aligned with certain ideas that were going on in theater and the kind of openness of it, of opening the definition of dance and who could dance really excited me. When I came to voguing, I was very moved by voguing itself, but I was also very moved in how they were theoretically very similar. It seemed to me that there were so many overlaps, yet these two things weren’t talking to each other.

…Beginning in the nineties perhaps…A French kind of “conceptual artists” reinvested in the Judson aesthetics that had been—not lost in the New York/U.S. scene, but it certainly wasn’t the most visible. I think it became more visible here when it became more visible in Europe. This kind of reinvigoration of Judson was very problematic for me in a lot of ways because I had to find my way through it. I think that Steve Paxton said that “You all never rebelled against us.” I think that in a way that by finding Judson it was like finding a way to rebel because there were so many contrasts and yet there was an incredible conversation that could be had. So there are parts of both. The tension is really interesting and they both appeal to parts of myself.

This thing that you talk about “dance” or the “non-dance,” or however you want to talk about it, the work really positions this dynamic within the work. There are aspects of it that are very “dance” in the work, and there are aspects of it that are “non-dance.” So it doesn’t, as I would say of my earlier work, which may have been clearly situated in something that someone would have considered non-dance, I think this work that I did today, there’s that and there’s also stuff that people go “okay, this is dance.” I think that’s very important to the kind of conversation, and the kind of questions you’re bringing up… I’m really interested in what people think is dance. I’ve become more and more interested in this thing as an object. Regardless of definition, regardless of histories, regardless of what has been expanded theoretically and in terms of dance history. I can look at a piece of movement and nine times out of ten I can say whether or not most people would say if this is dance or not, and this is quite interesting to me. I think that in the voguing vocabulary, there are things and aspects of it, and forms within it, which have these borders as well. It would be like a face category which most people might not see as dance, whereas you see vogue performers and people go “oh that’s dance” and a lot of contemporary voguers integrate a lot of ballet. They integrate all kinds of things into their performance. It’s all very interesting to me.

I have to say that I’m not an archeologist, and I’m not a sociologist so I don’t go into it to dissect it in a very kind of precise, accurate way. I really use it as a precipice for my imagination. I am a contemporary artist and it’s hard to say, but I would probably identify myself much more as a postmodern dancer/choreographer before I would a voguing dancer/choreographer, because my primary community has come from the legacy of Judson. That’s where my community has been, where my training has been and the voguing community has been more a place where I’ve been on the outside looking in; not a place where I’ve been on the inside and active; it’s been a place of research.

Thomas: Let’s talk a little bit about being outside the form if you will, to use that word that just came up. So how has this been for you in terms of engaging a community? —And I really appreciate that you talked about communities and places where your body and your sensibility are in an exchange with other people, rather than techniques or forms. That’s the way you’re describing the affiliation. So there’s a community of voguers—lots of communities of voguers—but there’s this idea that maybe you’re outside of it in some ways. What has that done to your process in terms of how you’ve come to develop this work and your own sort of learning curve or sense of affiliation to those communities of voguers?

Trajal: I think that it was based on respect, and I didn’t want at all to kind of do this kind of fusion work in which I’m trying to represent. So I think that by being very clear that I was on the outside, I was giving it the same kind of legitimacy I would give to any form, whether it be I’m on the outside of African dance, or I’m on the outside of Flamenco. So I really didn’t want to pretend I was a specialist. But I do think that we can look at things and I think that they can be sources for the imagination if you’re clear about that.

What was the simple part of the question?

Thomas: Well how was it for you? That way you can talk about the larger picture.

Trajal: That’s been very important for me. I think that it allowed me to do the work I had to do. It was an instinct. It wasn’t as though I checked with someone you know? It was really just an instinct I felt.

But I can say that in the project I’m doing, the medium version of this project, I’m doing it as a collaboration with three other choreographers who aren’t American: [Marlene Freitas] is from Cape Verde, but she primarily lives in Lisbon and works in France, [Cecilia Bengolea] is from Argentina but primarily works in France and [François Chaignaud] is French and works in France. It’s been very interesting to come to this material with them, because of course they don’t treat it in the same way that I do. They really have been much more intimate with it and wanted to get much closer to it than I have in terms of the voguing community. One of the first things they did—which I would have never probably done—when we were rehearsing in France, is they invited a voguer to come teach us voguing. I loved it, in fact, I really loved it. And the interesting thing about this guy is although he’s been asked to be in the House of Ninja, his own work walked in the New York ball. He’s mostly worked in these large dance competitions that they have in Europe of which voguing is a part, and hip-hop and different kinds of competitions, and he’s learned everything from youtube. He’s amazing. He knows so much and he’s a dancer. He studied modern dance, jazz, ballet. And he’s obsessed with voguing and he’s learned everything from youtube.

Thomas: I just have to jump in. We don’t have a lot of time left unfortunately. I love this story, but you know the current research in brain and cognitive science tells us that you can’t learn it from youtube. You actually have to have those things fire in person somehow first, and yeah, you can hone in on it through youtube. We don’t have ways of learning physical activity without the presence of other people in a deep way. You have to have some sort of dance background first, and then you can kind of go to a new form or go to voguing or go to house dancing, but it has to start somewhere before you get to youtube.

Trajal: That’s what I mean—he is a trained dancer, so I think that his training in ballet, jazz, modern, and all of this helped him.

Thomas: That’s important because I think [that idea] is starting to circulate.

Trajal: But what’s interesting—I’m not an authority—I still think there are diversities of ways to be in this tradition, and that’s what’s really interesting. Because, for example, one of the other things that we did, is we took class from someone at ImPulsTanz [who] is teaching abstract[ions] of movement out of the ball. From my experience of going to the balls that this kind of social performance is interesting in itself and then you have club voguing which is maybe the thing you learn in a classroom and you do in a club, but that’s very different than being in the competition and being in the balls in how it functions. This is something that I’m always reminded of, and I try and remind my collaborators of as well. I don’t want to make a judgement about it, I just want to understand how these differences appear and how they get produced. It isn’t interesting for me to put my body in it, but I think that because I have a distance from it, I have this long-term distance from it. I don’t think that I can be it. I never do, and I don’t want to. You know, personally speaking I love tennis. I love tennis, but I don’t play. But I love to watch it, and it’s different with voguing of course. I don’t want to become a voguer, just like I don’t want to become a ballet dancer, although I can look at ballet and I can be inspired by it.

I’m really interested in innovating and making my own work and my own language, and so for me it’s something that I look at. I can also have a certain relationship to it physically in this diversity of production and ways to relate to it. I don’t go in the studio and think okay, now let me vogue. I go into the studio and I produce from my own sense of expression. And of course I know that all those things are in the soup, but I’m not trying to direct them towards a production of “okay now I need to produce voguing postmodern blah blah.” I know that all those things influence me just like I do this research on the aesthetic of cool for many years and in this process too. I know that sense of cool is always somewhere in the work somehow. I just studied it for too long that it is a part of what is produced, but it’s not reasonable. I don’t try to reason it in. In that way I’m very unique, because I think a lot of people see the work and they think that it comes from this very strong like conceptual like “okay I’m trying to put these things together in a very kind of analytical way,” and it’s not so much the case. It’s much more an instinctive, fictional, imaginative thing that goes on for me. And that’s what’s pleasurable for me. That’s what I like to do. I think that it’s only one model. Of course there are many different models. But within the model of my own kind of production and creation I hope that I’m very humble before these forms and these traditions. They feed my imagination but I don’t try to reproduce them.

Thomas: Well it’s certainly a fantastic way to work and we’ll look forward to being a part of the process of generating this collective response to the ideas and to the movement. Thank you Trajal.

Trajal: Thank you.