– Abigail Levine, Editor at Large

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October 30, 2014

Janine Antoni: So, when I was going around offering my studio, I ran into Annie B. Parson at a performance. I didn’t know who she was but learned quickly she was a choreographer. I told her about laying a dance floor in my studio, and she was immediately curious. I naively asked her if she needed a space to rehearse. She called me the next day and said, I want to come over and work on some duet material.

Before her arrival, I made a Power Point on my work seen through the lens of the duet. I talked about the duet with ‘the other,’ the duet with my mother, and the duet with myself. After my presentation she turned to her dancers and said, ‘ok, shall we dance this?’ And I didn’t know what to think. But, of course, knowing Annie B. now, it’s exactly what she would do; she’s pulling her sources from everywhere.

Then Annie B. and I launched into a conversation about our husbands being artists while the dancers went off to create material from my slide lecture.  And then about fifteen minutes later, they had material drawn from everything I showed them. I went for a walk with my husband [the artist Paul Ramirez Jonas] afterwards, and I said, kind of facetiously, this should be my retrospective. I had seen twenty-five years of my work performed in five minutes of dance.

Abigail Levine: This was in what year?

JA: This was in 2010. And he said, ‘that’s a phenomenal idea.’ I said, ‘really?’ I was actually about to apply for the Guggenheim Fellowship and a Creative Capital Grant and this was the idea I had: to find five choreographers and ask them to choose a body of my work as a source from which to make a dance. I would call it a retrospective. It would replace the mid career survey show that is an idea that curators have been presenting to me. Frankly I’m completely terrified of looking backwards in that way. But a dance retrospective would be a way to move forward while looking back. I’d met Jill [Sigman] at a workshop I’d taught in London called Performance Matters. She’s serious, and she’s very interested in sculpture. And I said, let’s make a deal, I’ll teach you what I know about sculpture if you teach me about dance. And she said ok, and she started to do things with me that became a piece. But what she said to me was, I’d be happy to do this with you, if I can do it on you. I had no idea what she was talking about “on me.” Actually, I was really offended by the term.

AL: Welcome to being a dancer.

JA: I know. … I said you can do it with me. Or we can do it together, but what does this on thing mean? That misunderstanding basically generated the whole piece that we ended up doing together. It’s called Wedge. …The thing I should say is that rather than working directly with the content of my work, Jill did a lot of exercises to understand the feeling that I had while making the work. I wasn’t sure exactly what it had to do with the work itself, but that was part of my journey. I tried to remain open to the way she was working even though I didn’t really understand how she was making meaning. It was so different than how I was used to communicating through my work.

AL: Yes, explicit positioning of a work in relation to another is more present in visual art history than dance.

Janine Antoni. Living Set for Like Lazarus Did, performed by the Stephen Petronio Company (Performance documentation) 2013
Helicopter stretcher, polyurethane resin. Dimensions variable.

JA: Also, our relationship to language as makers, and thinking before acting—all of this is different which has been interesting. I think part of the incredible, prolific moment that I’m having has to do with, in fact, letting go of a lot of those preconceptions. Working in dance has allowed me to think in another way. And then there is my experience of improvisation; I feel like it’s not only changed my work, it’s changed my personality.

…So, when Jill said, I’m going to make a piece on you, I said, ok, and I’m going to make a piece on you! We had the pottery wheel next to the dance floor, and I was making the hip bone pots. The wheel is a moving surface, and the forms are made because of the way the material is shaped by the body as the wheel moves. So, why can’t I just apply that to Jill’s moving body? As she danced, I tried to use her body to make something. I did what I always do—I used the body as a tool for making.

I was on a crash course. Dance was slowly taking over my entire life. Jill Brienza invited me to a rehearsal of Stephen Petronio’s company. A week later he gave me a studio visit and asked me to make him a set for his upcoming performance, Like Lazarus Did.

I had been looking at these objects called milagros. In many Latin American countries, when you have an ailment, you go and buy these wax body parts, you take them to the church, and they are hung on the ceiling as a prayer for healing. The thing that struck me about Stephen’s work was how exuberant his choreography is. I would be taken away in the whirlwind of it all, and then I would leave the rehearsal with a simple gesture that kept haunting me. He has an extraordinary way of framing these provocative movements that seem to stick. Given the other work I was doing with somatic movement, I was really interested in how a gesture enters your body. For Like Lazarus Did, I decided to make Stephen a ‘living set’ of milagros.

AL: What was your process of working with Stephen and the dancers?

JA: I asked the dancers, of all the things you’re doing in the dance, can you give me a gesture that resonates with you emotionally? They took pictures of themselves with their phones doing the movement and sent them to me. I took those gestures, and I reenacted them in my body to make casts from them. I said to him, “the only thing I can offer here is stillness.” So I took myself and my objects off the stage. I wanted to be a counterpoint to the movement. I started to become interested in the stillness of the audience, how their stillness provides the space for this kind of intense movement. I love the idea of mirror cells and that the audience is moving inside in response to what they are seeing while their exterior remains still.

Janine Antoni. Living Set for Like Lazarus Did, performed by the Stephen Petronio Company (Performance documentation) 2013.
Helicopter stretcher, polyurethane resin. Dimensions variable

AL: Which is so hard sometimes.

JA: Yes, I agree. I just went to see Steve Paxton at DIA, and I have never had to hold onto my body so tightly. I felt my vertebrae just popping.

[Showing an image of Like Lazarus Did] This is what I made for him. I really wanted to equate myself with the stillness of the audience, so I hung my sculpture over the audience, and I hung under it remaining completely still for the duration of the performance.

AL: And how did you come to work with Anna Halprin?

JA: I had gone to Esalen to do a workshop with her but I was too in awe to introduce myself. I just did the workshop and then a year later, I decided to write her. I sent a thank you letter along with my catalogue and told her how much the workshop changed the way I think. Anna said, why didn’t you introduce yourself? I know Loving Care. She said, if you’re ever in San Francisco, come have lunch. So, I got myself to San Francisco to meet with her. And then we were applying for NYSCA, and we needed a choreographer to apply with. I said, I can’t ask Anna. And my assistant said, she can only say no. So, I sent her a letter. I wrote, I don’t know anything about the dance world; this may be totally inappropriate, but would you be interested in working together? I told her the idea of my dance retrospective and asked her if she would ever consider doing it. She said, come on over. She completely ignored my idea. She called me up, and she said, I have a great idea for you. I can give you the paper from Parades and Changes.

AL: Wow.

JA: My jaw dropped. I could care less about the dance retrospective at this point. It was a privilege to be in dialogue with such a historically significant work. I worked with her on her deck for a week. I lived in her house, and we spent every minute together. On the first day, she gave me the paper, which was perfect, because it was material and I could treat it just like I do materials in the studio. I didn’t have to worry about how I move. I just paid attention to the paper and let it direct me. She knew exactly what she was doing.

AL: So, the whole of her structure was giving you the materials?

JA: That was the crazy thing, especially from my naive point of view. She gave me the paper, and just said, ‘you may want to take your clothes off.’ And that was it, no instruction. Day one. We went down to the deck, and I had my roll of paper, and she’s sitting there on the bleachers, and I start to interact with the paper.

AL: What are the specifications of the paper?

JA: Just a roll of brown paper, the kind used to ship a package in the mail. She had a huge roll. I’m sure she works with it all the time. So, we pulled a piece off the roll. And, then, I was waiting for instruction, but there was no instruction, so I just kept going. Stephen told me, you’re working with a master, you go and do whatever she says. Don’t even try to collaborate. This is the opportunity of a lifetime. So, ok, I went with the intention of doing whatever she told me, but she didn’t tell me anything.

…So, no instruction is coming, and I’m working and working and working with the paper, maybe two hours. It got dark but I didn’t notice. And then I hear a quiet voice saying, ‘you can stop now.’ I guess she was just waiting for me to stop, and I was waiting for her to stop me.

The next day, she called the Berkeley Museum and said, ‘we’re coming up. Janine is here, and we’re going to perform a dance at the museum.’ I said to her, ‘Anna, you can’t do that.’ She replied, ‘yes, I can – this is what museums are for.’ It wasn’t advertised. I just turned up and did it. There were five or six people that watched.

AL: Did going into an art space do anything to…

JA: Terrible, it was terrible. Anna’s deck is magical. I thought I was just being sentimental and then I took Stephen Petronio and Adrian Heathfield out there, and we all agreed; it was the deck. Something happens on that deck. It gave me permission to use time in a different way. Not to mention all those feet that have danced on that wood. But as soon as I was done, she called up all her friends in Marin and said, ‘this artist is here, and you should really come see what we’ve been working on… and we’ll have a potluck!’ So, seventy-five people showed up, and I performed for them.

AL: She is just composing these experiences as she goes.

JA: That’s the crazy thing with Anna; everything is that open. Stephen was shocked. We went there to work, and whoever turned up, she put in the piece. So, it was the secretary, the Feldenkrais practitioner who came for breakfast, everyone. She ended up not leaving for the whole day. Tamalpa was doing a workshop, so at lunchtime Anna took the whole workshop and invited them to work with me and Stephen.

AL: And it’s a conception of dance, of the practice, the ongoing exploration, being as important, or more important, than the finished artwork.

JA: When we were there, Stephen wanted to come away with a score. He wanted to know what are we doing? And the very last time we did it, and we knew we were about to leave, she kept opening it and opening it. And then she said goodbye. And we were wondering, well, what do we work on? And she said, ‘oh, send me some videos.’ I wondered if that is a position or an insight from being ninety-five. She is much more focused on the process than the outcome.

AL: I don’t know that she’s ever been any different.

JA: I don’t know. Her work and her way of working was always radical. When I look back on my experience, working with Anna is about entering into a philosophy. Anna has taught for her whole life. Learning from her is much deeper than getting instruction.

Comparison of Gian Lorenzo Bernini “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa” and Janine Antoni in collaboration with Anna Halprin “Paper Dance” (2013).

AL: So, then, do you feel any allegiance to stay faithful to anything from the work with Anna, or do you now go and just make something from that experience?

JA: It’s interesting because I didn’t realize the freedom I was taking until I saw the way that Stephen has been handling the way we work with Anna. I feel like there’s room to make decisions, and we have to make decisions about how to take what Anna made and re-site it in the gallery context, which is very specific. Of course, the decisions we make will be, hopefully, in line with what Anna has created. But I also feel a certain responsibility to it… I mean, she’s asked me to put it in a gallery. She knows what that means. But solutions that work in a dance context with a dance audience don’t always work in a gallery.

AL: What specifically?

JA: Well, with Anna, one needs to consider her relationship to scoring and community rituals like the Planetary Dance. The score is a set of visual and verbal instructions. In the gallery or museum, you don’t have that. I mean, there’s participation, but it’s always a concession to have to tell people what to do. The work should create a response that is meaningful in terms of their interaction with it. But you have to give them autonomy to make those decisions. And whatever decision they make creates the meaning, and should be embraced.

AL: Though there’s so much explaining in visual art.

JA: Right, but not explaining, as in what to do. In the art world there is the big explaining, which is more about contextualizing the work but not Anna’s form of explaining. Such as “let’s just put a score on the wall.”

AL: For the audience…

JA: Yeah. So, for the upcoming exhibition, there are all these questions that are still in the air about how this translates into the gallery and what is the most interesting way to do that. There will be the performances, and then there will be the context created by the installation for those performances because something has to remain there for three months when the performance isn’t happening. It won’t be documentation in any straightforward way.

AL: There will the space for three months and, then, you and Stephen together will create a performance work as an event in it?

JA: So, Anna made a piece called “Rope Dance” for Stephen and me to perform, “Paper Dance” for me to perform and she gave her work, The Courtesan and the Crone to Stephen to perform. And then Stephen and I will make a work together. And all four of these pieces will have an installation for the duration of the show. And the thing I’m sure won’t happen—one should never say that—is that it won’t be straight up documentation of the performance. And it won’t be performers doing the pieces the entire time. So, we are looking for some way to solve that problem: the duration of viewing an exhibition and a performance, and the physical space of viewing an exhibition and a performance.

AL: Something that signals the performance’s existence.

JA: Right. There are many examples of artists dealing with performance and retrospection in the museum context. Having performed Marina [Abramovic]’s work in her retrospective at MoMA, you have experienced her decisions intimately.  So I have been thinking about that in relationship to Xavier [Le Roy]. I’m looking at all those models really carefully. In order to get a new perspective on my past work, I have engaged not only another form (dance), but also the work of two other artists from that form (choreographers).

AL: What is it about your work with dance and with choreographers that you feel is what you want to bring into a gallery space?

JA: Well, if you think my work has always been in this terrain between object, performance, and relic, I’ve been exploring this territory for a long time. If I can take what I know from that exploration and apply it to the way dance is being seen, that may be the biggest contribution I actually have. …But I’m talking like I know how to do this; I have no idea.

AL: I do feel that things can hold bodies, that they can hold movement.

JA: I think you’re right. I feel like I’ve done that to some degree. Then there’s the question: but is it an artwork? I’m making incredible forms with paper, but somehow that’s not enough for me. The paper forms are not objects I would make to remain in the world. And I have certain requirements of objects I put in the world. And so I’m in a funny place.

AL: That’s interesting. So, you remove the body from that, and it doesn’t stand?

JA: I mean, you could read the body in the paper…

AL: But it’s not a physical thing you stand behind as an art object?

JA: What dance allows for is endless malleability. Creating a kind of life that is reinvented over and over again. To still dance is, actually, to lose that malleability. These seem like very provocative gestures [with the paper]. They feel more like drawings than sculpture – drawings that speak about process rather than autonomous objects.

AL: And then it’s a question of, if you’re an object maker, but the interest is when they get activated as choreography or danced improvisation, does it have a weight as an intervention in dance history? And is that important in the context of a visual art exhibit?

JA: Well, that’s my big fear because I realize I come to it from the art side. People from the dance world are seeing something interesting that I almost can’t recognize myself. They seem to be fascinated by watching me in the process of making sculptural decisions and how the material is moving me—because it’s telling me what I need to do to it. And then there’s something else that has to do with some kind of movement that comes from an inner listening. Those two things combined seem to intrigue.

AL: You are a strong performer.

Janine Antoni in collaboration with Anna Halprin. Paper Dance. 2013
Photographed by Pak Han at the Halprin Dance Deck

JA: I’ve performed very few times in my life. I mean, I perform things in order to make objects. When I moved Anna would say, “She is so innocent,” as if to say don’t touch her because she might lose this. And then there’s Stephen who’s completely aware of what he’s doing. She puts us together and says, how’s this ever going to work? They’re moving from totally different places.

[Pulls up a video clip of Antoni performing Paper Dance.]

JA: So, I call up a friend of mine, Chris Sollars when I was heading to the Berkeley Museum to do Paper Dance. He is an ex-student and a great artist. I ask him if he come by and photograph the performance for me? After I perform Paper Dance he says, funny thing about that dance, I saw every piece you’ve ever made in it. So I guess I have come full circle to the retrospective idea. It makes sense that if I’m improvising, all I have to pull from is my past work. And life. What I know to be true. [Shows a series of slides that have body postures in relation to the paper that very closely mimic images of Antoni in performance of other works.] This was pretty uncanny and it opened up a whole new way for me to think. I felt like if I did Paper Dance and had a retrospective at the same time that, then, the dance would become programming for the retrospective. So, I felt instinctively that I should hold back the work so that people would have to find the work in the dance. Or that the work would be in the dance, and whether people wanted to go there or not was up to them.

AL: One thing that improvisers always struggle with is that you get to know your way of moving, your movement habits, so well.

JA: Yes, Anna does not want me to repeat myself. And, of course, the dance has changed radically. I can count on the physical material to keep it fresh. I guess I have counted on that throughout my career. Material is unwieldy, and I am in an improvisational duet with the material. It is an endlessly surprising partner and it keeps me responding in the moment.

AL: But the idea for your retrospective, that your body holds and performs your history of sculptural forms, is a really nice one.

JA: And the question is: is there a way to do that without actually putting the work there?

AL: Without also visualizing your history in objects?

JA: Yes, I don’t know how to do that, but I’d like to figure out how.

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Janine Antoni employs an amalgam of mediums including performance, sculpture, photography, installation, and video. Her body is both her tool for making and the source from which her meaning arises. She carefully articulates her relationship to the world, giving rise to emotional states that are felt in and through the body. In each piece, no matter the medium or image, a conveyed physicality speaks directly to the viewer’s body.

Janine Antoni was born in Freeport, Bahamas. Antoni has exhibited at numerous major institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC;  The Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Magazsin 3 Handelshögskolan, Stockholm; Haywood Gallery, London, Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany.  She has also been represented in several international biennials such as the Whitney Biennial; Venice Bienialle; Johannesburg Biennial; Kwangju Biennial, South Korea; Istanbul Biennial; S.I.T.E. Santa Fe Biennial: Project 1 Biennial, New Orleans;  and Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India.

Antoni is the recipient of several prestigious awards including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship in 1998, the New Media Award, ICA Boston in 1999, the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award in 1999, an Artes Mundi, Wales International Visual Art Prize nomination in 2004, The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2011, a 2012 Creative Capital Artist Grant, Anonymous Was A Woman Grant in 2014 and A Project Grant from The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage to collaborate with choreographers Anna Halprin and Stephen Petronio at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia for a 2016 exhibition. She currently resides in New York City.

Abigail Levine is a New York-based choreographer and performer. Her work has been presented at venues including Movement Research Festival, Mount Tremper Arts Festival, Danspace Project, Center for Performance Research, Gibney Dance, Roulette, The Knockdown Center, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Movement Research at the Judson Church, SESC São Paulo, Prisma Forum (Mexico), Hemispheric Institute Encuentro (Montreal), Días de la Danza (Havana), Benaki Museum (Athens), and Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (Cairo). Abigail was a reperformer in Marina Abramovic’s retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art and has also performed recently in the work of Clarinda Mac Low, Carolee Schneemann, Larissa Velez-Jackson, Will Rawls, and Mark Dendy. In 2014, she learned Yvonne Rainer’s iconic 1965 work Trio A, coached by Pat Catterson. She holds a Masters in Dance and Performance Studies from NYU and was the 2013-15 editor of Movement Research’s digital performance journal Critical Correspondence. Levine is currently visiting faculty in dance at Wesleyan University.

Dance and the Museum was conceived and curated by Nicole Daunic and Abigail Levine.

Contributions by:
Gustavo Ciríaco
Alexis Clements
Colectivo A.M.
Samara Davis
Mark Franko
Danielle Goldman
Jaamil Olawale Kosoko
Sarah Maxfield
Martin Nachbar
Yvonne Rainer
Mårten Spångberg
Sara Wookey

Related interviews and writings on Critical Correspondence:
Lise Soskolne of W.A.G.E. in conversation with Abigail Levine
Richard Move in conversation with Abigail Levine
Neal Beasley in conversation with Joshua Lubin-Levy
Claudia La Rocco in conversation with Marissa Perel
Charles Aubin in conversation with Abigail Levine
Ralph Lemon in conversation with Marissa Perel
Laurel Tentindo in conversation with Christine Elmo
Rebecca Davis in conversation with Jodi Bender
Janine Antoni in conversation with Abigail Levine
Marissa Perel on Conversations Without Walls: Mutual Seductions
Christine Elmo in response to “Seven Works by Trisha Brown”

Of Note Elsewhere:
Indexing Liveness: The (In)Animacy of Performance by Lauren Bakst in the New Museum blog
Yve Laris Cohen in Mousse Magazine
Performance at the Beginning of the 21st Century by Aaron Mattocks in The Performance Club
Sarah Michelson in Art21
Open Letter to Artists by Sara Wookey in The Performance Club
Being a Thing: The Work of Performing in the Museum by Abigail Levine in Women and Performance
Three Reperformers Respond to MOCA Gala in The Performance Club

We will complement these responses with other interviews, texts, and links to resources that speak to the issues at hand. We welcome further contributions, challenges, insights, resources, as well. You may contact us at: cc@movementresearch.org

The University Project is the first in a series of ‘research projects” in which we will accrue and amass various materials and approaches to a broad and relevant topic. Please feel free to participate and comment to keep the conversation alive.

From Guest Editor, Maura Donohue:

I remember sitting in the audience—a student about to graduate from Smith College—listening to Donald Byrd and fellow Tufts University grad, composer Mio Morales, explaining that his work, titled “Drastic Cuts,” was referencing the reduction of funding for the arts he saw happening in America.[4] Soon after my entrance into the community as part of the spring ‘95 Fresh Tracks program at DTW, I watched Ralph Lemon disband his company. I was told that things looked bleak. But, like many young artists coming in with nothing, I had nothing to lose. It didn’t seem like bad odds. I’d hit the fringes and thrive, avoid the pitfalls of the 80s and champion thrift and ingenuity. Flash forward ten years: I’m doing a residency in Hong Kong with two children in tow.[5] Their father has to carry them (the four-month old strapped to the front and the two-year old packed on the back) to the Academy of Performing Arts so that I can nurse in between classes and rehearsals. Great anecdotes, exhausting times—I knew I could no longer parse projects and pennies together with my experimental theater husband while trying to feed two kids.

I ran for academia. It’s a familiar story. We get older; the romantic notions of the starving artist diminish.  We seek stability and a way to stay in the field we love.[6] I went back for the MFA, managed to get full-time, tenure-track work here in NYC. For me, it all feels—to borrow a Hebrew word—Bashert, destiny revealed. I see my path ahead built through seemingly unrelated efforts from the years behind. Apparently academia is a good place for over achieving rebellious nerds.[7] As it turns out, it can be a really good place for many artists. You know—the working artist, the practicing professional, the independent artist, the people whose work we like to be in and to see around town—those capital “A” Artists. It’s also a pretty good place for well-known ex-dancers of the well-known “big dance companies”. And, it’s a good place for many more artists who work hard to educate on the campus and still manage to make work in the other real world that exists beyond NYC.[8]

It’s nice to get paid. It’s nice to get paid regularly, with benefits, and to have access to studios and computers and video cameras and maybe sometimes a theater and technical support.[9] It can be very not-nice if one is dealing with unsupportive administration, cantankerous peers, ignorant masses of know-it-all-but-seen-nothing undergraduates, having to go to work at a regular time, sitting in meetings, scrambling for money and justifying why the arts matter. But let’s face it: we need college. What’s our history without Bennington College in the 1930s with Martha, Hanya, Doris and Charles—without Martha, no Merce; without Cunningham, no Cage; without Cage, no Robert Ellis Dunn; without Dunn, no Judson Church; no Judson Church, no Grand Union. Without all of that, where would we be? Still twirling exotic fabrics and shiny tassels in the name of art?

The field is changing, the country is changing, the world is changing dramatically. Perhaps now it’s easier to be a poor artist, after the glamour of high finance has worn thin. Maybe it’s worse. If our presenting organizations don’t weather this crisis, how many important works and artists will we lose?[10] Or maybe the next seminal works need the new landscape in order for the field to grow. New York City teaches a kind of social Darwinism with fierce intent. There is attrition and contraction all around. Artists working in the service or temp industry feel it, artists working at arts organizations feel it, artists trying to make art feel it. But, when I speak to the heads of these college programs and to some of the highly respected artists now imbedded in academia, I hear overwhelming optimism. Everyone has plans: many are rethinking their curriculums, their hiring, their expectations and alliances. As an entire generation of founding faculty retire, a new guard is chipping away at the staunch mountain of academia. There is an abundance of hope in the following interviews with many ideas of how to serve students, artists, and the field, many plans for keeping pace and creating systems with mutually beneficial returns.

I’m very grateful for a couple heated, fleeting debates during DTW Artist Committee meetings. They sparked my desire to continue moving the conversation further. For me, it’s all about the conversation, which is why I’m also so deeply grateful that Critical Correspondence embarked on The University Project and let me jump in and bang at the threshold spaces of art world/school world and real world/campus world. Borders are being crossed, categories cracked—it’s no longer an either/or option. Every conversation I’ve had for this project so far has taught me a multitude about the generosity of spirit, ingenuity of planning, and wealth of possibility that lives inside the pairings of academia and art-makers.

There aren’t any formulas or easy answers, but my hope is that college and university departments can read these interviews and develop an arsenal of information that they can return to their Chairs, Deans, Provosts and Presidents to show how other schools make it work. I hope this project offers the same thing for artists. That those entering academic situations will arrive armed with more information about what is possible for them, or that those pondering the MFA can think about where they will be best served. I hope too that artistic and academic institutions can find something in here to help them build stronger alliances in a challenging landscape. But, most of all, I hope that we are adding more voices to the conversation already in progress.

Thank you to everyone who has (and who will) take the time to talk.

In celebration of Movement Research’s 30th Anniversary, Critical Correspondence is reprinting monthly excerpts from each of the first 30 Performance Journals. We are featuring representative and relevant articles, selected shorter quotes, as well as each of the issues’ editorial notes. It is both enervating and challenging to look at the historical map that precedes our time – the continuity of mission, the diverse attempts to “word” a practice, the voices that have gone and the ones that keep returning, the ongoing development of discourse alongside political struggles and the ever changing landscape of being a working and thinking artist.

Many of these Journal issues are available for purchase at Movement Research. As always, we welcome your comments at the end of each reprinted article. We are also posting a table of contents for each issue for your reference.

Download a PDF of this Conversation

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November 1st, 2015

Jeff Friedman: You asked a really important question about the field, since it is the broad spectrum that defines, to some degree, what we can do, what we should do for dance in higher education. What I would say about dance and the academy is that dance is still trying, still struggling, to define itself on its own terms. It is important to say that embodied practices in the academy are still generally considered suspect. The history of dance and the academy is that the discipline of dance comes in through physical education, then turns into a sub-program of theater, and then eventually dance becomes its own department. That dance has an embodied practice is essential and also, to whatever degree, that practice has been feminized in our culture. There are many problems with dance being legitimized. Doing it on our terms is really important.

I think the next step in that process is not only to continually legitimize and honor our embodied practice in the academy but also to legitimize the theoretical and methodological ways in which that practice can be further articulated. There are theories of embodiment and there are methods of knowing that come out of that mix.

How do we credential people in that mix of theory and practice, and how are we constrained by the existing framework of higher education to accomplish that goal? What we have are many MFA degree programs and Ph.D programs in various configurations in the U.S., Europe, the U.K. and one in New Zealand.

Will Rawls: What’s the one in New Zealand?

Jeff: The University of Auckland. I spent some time there with the Head of Dance named Ralph Buck. He’s great; he’s a wonderful guy. And what’s interesting about Auckland is that their program has always had a practice-theory connection. They don’t focus on creating virtuosic dancers as much as they focus on creating practice-based movement projects that are academically informed. So even their undergraduate work is like that, so it is relatively consistent within the BA degree,  through MA, all the way through the Ph.D degree programs.

Will: So Auckland is requiring, encouraging and facilitating dance students to develop dance as practice as their primary academic achievement.

Jeff: New Zealand is isolated enough that it was able to construct that approach on its own without having any necessarily problematic regulation or accreditation issues. In the UK there are Ph.D programs in dance which do allow practice and theory to mix. Practice as research is a coming thing these days. However, I have been at conferences at which individuals have said, “I was promised that a practice-as-research dissertation in a Ph.D program would be accepted. I made the work—the performance work—and all they wanted to look at was my written work.” And this was a betrayal, to some degree, of that promise. The problems have to do with the fact that there was no precedent for evaluating a practice-as-research doctoral project in dance. What I will say though is that, in the United States at least, there is a very interesting degree called the DMA, for example, the Doctor of Musical Arts at Rutgers and other universities. I’m occasionally present for several of those final reviews for the doctoral students. They have to “sing the lieder”—in other words, they have to have a very good practice—but they also have to have access to the theoretical and methodological frameworks around that practice. So, when you perform your lieder, you’re going be asked questions like “What are you doing with the glottal stops in your voice?”, as well as, “What are you doing with the Germanic relationship to Romanticism in regards to opera?” In other words, to know the practice as it relates to the theory. I think this is a wonderful opportunity.

Will: Are there other kind of exigencies around a contemporary representation of those things?

Jeff: Oh, you could do it about anything, really. It’s related to praxis—theory and practice integrated together. The DMA is a praxis degree. I like it very much; it’s one of the terminal degrees you can get in music. But we don’t have that degree right now in dance; we have Ph.D programs at University of California-Riverside, UCLA, and Ohio State; I think those are the three, if I can remember correctly.

Will: This next question comes from my folklore about you, but were you one of the first Ph.Ds in dance in the U.S.?

Jeff Friedman, choreographer and performer, in Muscle Memory (San Francisco, 1994). Photo by Steven Savage

Jeff: University of California at Riverside was considered the first Ph.D in Dance History and Theory. It started in 1993 as a doctoral program and there was one student at the time. I remember that the first graduate of the program graduated the year before I entered. I was the only one of my group of 8 to graduate in six years in 2003. So, it was one of the earlier Ph.D degree programs in Dance History and Theory. There are faculty there who have Ph.Ds but they had to do them in American Studies, they had to do them in History, they had to do them in other disciplines. They managed to create the groundwork for generating a faculty that could handle a Ph.D degree specific to dance. So I don’t want to say I’m one of the first people with a Ph.D in dance; there were others who were specialists from other disciplines. Our second generation is now sort of sprinkled throughout the United States and abroad in Canada, the U.K. and Europe.

Will: if I were to be pursuing a Ph.D in Dance through anthropology, through biomechanics, or something like that, are there things about those kinds of approaches to dance knowledge that hinder a relationship to embodied practice or aesthetics?

Jeff: Those people who went in through other disciplines had to struggle with advisors who were not necessarily dance-savvy people. Their advisors were historians of great renown, and others may have been biomechanics scholars who were great scientists but they didn’t have the dance element. So, in a way, those doctoral students had to invent dance discourse by themselves, to whatever degree someone might have been willing to support it. That was the challenge for them.

I’ll back up and say that a Ph.D in dance studies is always interdisciplinary and a student is probably going to be working with literary studies or anthropology or biomechanics or some other discipline in relationship to embodied practice. This means that theories are going to be emerging from other discourses. Say, for example in the late 1990s, when I was taking courses and was required to read anthropologist Clifford Geertz, we were asked to read it by putting the word dance into places where people were talking about music, or people were talking about visual arts—there was always a kind of replacement project happening there. That’s challenging because that means you’re inserting something that is then having an enduring effect inside the text, that will then change what the text can do. To some degree, we didn’t know what it would do, so that was experimental. I would say now we do have people who are recognized as self-creating dance theory from inside the practice. One of the things that is valuable about that is that there is an embodied experience that is now foundational to people working in theory. For example, if you’re going to be talking about phenomenology, how we experience ourselves as an embodied practitioner is highly informed by what we can do in phenomenology. The great phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty was not a dancer—so, what is it then, that we, as dancers, add to the theoretical discourse?

Will: Just taking this a little bit further, how do you guide your MFAs in order to put language into their practice? Are there specific questions that you’re still looking for?

Jeff: The new MFA in Dance degree at Rutgers is the degree that we can have as a terminal degree in dance. The MFA is generally considered a practice-based terminal degree, so there’s a bifurcation there, between the MFA and the theoretically-based Ph.D. The Rutgers MFA, as I’m constructing it right now, is more of a DMA model, more of a praxis—integrated practice and theory—degree. So, with that frame in mind, one of the things I’ve done is to construct praxis-based coursework that is experienced simultaneously by the students. They’re called Praxis of Dance or “POD” courses, where you may have a dance philosophy and aesthetics course that I will teach but at the same time you will be working with improvisational strategies taught by another faculty member. We co-create the course. In a three-hour block you might start with contact improvisation to have the felt experience phenomenologically. There is a trope in phenomenology: when your hand touches your other hand, you feel your hand touching the other hand but you also feel your other hand being touched. So, to have experiences that are viscerally about body first is important. For our students who are not necessarily academics, they’re working their way into it—they start with the practice and then to encounter the theory of phenomenology in a way where, “Wait a second, I have a little key, because I just experienced that physically.” And then we have an experience-based ground from which we can trace the reading or discussion. Or if we’re going to talk about theorists Deleuze and Guattari, and the question of “lines of flight”—that ideas are not arboreal in the sense of the “tree model” of knowledge in which every idea, everything is emerging from this one branch and then we’re branching out again but you can always trace it back to the original trunk. This is very Western perspective on information culture, and we’ve accepted it. But if you think differently, from Deleuze’s perspective, you can have a completely other thought on a line of flight, outside of the arboreal system, and I think, in dance, we do this innately. For example, you might also practice Bill Forsythe’s improvisation technologies. So when you’re “knotting,” all of a sudden you’re in the midst of this knotting procedure which then lends itself to other improvisational technologies into which you can then sidle off, and start doing another practice, and so on. And that’s something that Forsythe related to Deleuze’s “line of flight” theory, in particular. These courses are constructed to help stimulate each other and not privilege reading/writing/word languaging over the movement practice, but instead allowing them to be co-present with each other, and co-informing each other.

Will: And these are taking place in dance studios or lectures?

Jeff: All of our dance studios are smart classrooms, so there’s ways to have projection there, to use a Smart Board. In each classroom, there are ways to sit, ways to read and write, and ways to practice movement. Luckily.

We have a really prescient chair of our department, Julia M. Ritter, who insisted on having these classrooms equipped that way for the undergraduate degree. If they’re going to be doing Anatomy and Physiology—locating where your greater trochanter is in your body—you can be in a studio where you can have your yoga mat, use the Smart Board for a diagram reference, and where you can also actually see the trochanter physically with a skeleton in front of you. I wish I could teach my history classes there, so I could make people dance in history class all the time. But I do usually ask for a particular room that has a little extra space so we can move the chairs.

Will: So what kinds of things do people dance in your history class?

Jeff: Last semester we had a student from India in our BFA program and we studied the practices of Indian classical dance, so she got up and showed us six mudras and the students tried it. Or, they have to do a very short version of Trisha Brown’s Locus [1975], with the spatial cues of the cube aligned with the different numbers and the alphabet. They had to spell something out. So they experienced the analytic post-modern method that Brown was doing, and then relating that to what they know about this amazing movement sensibility. Or they do a little bit of a Baroque dance to understand how it is deeply invested in the etiquette of the court. Who does the first curtsy, who does the second bow, what’s the costume doing to your movement while wearing a whalebone corset. And they have to turn sideways to get their hip panniers in though the door. All the control of the body and what that means for in the political court of Louis XIV. We dance maybe four or five times in the semester, over fifteen weeks.

Will: Do you find that their physicality is becoming more amplified to coexist with their linguistic vocabulary?

Jeff: I would say yes and no. When we do Yvonne Rainer’s “No Manifesto,” I always have the students volunteer to read it. Whoever wants to read it has to stand up on their chair. Because that’s the only way you can give a manifesto, is to be on a soap box. So they experience that physicality of setting themselves up and then their voices always get loud and they start just yelling, “No, No, No.”

Or, when I say “semiotic theory,” their eyes glaze over. But when they actually have performed a work of Merce Cunninghan’s, where the signifier and the signified are unlocked, they raise their hands and say “Ooh, ooh, ooh; I know what that means because I physically did it.” So, at the level of amplification within a curriculum, we’ll have developed that depth of practice informing theory from having Gaga technique classes or having set a Cunningham work; all of that experience in the studio has a way that feeds itself back into the academic part of the curriculum.

Will: So, how is the MFA degree structured, within the 26 months?

Jeff: Going back to your first question about what the field is doing now. The field, at least in the U.S., has been developing graduate MFA terminal degrees in dance  moving in the direction of low-residency and we have several low-residency programs already, at Hollins University, Jacksonville State University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. There’s a new one in Northern Colorado. So, for me, the question is what is the role of a low-residency graduate degree program, how does it serve the field? I think that the idea was that these students are working professionals who have had careers as artists and they’re thinking about going back to graduate school to credential themselves to move into higher education. Not necessarily to give up the practice of making and the practice of performing but to add a pedagogical element. There are several of us at Rutgers who are practitioners working on the faculty. So, I guess the question has to be, is a graduate program that is low-residency a credential that allows people to say, “Well, now you’ve done that. Now you can work as faculty of higher education.” Is it sufficient to credential one’s self in a low-residency mode?

I think there’s actually a lot of stuff going on in the blogosphere now about why do we even have graduate programs in dance. How can we promise people the jobs? Because you may spend some significant money for a degree in order to do that but that job may not be there in sufficient numbers to give you that chance. This is a question people have been asking.

My answer to that question is, if some low-residency programs are focused on purely credentialing people, moving them through very quickly, I would ask if this experience was necessarily transformative. Can we really justify the outcome of such an education with a faculty position in higher education? Are they sufficiently prepared? Have they been transformed in some way through graduate study, in order to do the work of a faculty member? So, this is the hard question. And I think that there’s lots of variables there and I think these programs have thought about it. I think some achieve it, some less so. And I thought to myself, what would be a way I would acknowledge working professionals from the field (for our purposes at Rutgers, the means people who are at least five years out from an undergraduate degree)? How can I configure an MFA degree program that both acknowledges professional field experience, while also configuring a transformative graduate school experience? That’s the challenge.

To this end, the MFA in Dance degree structure is organized to be flexible, recognizing that working artists continue their existing careers. We’ve structured coursework over 1.5 years, beginning in the Winter of 2017, continuing through the spring semester and then a 6-week summer session. After summer break, we then continue through the Fall and Spring 2017-2018 academic year, with an additional 6-week summer session. Notably, during weekly coursework, most students will have at least 1.5-2 days off to work in the field.

By the end of 1.5 years, we recommend that all MFA students complete their required and elective coursework and advance to candidacy. Then, MFA candidates have the option for thesis work in- or out-of-residence. So, candidates can be working in New York or Philly or Singapore, for that matter, if they are cultivating an entirely screened dance project. While continuing supervision from their thesis advisor during the next academic year, all candidates will ideally complete their thesis research in the form of a movement-based performance event, in a variety of genres including screen dance. While most theses will be produced at Rutgers-New Brunswick, the faculty is willing to travel within a 50 mile radius to see thesis works produced or exhibited in New York City, Philadelphia or throughout New Jersey.

Will: After five years out of school, I’d assume most people who go to masters programs have weeded out certain academic interests and want to go back to focus on something specific. But, when you’re five years out of undergrad and people are coming back in, are those people transformable, as you say? This is also maybe a question that relates to one’s authorial voice as an artist versus your authorial voice as a dancer, and one’s voice as a student. How do these transformations occur, at what levels?

Jeff: What I’m hoping for is that five years minimum out of undergrad means they’ve consolidated some kind of creative and performance practice. My hope is that they then have another question that they’re asking themselves. I was at a panel and one woman was really interested in costume design, but not just as a designer, but as a practitioner of dance; how do those interact? So I asked her about her experiences of looking at Oskar Schlemmer’s work in the Bauhaus. She said, “Let me look at that.” I said, “Well, there’s a world: what does the costume do for your creative practice?”

Will: Walter Dundervill is someone I would think about.

Jeff: Oh yes, exactly, this guy’s whole environment is an extension of his body through costume/set/props/accessories. It’s amazing. So, I want people to be asking another question. I don’t want them to be asking how can I be a better dancer and a better maker, or how can I make more dances because I have the support of a studio that I don’t have to pay for. That’s not enough to be transformed in graduate school. I want people to have other questions. And the question for me that is the most interesting right now is about interdisciplinarity—how do other disciplines engage movement practice in some way? Someone might come to me and say, “I want to look at robotics in the engineering school and its relationship to dance movement.” Okay, let’s see if that can happen. Or, “I want to look at cinema as a way of enhancing my practice.” Or “I want to look at women and gender studies as a way of enhancing my practice”. Or Latino politics. I want those questions to be bubbling up for people, and they don’t have the answers necessarily now, which is fine, but what I want to do is bring them into an MFA degree program that gives them a chance to explore that question, have a base that allows them to have a conversation between Latino political theory and dance theory. And be able to practice it in the studio.

It’s also important for me that we have to have creatively literate global citizens in dance. We can’t just recreate our own historical practices. You know, what is happening in postmodern Māori dance in Auckland where my friend Cat Ruka is performing these amazing works. Why would she put her bare foot on a portrait of the prime minister of New Zealand? Because there’s a lot going on there in terms of what that means in Māori value systems, about what they call pakeha value systems—European value systems—how is hat foot position is a political move but in an embodied form. I want people to have that global perspective because, if they could become truly global citizens, they can go to Auckland, they can go to Europe, they can be conversant. So it’s not just recreating our own value systems elsewhere. So, there’s that interdisciplinary part, there’s the global part, and then the third part, which for me is really important, was a deficit in my own training, which was pedagogy.

Catherine Moana Te Rangitanika Ruka Gwynne, choreographer and performer, Playing Savage (Rutgers University, 2010)

We’re very lucky in that we have a Master’s Degree in Dance Education, in which our BFA students are getting a five year degree—BFA-EdM, Master’s of Education in Dance, an excellent program run by a faculty member with a doctoral degree focusing on critical pedagogy—the ways in which global pedagogy has changed to student-centered and social justice-oriented learning. This program already exists at Rutgers at the graduate level. Why not just borrow some of those courses and support dance pedagogy training?

Will: Now, how easy was it to get other departments at Rutgers and schools outside to come to the table and participate. What was the convincing you had to do?

Jeff: The Dance Education degree is located in our department, but, regarding interdisciplinary practice, it’s a matter of going to the other arts programs and saying what courses are you okay about enrolling our dance students. Maybe there’ll be one or two MFA dance students in your puppetry course in theater, or one or two students in your electronic music course, or one or two students in whatever it is. So far all I’ve heard pretty much is yes. So, then the question is, does the student have enough chops to go into that course, or is there an introductory course you belong in first? We also have a list of what we call “Special Topics” courses within the dance faculty—vernacular dance, street dance, screen dance. We have Keith Thompson, [a performer with Liz Lerman’s Dance Exchange and a choreographer in his own right] and community-based dance. I do documentary-based dance, which is engaged with oral history work. Our chair is getting her Ph.D in immersive dance at Texas Woman’s University. We have two specialists in videography/screen dance and we have someone who just came onto our faculty who is a specialist in devising installation projects with lighting design.

Will: And then, 26 months later, you leave and you enter this dance field. I always talk about “the dance field” in quotations, because there are networks within it but, depending on who you talk to, it can be described totally differently, as much as choreography could be described differently by each person who practices it. Could you define the field vis-a-vis your role in it?

Jeff: I brought a little quote with me. It’s from a dance that I made in 1984, which is called Topophilia; “topophilia” is a word that was coined by a Chinese geographer named Yi-Fu Tuan. He defines topophilia as the affective bond between people and place. And, as you know, my first undergraduate degree was in architecture. So my lens about spatiality and dance structures has always been very much through that architectural lens. I really wanted to make a work that started to look at dance through the lens of this relationship between people and place, and I found this wonderful artist named Will Insley and I’m just going to quote him:

Though trained as an architect, I realized that whatever it was I was looking for, I would never find it in the practice of architecture. It was necessary for me to first renounce architecture and subsequently renounce art in the normally accepted and separate definitions of both terms, in order for me to actively set my intuitive compass to that precise location arrived at through thinking as an architect and acting as an artist.

He was a visual artist who made these amazing two-dimensional drawings and three-dimensional models of utopian/dystopian cities. I just was always very struck by someone who was thinking already that there’s a lens that frames his practice in some way. He was saying, “It’s not one or the other, it’s this intuitive ‘location between’ that I need to find,” and that’s really what I would love for my students to be able to find in the new MFA: whatever that lens would be for them, that they renounce the binary and do a both-and thing, where they find that place over 26 months. Then you have had a transformational experience resulting in a new point of view, and then you go into the field with that point of view, not just: “I’m a really good dancer, I’m a really good maker,” but rather, “I have a transformed point of view about those practices. And that I have a drive towards questions that are arriving as a result of that point of view. There’s a friction between my practice and perspective that creates questions.” If you’re going into higher education, you have to be able to generate questions, because research is part of that world. And bless the higher education world, they have now actually acknowledged creative research as equal to what we would call scholarship—and again that’s an either/or—because both are creative and both are scholarly.

For the new MFA program, they’re going to be reading and writing and they’re going to actually create a performance event of some sort from a variety of genres, and those two things, writing and performance have to be inextricably connected. I’ve been on four or five faculty search committees and that’s what you’re looking for in a new faculty member. Someone who has a trajectory, not someone who’s just sitting there saying “I’m good at what I do.” That’s great and even fundamental, but it’s not enough. You actually have to have a research trajectory. And so, to me, that is what the dance field of higher education needs, combined with global literacy and critical pedagogy—not only do I have a question but it’s globalized, it’s not limited to our own value system. And, when teaching, the diversity of your student body should be acknowledged. When I teach five lectures on Africanist Aesthetics, that means something to everybody in the room, but it also means something in particular to the African American kids in my room. We have kids from Korea, and kids from New Zealand and kids from India, and kids from Nigeria in our program. They have to be seen. And these are opportunities for our students in New Jersey is to broaden their experience.

Will: How do these students who come from Korea and India, presumably from widely varied socioeconomic backgrounds, just like the other students coming to Rutgers from around the U.S., how do you guys account for or facilitate that difference? I’m curious here about the socioeconomic and cultural factors in an embodied practice, i.e., access to certain concepts about movement?

Jeff: Our first undergraduate academic course is called Introduction to Dance Studies and I reconfigured from a Dance Appreciation course that just wasn’t cutting it. And I thought, Oh no, they have to actually look at discourses of race, ethnicity, mixed-ability, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic/class position, those issues, in addition to costume design and sound design and all that. We start with that materiality of the dance experience, but then we relate how sound design relates to ethnicity. So they watch “The Stack-Up” from Alvin Ailey’s company repertory and they say, “Wait a second, I think I hear Latino rhythms inside this African-American aesthetic.” So then they develop a new concept of cultural hybridity. But, among many things, what we’re also seeing in “The Stack-Up” is street culture in uptown Harlem, and a lot dancers performing roles of people hanging out on the street because maybe their homes aren’t in such great shape. There’s class difference embedded in “The Stack-Up.” At first it looks like, “Okay, you’re mad at me because you’re trying to get my girl,” but then look at the costumes, look at their jewelry; there are all these clues cleverly given that say there’s class difference in here as well.

Will: Is there financial support for MFA students or will there be?

Jeff: There has to be, there has to be. Right now, it’s very clear that if we have this strong pedagogy sequence, we have to have graduate student practitioners who are actually working in the classroom with strong supervision. This is critical pedagogy working: how can we improve it, what are your course goals, go back to that, what are your assessments? So there will be a sufficient number of adjunct teaching positions available in our program where we will be able to place many of, if not all of our MFA students, so they’re applying pedagogy as they’re doing their MFA coursework. Their coursework happens over 18 months where there’s essentially three semesters, plus a winter session and two summer sessions—they could be teaching five different sessions across the entire 18 months. In addition, scholarships are available every year based on what the Dean of the School provides for us.

Will: Workstudy?

Jeff: No, adjuncts are unionized, actually. So, the adjuncts, our PTLs—part-time lecturers—actually have a significant amount of control around what it is that they get in terms of pay, work conditions and all of that.

So graduate students will have that work and then, separate from that compensation for teaching, there would be additional scholarship money at different rates. People coming from out of state have out-of-state tuition, and we have to think about, if we really want the student, what can we provide for them to make it doable? New Jersey is not that far away from New York and you might decide you want to do the program and move to Jersey City a year in advance; that may be a smart thing to do. To become a Jersey resident, I think there’s a requirement you have to have 12-months of utility bills proving that you’re living there already. I think your driver’s license has to change. And, if they don’t do it for the first year, they can do it for the second year. So, all those variables factor in to the affordability of the program.

Will: Was there a break-through moment for you? Why this all started?

Jeff: I was hired in 2003 at Rutgers to create an MFA degree. I came in with a Ph.D, degree the first Ph.D faculty in the department, and I was seen as someone who potentially could provide an “overview perspective.”  But, in fact, I was very happy that the MFA was delayed because getting tenure is really important and that takes six years. So, my first six years were spent focusing on getting tenured. Then we had to build the critical mass of our own faculty to a minimum of ten full-time educators, in order to really develop the infrastructure for this MFA, to support each student who needs their own advisor for their thesis research. So it took a long time long to do that, and I’m actually really glad it did.

Will: This is sort of getting off topic of the MFA for a little bit, but this question often comes up for me about how to navigate representation and embodiment in choreography. As a reader of dance performance can you speak to this?

Jeff: People at a certain point said, “Wait a second, our modern dance pioneers are dying, Martha Graham just died,’ what are we going to do about that? Can we reconstruct these works so that then we have an archive to keep alive? We must generate the best notation systems possible; we must generate the practices of reconstruction so that it’s really accurate; how can it be extra accurate?”

And then it became a question of, is that even doable? Is it even a responsible thing to put a lot of this work into that model? People started saying, “Well, no there’s a whole set of other worlds, not reconstruction, but restaging. And there’s many other “re-” words that had to do with it: not restaging, but re-enactment. This is what interests me most right now, “reenactment.” Reenactment is saying, here was a work of dance. We don’t have it anymore, it was ephemeral, it was temporal. Those embodied practitioners had those historically-informed bodies, at those times. We can reenact the work, while acknowledging that the gap between what we will do and what they did has some interesting critical questions coming up,. Let’s acknowledge the reality of this temporal disruption and ask about what’s inside that disruption that we want to look at. And, to me, this is fascinating, because then you have a practice that is contemporary, but related to the past, but in a critical way. So it’s not just restaging it just because you can, it’s actually interrogating the gap in between.

I’ll give you an example: I work as an advisor with a choreographer from Germany named Paula Rosolen, and she took my oral history workshop, like you did years ago. Born in Argentina originally, she went back to interview a cohort of people around a woman named Renata Schotellius, a very important modern dancer in Buenos Aires. Renata was a Jewish woman who left Germany before WWII and made a significant contribution to dance in Argentina. The dance community has created this perspective on Renata that she brought European modern dance to South America. What Paula found out when she did the interviews is that none of that is really very true at all. Renata was much more entrepreneurial: she came to Boston, she taught at the Boston Conservatory; she brought back American modern and post-modern dance to Buenos Aires. So, what Paula made was an oral history-based (or documentary) performance about Renata, in which the whole dance was about the gap between what we would call the official “archive” and what we would call the “embodied repertoire,” the embodied reality. We know that the body always exceeds what the archive can provide. How can you create a performance work that has a critical perspective on this problem around Argentina, which is a country that’s had heavy immigration from Germany, Italy, and other folks in Europe, and therefore they purport themselves as being the most European country in Latin America. Why would they do that? Is there something about race in there? Is there something about class in there? I think so. And it’s a deep question and those concerns are elevated in this particular archival mythology about Renata and her so-called Europeanizing of Argentinean modern dance.

So Paula made her dance, beginning with a soloist who comes out to stand behind a period dress that’s flattened onto a piece of cardboard. It’s obviously from the forties or thirties and the dress hanging right at the level of the audience and that’s how you see it. It’s flat. But you also see the soloist stand behind it and she tries to make it three-dimensional: the head is trying to be inside the collar that never actually ever fits; her arms are struggling to fit into the cardboard sleeves. There’s always a gap between the repertoire of the body and the dress, as an archival document. Paula found this and other choreographic devices that are artistically pointing at this problem that has to do with Argentinean nationalism, that has to do with racism toward existing indigenous populations, generating a kind of South American exceptionalism. And, to me, that kind of representation, that kind of performed reenactment, points to “the gap between”—can the embodied self ever be representational of whatever the referent is? The distance between the body and its referent is a critical thing. What can you do with a critical thing? Point at it, interrogate it. And then you develop a question about the gap, and say this is what my embodied work can do with that gap.

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Jeff Friedman, Ph.D, is the Graduate Director of a new MFA in Dance degree at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, in New Brunswick New Jersey. Jeff earned his B.Arch from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D in Dance History and Theory from the University of California-Riverside. He holds CLMA (Laban) certification from the University of Utah’s Integrated Movement Systems program. His research in oral history theory, method and practice as they relate to embodied practices includes an archival collection of oral histories with dance community members with HIV-AIDS and other life-threatening illnesses; book chapters and journal articles for publications in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Spain, Germany, Korea, Australia and New Zealand; and a series of documentary-based choreographies derived from oral history interviews. Jeff conducts oral history workshops on embodied practices in the U.S. and internationally.

This past winter I met with Lise Soskolne, core organizer for W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy). W.A.G.E. is “a New York-based activist organization focused on regulating the payment of artist fees by nonprofit art institutions, and establishing a sustainable labor relation between artists and the institutions that subcontract their labor.” I got to know Lise and the work of W.A.G.E. as I was negotiating the complications of working in a museum as a performer. We spoke about the evolution and current work of W.A.G.E., as well as specifically considering the work of performance artists and hired performers within the context of exhibitions and performances. W.A.G.E.’s website is a clearinghouse of resources on the economic and political conditions of professionalized art-making: http://W.A.G.E.forwork.com

– Abigail Levine

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Abigail Levine: Would you introduce W.A.G.E. and its history briefly?

Lise Soskolne: W.A.G.E. was founded in 2008 by a group of visual and performing artists, and independent curators, many of whom had amassed a noticeable amount of cultural and social capital but had no money and wondered why they were always broke. There were email exchanges, meetings at apartments and studios, and discussion around the issue of nonpayment. Two public meetings at Judson Church followed; the first was attended by maybe 50 or 80 people, and the second was about the same, maybe slightly smaller. At the first public meeting the question of whether nonprofits actually pay artist fees was introduced and nobody could say for certain if they did or did not, or whether they were mandated to or not. At the second meeting we broke out into working groups and these winnowed down over time into a core group of organizers. The first two years were spent doing consciousness-raising as well as developing the 2010 Artist Survey, W.A.G.E.’s first major initiative.

AL: At that point did certain goals coalesce?

LS: 2010 was a pivotal year; in addition to the survey it included W.A.G.E.’s first certification. We certified the New Museum exhibition “Free”, curated by Lauren Cornell.

AL: What are the survey and certification?

LS: The survey collected data about the economic experiences of artists working with nonprofits in the 5 boroughs between 2005-2010. It asked very basic questions like, did you work with a nonprofit during that time? If so, did you receive a fee? If you received a fee, how much was it? Were your expenses covered? If so, which ones? The same kinds of basic questions W.A.G.E. has been asking for a while.

AL: By nonprofit you mean, a visual art, presenting organization?

LS: Yes, although at that point it wasn’t as clearly defined as it is now. The survey was split into two parts, one for small to medium-sized organizations and the other for large organizations and museums. There are operational differences between the two and there were too many organizations to list in a single survey so we somewhat subjectively determined which fit into which category, but you could fill out both surveys.

AL: This excluded commercial galleries?

LS: Yes. And nonprofit means a 501c3 charitable organization. In terms of the New Museum certification in 2010, that was for a single exhibition. W.A.G.E. had been invited to participate in the exhibition “Free” as an artist but because W.A.G.E. is not an artist, and the work that we do is not art, we instead chose to negotiate fees for the participating artists in the show. This was an important decision both because it marked the introduction of W.A.G.E. Certification as a strategy for regulating compensation and because it defined the nature of our work relative to what we wanted it to accomplish, namely: the payment of artist fees by nonprofit art institutions. From there it took about a year to clarify that certification would likely become W.A.G.E.’s primary initiative. At that point we decided that it would no longer be for individual exhibitions but would, instead, be for entire institutions because we believe that an institution must show a long-term commitment to paying artists equitably and to paying fees, and compensation for a single exhibitions isn’t enough to indicate that.

AL: There’s an assumption, I think, outside of the art world that professional visual artists make their living through the sale of their work, but W.A.G.E. was saying that, regardless of this potential, artists need to be compensated for their work presenting their work. Is that right?

LS: Yes, but it took some time to define what that meant—to identify and articulate precisely what aspects of presenting one’s work compensation was intended to be for. Certification was initiated in 2010 but was developed into a policy and regulatory tool between 2011 and 2014. We now define the artist fee as: compensation for the work that you do once you enter into a transactional relationship with an arts organization. Referring back to W.A.G.E.’s 2008 wo/manifesto, that work might include preparation, installation, presentation, consultation, exhibition and reproduction, among other things. Essentially it’s inclusive of the work that you do to mount a program or exhibition in coordination with an arts organization, and is exclusive of the labor you might expend prior to that relationship, such as time spent in the studio, in reading groups, or doing research, etc, since there is no way to demarcate when that kind of work begins and ends, or to quantify its value in monetary terms, unless it’s as waged labor, but even then it’s incredibly difficult to price. Under W.A.G.E. Certification, you’re not being compensated for being an artist, you’re getting paid for the work that you do when you work with an institution.

AL: So it’s much more circumscribed and it’s meant to move towards compensating this very quantifiable labor in some fair way, which may or may not make it feasible for you to continue to survive as an artist?

LS: Yes, it’s an effort to bring definition and hyper-clarity to something that has been hyper-nebulous for a long time. Being a fee and not a wage, this kind of compensation still remains symbolic of “actual” value but the language we’ve developed around it is intended to open the door or shift the paradigm toward thinking about artwork as labor, or artistic engagement with institutions as being labor, and to assign a price to it that reflects what the labor is worth.

But because the way artists make work and engage with institutions has and is changing so rapidly—from something like a sustained and fairly autonomous studio practice from which the work is placed in an exhibition context, to the kind of post-studio production in which the work is made on a commissioned basis—the work of making art tends to be more prescribed and much of it happens once an artist gets a show, or as we might put it, once an artist is subcontracted to produce content or provide services for an arts organization. That’s the moment you enter into a transactional relationship.

Anecdotally speaking, it seems more unusual these days for a curator to go to an artist’s studio and say, “I want to show that body of work.” When an institution invites an artist to work with them that tends to be when the work gets made. Institutions want new work, and more often than not it incorporates some kinds of institutional critique, even if it’s just a nod to the context and conditions within which it’s being produced exhibited—and this would necessarily take place once an artist has begun working with that institutional context.

When I try to describe what the fee is compensation for, I sometimes picture it like this: you’re at home or in the studio on the computer or phone, and at the other end—as in the child’s mock telephone line made of two tin cans and a piece of string—is the curator or administrator, at their desk in the institution. Their work mirrors many of the tasks you’re doing to produce the exhibition or program but they’re getting paid a salary and you’re not getting paid anything[1] .

I wish I could say that our fee schedule represented some kind of living wage standard but at this point it remains symbolic. At the 2014 W.A.G.E. Summit, where W.A.G.E. Certification was formalized into a policy, this issue was debated during a session called “Living Wage or Symbolic Fee”. We decided by consensus not to align the program with a living wage campaign for several reasons, one being that no organization would be able to afford to pay fees at that level, which would kill the project. Minimum wage campaigns are more tenable and have higher success rates because wages are lower and are thus more achievable. Essentially, the tension during the development of Certification has been between what is fair and what is possible. It might be more fair to advocate for a living wage but given the funding limitations in the nonprofit sector, achieving one wouldn’t be possible.

All images from wageforwork.com

AL: What does it take for an institution to be certified?

LS:

The first and most basic requirement is that “Artist Fees” must be its own separate and distinct line item in operating and exhibition budgets. That literally enables us to assess if organizations are paying fees that meet our requirements in one of three different tiers. If their operating expenses are below $500,000, fees must be no less than the specified minimum or “compensation floor”, which we call “Floor W.A.G.E.”.

The second tier, which we call “Minimum W.A.G.E.”, is for organizations with operating expenses above $500,000. In this tier the fee is tied to the organization’s projected total annual operating expenses and scales up in direct relation to them. So the higher their expenses, the higher the fee. Required fees are calibrated precisely for each institution so I make a customized fee schedule based on their projected budget using the equation of our fee calculator.

AL: And then above a certain amount and it tops out?

LS: Yes, at 15 million. The scale-up continues up to 15 million, but above that it is recommended and not required; at 15 million, there is a fee cap to ensure that nobody profits from the redistribution of wealth, including artists. We also require that the institution cover what we call basic programming costs and services. These constitute the baseline infrastructural requirements that an artist can expect an institution to provide, and these costs cannot be taken out of the fee. The logic here is that given the current state of precarity, in which workers are often expected to supply the workplace infrastructure, we assert that in the visual arts the opposite is true. The institution is the infrastructure that cannot be provided by the artist. This includes the provision and preparation of exhibition, performance, or projection space, the coverage of shipping and insurance costs when necessary, presentation infrastructure, including display equipment, exhibition furniture and lighting, documentation of the exhibition or event, promotion, travel and accommodation when necessary, and obtaining and paying for image rights for commissioned and existing texts.

AL: And there was also a discussion of the costs of production, yes?

LS: We decided not to make the coverage of production costs a requirement of certification because we didn’t feel it was fair to penalize smaller institutions who potentially can’t afford to cover these expenses. In a performance context it seems more necessary, but there are some aspects of performance under certification that are unresolved, actually.

AL: Yes, because the wages of performers, or subcontracted performers in the language W.A.G.E. uses, could be seen both as artist wages and as productions costs. Was performance part of W.A.G.E.’s conversation from the beginning?

LS: Yes, W.A.G.E. was founded in part by performing artists. The original tagline read, “W.A.G.E. is a group of visual and performing artists, and independent curators.” It was very distinctly part of what W.A.G.E. was organized around so there was never any question that performance would be a consideration. This became clearer in designing the survey because it consciously included a category for performance. But given the constraints of the online survey format we used, it was logistically challenging to include different questions about the exhibition conditions for performance, but it became clear that different questions needed to be asked, particularly related to what expenses were being covered. That’s probably when we started to think about production costs as being different for performance than for other kinds of exhibition or installation work. The survey was in development around the same time that Performa began, which you could point to as a marker of when performance became a consumable form within the visual arts, or as you put it, an emerging form in terms of its prominence and wider appeal. A biennial exclusively for performance says as much.

AL: Then, when I came into the conversation, you had been talking about this idea of hired performer labor? Or was that later?

LS: Do you mean dancers? I don’t think we had gotten that far yet. I think that came specifically from you and your experience. That was definitely what got me thinking about it.

AL:  Right, when I got to know W.A.G.E.’s work, it seemed logical to include some sort of fee schedule for performers within the W.A.G.E. calculator. And, again, the tricky part was the balance between what would be fair compensation and what a smaller institution, or an individual artist, could afford. My experience was with large museums, and the principle seemed clear that, if performers were working in an institution of that size, they should be compensated at a level commensurate with their work in major performing arts institutions—theaters and opera houses. The first stumbling block was that there was no precedent for this kind of compensation and, so, the logic of the fee structure for freelance performers made little sense to the institutions. Then, there was the problem of how to scale down for smaller institutions. This became clear in our discussion with Lumi Tan from the Kitchen, that the way that they structure fees for artists in either their gallery or theater would not enable them to guarantee a day rate to performers. As conversations continued, I felt that inclusion of performers and performance in a W.A.G.E. structure still should fall under the notion of visual art presentations because the economy of producing a dance or theater-based show has a whole system of considerations that this fee structure doesn’t answer.

LS: Yes, and now that we’ve launched the program and it’s operating, it’s clear that our inclusion of performance and performers has to be strictly limited to a visual arts presenting context, and for us to be able to certify dance or theater-based programs, we have to develop a fee structure for a performing arts presenting context, which we are starting to work on together. The other issues we discovered in conversation with Lumi are the cost of paying people for rehearsal time and covering production costs because they tend to be high in a theatrical context, and unlike the production of  capital-intensive material artworks, production costs cannot be recouped through sales and are generally not subsidized by commercial galleries.

AL: I also think it’s important when people look at the fee schedule they remember that the proposed fees are a minimum rather than the goal. As with the artist fees that are meant to both provide a step towards a living wage and spur conversation and negotiation, I don’t think people should look at the performer fees and think that they are meant to represent a living wage. We had this discussion about these museums essentially that their budgets are so high that the calculus of the $5 million budgets and above doesn’t any longer work. I think the numbers work so that you get up there and for a performer its about $200 a day, which would obviously be more than symbolic.

LS: Even after $500,000, its $20 per hour or a $100 day rate, whichever is higher and while $100 for an 8-hour day ($12.50/hour) is closer to minimum wage, it’s probably closer to resembling a living wage than the other fees, given the amount of production time that cannot and is not being accounted for.

AL: In these questions of situating artists in relation to different economies, were there any discussion or thinking about this organizing effort in relation to either other labor movements or other communities?

LS: Do you mean at the beginning?

AL: Anywhere throughout this process.

LS: Occupy Wall Street brought W.A.G.E. into close proximity with other organizing initiatives both in and outside of the art field, and W.A.G.E. began to shift around that time, in part because of that. On a strategic level, it’s important to align the labor of artists with other kinds of labor to make the point that art is not exceptional: it is precisely its claim to exceptionality that causes artists to not get paid, and this claim gets made by both by artists and institutions. If we identify artistic labor as being no different than any other form of subcontracted labor, laying claim to compensation becomes inevitable, while also positioning artists squarely within the ever-expanding contemporary precariat, which the exploitable nature of artistic labor was pivotal in defining. The willingness of artists to work for free, justified by the “labor of love” argument, the satisfaction of being “creative” logic, and the promise of exposure, finds application in many other industries, most notably among the so-called creative class. We are all being exploited by a similar logic, and it’s in the strategic interests of artists, not to mention in their ethical interests, to align ourselves and fight together with others in the same position. The UK’s amazing Precarious Workers Brigade does exactly that.

AL: I think people are starting to think, in regard to issues like gentrification, that it’s shortsighted to think of artists fighting alone, saying “hey wait, don’t raise the rents on the neighborhood” rather than forming more multi-class and multi-cultural coalitions.

LS: Yes, agreed. If artists don’t start building coalitions across class, then the divide will continue to widen and artists will find themselves having to pick which side of it they’re on—and given the increasing scarcity of resources, they’re likely to pick the side that guarantees their own material survival. I’m personally fascinated by, and critical of, artists’ ability to straddle and lay claim to more than one class position at the same time. Despite the fact that many artists today function more like entrepreneurs who, when their commercial success demands increased supply, run their own mini factories and liaise with the elite who consume their work, they continue to identify with and as working class—which might be appropriate to the extent that their labor is being exploited and they tangibly experience material precarity. But because only those who can afford to work for free can afford to enter the field, being an artist today inherently implies a more elite class position. When artists identify as workers under conditions that stand to benefit their careers and not a broader class struggle, then such an identification is likely more aesthetic than political. Of course not all artists lay claim to different class positions depending on what the context requires, but those that do play a dangerous game, and so any kind of attempt at coalition building across class has to bear in mind that artists are often regarded with mistrust in that sense. A text I wrote called “On Merit” for the Artist as Debtor conference in New York this past winter includes some discussion of what it means for artists to embody these kinds of contradictions.

All images from wageforwork.com

AL: Introduce a little of your thesis of what you presented.

LS:The text connects the contradictions inherent to being an artist under neoliberal capitalism to the contradictions inherent to the nonprofit economy, and tries to show how these contradictions are determined and maintained by the deeply flawed philanthropic tradition that supports it. It poses and answers the question why don’t nonprofits pay artist fees? by looking at how money is dispensed within the field by private foundations to nonprofits, and by nonprofits to artists on the basis of charity and merit. I discuss how this convention is a means of placing the nonprofit sector in service of maintaining the status quo in the for-profit sector. So, starting at the ‘top’, think about how philanthropists, who accrue wealth by exploiting labor, appear to ever so generously use their wealth to fix what they identify as “the root causes of social problems” through their giving priorities, and how nonprofits are forced to appeal to foundations on that basis in order to survive. Nonprofits have to prove that the work they do merits the charity of the funder – a very similar dynamic that artists find themselves in relative to nonprofits in the logic they’ve tended to use in dispensing artist fees (as charity and on merit). In terms of philanthropy, not only does the assertion of fixing social problems at their root cause imply a great deal of hubris, it exposes the great irony on which the entire system is based: philanthropists receive profound tax breaks and are incentivized by tax law to solve so-called “social problems” but it is precisely these philanthropists who perpetuate them through their investment in the exploitation of labor and the unequal distribution of the wealth it generates. In other words, philanthropists make money by appearing to solve the problems they helped to create and continue to perpetuate. Given that these logics underpin the nonprofit sector in terms of law and taxation, and also in terms of how labor is devalued, it makes complete sense that charity and merit are the basis on which artists are compensated. The problem is that artists are not charity cases and compensation is not based on merit. It’s complicated and there’s more to it, but as an overview does that make sense?

AL: Yeah, it makes unfortunate sense. …Ok, last question. So in the context of that, I know that you are a practicing artist and you have told me that largely you keep your work private. How does your work with W.A.G.E. and doing this with the economics of art feed your art practice, or vice versa? Does it interrupt it?

LS:

I think the work I do with and for W.A.G.E., as well as other so-called political work I’ve done, relieves my art practice from the pressure I might put on it otherwise. I make paintings, and painting, at least from my point of view, has very little or no political agency. In fact, painting is a veritable pariah in the context of so-called political art. The more I tried to make my paintings function as political actors, the worse and more untenable the whole business became. So I prefer to have a dividing line or separation between painting and politics because it’s cleaner and makes more sense to me that way. It also separates how I make art from how I make money, which I also prefer. But that still doesn’t solve the problem of how to be an exhibiting artist. I haven’t found a way to participate as an artist without doing what seems to be required of me, which at this point I seem not willing to do. So for now my work remains relatively private, only to the extent that it isn’t shown publicly. W.A.G.E. serves as a conduit through which I can participate in art, and also acts as a buffer behind which I can continue to make paintings.

AL: And you are doing a lot of work to make sure other people can do it in a different way than you choose.

LS: Well, I can’t say that I do this work only because I want to help others. I derive satisfaction (utility) from it. Like painting, I enjoy it—and I see no contradiction in being compensated for that.

The Salon invitation:

Dance and Publish Salon, photo by Movement Research

What do readers want from a dance publication?:

– a filter

– a newsletter

– contextualization as a RESOURCE

– an opinion, a review

– a community

– an art project

– a trade magazine

– a history

– an archive

– advertising space for own work

– a platform

– content sharing with network

– research hub

– collection of different writings on dance by artists, academics, producers, curators

Dance and Publish Salon, photo by Movement Research

For Critical Correspondence, there are easier ways to embed our content in other sites. Journal, in theory, has more cumbersome circulation.

Next phase of research for CC: soliciting visitors from other sites, entering university curricula?

Both MR Performance Journal / Critical Correspondence: these publications are major a RESOURCE. Few other examples of them in the field. How do we collaborate with other publications in the field and circulate discussions and artist’s ideas more widely?Movement Research Performance Journal is oldest print publications experimental dance in the country. How to situate it better as a resource?

 

 

Dance and Publish Salon, photo by Movement Research

Academic researchers (PhD’s, professors, art historians) use CC and MRPJ as primary source of artists discussing their own work. CC and MRPJ contribute to the scholarship with wide-reaching impact. How do we track this impact? How do we solicit further interviews and content from these academic users?

Approach to content—When covering a story or an artist or object of inquiry what about using a 2nd and 3rd degree distance from the ‘object’ or site of inquiry? i.e. Two artists talking about two other artists, or another project altogether. Deflect, reflect. Herko dialogue model (See Critical Correspondence’s Herko Dialogues series from December 2014)

Online platform vs. Online content

– the platform, as a structure, feels like its own object. It brings up questions ofcontemporaneity, how does this object persist in time/age/endure?

 

– the immediacy of online publication, addresses urgency or quick back-and-forth discussion/arguing/gossip. Gawker/HyperAllergic examples. Bomb magazine.

How do we navigate questions of insularity within dance? Contemporary dance often accused of being too insular – and accusation that comes from inside as well as outside the field. What do we gain from becoming more accessible, either through different circulation strategies or different content?

Is accessibility defines in terms of content, popularity in Google search, digital versus print modalities? Who are the voices that dictate our discussions?

As we work on capturing and synthesizing our own history, are we reading or publishing enough of what younger dancers and dance makers have to say and write? What about diversity of voices? What is the primary demographic of Movement Research? Who do we want our readers to be?

Dance and Publish Salon, photo by Movement Research

 

Print publication takes time, delay for publication can take weeks, years. But, the print object is held in the hand, returned to again and again, whereas digital content is meant to be buried everyday by new postings and requires advanced searches to locate.

 

Dance and Publish Salon, photo by Movement Research

– Kimberly Bartosik

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Event, photo: Patrick André

Kimberly Bartosik: So, Robert. I would like this conversation to focus on what is happening in Angers under your leadership and invite you into a cross-continent conversation about the project of sustaining artistic legacies as well as contemporary performance practice, and providing a place for that. I really want to hear what is going on for you. So, first I want to talk about the idea of legacy. I know that there have been many myths around Merce’s desire, or not, for an extended legacy plan beyond the company’s final tour. I’m curious how your tenure in Angers is part of that. How did you end up there, and what were you hoping to establish?

Robert Swinston: Because of the finalization of the legacy project, which provided for the closing of the Cunningham Dance Foundation, the only entity remaining would be the Merce Cunningham Trust (MCT), whose mandate is to preserve and maintain Merce’s work through licensing projects and education. It’s just that I had a unique opportunity to apply for the position in Angers at the end of January 2012.

Kimberly: Was that the same year that the company ended?

Robert: The company had their last performance just before on December 31, 2011. I found out shortly after that there was an open call for Artistic Director at the CNDC in Angers. I applied for the job, but my focus at that time was still Merce’s work, his legacy and MCT’s transition from Westbeth to City Center. In February 2012, while I was making the adaption of Four Walls Doubletoss Interludes, I started to work with Claire Rousier to design a three-year project for the CNDC.

Kimberly: Can you tell us who Claire Rousier is and how you knew her?

Robert: Claire is the CNDC’s Deputy Director. She was a dancer and she worked for about 10 years at the CND Paris (Centre National de la Danse) and oversaw the publication of many, many books on dance. She also worked as a consultant, and through a mutual friend, I met her. We started to work on this project while I was employed by the Merce Cunningham Trust. I went to Angers after our presentation of Four Walls Doubletoss Interludes at the Barishnikov Arts Center. We waited until July to receive the confirmation of the nomination from the Ministry of Culture and Communication (MCC). Then Claire and I began to work in earnest to develop more specifically our idea for the pedagogical program for the school of the CNDC. We’ve tried to build a diverse educational program at the CNDC for our students. The diploma they receive after the two-year program is given by the MCC. We want to provide a fine understanding of the various techniques of modern dance as well as foundations of the contemporary dance and at the same time emphasize an approach that is practical, creative and theoretical.

Kimberly: Ok. Great. I want to go back to stuff going on at the school—

Robert: Let me explain that for all Centre Chorégraphique Nationaux (CCN), the first priority of the artistic project is to create new choreographic work. The second is to enable other choreographers and artists to work in our studios and for some artists, to offer them residencies. The third function is our service to the public.  The CNDC has two additional responsibilities. We administer an École National Superior and we also have theaters that we program dance in. This is a big service and there’s a wide net to cast.

Kimberly: How many theaters? You said theaters, plural.

Robert: Well, we have two theaters at the Quai, a 400-seat theater with the audience on a rake and a 900-seat theater with an enormous stage. We also have a very large studio that’s the same size as the stage and that is fitted with lighting equipment, so that technical work such as lighting can be done during the act of creation. We also have three other, smaller studios in the building and we have two other buildings with studios (nine in all). We have apartments so artists can be in residence and focus only on their work. An important part of the CNDC’s function is to help artists. We’re trying to work very much with artists in our region as well as with artists throughout France. There are some international artists also, but most are French artists or artists from the area. This is something we’ve tried to develop. It’s a significant part of our work and it brings me a lot of happiness, to tell you the truth.

Kimberly: That’s beautiful.

Robert: We have so much we’re allowed to give to people, and coming from America, we just don’t have this opportunity.

Kimberly: I know. I completely connect to what you’re saying. The ability to have resources to share is an incredible gift.

Robert: It is incredible. It makes every project interesting.

Kimberly: Yeah, it is a gift, and the students and people know that. It doesn’t matter if you’re from here or there; we understand that.

Robert: It’s also the way in France, the way culture is integrated with performing and visual arts. The arts and culture are knit together. In the US arts and culture seem separate, and we just don’t think about them the same way.

Kimberly: Right.

Robert: A big part of my project is also the idea of legacy, which the French call patrimony, one’s heritage, basically. The idea is that while you continue to reflect on your history, you find ways to bring new life to it, or create new life out of it. Personally, I have no need to divorce myself from my past, but doing so is part of the nature of a rite of passage. Artists, in a way, must come to terms with their past in order to make something new. I have realized that in the creation of my own work, I need to find my own voice. For our school I’m trying to find a way to introduce our common heritage within a curriculum that will give our students the opportunity to learn Cunningham, but also Nikolais, Limon, Trisha Brown and Forsythe. This year our students have ateliers focusing on the work of Martha Graham, Ohad Naharin, Kathrine Dunham and Germaine Acogny. In November Stephan Brinkmann and Malou Airaudo came to Angers from the Folkwang Universität Essen while I taught their students in Essen. In January the students learned historic solos, and created their own. They have just completed a stage learning repertory of Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker, and in April they will begin to work with Jean-Claude Gallotta. So our formation began with studies to build a foundation in American modern dance and will conclude with studies focusing on European contemporary dance. My 4-week workshop was followed by a two week period guided by Cedric Andrieux with the aim to use the Cunningham work as a springboard to create something new out of their experience. My workshop was somewhat strict as I was introducing the students to the Cunningham Technique and was assembling an Event for them. Afterward, Cedric came in and he worked with the students creatively, allowing them to adapt what they were learning, so that in a short time, there they making something new. This is the basic idea to combine patrimony and creation. We don’t have the intention to form the students to become a certain kind of dancer, but instead, would prefer them to discover the roots of their heritage so they have the tools to develop their individuality and their ability to perform.

Kimberly: Let me just interject—Cedric Andrieux was a member of the Cunningham Company and also performed, and is probably still touring, a solo in Jerome Bel’s work.  Can you speak more about the school? It’s very important. I know that Angers has probably the most extensive resources in terms of its education program.

Robert: Well, it’s an old school, was began under the direction of Alwin Nikolais in 1978 who was succeeded by Viola Farber from 1981 to 1983. Yes, the CNDC had an American heritage at its inception, which possibly helped me secure the position.

Kimberly: Okay. Well, we’ll get back to that. I’m really curious about this idea of legacy and how we understand it differently here and there. And the idea of patrimony. So, it’s not surprising, but also somewhat distressing, that this “home” where you’ve been able to find a to place support Cunningham’s legacy isn’t in the US. What do you think about the displacement of this cultural artifact, and if its existence outside of the country somehow alters the nature of the thing itself. Is it surprising that it’s France?

Robert: That’s a good question but I think in terms of the Legacy of Merce Cunningham in New York, we did the best we could, considering the situation and the responsibility that we had. It’s certainly a fact that the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) was financed to a large part by money from grants and money that was earned with the support of theaters and their programming of productions of Merce’s creations. It became apparent that without Merce’s new work, MCDC would have difficulty to maintain the standard it had established. That was a realistic way to look at it.

Kimberly: Right, and that’s a cultural artifact in itself. I’m thinking about what is possible in our country, and its really interesting to me that now that Forsythe has disbanded his company, there is a whole center—a university of performance—that’s being created for him in California, which is amazing, right? That makes me very happy that some great artist from our country is being given that, while he’s alive, while he’s still with us. So I don’t know that much about the end of Merce’s legacy tour—if there was planning to try to find a space in the US—and if that would just be impossible.

Robert: I was involved in that, and I made an effort. It’s really complicated because after Merce died, the Cunningham Dance Foundation (CDF) signed a contract with Westbeth to remain there throughout preparations for the Legacy Tour. The contract lasted until a certain date, and then CDF asked Westbeth if they could have a rider on the contract, so that it could be extended, in the case we could find a practical means to continue. This was refused. When I was trying to drum up interest to carry the studio forward, I spoke to the management of Westbeth repeatedly, but they wouldn’t offer us a contract.

Kimberly: That’s amazing.

Robert: I think that they were looking for somebody else with more money.

Kimberly: That’s supposed to be a home for artists.

Robert: New York real estate is very expensive. The 11th floor at Westbeth is very large and cost something like $14,000 a month. My fellow MC Trustee, Patricia Lent, who is our licensing director, worked on a dossier to create a Merce Cunningham Center and we investigated different ideas, whether it would be at Westbeth or somewhere else. However, at that time, without any kind of reinforcement from Westbeth, I finally gave upon that idea.

Kimberly: I don’t blame you at all.

Robert: To maintain Westbeth, I reached out to Carla Maxwell of the Limon company and to Diane Madden of the Trisha Brown company to investigate the possibility to share the space, but that was not practical since we all work at the same time every day. I also invited Marta Renzi from Dance Films Association to come look at the 11^th floor as a possible studio for filming dance. When MCT found office space in City Center, we made arrangements with Pam Tanowitz to rent space on a daily basis for classes and for rehearsals there. This was the most feasible way to approach the transition. Moving to City Center was within MCT’s financial means and we were able to offer our classes and workshops to the public there. City Center is also close to our hearts because we performed there annually from the late 1970’s into the 1990’s. It made more sense to have an office and studio in the same location, and we have a wonderful relationship with them. I love City Center.

Kimberly: I actually want to talk more later about the Trust at City Center because I’m really excited by it. But to go back to what’s possible there—at the CNDC– I’m curious how your goals have aligned or not with the realities of being there, and the process of navigating an intensely bureaucratic system that has no connection with how we understand arts institutions in the US. Can you give us a glimpse of what you hoped to do and what’s actually possible?

Robert: The administration of culture in France is complex. The CNDC is totally funded by the state government, by the town of Angers and by the region Pays de la Loire. We have a responsibility to them and to the public. It is a wonderful gift and there is a great deal that is possible within our guidelines, and it is more than I could have ever imagined. When the time came for me to start my creative work, I auditioned and took 8 dancers.

Kimberly: Did people come just from your community or from other places?

Robert: From all over France.

Kimberly: So have they moved to Angers permanently?

Robert: No, we are not a permanent company. The dancers are “intermittents.”

Kimberly: Oh I know all about that, I was there this summer during the intermittent crisis.

Robert: When the dancers aren’t here in Angers working with me, they go on unemployment, or they find other work.

Kimberly: I see. So how often do you get to work with them?

Robert: Well, I worked with them for three months the first time.

Kimberly: That’s significant.

Robert: The first rehearsal period was 12 weeks. I made three works that were performed at the end of January 2014: a 45 minute Cunningham Event with the Jackie Matisse décor, a reconstructed Four Walls Doubletoss Interludes and my first creation, Toujours Fidèle, in which I danced with two of the dancers. In March I choreographed Shadowplay for our 20 students. Then, in June, Vicky Shick and I made a duet, a work-in-progress, called Old Bags/Nut Cases. In November I made a program especially for young audiences, which included a stage adaption of Cunningham’s film dance, Deli Commedia, and I choreographed La Boîte à Joujoux to the Debussy score. I did all this in about 16 months.

Kimberly: That’s quite impressive, yeah.

Robert: When we come to New York for the Joyce season, I will present a different, longer Event. I’ve changed it and extended its length to 70 minutes.

Kimberly: Okay, so lets jump forward because there’s one question that I have. You’re coming to New York. This is your inaugural season with this company, with your new identity which is a mixed identity of course—part your very powerful identity with Cunningham, but also you are creating a new phase of your artistic life which creates another identity as a maker of your own work. I wanted to see your work when you came to New York. What was behind the choice to present a Cunningham event?

Robert: The work of Merce Cunningham is my heritage. I work with his technique and it is important that I train the dancers to do his work, because it informs them, challenges them and inspires them. I would be content to present my own work too, but I believe it is necessary to share my experience with the Cunningham work first. The dancers all have different backgrounds and training, so I try to develop a common vocabulary for them. The excerpts of Merce’s dances that are being presented at the Joyce were all created prior to Merce’s work with the computer in 1991. I find that the earlier work offers these dancers a better chance to integrate themselves in the technique and also allows them to find and be themselves. Merce’s work is not easy, since most dancers aren’t used to standing still on one leg so long.

Kimberly: Yes, I know. It’s profound, it really is.

Robert: It is. It takes time to develop.

Kimberly: These projects you talk about that you’ve created yourself, that you can say are really your work—did you have thoughts of sharing those with New York audiences or did you really want to stick to presenting Merce’s work and not conflate those ideas?

Robert: I am proud to present Merce’s work in New York now. As I said before, my most recent program was made for children. La Boîte à Joujoux is 35 minutes and Deli Commedia Variation is 16 minutes, so it is good program length for the young public. I have a desire to communicate, and I wanted to find a way to make a work that people would want to see and that would bring them enjoyment. I was hoping to create some magic with this work. At the CNDC our rehearsals are often open to the public, and I have a great deal of pleasure having groups of children coming into the studio to watch the last part of our class, and then to present a short dance for them. The kids get a kick out of it—they laugh and giggle. I have a daughter, and I wanted to make something especially for children. I didn’t have the need to make more Cunningham work after making the Event and Four Walls Doubletoss Interludes. However, this September I will present a program only of Cunningham’s work, and will reconstruct Place and How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run. Then in 2016 I will make a program in collaboration with the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire.

Kimberly: Oh, great!

Robert: I will choreograph to the music of a French composer named Henri Dutilleux, who happened to be born in Angers in 1916, so we will celebrate his centennial.

Kimberly: Well, I hope at some point while you’re there we, in the states, get to see your work. I think that’s exciting.

Robert: I hope so too! I have sent the Vimeo of Deli Commedia and La Boîte à Joujoux to programmers. I worked with two visual artists, Jean-Pierre Logerais and François-Xavier Alexandre, here in Angers to design the décor for La Boîte. It’s a toy box that opens up like a Rubik’s cube, and every side has a different image, but together they create four scenes. It is a beautiful décor, and I was really happy about the work as a whole.

Kimberly: Good. I hope we get to see it.

Robert: I’ll send you a Vimeo, you can watch it with your child!

Kimberly: Okay! She sees a lot of dance. Lets go back and connect to something you said earlier, about the fact that being in a place that has supported Americans has helped you. But this is sort of a complicated question. There’s a history in France of US artists and choreographers directing choreographic centers there: Viola Farber, Alwin Nikolais, Karole Armitage, but I think you’re the first American in quite some time, which is very interesting. How are you being embraced? What are the challenges, the successes—what is your navigation of the system?

Robert: I think, in terms of the heritage of the CNDC in Angers, the fact that two American artists were its first directors, shows that there is an openness here. But, as a matter of fact, there are quite a few Americans living here.

Kimberly: It’s an interesting moment in dance history because we are dealing with the notion of legacy on so many different levels with many prolific artists. In terms of legacy, there are also living artists we are considering—say Forsythe or Trisha Brown. I’m wondering if there is a connection between this sort of global thinking about legacy, and your appointment there, which goes beyond your lineage with Merce. Is there something larger that we’re all sort of contemplating which has to do with value for history?

Robert: I am not sure. I have been a teacher for many years, and I believe the Cunningham work offers a strong, yet neutral base for a dancers’ training. Beyond that there is also his rich history, his philosophy, and the way he worked in collaboration with other artists. But I also see a great value in other choreographers’ work and believe in sponsoring a diverse approach to education. Of course, Cunningham’s contribution is significant, but our students are introduced to many other ways to move. I’ve taught our students over the course of their time here, and I’m glad that they now know the exercises and that they’re starting to be able to apply their physicality in their dancing. It’s not the simplest technique.

Kimberly: You’re right about that.

Robert: I am grateful to pass on to the next generation this part of my heritage, as well as to inform the students of our shared history. More importantly, I urge them that they find that simplicity that resides in their body. The CNDC is the only school in France with the name Contemporaine in its title and this is symbolic. We don’t offer ballet here for the students’ daily training, but instead offer it as an adjunct discipline along with somatic work.

Kimberly: Yes, talk about that more.

Robert: Well, training in America is much more homogenous on the university level. The ballet and the modern dance techniques are taught together. In France, there is a division between ballet, classic and neoclassic, and the dance contemporaine. I felt an obligation to develop this principal and provide a diverse approach. Not just to bring Cunningham’s work here, and not to align ourselves with a conservatory approach. Instead, I wanted to try something different and to enable the development of a contemporary dancer with an understanding of modern and contemporary dance forms, so that we might learn from the artists who preceded us as well as from the artists who are with us now. In the Solo Project we’ve been collaborating with the CNSMD (Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse) Paris with their department of Labanotation and reconstructing old, masters’ solos, to give our students a sense of their history and a sense of entitlement for their future. There have been many developments in contemporary dance and our students have learned to adapt very quickly to change.

Kimberly:  This word “contemporary” can mean so many different things. I’m here in North Carolina, teaching at a competition dance school, where, if I say the word contemporary, it means something very particular. You’re contemporary or lyrical. I just haven’t quite grasped these different notions. Can you talk about your interest in, or who you are interested in, in Europe—who you feel is truly working in a contemporary vein—post Forsythe, post Judson, post Jerome Bel. Are there artists you’ve encountered that you’re interested in either as educators or creators?

Robert: A lot of teaching artists are invited here. Alberto del Saz, who is the co-director of Nikolais-Louis Foundation for Dance, is an excellent teacher and transmitter of the work. The same is true with Kathleen Fisher from Trisha Brown, who directed an excellent transmission of Set, Reset / Reset for our students. There’s also the very strong work that Cedric Andrieux created here. I have had the opportunity, because of our exchange with Folkwang Universität Essen, to go to Essen and teach there for two weeks, and to introduce the Cunningham work, which was a new experience for them. I’m learning all the time. Last year I went to Senegal and taught at the École des Sables for Germaine Acogny. I was introducing African dancers to modern dance. I was learning African dance too, and it was absolutely wonderful and fantastic. Since I’ve come to live and work at the CNDC in Angers, I’ve had these opportunities and these experiences have awakened me to many new ideas.

Kimberly: So, do you see the idea of “contemporary” being intricately connected to 20th century dance history? Because these are all icons of modern and post modern dance, and I feel like we’re trying to classify the current—the next—movement or moment. We don’t have a name for it, post-Judson or post-post-modern or something. There’s a lot of thinking around these ideas.

Robert: I’ve been asked this question before here in France. I have to say that contemporary dance for me is the dance of today. Everybody brings their definition of dance with them, with different baggage and with different dreams. I think that in France there is a philosophical and conceptual point that they believe very sincerely in their definition of the Danse Contemporaine. I had an eclectic background before I joined MCDC. In the making of La Boîte à Joujoux I was influenced by all sorts of different ideas that came to me from my early experiences as a dancer in musicals, ballet, opera and modern dance.

Kimberly: I think we are in a moment where ideas about virtuosity and ideas of the body and form are being thrown around in really interesting ways, at least here. I think we’re sort of past the notion that to be a contemporary practitioner you’re not allowed to use form or not allowed to make something that could potentially seem virtuosic. It’s a long complicated conversation.

Robert: The last dance I saw that I liked was Empty Moves by Angelin Preljocaj. Have you seen that?

There is rich vocabulary and it is well crafted. The long quartet is accompanied by a recording of John Cage in performance in Italy, reciting his mesostics based on Walt Whitman writing. Throughout Cage’s performance the audience is getting angrier and angrier until finally they are actually screaming at John Cage and he just continues as if nothing is happening.

Kimberly: I did see Empty Moves. It was at ADF this summer. Yeah and the ADF audience, they went crazy for it. It was amazing, but it’s a hard piece, a long piece. When I saw it I had just got gotten off the plane, very tired, and I wasn’t really prepared but I was really excited. I remember dancing at ADF with Merce and people not being excited at all, not that our work was parallel in any way but just the challenge of the work, the idea of presenting challenging work. They’ve changed. Anyway lets move away from that conversation and go to my experience with what’s happening with the Trust in New York right now, and how it’s connecting to what you’re doing. Like you said, City Center has become a training place for people to learn Merce’s technique, and beyond that, there is a Fellowship program that the Trust has created to look at works from all different generations and offer students not just class but access to repertory. I’ve been seeing as many of these fellowship presentations as I can because the first one I saw, I fell in love with Merce’s work in a different way. Seeing it up close in a studio with no production value. Seeing it on bodies that were not necessarily totally perfect in the work, but were really trying. So you saw the beauty of the effort of the body, the rigor, the honesty of that rigor, and being so close to it and being able to admire structure in a different way. When I saw Variations V, I was blown away. It was so radical. I didn’t get to do work like this, when I was a Cunningham dancer, and we didn’t get to see work like that in America. So there are pieces that are being brought out of the fabric of his repertory that our public hasn’t been privy to. The program seems unencumbered by organizational weight. It doesn’t seem to take a lot of money and resources, yet its providing this amazing way—not of keeping history alive, because I think that is a failed project– but allowing it to be vibrant and dynamic. In our American way, it’s making something out of nothing. I’d love for you to talk about how your work in Angers connects with this.

Robert: Well, the MCT established the Fellowship Program before we moved to City Center. We had auditions at Westbeth in March 2012 for students who would be chosen for the free workshops. I was working for the Trust as Director of Choreography and fellow Trustee, Trevor Carlson conceived of the idea. During that summer, I mentored five Fellows, Susanna Hayman-Chafee, Rashaun Mitchell, Susan Quinn, Sandra Neels and Andrea Weber in their reconstruction processes. It was their job to reconstruct the dances, and my job to help them if and when they needed it. Since I was moving to France, we then tried to conceive of the Fellowships in a different way, so we could offer Fellowships and they could be guided by other mentors. The MCT has continued to expand the Fellowships and they’ve developed the program very well, affording many young dancers the chance to learn Merce’s work and preparing more capable stagers to transmit the Cunningham legacy.

Kimberly: Yeah, and it feels like such an uncomplicated way to share information.

Robert: In today’s world, dancers don’t have a lot of money. They need a job and that sometimes interrupts their growth. They often have schedules that are inconsistent. Why not make it easier for them to come to class? Why make it too expensive? Why not give them a workshop that gives them free classes? Then we can all go on the journey together. They are appreciative, they learn and they improve.

The MCT has resources, thanks to Merce’s benevolence, and this is one way we can share his work in a positive manner. All of these Fellowship projects are very important for both Fellows and students to insure the continuation of Merce’s legacy.

Kimberly: Lets see, I have one other thing to ask.

Robert: It was kind of radical for me to leave NY after 42 years, a leap into the unknown.

Kimberly: I think it’s great! Were you surprised when you made it past the first cut for the position?

Robert: No, but I really learned how to develop the patience to go through the bumpy process that it became. Between Claire Rousier and I, and our team at the CNDC, I think we’ve made good decisions and we’re finally seeing some positive results and that has reduced opposition and engendered support. I feel that we have developed a good working relationship with the town of Angers as well as with the administrators of culture in the Ministry. The CNDC is an important part of Angers’ history and culture. I only hope we can arrive at a place where people in America can pronounce it correctly.

Kimberly: Angers? (laughter)

Robert: Well, it’s spelled like Angers. So you need a soft “j” sound for the “g”.

Kimberly: Well, don’t hold your breath for that! Let me give you one last question to round things up: What fears, joys, curiosities—I’m sure there are many mixed emotions—do you have about “coming home” for this New York City season in this dramatically new role, especially to the Joyce where you and I have danced many times together? Can you say a few lines about that?

Robert: First of all, I’m very happy I can return to New York and show what I’ve been doing. I wish to put an end to the perception of some, who think that Merce didn’t want his work seen after his death. In response, I try to explain that it was not his intention that his work not be danced. He always said that if people want to do it, it would make him happy.

Kimberly: That’s what I thought. I thought it was a little bit more ambiguous. Not so black and white.

Robert: With Merce, things could often be ambiguous. But he said this directly to me one day. If people want to dance his work, he would be pleased. The MCT has been sharing his work ever since he passed away and they have expanded its visibility in the US and abroad in universities and in professional dance companies. It seems to me to have been a very good reason for the Compagnie CNDC-Angers to have accepted the Joyce’s invitation to come to New York and show what we have been making. I have been given a wonderful gift to be able to direct the CNDC and its school in Angers, and to be given a budget that has allowed me to create a company. Also, the kindness of the Merce Cunningham Trust has allowed us to dance Merce Cunningham’s work while I direct the program here. I believe that the CNDC’s contemporary dancers can transmit the work effectively, not only the technical parts, but also the humanity of it. This is what I’m interested to convey. The dancers are very passionate, and in fact, sometimes they get so hot, I have to try to cool them down.

Kimberly: (laughter) How do you do that?

Robert: Cool…cool…cool.  They are enthusiastic and very emotional.

Kimberly: Well, Merce’s work is very emotional!

Robert: No, but the thing is—

Kimberly: It’s through the body, emotion through the body.

Robert: You have to deal with it.

Kimberly: Are you nervous to come present this project at the Joyce?

Robert: Of course I’m nervous.

Kimberly: It’s exciting.

Robert: I’m presenting things that you haven’t seen. We’re dancing a section from Variations V from 1965.

Kimberly: That is such a great piece.

Robert: And also dancing excerpts from Squaregame, Points in Space, Rebus and Fractions. That’s the longer event. The shorter event for the children and their families includes Deli Commedia, Changing Steps, Numbers, Four Lifts and Scramble.

Kimberly: Well I look forward to seeing it! For me, the Fellowship project also dispels some myths that…well…I think that all sorts or types of dancers can inhabit Merce’s work, and while some might be more technically capable than others, or have had more training, there’s something so much about the will behind the work and the integrity of the rigor that, when that is so present, that is what keeps it alive. Not that the person can do the absolute perfect relevé and hold it for fifty-nine counts, but that there is this attempt that we all endured and that constant reflection on the possibility of failure. Then, the desire to not fail, and that charge that’s created from that.

Robert: Yes, that’s a big issue.

Kimberly: Its profound, that’s where you have that, “fleeting moment where you feel alive,” I think. So seeing that effort, that desire—has been quite beautiful. On all these different types of bodies and personalities. It’s great.

Robert: It requires courage. You don’t develop confidence unless you have the courage first. Then, when you make it through the hazards, you become more confident and the courage you showed can be repeated.

Kimberly: Right!

Robert: And then the next day you might have to start over again because you might not feel the same.

Kimberly: That’s true. The next day is the next day.

Robert: I try to instruct the dancers to have a positive attitude about what they are doing, especially when they experience difficulty and struggle. I advise them to say to themselves, “Here I am, and yes, I can do it” and to simply try it again and again. Merce was such a powerful presence, but he instilled a willingness in each of us to venture to go beyond what we thought we were capable of. His presence, or his gaze or the sound of his voice often could set off different, sometimes contrary feelings in all of us, in our consciences. Part of the challenge and, yet, beauty of this process was that it required all of us, as dancers and individuals, to believe in ourselves no matter how many times we failed in our attempts. Ultimately, we realized that it was our responsibility, and that we must dance for our own pleasure and self-esteem and not only for him. This was never easy, because we always wanted to please him very much and to receive his affirmation. Our generation must find a new way to communicate this important lesson in different ways. We have to.

Kimberly: Right, it’s a different world.  I just want to say thank you so much.

Robert Swinston graduated from the Juilliard School with a BFA in Dance.

His experiences as a dancer began with the Martha Graham Apprentice Group. He performed with the companies of Kazuko Hirabayashi and José Limón, before joining Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) in 1980. In 1992, he became Assistant to the Choreographer.

After Cunningham’s death in 2009 Robert became Director of Choreography and maintained the company’s repertoire during the Legacy Tour (2010-2011). During this period he assembled 25 Events for MCDC, concluding with the final performances at the Park Avenue Armory Events.

While Director of Choreography for the Merce Cunningham Trust (2012) Swinston created Four Walls / Doubletoss Interludes, an adaptation of John Cage’s Four Walls (1944) and Cunningham’s Doubletoss (1993) for Baryshnikov Arts Center.

In January 2013, he became Artistic Director of the Centre national de danse contemporaine (CNDC) in Angers, France. For Compagnie CNDC d’Angers he created: the Cunningham Event, decor by Jackie Matisse with guest musicians ; Four Walls Doubletoss Interludes; Deli Commedia Variation (adaptation of Cunningham/Caplan Video Dance) and Debussy’s La Boîte à Joujoux for young audiences.

He has staged Cunningham works for companies such as the White Oak Dance Project, Rambert Dance Company, New York City Ballet, and the Paris Opera. In 2003, Robert Swinston was awarded a  « Bessie » for the reconstruction and performance in How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run (1965).

Bessie Award-winning performer Kimberly Bartosik creates viscerally provocative choreographic projects that are built upon the development of a virtuosic movement language, rigorous conceptual explorations, and the creation of highly theatricalized environments. Her work, which is deeply informed by literature and cinema, involves complex plays on space, time, and audience perspective, dramatically illuminating the ephemeral nature of performance. Bartosik’s work has been commissioned and presented by New York Live Arts, Dance Theater Workshop, The Chocolate Factory Theatre (2016), Abrons Art Center (2015); The Yard (2015), Danspace Project, French Institute Alliance Francaise’s Crossing the Line Festival, Festival Rencontres Chorégraphique Internationales de Seine-Saint Denis (France), Mouvement sur la Ville (France),Artdanthe Festival (France), BEAT Festival, The Kitchen, La Mama, Mount Tremper Arts, Barnard College, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Arizona State University, Purchase College Conservatory of Dance, and Movement Research at Judson Church. In 2005 she founded the organization daela, to facilitate the development of her artistic work.

Bartosik has received support for her choreographic work from the Jerome Foundation; Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation through USArtists International; New York Foundation for the Arts through Building Up Infrastructure Levels for Dance (BUILD); MAP Fund; American Dance Abroad; New Music USA through Live Music for Dance; and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists (nomination only). Bartosik is a 2010 and 2012 FUSED grantee (French-US Exchange in Dance), a program of the New England Foundation for the Arts in partnership with The Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French American Cultural Exchange. She is a 2015 Merce Cunningham Fellow. Bartosik’s current project, Ecsteriority4(Parts 1&2), will premiere at The Chocolate Factory in 2016. Ecsteriority4 (Part2) will premiere at Abrons Arts Center in May 2015 as part of Laurie Uprichard’s Traveloogues series and will be presented at The Yard in June.

She has been in creative residence at Centre Chorégraphique National de Franche-Comté à Belfort, France (FUSED); New York Live Arts as a Studio Series artist, Governor’s Island through Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Swing Space Program; Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University; Mouvements sur la Ville (France); Joyce Soho Artist Residency Program; La Guardia Performing Arts Center; Jacob’s Pillow; Kaatsbaan International Dance Center; Mount Tremper Arts; White Oak Plantation; and Movement Research.

Bartosik received her BFA from North Carolina School of the Arts, and MA in 20th Century Art and Art Criticism from The Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Research of the New School University. She was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for 9 years, where she created over 19 original roles and toured extensively around the world. She performed in the 2011 restaging of Robert Ashley’s 1967 opera, That Morning Thing, at The Kitchen (NYC) as part of Performa. She was a guest artist/faculty at University of North Carolina School for the Arts (2013), Arizona State University’s Hergberger Institute for Design and the Arts (2014), Purchase College (2014) and Colorado College (2014). www.daela.org

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Will: Before we talk about Retrospective and its placement at MoMA PS1 right now, I want to talk about the invitation to make it and what the context was. Where were you in your process when Laurence Rassel invited you to make a retrospective of your work?

Xavier: No, she invited me with what she called carte blanche, to come to Fundació Antoni Tàpies and do something, whatever I want—this was her proposal. So, there was not an expectation that I do a retrospective. The work was decided through a process. I did not say, Ah yes, good, I can do this piece I have made or that I always wanted to do. It was developed through an exchange with Laurence. She had followed my work since 2000 and we met during the Kunsten Festival des Arts [Brussels] in 2001 where I had proposed to organize a series of events that had a fil rouge [red thread, a through line], related to the question of copyright. At the time, Laurence, together with Nicola Malevé, were working on open source, software and media—the question of code, to whom it belongs, to whom the software belongs.

Laurence has an interest in the question of process and the processing of things and ideas. That’s something she is looking for in her institution—how to share, how to propose an idea of coming in contact with art, or the art experience actually being a process—by putting this idea of process in the institution.

Retrospective by Xavier Le Roy. Photography_ Lluís Bover. © Fundació Antoni Tàpies

Will: The process through which a performance gets made is something that you’ve experimented with a lot in your work.

Xavier: She pointed to this question in my work. She made her carte blanche proposal just after she saw The Rite of Spring [2007], which confirmed for her that I have an interest in the particular attention and intention of making this relationship between public and performers a subject matter. That is where she sees the potential for process.

She didn’t give me any instructions.

The first thing I thought I would do is to show my works in the museum. It was only when I got to Barcelona that I understood it wasn’t going to be possible to show the works.

Will: To show the works, intact, as they have been performed on stages?

Xavier: Yeah, because there’s no way to install a theater “situation” there. It was not fitting because the main space of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies is full of columns. [laughs]

Will: So, you arrive with a suitcase of your work in front of you. When did the idea of Retrospective, both as a title and concept, take shape?

Xavier: There was this first realization: I’m not going to be able to do what I thought. And the second thing is when Laurence said it would be an exhibition lasting 2 or 3 months. She said, “Maybe you do two days of performance, but then we have to think: what will happen in the two other months.” That is when I understood, Aha, I need to think about something in time that will last the duration of that period. It should be an exhibition, and I saw in the idea, retrospective, something that would be more specific to a museum than a theater, a time and space that brings things together, which, at first, were not made to be put together in the same space at the same time. This is something that seemed more specific to visual art than to performance in theater. I was also thinking about this word retrospective and looking backwards and how the past is part of our experience of the present.

Retrospective by Xavier Le Roy. Photography- Lluís Bover. © Fundació Antoni Tàpies

Will: How did choosing the word “retrospective” put pressure on you?

Xavier: If I had been asked, I probably would not have been able to do it. I think I wasn’t conscious of the weight that the title would bring with it. It was only after some people said, “So, you’re doing your first exhibition and you’re doing what an artist normally does at the end of a career.” I was more focused on using the past and bringing the past into the present, which I connected to my work, Product of Circumstances [1999] where I first used that operation to produce a new work. I was thinking about how the looking back produced something in the present moment.

Will: As I’ve been working as a performer in Retrospective, I’ve noticed there is a lot of repetition and recursiveness in your work. In Self-Unfinished [1998] there is a recurrent backwards walk; in Giszelle [2001] there’s a rewind and fast-forward of language and movement. In Low Pieces [2011] there’s this statement to the audience: “We can continue the conversation later on during the performance”. There is often a “return” that happens in the work. I thought maybe the idea of retrospective came from that.

Xavier Le Roy’s ‘Retrospective,’ photo: Will Rawls

Xavier: I think you are right. I didn’t see that in the way you put it. When I consciously did this for the first time in Product of Circumstances, I was using the idea of recycling something. In responding to a commission, I have often recycled things that already exist. Not that anything is ever really new; you always reuse things. I would make the distinction between consciously choosing to use something that already exists and doing so unconsciously—taking something extant and transforming it without knowing. In retrospective, this is consciously done. We use things that pre-exist and place them in another situation and out of this, something new is produced, And it’s still possible to recognize and identify the material that is used. There are different levels of this. It is also the strategy in Giszelle. There are two halves of the performance—one which is exclusively using material that people who are inscribed in Western culture will recognize or associate, very easily, with preexisting representations of bodies, and the second half, which is not based on this operation. Product of Circumstances also plays with this in a slightly different manner. When I say, “It was the ending of a three years long love relationship,” yes, it’s not something that you know, but you might recognize it because you might have had that experience also. The idea of reusing, I think, is a stream. But it’s also produced by the necessity of responding to the artistic production machines that we navigate; recycling is a strategy in order to respond to this. When I have to produce new material, for me that’s really complicated. Having the sense that you look for something that would become the movement, that is the material created for the new work; it is so difficult. I cannot do this very often.

Will: Movement invention—How does one even define the science of movement invention? It can be sought through activities you do or through sources of inspiration and feelings, but these aren’t the same as the movement that emerges that is new. And then also, it might be new for your body but not for another body.

Xavier Le Roy’s ‘Retrospective,’ photo: Will Rawls

Xavier: That is the complexity. In the way you produce movement you might engage a road that is new for yourself but definitely not for everybody; that is impossible. But you can use the strategy of reframing the movement so that it is new in another situation. It’s also what happens most of the time with things that you see in an exhibition; one takes something that is made in a context and places it in a different one: the exhibition space. If you also think of the market, you see vegetables. They are not meant to be exhibited in the market. They are from the garden and made to be put on your plate, but in between they are put in this place where they “don’t belong”, or more precisely it’s not a milieu where they are alive or are produced in the first place.

Will: And that place where they don’t belong has become naturalized in the journey of that vegetable to your plate.

Xavier: It produces an interface with the consumer. I think the exhibition space is like this, not only there for consumption but to produce a set of interactions that are specific to that space.

Will: How did Fundació Antoni Tàpies allow you to move into new territory for yourself as an artist? How did you find a way to keep it interesting for yourself, so you could keep evolving?

Xavier: As I develop my work through the years, without having a clear-cut moment when I’ve decided it, the relationship between the work and the public has taken on more and more importance. It became more obvious with Untitled [2005]—giving a flashlight to audience members in order to link the action of watching to both communal and individual action. Or, in The Rite of Spring, the idea of distributing the speakers under the audience seats and addressing my conductor’s movements to certain people across the room, as if they were musicians in an orchestra. The theater is a situation that produces relationships, and these relationships have a certain politics and poetics, and they are distributed and separated into two qualities: active and passive. This line of separation for me is somehow the question. In a way, I accept it because I use it, but also, I don’t. I try to transform it. Or, in other words, I would like to accept it under certain conditions, so I need to change the conditions or to change the theater. Some years ago I realized that this is what I do, trying to move these lines of separation; it’s in order to understand my relationship to the world, as an individual, in the group, in front of the group, part of the group. All these interests are at work in what I do and they produce questions, doubts, problems, satisfactions, enjoyments, sadness. The proposal of the exhibition space is to have another kind of this situation where relationships between people, between groups and individuals, between works and people, between people and work are also at stake.

This interest, to work in exhibition spaces, has also been activated by the work of Tino [Sehgal] as I have been involved in and followed, from the beginning, his thought and artistic project. I have been and I am very curious about why he wanted to use the visual art institutions such as galleries and museums, and how he did it. In the development of his work I saw possibilities; he opened up a way to deal with questions of these spaces and their potential.

Will: Among artists, we exchange these strategies, conversations and practices, and they manifest with different content or in different spaces but within power structures that we all manage together.

Going back to new movement, maybe it’s not possible to make new movement but—is perception easier to renew, somehow?

Xavier: You can revisit the assumption of perception, I think. Staging is a good way of thinking of this. It’s possible to produce doubt in your perception and that’s a way of conjuring something new because it can make you say “I thought it was different.” I am interested in creating this trouble in perception, the illusion, the uncanny, something that appears strange but is actually totally normal. That is what happens when we approach each visitor in Retrospective—it’s very strange, and for some, frightening. But it also comes out of a totally normal action, a human being going towards another human, with no weapons, but maybe with a strange way of standing up that reinforces the strangeness and the uncanny.

Will: Yes, it all happens before your eyes. When I watch Self-Unfinished, I watch you going through a process of being you or, being a human being, and then transforming into a creature-like body by bending over and pulling your shirt over your head, and then coming back. In these transitions, my doubt arises but I’ve also watched the whole thing happen, so I’m experiencing both transparency and doubt at the same time.

Xavier: And it’s made by both parties. It’s not only me, and it’s not only you.

Will: How would you describe the mechanism, or mechanics, of Retrospective?

Xavier: It’s three rooms. The first room one could describe as a display room, where movements, actions and choreography are displayed for the visitor. The dancers choose and perform excerpts from my works and excerpts from other performances over the course of their training and careers. These excerpts are woven into stories they share about their lives. At the same time other dancers are presenting excerpts from my works, either in poses or in loops. The second room is where two performers are at work and/or engaged conversation with visitors. So they are not “on display” in the same way as they are in the display room because the conversation that they have with the visitors and the actions each one chooses to do in that room aren’t preset or prepared; it happens in the moment out of the frame given by that room. And in the third room there are three dummies, an exhibition of objects. In each of the three rooms there is something “at work” and something “on display” but with different proportions; in one, the level of “display is” more important then being “at work” and vice versa. The third room has something that is very much on display but at the same time “at work”—when we watch the dummies for a while they seem to move. I’ve never described it like this but it’s another way of describing the three rooms.

Xavier Le Roy

Will: Would you say that part of the process of display is a kind of inertness?

Xavier: Yes but before we speak about that, there is another layer to describe which is that the choreography of the whole exhibition poses the question of, How can something that is continuous in time cohabitate with something that is discontinuous in time? Discontinuity of time is more specific to the theater. The theater is discontinuous in the sense that you have an engagement that is of a certain duration and it finishes. Beginning. End. One action or scene succeeds the next. Things are not present and visible forever; they appear and disappear. And the continuous is more related to exhibition space where you enter the room and the things are supposed to be there all the time continuously, even when you leave the room. So Retrospective is a sort of discontinuity that tries to exist in a place of continuity.

Will: How many times has this exhibition been presented before MoMA PS1?

Xavier: Seven.

Will: So you are also negotiating with different institutions that have different capabilities, different budgets, different approaches to presenting and conceptualizing performance. What I think is interesting about the project is that you’re also negotiating the labor conditions for the performers. So I’m curious to talk about what is consistent or inconsistent from these Restrospectives.

Xavier: One important thing that is, at the basis of this project is a question about objects. And how performing in an exhibition space that is made to display objects will involve a question of how much, as a performer, I transform myself into an object and the agency implied in that. That’s a line that I also relate to the work of choreography, which is very often happening in a group. Depending on how this group works together the material is very often generated from the bodies of individual people, except in a situation where the choreographer teaches the material to the others. But even then it is always about how a dancer negotiates this—and what the contract is. There are contracts and they are always subject to discussion somehow. In my experience of working as a dancer in different groups, there was always this moment of negotiation: Yes, it’s my material you used. And it’s also about what you want as a dancer—you want to be involved in something that will make you find something from yourself, or produce something. But this idea of “from yourself” implies “it’s mine”—but how do you negotiate this idea of property?

Will: Or remain conscious, or not conscious, about it.

Xavier: Exactly. It’s consciousness and unconsciousness that are at stake. And it is very exciting to work on that, if one can make it somehow productive and not only a subject of conflict. Conflict is also okay, but trauma, let’s say, is a problem. This is maybe a long deviation but I think to answer your question I have to go here. There is, for me, a necessity to include this question in the work—to put it to work—because I know I do not want to assume that it is simply possible to perform in the exhibition space all day long in order to replace the objects.

When I look at a person doing a performance, there is something in my mind that comes up. I enjoy the movement, the reflection about what these forms produce, and then there is a moment where I think, What do they think?

Will: Because they are thinking. And that’s part of the content already.

Xavier: I’m curious about that. One can think that this content is also visible. They think about the task they have to do, how the role is negotiated; this movement needs this attention in the body, et cetera. So of course as a practitioner I know this is going on for a performer, but I also know there are potentially other things, and I’m curious about those. I have a desire to try and show this, not only to represent it, but to use it as our force. In the performance, our labor is our power and is also our means of communicating. Out of this exchange, out of this communication, comes feedback. It is a way of asking, How much do I want to be an object? How much do I want to be a subject? How much, imperatively, do I have to be an object? How much, imperatively, do I have to be a subject in this situation? I relate this to daily life, Do I want to have many choices and therefore have to choose all the time? Or do I want to have only one choice imposed to me all the time? Of course I would like both but how? It seems difficult to find a satisfying balance between both. These possibilities are not very well distributed between people in our societies and it’s extremely difficult to build a situation where that would be working differently.

Xavier Le Roy’s ‘Retrospective,’ photo: Will Rawls

Will: There’s also a dichotomy through which dance can be an empowering or disempowering practice. As you participate in an artistic process, you accept a certain amount of intervention into your own body and mind, which, at times, can be traumatic. When I’m at PS1 performing I think about this—how to delineate my power, vulnerability and independence. There’s also a frustrating part, which is that, ultimately, while on the job, I cannot entirely break out of the frame of your work while telling my story. And that is a tension that I think will stay with me for the duration of the exhibition. I think the performers experience this tension at different intensities, or focus on other tensions. And then furthermore, the museum framework cannot be exploded or escaped while on the job, but I am still curious about how to work towards this.

Xavier: It points at the necessity to have this museum frame and structure in place in order to find out what you experience, but also, to encounter the limits of it. Hopefully it doesn’t produce a cynical situation. This is my hope. You have signed the contract with these limits, my works, the museum, the fact that this museum is in this place, in this city, all these things—that is what we play with.

Will: How does one perforate the limits of the museum? Maybe it is by presenting or performing in such a way that a visitor carries this performance with them, extending the experience beyond the site of the museum. But, sometimes, the virtuosity of performing so well that someone remembers you, can be a kind of hyperbolic objectification of your performance. Catch-22?

Xavier: I think one cannot break the limits of the museum, but maybe we can transform or extend them.

This might be an interesting survey to do with the visitors, if, when they go out, How and what do they remember of my work; How much what they take with them is actually this exchange with the performer(s). I’m almost sure that 80 per cent of people that don’t know anything about my work prior to Retrospective, who were not expecting to see performers in the space, who were coming to look at sculptures and pictures, leave with the impression and memory of the story of one of you, or two of you, or three of you—and my work and my identity actually disappear.

Will: Or they leave with a cacophony of impressions.

Xavier: That is what I hope. In the end, the structure and the frame have been necessary to produce attention for you.

Xavier Le Roy’s ‘Retrospective,’ photo: Will Rawls

Will: This is something that Jenny [Schlenzka] brought up when we had that reception, she was thanking the performers and was saying, “Day by day, it’s looking more like a group show than a solo show.” But I don’t know if the group show will ever supersede your authorship.

Xavier: That is, I think, the eternal question. [Long pause]. This reminds me of the intent of doing the opposite. When we were doing E.X.T.E.N.S.I.O.N.S [a collective authorship research project, 1999-2001], the intent was to present our work as something that is by these people. However, on the side of the public, institutions or the press, there was still the need to attach it to one name or one person, which at the time was me, being the project’s initiator. So then this group was full of the usual tension, all the clichés of what can happen in group work, cycles of exclusion and inclusion. This is, from my perspective, less productive than the situation that we have with Restrospective, which is, like you say, framed under my name, and yet the visitor’s experience can be of a totally different nature than that of my artistic signature, and the agency of the performers can be questioned, discussed and exposed.

Will: As the performers present their material each day, weaving our stories and dances into yours, Retrospective finds ways in which it can speak about things that your previous works don’t speak about. The subject matter and subjectivity of your work may be extended through us, and vice versa. But one thing that comes up for me is this idea of emotionality, especially when someone tells a story that engenders an empathetic response from a visitor. I don’t really associate your works with having this kind of exchange around empathy or emotional content, but I could be wrong. So, in my mind, when this emotionality, which has been “left out” of your work, reappears inside Retrospective, it throws your work into a different light. I am sure you know this and invite this. But by inviting these kinds of unforeseen contents, are you consciously inviting an undoing or a critique?

Xavier: Emotions are not a driving force to produce my work but they are also not absent. Or more precisely they conduct my work unconsciously and I don’t use them consciously or try to express or represent them explicitly. In Product of Circumstances, I attempt to transform emotions into fact, to say we encounter different things in our life such as events that produce certain emotions, reactions, and other actions and these things become facts. That’s why I try to present them as much as possible as matter of fact—this happened and that happened. Love trauma is loaded by emotion and is a fact. If I go into details there is a lot of emotion, dark feeling, extremes from joy, pleasure, happiness to desire of death. When I say, “a three-year long relationship ends”, there are all of these emotions and feelings behind this statement. So I don’t use the actual emotion—that’s not a driving force—but there is a relation to it about which I also don’t know. Maybe it’s why I do all this work. When I did Product of Circumstances for the first time in French—somehow my voice went up and down because it’s my mother tongue. Suddenly my voice reflected a trace of emotion. Or, while performing Product of Other Circumstances [2009], I have cried several times. So it is permeable. I am permeable to this. But like you say, Retrospective allows all this signification and meaning in my work, which has been classified, from a certain perspective, as intellectual. Which I think it is too hasty to classify it this way.

But I guess your remark is right, by doing Retrospective and having all these subjectivities that use the work and say “that’s what it means for me, and what it does for me”, they create a multitude of relations to my work and sometimes it activates, via personal association, some emotionality. Therefore the “subject matter and subjectivity of my work”, as you said, may be extended and not reduced to be “intellectual” and elitist or difficult.

Will: A dancer will talk about a moment in their life that involves a certain kind of dancing, and then, in the palette of your work, there is something that reflects that. They will use your work as a substitution. And we choose when to substitute or when not to. We also choose what not to share of our lives. I love this idea of mentioning a decision not to share certain information as a way of creating a space between the performance situation and me.

Xavier: It is also a way of saying, “It’s my choice.” That is important to me. This sense should be very present. To come back to your question about undoing my work: that is not a concern, it is something that Retrospective does in a certain way but it is not a desire of undoing. All the things you speak about, I also discover by doing.

Xavier Le Roy’s ‘Retrospective,’ photo: Will Rawls

Will: So what happens after Retrospective that is not a retrospective? What are your questions these days?

Xavier: I don’t know yet. I’m a bit taken by the stream of doing Retrospective again and the curiosity of what that does in each place. At the very beginning, the frame was much tighter: “You use my work. You do an excerpt of my work and you talk about yourself through that work.” Already in Barcelona there was the necessity to perform things other than my work. Then from Barcelona to now, I think the necessity of using my work is still there, because it’s necessary to produce that frame. If we don’t have the frame, then we don’t have this resistance. It is the negotiation with that frame that should be loose. It is loose from the first edition at Tàpies. But how loose? And not in the sense of more or less loose, but in the sense of, What quality of looseness?

Will: Some people might want to perform an excerpt of Self Unfinished perfectly and other people might want to perform it imperfectly as a form of resistance. That’s one way I’ve seen this looseness. There are numerous strategies for bending and playing with the frame, the material, your own story, and to an extent, the overall choreography of the exhibition.

My last question is, if you had to ask yourself a question at this point, what would it be?

Xavier: If I think about the possibility of extending this into a form that would not use my works as a frame or as material, I think that’s the question—Can the choreographic structure developed to exhibit these live materials become generic or, is it specific to my work? Can that choreographic structure be used as a frame for other kinds of material and subjects? How will that work? What would that do?

Xavier Le Roy holds a doctorate in molecular biology from the University of Montpellier, France, and has worked as a dancer and choreographer since 1991. He has performed with diverse companies and choreographers. From 1996 to 2003, he was artist-in-residence at the Podewil in Berlin. In 2007-2008 he was “Associated Artist”at Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier, France. In 2010 Le Roy is an Artist in Residence fellow at the MIT Program in Art Culture and Technology (Cambridge, MA). Through his solo works such as Self Unfinished (1998) and Product of Circumstances (1999), he has opened new perspectives for dance and his individual approach has radicalized academic discourse about the body and choreographic art. Le Roy develops his work like a researcher, while simultaneously focusing on the relationships between process and product and his own involvement in the process. He regularly initiates projects to question modes of production, collaboration and conditions of group work with projects such as E.X.T.E.N.S.I.O.N.S.(1999-2000), Project (2003), and 6 Months 1 Location (2008). His latest works, such as the solos Le Sacre du Printemps (2007) and Product of Other Circumstances (2009), as well as the group piece low pieces (2009-2011),  “production” created together with Mårten Spångberg for the exhibition Move: Choreographing you, “untitled” 2012 for the exhibition 12 Rooms and « Retrospective » first realized in 2012 at the Tapiès Foundation-Barcelona, produce situations that explore more explicitly diverse mode of relationships between spectators and performers.

WILL RAWLS is a choreographer, performer and writer.  Curious about the construction of identity and agency within historical and future narratives, Rawls performances and installation engage dance, text, music, sound, sculpture and installation. In Winter/Spring 2015 Rawls will present two projects in NYC: in February, a collaboration with dancer, Kaitlyn Gilliland, for Danspace Project’s Platform: Dancers, Buildings and people in the Streets and in June 2015, a choreographic installation for the 100th Anniversary of the Henry Street Playhouse and the Abrons Arts Center. His last work, The Planet-Eaters, premiered at The Chocolate Factory Theater in November 2013. His other choreographic work has appeared at Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, Dixon Place, The Brooklyn Museum, The Emily Harvey Foundation, Tanzquartier Wien, Mount Tremper Arts and Williams College, among others. From 2006-2013, Rawls collaborated with Kennis Hawkins on the performance duo, Dance Gang working in explicit and parasitic ways in public space and galleries (MoMA PS1, dOCUMENTA (13), ISE Cultural Foundation, Dance Theater Workshop and PS 122).  As a dancer, he has worked with Jérôme Bel, Brian Brooks, Alain Buffard, Maria Hassabi, Noemie LaFrance, Nicholas Leichter, Neal Medlyn, David Neumann, Shen Wei Dance Arts, and Katie Workum. Rawls has also been an interpreter for Tino Sehgal and re-performed works by Marina Abramović.